Fanfic

What follows is more than a bit silly and may only make sense if you read this first. For maximum effect start at the linked entry and go forward chronologically. In fact, you should probably just be reading that blog anyway, because it's really good.

Anyway, taking the statement "...you guys should really be writing Scale Guy, not me..." as an official request, I offer a piece of fan fiction celebrating one of the most unsung heroes of comics art. We should not take him for granted when he offers us so much.

THEY ALSO SERVE WHO ONLY STAND

"Stand here for one moment."

Scale Guy walked over to the prototype and stood next to it where the general had indicated. The technician (whose waistline was one and one-half the width of that of Scale Guy) and the general (half a head shorter than Scale Guy) looked from the prototype to Scale Guy and back again repeatedly. Scale Guy was used to the darting glances. People often did that around him.

"Yes, there, you see?" announced the general at last, waving his arm at the prototype. "The doorway does need to be slightly higher, as I said. Otherwise our taller soldiers will need to stoop over slightly as they pass through the dimensional threshhold..."

The general and the technician walked away, deep in conversation, forgetting Scale Guy was still there. As people usually did.

*

It was the peculiar fortune of Scale Guy to be precisely average in both height and weight throughout his entire life, the embodiment of the perfect median of the population for his age group. He had been a statistically average baby, an unexceptional teen, and an utterly common adult.

Over the years he had developed a slight tendency toward weight gain. At first he wondered if this mild paunch would make him more distinct, more individual...but then he learned that due to an increase in the average body mass index of adult males in his age group, he was still (and would always be) perfectly average.

But he was the best there was at what he did, and what he did was demonstrate relative size.

*

"We stand gathered here in William Foster Memorial Park to dedicate this monument to a fallen hero..." As the politician continued his oration, those in attendance at the dedication ceremony looked up at the towering statue of Bill Foster and then looked at Scale Guy briefly before their gaze returned to the memorial statue. Scale Guy thought this must be what the crowd at a match looks like to a tennis player.

No one there knew Scale Guy, and he was not invited to speak. Scale Guy knew no one cared if he had anything to say about Bill Foster, or whether Scale Guy had preferred the name Black Goliath or Goliath or Giant-Man. They wanted Scale Guy around for one reason: so that all present could say "Yes, it certainly is a big statue we've built. Look how big the statue is compared to that average fellow over there. The size of the statue shows how much we honor the memory of Bill Foster."

It was a big statue, though not quite as big as Foster had been when he died. Scale Guy noticed things like that.

*

That's very big of you. Don't be small about this. We'll keep you on standby. He'd heard them all.

*

"The Minister is deeply concerned about the possible threat from infiltration of military assets by terrorist organizations via the use of homebrew Pym particles. What strategies have MI-13 developed to address this threat?"

The agent gestured to Scale Guy, who held out his open hand for inspection. "Miniature weapons," she explained, "for use by miniature troops deployed in response to psychic detection of miniature brainwaves at key locations."

The assembled Defence officials peered into Scale Guy's palm to examine the flamethrower, the rocket launcher, and the submachine gun. There was no doubt these were indeed miniature weapons: everyone could see it plainly. They were like trinkets from a charm bracelet in Scale Guy's perfectly ordinary-sized hand.

Afterward, as they left the Main Building, the agent tried to make small talk with Scale Guy. "I went back to my childhood home this weekend. Hadn't seen it since I was twelve. I couldn't believe how small it was."

Scale Guy smiled politely, but inwardly he sighed. A place was the size it was. It didn't change just because someone looking at it became bigger or smaller. Why didn't people see?

*

He'd tried to join the Avengers once.

Luke Cage stood next to him in front of a mirror and studied their shared reflection. "Not bad...not bad at all. With you standing there, everybody can tell I'm not someone they should mess around with. Of course, everybody knows that already."

Wolverine looked up at Scale Guy and said "Stay the hell away from me."

*

Alarm klaxons sounded but Scale Guy could barely hear them over the crashing of machinery. Injured staff moaned with pain. The staging area began to fill with smoke and flame.

