...no nurgh for you...

I've always led a nomadic existence, but I've kept to Houston suburbs for the last 15 or so years, and that allows me a sense of stability. Still, I've tended to move from apartment to apartment every few years, and tiring of that scene, I decided to search out a roommate. My first was a passive-aggressive banker-weasel, who at least had a damned nice home. Unfortunately, I felt so uncomfortable there I drove 100 miles out to visit my father's place just about every weekend for the 4-5 months we lived in the same domicile. My next and current roommate turned out much better, as I've been living with her for nearly three years now. Holy shit-- I can't believe it's been three years! Anyway, I'm still paying the same all-bills-inclusive rate we initially agreed upon, which when you look at the rate of inflation, is itself seriously fantastic. Also, she's allowed my Classic car to rust away in her garage for most of that time, which gives her additional karma points. The only down side is that she's more than a little flakey, so when all those bills include the cable/phone/internet package, and she forgets to pay it, the Idol-Head and ...nurgh... get no updates for the better part of a week. Now you know.

Tomorrow, I'll reply to Damon's lengthy rebuttal of assertions I made about Iron Man and the Marvel Universe in my previous post. Also, I'll finally proof read that post, as if memory serves, it was a rambling monstrocity that sort of belly-flopped into a point way at the deep end...

Why I Don't Hate Iron Man

Sometimes I repeat myself, but I've always taken the notion that "every comic is someone's first" to heart, even if the industry hasn't in decades, and look how well that insular error has worked out. So on the notion that every blog posting may be someone's first, I'll not that I've been reading comics for well over a quarter century, and spent virtually none of that time reading Iron Man. I started out like most kids, with "gateway" heroes like Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and the Hulk... oh, how I hated the Hulk. I'll save that blog for when the crappy looking Ed Norton movie comes out.

Moving on, I have some difficulty pinning down my first exposure to Iron Man. It may have been a selection of Layton/Michelinie back issues my friend Charlie had, dated around 1981, with an appearance by Blacklash coming to mind. Black clad characters weren't that common in my experience, and between the energy whip and green hair, he seemed pretty bad ass. However, for some reason I skipped an issue of Marvel Team-Up in 1984 with the character, even after buying the issues immediately before (Moon Knight!) and after (Nomad!) Yeah, that's right, I passed on Iron Man and Whiplash, but Nomad made me swerve. Obviously, this is going somewhere.

Alternately, I might have first discovered Iron Man on a spinner rack in a Gemco department store in 1983. By that point, the creative reigns had been handed over to the less heralded Denny O'Neil and Luke McDonnell, who grabbed my attention to a greater degree. You might think my previous issue was with Bob Layton, but see, I bought the second Hercules mini-series by him, so that couldn't be it. Maybe it was because Stark had been replaced as Iron Man by Jim Rhoades, a second banana of color.

You see, I grew up in po' town, so most of my friends were either low income whites or black. There were Latinos everywhere, as the area skewed barrio even then. At that point though (late 70's/early 80's,) most of them didn't speak English, and routinely stole my shit. Not being racist here, as everyone stole everyone else's shit, but I could actually keep tabs with and even retrieve the shit my non-Latino friends ganked, so I tended to hang with them. Also, since there were fewer of us, sticking together helped keep us from getting our asses kicked by large groups of people to whom English was a second language, if any. This meant I associated with black heroes more strongly than most people as pale as my honkey ass happens to be, and of course my black friends were more likely to pick up comics featuring people like Luke Cage, Storm, Black Panther, or Stalker. They tended to buy Marvel, as DC Comics didn't care about black people, beyond Cyborg. However, the only friend I had who bought Iron Man was white, and he wasn't my friend anymore by the time Rhodey took over, and for some reason I didn't really dig on him either. I bought a What If...? Starring Sub-Mariner instead. I repeat, Namor, the avenging son of Atlantis, was more interesting to me than Iron Man.

Somehow, I assume through one of those bagged three-packs that used to be sold everywhere, I ended up with a Jim Rhoades Iron Man issue. It actually wasn't a bad read, but I still wasn't into the character. Also, it read "mature." I had the same problem with the odd Yeates or Moore "Swamp Thing" I'd find on the newsstand. They weren't bad, but as a kid I felt they were too sedate and sophisticated for my reading level. Seriously, I was precocious enough to be objective about that kind of thing. Now, Layton & Michelinie eventually returned, and they were clearly not writing anything over my head, but I was just as clearly not interested. Even when they ran that cool freakin' "Armor Wars" ad about it being time for the Avenger to start avenging. A similar vibe off the "Shadow War of Hawkman" totally turned me on to a dude wearing a bird head and fake wings, but I could not get it up for Iron Man.

