Mighty Fine Comics

Ratfist
If you take Bill Watterson (Calvin & Hobbes), Grant Morrison (Animal Man), Erik Larsen (Savage Dragon) and Michael Jantze (The Norm) and locked them up until they completed a superhero comic, the final outcome would be something like Ratfist. Or a bloody mess as they kill each other but for the sake of the review, we'll go with the former.

Ratfist is a webcomic (http://ratfist.com) by Doug Tennapel (Earthworm Jim) and colored by Katherine Garner who did a fantabulous job. It starts off pretty much as the exact opposite of what I want from superhero comics. First is the artwork which is obviously very cartoony and exaggerated to the point of being completely over the top. Ratfist's ears aren't even attached to his head for goodness' sake! Then there's the story as it starts in the middle of things setting the character up as being not only eccentric (he has a pet rat that he talks to and takes on his adventures fighting crime) but as the typical loser/loner that retreats from reality by putting on a lame costume, taking a lamer name and fighting crime while the creators can sit back and mock the genre and show off how much more intelligent and sophisticated they are, modern day Cervantes with all of their fifth-rate attempts at recreating Don Quixote with less than an ounce of talent.

However, the comic quickly shows that it's not that at all. Sure, he's a bit of a loser, a man-child that has some growing up to do, but his taking on a superhero identity isn't that much of retreat from reality. His reality is one with comic-book science, where people do get bit by strange things and gain powers and put on costumes, or are victims of bad magic mojo or science experiments.  Deciding to be a supehero is that context is less insane than appearing on "Jerry Springer" because you are told someone has a secret to share with you. Or appearing on "Big Brother". It may be stupid, ill-advised, and a tactic to avoiding some problems, but it's not insane in and of itself.

And, Tennapel is actually truly funny, writing and drawing hilarious scenes. He moves from one improbable, absurd scene to another. He's not making fun of superheroes, he's reveling in them and the concepts and scenarios they allow. Notice the creators I listed above? It has Morrison and Larsen's sheer creativity on their good days unbound by cynicism and self-importance, it has Watterson's exuberance and sense of whimy and humor coupled with Jantze's gentle, wry humanity and outlook on the life of the modern adult male.

What makes this truly stand out, though, is the transformation that takes place. As the character goes from one absurd situation to another, there's a point where your point of view changes. You'll recognize it when you get to it. You get to the point that you realize that Tennapel has a real story that he's telling, this is not just random events to merely see what happens next and what corners he can write himself into and out of. Underneath the humor, the absurdity, the jokes, there's an actual story being told here that has real emotion to it. And, you realize Ratfist may just have it in him to be one of the greatest, noblest heroes of all.

Do yourself a favor and don't read the characters tab first. It'll give away some of the surprises in store for you. And if you don't know who Michael Jantze is or "The Norm" comic strip, head over to thenorm.com as well.

Until last night, I would easily have said this was the best comic I have read in a year if not more. But, that's because last night, I read the following book.

Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites
This is a hardcover collection of the Beasts of Burden stories by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson with the exception of the Hellboy crossover. Which works out fine for me because that is the one issue I have. When I read that, I promised myself to keep an eye out for the trade when it came out. I was a little put off by it appearing in hardback but the price for it is equal if not better than many trades.

The stories concern a group of dogs and one cat in suburbia who protect their neighborhoods from various strange ie supernatural and increasingly deadly occurrences. Dorkin's writing keeps the animals looking and acting just appropriately animal enough but with distinctive personalities and their own sense of magic, faith and mysticism. Likewise Jill Thompson's watercolors are lush and balance being realistic when need be without sacrificing sense of expression and well placed sense of whimsy.

The look of the book at first glance would lead one to think it's one for kids, but it treats the supernatural and mundane in honest ways. There's deaths by monsters but also by cars on the highways and it treats both with equal somberness and detail. You never forget that as much as the animals act human and they face supernatural threats, some of the biggest dangers are the everyday ones that pets and strays face. The familiar grounds the fantastic and you feel for them.

If the book does stray it's that there's an occasional crude or crass word that seems completely at odd with both the artwork and the characters. It's far less colorful language than in most of today's comics, and only happens three or four times but each time the word choice stuck out like a sore thumb. Probably because otherwise the language was clean and the storytelling was so intelligent, it didn't really need such language to seem adult. Instead, it came off as suddenly trying to sound adult, "look, no one will take this book seriously if we don't add at least one cuss word in here."