"Enough!" shouted the Reaver. "No more resistance! Your soldiers have been dispatched as easily as lead toys, and your superhumans are nowhere to be found!" It was true. The most powerful heroes of the British Isles were away facing Dormammu; the others could not arrive soon enough to stop the intruder. "Now turn over to me the secret of your dimensional threshhold generator! With its power to eliminate distance and reach the furthest barriers of space, I shall conquer this world and raise here a mighty army to subdue the cosmos entire!"

"Er...excuse me." Scale Guy stepped forward out of the chaos, speaking slowly and calmly. "But have you really considered the magnitude of what you propose?"

"What do you mean?" the Reaver asked.

"Well, conquering the world...that's over six billion six hundred million people. Spread across a globe with a diameter of twelve thousand kilometres and a surface area of 510 million square kilometres. Logistically speaking, that's a nightmare. And all those people have to be housed and clothed and fed, not to mention trained if you want them to be an army. But really, more of them will have to be farmers and factory workers than soldiers. And they'll need communications and support systems. Did I mention doctors and nurses? By the time you rule the entire world, you'll be spending so much time on management and administration you won't be able to concentrate on anything else.

"And that's merely one world. There must be countless habitable worlds, and you'd have to do the same for all of them. Not to mention the logistics of communication and transportation. You'd become the manager of a crushingly huge galactic bureaucracy that would become unbearably slow, and spend your days putting your seal on their forms and filling out paperwork dealing with alien races you'd never even see. Your days eaten up with the tedium of managing the spoils of conquest, and it would just go on and on..."

And as he said this, Scale Guy stood there. He stood next to the Reaver.

Next to the entire world.

Next to the galaxy and all its neighbor galaxies and the teeming universe beyond.

The Reaver blinked, realizing how small he was in relation to an eternity of paperwork. "You...you're right. My ambition was far too grandiose. No lone individual could ever truly subjugate the entire universe. It's so vast...!

"Far better I devote my energies to taking only what I need to live in unrivalled splendour whilst my raging ego is soothed by incessant praise. Without a troublesome cosmos to tend and administrate, I shall be able to enjoy pure material comforts free of distraction.

"I have no need of the dimensional threshhold. Truly, there are infinite reaches to conquer within my own mind. Thank you for giving me this new perspective!" the Reaver shouted to Scale Guy before he flew off into the distance. In the relative quiet that followed, as fire control extinguished the smouldering wreckage, the staff of MI-13 looked in amazement at Scale Guy.

*

Hearing the acclaim and congratulations of his coworkers, Scale Guy realized his own problems weren't so big after all. You had to keep things in proportion.

The moth, the snake, and the stingray

Batman #682 by Grant Morrison and Lee Garbett includes in passing an understated sequence in which Alfred speculates on other guises Bruce Wayne might have taken had something other than a bat come through his window that fateful night long ago. Had a moth flown in, we might have a Mothman instead of a Batman. Or Bruce might have mused "My actions must be swift and decisive, my approach silent and undetected...' just before his eye was caught by the stuffed and mounted snake on his bookcase. "That's it! I shall become...a serpent!"

This plays on an idea Morrison has toyed with during his run on the series: the idea of Alfred as a Batman fan, someone who delights in the character to the extent of writing his own Batman fan fiction and imaginary stories...and who might even be vicariously living out his own desire for two-fisted action through the travails of his employer. That idea certainly didn't originate with Morrison, but he's used it to good effect.

Another thing Morrison has done is to incorporate bits and pieces from every era of Batman, taking the position that no story is so ridiculous or inappropriate it needs to be written off completely; that with some judicious reinterpretation, the entire 68 year history of the character can be read as the internally consistent life experiences of one individual. Use every part of the animal: Bat-Mite, Kathy Kane, Man-Bat, Ras al Ghul, it all goes into the mix. And the above sequence reminded me of the following item from Batman #256 (May-June 1974), written by Martin Pasko (with considerable snark, one feels) and drawn by Pat Broderick.




One can only ponder the crime-fighting effectiveness of the Iron Knight. (Full marks for intimidation value, but how many getaways would have been aided by the armored hero clomping towards them very...very...slowly?) And Aquaman would probably have been pissed off at the Stingray horning in on his turf. Anyway, I'm sure GM remembered this mini-featurette and I suspect he knowingly alluded to it with the above scene.

