It means a whole lot of jack-shit, to us anyways. We who have never been a part of mankind, we who have no humanity to lose. We will keep on fucking and rutting about in the trees as we always have. We will continue to out drink, out party, and out last all these hairless apes well into a new age of Monkee/Robot dominance. It will be a somber time as one of our greatest warriors Brock Lesnar has fallen and retreated to the snowy plains.Yet there is a lot to look forward to this year; The Hobbit movie comes out, along with the final decent Batman which may not be so decent since a third good Batman movie seems like a impossible dream. There’s also the Avengers and the Aliens prequel Prometheus. Aside from that we have the return of the Phoenix in Marvel comics, and The Invisible’s Omnibus headed down the pike. Although we morn the loss of our beloved Community (the best sitcom on TV), we welcome back 30 Rock with open arms, and can’t wait how they deal with Tracy Morgan’s real life controversies. NBC has jumped on the end-times bandwagon with their new promo (I tried to find a clip I couldn’t.)

Of course that’s just on the entertainment front. On the political front things look even more bleak and dismal, and we’re not talking about the Republican’t primaries. There seems to be no hope when you get to Washington but I’ll still vote for Obama over some right-wing religious fascist that will strip even more of my rights away in the name of some God that I can’t comprehend. The left’s weak attempt at revolting turned into a camping trip or improvisational homelessness. Although everything is trending downward, the world will undoubtedly keep on spinning and blessed Universe willing, comics will keep on being published.

What would a year end blog post be with out a moving tribute to the people we lost… Well a lot of people died this year. And although I kinda loathe the fact that we cry over celebrity deaths when people who are kind and good die without recognition  every single day. There has been one celebrity death this year that has moved the entire Monkee Kingdom;

We’ll leave it at that! Happy New Year you rotten son’s of Bitches!

I see all the news is filled with these #Occupiers, people standing up and crying out against the socio-economic injustices that have always existed in this country and the world. I would love to be in the middle of it all. I would love to raise my fist and help topple the corrupt empire that I have railed against since I was a teenager. Yet, I feel like it is all in vain. I have been a part of many protest actions in my time. I was at A16 in Washington DC (despite being on Federal Probation in North Carolina at the time); I was tear-gassed and chased by cops. Running along-side a drunken Uncle Sam who said he was also on Federal Probation in Virginia and not supposed to leave the state either. I was in New York in 2002 protesting against the Iraq War when the police came through on horseback hitting anything that moved with black jacks; I dove on top of a teenage girl I had never met before to shield her from the officer’s baton. I took several cracks to my back that actually felt good because my back is shit after spending eight months in a federal prison for thinking I was an anarchist terrorist when I was 19. Believe me if anyone should be out there crowing about the end of this bullshit society it should be me.

Although somehow I don’t see how playing drums in a circle and kicking around a hacky-sack with your college homies is gonna make a difference. I gave up on peaceful protest and marches in 2003 after a rather poor march through downtown Atlanta. I was chatting with an elderly woman who was rather sweet, and obviously a lost child of the sixties who was with a group called Poets for Peace. Their group was eight strong and felt they could best fight the system by writing horrible poetry and reading it to each other. They had t-shirts though and bought one for 10 bucks. As I rode the MARTA home I thought about how these people who claim to want to change the system are just as much a part of it as the ones they are against. They have different things they care about, separate values and ideas, but strip away the style and the meaningless things and they are the same. That woman could have given me the shirt or traded it for some of my shitty poetry, but she didn’t she exercised in a capitalist trade using printed money of the regime in which she rallied against moments before. She didn’t dislike the system she disliked its figure heads.

