After nearly three months of ignoring it, I’ve finally updated the site’s Table of Contents page. Other than adding the newer articles, I’ve added Hoatzin’s section, got a better picture for the “Ruining the Moment” section and added the Juggernaut.

See? Cain can be seen dashing into any articles deemed suggested reading by 4th Letter’s writers or readers.

In other news, CHIKARA has a new contest based on their DVD covers. By sending in your own artwork, you could possibly have it grace the cover of their yet-to-be-named November 07 event and win a bunch of free crap. The requirements:

– .jpg or .psd file
– 200 dpi
– RGB mode (NOT CMYK!)
– Measuring 5.125” (width) by 7.25” (height) inches
– Keep it family friendly

Send the entries to lfchikarason@gmail.com with your name and address. You can enter as many times as you want. I’m going to try and break out the pencils for the first time in years and see what I can do with this.

Finally, I made a couple purchases yesterday for the next series of articles that I’ll get to once I finish the Professor Marc’s Homework Trilogy. All I can say is that despite all the comics I’ve read over the course of this site’s history, nothing… NOTHING… has made me fear for my sanity more than what I have in store. Stay tuned.

First thing, big thanks to whoever submitted the comics/wrestling parallels article to Fark. You are a true class act, whoever you are.

Said article is also deemed incorrect thanks to Mr. Kennedy getting himself suspended and therefore written out of the “Vince McMahon’s long-lost son” storyline. Though I guess that does make him the wrestling version of Captain Atom.

Electronic Arts has announced another Marvel fighting game with no title yet. Rather than be a sequel to Marvel Nemesis, even in style, the game appears as a Marvel version of War of the Monsters. War of the Monsters was an all right game, though pretty shallow. The new game doesn’t look very different.

Here is the trailer and here is the in-game footage. The roster so far is Spider-Man, Captain America, the Hulk, the Juggernaut and Dr. Doom. Allow me to rail on the footage, character-by-character.

Spider-Man: Cool that they go with the small-eyed look, much like Alex Ross intended with his original Spider-Man movie designs. The part where he saves the blond lady from the falling building, but does nothing to save Bruce Banner reminds me of that Jay Pinkerton parody with the avalanche.

Captain America: Apparently able to punch the Hulk a mile away, Captain America pretends to be alive for this upcoming game. The designers show that they’ve come up with like a hundred sketches of what Captain America should look like here. Listen, I know I’m not paid the big bucks like you fine fellows, but why not… I don’t know… make him look like Captain America?!

See? Capcom got it right.

Hulk: They end the trailer with the Hulk yawning. I don’t get it.

Juggernaut: For a guy magically given an instant and infinitely buff body, why does the Juggernaut look like he needs to do some sit-ups? And stop trying to make him resemble the Vinnie Jones movie version. That’s not something that needs emulating.

Doctor Doom: First off, nice kilt, Scrooge Von Duck. Here I thought Doom was a strategic mastermind that acted evil behind the defenses of diplomatic immunity, not a guy who terrorizes the populace by taking a stroll through New York City in broad daylight. It looks like Jim Rhodes redesigned Doom’s armor by giving him missiles instead of the trademark energy gauntlets. Plus he blows up a building in his attempt to kill Spider-Man, showing that even Doom is over 9/11. No tears this time.

I’ll have a real article up tomorrow. Stay tuned.

I took a long break from these babies to do the Wrestlecrap articles, but now I’m back with quite a collection of characters. Some are a bit topical, too.

CROSSBONES

Captain America #360 (1989)

The story of the issue is part of an arc called the Bloodstone Hunt. It involves Captain America and Diamondback taking on Baron Zemo, Batroc, Zaron and Machete over some gem. That part isn’t really important.

Though I will say that Diamondback’s appearance is sort of off-putting here. Her outfit is pink spandex with a series of black diamonds over her front and back. Considering she’s in the water for most of the comic, she hangs around some people in bathing suits, and the way the pink is colored here, it looks like she’s wearing a black thong that doesn’t cover her chest. That’s all well and good, but her costume is torn in places, so now it looks like she has some nasty-ass skin disease.

Anyhow, she and Cap get away with the prize. As they leave, we see that they’re being watched.

Crossbones is so cool.

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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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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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Sorry for being a week late. The holidays drained me faster than a three-way with Rogue and Parasite. …Please pretend I didn’t just say that.

THE BEYONDER

Secret Wars II #1 (1985)

We start out with another iffy entry. The Beyonder was present during the first Secret Wars. That’s obvious. It’s just that at no point did he actually appear. That didn’t happen until the horrifying sequel. We know him for his silly disco outfit, but that wasn’t what he originally showed up in.

I like it. We see him talking with the Molecule Man, who tries to explain things to him in a way that is admirably calm and casual. Molecule Man and Volcana send Beyonder on his way as he takes a more subtle form on his quest for experience. This form is of Molecule Man himself. He proceeds to turn a desk into apples, turns a fat television writer into a super-villain and then turns invisible and follows Captain America around for the hell of it.

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I don’t know if I’ve ever shared this here before, but it’s a tale from the halcyon days of yore–

No, wait, let me start over.

I don’t know if I’ve ever shared this story before. I might’ve told Gavin or Thomas, I think, but not the entire internet as a whole. Read on as I tell you the Origin of Hal Jordan. If you’ve read it before, pardon me.

When I was a kid, I liked comics. Marvel Comics, mostly, because Spider-Man was and is the bomb. DC Comics were wiggedy-wack, in the parlance of the day (Kris-Kross will make you…). I liked them in theory, but they were straight up Dad Comics. Stuffy old guys doing stuffy old guy things.

