Classicos De Sabado Kazekage #3--Careful With These Jokes--They're Antiques!

Doing a little something different this week, as this needed some fresh context to post it in. But first, a few miscellaneous facts:


FACT 1--Busting on Rob Liefeld never gets old.

FACT 2--The 1989 shooter Zero Wing is remembered less for being a pedestrian shooter in the usual Toaplan mode and more for bringing to the world a frankly infamous meme.

FACT 3--My natural tendency when I find something funny is to push it to the ultimate degree. If something is x times the amount of funny, for instance, what would happen if I combined it with something else.

It was that line of thinking that led me to the following:

Way Back When--Thunderbolts #1

All this talk about Dark Avengers recently inspired me to start a new feature here at the Prattle--a feature wherein we take a look back at the comics of yesteryear, which, given the current strain of Ouroborsity in comics is more than likely having its serial numbers filed off and served to you yet again even as I type this. It is in that spirit that I present Way Back When, this week featuring the Dark Avengers from 12 years ago, the Thunderbolts.

Thunderbolts #1 (April 1997)

1996 was a pretty down time for Marvel Comics. The direct market was in the throes of melting down and a few creative gambles had come up lemons. The Clone Saga was sputtering along, long after any charitable person would have said the storyline potential had been exhausted, the X-Men had just blundered through the Onslaught crossover, which had started as a perfectly serviceable idea for an interior line-wide crossover that got had been hijacked for another purpose: Take out the Avengers and the Fantastic Four to get them available for Heroes Reborn.

(Man, Heroes Reborn. Remember when we all hated that and thought it was a stupid idea? Remember when they waited three years, called it the Ultimate line and we thought it was the greatest thing ever?)

First, a word or a dozen about why the Avengers were ripe for speedy deletion:

Earlier in the year, the powers that be had decided that the Avengers titles needed a shot in the arm. The standard operating procedure at Marvel in the 1990s was to take whatever the X-Men had done that was even a smidgen successful and map it onto their other properties whether it belonged there or not.

So Joe Madureria was asked over lunch to redesign some of the Avengers, and approached it with just about the same level of concentration and good design sense he brought to Ultimates 3. Remember Wasp redone as some sort of weird-ass bug lady? That was him. Of course, Madureria only designed the characters--as it took an act of federal law to force him to put down the N64 controller and actually draw, it was laughable even then to think he could handle two books--and remember, somehow his work ethic would get even worse in the decade and change that followed.

So, Thor began dressing like he-man and buggering about in some incomprehensible storyline Warren "Typin' For The Paycheck" Ellis wrote which was read by very few, understood by fewer, and cared about by even fewer. Iron Man became a murderer in the Hal Jordan mode, died (not in his own book) was replaced by a teenager, and then killed again (again, not in his own book--we will revisit this during Iron Man Week. Oh yes.) as his own book was slaved to Avengers, which became mired in a ghastly, incomprehensible storyline wherein, due to the tortured logic of the plot, characters acted wildly out of established character, a bunch of people died So We Knew They Weren't Fooling Around, time travel was involved, and ridiculously obscure bits of continuity were used to justify a story that did very little except piss most of its established readers and offer naked incomprehensibility to anyone new who might have been interested enough to check it out.

If any of this sounds familiar, you were probably reading Avengers in 2004, weren't you?

(I should add here that there was one bright spot during this time--Waid and Garney's run on Captain America, which was sadly cut short by Heroes Reborn and upon trying to re-establish their arrested momentum, fell far short of the mark the second time around.)

So it was decided that things were broken enough to where handing the Avengers over to Jeph Loeb and Rob Liefeld as a better idea than going forward with what they had. That's how bad things were, y'all.

Heroes Reborn I'll have to cover another time, but the point of this whole preamble was to set the stage thus--After Onslaught gets deaded (sadly, despite many playthroughs of Marvel vs. Capcom, Jin Saotome, Strider Hiryu, and Mega Man destroying Onslaught is not canon, I understand) he took the Avengers and the Fantastic Four with him.