Thanks to commenter Frank at Final Crisis Annotations for providing the issue number, enabling me to track down the issue and present these scans here. I thought non-Korean readers might want to enjoy it for themselves. (Props also to Jidol for making it available to Korean readers...)

For the record

Death-Man was created by Bob Kanigher and Sheldon Moldoff in Batman #180, cover dated May 1966. The character was not created by Bat-manga artist Jiro Kuwata. I don't know if the change in his name to "Lord Death-Man" was an accident of translation (in either direction) or a deliberate choice by Kuwata, but it definitely sounds better.

I don't expect some new guy at Newsarama to know something as obscure as this, and I have no idea if Chip Kidd or Saul Ferris know it or whether they attribute the character's origin correctly in the text of their Bat Manga! collection. But someone, somewhere, needed to point this out, so here it is.

Some assembly required

Thanks to Adam for this questionnaire in two parts, which he in turn discovered via Samurai Frog. Happily this meme comes without forced tagging, but anyone who wishes should feel free to give it a try.

I. The first half involves bolding the things you've done.

Gone on a blind date
Not as such. Gone out with someone I only knew through online correspondence but had never previously met in person, yes.

Skipped school
Most of my senior year in high school! Honestly, I'm amazed I managed to graduate...which may explain my recurring dream in which I have to go back there all these years later and finish all those classes I skipped.

Been to Canada
Not for a very long time, and I'd really like to go back.

Been to Mexico
Sadly, no.

Been to Florida
Sadly, yes. To my lasting dismay.

Been to Africa
Never, but I kind of like the music.

Been on a plane
I love flying and still consider airports to be exciting and romantic places, but I've avoided both for the past few years...partly due to the idiocy of "security theater" at the expense of genuine safety.

Been lost
It's one of my favorite ways to get to know a new place.

Gone to Washington DC
I've been there four times, and each visit was a lot of fun.

Swam in the ocean
At least two of them!

Broken a bone
I don't know how I've managed to avoid it all these years.

Been in a traffic accident
It was an extremely foggy afternoon in California. The car I was in got a cracked tail light. The front of the car that rear-ended us crumpled like foil. Happily, everyone involved had excellent insurance.

Cried yourself to sleep
And that was just last night! (Okay, and the night before.)

Been on TV
Once as recounted in an earlier meme here. More recently, I was in the audience for a Throwdown with Bobby Flay on the Food Network, but I don't know if I appear on camera.

Stole traffic signs
Why would anyone want to do that? I don't get it.

Played cops & robbers
Let's not bring my sex life into this. ("Now this time I'll be the cop and you be the sexy bank robber I've just arrested who's trying to seduce me into letting her go...")

Recently colored with crayons
Not recently enough.

Sang Karaoke
In fact, it was with Brian Cronin of Comics Should Be Good. Disturbingly, we sang a duet of "I've Got You, Babe." This is true.

Paid for a meal with coins only
It's strange that would be considered strange. See Horn and Hardart for details.

Done something you told yourself you wouldn't
And that was just last night!

Made prank phonecalls
Leaving allegedly "funny" messages on answering machines is the closest I've come.

Laughed until some kind of beverage came out of your nose & elsewhere
Ew.

Caught a snowflake on your tongue
Someone claimed no two of them tasted exactly alike and I was determined to prove this wrong.

Danced in the rain
No, but I have sung.

Written a letter to Santa Claus
Nor have I written to Kwanzaabot. Or the Hanukah Zombie.

Been kissed under the mistletoe
A gentleman never asks and a lady never tells.

Watched the sunrise with someone
Sure.

Blown bubbles
I'm forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles, in the air...

Gone ice-skating
Once. Miserable experience.

Been skinnydipping outdoors
Does anyone still call it that?

Gone to the movies
It seems hard to imagine anyone hasn't...though I wonder if that might change within our lifetimes.

Have a nickname
None of which I care to repeat.

Have body piercings
Sorry, afraid I spent too much time undergoing surgery as a child to see anything liberating or transgressive about cutting holes in myself. Totally cool with other people doing as they please, but it's not for me.


