AVALANCHE

Uncanny X-Men #141 (1981)

Here we go with Avalanche’s first appearance, fighting alongside Mystique and her mutant terrorist squad. He had a scene earlier out of costume where he looked completely generic. It was one of those scenes that makes me wonder if it’s a law that whenever a supervillain team is introduced, all the members need to fight each other over something petty while showing off their powers.

“Nobody calls me that! Now I’m going to hypnotize you into thinking you’re a chicken!”

“Hey, leave him alone, ya creep! Eat heat rays!”

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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.

Hey!

Today marks the one year anniversary of 4thletter! Technically, we had a Blogger blog before then, but 4l! is what it is now, not what it was then. 365 days, 112 posts and 31,476 visitors later (as of this moment!) and we’re still here. We’ll be here for some time to come, if all goes well!

One year. It’s crazy, huh? One full year of completely questionable taste in comics, Gavok-style lists, brief appearances by the Spotted Wanderer, and hopefully bellies full of laughter. I was going to call 4l! Year Two “Questionable Taste In Comics Harder!” but focus groups decided that that was too clunky. Maybe “Where’s My Money, Honey?” U DECIDE.

Just FYI, 4l! Year One was “Is it time… or hypertime?” I don’t think I actually told anyone that, though, so don’t stress it. It won’t be on the test.

Muchas gracias to my blogmates Gavin and Thomas. The Big Gavoktus is consistently funnier than I am, but the site is named after me technically so it’s cool. We have spent enough time on IRC talking about A) What we would do if we had gigs at Marvel or DC and B) hilarious What If?/Elseworlds ideas that I am confident that if we ever did manage to con/blackmail our way into a position at Marvel or DC, the world would be a better and funnier place for it. Thomas brings a razor sharp critical analysis to the table and lets me bug him on AIM with ridiculous comics questions. He has a Tricky Brain, did you know that? He also has a sick mind for comics trivia, particularly in the X-Men and Spider-Man arenas.

Basically, though, we all love comics. Wait, scratch that. We all love good comics. Bad ones can go hang.

In the past year, I’ve learned that the comics blogospherohedron is kind of shockingly DC-slanted. (That may be just my inner Marvel Zombie speaking, though.) Tons of people have fond memories of the Legion of Super-Heroes, which I only recently got into with the Waid/Kitson reboot, and no one likes Identity Crisis. Feminism in comics is pretty big, too. A couple comics blogs have gone mainstream and ended up attached to Newsarama and Comic Book Resources, and I think that the comics media is better for it. I learned… you know what? This is slightly less profound than I expected. Let me cut to the chase.

I learned that a lot of cool cats like comics and want to talk about the effects of comics just as much as who would win in a fight, Big Barda or Wonder Woman (Big Barda, see below).

I would like to give a special shout-out to the people who let me blab on their blogs comment lines. The crew at Comics Should Be Good and Blog@Newsarma are all good people (and I really need to add B@N to my links there on the right). Kalinara @ Pretty Fizzy Paradise, Ragnell @ Written World, Johanna @ Comics Worth Reading, and Carla (I think?) @ Snap Judgements are all cool peoples. I should probably give special notice to my livejournalin’ buddies Lynxara and JLG. Fun times! Dwayne McDuffie’s forum is also a cool place to hang out, not to mention Batman’s Shameful Secret over at Something Awful’s forums. Best comics forum out, I will tell you what.

Also, my mom apparently reads the blog, so– Top of the world, ma!

One year down, hopefully many more to go. More questionable taste, more inexplicable love for ’90s comics, more stuff you never wanted to know about comics but now you do so you can’t un-know it, sucker!

I’m hoping to get some cool articles from all three of us up to celebrate the anniversary of this blah-blah-blog. Thanks for reading. Stick around, you might learn something!

As promised, here is why Big Barda trumps Wonder Woman:

Yes, it’s future Wonder Woman, but you can’t argue with five tons per square inch. Big Barda is the truth.

I’m still waiting on a couple artists for the What If finale, so I figured I’d start this. The idea originally came from a thread at Superdickery back when I hung around there, and I later reprised it at BSS. Sure, we all know about Action Comics #1 and Amazing Fantasy #15, but there are so many great comic characters and a lot of them have changed since their debuts in ways that would surprise you. So let’s take a look at the heroes and villains before they were stars. Back when Lobo wore spandex and Wolverine had whiskers.

I figure I’ll do one of these every two weeks or so. It’s fun and educational!

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So yesterday while on my break at work, I wandered through the mall to get me some lunch and, as always, passed by a Hot Topic. This time, I did a double-take and stepped back for a closer look. Hot Topic now sells Zombie Captain America t-shirts, based on the fake Avengers #4 cover where Cap has birds sticking out of his skull. Not only that, but they have a zippered sweatshirt with the Zombie Secret Wars cover on the front. I decided against buying either, but continued looking at what they had.

I saw that they had this on a shirt.

This is Toxin. He’s the Carnage symbiote’s “son” using an honest cop as a host. He debuted in the Venom vs. Carnage mini-series and got his own six-issue series shortly after. I think he’s awesome, but I realize that only five people have read his stories and he will probably never make another appearance in any Marvel comic ever again. Much like Hybrid. So consider me a bit confused that they’d give him a shirt rather than, say, Thing or Daredevil.

Seeing that on a t-shirt was weird enough. What was even weirder was looking at where the tag should be and finding on the shirt “X-MEN 3: THE LAST STAND”. Er… yeah. Yes, those two have plenty to do with each other.

While I’m talking about things that have nothing to do with each other, Happy Thanksgiving everybody. I’m thankful for the Secret Wars t-shirt I bought for half-price!