The people in New York and around this country who are forming this Occupy #Whatever movement, are not protesting the system itself (some are but not all especially their new labor union allies) They are not calling for the end of America or the world as we know it. They are not offering up a new Anarchist state as response, hell they are not even really asking for anything other than the end to corporate greed, which will be as successful as the government’s imaginary war on the boogey-man “terror”. Abstract arguments against abstract concept. Today (Tuesday 10/11), they staged a Millionaires March where they walked past rich people’s houses and stopped to yell at Rupert Murdoch’s house. I’m sure that made everyone feel wonderful. And I’m sure Murdoch wasn’t even there and if he was he could care less. These symbolic gestures are meaningless in the grand scheme of things. If these people want to be taken seriously they should have burned down Murdoch’s home. They are trained and conditioned by decades of bullshit to believe that non-violent protest is the way to freedom and that only not fighting back changes things and that is bullshit. Do you honestly thing Martin Luther King talking at churches did as much as the riots which followed his assignation. Violence begets violence and violence gets results. I hate to be the one to point this out but, it’s true. Hippies didn’t stop the war in Vietnam; too many American soldiers coming home in body bags stopped the Vietnam War. Walking in a line and chanting slogans will get you nothing but a sore throat and swollen ankles. If this is truly to be a uprising and the beginning of the first Class Warfare Revolts since the dawning of the industrial age then there has to be massive riots not sit-ins. Look back at history and see how it has happened. Your signs and sing-along’s have no effect on those in glass towers to high to even hear them. You want to sleep on the streets and blog on you nice little capitalist made laptops fine, but don’t think you are making a difference or changing anything with a status update on facebook. You want to see real change (I doubt any of them do) you will burn down everything you see and destroy it all until there is no choice but to rebuild.

Outside my window right now they are building a new apartment building, but before they can they have to tear down the one that was already there, dig up the earth and make a new foundation. They can’t build anything on top of the old one. New lines must be made and new pipes laid; Out with the old. When I was in high school I wrote about the coming war between the Haves and the Have-Nots. If this is to be the beginning of that war then let’s not waste it with puppet shows and the ramblings of theater arts majors. I have been active in the anarchist movement in this country both physically and through my writing since I was 14. Allow me to share with you a little of what I have learned. I was anti-tax long before the Tea Party co-opted that lingo, I didn’t file my tax returns from 1996-2004! I haven’t had a job that takes taxes from in over a year, I could care less about the tax rate, if you don’t like it don’t pay and fuck it. I have a long criminal history mainly for bucking the system and fighting against what I believe to be injustices and partially because I am an alcoholic who can read. Steal everything that’s not nailed down. Can’t find a gig fuck it; sell weed or coke and party every fucking night. If you don’t like system burn it down! This life is what you make it. The only people that have control over you are the ones you allow to control you. Experimenting in Sado-Masochism taught me that. NO one is ever going to respect you, or listen to you if all you do is march and hold up signs. What this country needs (what the world needs) is a merging of the Tea Party and the Occupy people, and they start acting like London teenagers. Smoke out the terrorist and then see what happens. Until then it’s just empty rhetoric the same that they say they are fed up with.

Vincent Kartheiser (Pete Cambell from MadMen) , as the brilliant martial arts mastering monk who can see the flaw in all things. He’s a great actor and would give Karnak the air of arrogance that he deserves.

Asthe aquatic brother to Karnak Jim Parsons would make the perfect Triton. Now this wouldn’t be the purple underwear wearer of the Kirby era, but the thin swimmer build of Jae Lee. I picked him because I feel he could pull a David Hyde Pierce and give voice to a character portrayed by Doug Jones or some other body actor covered in CGI.

Ryan Hurst, who is awesome as Oppie in Sons of Anarchy, has the look and the chops to play the tough, and brash Gorgon.

The beautiful and powerful yet indecisive Crystal would be perfectly played by That 70′s Show’s Laura Pep (where has she been anyway). Whether or not they introduce her former lover The Human Torch, or her X-husband Quicksilver to tie the movie into the larger Marvel U, is up to the director. But if they do she would be excellent as the mother of Magneto’s only real grand-baby.

Crystals big sister and Queen of the Inhumans (the only real one to me), should be played by fellow North Carolinian Evan Rachel Wood. Although I have heard the cries for Christina Hendrix to play the role, I think the Inhumans should appear a little younger for the first film.

The villain of the film should of course be Maximus as I said earlier, and as you can see from the picture I have cobbled together for you the perfect choice for that role is none other than Dexter’s Micheal C. Hall. No pretending to be a mild mannered good guy, just all out psychotic bad-ass-ness for Dex!

