I’m one of those comic fans who tries not to allow himself to be dragged into the whole Marvel vs. DC argument based purely on the characters and being loyal to them. It’s all about the writers and the quality that comes with it. Sure, there are many times when the scale is skewed immensely, such as pre-Flashpoint when I was only reading a couple DC comics compared to now, but that’s on them. For the past 6-7 years, when you compare Marvel and DC, there’s no better writer sample size than Brian Michael Bendis and Geoff Johns. These two are the butt of a crazy amount of jokes about how they each write 80% of the comics of their respective companies.

Hell, I’m guilty of this myself. If they ever brought back Amalgam Comics, every issue would be written by Geoff Bendis.

They both have their strengths and weaknesses. I dropped all the Bendis Avengers books after growing impatient and realizing that the only reason I was reading them in the first place was because of enjoying what he used to write. At the same time, I’m really loving Ultimate Spider-Man and the whole Miles Morales experiment. With Johns, I lost complete interest in Justice League shortly after the origin arc, yet I eat up his Green Lantern and think his Sinestro is the most compelling character going in DC. Not that that’s hard, considering he has a head start over 95% of the New DC cast.

This isn’t so much a simple Bendis vs. John post, but more a comparison over something Johns does that I’ve always dug about his work and really helps earn him his spot as “that DC Comics guy”. It’s also something that I’ve found Bendis to almost get, only to drop the ball and go the opposite direction.

What I’m talking about is setting up a threat, usually in the first act, that allows the readers to say out loud, “These heroes are absolutely screwed.” This is a lot better as a selling point to a comic than “it’s important.”

I’m going to focus on the event storylines, since these are the ones given more emphasis and put under such a microscope that the two writers have to make extra sure that their threat is something that can’t simply be waved away.

I’m also going to skip over Avengers Disassembled and Green Lantern: Rebirth, since I don’t even really see those as events as just gigantic plot points meant to set up the next several years of storyline. Disassembled is something I read years after the fact and found it to be kind of a mess in terms of storytelling and Green Lantern: Rebirth was a big mess of retcons and reveals meant to pave the way for Johns’ lengthy run on the Lantern corner of the universe.

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Siege, Thor by J. Michael Straczynski Omnibus

For a while, Bryan Hitch held the crown of slam bang superhero action. On The Authority and The Ultimates, he took his Alan Davis-inspired style and redefined how what cool action scenes meant in cape comics. Hitch splurged on spectacle: hundreds of space ships, hyper-detailed rubble, and battle-scarred landscapes. He held the crown, until Olivier Coipel came along and knocked it right off his head.

My first exposure to Coipel came in House of M, an event comic that had a story that was actually pretty terrible. Despite that, Coipel’s art shone through. His broad, muscled figures really sell the power and majesty of the superhero. He can do that big, nasty superhero action that the fiends live for, and he only got better as time went on. He knocked Thor out of the park, and Siege, with inks by Mark Morales and colors by Laura Martin, looked amazing.

I don’t think of Coipel being a realistic artist, at least not in the way that Hitch or Alex Ross are realistic, but I do think that his comics look real. He’s got more in common with that old Alan Davis style, where characters have believable proportions but are absolutely subject to cartooning or exaggeration for effect. Coipel draws straight up comic books, without realism being the goal. If it looks good on the page, he does it. Sometimes this means drawing regular humans, but more often than not, it means playing with scale. His superheroes are barrel-chested and broad as a house. His faces are cartoony, perfectly caricatured, and exaggerated when things get emotional.

I dig this guy quite a bit. His comics look real because he’s just a consummate artist. He doesn’t have to work in the same lane as Hitch to get the same effect, and for my money, he’s holding the crown of what an event comic should look like.

(I accidentally uploaded a fifth image. Here it is.)

It’s time for the second part of the journey to check out the other alternate universe takes on Venom. We should probably start off with—wait, a sec.

What about Exiles? That’s a series that’s all about different Marvel universes. From what I’ve seen, Venom got shafted throughout. There was an inclusion of Peter Parker with the Carnage symbiote (I think), but Venom wouldn’t appear until the very last issue.

You see, Marvel always has to give Chris Claremont something to do… or else. He’s like the incompetent nephew that Quesada always has to give work to or else his sister will give him hell. They tend to give him stories that take place outside of Marvel 616, such as Exiles. The series became New Exiles and Claremont ran it into the ground, all while fulfilling his rampant [insert female X-Men member] fantasies. They relaunched it with Jeff Parker at the helm, where Morph would lead a team made up of Blink, Scarlet Witch, Beast, Black Panther, Forge and Polaris. It was fun, but nobody cared because of the stigma attached to the previous run. It was canceled by #6.