This leads to a fictional and non-fictional conceit that, while it's not run with as much as it should have been, actually led to a couple interesting books during the Heroes Reborn interregnum. Non-fictionally, with the "big" heroes off the table (and the X-Men floating in their own isolated bubble, as usual) writers of non-HR books brought little-used characters to the fore and ran with them. The books weren't Great Art, but it did freshen up the line to a large extent.

Fictionally, the Marvel Universe took a different turn--with their most beloved and trusted heroes gone and those who survived (the Hulk and the X-Men) viewed with even more suspicion and fear afterward no one stepped up to the plate.

Enter, the Thunderbolts.

Citizen V, MACH-1, Meteorite, Songbird, Techno, and Atlas come along at exactly the right time--they're bright, personable, and spend most of the first issue getting into two big fights, one of which involves the Wrecking Crew at the Statue of Liberty. They're just what a weary, fearful public wanted--they may not be the Avengers of the FF, but there's something about them that captures the public imagination and they get anointed the New Avengers. No, not them. So they get swept up in enthusiasm. They get access to the Avengers files. They get fancy security clearances. People miss the Avengers, but these guys just might do OK after all.

There's just one problem: The Thunderbolts (in one of those plot twists that would be damn-near impossible in the Internet Age) are actually the Masters of Evil, or to be more specific the version that wasn't a punchline and starred in one of the best of the later Avengers arcs there is. And in what's an unusually sensible plot for world domination, the Masters aim to gain the trust of the world, then take over after they've entrenched themselves.

That, at least, is the plan, anyways. As time goes on through the book's first year, it becomes a tug of war between those members who still want to execute the plan and those who are beginning to like being thought of as heroes. And to further complicate matters, the long-thought-dead Avengers and FF return just as the last stage of the plan is about to be put into effect.

Thunderbolts was a curious title, and probably the best argument for Heroes Reborn one could have imagined. Only under those circumstances could a book with no big names (c'mon, you know if it were done today, Wolverine would have to be in it somewhere. Oh wait.) and a hook like this be allowed to find its audience and play out the way it played out.

It's funny, considering the knocks the 90's gets (justifiably sometimes) for being style over substance and full of ill-advised experiments, rarely gets credits for those rare rolls of the dice that actually worked.

Witless Dictionary #10--Third Alternative

Continuing again with a special double-shot of Witless Dictionary fun for the week and another term of art inspired by the Prattle's bestest friend, the superlative Diana Kingston-Gabai:

Third Alternative--Term (in relation to comics) used to describe anything that comes along in opposition to the Big Two companies who upends the stagnant binary structure and injects some life into things again.

The best example of this in recent memory would be the rise of Image Comics in the early 90's. While it may not have led to anything we would recognise as "good comics" (whatever that means now) the energy and vitality Image brought to the medium ended up, in general refreshing the entire genre of superhero comics.

I don't argue it was all for the good, mind you, but the rise of Image forced the Big Two to try things they might not have done otherwise and it allowed some new blood a chance to make their mark in superhero comics.

It wasn't all for the good, but it was necessary, it can be argued.

Witless Dictionary #9--Sod-Off Character

Continuing our . . .uh, continuing efforts to create a wider glossary for comics criticism. This week, the Witless Dictionary does something a little different--the two definitions for this week were inspired or directly requested by the illustrious Diana Kingston-Gabai, who exemplifies the phrase "blogger of note" in ways I can't even begin to approach.

Sod-Off Character--The opposite of a breakout character (or, if you must, "the Fonzie"), the sod-off character is a character whose exhausted both his responsibilities for his immediate storyline and any potential for further storylines, but who s nevertheless shoved in the reader's face despite being annoying, uninteresting, and, as previously stated above, having no real reason to be there and as you read along you just want the character to go the hell away already.