II. The second half is a set of random questions, which I've decided to answer in random order.

1. Favorite drink?
No

2. How much do you love your job?
Cape Cod

3. Birthplace?
Coffee

4. Favorite vacation spot?
Sashimi

5. Ever eaten just cookies for dinner?
Connecticut

6. Favorite pie?
Full of regret

7. Favorite holiday?
With great difficulty

8. Favorite food?
The sea

9. Favorite smell?
My birthday

10. How do you relax?
Oodles and oodles

11. How do you see yourself in ten years time?
Empanada or Cornish pastie

What are you doing here?

A belated happy 45th birthday to the gentleman in the blue box.

Not always to the swift

At last the Presidential contest is over, and a joint victor has been declared.

I extend congratulations to my former opponent Ellen Bischoff -- who made a courageous, daring, and above all foresighted bid for the lead position -- and now shares with me the complete absence of any reward whatsoever, other than the satisfaction of seeing our names mentioned repeatedly on Mark Evanier's blog. At no point did Ellen stoop to mudslinging, character assassination, or dirty tricks, despite ample opportunities. The mutual respect and civility we have shown one another makes it much easier for us to come together now as co-recipients of this honor.

Congratulations also to my runners-up Michael Kilgore, Kris Mandt, Cory Strode, Corey de Danann, Tony Thomas, Roger Green, Bill O'Brien, Michael Hagan, Bob Claster and Anand Kandaswamy. Judging by the fact that we all selected the same number, I can only conclude that each of you is an insightful and discerning individual. Had I not decided to enter the race and then beaten you all, one of you would be accepting this win in my place; I'm certain you would be as gracious and humble about this honor as I am now.

For the benefit of future historians, the hard-fought campaign began here, with further developments recorded here and here. However, I need to address something Mark says here, where he attributes to me this description of the winning strategy:

A lot of us arrived at our guesses by figuring out which states might go black and not go back, and how many electoral votes each represented. Richard may have beaten us all by, he says, picking a number that just sounded about right.

Obviously, this needs to be cleared up. By the time of the Democratic National Convention in August, I was reading Electoral-vote.com every day, as I do every year when the election season begins. I added the now-indispensable FiveThirtyEight.com to my daily political reading immediately after all-star statistician Nate Silver appeared on the Colbert Report. So my choice followed several weeks of closely reading analyses made by highly informed people extremely skilled and crunching numbers and interpreting data. It was a guess, but I'd prefer it to be characterized as an informed guess rather than simple blind chance.

All that said, I indicated to Mark at the Big Apple Con that I felt a bit guilty about being in the lead of his poll because my choice was more wishful thinking than a serious projection: I was certainly hoping the electoral votes would break down somewhere close to where I placed them, but on an emotional level I didn't really expect it would happen. That wish was not for the sake of Barack Obama becoming President (he could have done that just as well at 271 electoral votes) but because I was hoping against hope that voters would repudiate McCain for the clumsy, ill-considered, and frequently offensive campaign he conducted. In other words, it wasn't so much about wanting Obama to win decisively as wanting the McCain campaign to lose thoroughly. Mark tells me he's been hearing this from a lot of people. Neither of us is surprised.

Now that the contest is over I can finally relax and enjoy my shared triumph, as indeed may all America. I hope Ellen will accept this post in lieu of the traditional congratulatory telephone call. And now, on to the victory party!

Hello tomorrow

Via Cult of Mac:

Fans of comics’ “Golden Age” now have a great way to feed that jones on the iPhone and iPod Touch with Comic Zeal from Bitolithic.

The $1.99 app lets you download an unlimited number of classic comics from the 1930s and 1940s, a period that saw the arrival of the comic book as a mainstream art form, when the medium’s artistic vocabulary and creative conventions were defined by its first generation of writers, artists, and editors.

The app downloads full comics to store locally on your device for easy access offline, and takes full advantage of the iPhone platform’s pinch-zoom and fingertip scrolling so you can move around pages quickly and zoom in to detail as you wish. A recent update makes turning pages with the swipe gesture a breeze and counts as an excellent improvement to the original released version.

The Comic Zeal developer site is here. Now, compare and contrast Sean Kleefeld on the economics of current comics production:

Marvel has hired Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch to create The Fantastic Four. Hitch receives an electronic script from Millar and begins drawing an issue. But he doesn't make his drawing paper himself; he buys it. Some company had to chop down a tree, convert it to wood pulp, press that into paper, and ship that to wherever he bought it from. Looking at just the gas consumption alone, the paper costs more to make. So they pass those charges on to Hitch in the form of a price increase. Maybe one or two cents a sheet.