Venom appeared for a single panel. Why did I go through all that explanation to cover a single stinking panel? Because in it, the team sees another Exiles supergroup and I just know that Jeff Parker made the wrong choice.

Look at that team! I swear, if Parker went with that lineup instead of mutants and wacky Black Panther, it would be outselling Blackest Night.

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This week begins with a lack of Amazing Spider-Man. That’s odd.

Batman and Robin #5
Grant Morrison and Phillip Tan

The Boys #35
Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson

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As I’ve mentioned before, I tend to buy more than I can read. I have mountains of books lying around for forever that I just can’t find the time to finish off. Who knows when I’ll be able to crack open Essential Frankenstein’s Monster? Finally, I was able to make some time for myself to get to reading.

First I read X-Men: Endangered Species. I had that one lying around for a while and I really needed to read through it just so I could segue myself into Messiah Complex. Complex was pretty rad, no doubt. Endangered Species was different, though.

hermanos told me how he and just about everyone else considered it to be a dull flop of a story. I disagree. Everyone has been looking at it the wrong way. I figured it out, see. Endangered Species isn’t truly about Beast and Dark Beast trying to rekindle the mutant population through every possible means until giving up. No, not at all.

Endangered Species is a comic book retelling of Super Mario Brothers. God, it’s so obvious.

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“There’s no such thing as bad characters, just bad writers.” – Unknown

It’s the truth. Especially in a medium where characters rarely have one set writer, sometimes not even one at a time, the quality of a character is largely decided by how they’re written. But sometimes a character needs a little more effort to work; characters with no set goal or motivation, a lack of personality or simply an outdated concept. Tigra is one of those characters. She never struck me as interesting in anything I’ve read featuring her; She was either just kind of a generic urban vigilante with a cat theme or caught up in the plights of some society of cat people with a convoluted history that I couldn’t care less about. But recently Marvel seems to have been making people more aware of the character, by making her the one who betrayed Captain America in Civil War, the person the Hood beat the crap out of to set an example in New Avengers and as one of the characters in the House of M: Avengers miniseries. So if you’re going to bring her to the readers’ attention, the least you can do is make her compelling. That scene in New Avengers was the first time I’d felt any sort of emotion towards the character, but it hasn’t been followed up on so far and it’s unclear if it will be (although I’m still holding out since Bendis tends to write stories with a slow burn). So here are some things I would like to see happening with the character to make me interested in reading about her:

– Politely ignore the cat people stuff. It’s unnecessary baggage and too goofy to take seriously in this day and age. There was a Tigra mini a couple of years back by Christina Z and Mike Deodato Jr. that did exactly this. It wasn’t very good because the writing was too cheesy, but at least it tried to do something new with the character and give her a place in the universe. Oh yeah, she became a cop at the end of that mini. That was sorta interesting. Whatever happened to that?

– Change the name while you’re at it. “Tigra” makes it sound like she should a member of the Thundercats. Either go for the Luke Cage angle and get rid of the name altogether (“Greer Grant” has a nice enough ring to it), or change it back to the more generic yet elegantly simple “The Cat”.

– Change the outfit. It makes her look silly. Yeah, I know, she’s confident about her sexuality, blablabla. Lots of people (real and fictional) are confident about their sexuality, yet they generally don’t walk around in a bikini all the time. Besides, we all know the real reason she’s dressed like that. It’s not even a practical outfit, since very rarely is it drawn as giving any sort of support. The only thing it’s good for is removing the impact from dramatic scenes. She doesn’t need a superhero outfit anyway, much in the same way Wolverine doesn’t need one. She has no secret identity anymore and her look is distinctive enough to not warrant a flashy costume. Like I mentioned, she’s supposed to be a police officer now, so put her in a police uniform.

– Yeah, she’s a police officer! That’s one of the things that always appealed to me about Savage Dragon, that he was a cop who got super powers but chose to stay a cop in favor of becoming a generic superhero. Focus on that idea and it’d both give her a unique role in the universe and be the perfect opportunity to show the Initiative in action; Superheroes actively working together with the police force. And, hey, holy crap, guess who’s the new top dog in Marvel’s criminal underworld? The Hood. The guy she’d have a very personal reason for going after. This stuff practically writes itself.

In fact, this can all be brought back to simply remembering that she’s a cop. That one story element from a five year old miniseries suddenly makes the character relevant again. This really isn’t that hard.

How many comic characters have come up with recently revealed/brought back into play children?