As I said in the last article, most What Ifs are interesting in their own way. Whether it’s because they tell a really good story, an abomination of a story or if the changes in reality are completely off the wall, almost every issue has something worth talking about.

I just talked about 100 of these stories and a couple extra ones I thought were crappy. So rather than have me write a bunch of exhaustive issue profiles, how’s about we just look at the bits and pieces that got my attention? It’s time to hand out the What If Honorable Mention Awards!

If I wasn’t so lazy, I would probably Photoshop a bunch of golden Uatu statues.

Edit: It looks like I didn’t have to. Thanks to Kyle Hayes for the award trophy.

Strangest What If Couple: Quicksilver and Gwen Stacy

This comes from What If the Age of Apocalypse Hadn’t Ended (volume 2, #81). Tony Stark, head of the human resistance, joins up with Magneto to figure out a way to save Earth from the coming of Galactus. Among Tony’s fellow human freedom fighters are the Hulk, Sue Storm and, strangely enough, Donald Blake’s bodyguard Gwen Stacy. Er… yeah. I guess with her dad being a cop and all… No, it still sounds goofy.

Pietro is without a sister and Gwen needs a boyfriend who can kill her with whiplash. It’s only natural that these two would find each other.

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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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I don’t have a lot of time at the moment (so go read Gavok’s What-If countdown, it’s great) but I do want to give you guys a heads-up!

Your local B Dalton or Barnes & Noble bookstore may have a sweet deal for you lurking around. They released a bunch of the Marvel Masterworks series in softcover format a couple years ago at 12.95 a piece.

I dropped by my local B Dalton today (and a tip of the hat here to the awesome manager there, her ladyship Shonda Wilson) and they had marked the books down to five dollars. I got 45 (or so) issues of early Marvel comics today for 25 bucks. Well, less, because I am technically an employee, but still!

Five dollars, people.

Here’s some ISBNs to make it easy on you.
The Amazing Spider-Man vol 1 (collecting ASM 1-10): 0-7607-3793-2
The Amazing Spider-Man vol 2 (collecting ASM 11-19): 0-7607-4957-4
The Amazing Spider-Man vol 3 (collecting ASM 20-30 & Annual 1): 0-7607-5565-5
Uncanny X-Men vol 1 (collecting The X-Men 94-100 & Giant-Size X-Men 1): 0-7607-4958-2
Uncanny X-Men vol 2 (collecting The X-Men 101-110): 0-7607-5566-3

Links go to the BN.com website, where the books are listed at full price. I don’t think that this is just a local deal, so give your local B&N or B Dalton a call and see if they can’t order one of these for you. I’m talking 30 issues of Lee/Ditko Spidey and the very beginning of Claremont on X-Men here.

I also bought Daredevil HC v6, wrapping up the Bendis/Maleev run in glorious hardcover format, Black Widow: The Things They Say About Her, Black Widow by Grayson/Rucka/Jones/Hampton, Gambit v2 by Layman/Jeanty, War Stories v2 by Ennis, and Daredevil: Means & Ends by David Lapham. Lads and ladies, I think I may have a problem. An addiction.

However: Comics :toot:!

It’s a good time for a new What If article. Not only does What If: Avengers Disassembled come out this Wednesday, but Halloween’s right around the corner. What If and Halloween go together hand-in-hand. On Halloween, children dress up as their favorite superheroes. In What If, Frank Castle dresses up as Captain America. On Halloween, the theme is horror and gore. In What If, characters die by the dozen if you ask them politely. Halloween is represented by a bald kid with a big head, whining about how all he got from trick-or-treating was a rock. What If is represented by a bald guy with a big head, telling us about times when Ben Grimm didn’t get covered in rocks.

Okay, this is going too far. Let’s get to the article.

15) WHAT IF NOVA HAD BEEN FOUR OTHER PEOPLE?

Issue: Volume 1, #15
Writer: Marv Wolfman
Artist: Simonson Wiacek, Infantino Springer, Andru Giacoi and Perez Palmer
Spider-Man death: Yes
Background: The Green Lant—I mean, Nova got his powers when the previous Nova Rhomann Dey was mortally wounded while around Earth’s atmosphere. He transferred his powers and spot in the Nova Corps to a human at random. That human turned out to be Richard Rider, who continues to fight as Nova to this very day as the main hero of Annihilation. So if he was randomly picked, that opens up a lot of possibilities.

The first story begins with a mugger killing a man and running off in a panic. The victim’s wife, Helen Taylor, screams a vow that she’s going to find this guy and kill him. Months pass and Helen stands at her husband’s grave, sad that the police are no use and there’s nothing she can really do to help him. Only a miracle can set things right.

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Sorry about that. Real life schedule sort of held me back for a bit. But I’m getting back into the swing of things and we’re almost done with this. Just a reminder for the artist types reading this, I could use your help.

20) WHAT IF THE PUNISHER BECAME AN AGENT OF S.H.I.E.L.D.?

Issue: Volume 2, #57
Writer: Chuck Dixon
Artist: Mike Harris
Spider-Man death: No
Background: There’s no exact turning point here. Frank Castle has always been on the run of the law. Every once and a while, he gets caught. In this story, while in prison, Frank meets Nick Fury. Nick has kept an eye on Frank and wants him to lead a SHIELD strike force. No more going after the petty dealers. Now he’ll be going after the top drug lords with weaponry Frank’s never imagined using. With a choice between that or spending the rest of his life in prison, Frank makes the right decision.

Wouldn’t you know it, Frank Castle has never had so much fun. With his hand-picked troops behind him, Frank goes after high profile villains he never thought he’d ever get a chance to go up against. We see as he and his boys go after the Yellow Claw and bomb his drug crop into oblivion. He actually seems far less cynical now, feeling that he’s actually in a war he can win.

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