Marvel receives all the material electronically. It gets reviewed, approved, and then sent (again, electronically) over to their printer in Canada. That printer needs paper to print the books on, so they have that shipped in not unlike the way Hitch does. Except Marvel needs around 60,000 comics at 32 pages each. Even at only one mil (one one-thousandth of a cent) per page, that amounts to an additional $1,920 every month. Sure, Marvel has deeper pockets than I do, but I don't mind saying that's a fair sight more than my monthly mortgage payment!

But now that printer needs to move those 60,000 comics. They get shipped out to regional Diamond warehouses. Again, increased gas prices impact how much that will cost. And from those warehouses, the books will then be distributed (i.e. shipped by a gas-guzzling truck) to your Local Comic Shop.

The above quote comes from an outstanding series of posts by Sean on the economics of comics, starting here. I'm quoting him out of context to make a rhetorical point he was not trying to make and may not agree with at all, but that's what happens when you say stuff on the Internet.

One place you can get your feet wet in the search for Golden Age comics in public domain available for free download in .cbr format is here. (The same site also offers original and equally free comic stories by some outstanding creators just waiting to be discovered by the world at large.)

This is not an endorsement of Comic Zeal in particular; it will be some time before I'll have any chance to try this particular app out for myself. But the work going in this direction is promising. The absence of those printing and shipping costs (and the oil they consume) is going to make an even bigger difference to the general public in the coming year. That, combined with the popularity and glamor of the iPhone platform, may even be enough to override the major publishers' pyhrric insistence on digital copy protection, which is seriously hampering their thinking about digital comics; if not, other publishers will step in to fill the gap.

Update: John Rogers of Blue Beetle fame weighs in.

The alphabet meme

Still too busy for regular blogging yet, but Adam at Movie Chunks tagged me with a meme devised by Fletch at Blog Cabins, to wit:

It's a simple concept (my favorite kind) - pick your favorite film for each letter of the alphabet. Some will be tough because there's too many choices (R, S, T, L, N, E...wait a sec - that's Wheel of Fortune) and others will be tough because there are so few choices that you have trouble finding much of anything (Q, anyone?). I'm sure I missed some great ones and I'm hoping that you find them.

The Rules

1. Pick one film to represent each letter of the alphabet.

2. The letter "A" and the word "The" do not count as the beginning of a film's title, unless the film is simply titled A or The, and I don't know of any films with those titles.

3. Return of the Jedi belongs under "R," not "S" as in Star Wars Episode IV: Return of the Jedi. This rule applies to all films in the original Star Wars trilogy; all that followed start with "S." Similarly, Raiders of the Lost Ark belongs under "R," not "I" as in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. Conversely, all films in the LOTR series belong under "L" and all films in the Chronicles of Narnia series belong under "C," as that's what those filmmakers called their films from the start. In other words, movies are stuck with the titles their owners gave them at the time of their theatrical release. Use your better judgement to apply the above rule to any series/films not mentioned.

4. Films that start with a number are filed under the first letter of their number's word. 12 Monkeys would be filed under "T."

5. Link back to Blog Cabins in your post so that I can eventually type "alphabet meme" into Google and come up #1, then make a post where I declare that I am the King of Google.

6. If you're selected, you have to then select 5 more people.

The rules don't specify any criteria, but each of these is a particular favorite of mine -- except for one which is an obvious ringer that I've never even seen and probably never will. See if you can spot it! All the rest of these have strong personal associations for me and would be on any list of my favorite films regardless of alphabetical necessity:

Ali
Blazing Saddles
Casino Royale (1967)
Dick
Excalibur
Fantastic Voyage
Ghost Dog
Help!
Idiocracy
Johnny Dangerously
King Kong (1933)
Letter to Brezhnev
M.A.S.H.
North by Northwest
Office Space
Pee Wee's Big Adventure
Quadrophenia
Robinson Crusoe on Mars
Sexy Beast
Tommy
Until the End of the World
Viva Las Vegas
Witness for the Prosecution
Xanadu
Young Frankenstein
Zabriskie Point

I won't tag anyone; I'm looking for five volunteers to step up and take the challenge. Or are you all cowards?