For the role of the silent King, and Maximus bro, I’m a bit torn. On one hand it has to be someone who looks the part both body and face. The actor has to be able to be both stoic and convey everything with his face. He can not speak so the look is the most important thing. Dark hair, steely blue eyes and the air of a King with the weight of an entire race on his shoulders. I narrowed it down to two choices. Both of which have played superheroes before, albeit for the rival company;

Ian Somerhalder, from CW's Vampire Diaries. Who starred in DC's Smallville.

And the Star of Smallville Tom Welling! I mean c'mon the guy is great and got shafted out of the reboot.

Honestly either of these guys would be a good BB but time is running out on Welling in Hollywood terms, so I hope he finds a big role soon that will put him back on the  map.

Seriously what is up with that waist? Who is he Fakir Musafar???

The second book I picked up was of course -Action Comics! As a devoted Grant Morrison fan there has been very little that man has written that I haven’t bought-with one huge exception. I never got his JLA run, never! I read part of it at friends house in graphic novel form, but when it was out, I was more into his Invisibles work. I also didn’t read any of the 52 weekly series. With that, this book will be another Grant Morrison book that I will not read. Not even so much because it’s trying hard to be like the TV show Smallville, but because Rags Morales art work is not my cup of tea. His Superman has a waistline so small that he would snap in half like a twig if he had to go up against someone like Darksied, or even parasite for that matter. The book almost had me by including Shazam’s nemesis Dr. Silvana, but not enough to overlook how effeminate he is making Lex (one of the greatest villains of all time). Had they went t he All-Star route, including Frank Quietly as the artist, I would place this book at the top of my list, but instead they tried to ground this in our modern world and taken Superman out of the clouds and humanize him in a way that I hate. Superman is a timeless character, he is meant to exist in a fictional city, in a fictional world, not have shots of him running around blocked by someone holding up a Blackberry. How will this hold up ten, or twenty years from now? Hopefully, like this terrible reboot, will be forgotten. I just hope that this won’t ruin Grant’s legacy.

The third book I picked up was Stormwatch. I wanted to see if Apollo and Midnighter would remain gay lovers, and if they would eventually meet their DC counter-parts. This is not what I got. The Midnighter doesn’t even show up until the last page. Apollo looks gay, but he’s lost his golden locks and opted for a short tight cut. The story centers more around a poorly drawn Engineer, and Martian Manhunter. Most of the Authority is still here, there’s Jack Hawksmore with his tire tread feet (and now hands apparently), Jenny Quantum is back as well, as an annoying twelve-year old with no definable powers. The good doctor seems to be missing, but this all just begs to question why they took the Stormwatch name rather than keeping the old Authority title. The addition of Martian Manhunter is accompanied by a woman who can go online with her mind and already feels a need to justify her pointless existence in the first issue, and some douche with a electric sword that can cut anything who gets possessed by what I can only assume is going to be Starro two pages after being introduced. All in all the art was horrid, the story was lame, and we still don’t know if Midnighter and Apollo will be butt-buddys! So of the three I guess I will have to buy another issue of Storwatch.

The sad thing is, that Marvel is being drowned out by all this over hype. The shake up in the X-Men world, the death of Bucky in Fear Itself. More importantly no one is talking about Uncanny X-Force! Which for my money is the finest book on the market. The Dark Angel Saga, which has Archangel claiming the role of Apocalypse finally, is the finest X-story in years. It’s hilarious and has finally made me care about Deadpool. The art is above and beyond anything else on the stands and Rick Remender is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers on the planet. If you’re not reading it, you should be! They have revived not only the Age of Apocalypse alternate-reality, but reminded the Marvel universe that there is a huge Celestial standing in Golden Gate Park! My main question is who are these other agent’s of the Celestials along side En Sabah Nur, and why does that Kelby guy look an awful lot like Cyclops?

As we ebb closer and closer to the end of the month and the end of DC Comics as we know it, I guess I should finish ripping apart the 52 preview they released last month. Now I know there are those of you out there who feel I should wait and pass judgment after the books are released and I read them, but in this economy there is no way in hell I could afford to collect 52 new titles not to mention that from what they have chosen to reveal so far leaves me fuming no less. It has been said that this re-launch is for introducing new readers without bogging them down with all of the vast history that DC has to offer, but I see it as spitting in the face of everyone who has ever bought a DC book-ever. It’s as if none of us count, we don’t matter because there’s not enough of us. Imagine if your friend who you’ve shared s many stories and adventures with suddenly decides that you’re not cool enough to hang out with anymore so they change their style and try to make friends with some new kids in the neighborhood who’s not even paying attention to him. Secretly you hope they diss him and he changes back to your old buddy so you can go back to having the same adventures you used to have.