Wolverine has Daken and X-23, kinda. Agent 13 is preggo with Cap’s baby. Namor had that son show up in his mini. Superman has Chris Kent. Batman has Damian. Hulk has Skaar or whatever. Corsair had Vulcan, though that’s kind of stretching the timeline a little. Punisher’s got a tyke.

That’s eight in, what, just under two years?

Anyway, Christos Gage is one of my new favorite writers. His Union Jack was the bomb, his House of M Avengers was mostly recap/revamp for Cage fans, but good, and so on. He’s got a couple books dropping soon. Iron Man Annual #1 and T-bolts: Breaking Points. Both are one-offs.

Tony Stark as James Bond + Bruce Wayne is a brilliant move, seriously. Why hasn’t anyone done this before? It’s totally Tony Stark. Danny Rand is Kung Fu Billionaire, Tony Stark should be Mecha James Bond. I want to pick up both books now. Gage generally does good.

But yeah, there’s something else in those previews that I noticed. Check out this image and think back a few months to the Mary Jane statue thing.

I laughed.

My question is– is this a knee-slapper with a knowing wink or a face-slapper with a mean glare? It’s kind of obviously presented as something that isn’t altogether kosher or positive… my money is on wink.

I feel kind of silly making this article since it was supposed to be done months ago. There are several things that kept me from finishing it, but I’m going to take the easy way out. All the time I usually use to write these What If articles was really used to pretend I was writing for Lost. I love writing Sam the Butcher’s dialogue the most.

Starting it off, here’s a series of sig images I made for the Batman’s Shameful Secret sub-forum at Something Awful. I guess they worked.

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Oh yes, it is that time again! Time for your favorite feature and mine, Who Would Win In A Fight!

If you’re new to the blog, WWWIF is a semi-regular (read: whenever I remember to do it) feature where I put some thought toward non-standard comics fights. No Superman vs Batman, Thing vs Hulk, or Spider-Man vs Blue Beetle here, no sirree. These are the fights that are important. If you want to read the previous entires in this battle, click the “Who Would Win In a Fight” category link over to your right, or click here.

Er, now that I click the link myself, I see that there is only one other fight. Oops! Well, here’s a second. Onward!

Kitty “Shadowcat” Pryde vs Jubilation “Jubilee” Lee!
“I was the first and the best, Jubilee! You’re going down!”
“Pfft, I’m shoor, old-timer. As if.”

Kitty and Jubes have a lot in common. They’re both teenaged sidekicks. They both had to fight to stay on the X-Men. Kitty Pryde had her “Professor Xavier is a JERK!” and was Jubilee ever an official X-Man? Wolverine has a paternal relationship with both of them, even going so far as to drag them along on trips to Japan, Madripoor, and who knows where else.

It’s kind of interesting in how they differ in their relationships with the other X-Men. Kitty’s “mother,” for lack of a better word, is Ororo “Storm” Munroe. They have a great and nurturing relationship going. Of course, Kitty also dated Peter “Colossus” Rasputin for a good long while, turning Peter into not only a mutant hated and feared by a world he’s sworn to protect, but a probable sex offender.

Jubilee, however, is a bit more rough. She’s been openly jealous of many of the X-Women’s X-Bodies, she used to hate Psylocke’s ninja-kicking, bathing-suit-for-a-uniform-wearing, race-changing guts, and for a little bit she had something of a crush on Gambit, even if she would never admit it. Also, she called Longshot “Blonde Jovi” once and wondered how he got into the X-Men.

Kitty Pryde has enjoyed no small amount of popularity. I mean, and I’m not trying to be mean here, but she’s tailored to be someone’s dream girl. I’m sure you know what I mean. She’s a collection of traits that make people go “Ooh, awesome!” She’s consistently cute, super-smart, has ninja skills, is great with computers, and isn’t so hoity-toity that she won’t date a normal guy like you Doug Ramsey. I mean, that’s not even touching on the Agent of SHIELD stuff, Excalibur, Mekanix, or any of the other awful things she’s done or been through over the years. She’s got baggage. Now, she’s in Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-men, hardcore-ing it up, slapping Emma Frost around, and getting all the good lines. It’s worth noting that Kitty’s current and original costume are classics, but every single costume she had in between these two have actually been worse than every costume the Wasp has had. That is an incredible accomplishment. Even when she’s screwing up, she’s perfect at it.