Why is this, I asked myself then and now? Sure, Tony Stark was an affluent white male, a segment of the population I was raised to hate/fear/distrust, but that doesn't explain my disinterest in Rhoadey. Maybe it was the suit itself, as I've never cared about technology, whether it was car, jets, robots, or robots that could turn into cars and jets. Then again, I liked Robotech, even if it was mostly for the vinyl suits, blue hair and the boom anime babes that make me think the wrong thing. What was wrong with Iron Man? I tried it during the brief Byrne/Romita Jr. stint-- nothing. One of my best friend's favorite character is Iron Man, so he got me to read some Kaminiski, but I wasn't feeling it. He had me read the "Demon in a Bottle" trade, and in fact it did turn out I thought Layton & Michelinie sucked, so that was a non-start. When Lobdell and Portacio relaunched the title, at a time when Whilce was still one of my favorite artists, I read without conviction. Busiek and Chen fared worse. Ellis and Granov were terrible, regardless of my feelings about turning Tony Stark into a cyborg in the lamest fashion possible. The only saving grace was that I read more O'Neil/McDonnell, and they really did have a well crafted run with two heroes I don't care enough about to piss on if they were set afire.

Today, I visited Occasional Superheroine, which linked to Sean Kleefeld's post discussing why he hates Iron Man. His hang-up seems to amount to Tony Stark's having a personality, where Iron Man was always a put-on "bodyguard" with no distinct character. He may well have had a point... prior to Civil War.

Here, you see, is where it all turns around. Now, I love Captain America more than I love the Martian Manhunter, to whom I've dedicated the better part of a decade researching for the purpose of constructing one expansive website a ran for a few years, and now a daily blog that I've worked on for over 200 consecutive days. Even after all that effort on my part, I think it would be a task to sustain a Martian Manhunter series of quality for an extended period of time. On the other hand, I could write Captain America every month until the day I die. I'd love to take on Mark Gruenwald's record, and I'm confident I could outperform him. Captain America helped form my identity and moral code. If I am at all patriotic, especially in this day and age, it is because of Captain America. It was a given that I would root for Captain America and his band of costumed objectors in the political schism between super-heroes caused by a tragic event claiming thousands of lives, and of course I did, until I didn't.

You see, for years, Iron Man did what was normal for super-heroes: he put on a sort of costume, pretended to be two different people, and fought other people with similar powers and interests as himself. I never had much interest in "straight" super-heroes. Flash was always nabbing bank robbers, as if I gave two shits about FDIC-insured fat cats losing a few bills. Spider-Man was always catching muggers, as if such a thing had any bearing on a poor boy from Texas. Iron Man was the worst, a rich white man protecting his company's trade secrets from super-thieves. I loved Captain America because he fought terrorists, Nazis, and other idealogues that ran counter to liberal values. After 9/11 though, Marvel's icons like Cap and Shell-Headed started revealing their secret identities. This led to lots of stories in which Steve Rogers searched his soul about the meaning of his life and America itself in the face of this national tragedy. I was cool with that in the post-Watergate years of the Man Without A Country, or in the face of Reagan's jingoism as personified by Super-Patriot/USAgent. After 9/11 though, I felt there were only two ways to go: address America's dirty hands that led to these terrorists hating on us, or socking proxy Osamas in the mug like he handeled Hitler in '40! Since in any way speaking about American culpability was verboten in the first half of this decade, the only thing to do was deliver on the comfortingly simplistic iconography of the war on terror. Captain America's writers instead straddled the fence, effectively going nowhere, and selling us the non-adventures of Steve Rogers, namby-pamby.

Meanwhile, Iron Man stood revealed as a raging hypocrite. Yes, he lied to people in his personal and professional life for years. Yes, this essentially constitutes grievous fraud. Yes, Stark the alcoholic was also the various rampaging Iron Men. Yes, he illegal entered foreign countries, caused enormous loss to property and life, yet still tried to play at taking the "high road" by abandoning arms manufacture, as if his own armor wasn't the source of continued threat throughout the world. These revelations earned him a government post, and later, directorship of S.H.I.E.L.D. In this Civil War, after decades acting as an unlicensed corporate policeman, he had now forced through legislation to outlaw any acts of vigilanteism in the United States, while simultaneously pressing for similarly action abroad. Iron Man effectively reinstated the draft when it came to super-heroes, and jailed anyone, even Captain America, who did not tow the line. Iron Man and Tony Stark were now inseperable, unavoidable, and utterly fascistic. Many now consider him the greatest super-villain in the Marvel Universe.

