"And the adventure continues."

No spoilers.

If Justice League had to end, I'm glad it was with that episode. Except perhaps for last seasons four-part finale, that might be the best episode of any of the series ever in the Animated DCU.

Besides that, we know Superman's coming back in a direct-to-DVD movie, and some sort of movies for the Teen Titans have already been confirmed. I'd be shocked if JLU didn't warrant the same treatment in the near future.

Although, here's my ideal scenario:
WB and UPN just merged into the CW network, which decides to open up a children's programming block. Heading this block would be The New Teen Titans and Justice League Unlimited. To kick it all off: a three-part movie crossover event. Slade and the other major Titans villains join the Society. After JL villains wipe the floor with the Titans, the Society goes after the League. A few of the Unlimited escape the surprise attack and regroup with the Titans, then stage their own assault. The movie would explore the various hero-sidekick relationships between the teams, and would serve to give the Titans a new member or two (can we say Stargirl?).

And then both shows would air until the end of time. Hey, a guy can hope, right?

Strangely prophetic...

Hey, remember the last Crisis crossover?

No, not Crisis on Infinite Earths. And not Identity Crisis either. No, I'm talking about Zero Hour: Crisis in Time.

Yes, that crisis.

I was reading through some Superboy comics today, partially for nostalgia's sake, partially because I hadn't read them yet, and partially because issue #9 introduces Aquaman's new riding partner, King Shark. Incidentally, if you're looking for a wonderful mourning issue, check out Superboy #4, which has our dear, departed Kon-El, his late girlfriend Tana Moon, and art by the sorely-missed Mike Parobeck.

Anyway, I read Superboy #8, where a time-anomaly Silver Age Superboy happens upon our modern protagonist in Smallville. Reading this first clash of the Superboys really resonates once you've seen Infinite Crisis. Check it out:

The obligatory superhero fight

You can enlarge this one, but here's the dialogue:
Conner: Eat chain, [???] poser--that's exactly who I am! And here's a hint for you wanna-be's--gonna pass yourself off as the genuine article? Wait 'til I'm DEAD!
Clark: Which shouldn't be long at the rate you're going.
Oy, way to foreshadow there, Kon. I guess Superboy-Prime just got tired of waiting.

Oh Superboy, that's for the courts and the Siegels to decide.

Now, imagine that with the Anti-Monitor's armor...

Too bad the latest meeting couldn't have ended like this. Especially when they both started the same way:

Coincidence? You be the judge.

Spoilers and images below the fold!

Scipio was right!

I wonder if Scipio's reading (and enjoying) Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis.

"But Tom, Scipio loathed the very idea of the book! Aquaman shouldn't be sword and sorcery!"

True enough. In fact, while I admit that I don't know much about what Aquaman should be, I'd be willing to say that Scipio was right on the money: Aquaman as a Western sounds to me like the most interesting take on the character.

Which is why this week's issue of Sword of Atlantis has me hooked. At first glance, it's very medieval. There's a prophetic wizard-esque character, a gladiatorial swordfight, a deposed Queen and a missing King. But actually reading the book makes it seem like Kurt Busiek has taken Scip's advice to heart.

Arthur Curry is a young hothead searching for his missing father, or failing that, revenge. In the first issue, he is thrust into a new frontier of sorts, where he uses his wits and his gut to help an outlaw fight off a bunch of raiders, saving their captives. The outsider is given weapons and clothes to help him survive in this harsh world, and travels with the outlaw King Shark and the mysterious Dweller in the Depths (also a pretty decent Transformers episode, as I recall, penned by Paul Dini), hoping still to find his missing father. They come across a small village, a ghost town populated by drifters, outlaws, and some of the scattered refugees from the destroyed Atlantis. He learns that this undersea world is a land without laws or leadership, since the central capital was destroyed. Tribes of bandits and rastabouts have prevented any rebuilding, and countless are dead. Arthur then ends up in a duel, horrendously outmatched, but driven by pure nerves. At the end, he proves himself the better man by letting his opponent live and riding off with his outlaw buddy.

Lawless frontier. Idealistic hotheaded hero. Duels and honor codes. Roving bandits. Outlaws and refugees. Ghost towns.

Sounds like a western to me.

I must have been absent that day...

Okay, so Tony Daniel wasn't Mike McKone or Tom Grummett, but he's been a decent artist on Teen Titans for quite some time now.

So when exactly did he decide to start sucking?

Somehow, the One Year Gap turned a guy with a decent, if unmemorable, style into a mid-'90s Image artist with little sense of proportion, anatomy, or, uh, faces.

