On The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves

Comicmix.com recently reported the passing of John Carbonaro, long time comics fan and Last Man Standing in the nightmare that was the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents copyright mess.

Now, just as I believe that there are a series of speedboats (belonging to Microsoft, Disney, the Mob, etc) idling off the shore of Florida, ready to race to Cuba the moment Castro dies, I think right now there are offers being drafted for the rights to the Agents by several comics publishers. DC came the closest to using them in recent history, kiboshing their planned series after Carbonaro allegedly nixed changes they planned to make to the characters. They put out the Archives series of the books, so they've likely got the most ideas to use them. If I had my choice, I'd want DC to get ahold of them. Given a choice between the Red Circle characters and the Agents to get folded into the DCU, it's no contest.

The THUNDER Agents' basic origin concept isn't as vital to the characters as, say, the Legion is. "A group of people given powers to fight The Warlord" could easily become "A group of people given powers to fight (insert threat here)"

Dynamo is about the only one who'd need an ever-so-slight tweaking. Len Brown was almost played as a complete clown in the books, almost as badly as The Web was treated in his Red Circle books (A henpecked Superhero - that's got gold written all over it, don't it?) He's a guy that desperately WANTS to get it right, he knows the pressure he's under; the thunderbelt can't be reset for anyone else until he's DEAD (slight tweak there). If anything, it's a reversal of the Spider-Man concept. As a regular person he's pretty okay and happy, it's as a Superhero that the guilt and the pressure weighs in on him.

For NoMan, let's try this - make him a younger man. Professor Dunn was an old man - he'd lived his life, sampled its wonders, he was pretty okay with giving up the lion's share of his humanity for the chance to stay alive and active. But make him a younger man, maybe mid-30, early 40's. He's glad to be alive, but like Cliff Steele, at what cost? If I may get a bit crude...one of the complaints some men use for not wearing...protection...is "I can't feel anything". Take that to the extreme, and you know what NoMan feels (or doesn't) like. I can easily see him becoming a sort of Mr. Spock / Dr. Manhattan like character - out of touch with the world. Starting to treat the other agents are expendable and replaceable, like his bodies; only the equipment they carry is valuable.

Lightning already has a great plot device built in - every time he uses the suit, he ages. So say he runs 100 miles in a second. How long would it take a regular person to run 100 miles - that's how much his body has just aged. So it could mount up but fast. I could see Lightning striking (heh heh) up a friendship with Jay Garrick, as opposed to Wally or Barry. Likely because he'll be the one he'll have more in common with sooner than later.

Menthor was rather ham-handed attempt at creating a conflicted hero, but damn if it didn't work. The wearer of the helmet was in fact a mole for the Warlord, and gettig assigned the Menthor helmet was the best-case scenario for his assignment. But the helmet was so powerful, when he wore, he was compelled to do good, disobeying his masters' commands to undermine THUNDER with his new power. John Janus (Janus - two-faced - get it?) died while trying to protect his THUNDER compatriots, and in the John C revival series, a new person wore the helmet, only to learn that the consciousness of Janus had been absorbed by the helmet, and could offer her advice. There's a lot there that could make for good character work.

When I first explained the concept of Menthor to my wife, she immediately compared it to the Happy Helmet from Ren & Stimpy. I had no answer - she had touched it with a pin.

And let's be honest, put the Iron Maiden on a cover, and it's gonna sell books.

Jim Shooter wanted them for Marvel back in the day. The Tower reps showed them what they had, and he realized they didn't have a single piece of signed paperwork from Wally Wood saying he transferred copyright. They didn't have the standard verbiage on the back of the paycheck. NOTHING. He realized he could take these facts to Wally's estate, but they wouldn't have the money to make a case. He recognized a minefield when he saw it, and he retraced his steps back out.

Wally Wood was an amazing creator - his art was dynamic and bold, his women buxom and brazen (you know the Power Girl story, right? True or not, remind me to work it into a piece sometime) and his stories imaginative and innovative. This was his chance to set up his own universe, and he jumped in with both feet. This is a bunch of characters who haven't had a serious viewing in over 20 years, and yet they're still well-known by fans.

The THUNDER Agents are just about the last set of classic heroes that hasn't been grabbed up by one company or another, or floated into the public domain. They have a vocal and loyal following, and the characters are even strong enough to survive a radical rethinking and modernization.

