Bleeding Fiction

Blog: Slightly wonked due to a hacker. Bastard. Host is cool, providing on-site visits and discussions of poetry. Also, she fixed the blog. Mostly. Last update along these lines lost to the digital ether. Good riddance, I say.

Vitaly: Got married recently. Yay! Nice wedding, very traditional, right down to the break-dancing-Brad-Pitt-look-alike rabbi.

Kiki: Now engaged. About damn time. She and Raphael have only been dating for eight and a half years.

Erin McKeown: Free show at South Street Seaport past Thursday. Excellent music, as always. Open air = poor acoustics but great breeze. Too much sitting, not enough dancing.

Visitations: Something Positive went pro; creator-dude Randy got mad donations and quit his job to do the comic. That's cool. Also, Bekah started a livejournal. Its bilingualness astounds me. Go be astounded too.

Lena: What I said I'd write: Everything she says about why she and I should not be together makes perfect sense. But my life bleeds fiction and makes no sense, so there. Plus, I love fairy tales and happily-ever-afters.

Mother: In hospital for non-serious, non-diabetes problems. Yeesh.

Borges: My current reading. Witty and self-deprecating. Major images are mirrors, labyrinths and knife-fights. Very cool.

Saved: A movie. Pokes fun at very religious types. Funny as hell. Go see it. I want to see it again. And own it on DVD.

Work: Increasingly less busy. Or decreasingly busy. Whichever. Yay.

School: Registration papers to arrive... soon?

Writing: It's June. Leave me the fuck alone.

Back to a regular schedule presently.

I have a deep and abiding love of Communism. Not the practice, of course; Communism in practice has been a terrible, totalitatian thing responsible, at least in part, for some of the worst offenses of the twentieth century. It's not even the theory behind Communism that I love. While the spirit of societal responsibility that Socialism theoretically engenders is something that I value and try (in some way) to cling to, I have a deep and abiding mistrust of the mass of humanity that prevents me from really being comfortable with the idea of Marx's proletariat as a means of accomplishing anything. In other words, nothing worthwhile has ever been accomplished by a committee.

So, given that I pretty much hate people, you'd think that Communism wouldn't appeal to me at all. And yet it gets me on a visceral level, enough that an old friend once told me that I was "too much of a Socialist to be any good at Monopoly." Certainly I'd have done my mother's father proud. He was, literally, a card-carrying member of the American Communist party, in an age when that sort of thing could get you in a lot of trouble with certain people. He was a labor organizer in the Jimmy Hoffa tradition and he sat on the Board of Aldermen of the city in which he lived.

But there has to be more to this than family tradition, especially as my grandfather died before I was born. What, then? I've wracked my brains trying to come up with something, and the best I can figure is I love the visuals. There's something visceral about the huge swaths of bright red, something powerful in the square outlines, almost block-cuts, of men steadfastly at their labors. I am interested, I guess, in the iconography that surrounds the proletariat. It's an iconography that's thick indeed, the very core of Marxist philosophy built up and sold to a people whole-cloth as a social platform. It had to manifest itself in art, or else it would have died as it was being born. Communism had to create for itself a visual mythology, and I love mythology.

So it was with no surprise that, along with my afore-mentioned book on Soviet political posters, I snatched up two books that come close to the core of the Communist mythology: two comic books. Comic books are, in many ways, our modern mythology. It's not an accident that the greatest heroes of the DC Universe map fairly perfectly over the Greek gods. The mythology of Communism is vastly different, but no less familiar, and in the two comic books I bought that mythology gets explored in different ways.

First is Red Star, a fairly straight-forward mythologising of the history of Soviet Russia. The first collection recounts the Soviet Union's long, old war to sieze Afghanistan and Russia's current problems with Chechnyan seperatists - a fight I still don't know enough about to feel comfortable commenting on - all through the eyes of an unlikely group of heroes who, of course, represent something of a Communist ideal (the proud soldier, the strong engineer, etc.). Throw magi-tech, spirit beings and spiffy computer-generated images into the mix and you get a book that's both visually and creatively stunning.

