Comics: Blackest, Darkest, Night Siege

Major Star Trek flashback - there's an old episode of the original series, "I, Mudd", where the crew has to confuse a whole bunch of androids in order to burn out their circuits. So Spock goes up to a pair of beautiful androids (played by twins), and says to one. "I love you." and to the other "But I hate you". The second beautiful android says "But I am identical in every way to the other android." "And that is why I hate you," says Spock, and the beautiful androids burn out their circuits dealing with the contradiction.

So that's how I feel about the two major comic book company "events", which have recently resolved - the "Dark Reign/Seige" sequence from Marvel, and the "Blackest Night" event over at DC. I've been trying to figure out why I like the former when those same reasons also apply to the latter, which left me frustrated and cranky.

For those who don't follow comics on a weekly basis, here is the short form. Over in the Marvel Universe, at the end of the Skrull Invasion (don't ask), Norman Osborn (the Green Goblin) emerges as a hero, and is given Nick Fury's old job of defending the free world. He then proceeds to hire every other villain in creation with the intention of creating a "permanent super-powered majority" that lets them be villainous (within limits) and keep the heroes from making a comeback. Meanwhile, over in the DC universe, a dark cosmic entity, Nekron, raises the dead to confront the living heroes, allowing DC to literally resurrect old deceased characters.

And from these bases, they spool out pretty darn similar. There are titanic battles. There are a plethora of tie-ins, which vary from intriguing to lame. There are more titanic battles. There are forgotten villains which suddenly see a lot of screen time (I swear the Griffon, a minor-league Spidey villain, has gotten more work in the past year than in the previous thirty). There are heroes returning from the dead (Steve Rogers is back, Aquaman is back, Batman appears as a skull, but HE's coming back as well). There are heroes engaged in redemption (Hal Jordan blew up the Green Lantern corps, Tony Stark wandered deep into supervillain territory - both are back on the side of angels (Tony reloaded a back-up personality, which creates interesting legal problems). There are way too many superteams involved (Rainbow Lanterns for DC, all the flavors of Avengers in Marvel). The core books feel like a lot of "coming attraction" trailers for other books that spin off. And both end with a sense of redemption - a Brightest Day which leads to a Heroic Age.

And yet it works for me on the Marvel side, and not on the DC side. So much so that I am looking forward to the next step of the Marvel ongoing story (Heroic Age), but not the DC (Brightest Day)(Note that the DC Brightest Day already cheesed me off through the gratuitous slaying of a Next Generation Hero (the Ryan Choi version of the Atom) - but that's a rant for another day). And given all the similarities, that contradiction should burn out my circuits.

I guess what it all boils down to is this - I grokked the Marvel characters and enjoyed the stories more than the DC version. Given my own background in the MU, I recognized most of the D-listers that filled up the panels (Mandrill, anyone?) and felt the whole Dark Reign/Siege was an event that let all the characters react according to their natures (a Marvel strength). Blackest Night, on the other hand, sort of put all the heroes in the same box, with identical reactions to the threat du jour. In the end, the various heroic factions coming together made a lot more sense in the Marvel end than on the DC side.

Heck, Marvel even made its Sentry character, the latest in their sequence of Superman clones, interesting.

But I'm still trying to parse out the difference between the two - megaevents that sprawl through multiple books. Both were big events that should have had personal resolutions, yet only Marvel seems to have pulled that off.

Excuse me, I smell burning circuits. More later.

Olympics

I've spent the past few days wrestling with a nasty headcold, which has manifested with an ever-rotating cascade of symptoms like a demonically-possessed Simon game (Today - sore throat! Tomorrow - uncontrollable coughing!).

And worst of all, when I'm sick like this, I sing. Badly. And not good songs, either, usually bits of doggerel made up on the spot, or things like the Donny Most song from that Family Guy episode:

Donny Most, Donny Most

He was "Ralph" on Happy Days

Donny Most, Donny Most

Now he rises from the haze.

So its not a good idea for me to be around others, and I've been working at home for the past couple days. Now, the fact that this coincides with the Olympics, which are being broadcast by the network nation of NBC, is completely beside the point. So the fact I can curl up and let the TV run while I slurp down hot tea and review manuscripts is totally a small bonus.