Not I. Somehow, my left-leanings be damned, I wholeheartedly support Iron Man's campaign. Despite all the nefarious shit he got up to with Reed Richards and Hank Pym, and despite the obvious parallels with George Dubbya, can you honestly say you think ungoverned super-heroes are a good idea? Perhaps in a universally and unbelievably altruistic comic book universe, but Marvel has always been considered "realistic." Their heroes are not Justice League goody two-shoes, but the people you know, with super-powers. I don't know anyone I'd trust with super-powers, and super-heroes are a inherently fascistic concept. Maybe in the early days when Superman beat down the doors of wife-beaters and rescued innocent persons from death row, the prospect of instant and unequivocal social justice was desirable. Even as a child though, it wasn't hard to see those hoodlums Batman likes to beat senseless being a degree or two seperate from the circumstances I grew up in. Desperate people in desperate times, hustling to get by, only to have some psychotic thug give them a concussion. It reminds me of when I read Jim O'Barr's "The Crow." On the one hand, it wasn't as comically stupid as the awful movie, with it's multiracial super-villain team of home invaders. On the other, a man so white he painted himself up as a mime kills a group of very black and mostly indistinguished black men who raped and murdered a couple on a roadside. Am I reading too much into that? Maybe, but the subtext seems pretty textual there. Oh, how many drug peddlers have Green Arrow and Speedy shot through the motherfucking hand? Am I the only one who thinks that's maybe a little excessive? I want someone to rein in the real crazies, those self-appointed gestapo in tights!

Finally, Tony Stark is Iron, and Tony Stark is the Man. No more soft-peddling the fact this cat is hard-drinkin', armor-wearin', fast-drivin', slow-lovin', cash-blowin', underling bossin', 100% U.S. Grade A Republican Son-of-a-Bitch! No more eqivocation. No pussy-footing. Tony Stark makes you feel he's a cool exec with a heart of steel. As Iron Man, boot jets ablaze, he fights and smites with repulsor rays. Iron Man is about fucking up Commies, Skrulls, and any other douchebags that don't get the meaning of the word "invincible." Iron Man is about power, not feet of clay and detox. Iron Man is about having what every man in this wants, and working it like he knows how. Iron Man is about what Superman would be like if he were a Marvel character and still retained his true heart. Comic book creators tend toward liberalism, and that is exactly why Iron Man hasn't worked for most of fandom in forty years. Now is the time for the fantasy of strength and righteousness, especially as the reality of overbearing, ill-considered self-righteousness looks to have launched us deep enough into a recession to scare everyone shitless. I don't want to think like a Steinbeck character while I scrape by for the next decade, because I expect that's the shit we'll all be living soon. I want to be Iron Man!

And that is why I now like Iron Man. Also, the new movie stars Robert Downey Jr., and pits him against a bald Jeff Bridges. These are two of our greatest living actors, in a super-hero movie! If Batman fans weren't such deluded fuckwits, they'd think about mixing their own medications in the face of that overwhelming coolness. Too far? Too soon? Just trying to roll like Iron Man, blogging like a waterboard...

Iron Man: Hypervelocity

For years, I've been drawn to Adam Warren's work, and yet avoided actually reading any of it. You see, he was one of the first heavily manga influenced artists, and worked on American adaptations of manga characters. This made him a favorite of grown men who carry vinyl "Hello Kitty" wallets in their back pocket. Nevermind that his best selling work seemed to be on "Gen 13" related projects. I have the same problem with Gen 13 that I have with most manga-- if it doesn't involve schoolgirl tentacle rape, I'm probably not going to be able to feign interest. I've been exposed to lots of anime over the years, and it seems to me entirely too much of it targets the most base interests of either gender. Whether its animated slash fiction romance or exploding heads, even my sorry ass seem to have developed past being entertained by that dreck.

Anyhow, I still liked Warren's artwork, which led me to read preview pages of his new series "Empowered" many moons before the first issue/trade was released. I enjoyed it a great deal, and not just for purile reasons. It was funny, smart, and portrayed one of the few super-heroines I've ever read who in any way resembled an actual woman. Sure she's a raging neurotic, but again, I'm talking about real life women. They're not exactly uncommon.