Jubilee, on the other hand, hasn’t. She was in Generation X for a while, then that got canceled, and then she lost her powers during House of M. She had a good run in X-Men, though, and I hear that her stuff during Wolverine’s solo series was great, but I haven’t read it yet. She was pretty awesome in the X-Men tv show, too. The yellow trenchcoat is bright enough to be blinding. The “Jubilee” earrings are a nice touch, too, but the bright pink shirt and ’90s shorts that go up to her armpits are awful. I’m kind of glad that those got dropped, costume-wise. Shorts don’t belong above your belly button.

Jubilee is another of those characters with “hidden potential.” She could theoretically kill people with her “pafs,” but tends to shy away from doing such a thing. Even better, I read somewhere that she is technically splitting atoms on a subatomic level, which makes her a nuclear threat. When properly unleashed, she is crazy powerful. She blew up the Mandarin’s boat back during the bit when Jubilee, Psylocke, and Wolverine were traipsing around Southeast Asia. She’s an Olympic-level gymnast, too, and a decent fighter. This doesn’t stop the other X-Men from saving her on a daily basis. She’s gone toe-to-toe with The Hand, though, so she can’t be too bad. Then again, it is The Hand. You can get a Hand membership out of a Crackerjacks box. Jubilee is also a walking and talking ’90s pop culture reference, and starred in a really, really bad Generation X TV pilot from the ’90s that I inordinately loved as a kid. It should’ve gone on to be a TV show, I’ll tell you what. It would’ve been bigger than Buffy.

Kitty Pryde’s abilities are pretty well-defined. All of them. Putting aside the ridiculous idea of “phasing between worlds” or whatever that was in X-Treme X-Men, she can phase herself and things she is in contact with through nearly any object. It’s been suggested that she can phase through anything but adamantium, too. She’s super smart and an expert computer user. She can hack and program and blah blah blah. She was an agent of SHIELD for a little bit, so she may even be government trained. She was possessed by Ogun, Wolverine’s former sensei, and had crazy ninja skills for a short while. Later on, according to Thomas Wilde, Warren Ellis realizes that “Kitty’s spent years and years being taught how to fight hand-to-hand by one of the scariest bastards on Earth.” So, sup crazy fighting skills! Also, she can phase just enough that she can walk on air.

Yes, she can fly. She also has a pet dragon. Cripes. She probably isn’t a long-lost princess, though.

Taken head to head, this would be an interesting and pretty short battle. Kitty could just grab Jubilee and half-phase her into a rock or something. Jubilee probably couldn’t open up full bore on Kitty the way she needs to do in order to win the fight, so it’d devolve to hand-to-hand… against a ninja master who can turn intangible. Jubilee is agile, so she could probably dodge a few hits, but Kitty is super smart, can walk on air, and has crazy fight training. Jubilee could use her fireworks to blind Kitty and get in some good hits, but all Kitty has to do is turn intangible and nothing Jubilee throws would land. It is worth noting that Kitty can still see when she’s phased, which means a couple things. One, light can still strike her eyes (and the rest of her, since she doesn’t turn invisible). That means she still has some form of solid matter. Two, if light can strike her eyes, Jubilee’s pafs might have the impact of actual matter. Gavok thinks that Jubes may even be able to induce seizures in Kitty. Even if she can’t, having fireworks going off in your brain can’t be a good thing.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is that, six times out of ten, Kitty Pryde would probably beat the bone marrow out of Jubilee and then invent a cure for cancer, AIDS, and the common cold out of that bone marrow, all the while singing the Star-Spangled Banner.

…

Final Verdict: Jubilee wins by authorial fiat.

Thanks for reading!

It’s Christmas time and 4th Letter is in the spirit!

See?

Over a year ago, a class act by the name of Chinaman7000 created a very special thread at the Something Awful sub-forum Batman’s Shameful Secret. Called “Let’s Ruin the Moment”, people would take an impacting moment or scene from comic history and meddle with it. You would see Ultimate Mr. Sinister shoving a content Ultimate Xavier down a wheelchair ramp or Tomorrow Woman’s dying words to Superman being about how much she saved with Geico. It’s very fun and at times incredibly funny.

I’ve made a lot of images for those threads (the first thread got too long) over the past year and two months. When I started, I didn’t have any decent image-manipulation programs, so I had to deal with MS Paint. It was a disaster. Then I got Paint Shop Pro. That was also a disaster. But eventually, my understanding of the program got better and I still use it today. I could get Photoshop like any other good citizen, but I have a strong case of Stockholm syndrome.

Because there are 4L readers here who haven’t paid the $10 to be part of the Something Awful forums, I decided that from time to time, I’d post a batch of these. At least mine and any that are made by people associated with me (like hermanos). I don’t want to be yelled at by anyone for Ebauming their images, but if anyone wants me to showcase their work, just give me a ring.

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