Garth Ennis Is Twisted -- Part Three -- A Stabbing Pain To The Groin

Nothing can ruin your day like a knife to the nuts, as shown by this sad thug in Hellblazer #65.

Garth Ennis actually has a whole section reserved just for him at NadShot.com.

I will probably be going there for several examples of Twisted Ennis as time goes on.

I can't see a damned thing with this black lantern

At the end of the whatever-the-hell-the-major-story-arc-was dominating the Green Lantern books in late 2007, DC ran several teaser panels of up-coming events, up to and including "Blackest Night - Summer 2009." With great excitement and anticipation, I thought, "Yay! Martin Lawrence is doing a sequel to his Greatest Movie Ever!!" But alas, it was not to be. "Blackest Night" has nothing to do with the urban(e) comedy stylings of Mssr. Lawrence.
"Blackest Night" is the culmination of several stories revolving around the rise of several other ring-bearing corps of various colours and power sources. It seems that different colours correspond to different feelings or emotions. The Sinestro Corps have yellow rings that are powered by fear. Red Lanterns are fed by rage. A veritable rainbow of lantern corps are forming, running the gamut of sentient emotion. Fear, rage, hope, love, boredom, ennui, sarcasm and, uh, playfulness, I guess. Then lastly, the absence of all feeling and emotion, the Black Lanterns, representing Death.
Since the initial announcement, the hype around Blackest Night has snowballed, steamrolling through the DCU, rolling like a big, steamy snowball, flattening extraneous plotlines and picking up leftover bits from the last five years of "Events."
And we'd expect nothing less from Geoff Johns, the Brian Michael Bendis of DC Comics. Johns did for Hal Jordan what Bendis did for Luke Cage. He's currently doing for Barry Allen what Bendis is doing for Jessica Drew. And "Blackest Night" should do for the DCU what "Secret Invasion" did for Marvel 616 (because, let's face it, "Final Crisis" left readers slightly less than satisfied and feeling like the guy with a steak knife at the vegetarian buffet).
Lately my DC pull list has consisted mainly of Geoff Johns' books and related titles. He has a sense of scope and long-term planning to his writing. Like Bendis, when he signs on to write a comic book, he seems to be in it for the long haul. "I'll write this book until I run out of stories to tell." That's a refreshing change from writers who sign a contract for a twelve issue run on a title and we're all supposed to be thrilled when, around their eighth or ninth issue, they sign on for another six, then they're done.
Don't get me wrong; I love Mark Millar's writing whenever it happens and I enjoyed Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men. I even liked Kevin Smith's stuff on Daredevil and Green Arrow. I just really love the moment when you're reading a comic and there's a big reveal of some major plot twist and you remember seeing the clues three years earlier. That's just quality story architecture and it impresses me.
Also like Bendis, Geoff Johns seems to able to adapt and absorb other writers' storylines into his longterm plots. Apparently every DCU character who has died in the last few years will be returning as a Black Lantern when "Blackest Night" gets into full swing in July. Earth-2 Superman, J'onn J'onz, that little yappy dog that got crushed under a giant robot's foot in a back up story in an unpublished issue of Blue Beetle's Burlesque Bonanza. There's gonna be a whole bunch of dead folk rising from the grave to kick the little blue asses of the Guardians of the Universe. "Blackest Night" promises to be big.
Even bigger than you might suspect.
Recently Marvel began running some teaser ads in their comics. A white star standing out starkly against a background of black. Across the bottom of the page, the ominous words, "JULY 2009." Upon closer examination, a chainmail pattern was discernible on the black background.
This can only mean one thing.
Black Lantern Captain America.
Awesome.
DC doesn't have enough dead superheroes of their own. They have to borrow some corpses from the competition.

"Garth Ennis Is Twisted" -- "Part Two" -- "Garth Harder"

Punctuation is so important.

Some Slightly Less Personal Questions About Superheroes

Do other superheroes tease Green Lantern for having a super-power based on jewelry and wishing really hard?