I've continued to buy and enjoy "Empowered," though somewhat less so as the gags have subsided or repeated while dreaded longform narrative has reared its ugly head. Still, Warren seemed capable with playing straight as needed, and when the opportunity to read his work for Marvel on a iconic character came up, I took it.

"Hypervelocity" is not quite an Iron Man book. There's room for a No-Prize to explain Tony Stark's newly acquired hipster snark, but that doesn't cover the entirely too kewl S.H.I.E.L.D. team pursuing a seemingly rogue, semi-sentient armor. While Image artist Brian Denham brings a thoroughly modern sheen and edge the Iron Man character has rarely enjoyed, Warren's layouts still bring the mangacentricities and gags. The book is awash in high concept where one usually finds more hoary concerns, while the villainess Absynthe has a transgressive sexuality far removed from the Hugh Hefner approved cornfed girls of the Layton years.

All that having been said, I guess it's a damned good thing I never liked Iron Man, huh? One of my best friends is a huge fan, and while reading I wondered if he would see this collected mini-series as a sacrilige or get his geek on as Tony was finally allowed to move past the 70's into the age of adrenaline junkies and sex bombs. "Hypervelocity" is a true page turner, more likely to impress fans of Joss Whedon, Grant Morrison, and (perhaps) the Robert Downey Jr. take in the upcoming major motion picture. If the film does good box office, I'd expect this to fly off the shelves of Barnes and Noble at a much faster clip than any Essential volumes.

My only caveat is that the book kinda sorta doesn't have an ending. It's one of those ambiguous numbers, in a story that otherwise seems exceedingly forthcoming with the details. Either there's room for a sequal, or more likely, you just have to accept that those darned Japanese influenced yet another "that's it?!?" Regardless, the trade is worth reading, especially for free. Fuck you, capitalist swine in a tin can! You won't get my money until opening weekend!

"C": Things I learned from "The Superhero Book"

• The syndicated, semi-animated "The Marvel Super-Heroes" show from 1965 was a daily. Monday: Captain America; Tuesday: Incredible Hulk; Wednesday: Iron Man; Thursday: Mighty Thor; Friday: Sub-Mariner. Also, the process used on the show was called "Xerography." Makes sense to me.
• Captain Atom by Steve Ditko predated the Marvel Age by a bit under two years. He was also a violent Commie smasher, though his first run lasted only 10 issues. Ditko's return to Charlton after Spider-Man was better received, but was still canned after 11 issues. His second costume was only worn for about half of the latter. Also, he was always a government agent, something I previously assumed began Post-Crisis.
• I've never "gotten" Captain Britain, and it doesn't seem like anyone else ever has either. His creation was inorganic, and his life thereafter seems more a curiosity than anything.
• I've never "gotten" Captain Canuck either, but I've never read any of his comics, and his entry doesn't make me want to. A Boy Scoutmaster struck by alien rays? But hey, his native country put him on a postage stamp, which is all the reason anyone needs to start lobbing cracks at Canada again. Eh.
• I didn't know Carol Danvers was introduced at the same time as Captain Mar-Vell. That legitimizes her more in my eyes. Maybe I'll pick-up that upcoming "Essential" collection and read up on the pre-Starlin material.
• Why have we never seen, to my knowledge, Captain Marvel Junior's rogues gallery in modern times? Dr. Eternity? Pied Piper? Captain Nippon? Wait, I think I understand that last one.
• Shazam briefly had a "sambo" comic relief named "Steamboat?" File with Captain Nippon.
• I've grown very tired of deconstructionist super-hero tales, but someone like Rick Veitch needs to go all "Brat Pack" on Cat-Man. Your vocabulary word of the day is ephebophilia.
• Since I used to pull odd issues of Charlton's Action Heroes with high numbering out of cheapie bins in my 80's childhood, I always assumed they were plentiful and long-lived. Turns out few lived much past the two year mark. Shame I no longer have any. They were fun, especially Peter Cannon... Thunderbolt.

Obscure Character Handbook: Muhammad X

Justice League of America / The Avengers (1983)

I'm currently reading the Avengers/JLA Compendium, which reprints the twenty pages of art produced for the abortive 1983 team-up plotted by Gerry Conway and pencilled by George Pérez, with liner notes and an ending as recalled by Pérez. Since I got no blog work done this weekend, and expect lots on non-virtual work all next week, I plan to milk this book as a whole and in parts. We'll start with a review of as much of the book as is available.