My real entry to the DCU was either Batman: Knightfall or the Death and Return of Superman. I’m not 100% sure which it was because it was a while back. Thing was, comics cost money and I was maybe ten years old at most. Ten year olds do not really have any way to make money and I had no access to the monstrous stash of coke that I’ve been peddling to make paper nowadays.

So, like a lot of other little kids, I traded comics with friends. X-Force #1 for that issue of Spidey were Juggernaut almost gets his eye poked out. An extra copy of X-Men #3 for the latest Venom appearance. And so on. I bought the comics that featured cool characters that I could afford.

I think I first saw news of Superman’s death on CNN. I don’t think I could’ve afforded all the crazy variant comics, so I grabbed the novelization later on. I loved it. Roger Stern did a bang-up job and it remains one of my most loved novels to this day. I bought the recent reissue and everything.

Later, I managed to acquire most of the single issues, or maybe it was a TPB. In fact, it was probably a TPB. I still have a well-worn first printing of the World Without A Superman, so let’s say TPB so I don’t have to stretch my memory.

I read Death of Superman. It was good. I read World Without A Superman. It was good. I read Reign of the Superman. It was goo– wait. Something’s not right. The Central City portion of the story has some new jack in the proceedings.

Who the heck is this nerd in the green tights with the magic ring? What is he doing in a story about Superman dying and coming back? I want to read about Superman in that awesome robot, not some jerk with fancy jewelry.

Oh, oh hold on. Is this that annoying guy from the Super Friends cartoons? The one who got less face time than Aquaman? Why would they put this guy in such an awesome story? This was so much better in the novel!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my introduction to Hal Jordan. I finished the series and promptly put him out of my mind until I picked up Morrison’s JLA close to a decade later.

This is probably why I don’t “get” him to this day. He’s just another generic Superman-styled hero in my mind. Gavok has a pretty awesome explanation on how he’s the second generation of the Superman archetype, but Hal himself? I don’t like him near as much as I like Kyle or John. I read the new GL series briefly, but I soon lost interest I think around the time when Mongul (Mongul II?) showed up?

There you go.

Well, it’s been four months of lead-up. When the first part of the countdown came out, Lynxara asked about why I’d do a top 100 list for a series of books that only have 175 issues. Especially when I count two-parters as one entry. Truth be told, this isn’t like ranking the best issues of Nightwing or Mighty Thor. Most comic series have cohesion and you usually have an idea of what to expect in each issue. Writers, artists and story remain the same for months and sometimes years at a time.

What If, on the other hand, is different. What If is the ultimate comic book box of chocolates. Writers, artists, stories, ideas and tones change from issue to issue. Many stories are good. Many are bad. But almost every one of them is interesting in its own way. I could have easily have done a top 20 or top 50 list and be done long ago, but there’s too much fun we’d be missing out on. No jive-talking Incredible Hulk, or Matt Murdock crying over Wilson Fisk’s death bed, or Kraven the Hunter eating Peter Parker’s face.

Now let’s get in our Quinjet and take us down to #1.

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The new Marvel solicitations have been released, detailing the new What Ifs. One is based on Deadly Genesis, which doesn’t interest me since I haven’t read that yet. The other, which looks to be awesome, is Age of Apocalypse. This time, Legion did kill Magneto… but he also killed Xavier. Judging from the cover, this could be very interesting.

35) WHAT IF THE AVENGERS FOUGHT THE KREE-SKRULL WAR WITHOUT RICK JONES?

Issue: Volume 1, #20
Writer: Tom DeFalco
Artist: Alan Kupperberg
Spider-Man death: No
Background: I myself haven’t read the Kree-Skrull War arc, but I get the gist of it from Wikipedia and the Watcher’s introduction. It doesn’t sound very good, all in all. The important parts to note are that the Super-Skrull had captured Captain Marvel, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver with Captain America, Goliath (Pym), Iron Man, Thor and Vision off to save them. Rick Jones somehow got captured by some Kree guys as the Kree’s fleet prepared to invade Earth. In the end, Rick met with the Supreme Intelligence, who betrayed the Kree. He stimulated Rick’s mind so that he mentally projected memories of his childhood heroes (ie. the Invaders and the like) to beat up the Kree fleet. Sounds retarded, but it was the 70’s. This version of the story is far better. There’s a part of the original story where Rick Jones was brought before Ronan the Accuser. Rick stole a guard’s staff and attacked Ronan, only to do no damage. Ronan noted Rick’s courage and figured he’d make a good slave. In the Tom DeFalco version, Ronan is more pissed than amused and kills the boy with his cosmic hammer dealy. He calls for the fleet to make way to Earth and decimate it.

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Before we hit the halfway point, things are about to get pretty freaking dark. Insert your own Luke Cage/Falcon/War Machine joke here.

55) WHAT IF THE SILVER SURFER HAD NOT ESCAPED EARTH?

Issue: Volume 2, #22
Writer: Ron Marz
Artist: Ron Lim
Spider-Man death: No
Background: After turning on Galactus, Silver Surfer was punished by being forced to stay within Earth’s atmosphere. Whenever he tried to fly off, an invisible barrier would bounce him back in. Eventually, a powerful being named the Champion came to Earth and helped destroy the barrier, permitting the Surfer to travel the universe and experience more adventures. In this reality, the Champion never does come to Earth.

Surfer rams into the force field again and again, still annoyed. The Fantastic Four show up, explaining that they haven’t figured out an answer to what’s holding him back, scientifically. They ask the Surfer to join their team, since it’ll give him a home, something to do and having him around would help Reed’s research into how he could break through the barrier. The Surfer thinks about it and takes them up on the offer.

I don’t have to tell you that they dominated. We get a two-page spread that shows the Surfer aiding the other four in punking out Annihilus, Dr. Doom, the Frightful Four, and others. It’s like God Mode in comic book form. Plus we get this amusing image:

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