Or, if you'd like a more succinct definition, The Sentry.

The Nexus Of Superhero Comics and Pro Wrestling

I'm sure someone, at one time or another, has queried Paul O'Brien's dual critiques of both (primarily superhero) comics and his incisive commentaries on pro wrestling. The implication seems to be that one is more or less valid than the other and the concept that one could like both is, apparently, quite unusual.

Only--and yes, I am aware that anecdotal evidence is poor justification for one's opinions--I know a lot of people who are fans of both wrestling and comics. And when you get right down to it, it's not hard to see why that is.

Superhero comics feature colourful characters, usually with muscled physiques and other quirks, usually solving their problems through violence in stories in which good, inevitably, triumphs over evil in what is, ultimately, a kind of catharsis for the reader.

Pro wrestling is a type of performance art featuring colourful characters with muscled physiques and other strange quirks, solving their problems with violence in pre-planned storylines wherein good inevitably triumphs over evil, and what is ultimately a kind of catharsis for the viewer.

In short--they're not that different. Even moreso when you look at recent trends in both.

To wit: After years of more or less adhering to the basic model with a bit of individual variation here and there and a sort of gradual evolution of the form happening in a slow but steady fashion, a variety of factors converged to alter the basic dynamic. Characters became more complex, the overall tone became darker, and the old black/white good/evil model was largely set aside for characters that worked more in shades of gray. While this worked at first and revitalised the entire genre to a large extent, as time went on, it became the very norm it was a reaction against in the first place and now, as the amount of stories possible under this paradigm cycle lower and lower until a new alternative is needed to refresh things. Unfortunately, none is immediately apparent.

Depending on what you're a fan of, here I'm speaking of either the 1980's in comics (wherein stuff like Watchmen changed the game significantly and became the primary blueprint for the future course of the genre) or I'm speaking about the 1990's in pro wrestling (wherein the rise of ECW broke storytelling out of a very stagnant place and because the primary blueprint for at least the next ten years)

That's not the only thing they have in common. If you'll allow me to use an example I use a lot. In wrestling, a storyline usually breaks down like this: Your good guy (the "babyface" or "face") is chased by, or chases the bad guy the "heel.") The reasons can be anything you like, but ultimately it comes down to good guy vs bad guy--everything else is window dressing.

The key element in crafting a wrestling storyline (and it is a craft, in its way) is knowing how long to draw it out. Too short, and it seems a bit rushed and not as fulfilling as it might be. Too long and you run the risk of losing the audience's attention before the end of the storyline.

It's all about precisely playing on the audience's expectations toward the ultimate catharsis. Too long and too many defeats of your good guy and whatever the result, it's not credible whatever the end result. Too many bad finishes and the whole audience deserts the product and everything collapses in on itself.

Sound familiar?

It's not hard, I think, to see the carryover when you hold both up to the light and compare them. There are finer differences, of course, but there are more similarities I didn't cover in this go-round. Maybe if I have an additional thought on the subject, I'll do a write-up on how the different comics companies' approach mirrors the distinct ideology of the old territory system in wrestling--don't worry if you don't don't get what I'm talking about, I'm not sure I do. However, I thought it was worth writing it up before the thought floated out of my head.

Janked From Sententia With Craven Impertinences

Empire Magazine has revealed its list of the 50 Greatest TV Shows ever.

1. Bold the shows you watch/used to watch.
2. Italicize the shows you've seen at least one episode of.
3. Underline the shows you own on DVD (or VCR tape).
4. Post your answers.