The Defenders: From the Vault
Since I ragged on the storytelling of The Canterbury Cricket as to how not tell a one-shot comic, I feel I should lift this comic up as how to properly do it. The CC comic had the hurdle of having to fit into a larger story, a company-wide event. This book had the problem of having to fit into another creative team’s run on a title without seeming like too big of a hiccup. Then there were further problems. Fabian Nicieza plotted the book and Bagley drew the book, but neither could recall what the actual script was to be and copies were lost. Nicieza was also now on exclusive with another company so Kurt Busiek, the writer of the run the comic was to fit in, was hired to basically come up with a story and script that matched the artwork already done.

He does so to the degree that it’s hard to envision the story being substantially different any other way. While it is to fit into the run he and Larsen had on the book, other than a single panel and a few artistic stylings, the story is such that it could have been in any Defenders era. The one panel inclusion actually does a good job at just summing up the purpose of the four heroes as the Defenders for any that are totally lost.

What makes this story really stand out is that despite the characters visibly being the Hulk, Namor, Dr. Strange and the Silver Surfer, for the most part it’s a group of roleplaying gamers whose minds are in those bodies and they carry the show. In typical Busiek fashion, he makes the story be one about human emotions and interactions, what ties us together. It’s both a superhero story and a human interest one. Even though we never actually see the four gamers that we know of, we are left kind of wishing to see a short-story that followed up on the events and character revelations revealed here. But, you aren’t short-changed. The plot is addressed and resolved, new characters and concepts were introduced and developed. It runs the gamut of humor and pathos, superheroes and villains and every-day people, science-fiction and magic, love lost and love from afar. An old joke was told along the way (though left out the follow-up joke). When done, you’re left wanting more but not needing more like a delicious meal that satisfies.

Captain America Corps
The premise of this mini-series written by classic Captain America writer Roger Stern is that someone is removing the Avengers finding Captain America across the various timestreams. An Elder of the Universe called the Contemplator seems to be the only one seeing the timelines being manipulated so he calls forth various heroes that have been the mantle bearers of Captain America to make things right. The heroes called are Captain America from 1941-42 (he still has the triangular shield), Bucky when he was Captain America, USAgent from shortly after his stint as Cap, American Dream who is the daughter of Sharon Carter in the MC2-verse, and Commando A who stands about seven feet tall and is from centuries in the future.

The timeline they travel to is one where the heroes are strangely absent and the Americommand, a group of dark reflections of Captain Americas, hold the country in the control such as Americop and his legion of Americops, Major America, the Ameridroid and two women called Broad Stripe and Bright Star who from the get go seem to know more than they let on.

Each issue starts off focusing on one of the Captain America mantle-bearers, what he was doing when called by the Contemplator. Under Stern’s hand, each issue is a dense read, full of story, characterization and action with twists and cameos along the way. Effort is made that each member has their own style and voice. As one of the Americommand is revealed to be a somewhat minor grandiose villain that fought Captain America a couple of times and seems to be behind it all, the question rises are any of the others somewhat familiar faces? Could Major America be this timeline’s John Walker (USAgent) or Jack Monroe (Nomad/Bucky) or even a former Captain America such as Jeff Mace or the 1950s Cap?

A minor quibble or two with the characters Bright Star and Broad Stripe. The former is depicted a little too similar to DC’s Stargirl. Some similarity is almost unavoidable as their costume and name are pretty much from the same source. However, to give her the same hair style, color and mask was something that could have been easily modified. With Broad Stripe, I don’t know if it was meant to be a pun or not, but as “broad” is a somewhat crass slang word for “woman”, the name is not really flattering. And, considering who she is supposed to be, a little uncharacteristic. It’s not a name that a woman would choose for herself.

This is an old-school mini-series. It’s not tied to any mega-event. It uses continuity and plays with it, but everything you really need to know is covered in-story. And, despite playing with an alternate time-line, it’s not really about rewriting present continuity and history to suit the writer’s preferences. The characters are all on model.  It’s accessible to new readers while showing off the rich tapestry of the Marvel U. and the role Captain America plays in it. Most of all, the title is fun, enough so to make me actually enjoy Bucky-Cap for once.

John Byrne’s Next Men
The last two issues didn’t really work for me. The penultimate issue explores the life of Gillian, the Next Man who only exists as a separate consciousness in other people’s bodies. The issue speeds forwards through generations as it shows the different lives (s)he led, usually staying with a body for years until eminent death or circumstances require that Gillian move on. As such, the reader is really only shown two points in each life, the point that (s)he moves in and the point (s)he moves out.
This issue would be the best place to really explore why Gil is obsessed with changing the past, mostly to wipe out Sathanas’ existence. But, it doesn’t do that. In fact, other than a single war, humanity’s future and Gil’s present does not seem that bleak and Sathanas’ impact seems minimal. After doing a great job in past issues of showing bleak and barbaric moments of humanity, the issue is one of relative peace of people living their ordinary lives. Sathanas is not mentioned at all.