The second book is Red Son, which takes one of the ultimate American myths - Superman - and asks what the world would be like if his ship had landed in a farm not in Kansas but in the Ukraine. What if Superman didn't stand for Truth, Justice and the American way but instead stood for Stalin, Socialism and the Warsaw Pact? This book I've yet to read, but from all I've heard it should live up to expectations.

So, with these books in hand I continue my love affair with Soviet art and Communist mythology. It's a strange sort of itch and I'm outlining a writing project now (of course) to help me scratch it. But it's one that won't see the light of day for a long, long time. Very back burner. But it's fun to dream.

Jon and I were talking about the X-Men. Both of us are big fans, because we recognize that, unlike many other superhero books, the X-Men's stories have a solid theme.

The X-Men's story is the story of bigotry. There are different ways it manifests in the comics, mostly drawn from the real world. Magneto's belief that mutants need to secure a separate place for themselves, where they can be secure against the hatreds of humanity, is a result of his experiences in a nazi concentration camp during World War II and is a fair parallel for Zionism; Genosha, the African nation that kept mutants as slaves, corresponds with South Africa and its history of apartheid; and the Mutant Registration Act is a stand-in for the Alien Registration Act of the McCarthy Era.

This conflict is perfectly illustrated by the graphic novel "God Loves, Man Kills" which is arguably the best (or at least most iconic) X-Men story ever told. I recommend that everyone give it a look. It paints the bigotry in the X-Men's world in religious terms and confronts it on both the national and personal level. It's also, loosely, the basis for the second X-Men movie.

Where Jon and I disagree is in the continuation of the X-Men series. I feel that after a certain run of the same continuity, you'll run out of unique stories to tell in that continuity that still follow the theme. And lets face it, the core X-Men series, Uncanny X-Men, has been running for forty years and just hit issue #450. And there are three or four more books beyond that! That's why you get storylines about time-travel and aliens; stories which, I feel, have no place in an X-Men book. Of course, the alternative is to keep telling the same old thematic stories again and again with new characters, which they've been doing in the X-books, too. But I think that's trite. It's like a soap-opera; more melodrama than drama.

The most original, creative Superman stories I've seen in recent years are Smallville, which makes clever reference to Superman continuity and casts Clark Kent and Lex Luthor as friends, and Red Son, which I've mentioned here before. I want to see similar things happen to the X-Men. I want to see things like X-Men: Evolution (which brings the entire conflict down to high-school scale), like the X-Men movie (which dispenses with the trappings of the super-heroes' life) or the new Ultimate X-Men series (which takes our old, familiar characters and twists them in new, but true-to-character ways). Let the X-Men's current narrative reach its end. Let the series go, put it to bed. Show me something new.

Thanks to a link from Megatokyo a few weeks back I found this PowerPuff Girls Doujinshi. A Doujinshi is a fan manga - a manga drawn by a fan using the characters from a pre-existing manga. It's essentially visual fan fiction.

This PowerPuff Girls Doujinshi is tremendously awesome. It's got great art, which is part of it, but it also extends beyond the realms of the PPG cartoon itself to bring in pretty much every major character from a Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon cartoon series, including Samurai Jack, Dexter's Lab, Invader Zim, Courage, Fairly Odd Parents, Teenage Robot, Time Squad, Megas, Billy & Mandy and Johnny Bravo and it actually blends these characters together in a way that's surprisingly compelling and true to form. So, I really dig this comic.

I don't generally get fan fiction. I'm not trying to insult the quality of the material; I've never read more than a handful of examples. I mean only that I don't understand what would prompt someone to spend time writing it or why a fan would much want to read it. I suppose it's because I tend to have as much love of an author's writing style as I do a character and tend to think of characters as being fairly inextricable from the stories that they're involved in (which is to say I put primacy on story and character as the fuel for that story, as opposed to primacy on character and the story as the thing a results from the character's actions; a subtle distinction). And yet here I am, delighting in the insanity of this comic, which is a fan fiction.