I left off the last review of the preview just before the section on Green Lantern. I’ll gloss over the Lanterns because honestly I never cared for them to begin with. And it’s not because a magic ring powered by will is stupid, or because everything green Lantern has ever used it to construct has been even dumber, it’s because he’s a cop. I’ve never been that big a fan of police dramas (Law and Order S.V.U aside Ice-T is the man). To me the Green Lantern Corps was just some goose-stepping fascist para-military force enforcing some out-dated intergalactic police state across the cosmos. Not to mention that they have already made it clear that not much will change with the Lanterns because Geoff Johns is in control and he’s okay with ruining Grant Morrison’s six years on Batman but wouldn’t dare touch his precious space baby. This irritates me to no end BTW!

Which brings me to the next irritation and possible the only book that has the potential to be half-way decent; Justice League Dark. Despite having the worse name this side of I, Vampire (more on that later), the book features some of the “magic” based Dc characters. Deadman, Zatanna, Xanadu (Olivia Newton John I suppose-I’ve never heard of her), and then there’s the Vertigo boys who for the first time in a long time will be introduced to the no-swearing, no nudity, boring side of the DCU; Shade the Changing Man, and John Constantine. While I’m least happy about Shade being brought over I will always have fond memories of the Chris Bachalo, Peter Milligan stuff from when I was in high school and comics were really good. I know the character has been drug kicking and screaming into this mess and most likely been reduced back to his 60s roots as an uninteresting alien. Although Milligan is handling the writing duties on this which may make it the only non-Grant Morrison book in this re-launch that I will actually purchase. I really fear for old Hellblazer, because god knows he’s suffered enough with that God awful Keanu Reeves film still hanging over his head like a floating corpse.  He seemed to be doing alright on his own over in Vertigo where his stories fit, and he had lived for so long. But Geoff Johns doesn’t like Vertigo because he’s not creative enough to create any characters of his own, so he will do whatever he can to destroy them.

Artistically everything I have seen makes this book look great though; the same can also be said for Swamp Thing, Animal Man, and Frankenstein which come next in the preview. All of these belong in Vertigo, and deserve to be given a mature imprint and license to tell more adult oriented stories. I like Yanick Paquette so I won’t be too harsh on Swampy, but I do want to know how a creature called Swamp thing is going to work in the desert! I mean I know he’s an Earth elemental, but since there throwing everything out and starting from scratch how those Allan Moore stories are going to fit in. I mean has he traveled through time and become Jesus cross or not? I haven’t kept up with Animal man since the end of his Vertigo run back in the 90s so I don’t know what to expect from this book. Other than Travel Foreman being one of the most unsung new artist around and the light buzz around Jeff Lemire. I wonder if he will still be the peace-loving vegetarian Animal man I used to collect oh so long ago. Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E. however is just there I could take it, or leave it. I would prefer to see the character in the hands of Grant, but that’s probably the only thing that could entice me to buy it honestly.

Now before you think I’m going soft let me get to the next outrage! The most undeserving, waste of paper I have ever had the misfortune of laying eyes on. DC’s useless and obvious attempt to pander to the Twilight set; I, Vampire, the dumbest name on what looks like the dumbest book in the entire “re-launch” I mean did I miss something? Was this book ever apart of the DCU? If so how, and if not why now? Where does the story Andrew Stanton fit in to this new universe? According to the preview he has; “kept mankind safe from the horrors of the supper natural world-for hundreds of years”. Seriously!?! Then why do we need Frankenstein, Swamp Thing, or the damn Justice League Dark?  The writer claims he wants’ to “push the limits of what it means to be a vampire”. I guess that means making his vampire look more like the Werewolf from Twilight. I’m really sick of this young, hip, shirtless vampire craze. Vampires who are all sexy and sullen and just trying to save everybody, I mean they’re undead creatures of the night, when was the last time they’ve actually been bad-ass blood suckers?