Update: Indeed you are not, as the stalwart crew of TS, Mark, Johnny Bacardi, Walaka, and Sea of Green have each risen to the occasion. And honorable mention to plok for fessing up, which also takes courage.

Long time coming

24194160 minutes later

It turns out to be my 200th post on this blog, but it's also a special occasion here for another reason:

Birthday greetings today go out to one of my very favorite bloggers, the charming and talented and always entertaining Becca of the charming and talented and always entertaining blog No Smoking In The Skull Cave. And to Adam of the blog Movie Chunks, of whom I was previously unaware until today but I'm sure will become a great favorite of mine in due course.

Though the personal significance of this day may often be overshadowed in the public imagination by events like the Feast of St. Crispin and the Battle of Agincourt as well as the birthdays of Pablo Picasso and Minnie Pearl, it is nonetheless extra special to us. May you both prevail over all those who scorn and mock you, and see your enemies driven before you in the dust, begging for mercy which will never be granted as the unstoppable force of your conquering armies march ever onward to victory over those who dare defy --

-- oops, sorry, that was my birthday wish. Anyway, you guys have a good one too!

Local news

I was surprised to discover in yesterday's Doonesbury that my former hometown has achieved fame as an exemplar (at least for one cartoonist) of the small-town values held up by the likes of Sarah Palin as "the real America." It's a surprise because I know from personal experience that that town is actually built on top of an ancient hellmouth and controlled by sinister, malign forces who plot the downfall of all humanity. Sort of like Twin Peaks or Sunnydale or Smallville, except without the plucky young people to save the populace from eternal damnation at the mercy of unspeakable nameless things who delight in pain and torment.

In a cruel twist, it's also home to one of the best restaurants I've ever been to in my life. That kind of sucks. You have to enter this vile place of horrific torture to reach this spectacular meal. Still, worth it if you like really excellent Italian food.

Unless he meant the one in Oklahoma (which turns out to be named for the same person) because that place is nowhere. What a dump!

Written in the eaves

Foo Fighters tell McCain to stop using song

And in breaking news...

NEW YORK -- Popular indie rock band Vampire Weekend today issued a statement asking that Senator John McCain refrain from using any of their songs in his campaign, in case he was thinking of doing so at any time in the future. A spokesperson for the band explained, "First it was John Mellencamp, then it was Heart, then ABBA, then Jackson Browne, then Van Halen, and now the Foo Fighters. The band thought it would save a lot of time to make it clear at the outset that permission to use their songs would not be granted."

Following up on this development, fellow indie rockers Death Cab For Cutie subsequently issued a companion statement, declaring "Let's nip this one in the bud right now and spare everyone the trouble of calling their lawyers, okay? Don't use our songs either."

Garage rock revivalists The Strokes, currently preparing to release their fourth studio album sometime after the inauguration ceremonies in 2009, also issued a statement indicating their back catalog was henceforth to be considered off-limits to the McCain campaign.

In response, the McCain team dispatched operatives to all forthcoming campaign stops to verify that all background music played during personal appearances by the candidate and his running mate Gov. Sarah Palin will consist exclusively of music by Ted Nugent, Pat Boone, John Rich, and "anyone else who didn't expressly and specifically tell us not to."

Senator McCain (pictured above with Senator Barack Obama during their debate at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee on October 7, 2008) was unavailable for comment.

Update: And Bon Jovi.

They got the guns but we got the numbers

Found on Gothamist, this map illustrates the sheer number of people living in each borough of New York City by comparison with an entire state of the U.S. of similar population size. For instance, the estimated population of Maine in the year 2007 was 1,317,207; the population of the Bronx the same year was 1,373,659. The above map uses estimates from 2006, but the principle is the same.

Actually, a couple of them now fall short: the entire population of Idaho in 2007 was 1,499,402 people while Manhattan alone had 1,620,867 residents. And New Mexico the same year was quite spacious with 1,969,915 citizens...while the borough of Queens was a little more, um, let's say neighborly at a population of 2,270,338.