Check out the new issue of Teen Titans, particularly the scene with Gar and Raven, or most of the panels of Wendy and Marvin. Ugh. Faces are all slanty, features are misplaced, bodies look like they came out of a quality of work that Rob Liefeld could only dream of achieving, but that everyone else long ago mastered and built upon.

Tony Daniel, what happened?

All the Newsarama that's fit to print

Mild spoilerage ahead.

So, what are the practical implications of this? Joanne Siegel and Laura Siegel Larson (LL? Neat) have been found to own the rights to the Superboy character, and to Clark Kent as seen in Smallville. What happens next, besides several appeals? Is it just a matter of royalties, or do the Siegels gain creative control of the characters? If that's the case, then what are they going to do? Sell them back to DC? Sell them to Marvel? Self-publish some Superboy comics? Can they do that? I'm reasonably certain that every other major character in the Superman/boy mythos, and the symbol on his costume, and his title logo, are owned by DC. What kind of comic could the Siegels produce?

Furthermore, would this apply to the Kesel/Grummett Superboy? He's not a young Clark Kent, he's not just Superman when he was a boy, he has different powers and a different costume (or three), is he owned by the Siegels by virtue of having the same name?

I hope this just ends up with an amicable settlement and a hefty royalties package, where DC retains the ability to tell stories about their primary hero when he was a boy. And the youthful clone of said hero.

See, I'm kind of torn by this. I think the comic companies really jerked around with their top creators back in the day, and ought to recognize that, apologize for it, and make some monetary recognition. The Siegels and Shusters and Kanes and Fingers and Kirbys and Lees and Schwartzes and Infantinos ought to be getting decent-sized royalty packages 'til the end of time. Every solo comic ought to come with a "_____ created by John Doe and Jack Smith" credit on the title page, like Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman do.

But I also think people shouldn't be able to live without ever working on the achievements of their grandparents and great-grandparents and other generations removed. Adults ought to earn their living, not have their living earned for them by some ancestor. I'm not saying this is the case here; Joanne and Laura deserve Jerry's royalties. But a few generations down the line, it starts to become like reparations. Why should you get paid for something your great-great-grandparents did or went through? I don't go looking through European crests trying to find out who owned my indentured servant ancestor who jumped ship to come to America. I don't go looking for the barons who owned my distant serf ancestors. Sure, they suffered, but I haven't, and I don't deserve to profit from their suffering any more than anyone else deserved to profit from their suffering.

End soapbox.

Next: Dan DiDio is at least better at giving straight answers to questions then Joe Quesada.

Q: Is Booster still married to Gladys or did Superboy Prime get her too?

DD: Gladys is gone, one of the few good things Superboy Prime’s “wall punching” accomplished.

Why? Booster's clearly been in the future long enough to upgrade Skeets and get a little noticably older. Why can't we say he had annulment or divorce papers drawn up there, rather than say Superboy wiped her from existence? Sure, in the 25th Century she's long-dead, but we have no idea what time-traveling marriage laws are like. Why not just say she died in Blüdhaven? She was an OMAC who died in the assault on Themyscira? She was a covert Checkmate agent who died in Max Lord's purge? DC keeps saying they respect Keith Giffen and giving him high-profile assignments and whatnot, but then they say "oh, that most recent story you did with these characters who we've raped, killed, and otherwise darkened? Yeah, Superboy punched it."

Q: Will we see Ray Palmer (the Atom) in Infinite Crisis? Will we soon find out what's he been up to ever since the end of Identity Crisis?

DD: Ray is gone.

Lame. Comic characters don't just walk off into the sunset. Either there's plans for Ray, or they just haven't planned his comeback, but something so final-sounding as "Ray is gone" is just lame.

Q: Why hasn't DC ever done anything with Apache Chief, Black Vulcan, El Dorado, Rima, or Samurai in the DCU? It would be cool to see them join the JLA or maybe the Global Guardians.

DD: Out of all the characters you mentioned only Rima catches my interest. Then again, if one of our writers has an interesting take on one of the others, hey, you never know.

Um, dude: Apache Chief=Manitou Raven; Black Vulcan=Black Lightning; El Dorado=Motorcyclist hero from the '90s, or swashbuckler from the old west, either way, they've done stuff with him; and Samurai was basically the Asian Red Tornado. In any case, most of those characters have been used by DC in some form or another.

Q: Ultra the Multi-Alien showed up during the Rann-Thanagar War as a background character. He's been kicking around for years and little has been done with him. Is there ANY chance that this great character (that did carry one of the sci fi titles for at least a year back in the sixties!) will get a taste of rehabilitation and get used again?