As you've probably heard, it has been a snakebit Olympics. Warm weather. Tough venues. A fatality in the luge. Protesters. Breakdowns in equipment and transportation. The torch trapped behind a chain link fence like it was in Free Speech Zone. Still, it is the Winter Olympics, and I've always liked the Winter Games more than the Summer. Skiing, speedskating, hey, I'll even watch figure skating. And adding the polar cold-weather opposites of curling and snowboarding just adds icing to the cake.

And I've been happy with the coverage. One of the grumbles in Seattle right now is that we get the games in the evening NBC feed instead of live. Vancouver is two hours away (plus an hour at the border) - why are we getting everything on tape delay. Me? I'm glad I don't have to watch the announcers fill time for two hours while the IOC Judges are on the women's alpine course praying for snow, or waiting for the fog to lift so you can see the top of the course from the bottom.

As much as I bash on large corporatism, the network nation of NBC has done a good job so far - highlights in the evening in prime, and live/semi-live events during the day on CNBC, MSNBC, and USA. And while they cut some of the action (like the opening rocks for curling each end), they have been showing full games (which is just as well, since the US team is 0-3 in the round robin and not looking at all well - will there still be coverage when the US is no longer a contender?). In addition, NBC has eschewed the mawkish sentimentality and jingoism that often haunts Olympic coverage.

So for the moment I've got my laptop, manuscript, blanket, and tea, and I'm happy the Olympics are on - because otherwise the only thing on TV would be reruns of "Phineas and Ferb".

Donny Most, Donny Most

Sunday Monday, Happy Days.

More later.

Thought for the Day

Never get into an argument with a fool. Folk may not be able to tell the difference.

More later,

Missed Phone Messages

Apparently, this is all my fault.

Remember last week, when I rolled that kayak (um, three times)? Well, I had my cell phone in my shirt pocket, and it shorted out from immersion in Lake Washington. And once I dried it out (household tip – Hair dryer on low and patience), I didn’t check for messages.

Turns out I had three of them. Here’s the first – Wednesday, 9 AM:

Hey, Jeff, this is, um, John McCain. Running for president, you know? And the boys and I were talking and they really like some of the things you’ve written – Manual of the Planes and all that. Visionary stuff. And I was thinking, well, we were thinking, that this was the fresh outlook that we’re looking for in the Republican Party. So, if you’re interested, you might want to join the ticket and become my vice president.

So get back to me when you have a chance. Ciao!

Second Message – Wednesday, 11 AM

Jeff, John again. I haven’t heard from you. Look, is it the D&D thing? I know we’ve been talking smack about that pro-Obama D&D crowd, but if you want, I can fire the guy saying that. Bang, he's gone. No, really, he creeps me out. And the base will understand. They’ll take whatever we give them. I can dig up Saddam’s body and make it my running mate and FOX will declare that it’s a game-changing, mavericky decision.

OK, that came out wrong. I don’t mean to compare you to a dead dictator. The point is, we can do whatever we want. Our party has screwed up the Federal Government for eight years and now we're running as reformers, and no one even blinks. I think we have good synergy, you and me. I really want you consider this and get back to me, soonest.

Really like your stuff. Hope to hear from you. B’bye.

Third Message – Wednesday, 1 PM.

Fine. You don’t want the (deleted) job. At least you’d have the (deleted) to tell me to my (deleted) face. I don’t need you. I don’t need ANY of you (unintelligible) . No, I haven’t been drinking. I’m just hurt. I THOUGHT you’d care about your country, but I can see you’re just like the others.

Hate you. Hate your (deleted) books. I’m going to go find somebody who will answer my calls. Is that an Alaska phone book? Throw it over here. (mutters) I'll show you all.

Oh, and don’t bother to call back. Bozo.

What can I say? I could have spared the nation all this.

More later,

Rant: Flawed Vessels

So I have to deal with the fact that a public figure that I've admired has proved to be guilty of the sins that flesh is err to. Oddly enough, I'm not talking about Brett Favre.