Speaking of which, when was the last time the fucking Resurrection Man an interesting character? I mean the idea is great, a guy who keeps dying and coming back with a brand new super power. Sounds nice, but it’s never been fully taken advantage of. I picked up a few copies of the original series in the late 90s, but it never struck me as a must read. I would much rather have they kept the recently resurrected Xombie who much like the Resurrection Man is a product of nano-technology. I was reading that book and quite enjoyed it, but I guess my dollars don’t matter if DC can pick up a few more with by bringing back the never popular Resurrection Man.  Speaking of never popular-Jack Kirby’s the rhyming yellow Jekyll and Hyde; Ertigan the Demon!

Going under the book title Demon Knights this waste of paper is set in the DCU’s “Dark Ages” whatever that means. I mean is it a medieval fairy tale all of a sudden? I have never liked this character and I doubt this reboot will change that. I have the same problem with a Demon being a hero as I do with a vampire being cast as one. The teaser promises “surprising heroes and villains-will have no choice but to join the fray” So I guess if this is set in the Dark Ages we’ll see the Shining Knight and Vandal Savage, but how many people are clamoring for a Demon comic book? How many people would rather see The Spectre brought back? I mean if you’re going to tell the story of a man struggling with a powerful supernatural force tethered to him, isn’t that the one you’d rather read? That’s the problem with this whole re-launch, DC has so many characters to choose from with so many good stories still left In them and it just seems like they picked the ones they wanted to use out  of a fucking hat! I mean, not counting the big guns of course.

The next little book featured is one I’m having a lot of trouble accepting. When DC bought the rights to Jim Lee’s soul they also acquired his creative stable of books that were previously free from corporate corruption over at Image. There are a lot of mixed feelings in the comic book community in regards to Image Comics. I lost interest in most of the title once I graduated high school, but I always loved Wild C.A.T.s, and the Authority. I stopped collecting Spawn around issue 25, I stopped getting Savage Dragon with issue #50, but I have every reboot of the C.A.T.s down to the short live ill-fated Grant Morrison try. I liked the idea of a group of “heroes” that weren’t out there trying to save the world from every jack-ass in a mask and cape, but tasked with one singular mission. Yes they got off that mission somewhat, but the idea of them being aliens fighting a war and half-breeds trying to find their place between their alien home-world and Earth was intriguing to say the least. I loved Jim Lee’s original art on the series, and loved Travis Charest even more. I was stoked about Allan Moore’s run on the series and miss it when it was at its apex as one of the best most original super hero comics on the market.

With that said I also miss the Authority. It’s the only book that I really enjoyed Warren Ellis on and the place where I discovered Mark Millar. It was in its day the best written superhero book. It took the concept to the next level after the C.A.t.’s started going south. It made perfect since the way the dimension hoping pseudo super heroes took things to their obvious next level and started putting the world’s governments on notice. They battled thing that needed to be fought like genocidal Southeast Asian dictators and corporate controlled puppets here at home. I enjoyed the fact that Apollo and Midnighter, the Superman and Batman of the Wildstorm Universe, were gay lovers. And that the team leader was a guy who wore no shoes and talked to cities. I was with that book right up until the end.

While there were some duds in the Wildstorm universe that I didn’t care for like; Wetworks and Deathblow for example. I was in on the ground floor for most of the line. One book I could take or leave was Storm Watch. The creative teams that jumped on and off that book never moved me and the concept of a U.N. backed super team that policed the worlds super powered populace was as unattractive to me as the Lantern Corps. So of course leave it to this Geoff Johns helmed reboot of everything to include a rebirth of Storm Watch. This time refashioning the team to consist of The Authority’s Jack Hawksmore, Apollo and The Midnighter alongside perpetual DC loser John Jonnz, the Martian Manhunter that seems do only be able to hunt bad stories. The green Super Man in the purple cape is actually the least of the problems with this series. Taking into account that they are supposed to be establishing Superman as the new universes first Super Hero how does he coexist in a world with Apollo who is basically a gay blonde version of him? And is Apollo going to remain gay? I mean they’ve dressed the Midnighter up in some sort of spiked fetish gear so I assume he still is, but how will he react to Batman. Whereas he was based on the character, Midnighter never had a problem with killing in fact he was a bit more Wolverine in that respect and now that Batman has taken on Wolverines powers of appearing in every single book, it’s only a matter of time before these two cross paths.  Of course curiosity will more than likely get the best of me and I will be forced to pick up the first issue. Although I already hate myself for doing it before it even happens.