50. Quantum Leap
49. Prison Break
48.Veronica Mars
47. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
46. Sex & The City
45. Farscape
44. Cracker
43. Star Trek
42. Only Fools and Horses
41. Band of Brothers
40. Life on Mars
39. Monty Python
38. Curb Your Enthusiasm
37. Star Trek: The Next Generation
36. Father Ted
35. Alias
34. Frasier
33. CSI Las Vegas
32. Babylon 5
31. Deadwood
30. Dexter
29. ER
28. Fawlty Towers
27. Six Feet Under
26. Red Dwarf
25. Futurama
24. Twin Peaks
23. The Office
22. The Shield
21. Angel
20. Blackadder
19. Scrubs
18. Arrested Development
17. South Park
16. Doctor Who
15. Heroes
14. Firefly
13. Battlestar Galactica
12. Family Guy
11. Seinfeld
10. Spaced
09. The X-Files
08. The Wire
07. Friends
06. 24
05. Lost
04. The West Wing
03. The Sopranos
02. Buffy The Vampire Slayer
01. The Simpsons


I have this awful feeling my ignrance in certain matters will either be a huge disappointment or explain everything, and possibly both all at one and the same time.

Classicos De Sabado Kazekage #2--Bedlam, Thy Name Is Bill Mantlo

(Continuing our look back at days gone by from the old comic blog, I present for you a little gem from the frankly awful year of 2006. For those of you who remember my perennial bouts of rage in regards to Alpha Flight--specifically Bill Mantlo's run on the book, this will be nothing new. The rest of yu--buckle in. This one's going to sting . . .)

Hi folks,
Not so very long ago, I did a detailed rundown of a little book called Alpha Flight, a book I followed as a younger man for quite some time. I suppose it was partly because the idea of Canadian superheroes--it was different and somewhat interesting. Hindsight has taught me that it had more to do with me being a brutally stupid child.

Not to plough over old ground here, but most of my growing disenchantment with the team could probably be laid at the feet of one Bill Mantlo, a man who, at the summit of his powers wrote utterly apeshit comics about motorcyclists, one of whom was named "Honcho." You are free to draw your own conclusions from there.

His tenure on Alpha Flight is a nadir of another, kind, beginning badly, flatering early on, crashing in the middle and finally ending in the kind of gut-wrenching disaster usually only seen when Zepplins crash.

Today we examine the point of impact. Alpha Flight #53



I admit I modified the cover a bit to editorialise.

Were it not for the fact that all comics in the mid-1980s looked like utter shit (Flexographic printing had just been introduced and we spent the tail end of the 80's seeing and often feeling it's growing pains, hence the wretched quality of my scans here--all comics looked like that, even when brand new) you could say even the very ink on the pages revolted against what they were depicting. But you can't, so fuck that noise. Let's look at our cast of characters:

BILL MANTLO: Trapped writing a comic he didn't want to write and shuffled off the one he wanted, he'd by now hit upon the idea of systematically killing every single cast member in the book, perhaps in the vain hope that the book will be canceled from underneath him or he'll be replaced and he can go back to writing stuff he gave a shit about.

By the time of this issue, nearly everyone's been killed or shuffled off 3 issues ago, so guess how successful that was.

VINDICATOR: The leader of Canada's fighting-mad superheroes, Heather Hudson was the jailbait girlfriend of the original Vindicator and kinda stora blew him up. Spends an inordinate amount of time macking on Box right in front of everyone, which is probably bad for morale, but given the clumsiness of their technique, more fucking creepy than anything:



"Give good training." "Private workout." I get the feeling she means something else, but I'll be damned if I can work out what.

BEDLAM (The Brain-Blast): Canada, being hard-up for superheroes, decided, "Hey, we'll experiment on a multiple murderer and give him psychic powers that let him do pretty much whatever the plot requires. What's the worst that could happen?" Has some kind of dumbshit master plan to breed a master race out of the survivors of a donnybrook between Alpha Flight and the Derangers which is never made clear, possibly because it's total bollocks. Curiously dresses in gold armour and a blue cape and frankly adorable little blue booties.



JIM LEE: Somehow goes on to have a real career after this and now has more money than God. Nevertheless--seriously, Jim--Gold armour with blue booties? Were you late for lunch that day or something?