The final issue actually mentions Sathanas and touches on that history. There’s a brief aside as Jazz flees to the past to meet with an older Jack and we see Tony one more time. Other than that and Jazz’ ultimate decision to not travel with Nathan and Beth to the past to undo Sathanas’ time loop, there is no actual hiccup to the plan. Everything goes exactly according to plan without a hitch. This makes for a final issue that’s full of great character moments and characters not necessarily making the decisions you’d expect but is otherwise very lackluster and boring in the plotting. There’s no real story twist or even feeling of personal danger or jeopardy to the plan succeeding. Even Jazz’ decision is admitted to not really changing or jeopardizing things as she didn’t really have a role to play. It would be more dangerous if she went and decided at the last moment to not risk non-existence and started fighting Nathan and Beth, trying to prevent changing the past. Instead, she just simply takes herself out of the equation.

Then you have the whole thing ending there, at the moment that time has been changed. Of course this leads into the next series titled “Aftermath” but I still feel a bit cheated as to not knowing even in general terms what any repercussions are for their actions. Does Aldus become Sathanas another way (maybe the whole time loop just made the transition easier and cleaner than his original history)? We know through Nathan’s experiences in WWII Germany the doctor that created the Next Men was already doing research in that area before the involvement of Sathanas and his examination of Nathan may have set off other changes. There’s Mark IV and Cornelius Van Damme to consider. And, poor Jack was just simply wiped from existence. I am content to know that a lot of that may be answered in the next series, but just felt that if the story is going to end with them changing time, we should see some little hint of what that actually resulted in, at least on the personal level.

Everything we’ve seen was to build towards this moment. But, while the first Next Men arc was largely about Sathanas, this one hasn’t been and it’s been too long between arcs. It fails to build the case in the readers’ minds why it’s necessary to stop Sathanas as opposed to Christopher Columbus’ trip to the New World or Hitler or Genghis Khan or World War I. It then fails to show or even suggest any of the fallout of the characters’ actions. And, it fails to provide any twists or real jeopardy to the plan, which might allow for the other shortcomings. If carrying off the plan has significant problems and jeopardy, the success of the mission is a reasonable resolution because the story is “a caper”. But, even though there’s this massive explosion in the end, it ends with a whimper, not a bang.

There’s also problems with Gil’s plan. While Nathan and Beth are given a cover story, it isn’t one that actually will bear up under any kind of scrutiny. This is Antarctica. You don’t have unknown helicopters with unknown persons on board crashing. Every person on the ice or flying over it is known by someone or some agency. Especially two people carrying quite a bit of cash on them. The holes in their story and that much cash would be uncovered before they ever have a chance to leave the continent.

Kirby’s Genesis
This is a schizophrenic book and my feelings are likewise divided. Busiek excels at and delivers the common man feel and characterization of the main viewpoint characters. The Kirby characters are kept mostly intact and delivered in proper grandiose style (although I don’t like the Secret City heroes neon lit black costumes, the premise is this is the characters as Kirby designed them, go ahead and give them to us).

Part of the problem is the plotting. There’s a lot of effort of presenting an everyday world and then all this madness hits at one time. Silver Star is rumored to have existed before but is just now being confirmed. Confirmed sightings of Thunderfoot aka bigfoot. The discovery of the Secret City and its heroes. Space heroes and villains suddenly popping up all over the globe. Etc. I am sure it’s supposed to be part of the plot but it serves as a dividing wall between the reality of the everyday world and the Kirby world. No time is really spent on developing any of the ideas other than to seemingly throw them at the reader as fast as possible.

The viewpoint characters are distractions and annoying (doesn’t help that the central character is visibly based on an actor whose whiny nasally voice and emoting makes him almost as annoying as Woody Allen) especially when they break the fourth wall, thus breaking even the relative realism they already exist in. Characterization and relationships between the characters are great, but it should come through the scenes and the action and the plotting, not through expositional scenes of the characters addressing the reader. Leave those out and get to the actual characters and plots that we are chunking our money down to see.

The artwork carries the schizophrenia through. It’s hard to tell just how much is Alex Ross’ underlying pencil or Jackson Herbert’s re-penciling and slightly too heavy inks. The realistic sections are done well. The grandiose, fantastic parts are done well. But, the two don’t really jibe together well here. It may be because the story itself is already setting up that wall between the real world and the unreality of the superhero world and it just carries through with the artwork.