And even as I'm thinking about this I'm doing research/taking notes for two different comic proposals (one to Marvel, one to DC), both of which involve pre-existing comic characters. And I stop for a second and I realize that writing a comic book for a pre-existing character is writing fan fiction. You pick up your pen and you write (or draw) a Superman story not for the unique voice of Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster or for the "strange visitor from another planet" story but to attach your name to the power and iconography that is Superman, that has been Superman for more than fifty years (I can't find the quote right now, but a great comic writer once wrote "When you write Superman, you don't leave your mark on him; Superman leaves his mark on you.").

It makes sense, of course. At least to me. Superheroes are the only characters that I see as big enough, that I see as having enough of their own reality (separate from their stories), that I have enough of a sense of ownership of or entitlement to to write about. (And this is limited to only a few superheroes, at that.) Superman's my mythology; why shouldn't I tell a Superman story if I have one to tell? If someone else feels that strongly about Harry Potter or Captain Kirk or whoever else, well, more power to them, and through the lens of superheroes I can understand, on some level, what they're doing even if I don't feel the same connection to their characters of choice.

At the same time, I wouldn't have an interest in writing fan fiction for non-professional reasons. That is to say, I'd want to see if I could get it published. Green Thoughts, which I guess is a sort of Green Lantern fan fiction, came to me as prose, but even as I put the first word to paper I knew that when I was done, when I'd gotten the structure of the story down, I'd turn it into a comic script and send it off to DC. That, of course, may just be my desire to do this writing thing for a living coming through, though.

Today, with all of that bubbling in my brain for the past few weeks, Teresa blogged about something she saw relating to the discussion of fan fiction vis-a-vis professional fiction. To wit: because of that sense of ownership, because of the nothing-to-lose-non-professional nature of fan fiction, because of the slashy nature of a lot of the stuff and because of a dozen other reasons, fan fiction writers are more engaged with the "squishy" stuff (the sex and the blood), and often better engaged with it than professional writers, who tend to feel uncomfortable with it and either handle it stiffly or avoid it altogether, to the detriment of their writing.

Which could bring me to an issue I'm trying to tackle with the Fables right now. But I realize that I've gone on long enough already and that the story currently available to the viewing public does not yet make this a good topic for conversation in a public place.

You should read Questionable Content. It's a webcomic and even two-hundred and fifty strips in it's one of the simpler ones out there. It's cast of characters is small and easy to manage (six regulars, with I think only three others actually appearing in the strip at all so far). It's essentially a relationship drama, which are generally pretty tiring, but this one's still fresh enough to make it worth while.

It doesn't do a whole lot that's new with the genre, and it's got a few indie-band references that I don't always get, but it's got some solid writing and some steadily (and greatly) improving art.

My favorite strip so far is one of the early ones. It reminds me of my favorite Russian restaurant, Propoganda.

* * *

You should also read Wapsi Square. I'll confess that I first looked at it because I saw the enormous breasts on the main character in an ad on another site and just needed to know if the comic was cheesecake and bad T&A jokes.

The comic's kind of short on the cheesecake and has mostly good(?) T&A jokes. I was tremendously surprised at... well, Christ, I don't believe I'm saying this, but hey... tremendously surprised at how... uhm... realistically the main character takes her breasts. She treats the huge things as the pain in the ass I'm told they are. I mean, the damn comic inspired this thrad on the forum for serious discussion of bra-related issues. It just boggles my fuckin' mind.

The comic is about a circle of friends and their lives, a topic I buy into entirely too easily. Sometimes they do some weird stuff with an ancient Aztec beer god. That... doesn't work as well as the other stuff. No favorite strip here, but there's a lot more than two fifty. Still, it's worth checking out.