My own political history with John Edwards has been played out with this blog. I wasn't a supporter originally, but when I found myself in his camp, found I like a lot of his policies and thought he could do the job. Indeed, as an Edwards supporter I got to engage in my own smugness when the top two Democratic candidates were pummeling each other - the dog I backed had already retired from the field with honor. Still, I am disappointed by the news that he had an affair, which he confirmed it on Friday.

Now, you'd think after the relentless bombardment of inappropriate behavior from the conservative side over the past six years, I would immune to this type of thing. Truth of the matter is, I find myself drifting more and more to a zero-tolerance position on the fine art of stepping out on your spouse. And if you're playing the "good-husband/family man card", you are putting your personal behavior on the table, so you really should live up to the talk.

More to the poinit, such activities underscore a basic error in judgment, considering, you know, that we're dealing with a figure with a published schedule and who is surrounded by the media. And while the political press is not adversarial (a rant for another day), it is opportunistic. It will likely pop up that those covering the campaign were aware of the affair (the young woman was videographer and working alongside them), but that no one was sure lacking positive proof (like, the candidate confessing - and if you're asking, no, you don't get points for being brave and honest on the television, you get points for not having the affair in the first place).

In short, the media close to the candidate was covering for him, as has happened with a number of "open secrets" about the private lives of public individuals. But once the cat is let out of the bag, everyone has to get into the big story. The information was released on a Friday afternoon, the day the Olympics began, when the Russians invaded a neighboring country. But Russia is far away and China gets its feathers ruffled if you talk about the weather, while Obama is on a vacation and McCain is reducing his press time. And most of all, this is a Democratic Sex Scandal, which the media KNOWS how to handle.

And yeah, there's a feeling of "Judge not, lest ye be judged" in looking at this, though if the Book of Matthew isn't your style, there's the basic Karmic justice that occurs when you declaim inappropriate activity on a Monday and by Wednesday the photos of your time as manager of the Suicide Girls Lacrosse Club show up on the Internet. But there has been a lot of judgment going on, and I don't feel like equivocating if this is better or worse than Alaskan corruption or Congressional shenanigans or Vice-presidential misadventures. If it is bad behavior from a conservative, it is bad behavior from a progressive.

Then there is the "flawed vessel" argument - just because the man is wrong, doesn't mean the ideas he exposes are wrong. That is true, but we have seen a plethora of leaky terracotta over the past decade, and but it doesn't make it any easier. Yeah, we DO expect our leaders to hold themselves to a higher standard - that's why they are leaders. Call it the Captain America school of political values, and it applies to all parties.

I like what Edwards was fighting for, and while I think his national career is done, he probably will continue to serve his state. In his apology, he stated "Feel free to beat me up", and there will be no shortage of that in the coming days, as this story continues (yeah, continues) to unspool. The irony is, Edwards aspired to the highest office of the land, and for the next week or so, will get all the scrutiny and judgment that comes with the office.

OK, sermon over. Back to the Voter's Guide. More later,

Update Admit it, you would click on a link titled Suicide Girls Lacrosse Club.

May I See Your Visa?

You know those commercials, where there is a bouncy tune like the "Powerhouse" theme blaring over scenes of people buying, buying, buying, effortlessly in an orgy of consumerism, a ballet of capitalism? And they're all using their Visa cards? And then some shlub tries to pay with cash, and everything comes to a screeching halt - the music stops, everyone stares, until the uncool shlub leaves and the enthusiastic party starts up again?

I really, really, hate those commercials.

That is all. More later,

No Ex-Scaife

A short while back, I noted about the upcoming ugly divorce of Richard Mellon Scaife, media titan of Western PA. Now, wealthy people go through spouses like you and I go through windshield wiper blades, but what pushes this into commentary is a)the revelation that Scaife's paper, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, is a money hole, and b)that Scaife is apparently guilty of the same crimes he accused the former administration of, crimes that he thundered against sanctimoniously (and apparently hypocritically).

For us ordinary people, we'd just lay low for a while until this blows over. But not for the wealthy.