I'm betting we'll hear something in under a year.

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On the unnecessary and excessive application of drama to Baked Goods

We're avid Food Network fans in our house. Alton Brown is one of the coolest foodies to come down the pike, Nigella Lawson one of the hottest, and Guy Fieri one of the most affable and charming.

Like every station, they have been tainted with the stink of the Reality show. The Next Food Network Star has been on four times so far, and has given us two actual "Stars" - the aforementioned Guy, and Aaron McCargo, Jr. (not to be confused with the pokemon Magcargo), star of Big Daddy's House, who just got a second season. The real purpose of these shows is of course to get you to watch THEIR show. If they get a person who actually turns out to be a hit (like Guy, who now has FOUR shows on the channel), that's gravy.

Watching The Next Food Network Star is a delight, in the same way that the Tilt-a-Whirl is a delight. It's best done in short bursts, and it's usually more fun to watch others as they do it. First off, everyone is constantly talking about how this is their dream, and they've worked all their life to get to this point, yakkity schmakkitty. I don't think they could get more emotionally invovled if they were competing for a new kidney for their daughter. The level of emotion on the show is just over the top, especially considering the prize is basically the chance to be on TV some more. There's a lot less "competition" (as in backbiting and bitchiness) on the shows, and that's a plus, but that just opens the door to them all getting to know one another and getting all weepy-peepy as each one leaves. Most of the true drama about the show is accidental, like in season three where one of the finalists revealed that he'd puffed up his resume (like the part where he'd fought in Afghanistan), and they booted him off before the final episode. So they had to bring back the last-booted competitor, the terminally panicky Amy Finley, who went on to win the competition, get her six episodes dumped on Sunday Afternoons, then reveal she turned down the chance to come back for a second season because it was all too stressful. Good friggin' riddance. Just once I wished the judges had complained about how salty her damn food was from her crying all the time. GOD I hated her. Alton Brown had the most telling comment of the season- "Couldn't we just start over with eleven new people?" If only, dear boy. If...Only.

But NFNS is peanuts compared to Food Network Challenge. Peppered in amongst the national pie competitions, the Pillsbury bake-off and BBQ-fests are the tentpoles of the series, the cake contests. The best pastry and candy chefs in the world compete to create the most outlandish comestibles in a theme, whether it be Disney cakes, Las Vegas inspired sugar sculptures, or something equally outlandish.

And just like NASCAR, a tiny, evil part of your brain tunes in to watch one of these massive works of confectionary take a not-quite-graceful pa-twa-dee out of their hands and shatter on the ground in a cloud of flour and sadness. And the station knows that's what you want, because they'll edit in the one or two calamitous surrenders to gravity they HAVE had into every commercial. And as you're watching, they'll show you a reaction shot of someone in the audience that makes you think one of of them is not just gonna go down, but catch on fire and take out half the judges.

I get that they're competing for money, and I get that these competitions can be very stressful. But sweet merciful pancakes, Shirley Jackson put less stress in The Lottery. It's food. It should be a source of fun and calories, an analogy for sex, and occasionally a meal. The only stress and drama it should hold is its unconscious connection to the joy and/or guilt of one's childhood, and nine times out of ten, that's not worth a TV show.

Of all their reality shows, the two best at the moment are Iron Chef America, the American version of the show that gave the food Network its start, hosted by the increasingly ubiquitous Alton Brown, and Chopped, hosted by Ted Allen, the one Queer Eye alumnus who had both charm before the camera and the gentle, non-threatening kind of homosexuality that Americans prefer. The concept behind both is the same - mystery ingredients that must be mixed into a meal. While ICA has ONE ingredient that must be incorporated into at least five dishes, all cooked at once, Chopped spins the idea around, and the competitors get a number of ingedients that all must be used in a single course, with three course for the whole competition. In both cases, there's no TIME for ridiculous drama. Iron Chef is much more about the expertise of the Chefs, and watching them balance multiple dishes at once. Chopped is more personal but no less frenetic, and their mid-show interviews are much more on the level of "How the hell am I supposed to use peanut butter, seaweed and curry powder together?"

For all the ways they try to make the food exciting, it's the straightforward cooking shows that are the winner for me. I'll watch Good Eats over Lost any day.

When I get my cooking show, it will be called "To Serve Man", and my first cookbook will be called "It's A Cookbook! It's a COOKBOOK!!!" I addition to regular cooking that the average male can understand (Episode one -"I am Jack's Kitchen") I will make liquid nitrogen ice cream, cook things with lasers, and in one episode there will be a little picture in the corner of a toaster containing blueberry pop-tarts, counting down the time that they take to burst into flame. Kinda like "Good Eats" meets "Brainiac: Science Abuse". I always said Alton Brown was similar to Jearl Walker - I'm gonna take the next step.

Ya know, I think they're casting Season five of NFNS now...

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On the infinite gradiations between "We" and "They"

I've gone on about the new World of New Krypton series already, but I'm pleased to see that some of the things Robinson and Rucka have introduced in their first issue are already sparking talk.

In that first issue, Superman sees flaws in the guild system that Kandor/New Krypton employs in its society. He says right out that it's more of a caste system. He looks at the way Alura speaks to Labor Guild member Lor-Van, and immediately brands it thinly veiled slavery. But he's been there like a day. Are we absolutely sure he's right?

Bear in mind the following. They've already said that Jor-El married "outside his guild" and suffered no penalties from it. This implies (or more correctly, I infer) that they are not as hopelessly locked in to their guild as one would expect in a strict caste society.

At first glance Superman views the Labor guild as "glorified slaves". But do THEY consider themselves that? And if one is "glorified", is one still a slave? And as I've said many times, don't look down on the folks that fix things and deliver the food. Want to see what happens to society if they all stay home? To quote spencer Tracy "The world needs ditch-diggers too". Yes, in our society these people are often paid like chimps and treated like animals. But there's no evidence of that yet on Krypton.

The subtle thing that makes guilds "wrong" in most eyes is if they force people into those guilds. If the child of two Labor Guildsmen shows an amazing aptitude for scientific thinking, or if the child of two Science Guildmembers is built like a tank and has a voice that makes the other kids follow his orders, it would be against the good of the society to force those two to be street sweepers or beaker jockies respectively.

Guilds have made their way into science fiction lots of times. The Guilds in Dune and the Splinter Cultures from the Dorsai books (more correctly the Childe Cycle) are but two examples. Ironically, many people say that the only way you could get a guild system to work smoothly is IN science-fiction. I've often said that a truly perfect model of Communism exists in only one place - the Marvelous Land of Oz.

While it could concievably be played out as if it's a bad system, consider a few thoughts...

Superman sees these things through the eyes of an American, one used to democracy. So he's going to apply his worldview to the societies he meets up with. England still has a monarchy; a democratic Monarchy, but there's still a lineage-based leader in the middle of everything. That seems woefully out of place in a modern world, but it seems to be working fine for them. So in New Krypton (I can't bring myself to use the acronym "WoNK"), perhaps R&R are planning to simply present the idea that other cultures have come up with government structures that work for them, and are not "Good" or "Evil" in any sense.

A lot of people on this world claim that countries in the Middle-East "don't want" or even more insultingly, "Aren't ready" for democracy. I doubt we'll see that heavy-handed a point made here. I've yet to see either of these writers Sockpuppet any characters, even when dealing with touchy and controversial subjects. So I don't expect them to start.

As I mentioned before, with a year to work with and a whole planet to play on, There's every possibility that Robinson and Rucka will play with our expectations and offer the idea that maybe, just maybe, an alien planet with who knows how many more millenia of advancement as us might be able to get a workable system that isn't a direct copy of ours. There is every possible chance that the story will NOT end with earth at war with Krypton.

Jim Shooter tried to play with the same ideas in his run of Magnus Robot Fighter. He said it would have been far too easy to portray North-Am as this momolithic fascist state which Magnus would fight against. But he chose to suggest that maybe these changes ended up being beneficial after all. He once said in an interview with yours truly,

"A lot of the citizens of North-Am are relatively nice people. In this
country today, if you had a psycho-probe and offered it, there'd be a lot of
basically decent respectable nice people, people you wouldn't mind having lunch
with who would think that was a good idea. So basically, it's not an all evil
thing, it's a society that's decided to make use of technology."

Now of course, after a couple of years, Shooter got ousted from his own company and Magnus got turned into a knock-down drag out book where Magnus fought not just evil robots, but evil ALIEN robots. The thin political-philosophy pieces of the puzzle were replaced with more hitting. To this day you've got camps of people each maintaining that this version was better than that one.

The challenge in fiction (or indeed in the real world) is that when you suggest that That Group Over There might have a couple good ideas, or that "They" might be doing some things right, it's too easy to get accused of being anti-"we".

Politics is not a black and white discussion, no matter what the folks on television would like the viewer to believe. Comics have never been very good at portraying gray, literally and figuratively. let's see if it gets any better here.

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On the importance of teaching our next generation, and the ease of Spreading the Word

This child is being well cared for.

For the rest of my days, the practice droid that Luke tested his mettle against on the Millenium Falcon shall be known as "The Pokeball".

It's just over a year old now, first posted on Fist of Blog. But the awe and mystery of the electric-type internet is that there will always be people out of the range of infection who will wander into the hot zone accidentally, think they are the first to discover the thing they found, and spark off a whole new explosion of emails titled "You have GOT to see this!"

There's a reason they call these things viral videos. Because it's exactly how they spread, with mad infection vectors (and other such words I learned by watching Outbreak) and one email sent to an obscure enough friend will spark off a whole new infection pattern.

It happened before the Internet as well. You know how everybody in the country would hear the new off-color joke about the latest news item, but nobody could remember where they heard it? More than morning radio shows and late-night talk shows, I always heard one of the biggest distribution networks was Wall Street. Apparently in between Telex transmissions, the operators would trade jokes they'd heard or made up, and that would get the joke spread nationwide in an instant.

Another fun thing to watch is how the joke mutates from telling to telling, like a massively multiplayer online version of Telephone, or its far cooler (and more threatening to the easily offended) British name, Chinese Whispers. For example, after Michael Jackson got set on fire on the Pepsi commercial, the following joke was told on the Imus in the Morning (back when Imus was young, popular, and funny) show by a caller:

"Did you hear that Michael Jackson is starting a new charity?"

"No, what?"

"The Ignited Negro College Fund"

Now, some weeks later, I heard two yentas tell the following version of the joke as they waited on line at the B. Dalton I was working at:

"Oh, you gotta hear this...Did you hear that Michael Jackson is starting a new charity?"
"No, what"
"The Ignited Negroes"

And even though the joke had lost its pun, its relevance to modern culture, and its inherent funny, they still laughed.

Same thing with urban legends. If can't tell you how many of those stories my mother would tell me as if they were the absolute emis. Even at the young age I was at when she told me the cautionary tales about the guy who would dress up as an old lady and sit in the back of people's cars in the mall parking lot, I knew they were, to be polite, apocryphal.

But I was always at a loss as to where she heard the stories, as I never actually saw her talking to anyone, ever. I don't think Dad let her, lest she get Ideas. I assumed she received a newsletter every so often, filled with cautionary tales to be used on children that wanted to go to the mall or eat pop rocks. Because in my Mom's version of the story, these horrific events didn't happen in some far off land like the rectangular midwestern states that nobody can actually keep straight (Utah is the one with the notch cut out of it, I know that one), no no, they happened at out local mall (Green Acres, the one that (actually) had the trampling death at the Wal-Mart last Black Friday), and it only happened last week, and it was just in the paper.

To this day, I cannot honestly say if she told these stories because she honestly believed them and wished to protect me from the dangers of the evil shopping mall, or if, like the Giant Hairy Killer Bats which lived in our basement (which were wide awake if I wanted to go and play, but coincedentally sleeping when she wanted me to go down and get a can of beans) they were just used as a bugaboo to warn me away from sources of potential harm. Like, apparently, people who would hide under cars, reach out and slice your achilles tendons as you came up to unlock your door. Seems like a long way to go to lift a purse.

In second grade at Saint Boniface, I was the kid in class everyone foisted their Bubble Yum on. In retrospect, this meant I was the kid in class that people used to get rid of their spider-egg infested candy, in the disguise of a charitable act, but at the time, all I knew was that a bunch of gullible children were giving me free gum.

I tried to explain to them...

1) How in the name of all that's holy would the Spider eggs get INTO the gum machinery? Surely there were security measures, and screens, and they had to wash it occasionally.

2) Even if they DID get in the gum, the mixing and cooking process would reduce them to their component molecules, and thus harmless.

3) Even if THAT didn't happen, the chewing process, and saliva in your mouth (and the hydrochloric acid in your stomach if you preferred swallowing to spitting) would also reduce them to harmlessness.

They did not listen. Probably because my mouth was filled with gum.

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On the most important thing in the world at this white-hot moment

I have a huge article about Crisis I'm going to let sit.

I just saw Watchmen, and like everyone else on the planet, I have an opinion about it. but this will wait.

Why? Because in one sweeping gesture, Marvel Comics has just made up for One More Day, House of M, and for not bitch-slapping George Lucas when he released Howard the Duck.

The Marvel Comics website has translated and his hosting the Japanese Spider-Man show.

This show is legendary. It's part of a four-year licensing deal Marvel did with the Japanese TV powerhouse Toei Productions, a partnership that only spawned two shows - this and Battle Fever J, the show that created the Super Sentai Series, the shows that America then takes and turns into Power Rangers.

America could do it for another 50 years, but it will never get as WTF-y as the Japanese Spider-Man show did.

I often used to imagine what the meeting between Toei and Marvel was like...

(In the interests of political correctness, no embarassing sterotypical accents will be added to the dialogue. Please imagine your own and insert where required.)

Toei Executive - We are very excited about working with you on Spider-Man program. You have our gratitude.

Marvel Executive - We are pleased as well. We hope you will have much success.

TE - We have read about character from comics you sent. We do have some questions.

ME - Of course, we'll be happy to help.

TE - Ah, good, thank you. We could not find any pictures of Spider-Man's flying car.

ME - Um...he doesn't have one, as such.

TE - Really? (muffled conversation in Japanese) Ah, We will fix this, it is not a problem. OK, next question...exactly how tall is his Giant Robot?

ME - The say whonow?

Japanese Spider-Man was given his powers by a space alien from the Planet Spider who lived in a cave for 400 years, hiding and plotting his revenge against Professor Monster and the Iron Cross Army.

No. Really.

And he has a spaceship named "Marveller" that spits out his car, the Spider-Machine 7, and transforms into the giant robot Leopardon, and they...what, why are you laughing?

This makes Italian Spiderman look like friggin' Shakespere.

Just push play, and soak it in.

There's forty more where that came from.

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On Two Bizarros and a 186,000,000 mile commute

OK, so this week in comics, Bizarro shows up in both Solomon Grundy #1 and Strange Adventures #1. And somehow, people can't handle it.

"How can he be in two places at once?" they cry. Obvious Firesign Theatre joke aside, this is not that hard a concept to explain.

All comic books do not happen at once.

Even books released the same week do not all take place at the same time.

One book happened at this time, and the other book happened at that time.

That's it. You don't need more.

If two adventures feature events that would directly affect the second one (new costume, new powers, death), OK, maybe it needs a moment or two of shuffling to make sure it's clear which came first. But honestly, if Superman flies off to New Krypton in the first issue of World of New Krypton (which was wonderful - more on that later), and he shows up in Example-Man two weeks later, do you really need an editorial box making it clear this happened before he left?

This is just people looking for things to complain about. How about noticing that for the last couple of years, Jim Starlin has been single handedly rehabilitating the spacefaring characters of the DC Universe, to the point that the Omega Men are suddenly happening and the L.E.G.I.O.N. have their own book again (under the title R.E.B.E.L.S., but who's counting)? How about noticing that like Greg Rucka in his series of books with Batwoman and the Question, Starlin has been telling one long story in those books, one that if they needed to, could be promoted to Event status in a fortnight? The man has made CAPTAIN COMET a viable and interesting character again. And not just by giving him a talking dog. Though that helped.

Don't just complain about the fact that two guys chose to use the same character. I mean, Wolverine shows up in more comic books in a month than Jude Law showed up in movies in a year, and nobody makes a peep. Bizarro shows up in TWO, and people's heads explode. C'moooonnnnn...

Now, as for New Krypton...

When they presented the idea of bringing back Kandor (the real one, thank you very much, not the assorted Kandor-manias we've had in the last couple of decades) and enlarging it upon earth, the first thought I had was "This is way too good an idea to be crammed into an eight-week event". I thought that from a political point of view, this was an idea that could be mined for a year, easy. but I figured since they had to get it out of the way before Final Crisis "started", it was going to be a quick in and out story, short and exciting but few leftover damage.

You see, THIS is an example of a case where knowing which story happened when is rather important. The conceit while FC was running was that ALL stories we were reading in the regular monthlies were happening in the proveribial "week before" Final Crisis. But if that was so, then where did the 100,000 Kryptonians go? Surely if they were around they could have been talked into helping out against Darkseid, no? Surely, the story was going to end with them sent Far Away, or placed in the Phantom Zone, or some other place that would render them no longer available for plot complication or resolution in the near future.

Imagine my surprise.

Now that it's all over, it seems clear (to me at least) that this story was happening AFTER Final Crisis, but they simply couldn't tell us that for fear of "spoiling" the end of final Crisis (the good guys won and Superman saved us all - I'm shocked, shocked!). So they had the freedom to not load the high-potential storyline into a low-result package.

For those of you not following the Super-titles, SHAME on you... Superman recently fought Brainiac and liberated the bottle citiy of Kandor. Yes, this is a story we've heard before, but this is the definitive (until the next one comes along) post Crisis version of the classic Superman story. In a big change from the Silver-Age version, Kandor gets enlarged right away. On Earth. Near the North pole, a crystal's throw from the Fortress.

Sounds great, right? No, listen again.

100,000 people with the potential to be as strong as Superman are released from a prison they've been trapped in for an unspecified number of decades.

100,000 people from a formerly militaristic planet are released from a prison they've been trapped in for an unspecified number of decades, and given the powers of Superman.

And shortly after they are released, they rip the city from its moorings, fly to the far side of the sun and set up their own planet made out of Kryptonian magic sun crystals, free Zod from the Phantom Zone, and put him in charge of their military.

Can you see why I thought there might be more that eight weeks of story here?

Phase 2 all starts here in World of new Krypton #1. After the events of the New Krypton story in the Super-books (super-summarized above), Superman is invited to go to New Krypton to live. After a Mag-god-damnned-Nificent Superman #685 where he makes his decision, he takes off for his "new home".

The issue is mainly set up to show the culture of Kandor, and the differences the harsh dichotomy between it and Earth, or at least of Superman's Middle-American upbringing. We learn that Krypton (both new and old) is a strict caste society, complete with labor class, who are functionally well-cared-for slaves. Told to choose a caste (politely called "guilds") by Alura, Superman demurs, saying he's against the whole idea. Ain't here a day, and he's already trying to fix things.

Alura calmly states that if he won't choose, it will be chosen for him, and faster than you can say "Captains Courageous", he's made a Commander in the Military Guild, working directly under General Zod.

Now here's the thing. It's too easy to assume that Zod is the bad guy here. After all, as Kal calmly points out, he did try to take over the Earth. But here, and in a recent issue of Action, Zod makes the point that he simply doesn't NEED the Earth now, he has his people back, a people who remember him as a hero, and a people that desperately want him back.

MAYBE he's serious.

James Robinson is quite good at turning comic cliches on their ear. He's got a year to work this story out. There's every chance we'll start to see Zod played as a positive character, and it'll be Kal-El who can't let go of the past. It'd be an interesting move.

The Super-books are just slopping over with potential right now. We'll see the chance for intriugue as the recently revealed as alive General Sam Lane moves forward with his plans to get rid of the Kryptonian Threat.

We'll see the identities of Nightwing and Flamebird revealed next week in Action Comics. Which will take an important piece of drmatic tension off the table, and require Greg Rucka to wow us right out of the box, or run the risk of people getting Laura Palmer syndrome, and saying "Oh, that's who it is, I can stop reading now". I ain't terribly worried.

Sterling Gates and Jamal Igle are taking the exact opposite tack in Supergirl, turning the "Who is Superwoman" question into a multi-issue story. He's got the same risk of people walking away after the reveal, but he's playing the angle of making people CARE enough about the character (not to mention the rest of the characters in the book, including Supergirl herself) that when the reveal happens, it'll almost be ancillary. So far, he's doing a great job.