BOX: He's a robot named after cardboard, and in a confession more shameful than any I've said before, he used to be my favourite character. Started out brutally homely, became handsome because he's supposed to be sweet on Vindicator, and Jim Lee couldn't draw an ugly person if he woke up in bed with one.

SASQUATCH: Walter Langkowski was once a dude. And orange. Now he's a white furry part-time and a woman (a reanimated dead one!) the rest of the time who dresses very "flashdance-y" at least three years after that was in any way shape or form a good idea. This is actually a plot point in this issue. I hope anyone who ever rubbed one out to him/her is dead now, and in hell.

Also, comics can just go right to hell.

MANIKIN and the PURPLE GIRL (who is, in fact, purple): Just as generic as they sound. Really there to fill out the "minimum occupancy" rule every time Alpha Flight rides an elevator, Manikin can split into 4 people at various levels of evolution, and the Purple Girl (who is purple) can control minds, although it never seems to come in handy whenever it would solve the plot in 2 pages.

WOLVERINE: It was a common practice in the 80s to stick Wolverine into random issues of a book to fool people into buying it. Today, Marvel has Wolverine in 5-13 books every single week. Thank God since the time this book was published comics as a medium have progressed past that kind of cynical manipulative pandering.

THE DERANGERS: To call Freakout, Janus, Goblyn, and Breakdown ciphers is an insult to actual ciphers, numerical or otherwise. At one time slated to carry a book of their own, the Derangers were a team of mental patients, respectively a drug addict, schizo artist, an autistic and a battered wife, who, in their one appearance, are treated with the kind of compassion and respect you would imagine they'd get in a book like Alpha Flight:

That's right--they get brutally murdered in three pages. Except for Goblyn. As none of them have been given any characterisation in the classic sense, the weight of their sacrifice means about as much as a bean fart in an opium den.

Goblyn sticks around and becomes something of a walking plot point for the next year and change, but I don't care since I gave up the book soon after this and I NEVER FUCKING CARED ABOUT STUPID-ASS GOBLYN ANYWAY.

Oh yeah, I should add that the Derangers are in no way to be confused with Wildrider, Dead End, Motormaster, Drag Strip, and Breakdown, that team of mental patients known as the Stunticons who distinguish themselves by a) not dying 5 pages after being introduced and b) being able to combine into the giant robot known as Menasor, which is a kind of awesome that Alpha Flight will never know.

You may have noticed I'm doing an awful lot of stalling about the plot. Probably because there really isn't much of one and what there is is really dumb. Basically, Wolverine shows up at the remains of Alpha's Tamarind Island HQ and finds Box well into the throes of a nervous breakdown. Now, maybe it's because Bedlam decided, not understand the concept of a doorknob, to announce his terrifying blue-bootied presence by blowing a great hole in the place, but probably more because of this:



"Wish I was doing it with you, Vindicator, instead of to you." The erotic subtext is spellbinding. Box is smoove.

The sad thing is, it works, or it would have, had Bedlam not cock-blocked our cardboard robot by attacking and kidnapping everyone by Box who turns himself into a Walkman or something and gibbers like a jackass until Wolverine finds him. Wolverine spends most of this issue, it must be said, looking very embarassed to be in this comic, as well he should.

Bedlam, as it turns out has spirited them to a cozy little pad in the Arctic Circle he made, like, just yesterday, and whilst he's got both teams trussed up like something out of the Overfiend movies, we get the following quick recap of Alpha's and the Derangers' origins, represented here because this is how people wasted an entire fucking page back in the day:

The senses-numbing origins of BOTH teams in confusing postage-stamp-o-vision!

Then Bedlam lays out his plan--The Derangers and Alpha Flight battle it out to the death and whoever's left standing gets to breed Bedlam's "Master Race." Because right after you've committed brutal murder in the course of trail by combat, well of course its "hey everybody--we're all gonna get laid!"