Scaife has gone to court to try to seal back up the documents that the Post-Gazette got ahold of. That's right - you weren't MEANT to find out about the messy details of the divorce. Never mind that his newspaper funded investigation into the most lurid details of Clinton's past. Never mind that he demanded that Senator Heinz's will be made public, in hopes of grabbing some dirt on the Senator's ex-wife, who just happened to be the wife of a presidential candidate. Such demands were for the good of the republic. Hurrumph!

But when the shoe is on the other foot, summon the lawyers and unleash the flying monkeys! Oh, you don't deserve to know that a powerful individual has a messy personal life. Why, the very idea!

(Of course, the P-G proceeded to put the documents on the net, just to make sure they didn't disappear down the memory hole.)

But here's what really is cheesing off most Americans - we seem to have developed an separate sense of justice for the wealthy rulers as opposed to the rest of us. This is bi-partisan venality, though the conservative end of the spectrum seems to have the most offenders. These are guys who can seal up (or erase) records. These are guys who get "do-overs" on confessions. These are guys who can take a swing at a cop. These are guys who get polite warnings from the FBI that the feds are dropping by. These are guys who seek (and get) protection for the illegal cash they keep in their freezer. These are guys who have hats made that say "Corrupt Bastards Club". These are guys who can swear like sailors and unload a shotgun in someone else's face. And no one can touch them.

But if a student newspaper in Colo-freaking-rado uses a four-letter expletive to describe the sitting president, all the powers that be get the vapors.

These are people that want to know all about your business but don't want you to know about theirs. They want to monitor your movements but won't tell you who visited the White House. They want to check your emails, but have conveniently "lost" theirs.

That's what is cheesing people off. It is not as much the corruption (which is still bad) as the fact that we have a raft of people who think that they are above the law, while tightening the screws on everyone else.

And it should be time to push a few of these people off the raft, and have them join the rest of us mortals.

More later

Church and State

So here's where I shear myself away from some of my fellows. A lot of them (in mailing lists and in journals) are comfortable with the idea that science and religions are opposites. Black and white. On and off. Thinking and feeling. Up and down. One cannot exist in the presence of the other.

Actually, I think of them as salt and pepper, which can be combined (in various amounts) but really two completely different things, and have completely different paths to your kitchen table. Salt is a mineral, an edible rock that appeals to certain parts of your tastes, while pepper is a plant (a dried fruit of a flowering vine, actually), which appeals to other regions of one's taste buds. To say that the two are polar opposites is kinda silly, and in the same fashion I think the science/religion split is a false dichotomy as well.

In fact, the two work together better than working apart. Over the course of my lifetime, there have been Biblical stories that have benefited from scientific support. As a lad, the Great Flood was a "bible story", a religious tall tale with a moral ("Don't cheese off the Lord"). Yet over the years archaeological thought has moved from "was there a Great Flood?" to "Was there a single flood or a series of localized floods?") Indeed, discovery of previous legends, like that of Deucalion, act to support the existence of a biblical flood, not diminish it.

Similarly, faith has supported science over the years. Gregor Mendel (genetics), Roger Bacon (scientific method), and Copernicus (astronomy) were all men of the cloth and received encouragement from their church. There are the monks in Ireland who kept knowledge alive in the wake of the fall of Rome, and the flowering of Islam brought new concepts, even new words (Algebra, Algorithm, Alchol) into European thought.

I think that both science and religion are spectrums as opposed to absolutes, and when we have a hard orthodoxy in control in either case, there difficulty for the rest of us. In religion we currently seem to be under the sway of the orthodox forces, but not too many years ago we were in the porgressive grips of Vatican II and the Ecumenical Movement. In science we have seen where the hide-bound individuals who control the mechanisms twisting vital research for their own ends (Gallo and the HIV virus comes to mind). Yet in both cases it is moving across a spectrum (of course, in both cases, the installed orthodoxy wants to KEEP their power, and to that end seeks to exclude others who might disagree. The spectrum becomes a single wavelength).