Kirby drew the epic as if it was everyday stuff. But, he also drew the everyday as if it was epic. Under Kirby’s hand, ramshackle buildings, ill-fitting clothes and garbage was larger than life. There was a consistency of style and approach. Thus, when police officer Dan Turpin battles Kalibak in an effort to arrest him, you believe it and you feel it. I think that’s why this misses when it does. Kirby gave everything the same level of realism and convinced you of the central integrity of his vision and world. The gods talked in grandiose ways but they struggled with love and fitting in. They felt as real as the everyday people. Kirby dealt with the clash of the fantastic with the everyday, but there wasn’t a lot of naval gazing about it, as usually there was some war or cosmic event occurring. So far, this is about the unreality of it all as if there needs to be an explanation for the presence of all these disparate characters, acknowledging the unreality of magic, super-science, etc in a real world situation. That’s not really what I buy superhero comics for.

I’m willing to cut a little slack, because I get so few comics and this is still better than most out there. It’s still with good guys who are good, and bad guys who are bad while being true to the vision of Kirby without simply being a pastiche of his surface style. The characterization is strong, and it’s setting up a world of wonder and possibility without resorting to graphic violence or language. Sophisticated without being crass. And, the book has the hurdle that it is introducing a ton of characters in a very short span of time.  It's better than the dark superhero comics offered by the other companies, and better by far than the decompressed storytelling that plagues most of Dynamite's Comics. If the plot is slow in developing it's in part because there's so many characters and concepts to set up. The chance to see so many of Kirby’s characters and creativity, even if distilled through other hands is too good a chance to simply pass up.

Mystery Men
Another mini-series by Marvel, this one explores several masked men coming together in the 1930s America. As the name implies, this group draws largely from the heroes and adventurers of the pulps. David Liss does a good job at credibly reproducing the time and attitudes and a story that straddles the world of the pulp heroes with that of the Marvel U. and a modern look at the attitudes.

The central character in many ways is the man known as The Operative. Born of wealth and privilege, he carries a certain amount of guilt in the time of the Great Depression. Part of it is knowing what kind of man his father is and him setting out to be the opposite.  So, he steals from the wealthy in order to give money to the needy. But, when he’s framed for the murder of his fiancé, to prove his innocence he ends up teaming up with a group of odd would-be heroes and adventurers: The Aviatrix, inventor and sister of his fiancé; The Revenant, African-American stage-magician turned masked man; the Surgeon, a doctor horribly scarred and driven insane by the actions of the cabal they are up against and who has a case of hero worship of the masked men; and Achilles, an archaeologist hired to find an artifact and discovers himself thrust into the role of hero with fantastic powers but at great cost.
Liss is primarily a novelist and maybe it’s because of that background and writing in comics for almost the first time that the mini-series does have the few faults it does.

The problem is that everything is actually too tight and neat, many things presented in the most obvious and simplistic terms that betrays an artificiality to the world he is setting up as if he is giving us a shorthand version of world creation because there’s not enough space to develop further. First the names. Other than Achilles, all of the names betray the hand of a single creator not giving too much thought to it or used to developing colorful code-names. The pulps gave us the Shadow, the Spider, Doc Savage, Thunder Jim Wade, G-8, The Phantom, The Green Ghost, Domino Lady, Black Bat, Park Avenue Hunt Club, Secret Six, the Green Lama, the Picaroon, the Crimson Clown, etc. What we have here are not names, but generic titles, one word descriptions and not identities. They come across more like names given to serial killers on “Criminal Minds”. Even the title “Mystery Men” becomes the default name of this specific group as opposed to a general term applied to a larger sampling. Keep in mind, this is the Marvel Universe. They have seen masked heroes before, in the Old West and in WWI.

In the case of the Operative, the name doesn’t even make sense. According to the notes, the name is meant to reflect the Continental Op, and in the backdrop of the pulps, the name conjures up the likes of Agent “X”, Operator 5, Secret Agent X-9, G-8 and so on. Only, he’s not a masked spy, freelance or otherwise. He is actually drawn from the likes of characters written by Frank Packard, Frederick Davis and Johnston McCully: a crook who breaks the law in order to serve a greater justice.

According to this story, all cops are corrupt or at best, lazy. Again, this makes the world seem smaller and obviously being viewed by someone writing today. It’s an easy shorthand and able to paint the heroes as being obviously right and not worry about the dangers of fighting cops.

The General, the bad guy is then linked to the Operative. Makes it easy to connect the dots and solve the mystery when the heroes already know the identity of the man behind it all.