The thing about Green Lantern is that he's not simply another Earth-bound superhero; he's part of an intergalactic police force. There are about 7200 people in the universe answering to the name "Green Lantern," four of them are from Earth.* 7200 people of various shapes, sizes and alien species, each one equipped with a power ring. The Guardians of the Universe (little blue dudes from a planet whose name sounds like you're trying to remember something; "Oh... Ah...") gave a ring to each member of the Green Lantern Corps (yes, they're a corps, because "Green Lantern Gang" sounded so working-class) and them out to protect their assigned sector of the universe.
Apparently all you need to police the universe is the ability to accessorize and make wishes.
The Guardians are obsessed with maintaining,or more accurately, imposing order in the universe. Their goal is to eliminate chaos, thereby making the universe a much more manageable place to live or at least exist. To achieve this goal they have harnessed the power of fashion sense and imagination, two of the most chaotic things ever.
But it was already fairly apparent that the Guardians hadn't really thought this whole thing through, anyway. The took something infinite (the universe) and divided it into a finite number of equal-sized sections (3600 of them, in fact).
I guess nobody told them there'd be math.




*There is a fifth guy on Earth occasionally going by the name Green Lantern, but he's not part of the whole universal police force thing. He has an ancient power ring that doesn't work on wood. Think about that... his magic ring is thousands of years old, from a pre-industrialized civilization when most adventures, quests or assigned tasks would be likely to take place in a forest, and it doesn't work on wood. I'd be taking it back for a refund.




So Thor doesn't actually fly, he just throws his hammer and then hangs on tight? Really?

Thor, Marvel Comics' God of Thunder, has a big hammer made of mystical Uru metal, It has a leather strap at the bottom of the handle. Thor even named his hammer, because, well, doesn't everyone name their hammer. He named his hammer Mjolnir and sometimes he talks to it.

Already, you can see why Thor's parents make him wear a helmet all the time.

When Thor has to travel a great distance and he doesn't want to go on the short bus because the other kids will take his lunch, he just winds up and throws his hammer in the air (aiming in the general direction of wherever he wants to go) and then hangs on to the strap. The force of the throw (generated, remember, by Thor) is enough to actually lift Thor himself and fling him through the air to his destination, many miles away.
Really. That's the explanation, going all the way back to Journey Into Mystery #83 in August of 1962. Ponder that for a moment. Even in 1962, the physics of that are dodgy at best.
Many years ago, as a joke, I proposed to some friends the game of Tackle Bowling. There's barbed wire at the end of the lane in front of the pins, you have to wear a helmet and you've got a modified skateboard strapped to your torso. It's just like normal bowling, I explained, except you don't let go of the ball. This whole "throw-the-hammer-but-don't-let-go" thing sounds like a similar sort of thing. Thor's adopted brother Loki is the prankster God of Mischief. it's really no mystery where Thor got the idea for his fake-flying power.

But then it just gets silly. Having thrown Molly the Hammer, Thor is "flying" along beside Iron Man, on the way to an Avengers cook out or something. "Lookest thou at me, Iron Man," Thor says, with stars in his eyes and a bit of wind-blown dribble on his chin. "I canst fly! I doth be flying just like thee. Now we canst be bestest friends. Yay!" Wishing he hadn't given up drinking, Iron Man says, "That's nice. Turning left now." So Thor, while in motion through open air, with nothing to anchor against and no pivot point, being dragged along behind a hunk of metal and leather COMPLETELY CHANGES DIRECTION BY AIMING THE HAMMER TO THE LEFT!!!
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. That's just messed up. Even with Asgardian physics, that's gotta be about eight different flavors of impossible.