This leads into the resurrection of Voodoo and the Grifter, who are being shoehorned into the new DCU for some ungodly reason. If there were ever two Wild C.A.T.’s that I disliked; it was the stripper with the alien inside and the gun toting blonde Gambit hack with half Deadpool’s mask! Grifter becoming interesting when he was Cole Cash in the later more espionage oriented versions of the Covert Action Team, but essentially no one has ever been able to truly establish what voice the character should be aping, he has always been a mesh of different popular characters and never had a distinct enough personality of his own to warrant his own title. The most interesting thing about him was his love affair with the white haired baddest bitch on the planet-Zealot. So far there have been no signs that she’ll be tagging along for this series, so why should we? The blurb in the preview mentions he’ll be hunting inhuman creatures that only he can see. I can only assume this means Voodoo’s cousins the Daemonite. But does this mean the Kherubims will be involved and if so how do they fit in a world where Superman exist? It’s easy they don’t! Because they have been here flying around with super powers for hundreds of years, but Superman is the first hero the world has ever seen?

All of this annoys me but one thing that seems to annoy everyone else is the new and improved Harley Quinn taking up residence in the revamped Suicide Squad. Now dressed like a 19^th century prostitute in her underwear and wielding a sledge hammer and medieval knife the Jokers former sidekick and beard is now her own woman hanging out with several of DC’s bottom rung like a guy who is a less than successful Deathstroke and another guy who’s a giant Shark somehow capable of breathing air. This is a book that never lived up to its name and if DC was smart it would have used it over the years to clean house rather than relying on constant Crisis’s every time their considerable continuity became an issue.  If there was any room in Geoff John’s head not being occupied by his ego he would have been able to use concepts like Storm Watch and the Suicide Squad to fix this mess pronto. Assuming you want to get in (and get rid of) some of the vast list of villains in the DCU, just run’em through the Suicide Squad and kill them at the end of each issue. And when DC finds that this stupid re-launch cost them more readers than they gained just use Storm Watch and the bleed to shift back into the old universe and let us all get back on without lives without looking at this stupid, stupid Deathstroke book.

All I will say about this Simon Bisley drawn figure sporting the worst costume for a stealthy assassin , and carrying the biggest sword this side of Conan the fucking Barbarian is that if any psychopathic, murdering DC character deserved his own book in this new universe-it’s Lobo1 ‘Nuff Said (oops wrong company). The next two pages are crammed with irrelevance. All-Star Western-really? Was anyone dying for a cowboy comic? O.M.A.C? Was any one asking for this Kirby concept? Men of War and Blackhawks redone to fit in to a world where America is involved in its longest most senseless war ever and thousands of young people are actually being killed every year? Seriously DC we read comics to take us away from the fact that real war is out there looming in the distant on our television news every single day. It’s not pretty and it’s nothing to take lightly. Using the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in comics should wait until we’ve done with them. I have no idea who on Earth would want to buy these books.

Someone may want to buy this hideous Teen Titans based on the name and the love people have for the original characters, but for some reason DC chose to stuff those in the back behind the miscellaneous books already doomed for cancellation.  Oh I see why! Teen Titans looks like something Marc Silvistri threw up after he hear that robin had wings and Superboy would have a bar code tattoo! Not that the bar code that is the worst idea but he also can seem to only have time to tape the familiar S symbol to his tank top! Now earlier in the preview we see Superboy in his own title being constructed like he is a machine, but DC has sworn that he is a clone of Superman and Lex Luther like he has been for the last 15 years. Kid Flash is here using the ( now line wide) standard of lighting  bolts to signify that he’s a fast one, although for the Jr. speedster it only seems to apply to his head. Which I guess is to show he’s quickly looking around trying to figure out what the hell is going on with this team. There’s some spider chick that vaguely resembles Maxine Manchester a.k.a Ladytron of the aforementioned Wild C.A.T.s. There seems to be a female version of the New Mutants Sunspot rising up out of nowhere in particular, and a small gold woman reading her Ipad in the distance. Wondergirl is also there, but not the original one, that annoying Aryan version that I can never remember her name. Oh and did I mention Robin is there with wings hovering somehow as if he’s a hummingbird! Which just brings up the $6 million question again; that if old Bat’s is new to the game how the hell has he gone through so many sidekicks already!