The latest issue then has the one white woman hooking up with the single African-American guy who she’s known for just days at best. Again, it’s too easy and obvious to go for that particular race card. And, it just happens without any build-up of any romance between the two, that all happens off panel.

The Revenant himself is a bit of conflicting. It’s interesting to do a reverse-Shadow, an African-American dressed all in white. However the writer of the Shadow and several other pulp writers were magicians and understood magic. They could convince us of reality of what the heroes did, when they used magic tricks to pull off their stunts. Again, here Liss seems to use the stage magic background as a shorthand to explain things without actually selling it to the reader. How does a man dress in white sneak up on people at night and attack from clouds? How does he present multiple images of himself in the Operative’s apartment? The idea of the character and his background is interesting. He falls down as being presented as being credible.

But these are minor quibbles against the backdrop of the story and comic itself.  The story is intriguing. Since Liss is a novelist and not someone whose credentials are primarily writing comics, he delivers an actual story. Despite being set in the past and in the Marvel Universe, it’s not actually about continuity and comicbook history. The heroes are active and pro-active though most are driven by circumstances to become heroes. The villain is frightening. The third issue cranks up the danger as the supernatural elements come into play and the heroes are suddenly out of their depth. Against normal crooks and men, they excel but actual horrors are another thing entirely. It is taking what was part pulp and weird menace and reminding the reader this is the Marvel Universe. Things like this can and do happen. But, it doesn’t break the mood and atmosphere of the story that is being crafted by Liss and ably executed by Patrick Zircher. The world has corruption and is dark and dangerous, but it’s not a cynical or dark comic. The heroes are less than perfect without actually having the concept of heroes being mocked or treated cynically. It understands that not all pulp or crime stories need to be urbane or noir just as all horror stories need not be gore fests (a distinction that many “pulp comic” fans don’t seem able to make).

Something that struck me interesting was that in many ways, this story could easily be set in the modern day. The issues and themes that root this story in its time, racial and class inequality, the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, economic downturns and future instability at home and wars and unrest abroad, they are all elements that would make the same story and the pulp heroes relevant today. Maybe that’s part of the reason why we’re seeing a resurgence in popularity and interest in them.

Where's Wally, The Twelve, and Technical issues

I don’t read “Funky Winkerbean” as regularly as I used to. I guess part of me is still grieving over Lisa’s death, one of the most emotional storylines in comics ever, whether you’re talking comic books or comic strips. There are people that disagreed with it of course. These are people that think that the comic strip page should be nothing but humor strips and all aimed for children. You know those types of fans, the ones that dictate that everything in a medium should conform to one reader, one taste. Usually their own. Not me. I applaud Batiuk in taking chances with the characters and storylines and fully engaging us in multitudes of ways. The strip’s a lot like life. It’s funny and sad, joyful and tragic, full of successes and failures.

While strip creator Tom Batiuk was able to jump his strip ahead ten years immediately following Lisa’s passing, jumping past much of the grieving process, I was unable to do that myself. I remember when my father was dying and there were times when I wished I could do just that, wake up and be me some years down the road pass all the grief and hardship, that living it day by day was too difficult. While the characters of the strip were able to do just that, not so this reader. Suddenly, all the characters are older, more wistful and bittersweet. And there are new characters and status quos. A lot of new stuff to absorb, but I wasn’t quite ready to move on and embrace the new.

So, it was with some surprise that in the Sunday strip 01-13-07, that I see that Wally Winkerbean’s wife Becky is now with comic shop guy John (who had fallen in love with her when Wally went MIA the first time). Now the last time I remember seeing Wally in the strip was before the time jump and his fate was left a bit questionable while in Afghanistan. I have no clue as to what the story here is. Did I miss some other subtle clue as to Wally’s ultimate fate? Whether it’s the death of a sympathetic character or of a relationship that I rejoiced to see, it looks like there’s more sadness in store. Just another bittersweet indicator of the passage of time and life going on.

It gives me a chuckle when I think of comments by a friend in an APA who commented a couple of years back in that he thought Batiuk was gearing towards giving happy endings for all of his characters, Funky falling in love and getting married, Wally turning up alive and marrying Becky etc.

The Twelve #1.

The first issue is out. And for the most part it’s good. Color adds a lot to Weston’s rather stiff drawing. The story is told mostly from the Phantom Reporter’s point of view as he narrates the twelve going into Berlin, walking into a trap and getting put in suspended animation (and addressing why they stayed lost for 40 years), and coming to in the present day and then ending on a cliffhanger as he discovers the dead body of one of the group. A pretty darn good set-up issue, with some mysteries involved.