And I can get to all these places by subway except for the island of Wyoming, but the ferry there is free.

And we're out of beta, we're releasing on time

Teenagers From The Future, the anthology of essays about the Legion of Super-Heroes edited by Tim Callahan and published by Sequart Research and Literacy Organization, is now available from Amazon.

The book includes my essay "The Perfect Storm: The Death and Resurrection of Lightning Lad" about the early days of the Legion series. The particular storyline I examine is one of the first examples of a multi-issue "story arc" in superhero comics (I also mention a few precursors) as well as an early instance of the "death as a revolving door" motif which has since become a staple of comics as well as other serialized entertainment. All this and a tribute to the great Jerry Siegel, plus a comparison of the different working relationships he and his successor Edmond Hamilton had with their editor, the controversial Mort Weisinger. And even though that seems like it should be enough for one book, this particular volume comes with seventeen other essays at no additional cost, written by...um, a bunch of other people who I'm sure have interesting things to say too. Whatever.

(I'm kidding, of course -- I've read this entire book several times in painstaking detail and I'm proud to be one small part of it. Also, this year is the fiftieth anniversary of the first appearance of the Legion of Super-Heroes, and it means a lot to be able to participate in commemorating that.)

According to Tim, the book will also be available for order through the direct market in either the October or November Diamond Previews catalog. Tim isn't sure whether the book will still be available through Amazon after it appears in the Diamond catalog, so anyone who wants to be sure of getting a copy without actually going into a comics shop should probably order it now.

And that cover is amazingly cool, isn't it?

This post is inappropriate

This was my mother's actual response to news that the first day of the Republican Convention might be postponed or curtailed due to Hurricane Gustav:

"I just hope the men's restrooms in St. Paul are prepared for all those Republican delegates with nothing to do..."

See? Now you know where I got my crass sense of humor.

The whole thing is a blessing in disguise for the RNC. The last thing Republican strategists wanted at the convention was to have those high-profile appearances by Bush and Cheney -- reminding everyone yet again how closely tied McCain is to the staggeringly unpopular incumbent -- but there was no way to exclude them from appearing without it being noticed and remarked upon. Now those speeches can be cancelled altogether without it looking like a sign of embarassment.

Plus McCain and Palin now get an opportunity to rush to the Gulf Coast for a photo op that will make them look presidential. It's like McCain received a special blessing from above in return for picking a running mate so beloved by Christian conservatives.

On the other hand, Focus on the Family may not be able to savor this victory, as they'll be preoccupied with filing a breach of contract suit against the Almighty for utterly failing to live up to their demands. Whose side is that guy on, anyway?

Search for tomorrow

When I was seven years old, one of my most prized possessions was a book called The World of Tomorrow written by Kenneth K. Goldstein and published by McGraw-Hill. (Miraculously, I still own that book today, and it's still one of my most prized possessions.) As the title indicates, this was a book about the future, lavishly illustrated with gorgeous full-color photographs of life in the year 2069.



You wouldn't believe how many hours I spent staring at those photos when I was seven. Well, actually, maybe you would. It was so authoritative: these were detailed photographs, not merely drawings created by some artist, so any reasonable person could only assume this was how the future was actually going to be. I tried to put myself into the world of those pictures to better understand how the future would feel to live in at ground level. What would it be like to walk down that street? What view would you see from that park? What sounds would you hear from the traffic of those automated cars zipping by on their grooved tracks? How would it feel to ride in one? Were those rosette-like buildings carousels or restaurants? Would it be strange to sleep in an underwater hotel?



Because of all those hours staring and contemplating, these images are still the indelible default setting for "the future" in my imagination. This is still the future cityscape I envision when reading a science fiction novel. It's the utopian future Earth of Star Trek; the three-dimensional version of what Curt Swan drew in old issues of Adventure Comics with the Legion of Super-Heroes.

It turns out the photos in The World of Tomorrow actually came from the Futurama II exhibit presented by General Motors at the 1964 New York World's Fair, the very building I wrote about in my previous post. (The original Futurama was presented by GM at the 1939 World's Fair.) Neither the corporate connection nor the association with the World's Fair were highlighted in any way by Goldstein or singled out in the acknowledgements. The book was published several years after the fair closed, in which time a lot had changed in America...and the surprisingly progressive, socially conscious, and environmentally enlightened text wasn't a commercial sop to the automaker. As a result, I went a decades not ever guessing the connection until I came across the familiar pictures by accident a couple of years ago while researching something else.