All of this makes about as much sense as anything else going on with this re-launch so DC decides to take it right over the cliff by introducing not only a hero from the Milestone world where diversity is king but also the concept that New York and Gotham City both exist as two separate places! Now I’m not sure if this is something DC has recently reconciled, but no one ever really mentions the fact that New York exist in any of the titles that I read, and when I was growing up it was widely understood that the DCU was geographically different from our real world. Gotham existed in place of NYC and Metropolis existed in place of Chi-town. Does this now mean that America has not only flying illegal aliens telling people what to do but enough major cities to reboot the economy and lift us out of the second great depression  that we are currently in the middle of? And is so how does this reborn Static confront the fact that he is no longer the blackest version of Spiderman in the Big Apple?

Then we come to the worst of the worst. As if much of this re-launch has the stink of the worst of the 90s and it is only fitting that they bring back the most shining example of what was wrong during that time. I speak not of foil covers and giant impractical weapons, but the father of bad anatomy and clichéd teeth grimaces Sir Robert Liefeld! Yes ladies and gentleman I’m sure you have heard the groan of a thousand fan boys by now. Rob is back and he’s back on the book that put him on the map when he was just 15 years old. The absolute envy of anyone who has ever dreamed of being a comic book artist but was told he or she didn’t have the skill it took. The man who never had the skill yet was given the keys to the kingdom time and time again at a impossible young age and yet refused to learn proportion, or even how to draw an ankle much less a foot! It looks like nothing has changed either. He still refuses to draw a background or lines in between teeth. I may never get to draw a major publication comic book as long as I live but I will sleep well at night knowing that Rob Liefeld has a job. Because as long as he does I know in my heart that it’s not because I’m not good enough, it’s because I don’t know who Rob does. Just goes to show you kids it’s all about whose dick you suck and nothing about talent!

The last three books are of no real consequence to me, Blue Beetle (not Ted Kord) is competing with Static for best ethnic Spiderman wanna-be, while the heroes from the future are apparently without a GPS again and trying hard to remain relevant in a world where their past has been altered so much their entire existence has been made irrelevant three times over. Starting in just a few weeks we will be treated with the first of these dreaded titles Justice League #1 and from there we will be bombarded with 51 more title over the course of September. How DC expects people to collect 52 books in a month during this market is in itself ridiculous. Even if you wanted to you would have to be rolling in dough to keep up. Of the 52 I will probably pick up 2 possibly 3. But like I said earlier, I really want the new kids to ignore my old friend so that he comes back to me and we can have the old adventures again. Until then count me among the butt-hurt fan boys decrying this re-launch each and everyday!

p.s. Make Mine Marvel!

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Now playing: Mindless Ones – Grant Morrison interview
via FoxyTunes

Okay so I’ve been back from my two month long stint in Los Angeles for a few days now, it’s high time I try to write about my experience and try to contextualize the event. I tried to start off keeping a daily journal that I complied a few times into my “Cain-off-Kung-Fu, World Tour Diary”. That didn’t go as well as I quickly fell off and fell into days of traipsing all around L.A. in search of stars and famous landmarks. Then my money woes began and it was a few weeks of frightfully searching for work before giving up and settling in to a quite routine of trying to squeak by and still have a good time. Thankfully my dear friend Emily over at Gynomite (who I have known since my days as a, wee lass in North Carolina) introduced me to her cast of friends over at Meltdown Comics and we hit it off pretty well.  I was able to join in a few fun activities and hang out at an amazing comic shop most of the time. I don’t drive so getting from place to place became the biggest ordeal. There was some downtime, which was to be expected. A lot of time spent roaming the city streets alone, which gave way to some introspection and reflection that hadn’t happened in quite some time. Then came the final week when a personal hero was met and life was reassessed, but that’s a whole other blog yet to be written.