But the bad… the cover is horrendous. I don’t know how many books are bought these days by casual buyers based on covers, but this cover will surely kill that. It’s a painted cover of the heroes just standing there ala Alex Ross’ KINGDOM COME covers. Only, this artist is no Alex Ross and such a cover is visually boring if you don’t really have the skill of Ross or Neal Adams to pull off. Notice that when Maguire did the iconic JUSTICE LEAGUE #1 cover that was then parodied endlessly by other artists (the cover may have been designed by Giffen), there is an attention to detail and a sense of attitude in the faces. There’s still a story/message being conveyed by the cover. Here, it’s looks like some generic computer painted fan art, the characters at best looking a bit constipated after their long sleep.

A plot hole that may actually be a clue to the identity of the traitor, just why were the Nazis in a hidden bunker lab apparently prepared and wanting some superheroes to happen to find them? Unless Mastermind Excello is working with them, it doesn’t make much sense. Excello’s knowing where he is fated to be could be a blind, that he knows where he is supposed to be because it’s all been a cover. The Phantom Reporter’s narration hints at some of the things “known” about these obscure heroes might not be true, Excello’s powers might be it. I think an interesting twist would that he saw that he and the others were fated/needed to be in the present to stop some threat, so he “betrayed” them in the past to get them to the here and now.

Although, another plot hole is, if they were part of the larger invasion force of heroes (some cool scenes there), why weren't they noticed missing? Especially considering the power levels of a couple of them. Dynamic Man and Fiery Mask might be obscure to modern readers, but in the context of the times, both were incredibly powerful heroes, and a technological marvel such as the robot Electro, I cannot imagine there wouldn’t be all sorts of investigations, even if undercover to find what happened and recover the bodies and technology. This would be like knowing we lost an atomic bomb in Berlin and be content with thinking that the Communists probably wouldn’t find it. Why wouldn't the professor behind Electro have an investigation launched? He presumably saw everything up to the trap being sprung .

I think we also see the weakness of JMS’ background as a television writer coming to the fore. Almost half of the book is spent just getting the heroes into the suspended animation. Too much is just watching the heroes cross a room, going down the stairs, etc. While the narration is good of the Phantom Reporter talking about the other members of the group, we don’t really see them doing anything. Instead of pages of other heroes like Bucky fighting in the invasion, why not really show off the heroes the book is about. Instead of an empty bunker and them casually walking down stairs, let’s see them fight their way, let’s see Laughing Mask be good with his .45’s and the Blue Blade with his sword instead of just the Phantom Reporter only commenting on it. It’s not television or a movie, we don’t need to see characters walking from point A to point B. It’s a superhero comic, show us ACTION. When we get to the cliffhanger of the last page, it’s really the first sign of the actual plot to the story, the rest has been all set-up of the characters and background information. If you watch LAW & ORDER, what we got is pretty much reserved for the first 3 – 4 minutes of the hour-long show to get you through the credits and make you care for the rest of the hour. Maybe if not so much page space was spent just putting the characters to sleep, we could have gotten to the meat of the story, saved some of that background to layer into the story later on.

What also struck a flat note was the preoccupation with Dynamic Man’s preoccupation with sexuality. Dynamic Man is an android (yet he falls victim to the gas and it’s his life signs that are being checked later) so I’m sure there’s a point to it. A lot of it read to me as a teen-age boy that is first discovering his own sexuality and in trying to sound adult about it, goes over-board with the talk. But it also struck me as a writer trying to sound more mature and adult like all those fan-favorite British writers. “See, you can tell this is a serious and adult book, we have sexual references and possible deviances.” You want to write stuff like that, take it to the MAX line or Vertigo. Just give us some superhero stories.

I guess I shouldn’t expect more. After all while he makes the Phantom Reporter and the Witness sound like really cool characters it's by a little subtle writing sleight of hand. First, he dismisses them in an interview, ignoring their heritage and reducing them to being 2nd rate even next to the equally obscure Fiery Mask and Rockman. He then reinforces that in-story by bringing over the reference to them being "tourists" and looked down by the super-powered types (and possibly modern fans as well). Only THEN does he get to be the rescuer of the characters by showing off how cool they could really be. But, he's the one who set them up as "tourists" in the first place. It's like the fireman who sets buildings on fire so he can be the hero by putting the fires out. It's a passive aggressive way of writing characters.