At the recommendation of the Bard, I bought the new Ex Machina graphic novel. The basic concept of the comic is that the world's first (and, as far as we can tell, only) superhero was from New York. After he'd been at the game for a few years, after he'd saved one of the Twin Towers from attack, he realized the same thing that so many superheroes in other superhero universes are realizing in this day and age: he wasn't making things better, he was only helping to maintain the status quo.

So he retired as a hero and ran for mayor of New York. And he won.

The book's very well executed. Brian Vaughan's writing is quite good, especially the dialogue; every character has a unique voice and way of speaking, and it really comes through clearly. It's all very natural, too; very real. As it should be, because it's very much a story about a guy who's the mayor of New York. The fact that he used to be a superhero is a big part of that, but really he's just a guy who's the mayor of New York, and that shows. There are some thing I'd have done differently with pacing, but isn't that always the way?

Tony Harris' art has changed a little since he was on Starman. In that book, the characters were all sharp, a little bit angular in their design. It served as a very nice counterpoint to the smooth, curving lines and art deco style of the ever-present background of the city in which they lived. In Ex Machina, on the other hand, the city isn't as important to the story - it's not a character itself - so we don't see quite as much of it. Instead, the characters are a little softer, a little less angular, but with the same use of crisp lines that Harris always has. Both styles fit their respective books very well.

The only thing I don't like, and this is more of a criticism levelled at graphic novels in general than at Ex Machina, is that there's no introduction. There was a while, when only certain comics were being collected into books, that almost every one of them had an introduction of some sort. Sometimes the comic company hired somebody big (Sandman was introduced by the likes of Harlan Ellison, Gene Wolfe, Clive Barker and Stephen King) and sometimes it was just by the author.

But now that pretty much every mainstream comic that exists is being collected into a trade, introductions seem on their way out, except for big projects, and I miss the little peek behind the curtain or under the hood. I miss the stories about the stories and I miss the little bits of praise from unlikely sources (my favorite surprise still being Bruce Campbell's introduction to Danger Girl). I miss introductions.

I've been a big fan of the Books of Magic comic for a long, long time, in all of its various incarnations. First the four part miniseries that Neil Gaiman wrote, which gives a full tour of DC's magic landscape and (according to Roger Zelazny's introduction) takes young Tim on a Campbellian Hero's Journey, and then later the regular series that John Ney Reiber wrote, which was probably the most realistic portrayal of a teenager I've ever seen in a work of fiction.

The latest entry into the Books of Magic "universe" is the series Life During Wartime and the first trade paperback came out today. It's a new take on Tim and his story, a different world than anything we've seen before and it's absolutely awesome. This is everything readers have come to expect from the Books of Magic - the grainy whimsy, the intricate plots, the existential questioning, the use of Faerie, Heaven and Hell as places filled with flawed individuals - but with a slightly different edge. It's a look at Tim and his friends as twenty-something druggies rather than innocent young teenagers, it's a wonderful take on religious extremism, it's a look at the psychological impact of war and the strangeness of a world without either it or magic. Plus it's clever. My favorite quote: "There's no such thing as science. He's just pretending not to use magic."

At the same time, this is a different continuity than the last series. It doesn't take place in the same world and it's a very different storyline. That's a bit disappointing to me. It's not that this new book isn't just as good in it's own way (as I said, it's awesome). It's just that I think that the old Tim had more of a story than he got. The love of his life is still fey-touched; he's only just starting to get a handle on what magic is and how to use it; the succubus who loves him is still wandering around somewhere, along with several other interesting characters from his past; and his mother's memories are waiting for him, turned into jam, in jars in the cupboard.

To be honest, I liked the old Tim better, too. He was sensible and stupid, infuriating and clever and sarcastic. And he talked to himself. He was, as I said, real. This new Tim, well, we haven't seen a lot of him yet, but he seems a quieter sort, an internal thinker rather than an external one.

I like the new Books of Magic, I'm very happy to have read it and I'm waiting anxiously for the next trade paperback (which will doubtless be a little while), but that doesn't stop me wanting to read more about the Tim I've been reading about for, literally, a decade.