There is pseudo-religion and there is psuedo-science. Both science and religion can have bad ideas, false leads and dead ends. The Catholic Church, seeking to answer the question - what happens to the unbaptized innocent? - ended up with the concept of Limbo, which was recently abandoned. Science similarly has a long history of mechanisms created to make the theory work - Ether (if light is a wave, how does it travel through a vacuum?) orphlogiston (what is that makes stuff burn?). Now dark matter and superstring theory are similar constructs. Both science and religion have a tendency to pick stuff up, examine it, and discard it if it does not work. In both cases, problems show up when the thought process becomes rigid and rejecting (Papal infallibility, corporate-paid research think tanks), seeking to exert temporal power as opposed to seeking knowledge, comprehension, and understanding.

Science and religion are playing fields, where conservative and progressive forces move back and forth. Orthodox forces in both seem to limit both what is going out (in the way of sharing understanding) and what is coming in (as far as believers or theorists who may hold contrary views). While it is very easy to identify an established extreme as an enemy, it is not representative of the entire spectrum. Indeed, calling all scientists heretics and all faithful people ignorant supports those orthodoxies by restricting the number of participants that need to be controlled, exiling those non-, un-, and wrong believers into some sort of darkness where they may be ignored.

The answer for both spectrums is "more light". More thought, more discussion, more examination of both science and faith. Because only then can either sphere move forward.

More later,

Commencement Address

So being out of town for the heart of this past week, I got the news in bits and pieces - headlines on the papers, soundbites on the passing televisions, and of course the Internet. A troubled young man with two handguns killed 32 people and wounded a similar number at Virginia Tech. And everyone agrees that it is a horrible, horrible thing.

And the usual windbags have come forward to lambast the usual suspects: Computer Games (Jack Thompson), Gheys (Westboro Knuckledragger Church), Liberals (Rush - his logic is that the kids were rich, the shooter must hate the rich, liberals hate the rich, ergo the shooter was liberal). Yet through it all we didn't see a whole lot of information about how the kid got the guns (I had to do a bit of digging to find out it was a Walther 22 and a Glock 9)

Indeed, we've seen the exact opposite - reassurances from the government that despite this terrible, terrible thing, you can rest assured we be doing EXACTLY NOTHING to prevent it from happening again. In fact, the embedded right-wing insists that this was the fault of the victims, since this would never have happened if the students were all packing heat.

And so this is one more teaching moment for our young people, so pay attention, kids. We grown-ups? We don't like you. Its hard to imagine, but it is true. You get to a point where you suddenly wake up and, despite what the warm, white voices on the radio say, discover that when push comes to shove, we don't like you at all. When kids are shot in Ohio, when kids are shot in Colorado, when young people are tear-gassed in their homes on Cap Hill, when an American city drowns. In fact, not only do we not like you, we're going to make sure it will happen again.

We've looked at you, and then looked at the shooter, who killed two people, sent out a press release, then killed 30 more, then killed himself. And we decided to side with the crazy guy with the guns. Cause you know guns don't kill people, alienated playwrights kill people.

Just so you know, we're going to make the comforting noises because we have to, but anything that might keep this from happening again? Forget about it.

Welcome to the future, kids. Watch your ass.

More later,

Reality-Based

So the question is, which is more in free-fall – the Current GOP Administration or the Marvel Universe? I mention the idea that whenever I think either one has hit bottom, the floor opens up and we go spinning further down the rabbit hole.

Over in the political world, we have the Veep's Chief of Staff guilty for four counts of perjury, obstruction, and lying. We have revelations that after sending troops into combat without enough battle armor, we are now not taking care of them when they're wounded. We have revelations that the Fish and Wildlife Service is being leaned one to downplay the fact that the olar-cap-ay is elting-may. We have the FBI abusing the PATRIOT Act after swearing they never would do something like that (suprise!). We have the revelations that the government pitched a number of Attorney Generals out the door because they wouldn't play ball with the administration politically.

And this was just last week. Oh, and to top it all off, one of the lead bloodhounds going after the previous administration for illicit sex admitted that while he was doing so, he was having illicit sex. And he's running for president.

Yet given all of the above, last Wednesday, the NY Daily Post put on their front page the "Death" of Captain America, and everyone shrugged and said it must be a slow news day.