Superman (the title) will be suffering from false advertising for a few months, as Superman will be featured in World of New Krypton. The title will be featuring Mon-El, Guardian, the Science Police, and generally, the city of Metropolis. And if you think the book's going to be lacking without its titular character, I'm betting you haven't read a lot of James Robinson's work.

Ironically, of all the characters in the Super-books, the one I'm most keen on seeing what happens to is Lex Luthor. Consider - he's suddenly got what he says he's always wanted - a world without Superman, and a world deathly afraid of Kryptonians. What is he going to do now?

And will Zod be drawn to look like Ian McShane again?

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On Mayors who speak without thinking ahead

As about eighteen million websites and blogs have already mentioned today, Mayor of San Diego Jerry Sanders let loose on a local morning radio program with the following quote about the just finished San Diego Comic-Con, and the just about to start American Idol auditions...

“We’ve put up with the superheroes and now we’re on to the people with actual talent.”

I dropped a note to the Mayor's website alerting him to the short-sightedness of the comment, but I decided that wasn't...quite...enough.

I called the mayor's communication office and asked if an official statement had been prepared about the comment, explaining I was preparing a story on the incident.

I called the Convention Office Liason, and found out that the AI Auditions had about 30,000 attendees, counting friends and family. That's compared the approximately 140,000 SDCC attendees.

I mentioned I was getting the info for an article on the "superheroes" quote. He said he'd have someone get back to me.

The Mayor's Deputy Press Secretary called me back in under an hour. His initial comments on the phone were off the cuff and all of the variety of he was kidding, he loves you guys, etc. But I maintained a calm demeanor, and asked again if that was an official statement. I played the role of journalist, not offended geek.

About an hour or two later, I got the following official response...

Anybody who thinks that Jerry Sanders doesn’t really love Comic-Con doesn’t know about his history with this convention. When he was chief of police he helped make this one of the most secure and fun conventions to attend in the world. Since being elected mayor, Jerry has gone to opening day for each of the past two years.

In his first year as mayor, Jerry joined Comic-Con president John Rodgers to help unveil the DC Comics Super Heroes stamps, saying to a packed house of more than 3,000 in attendance:

“Comic book Superheroes continue to capture the imagination of people young and old, and the Superheroes of DC Comics are some of the mostly widely recognized icons in the world. I can’t think of a more fitting subject to be memorialized in a U.S. Postage Stamp Series, and I couldn’t be prouder that these stamps are having their exclusive First Day Stamp Issue here in San Diego.

You can’t help but get caught up in the energy and buzz that takes over San Diego each year when more than 100,000 participants flock to Comic Con. This is truly the one convention that everyone talks about each year, and I’m so pleased that Comic Con continues to call San Diego home. I hope you continue to come back for many years to come.”

Then just last week, as he kicked off the Yu-Gi-Oh! World’s Fair and International Championship Tournament sponsored by Upper Deck and KONAMI, the mayor said:

“We also appreciate how Yu-Gi-Oh and all its players add to our local economy and to our status as one of the world’s leading creative communities. I’m proud to say that in addition to everything else Upper Deck and the KONAMI Corporation bring to San Diego, they also bring jobs.

That’s a great local business connection and just a small example of how important creative games and creative companies like Upper Deck and KOMAMI are to cities like San Diego.”

The mayor went so far as to declare opening day at Comic-Con “Yu-Gi-Oh! Day” in the City of San Diego and gave Upper Deck’s John Sepenuk a special resolution commemorating that declaration.

The mayor gets it, the mayor likes it, the mayor has a good time, and like everyone else who attends, he enjoys the excitement, the energy, and, yes * all the costumes and hoopla that are such a big part of what Comic-Con has become.

The mayor in no way meant to disparage the talent and attention to detail shown by anyone attending Comic-Con. He loves you guys and looks forward to seeing you next year, and is sorry for the misunderstanding.


George N. Biagi III
Deputy Press Secretary
Mayor Jerry Sanders
City of San Diego

This is a real good example of how well the Internet works at spreading news. He makes a comment like that and it's spread country-wide in under a day. When they saw they were getting a call from Pennsylvania asking about the quote, they knew they had to move, and fast.

How great is it that one person (me) can make one phone call and get this much done in only a couple hours? This had to be drafted from scratch, and fast. I feel almost...important.

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