In the mid-60's, Marvel Comics had a run in the Strange Tales comic called Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. It was a fair run of super-spy adventures, more in the vein of The Avengers or The Mod Squad than James Bond. Especially with the psychedelic visuals. It's a historically ground-breaking piece of comic art, and hugely influential on later comic art design. Really getting into the meat of what Jim Steranko did with this book is very helpful in figuring out what I'd do if I got a chance to write my own Nick Fury book.

But sometimes...

Our hero, Nick Fury, is a skilled commando and spy. He has successfully and openly fought his way through no fewer than two Hydra (like Cobra, only in green) bases, survived countless explosions and fought off an 8 foot tall robot. In other words, everyone on the damn planet knows that Fury's no slouch.

In one particular sequence, Fury's infiltrated yet another Hydra base. He runs afoul of some Hydra soldiers. The lead soldier points at Fury and says "Use plan K-11! Attack him one at a time and exhaust him for the kill!"

So, not only is the brilliant strategy of the masked and faceless goons to attack the shit-kicking super-spy one by one, but this is in fact a strategy that they had planned in advance. I'd like to know a) what on earth made them think it would work and b) if they ever practiced it.

I can just see the poor Hydra soldier who gets picked for Fury duty. "Ok, Jim. You just stand here and try your best to look like Nick Fury. The rest of us, we're going to come up to you one at a time and kick the holy living fuck out of you. What? Oh, no, just the sixteen of us for now. Squad B doesn't get to use the gym until after lunch."

I think evil organizations really need to raise the standards for goon hiring. Require a GED, at least. Or have them take a test beforehand. Something!

I read Green Lantern: Rebirth #5 today.

Could you tell?

Let me state, for the record, that I don't usually think bumper stickers, applied to areas they're meant to be applied, are particularly cool.

If you say "Eisner" to most people, they'll say "huh, what? Who are you? Why are you in my living room?" But after you've explained to them that they should put the phone down because you are, in fact, holding a gun and that you simply wanted to know who they associate with the last name Eisner, most people will say Michael Eisner, former something-or-other (CEO? CFO? UFO?) of Disney.

I think of Will Eisner and the awards that are given out annually in his name. Awards for comic books. Here is this year's list.

These are my thoughts:

Ex Machina #1 and Global Frequency #12 were both nominated for Best Single Issue. Much as I'm Warren Ellis' whore, I'd give this one to Ex Machina. That whole series has been great, but issue #1 was golden, a sort of ideal kick-off that I couldn't have asked to be any better.

The next four issues of Ex Machina also come up against Warren Ellis, though this time in the Planetary title, issues 19 and 20, for Best Serialized Story. I haven't read those bits of Planetary yet, but I feel bad about dissing Warren last time. Plus, from the set up in Planetary #18, the story after has to be damn cool.

Best Continuing Series... hey, look! Ex Machina! And Best New Series, too!

At this point if I say I'd award Best Writer to Brian Vaughan (the writer on Ex Machina), you won't be surprised, right? 'Cause that's what I'd do.

Best Graphic Album - New I'd give to It's A Bird... which is the best Superman story I've ever read. I think it most captures what the character's all about. This is distinctive as Superman doesn't actually appear in the book. Nor does any other super-powered individual.

I'd give Best Penciller/Inker to John Cassaday, because his work on Planetary is beyond belief.

There's other categories, too, and other people in the categories I've named. Joss Whedon, in particular, has been nominated for four awards (the first four I mention above). That's pretty impressive; if I could still bring myself to read an X-Men book, I might pick up his run. There's also a bunch of indy folk. Which I guess is nice. But I stand by my devotion to Warren Ellis and Brian Vaughan, because their work is absolutely fucking brilliant. I hope they win.

I watched a lot of cartoons last night. I went over to Lukas' place and, with a bunch of friends of his (cool people, all) watched Grave of the Fireflies. It's a sad movie. Really, really sad. A "war is hell" movies, from the side of the civilians. I'd heard that if you think anime can't tell serious stories, this is the movie to prove you wrong. So true.