Now, the Masters of the Marvel Universe seem to occupy the same general sphere as the planners in the White House- deploring the "Reality Based" world and declaring that they define what reality is. Now, in a shared creative universe such as Marvel, this is ACTUALLY TRUE. They DO have the power to determine the reality of their characters. Not that they've been doing real well with it.

Last time you tuned in, two weeks back, the Civil War was over, and the smart guys (Led by Tony (Iron Man) Stark) won because Captain America surrendered. The next two weeks, in a real world, would be made up with dealing with repercussions and continued conflict. Here? Not so much. The dead-enders go into hiding. Everyone pulls together under the new regime, and Tony suddenly is in charge of SHIELD, Nick Fury's old organization of super-spies.

In the next week, it was revealed that our friend Tony was manipulating control-nanites to force the original Green Goblin to shoot the Atlantean ambassador (a plot line in one of the supporting books), therefore creating a threat from the Atlanteans which the heroes can unify behind. A couple reporters find this out, and bring down the house of cards.

Hah! I kid! In the reality-defining world, the reporters confronted Tony, and told him they were going to keep quiet about it, since it was for the greater good. Go, fourth estate! I wonder how they would have felt about Tony if they knew he's pulled this stunt before, getting the Titanium Man to attack Congress to underscore the dangers of superhumans.

OK, so another week passes and now Cap is shot. For those who didn't get past the headlines, he was winged by a sniper while on the courthouse steps for a highly publicized (verging on show-) trial. Then in the confusion, with all the media cameras running, Cap's girlfriend, a SHIELD agent, runs up and pumps five slugs in his gut. OK, so she was hypnotized by some of Cap's enemies, but still, this is a PR disaster for SHIELD.

In fact, that may be what they're talking about in a promo book called the Initiative, which is supposed to be the NEXT big thing. Spider-Woman runs into Ms. Marvel (They come out of the same 80's Clairmont era, so they bond, even though they were on different sides). SW accuses Tony of killing Cap. Ms M says no, Cap's alive, and being kept on life support elsewhere. Outside continuity, the powers that be have declared Ms. Marvel to be lying, which further reduces any good feeling about her. But I think this story was written before the ending of Civil War was determined, when the very likely chance existed of Cap getting killed in final conflict with Tony (Which sort of explains the fairly lame ending the highly-touted series had). However, you go to war with the reality you have, and Ms. Marvel is tossed under the bus to support that reality.

Fine, so in the same week Tony reorgs the Avengers, which consists entirely of easily-manipulated bricks (Sentry, Wonder Man, Ares) and women Tony has slept with (Ms. Marvel, Black Widow, and Wasp). So Tony is showing the same reasonable decision-making capability that has carried him so far (By the way, what number on Reed Richard's Hundred Great Ideas was shooting the symbol of the USA?). But at the end of that issue, Tony's armor is taken over (again), and morphed inside out (apparently killing Iron Man in the process) and a new female Ultron takes over. Mind you, the last time Ultron showed up, another hero (Vision) died, so this conclusion is not out of the question.

Of course, the apparent Iron Man death will be explained away (but it is nicely drawn by a brilliant artist, Frank Cho), but it underscores the impermanence of death in the Marvel Universe- Cap was presumed dead since the end of WWII, and has died a few times since – he's always gotten better. Ditto Iron Man. Green Goblin? He was dead for a long time, but is back. Vision? Dead, back again. Spider-Man? Dead, and recently, too. So there is no prob that Captain America will be back in some form.

And even if they hold the line, and state that the Steve Rogers/Captain America is dead, dead dead, that will only hold as long as those in charge declare it to be so, In a consensus reality, such declarations last as long as those making the declarations are in power. In my capacity as a licensee with Marvel, long ago, I was assured (and sometimes ordered) that certain characters and incidents would never appear again, and should not even being addressed (Random example? - Gwen's Clone). All have since appeared again, as the great wheel rotates and different people come into power. So all this will change yet again.

And that may be the case on the national level as well.

More later,

Comics: Uncivil War

So it is two in the morning, and I am up with an upset stomach and I THINK it was something I ate as opposed to the wrap-up of the Marvel Civil War mega-event, but why take chances? This is presented in spoiler-vision (TM) means that I go on with this intro until I reach the point that I get past the cut-off of the RSS feeds, just so I don't give anything away to those who really want to be, uh, surprised.