And if JMS is busy on bringing the characters down a level in order to tell more “realistic” tales, ie with sex, death, betrayals and bodies of clay, at least the art is keeping up with him. Weston’s tweakings of the costumes work for me. I like how in settling on a single look for the Fiery Mask, the costume is made up of elements of his various looks and thus still looks on-model for the period. The color differences in the Phantom Reporter and Mr. E work to differentiate two visibly similar characters. And the Laughing Mask’s theatre mask fits in with the look of that character as well. But, he also accentuates the negatives of the costumes such as the Blue Blade’s and where the costume design would otherwise work, he seems to go out of his way to make things ugly such as the hairy legs or making the Laughing Mask homely behind the mask and the rather weak weaselly face he gives Mr. E. Look at Paul Smith's artwork in THE GOLDEN AGE and he draws the characters accurately without highlighting the ridiculousness of grown men trying to be taken seriously in costumes. He handles all these different costumes and they all work. Here we have an artist that takes pains to make the costumes or the people less so.


JLA CLASSIFIED #50 on the other hand is pretty much pure fun. There’s a mystery villain that’s immensely powerful, and Byrne’s art is clear and powerful whether depicting a reflective Martian Manhunter, an analytical Atom, or just all out battle. It’s a great opening arc to a story that’s unabashedly pure superheroics and fun.

Roger Stern is a long-time and old style comicbook writer. He knows how to write longer arcs, his Masters of Evil taking over the Avengers mansion is a classic. And he knows how to tell quieter tales as some of his work on Doctor Strange can attest. This looks to be a great story by two of the masters of the genre. And probably a darn sight better than the majority of the mainstream superhero stuff put out right now by the big two.

TECHNICAL ISSUES

There’s a reason why it’s been a week since updates have shown on my site. Basically, working on some of my villain pages, I discovered that the ftp client Filezilla would not connect to my geocities web pages. Now, it was working fine with no hint of an issue at the end of the year. When I tried using Fetch on my work computer, it also was giving me issues for several hours before deciding to work. Got home, Filezilla still not working. I don’t know if you ever tried contacting an Online company with a technical issue, but it’s next to impossible to actually find a service contact phone number anywhere on the pages.

I email them. 24 hours later I get a standard response asking for more information regarding my account. Respond, and about 24 hours later again I get a response saying that they don’t “currently support Fetch or Filezilla” and “if and when” they’ll be able to and that I should just use the EZ Upload on their site. I email them back detailing that EZ Upload doesn’t allow downloading which I need (even if I didn’t, the Fighting Yank stories and an upcoming expansion are way beyond the limits of EZ Upload) and that their website says that they do indeed support both of those programs, both are actually recommended (I don’t point out that I told them already that Fetch did eventually work). 24 hours later, no response.

So, I compose a sterner and nastier email since I had been brewing over the last one. I pointed out that 1) I was a paying customer and one of the things I pay for is the convenience of not using their EZ Upload that they offer to non-paying customers and doesn’t do half of what I want and need it to and 2) the fact that if they don’t support those two programs, their website is still soliciting business on the basis that they do and that’s fraud, taking a technical issue and making it a legal one. For the record, I don’t think they are guilty of fraud as much as the guy that wrote that email response just didn’t want to do any work. So, he recommended a “solution” that he hoped I would be content with and tried to give me a reason to not pursue issues with the programs further. I got a quicker response, within that same business day of someone willing to work some and suggested a few tests to run. Also that one of the problems might be with the ISP and not them as they cannot replicate the error.

I ran the tests. Ping’ing my website didn’t work at all, running a trace showed me timing out about halfway. I emailed the results to Yahoo. Knowing it’d be the next day before I heard back, I decided to try my ISP provider. We have digital cable through Time Warner and the internet through Earthlink. Again, a little tricky finding a phone number but I do so. My brother warns me that their stock answer is call Time Warner. In this modern day and age, everything is automated as much as possible in the name of “better servicing your needs”. I see this even in the company I work for. I rarely received mis-directed calls before we went to some voice recognition system. Now, if someone mumbles, they get me. This isn’t much difference. Answer a few yes or no questions and sure enough, I get an automated number giving me the Time-Warner telephone number.

I call Time-Warner, go through some automated answers again (letting the computer know I am calling about Earthlink and not Road Runner) and after being on hold for a little while, get a live person! And, surprise, in America! The gentleman is polite and admits that he cannot help me so he’d forward me to the “Tier 2” level of technical service. The young woman there is patient while I re-iterate my problems. She informs me that once the trace clears line 10, it’s leaving their servers and not much they can do. But, she volunteers to take a look. And…

“Are you an Earthlink or Road Runner subscriber?”

“Earthlink.”

“Then why are you calling Road Runner?”

“I’m not ‘calling’ Road Runner. I called Earthlink, talked to a computer who directed me to Time Warner. I called Time Warner and the guy there forwarded me to you. I didn’t actually call you.”

“But this is Road Runner. I can’t help you. I don’t know why Earthlink told you to call us, you need to talk to them.”

“I called them. You don’t get a live person, their idea of tech support was to send me to Time Warner. They didn’t ask me if I was Road Runner or Earthlink, they just forwarded me to you.”

As this was going in circles, she asked me what Earthlink number I called and I read the one back from their website. She gave me a different 1-800 number to try. As my phone was beeping at me in frustration and was about to give up on me, I placed it back in its charger and resolved to see the next day what advice Yahoo gave me before trying again with Earthlink.

The next day was another non-answer in that they could not recreate the problem, it seemed to be happening somewhere in between Earthlink and them. I should just try and use a different computer on another network. Excuse me? And, that helps me with my home computer that I do 90% of my webpage work in what way? Besides, the whole point of this is I want to be able to access work done and uploaded from another computer and network at my home computer. How many of the people that have issues with them have the luxury of just going to another computer on a different network? It’s interesting to note, that every single one of these emails was signed by someone different. Apparently, at no point did I have the same person twice working on my problem.

Saturday morning. Girlfriend is working out to an exercise video, I get back on the telephone with the 1-800 number to Earthlink that the people of Road Runner provided. I get the computer again. With this round of computerized voices I must answer something differently (correctly?) because I get put in the queue for a live person. I wait and I get the IT department out of India apparently. To his credit, he speaks good English and I explain the issues and he tries to help. When directing me to type things, he spells them out as “C as in Charlie”. This is where the language barrier comes in. If someone has trouble pronouncing a sound, there’s a good chance they will have trouble pronouncing both the letter and the clarifying word as well. So, we get to “H” and it comes out as “Eh as in Ehyo”. Huh? And, he apparently doesn’t know the the difference between the letter X and the letter G since he directs me to spell “cryptofix” as “cryptofig”:

“G as in GO”

“I’m sorry. Can you repeat that?”

“G as in GO”

I’m thinking that’s not right, but he’s the professional, so I type that in. My computer responds, “Do you perhaps mean ‘cryptofix’ you numbskull?”

The results I end up with aren’t what he expects, so we end up letting him take control of my computer remotely, he runs this program, restarts my computer which takes forever to boot up anyways… and the end result after 30 minutes or more on the phone is Filezilla still does not work any differently. He gives me the familiar refrain that the problem isn’t on their end, I’m clearing their servers with no problem, it’s not until I hit the geocities' computer. I try to point out that I have no trouble connecting using a completely different network Fetch on the Mac but the brick wall has gone up. Doesn’t matter, by this point I don’t really think it’s the ISP either.

So, I decide to call Yahoo. I had done so when this first started, but I wasn’t quick witted enough and they had directed me to using the “Online support”. This time I was ready. Only I couldn’t remember where in their morass of pages the phone number was. There’s the little bit that paying customers have access to 24 hr toll-free support, but there’s no phone number. And at this point I feel really sorry for anyone having issues that’s not a paying member and has to do it all via email. I finally find a number to call, not under Geocities and their various help pages still hawking Filezilla and Fetch, but under Yahoo.

I call and the “I don’t really want to help you” mentality kicks in with the person as I tell her my case number, outline my problem, she tells me that the support line is for the Plus and Pro members ie paying customers. I was ready for this, my hoo doo was strong and it’s with great restraint I didn’t holler, “ I AM A PLUS MEMBER, A PAYING CUSTOMER” I AM A MAN, NOT A NUMBER….sorry. I digress.

After that, the person was extremely kind and helpful. We found out a few new things. Ping and the Trace showed no problems if I tried just the Geocities server and not actually sign into my account. But, at the end of 30 plus minutes, they still cannot fix the Filezilla problem but direct me to downloading a different FTP client: Leech. A solution they could have just as easily done the first day and was a far sight better answer than telling me to use the free EZ Upload or going to a different computer and network. It’s not a fix, but it’s an acceptable workaround. I hope maybe Filezilla will fix itself, at least before Leech decides to also not work.

Leech seems a bit clunkier. And it’s too smart for it’s own good as it somehow looks at content ala file size and not modification date in deciding if the file it’s moving is the same as the one in the target folder. And if it is, it doesn’t allow you to override, it just refuses to copy, a problem I had in trying to download the updated index page to my computer over my older one. Yet, somehow in trying to get it to do so, it UPLOADED the old file to the server. Though the date on the file in the server still said the new date, I discovered almost two days later that my home page was the one from 12-31-07 and NOT 01-04-08! Sheesh.

Ain’t technology grand?