Back in '83, Jim Shooter didn't like the story, and I can see his point. You've got three pages spent on Kang the Conquerer tracking down the vague deus ex machina "Time Egg." Then obscure JLofA villain the Lord of Time shows up, so underwhelming as to have been a b-story/foe in the first Felix Faust appearances. That led to 5 1/2 pages of generic Avengers character moments, a quick fight with Kang that served no real purpose, and a bunch of exposition to allow the inclusion of several extant/non-members. The JLofA then got 3 1/2 pages of the same, substituting the Lord of Time, and then including Kang for an additional 3 pages of exposition. Are we having fun yet? The other DC/Marvel team-ups got moving far more smoothly by quickly establishing all the heroes lived on the same planet and knew of each other for the purposes of any individual story. Now, with far more characters to juggle, 15 pages, just under a quarter of the book, was spent on set-up with no interaction between the two super-teams. My string theory parallel self, having paid a substantial premium on my budget for this thing, after journeying to a remote specialty shop, is seriously pissed. Hell, my Earth-1 self is at least annoyed, as after finally seeing all of Pérez's finished pages, I get only 6 of team-up action.

A World War I battlefield served as backdrop for the only confrontation to be drawn. Starfox had nearly reached the temporally displaced "egg" when Hawkman whacked him with a chain mace. Does that seem as severe to you as it does me, especially considering Katar had no way of knowing whether he'd crack Eros' own egg wide open? Starfox punched a hunk of mortar into the Thanagarian's mug in retribution, downing the bird for the duration. I suppose I can buy that, but I'd hope Hawkman could pull off better evasive action than that. Zatanna managed to capture the Scarlet Witch, but the freed-up Starfox sexed her up with his love touch, allowing Wanda to lay the zap on. Batman and Captain America fought to a draw, which I will whine about in the near future.

Per George Pérez, there were many additional match-ups, as I note at today's Idol-Head of Diabolu listing. His favorite took place on Galactus' ship, which had to be prevented from eating Krypton in the distant past. That all sounds fine, but all-in-all, the project sounded in line with the dissatisfying fan wanks that preceded it among the DC/Marvel crossovers. The quality of Pérez's art was also uneven, with some awkward anatomy and some pages skewing toward amateurish. I'm actually somewhat pleased this remained a "lost" project, as all appearances were that that the execution would fall short of the potential, not unlike the actual JLA/Avengers book released twenty-odd years later. The real saving grace, had the original incarnation reached fruition, was that these were the "iconic" takes on all the heroes. All Silver Age DC, excepting the nigh-universally approved adjustments to Green Arrow and Batman, plus the inclusion of fan-favorite Firestorm. A classic Avengers line-up, excepting Starfox and Photon, but with Iron Man's beloved red & gold. I still cringe at the later incarnation's use of dog-collar Kyle Rayner, harpoon-hand Aquaman, hangers-on like Triathlon, and general over-stuffed/under-cooked nature.

Godhead, or Icarus Too Close to the Sunlamp

I hate to leave a day open without a post, but between holiday nonsense and my crushing work schedule, something substantial would be pushing it. Instead, I'll backdate a brief anecdote to Saturday. and move forward from there.

Many months back, I raided the music collection of a girlfriend (formerly emphasis in full, now simply on the "friend.") For whatever reason, she specifically wanted me to check out the band Godhead. I did, and found them to be a thrift store smash-up of Smashing Westward and Filter, themselves poor man's Nine Inch Nails. So I'm sorry I was exposed to the indigent's industrial band, assuming as beggers, they can't be choosy.

So I'd been hitting the gym hard and heavy at that time, having at one point come perilously close to 190 lbs. of sedentary girth, now a more svelt 150. Hard labor was my primary tool, but maintenence was required while I was exclusively in a CNA program (which proved unnecessary, as the course was a cakewalk.) Anyhow, I would hit the elliptical for 1-2 hours about five days a week while rockin' the tunage on my MP3 player. All was well with the world. This one night though, I'd really been pushing hard, dripping sweat with the blood pounding in my eyes. I headed out to my car, as I preferred to shower at home, a garbage bag saving my upholstery from the stank. Well, I'd forgotten I had the stereo significantly cranked while Godhead played, and the sonic assault was seriously damaging.

I've always preferrred to sleep with music playing, but that has now become something of a need. Thanks to Godhead, I now have tinnitus, a constant ringing in my right ear. I'm not sure that I would wish a band I liked to have been associated with this affliction, but I am in no way consoled by having to reference a thoroughly unimpressive band as the source of my malady.