OK, here's the short version - at least it wrapped up sooner than the Iraqi Civil War, but unfortunately, just about as neatly.

The concept which let up to this dog's breakfast is pretty interesting - there is a superhero disaster in which innocents are killed. A group of superheroes, including the supposedly smartest guys on the planet, decide the best answer is to register all superheroes and reveal their identities. Those that don't go along are hunted down and thrown into a Gitmo in the Negative Zone. Iron Man leads the pro-registration group, while Captain America leads the rebel forces. I've said before, it is not a left-versus-right argument, but rather one of head versus heart - the thinking heroes against the feeling heroes. Spider-Man starts in one camp and ends up in the other.

And the thinking heroes have been at a disadvantage since they are forced into all sorts of twisted rationalizations to support this Very Bad Idea, often going back on their very core ethics in order to pull it off (Mr. Fantastic, who STOLE A ROCKET at the start of his career, stressed the importance of obeying laws, even bad ones. Tony Stark, whose technology seems to go rogue more often than his employees get lunch breaks, thinks superheroes have too much power). Also, the pro-registration guys have to fight Captain America. How can Captain America be wrong? Over the course of this much-delayed event, Spider-Man is outed, Thor comes back as an insane clone, the dead original Captain Marvel returns, heroes die messily, and supervillains are put in positions of trust and authority.

Through it all, continuity was a hash, as characters who fled to Canada or France were suddenly back in the mix, characters who were dead were suddenly living, and characters who backed one ethos suddenly were on the other team. There was some good writing in all this in the required tie-ins- the Black Panther books provided a refreshing island of sanity and McDuffie, the new FF writer, came up with a better reason for Mr. F to be such an ass that was in keeping with his background (Reed Richards invents psychohistory and discovers that unless they do this, humanity dies. OK, then. What's Tony's excuse?). But in general it has been a slow, painful crawl through broken glass. I ended up dropping books, a rarity for me during the fever of a crossover.

And how does it end up? With a big superhero battle with each side upping the stakes. Cap's side breaks into Camp 42, Tony's side is waiting for them, Cap's side breaks out the prisoners to help them, Tony's side tries to trap them, Cap's side has Cloak (I think he was dead, once), teleport everyone to downtown Manhattan, Cap's side takes another turn as the Atlanteans attack, Tony's side brings in the New Superheroes they've been cobbling together, including the Cloned Thor, Hercules kills Cloned Thor making a Dan Quayle-era quote, etc .... And it all comes to down to Captain America and Iron Man brawling together.

And Captain America almost wins, except a group of New Yorkers stop him, and he realizes that in the battle they are being the very threat that Tony's registration forces worry about. So he surrenders.

And there you have it. Head beats heart. Brains beat emotions. Smarts beat feeling because feeling cannot rationalize away its crimes and smarts can. Bleah.

There is a long epilogue after that of Reed writing to get Sue back, which has a bit of a magic wand approach, though the words are undercut by what is being shown. There is an "Amnesty" for all the rebels (meaning what - they get to register? Wasn't that what they were fighting in the first place?) Everyone loves the idea of an extradimensional prison for malcontents outside due process. Tony Stark is made director of SHIELD, since there's no chance of him losing control of THAT technology. Fifty new superhero teams are formed, one for every state (controlled by the state legislatures? The national government?(Though they do show one of my favorite under-used teams of the 80s, the Rangers)).Cap becomes Nelson Mandela, penned up in a cell (while all the other rebels freed and supervillains get on the teams? Huh?). And there is an aside that underground rebellion continues, with Cap's former allies making up the "cool-kid" Rebel Avengers (Luke Cage, Spidey, Wolverine, and Doc Strange, for Galactus's sake), while the "recognized, official Avengers consists of Iron Man, the female version of Captian Marvel, the female version of the Hulk, and uh, some other guys who never got permanent books of their own. We're not stacking the deck here at all.

Oh, and the prison was called "42' (a play on DC's 52) because it was the 42nd Great Idea that Reed came up with make the world a safer place. 43 is cleaning up SHIELD, which apparently involves humiliating the former director. Man, I'd love to see the rest of that list - #35 was to alienate every black hero in the Marvel Universe. #36 was to clone Thor but make him more amoral. #37 was to kill off a black hero just to show they mean business. I thinking screwing up Peter Parker's life had to be in the first dozen, because Spider-Man obviously wasn't suffering enough for the rest of humanity to survive. Ooo! And Tony hiring the Titanium Man to attack Congress to make his point. THAT has to be in the first five! I bet they had to drop universal health care in order to get that in.

End result? Frustration, and a grisly curiosity about where this open-ended disaster is going next The answer is - THE RECONSTRUCTION, I mean, THE INITIATIVE. I applaud attempts to put heroes outside their comfort zones and to create events that do have long-lasting effects on the continuity of their universes. But I would not use this series to support either concept as a good idea.

More later (Nope, stomach still hurts),

Blogger Busted

So I'm not posting as much at the moment. Part of it is the workload, but part of it is the nature of Blogger itself.

Last year, Blogger was bought by Google, who promised to "improve" the service. So far, the improvements seem to be similar to the ones AMC brought to Harley-Davidson, or CBS brought to the Fender Stratocaster guitar (or more locally, New Times brought to the now-undead Seattle Weekly). After a few months of warnings, my old blogger account no longer functioned, and I had to create a Google account in order to access my blog.

This is followed by the discovery, after making the irreversible change, that the new system does not support my current Mac browser, Safari (yes, I can get another browser, but see the top paragraph - I'm a little busy at the moment). So if I blog, it is off the portable - very doable, but I have other things I do with it.

And then, through arcana of the new process, I am writing in a default New York font, then having to change it all over to Verdana when I am done. Again, there is probably a better way, but it is not particularly elegant at the moment.

So I am muddling through,and pushing off reviews and comments for later. And thinking seriously about picking up another service. Any recommendations?

More later (I hope),

While I Was Gone ...

When I was on the road I had limited Internet (WiFi only from the hotel lobby) and Media acess (TV was out in the room). As a result, my news consisted of the front page of the USA Today left at in the elevator lobby. So I missed a few things ....

...An astronaut flew into a jealous rage and went a little crazy, getting more press ink than any of the shuttle missions she went on.

...A former Playboy Playmate who had an outrageous life experienced an outrageous death, getting more press ink than all the shuttle astronauts who ever flew.

...Several candidates declared that they wanted the most unwanted job in the world - cleaning up the mess left by the current administration.

... Republican sources announced, and the media duly reported, that the new, Democrat, Speaker of the House demanded an Air Force Jet to get back to her home district. Then it was revealed that her Republican predecessor got the same deal, and that Homeland Security demanded it, not her. Leaving the only controversy being why the media would report such a thing as "news".

...The head of the Cartoon Network resigned after a major American city spazzed out, confusing guerilla marketing with guerilla infiltration. Namely, a promotion for Aqua Teen Hunger Force (hey, I don't make these up) was suspected as being a terrorist lite-brite. Similar devices were found in the Seattle area, whose local governments reacted badly by merely removing the devices and not panicking, and as a result not getting a cool two mill for their overeaction (well, I hope we learned an important lesson there).

... And yeah, other people noticed that at $2 million, the corporate prank was still cheaper than buying time at the Superbowl (where the only commercial I remember is Robert Goulet sneaking into your office and messing with your stuff).

...The court marshal of a US Soldier who refused to deploy to Iraq was declared a mistrial, even though said soldier was not allowed to offer a defense. This, of course, got less column space than a crazy astronaut or a dead playmate.

...We had extreme weather in upstate New York in the form of very heavy snow, which allowed people to sniff about global warming while conveniently ignoring an example of catastrophic climate change.

... We seem to have succeeded in Iraq while I was gone, since we're now busy planning to attack Iran.

... Apparently things are going real well in Afghanistan, too. There hasn't been any news on that at all. We must have caught that Osama guy, and I just missed it.

Then again, maybe I should just check into another hotel for a week.

More later,