Exactly how one intends to create the Ubermensch combining middle-of-the-road Canadian superheroes with superpowered mental patients is never made clear, and if that means too sane to comprehend insanity, well it's news to me.

So they fight, and since one has not been given much of a reason to give a shit about the stakes in the conflict, it's pretty pointless, full of overdone violence (and blood flying everywhere that thanks to the Flexo printing looks like Tahitian Treat) and people beating on people and it's not even in a steel cage. Vindicator flies around and helpfully expands on the Derangers origins (rather than, y'know, helping or anything) until the following extraordinarily disturbing moment occurs:



Bear in mind, last week I ran an image of a naked woman standing on Satan's nipple. You tell me which one's more wrong.

What he/she says is bad enough, but what's up with that "Make yourself my man" stuff?

This endears us very little to Bedlam as everyone all of a sudden beats on him, but with his uber-stupid mind powers he holds all of them off for most of the rest of the issue, until Vindicator automates her suit (sorta--again, clairty is not our friend) and mercifully ends out pain:



Nice that Bedlam, despite his super-brain, totally failed to see her hand glowing in the previous panel, and totally dismissed that she was pointing it right at his face. And he was going to lead the master race, too, remember? What an ass.

Anyways, after the Derangers have been cut to pieces and Bedlam's been decapitated with extreme prejudice, it's time for a happy ending. Standing amongst the corpses, they decide they'll chill at Bedlam's pad and get all chummy. Y'know, despite the dead bodies. Wolverine says Vindicator's a "good leader-lady," which is is totally off my bullshit scale.

OK, so the good guys won (by writer fiat more than anything) and the bad guys went down (because absurd ultraviolence=kewl) everything's wrapped up neatly, right? But what about Box? Did he ever tap Vindicator's Maple Leaf?



Magic 8-ball says: "Signs point to yes." Because it's not a happy ending unless someone gets laid at the end.

Surely Caddyshack has taught us that for generations, now.

Witless Dictionary #8--Marenghi Bubble

Part 8 of a never-ending series designed to create a functioning vocabulary for my unique brand of comics criticism. Or, to be more blunt about it, I'm just making this stuff up as I go along.

Marenghi Bubble--Filter on perception that usually results from having a reliable coterie of apologists around them that prevents any valid constructive criticism (or, indeed, criticism of any kind) from penetrating. Those in within a Marenghi Bubble will often justify dubious creative choices by citing high sales or an editorial mandate to shake things up or . . .geez, anything, really. This meme will be buttressed by his followers, who will continue to paint the person inside the bubble as a visionary and slag off anyone who doesn't get it.

Or, alternatively, those poor fools who walk around the Emperor with a big sheet so we can't see he bloody well has no clothes on.

Named for fictional construct Garth Marenghi, who, while meant as a parody, sadly has plenty of company in the real world who aren't.

Just Sayin': Dark Avengers #1

This could, I imagine, be construed as me getting up on my K-Box but . . .

So, all it takes for this whole Dark Reign tosh to be considered "awesome" is for Norman Osborn to go wanking off in a suit of armour that looks like Iron Man and Captain America pounded out a baby leading a bunch of faux-Avengers in a muddled rehash of Thunderbolts #1 and all of a sudden it's "awesome."

And comics are in better shape now as opposed to the 90's exactly how?

Please explain your answer in the space provided below. Remember, this counts as 20% of your final grade.

Witless Dictionary #7--Zeitgeist Failure

Back once again with another in an attempt to create a lexicon for comics criticism and, to paraphrase Von Clausewitz, criticise the current state of comics by other means.

Zeitgeist Failure--Term which describes any project released at exactly the wrong time and which totally fails to speak to the current social and/or political climate of the time and usually results in something as wrongheaded and almost quaint as, say, trying to credibly sell Norman Osborn as head of a vast government conspiracy that grinds on through every third Marvel book or something. Basically, we're talking a catastrophic failure to read the mood of your audience.

Or, to be more succinct (for once), this.