my view most days

The blackman paying tribute to the man in black

All in all I liked L.A., I hated its public transportation system and general city planning is shit, but all in all it was an interesting town. Just like any other place I have ever lived, from New York, to St. Louis, to here in S.F.; it starts off so shiny and new and full of amazing wonder, then slowly fades to fact of life day to day monotony. Although I don’t think I could ever live there or ever get used to seeing people I had previously only seen on television or my computer screen up close and in person. I also don’t think I could live there without seriously learning Spanish and possibly Korean. The weather (much like the traffic) is everything you have ever heard. Two months and it didn’t rain once, the sun shown ever day down on beautiful palm trees and unbelievable attractive women in skimpy clothes. There were defiantly moments that felt like a David Lee Roth cover of a Beach Boys song! The sheer expansiveness of the city was daunting at times. It felt like L.A. was just a blanket name they gave to five cities which met at the center.

The center being the massive, yet empty downtown, which I would wander through occasionally trying to soak in the atmosphere of L.A. Being a pedestrian in Los Angeles is akin to being homeless. It is not a city used to anyone but the very poor or the very naive walking around. I am a street level kind of guy (with a heart full of napalm no less), but the streets of L.A. extend forever. One street will stretch out for over twenty miles and contain a happening joint or two only at the furthest ends. So I became a frequent bus rider, something I rarely have to do in here in San Fran. I’m used to just popping out my door and walking to the nearest whatever I need or want to do. Even the bus rides though were epic two hour events that made getting anywhere exciting an enormous undertaking that drained the batteries on my cell phone/music player. To take this in perspective it takes a mere five hours in a car and seven hours on a bus to get from L.A. to SF; but to travel from where I was staying on 23^rd St off Vermont, to Sunset where the Meltdown was took me two hours one way!  Unbelievable to me, I have managed to exist on this planet for 33 years and some change, a vagabond by choice, yet I have never had more difficulty navigating an urban area as I did in the City of Angels.

I was too scared to visit this place at night

Yet despite my gripes on transportation I was able to visit some infamous spots and pay homage to my dark pop gods. I saw the Griffith Observatory where James Dean gave voice to a generation of rebellion and disobedience. I stood in front of the Viper Room and saw the spot where River Phoenix ended his time on this Earth. Went to Long Beach and saw the birthplace of the Dogfather, then went to Santa Monica and soaked up the rays where many terrible idea was hatched amidst the throngs of tourist families. I saw even more tourist at the site of so many epic film montages, down on Venice. I never made it too close to the famous Hollywood sign, but I walked the famous strip several times and even rose up out of the limited subway system to face a massive riot taking place. I took in as much as I could and attempted (although halfheartedly towards the end) to photograph as much as possible I played it a little too cool when confronted with some celebrities and porn stars, and failed to document some stupendous meetings, but all in all I made it worthwhile. My beloved mate disagrees and feels I did not fully take advantage of certain situations, but I am not one to try and press myself upon people who are much like me just trying to survive. I didn’t meet any powerful studio execs or influential power brokers (to my knowledge) so I felt no real need to try and sell myself.

not much drama in the LBC these days!

When I go places I like to become one with the inhabitants, and move and work as any other person, I don’t like to become a typical tourist and hop on topless busses through the neighborhoods of stars. I like to walk around and get the guttural feeling, the pulse, of any given place. No matter how long I am there I consider myself a modern urban anthropologist with no degree or real job. I want to understand what it is really like to live somewhere. And with two months I felt I achieved that quite well in Los Angeles. I did a few touristy things and hit a few touristy spots, perhaps more than I would have cared to actually. But riding on the bus and hanging out in neighborhoods otherwise left for true residents, I felt I got the real L.A. It wasn’t all glossy; in fact it wasn’t glossy at all. I felt the real beast, the real city. It wasn’t all pleasant and picturesque. There were times when I was on the bus and some homeless guy would defecate in a seat, or I would see auto accidents that turned into bitter street fights. I saw the quite side at night when the streets were empty and all the lights were out. I experienced the desolation and ruggedness of downtown at 3 in the morning. I could have used more weed or at least more booze at that point.

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Now playing: Thin Lizzy – Vagabond of the Western World
via FoxyTunes