And now, because we live in the future -- where this home computer terminal I'm using at the moment is connected to a worldwide communications network -- I can share with you something I never dreamed existed: actual motion picture footage of that other future I kept trying to visit throughout my childhood.



Note: the above scans were found at nywf64.com, which offers a thorough guide to Futurama II among other attractions.

If you've only seen it once, you haven't seen it all

As a special treat for those who follow the exploits of the internationally famous super-scientist Dr. Thaddeus "Rusty" Venture and his clan, we present an actual photograph of their home and research headquarters, better known as the Venture Compound, circa 1964:



The above picture is the best quality photo I was able to find online after long hours of research. Because the flags and the throngs of tourists may obscure your view of the main building, we also offer an artist's conception depicting a wider angle, as seen in a postcard from the same era:



And this image from yet another angle clarifies the overall design of this impressive structure:



The unfamiliar corporate signage may seem puzzling, but this is easily explained. At the time these images were created, Dr. Jonas Venture leased his distinctive home and research center to the General Motors Corporation for use as their pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair in Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens, New York. General Motors used the complex for their Futurama exhibit, in which visitors seated in moving armchairs glided past detailed scenes depicting urban life as it would be lived in the early 21st Century. Futurama proved to be the most popular attraction of the World's Fair: nearly twenty-six million people took the journey into the future during the Fair's two year run.

I've visited the fairgrounds at Flushing Meadows many times, but no trace of the Venture Compound remains. I assume that, having made a tidy profit on the temporary use of his abode, Jonas Venture removed it from the site after the Fair ended and returned it once more to the remote location where it stands to this day. Courtesy of a Mr. Jackson Publick, we conclude with this image of the Venture Compound as it appears today:

Dark as his shadow

This kind of thing fascinates me:

First, Marc Tyler Nobleman -- whose book on Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Boys of Steel, has just been published -- notes a significant, but totally expected and unsurprising, omission from the credits of a recent superhero movie, leading him to wonder about the origin of the phrase "the Dark Knight" before it appeared in Detective Comics #40 in a story written by Bill Finger in 1940.

Then, doing the literary legwork, J.L. Bell traces the coinage back to Irish gothic novelist Charles Robert Maturin in 1816.

What, you didn't think Frank Miller invented it, did you?

Found here. Both blogs are really excellent in general and, it should go without saying, well worth reading.

Temporally unavailable

I'm back but I'm not back. Or do I have that backwards? Maybe it's the other way around. I've concluded my annual retreat for another year and have returned to my usual surroundings to get caught up on work and e-mail but I'm not quite in a position to resume normal blogging activity just yet. Thanks in advance for your continued indulgence.

The title of this post is a phrase that seemed funny and apt when I first saw it just a couple of days ago. It was on a sign in a shop window announcing iPhones were out of stock at that location. Doesn't it seem like something out of Doctor Who? On checking Google, I've come across a lot of people using this phrase the same way. The funny thing is, even though the phrase is properly speaking a mistake, if it did exist it would probably mean more or less just what these people think it means. Unavailable in this time. If you come to this locus in spacetime seeking this item, you will not find it here and now. Adjust your temporal and spatial coordinates and try again.

Lightful dwellings

Photo ganked from Gothamist.

I was only peripherally aware of Buckminster Fuller for all these years, but in recent months I've become a bit of a fan and suddenly, as if in reply to my vague stirring of interest, he's everywhere. Really, don't you think it's time we gave the Dymaxion car another shot?

In a pleasing coincidence, a Fuller dome has been constructed near my home on the very week I'm heading off to visit another dome that has a special place in my heart. In other words, it's time once again for this blog to enter a state of hibernative naptosis while I go off to recover from the first half of this year. I will be travelling with geeks, but I won't be checking my e-mail often (if at all) or keeping up with my favorite blogs while I'm in retreat, so try not to ask me anything or say anything interesting while I'm gone.

I have some good stuff in mind for when I return so we'll see about that, eh?