Here's a fun game you can play with children... (Don't play it with your own children; use nephews or neighborhood kids or any kids that, ultimately, you won't have to wheel around if things go wrong.) Get a big plastic hammer and tie a belt to the handle. Better yet, just duct tape the hammer to the kid's hand. Then tell the kid about Thor and how he can fly just like a real superhero when he throws his hammer. Then sit on your back porch, have a beer and watch the eager little thunder god fling himself around the backyard in his futile attempts to fly.
Fling! Waahhh! Thump!
Fling! Waahhh! Thump!
Fling! Waahhh! Thump!
Oh, it'll be lots of fun.



Do superheroines get to choose their own costumes?

I'm sure dressing like a swimwear model or a well armed hooker might seem like the best way to fight crime and other assorted universal scourges that my arise from time to time, it hardly seems practical to spend the night leaping from rooftop to rooftop wearing high heels and very little else.
Not that I'm complaining, of course. I could happily spend the day watching super-powered women run around in their impractically flimsy and petite costumes. In fact, i would actively consider committing crimes on a regular basis if I knew that Wonder Woman would show up to spank me (metaphorically speaking, of course). But that's just it, isn't it? You never know who's going to show up. There's no guarantee that it's going to be Wonder Woman. Or any woman.
Let's say you've just robbed a corner store and a couple of representatives from Justice Revengers Local 212 arrive. You are going to have your ass handed to you. No doubt about it. Would you rather a/ get beaten to a pulp by some testosterone-soaked guy dressed head-to-toe in spandex with anger issues that compensate for his steroid-shrivelled testicles, or b/ get beaten to a pulp by a triple-D cup fantasy girl in thigh-high leather boots, a chainmail thong and screaming-eagle pasties?
Yeah, me too.
Either way, you're going to end up in the prison hospital, but at least if she puts you there, you'll have a mental image to dream about during the three years you spend in a bodycast.

Some Rather Personal Questions About Superheroes

Do costumed superheroes wear adult diapers?

It seems to me that if you're out on patrol all night, keeping the city safe from evil-doers and the like, you may not be able to plan your bathroom breaks with the, oh let's say, regularity that you might hope for.
What if you get sucker-punched by a couple of Two-Face's henchmen and you wake up strapped to a water board, with crazy Harvey Dent standing over you with two days worth of coins to flip, heads for lead pipe and tails for garden hose. Eventually you're gonna have to tell Harvey to pick a number between one and two in order to determine which bodily function to to allow first. It would be good to have an extra layer of protection there to save yourself some embarrassment. The last thing you want is everyone in Arkham Asylum knowing that you guano'd in your batsuit.



You're web-swinging your way around the city when Dr. Octopus sudden punches you in the kidneys with three of his metal arms. Sure in a pragmatic sense, you can be forgiven for having a momentary lapse of bladder control under the circumstances, but it's difficult to remain dignified when bad guys point and laugh.



Perhaps it's just a quiet night with no significant crime for you fight, but your neighbourhood bodega closes at ten o'clock and you've nowhere else to go. It just wouldn't be right for a defender of the defenseless and hero of the downtrodden to take a whizz off the side of a building. It doesn't matter if you're both blind and a lawyer, you're gonna get some bad press out of that.



Do superheroes wear athletic supporters?


They dedicate entire episodes of America's Funniest Home Videos to the groin punch and the crotch crash. At least 72% of the videos on YouTube involve some guy or other getting nailed in the stones. It happens. It's out there. And those are just the accidental hits.
Superheroes fight supervillains, bad guys, evil bastards who wouldn't think twice about winding up and slamming a bus into your berries. Twice. On purpose.
Protect yourself and your future potential generations. You've got to keep your junk functional if you're ever going to have any hope of having children that can be written out of current continuity ten years later during the next retro-fit re-imagining.


Speaking of super-procreation, why hasn't the top of Lois Lane's head been blown off?