DD: Actually, that’s a character I enjoy as well, if only for one of the strangest origins out there. No surprise, except to see him in 52.

Maybe this was obvious, but I just realized that Ultra is simply the 20th-century (or whenever) version of Ultra Boy, or that Ultra Boy is the 30th-Century version of Ultra the Multi-Alien. While Ultra had discrete powers, each of which could only be used by one segment of his body, Ultra Boy has discrete powers, each of which can only be used one at a time. I don't know, I thought it was neat, and wondered if it was intentional.

Q: Any chance of ADVENTURE COMICS ever being revived?

DD: A very good chance.

Neat.

Q: Does Superman wear underwear under the costume already wearing underwear?

DD: Not sure if I can answer that one, it’s more of a question for Lois.

I can answer that: no. In the interior of issue on the right, Superman sets fire to his costume and walks away, bare-butt naked. It's not the only comic that established this, but it's the first one I thought of.

Q: Lynx, Lady Shiva, Jet....are the Dead returning to the DCU?

DD: Following the collapse of the Multiverse in issue six, a new Earth is formed and some who were thought dead appear to have been reborn. If they were meant to survive in the new DCU, they will do so, if they weren’t, things have a way of correcting themselves.

Also lame. I'm really not totally digging the "Superboy punched it and made it better" thing for resurrections. Seems lazy to me.

Q: When are Dick and Babs getting hitched?

DD: Better question is “Why didn’t they get hitched?”
...
Q: After Infinite Crisis, how many people left in the DC Universe will have the powers of The Flash?

DD: One.
...
Q: The "new" Ray in Freedom Fighters... Ray Terrill or no?

DD: Nope.

Lame, lame, lame. The new Flash series gets one arc to hook me. The Speed Force and the Flash family was a universally good idea (okay, the future Flashes weren't quite so good). Pruning the family tree is a major step backward, and I hope it's a temporary step.

And why invent a new Ray? There's still a Ray in the DCU. Why replace him? Unnecessary characters bug me.

Q: Will we see Linda Danvers in 52?

DD: Not sure if Linda Danvers as you remember her made it out of Crisis intact.

If this means that Superboy punched Linda Danvers out of continuity, then it may be grounds to bludgeon Dan DiDio with a baseball bat. While I don't want to ever see her again (unless it's under Peter David's pen), I want her to be around, somewhere, for potential use down the line. And I definitely want her in continuity; it takes some of the sting away from Kara.

End DiDio.

Dude, Wendy and Marvin are on the Teen Titans? I'm sorry, that's the height of lameness. Snapper Carr as mentor to Young Justice? Cool. Wendy and Marvin as junior Titans? Not cool. We replaced Superboy with those Scooby-Doo rejects?

End Shaggy and Daphne.

Okay, they killed Scarface and the Ventriloquist? Bah! A fantastic Batman villain, gone for no reason. What, they couldn't off the Ten-Eyed Man or something? Batman has scores of worse villains to kill.

End glog post.

Read More!

Was that really necessary?

Spoilers Ahead!

Why'd they have to kill Superboy? I liked Superboy. Okay, I liked Blue Beetle, Max Lord, Outburst and Loser from the Supermen of America, Dr. Fate, Phantom Lady, Human Bomb, Hawkwoman, Mike the Parademon, Shazam, Jade, Pantha, Ronnie Raymond, Lord Satanus, and Ragdoll, but I really liked Superboy.

Superboy's always been an interesting character, right from his first appearance. Sure, in the month or so when DC was still trying to make you think that one of the four "impostors" was actually the real Superman, he was the next-to-least convincing of the group (and that's only because Steel never claimed to be Superman after the first issue or so), but he was still fascinating. He began his career naïve and arrogant, an attention hog and womanizer and consummate teenager. He trademarked the Superman name! He found an agent! He was immature, he was a jerk, he was a kid playing an adult, and to be frank, it was a little scary.

When Superman came back, he and the kid had some words. One of those words was "Superboy," a moniker that the nameless kid had hated with a passion until that point. Coming from Superman, along with his approval, along with the legitimacy of his S-Shield, it finally seemed acceptable. Superboy headed for the sun-drenched skies of Hawai'i. He left that issue with a quote; Superman spotted it as one from Peter Pan, fitting since it was spoken by a boy-hero who didn't want to grow up. Superboy, in his mind, had been quoting Captain James Kirk, seeing himself as a swashbuckling, smooth-talking adventurer.

He got his own series, he got a girlfriend or two, a fantastic supporting cast, and a rogue's gallery. 59 issues later, he got a name: Kon-El. Superman "adopted" him as a cousin. He had grown out of his attention-whore phase and had become a successful, independent superhero in his own right. 'Twas around this time that he found out he couldn't age, and that caused him a good deal of angst; he was finally ready to grow up, to find some depth in his life, to become a "real boy."

Then his girlfriend died; he lost his powers and found his mortality. In Young Justice, he found peers and friends and love unlike what he'd had before. He reinvented himself, he became embroiled in a war and saw friends die. He had a breakdown, had a crappy seven issues under Palmiotti and Didio, and eventually ended up helping found the new Teen Titans. He traveled to the future and became part of another family. He developed a secret identity and chafed in the role of a normal human, but loved being part of a normal family. He went nuts, but found his way back again. He'd grown from arrogance and naiveté to insecurity and budding maturity, to a well-developed personality and a deep sense of responsibility.

And then he sacrificed himself to stop another Superboy, one who had never earned the name, not the way Kon did. One who had the name thrust upon 'im by circumstance and cruel parentage.

I read the spoilers; I saw the sun beginning to set in "Teen Titans Annual," but still I hoped that poor Conner Kent, the first post-Crisis Kryptonian cousin, would make it through intact. It was an irrational hope, I know, and the more I think about it, the more I understand that it had to be this way. Superboy-Prime had been gunning for this battle since day one; Superboy was portrayed as conflicted, depressed, even cowardly, while Superboy-Prime talked a big game of grand heroism and idealism, a game he ultimately lost.

Of course, the parallelism isn't lost on me. Superboy-Prime was decked out in the Anti-Monitor's armor, hoping to destroy our world and supplant his own. Just as in the first Crisis, someone with an 'S'-shield had to make that ultimate sacrifice to stop him. Except this time, the sacrifice worked; it didn't just shock Dr. Light into action.

My only question, then, is "why Superboy?" Or, more specifically, "why not Supergirl?" Sure, there's the whole battle of the Superboys, but it really seems unfair that a character who's been around for thirteen years and has had major character development, someone who has starred in four series and has a major fanbase, should die while a character who has lounged around the DCU for a couple of years with absolutely no characterization, who is mildly-creepy eye candy without any substance whatsoever, a character who has replaced a much more interesting figure with the same name, could not only continue living, not only carry her own series, but become the star of another as well. I liked Linda Danvers; Kara Zor-El has so far given me one issue of content to make me like her, and it's her most recent appearance. Why does Batman's family only continue to grow, while even Superman's core books get pruned from the tree?

The new Teen Titans issue gives me some hope. Robin's trying to clone his best friend, and I hope he succeeds. Not only would that bring back the second-best character to enter the Superman mythos in the modern era (following Steel, natch), but it would also add a new layer of confliction onto his character. Superboy rose from the ashes of Superman's death; here he would be rising from the ashes of his own. Serious questions about the nature of death, the morality of cloning, and the existence of the soul would be raised anew in the Teen of Steel, and his relationship with Tim would become necessarily strained and awkward. I hope above hopes that Tim succeeds, and I hope that it becomes fodder for interesting Superboy stories, perhaps even a much-deserved new series, for years to come.

I know Kon will return eventually. He's too good not to. Until then, as the Kid said:

"Second star to the right, and straight on till morning."

Raospeed, Conner.

Read More!

Pinky, are you purchasing what I'm purchasing?

Animamiacs is coming to DVD! Pinky and the Brain is coming to DVD! Both sets hit July 25th, which makes this year even more awesome in terms of season sets. I still haven't even been able to pick up the second half of He-Man Season 1 or Justice League Season 1. New Superman and Batman Beyond sets hit this summer, as well as more He-Man than you can shake a stick at.

It's going to be an expensive year.

Anyway, with Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain hitting the DVD shelves, can Freakazoid be far behind? I daresay he cannot.



Huggbees!

April Fool's Day

I hope you all enjoyed Comix Are Suxxors. I'll leave it up at least for a little while, so anyone interested can see my lame, last-minute attempts at humor. Marvel at my intentionally-unchanged "Edit-Me" links! See the way I spent five minutes trying to find a robotic-looking font so I could parody the title image on Comics Should Be Good. Watch me rip off Jon's "Eat a Dick" joke again!

Ah, good times, good times.

Oh, and Jon said that using that joke made him feel like Bruce Vilanche. For that, I am profoundly sorry.