That said, what I really want to talk about is an episode of Justice League I watched, from tape, when I got home. It's called "Clash" and features everyone's favorite Big Red Cheese, Captain Marvel. Holy crap was this episode well done! Marvel's played as the idealist, hero-worshipping, innocent he should be and the contrast between him and the more realistic, slightly more cynical (at least where Luthor's concerned) Superman was not only great to see but also the cause of all of the problems in the episode. When it finally came down to a fight between the two, damn! They flew at each other and the shockwaves of their impact was visible on screen; the thunder of their punches shattered windows, took out buildings. This was animated perfectly for a fight between the Man of Steel and the World's Mightiest Mortal.

The absolute best part was how thoroughly Superman got played. Luthor is, as ever, the master manipulator and it's nice to see that, at this point, he can be 100% honest with Clark and still do nothing but cause the man endless trouble (not to mention sending his own public image through the roof).

I think I'm going to go watch it again...

Waaaay back in October I was talking about one of the reasons that I don't like stories going on for too long and writers, even writers news to a series, running out of things to say.

This is a really, really good example of another reason why I hate it. Keep in mind that every plot pointed mentioned in the little cartoon is true.

I've let a few things fall by the wayside in the past few weeks, vis a vis blogging, at least. Let me see if I can sum it up quickly:

Dar Williams: I skipped the Dar show on Wednesday. Some of you will now undoubtedly be wondering if I'm feeling alright, and I assure you that I am. It's just that I had a test in Japanese on Thursday and decided that getting my master's degree was more important than seeing Dar. This one time, at least. Plus, by staying home, I got to talk on the phone with Sarah Who Is Awesome. The conversation, as you might expect, was awesome.

November: Speaking of awesome things, my invitation to Aaron and Jen's wedding came in the mail this week. Plus their wedding's just before Thanksgiving, which means I get to be home for that, too.

Smallville: Same problem with Aquaman here as in Super Friends: they had to invent a water-based problem for him to have a reason to be around. Also, sufer style was never cool. Not even in the 80's, when people thought it was. Also also, while I'm not a huge fan of Tom Welling's pecs, it probably wasn't the smartest move on the producers' part to film the episode where he goes topless after he'd stopped working out.

Kamikaze Girls: A Japanese biker girl head-butting a Japanese Loli is a universally funny image. When it shows up repeatedly in a movie that's cute, funny, bizarre and, at turns, heart-warming, you're pretty much set. See this if you can.

Arkham Asylum: One of the classic Batman stories, re-released in a normal-sized trade, includes a copy of the script. It has one of the best lines from Batman ever. The rogues have Batman trapped and at their mercy. They're debating what to do with him. "We should take his mask off and get a look at his face," says one. "Don't be obvious," says the Joker as he looks at Batman's grim mask. "That is his face."

Mirrormask: Lukas accurately quotes me as saying that "I have never seen a movie that so fully reflected the tastes of its director." Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean and the Jim Henson's company were locked in a room. This is the movie they made. It's of the "unhappy girl gets sucked into wonderous yet crappy other world" genre. Some reviewers regard this as a bad thing. They are stupid, for this movie is excellent.

I think that pretty much covers the highlights. I need to get better about keeping a schedule, I think. But, then, that's usually the case these days. Pardon, I'm off to give being productive a whirl. Or possibly to watch the Princess Bride. I haven't decided.

March 21st, 2006 is going to be an interesting day. A very interesting day.

Of course January 10th won't exactly be bad, either, and February 7th has a certain something going for it, too.

I just watched what, I'm told, is the last episode of Teen Titans. Other than the very beginning and the very, very end it didn't feel much like a last episode to me. Hell, it didn't even feel much like a season finale. Why? One word:

Terra.

Actually, let me add another two words on to that:

and Slade.

If you've been following the Titans at all before now it's worth your while to check out this episode. Even if even if you missed this entire season you should check it out - the season honestly has no bearing on this episode other than what the Titans themselves say in the opener ("Boy, we sure have been away for a while."). Cartoon Network's supposed to broadcast it this Saturday at 8pm, but you can catch a BitTorrent of Monday's initial broadcast at mininova, among other places.

Stop back here after you check it out and tell me if it feels as non-over to you as it does to me.

From a long essay on the history of Wonder Girl at The Wonder Woman Blog:

"Stan Lee didn't get the nickname 'The Man' for nothing. He got it for killing Bucky."

I just watched the final episode of Justice League Unlimited. Thing's only been broadcast in the UK so far, I believe, so I had to grab it off of a BitTorrent site. It should hit the States in a month or so; Canada probably a week or so before then.

It's a decent episode, but not great. It features Darkseid. And cameos by... well... pretty much everyone. No Titans, of course, and I didn't spot the Huntress or Captain Marvel anywhere, but other than that every member of the Justice League or Society shows up for at least a second. Zatanna's few moments, though unvoiced, are brilliant. Flash has a typical fun moment, too. And Superman... damn, but if Superman doesn't get to cut loose for a moment there. You know that when Superman finally starts talking like a badass, there's a titanic struggle on the way.

Unfortunately it only lasts for a minute before the writers remember that the series bible calls for the total wussification of Superman and the blue boy gets dropped again pretty quickly.

Darkseid's defeat (if you can call it that) comes in an unlikely way and the ramifications are... interesting: Luthor hands Darkseid the Anti-Life Equation. You know, the thing that Darkseid wants to get so that he can have absolute dominion over all life in the universe. Sure, when Darkseid gets it he teleports out and stops trying to open up firepits in the earth and kill off all of humanity right then and there, but isn't that only delaying what you've just made inevitable? It's sort of like... I dunno, summoning Great Chthulhu in the hopes that he just wants to play a hand of bridge. Seems to me that you put yourself in a pretty bad position that way. I figure you're better off just having Superman pound the crap out of him. Erm... Darkseid, that is, not Cthulhu.

Finally, my one continuing complaint about JLU still stands: not enough Stargirl. It's hard for me not to like Courtney. She's got a cute, athletic costume, a youthful attitude, a neat set of powers and she's a legacy hero to boot. Jack Knight's legacy hero. And they even make sure to give her the right, art deco-style cosmic rod in her appearances. I can't blame the show, of course; I couldn't expect them to give Stargirl a lot of play at the expense of the more well-known characters. But it'd be cool if she had more than just the one episode to feature in. Ah, well; I guess I need to start collecting the Justice Society trades.

Anyway, I'll look forward to picking up this season of JLU on DVD, but unlike Teen Titans, which I thought had a really solid extra season, I think this show sneaked by with mostly the visual references to Super Friends to keep it neat. It was nice to see for the nostalgia, but the show's real end was last season.

Some days I consider shaving my head, just so I can dress as Spider Jerusalem.

I went to visit my local comic shop today, just to see if they had anything new for me. I was only there for a few moments when I heard someone say "Seriously, Lobo would so beat Cthulhu in a fight."

I knew then that it was time to leave, but my head twisted round - choppily, as if on a gear - to see who'd said it. He was in his early 40's, balding and wearing a black leather jacket with "Bite Me Fanboy" enamelled onto the back. In other words, he had a copy of Lobo's jacket.

I knew then that it was time to leave. As I bolted for the door, a conversation - no, a serious debate sprang up behind me.

There are depths of fanboyish geekiness to which no one should ever sink...

From a Q&A on Whitechapel, Warren's message board:

ValCapone: For a guy who claims to hate people, I have to wonder: why torture yourself with multiple message boards and attempts to answer the questions of the idiot masses?

Warren Ellis: So that I can hate people BETTER.

- also -

InvincibleM: Mr. Ellis, If you were able to punch any one person, living or dead, in the jaw, who would it be?

Warren Ellis: You.