Nearly forty years ago, Larry Niven pointed out the drawbacks of Superman and sex in his brilliant essay "Man Of Steel, Woman Of Kleenex" yet the matter has not been addressed at all in the actual comic books. Worse, they've gone and married Clark Kent and Lois Lane, so it must be assumed that there are some kind marital relations taking place off-panel. It's a rather significant issue and it needs to be acknowledged.
Now, I'm not suggesting that they should add the adjectives "hot" and "steamy" to the title of Action Comics, but a storyline recognising the challenges and risks inherent in a physical relation of this nature wouldn't be asking a lot.





What kind of weird foreplay games do Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman play?








Think about it... She can turn invisible (or turn other things invisible) and he can stretch and/or reshape any part of his body with virtually no limit. They could have the most sexually charged game of Hide & Seek ever.



They list their occupations as "Adventurer" and that sort of attitude must apply to the bedroom, as well. According to the John Byrne era of stories in the '80s, the Invisible Woman became pregnant while on a camping trip with the rest of the Fantastic Four in the Negative Zone.



This is the kind of woman who will have sex in a tent in the middle of an extra-dimensional forest and her husband can be his own condom.



Damn right, they get kinky.




What's the status of the Thing's, uh, little thing?



When those nasty cosmic rays turned Ben Grimm into the orange-rock-covered Thing his nose became small and ridge-like while his ears disappeared completely. One can logically assume that any other, uh, bodily protuberances were similarly affected. (He even lost out on the total number of fingers and toes he's left with.)







So the question becomes... Small and ridge-like or disappeared completely?







There have been various alternate-universe stories in which the Thing and his occasional squeeze Alicia Masters have had children, so the general assumption seems to be that, yes, he still has the plumbing and it still works like it should.


But let's take a moment and consider the feelings of poor Alicia (or any other woman "lucky" enough to enjoy a sensual re-phrasing of "It's clobberin' time!!"). Comfort is an important factor in ensuring mutual pleasure during sex. More specifically, a lack of discomfort. There is a significant difference between being "hard as a rock" and actually being made of rock.


Ouch!

It's probably just as well that Alicia Masters is blind. Ben would be very grim indeed if she were turned off by the sight of his little stalagmite (or stalagmite-not, depending on how much he's had to drink).







What about poor Victor Stone, the Cyborg of the (formerly) Teen Titans? What's he got in his shiny metal pants? If Data on Star Trek can be more anatomically correct that an "Archie Bunker's Grandson" doll, then there's really no reason why a superhero named Cyborg can't have a fully functioning piston for those special times when binary programming takes on a whole new meaning.



What would happen if the Hulk farted?



No matter how big and scary and intimidating and just plain pissed off a person may be, if they fart, somebody is going to laugh. It may be just a tiny giggle, a suppressed snort or an outright guffaw. But there's gonna be a laugh. When you laugh at the embarrassment of someone who gets stronger as he gets angrier, well, it's just not going to end well.
If the Hulk farts, don't laugh.
Just don't. It'll be better for everyone.

The Un-Kicked Ass

Not that I really expect to get an answer, but...

Where the hell is the next issue of "Kick-Ass"? The schedule on this series has been worse than Mark Millar's Ultimates. As much as the story hooks the reader and you want to know what happens next, if you have to wait a year for the next issue, you're gonna lose interest.

At this rate, it looks like the movie will be released before issue #6 sees the light of day. If that happens, there'll be no point in reading it anymore, will there?

While we're on the topic, where the hell is the next issue of "The Twelve"? If J. Michael Straczynski doesn't show up with another four issues soon, they're going to have to rename the series for the trade paperback edition. Either that or mark it one third off.

Finally the third issue of "Ultimate Wolverine Vs. Hulk" has been released, but it took so long that the powers that be felt obligated to re-issue the first two issues, just so people would remember what the story was about.

The cynic in me is screaming that extended schedule delays like that are a twisted Machiavellian plot to get readers to buy the same thing twice.

Garth Ennis is Twisted -- Part One

This is from the first issue of Garth Ennis's first "Just A Pilgrim" limited series, drawn by Carlos Ezquerra. Both series were recently collected in hardcover by Dynamite Entertainment. It's awesome. Go buy it now.

Click on it view a larger image.

"Met a girl called Lola.."

While picking up my weekly stash of new comics, I spotted a new book from Max, the Marvel "we-can-swear-here" imprint, entitled "Destroyer." Leafing through the book I saw an image of the blood-spattered title character shoving a rifle through the chest of an assailant while screaming, "Guns are for pussies!" I decided to buy it, just on a whim.
Written by Robert Kirkman with art by Cory Walker, the whole book has a very "Indie" feel to it, yet it also seems to have a basis in Marvelesque mythos although it is obviously an out-of-current-continuity story.
The title character is an aging crime fighter who apparently has an extensive backstory, which Kirkman may or may not be able to cover thoughout the five issue run of this limited series. Although while in costume, Destroyer seems to be indestructible and intimidatingly strong, out of costume, he is simply Keene Marlowe, 80-something year old heart patient.
I did some research on the character and was initially confused, but upon digging deeper, I've found the thread of his long and minimal history.
Destroyer aka Keen Marlowe appeared in Mystic Comics #'s 6, 7, 8 & 9, way back in 1941 and 1942.
That was it.
More recently, the character of Destroyer aka Roger Aubrey was retro-fitted to become the "official" Marvel version of the 1940's hero. That character eventually became a founding member of the V-Battalion which eventually became significant players in the early part of the Thunderbolts story, until it all eventually got horrible convoluted, stopped making any sense whatsoever and eventually had to be rebuilt from scratch.
>sigh< (whose office is at the bottom of the ocean for no discernible reason) that his days on this earth are very limited indeed, he decides, "Well enough of this pussyfooting around. Time to crank it up a notch and just slaughter as many high-powered supervillains as I can in the time I have left."
So he starts with his brother.
This, after the scenes at his granddaughter's birthday party clearly demonstrate the importance of his family.
It's not known yet if Kirkman will use Marlowe's tenuous link to early Marvel lore and make references to other heroes from the 1940, or simply create whole new characters with which to pepper his Destroyer's history. Either way, it has the potential to be a fun ride. I'll be picking up the rest of the series in the hopes that the interest can be maintained.
Odd little side note... The one time that Marlowe's first name is used, it is spelled "Keene." This is the spelling that I first used above. In his few appearances back in the 1940's, his name was spelled "Keen." I can accept a slight variance in the spelling occurring with a character update. Neither spelling is wrong as far as the traditional name is concerned. I've seen it both ways, although it is not a common name. What irks me about this is that in the promo page on the Marvel.com website it is spelled "Keen" contrary to what is actually in the book that page is advertising.
No wonder the story is outside continuity. They can't even get continuity in their spelling.
...but I'll keep reading anyway.

What's it all about, Alfie?

I used to have a blog a few years ago. I would use it to recount interesting things that happened to me and regale my dedicated readers with thrilling tales of how wonderful it was to be me.
Then, for a while, nothing interesting happened to me and I stopped blogging.
So, now, I'm trying a different approach. I shall blog about interesting things that happen to other people, mainly fictional people, more often than not hand-drawn fictional people with unusual abilities and imaginative tailors. During the inevitable lulls between interesting things happening to fictional people, I'll blog about the search for interesting things that happen to fictional people.
This blog will be mostly about comic books and related subjects, some old and some new. I've got 35+ years of comic reading from which to draw opinions. Sometimes I may talk about movies instead, or a television show. Without warning I may throw out the occasional quote from WKRP or Ghostbusters or The Princess Bride, who knows... I'll try to keep it random.
So that's the plan. Slowly cultivate an audience of similarly interested people, bend their minds just enough, then when they least expect it, execute Operation: Scrabblepants (more on that later).
So, thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoy reading what I enjoy writing. If so, tell your friends. If not, then keep it to yourself. No one likes a whiner.
"Good night, Wesley. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning."