This is Halloween. Halloween, Halloween.

Hi ho.

It's October, which means a couple things. First, that my DVR will soon be full of whatever horror schlock Turner Classic Movies can dish up (I'm looking at you, The Return of Dr. X).

Second, that you might be in the mood for some seasonal comics to read while you, I dunno, chop down pumpkin trees or whatever.

The Chicago Tribune recently

took a stab at recommending some seasonal books, but the comics they mention are pretty standard fare and won't be unfamiliar to anybody who keeps up with comic book movies.

And in the words of Dr. Frank N. Furter: I think we can do a little better than that!

Let's take a look at ten terrifying tales for the more well-read comics aficionado (nerd).

10. Creepy

Creepy magazine was basically a revival (if it hadn't been good, we'd be calling it a "rip off") of Tales From the Crypt in the mid-1960's. Like its predecessor, Creepy was an anthology title that featured a number of short horror stories per issue, all introduced by the darkly comic "Uncle Creepy."

The strength of the magazine was its creators - Frank Frazetta, Reed Crandall, Joe Orlando, and scores of others turned out dozens of chilling stories over the course of the magazine's nearly twenty-year run.

Get it off, get it off, GET IT OFF!!!

Dark Horse Comics recently released the first volume of The Creepy Archives, collecting the series' first twenty-four stories. Check it out and marvel at the gorgeous Frank Frazetta covers.

9. Batman & Dracula: Red Rain

Red Rain is the first - and best - part of a trilogy of Batman-as-Vampire stories by Doug Moench and Kelley Jones.

The book is exactly what it sounds like. And frankly, if the words "Batman and Dracula" and the image below aren't enough to motivate you to immediately read this, I don't know what will.

Sometimes I think my costume is too spiky... nah.

Thankfully, the entire trilogy was recently released in the Batman: Vampire trade paperback.

8. Parasyte

Parasyte is a Japanese comic by Hitoshi Iwaaki first published in Japan in the early-90's and brought to the U.S. in the late-90's as part of Tokyopop's early publication Mixx Zine.

The story concerns a race or parasitic aliens who come to Earth and take over human hosts, killing them in the process. When a parasite's attempt to take over high school student Shinichi Izumi's brain fails, Shinichi's hand is replaced by the alien and the two work together to fight the invasion.

NOM NOM NOM

It may sound superhero-y, but it's really a horror comic, full of surreal images and fights between the various parasites. The series is currently in print and worth checking out to see some creepy-as-hell monsters maiming each other and those around them.

7. Shock SuspenStories

The more obvious EC comic to read on Halloween is, of course, Tales From the Crypt. But while lacking the supernatural elements of that title, Shock SuspenStories is a lot cooler and creepier.

An anthology title from the 1950's, Shock SuspenStories featured stories from a number of genres (horror, sci-fi, war) with the connecting thread being that each story was lurid, provacative, and had a "shocking" twist ending (hence the name).

The series' most famous stories tackle subjects like racism, drug use, corruption, and mass hysteria.

Yep. Just another Friday night in the South.

There are two volumes of archived SuspenStories currently in print through Gemstone. They feature fantastic, disturbing stories and artwork by greats like Wally Wood and Frank Frazetta (unfortunately given a gaudy, inappropriate recoloring, but that's a rant for another time).

6. Route 666

A moment of silence for Crossgen.

Ahem.

Route 666 was part of Crossgen's expansion following their first wave of titles in 2000. Written by Tony Bedard and penciled by Karl Moline, the book followed the trials of college student Cassie Starkweather, cursed from birth with the ability to see and talk to ghosts. Following the grisly death of a classmate, Cassie becomes involved in a war between our world and the next, fighting a variety of monsters and ghosts along the way.

This is the worst prom ever!

The book is as fun as it is gruesome (check out the death of Cassie's classmate - crushed to death by the collapsing gym bleachers). Unfortunately it was cancelled at issue #22 due to Crossgen's going belly-up, but those 22 issues are some solid horror comics. The series is no longer in print, but back issues can be got dirt cheap on eBay or, no doubt, in your local comic shop's quarter bin.

5. Frankenstein

Seven Soldiers: Frankenstein is a four-issue miniseries from 2005 written by Grant Morrison and drawn by Doug Mahnke that - for reasons I will never understand - was not turned into an ongoing series afterward.

It follows the adventures of the recently-revived Frankenstein as he tangles with a telepathic teenage outcast, evil fairies on Mars, and his own former Bride - now a government operative.

Friiiieeeeennnd

The whole series is Grant Morrison at his best and Doug Mahnke was born to draw a gruesome, unsettling, off-the-wall story like this.

The story is scattered throughout the various Seven Soldiers trade paperbacks, but that's frankly a crappy way to read them. The individual issues shouldn't be hard to come by or expensive.

"All in a day's work... for FRANKENSTEIN!"

4. Wrath of the Spectre

If you are a criminal in the DC Universe, The Spectre is the absolute last guy you want gunning for you. Superman will whisk you off to jail. Batman will stuff you into an asylum after breaking your jaw with a hunk of bat-shaped metal. Wonder Woman will give you a chance to indulge in whatever light bondage fantasies you might harbor.

The Spectre will melt your fucking hands off before sending you to Hell.

Well, shit.

Written by Michael Fleisher and masterfully drawn by Jim Aparo (all hail), Wrath of the Spectre contains some of the character's best stories ever. Watch in horror as the omnipotent Spectre hunts down criminals and deals macabre justice upon them.

3. Thor: Vikings

Thor is probably not a character you'd expect to wind up on a list of creepy comics. To the skeptical, I have three words: Zombie Super Vikings.

Written by Garth Ennis and drawn by Glen Fabry (the creative team behind Preacher), Thor: Vikings pits the god of thunder/superhero against an undead army of super-powered vikings. Easily the goriest thing on this entire list, the book features perhaps more decapitations than any comic in history as the zombie vikings - after easily beating Thor to a pulp - proceed to rape and pillage all of Manhattan.

Pictured: Thor being asked for spare change on a normal day in the East Village.

It looks like the book is out of print right now, but check it out if you run across a copy. If your idea of black humor includes lots of disembowelment, this book is right up your alley.

2. The Living and The Dead

Of course, not every spooky Halloween story has to be mean-spirited.

Drawn by Norwegian cartoonist Jason, The Living and the Dead is a silent comic that follows a young dishwasher who falls in love with a prostitute and has to fend off a zombie invasion.

In process: fending.

The story is cute, gruesome, and touching all at once. If you liked Shaun of the Dead, you'll like this.

1. The Tomb of Dracula

With respect to all of the above artists, nobody can draw horror comics like Gene Colan.

Beginning in 1971 and working with a number of writers over the course of nearly a decade, Colan pencilled what remains the definitive comics version of Dracula.

How am I supposed to ravish this young nubile woman if I can't find my castle in this goddamn fog?

The stories range from gruesome to more adventurous, but they're all worth reading to absorb the gorgeous, haunting artwork.

Thankfully, the entire series is available through Marvel's dirt-cheap Essentials books. And unlike many comics, Tomb of Dracula actually looks better in black and white than it did in its original color.

The Defense of Wonder Woman

Hola!

In my noble and tireless quest to educate the six people who read this blog about our Star Spangled Savior, occasionally I’m going to have to address some misinformation that gets spread throughout the interwebs.

In this case, it’s this blog entry that wound up on Digg last night.

I have no idea who Alicia Ashby is. I’m sure she’s a wonderful person, and she’s clearly a talented writer. But, to be blunt, she don’t know nothin’ ‘bout no Wondy.

In the interest of stemming the flow of ignorance and hopefully stopping people from missing out on some great comics that Ashby completely dismisses, I’m going to address her various claims and see how they stand up to some scrutiny. Let’s begin.

Ashby’s argument is basically that with as big of a push as DC is giving Wonder Woman these days, the fact that she’s not generating much excitement is the result of some fundamental flaws with the character. Ashby writes:

“You’d think people would in a frenzy of Wonder-mania, the same as we were during the great Superman media blitz that preceded the mediocre Superman Returns, or the Batman blitz that predated the total rad Dark Knight flick.”

I’m going to immediately dismiss her contention that a direct-to-DVD movie and co-starring in a weekly comic book should be generating as much interest in Wonder Woman as Dark Knight and Superman Returns did for Batman and Superman, because that’s just... nuts. Obviously a big-budget Hollywood movie is the biggest exposure that any character can get, and nothing will generate that level of excitement. How many people really cared about Iron Man when all he had going for him was being the bad guy in Civil War and getting his own direct-to-DVD movie?

Anyway, Ashby’s complaints begin with Wondy’s outfit. Writes Ashby:

"In the '40s, a woman in short-shorts was telling you she was no housewife! She was going to go out and do all kinds of unladylike things that involved exercise and possibly building muscle. In the 90’s, a woman who’s rolling into battle wearing a leotard resembles… um… nothing so much as an extremely angry underwear model."

Okay. On one hand, she’s not wrong. Wondy’s costume is something of an eyesore, and it certainly makes no sense for her character. That much is true.

But does anybody seriously think that putting more clothes on Diana would heighten interest in her? Has anyone seen what other superheroines run around in?

Pants aren’t exactly the order of the day.

Moving on.

And oh boy. You’re gonna want to sit down for this one.

9) There Are No Great Wonder Woman Stories

Oh me, oh my. The thrust of Ashby’s argument here is that Wondy doesn’t have equivalents to Dark Knight Returns or Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow.

First of all, who does? It seems that Ashby is buying into that “trinity” nonsense that DC tries to push, whereby Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman are held up as the most important people in the universe. It’s really stupid, but fanboys absolutely eat it up, so DC has been running with it for the last, like, twelve or so years.

One of the reasons why it’s so stupid is that it puts unrealistic expectations on Wondy. Of course she’s not as popular as the other two. Nobody’s suggesting that. But the mistake that Ashby and others make is going from “There hasn’t been a Wondy-centric equivalent to Dark Knight Returns” to “There are no great Wonder Woman stories.”

"The Return of Barry Allen", despite being probably the best Flash story ever, isn't as good as Dark Knight Returns, but you don’t see anyone talking about how much all Flash stories suck.

At any rate, this is dead wrong. There are lots of great Wondy stories, and any Wondy fan worth her weight in salt can rattle off some gems at a moment’s notice.

I’m going to leave aside Wondy's golden age, since I’ll address that later. But from the Silver Age onward, you’ve got –

The fantastic Diana Prince stories, in which Wondy renounces her powers in order to remain in Man’s World while the Amazons leave this dimension, and becomes a globe-spanning adventuress. Fantastic art by Mike Sekowsky, and fun, exciting stories by Denny O’Neil.

Then there are the "Twelve Labors of Wonder Woman" (unfortunately not collected in one volume). Issues #212 (pictured above) - #222 of Wondy’s first series chronicled the various feats that Wondy had to perform – upon regaining her powers – to be reinstated in the Justice League of America. You’d think just, you know, being Wonder Woman would be enough, but this was a team that thought Hawkman and Green Arrow were worthwhile members, so who knows. Anyway, each issue is narrated by a different member of the Justice League, and the stories are handled by an assortment of writers and artists. They’re tons of fun and showcase a smart, capable, powerful Diana.

Of course, after Crisis on Infinite Earths, we get…



George Perez’s Wonder Woman! For twenty-four issues (and one annual), superstar artist George Perez took Wonder Woman and completely reinvented her for a more sophisticated audience. I have issues with some of the changes he made, but these comics are insanely good. Exciting, fun, and featuring what might be Perez’ greatest artwork ever, these are some of the best comics of the 1980’s. And that’s saying a lot. The highlight of the bunch might be Wonder Woman #20: "Who Killed Myndi Mayer?"



Following George Perez on the book (once Perez left as artist he kept writing the book for a while, but it wasn’t as good), we got William Messner-Loeb as writer, who turned out some absolutely fantastic Wondy stories in his time (which started with Wonder Woman Special #1 and lasted for a while starting with issue #63, although I’d quit reading just before “The Challenge of Artemis” starts up). This period is also notable for Brian Bolland having turned out some of the most stunning comic book covers ever.



Then there’s 2000’s JLA: League of One, written and painted by Christopher Moeller. An interesting story, it highlights Wondy’s place in the Justice League as she has to use all her wits to defeat not only an ancient dragon, but the rest of the League as well.



And let’s round things out with Gail Simone’s first arc on the title, recently released in hardcover. After a couple years of putrid Wondy stories, The Circle was not only a breath of fresh air, it is one of the best Wondy stories ever. Centering around a small group of Rogue Amazons who have been imprisoned beneath Paradise Island since Diana’s birth, the Circle is a thrilling story with gorgeous art courtesy of Terry and Rachel Dodson that demonstrates not only the power and cunning of Diana, but adds new layers of pathos to the Amazons and their Queen (and Diana’s Mother) Hippolyta, and explores the consequences of living on a perfect island of immortals.

That’s a pretty good place to get started. Are any of these things Dark Knight Returns? No. But Dark Knight Returns is one of the great works of the medium; by that standard, Superman hasn’t had his DKR, either. So, is there reason for saying…

8) In Fact, Most Wonder Woman Comics Are Completely Terrible

?

Well, yes and no. The fact is, most comics in general are completely terrible. When you’re in continuous publication for over sixty years, it’s no wonder that some crap is going to find its way in there. But the statement above is misleading. It makes it sound like Wonder Woman comics are particularly bad compared to other superheroes, and that’s bullshit.

You could fill several large libraries with crappy Superman and Batman comics that have been published over the decades. And remember: Superman and Batman, being the most popular superheroes around for decades, get the top-tier talent, which in turn gets them better stories, which keeps them popular, etc.. Wondy has at least as good a track record as heroes like Green Lantern, Flash, Iron Man, and Thor, and a better record overall than some other high-profile heroes like Captain America and the X-Men.

Yes, there were bad Wonder Woman comics in the 50’s. Ever try to read 50’s Batman comics? The ones with Batwoman, Bat-Girl, Bat-Mite, and Bat Hound, in which Batman turned into Zebra Batman and Space Alien Batman, among other Bat-men? I can assure you that they have little to do with what you see in The Dark Knight.

But apparently two entries being wrong about Wondy comics wasn’t enough, because now we move on to…

7) Golden Age Wonder Woman Comics Were Really, Really Terrible

The wrongest of them all! Don’t believe this for one second. There was a reason, after all, that Wondy was one of very, very few characters in the golden age to both star in an ongoing anthology (which is what most comics were) *and* carry her own title (the only other DC characters to do that were Superman, Batman, Flash, and Green Lantern, and only Superman’s, Batman’s, and Wonder Woman’s books survived into the 1950’s and beyond).

Says Ashby:

"Wonder Woman’s Golden Age books are hallucinogenic nightmares of bad plot, arbitrary story, and lots of loving depictions of fetishistic behavior that are just quaint and ridiculous now. From the lousy lettering to the bad writing to the poorly-composed artwork, I’d be tempted to say that Golden Age Wonder Woman comics are just unreadable to the modern fan."

Firstly, of course they’re ridiculous now. They were ridiculous then! That was the whole point! Wondy’s golden age stories were whimsical, light-hearted stories meant to teach the virtues of empowerment (along with writer William Marston’s bizarre ideas of submission). Wondy’s golden age adventures were viewed at the time as subversive, provocative, and potentially *dangerous* precisely because of their off-the-wall nature. That is a strength, not a weakness. Diana and her teachings were incredibly ahead of her time, and that is something to be admired rather than dismissed as hokey.

Quoth Diana:

“It takes real character to admit one’s failures – and not a little wisdom to take your profits from defeat. But remember, this Man’s World of yours will never be without pain and suffering until it learns love, and respect for human rights. Keep your hands extended to all in friendliness but never holding the gun of persecution and intolerance!”

This going on while Superman and Batman are still fighting bank robbers and spies.

I’m also sorry to say that Ashby betrays an ignorance of golden age comics in general if she’s going to call the unique and dynamic art of H.G. Peter “poorly-composed.” I would encourage her to look at some other artwork of the time and compare it with the gorgeous splash pages and panels of stories like “Villainy, Inc.”, in which her greatest foes team-up, or “The Ice-Bound Maidens,” in which Diana helps train young Amazons and fights the Seal Men. Peter was one of the age’s great cartoonists, and Wonder Woman is one of its best looking comics.

She may well be right that modern audiences would have a hard time with Wondy's golden age adventures, but that is hardly a problem specific to Diana. As I've mentioned before, golden age comics are, on the whole, completely unreadable to modern audiences, and are almost all complete garbage. Wondy's comics are some of the golden age books that have aged best, and are infinitely more readable than, say, old Justice Society strories, or certainly any old Flash or Green Lantern stories.

6) Her Lasso of Bondage

Ashby takes issue with Wondy’s lasso next. Eh. It’s a shame that she dismisses one of the most distinctive and cool weapons in superhero-dom just because it’s bourne out of Marston’s bondage fantasies, but there you go. Perhaps she hasn’t read any of Gail Simone’s Wonder Woman issues, where she demonstrates how Wondy's lasso basically turns her into Professor X once she gets it around you? Maybe she's unfamiliar with the Greg Rucka issue in which she braided her lasso into a flail and used it to beat the shit out of Silver Swan?

5) The Invisible Plane

Next on the chopping block is Wondy’s invisible plane. I don’t have much of a dog in that fight, as I can take it or leave it. I will say, though, that Ashby again acts like it’s uniquely absurd among superhero paraphernalia, when in fact it’s downright pedestrian compared to the crazy shit Superman owned in the Silver Age.

4) Terrible Villains

Well, Ashby and I finally agree on something: that Circe sucks.

That said, she’s hardly the first person to point out that Wondy is lacking in fantastic bad guys, and she’s not entirely wrong. The thing is, though, that, again, this isn’t a uniquely Wondy-centric problem.

The modern Cheetah, Dr. Psycho, Ares, Circe, and Giganta aren’t that bad a core group of villains to have. It’s not Joker and Catwoman, no, but almost no DC heroes outside of Batman and the Flash have a rogues gallery worth writing home about. That’s why Superman fights Lex Luthor, Braniac, and General Zod or some other heretofore unknown Kryptonian every other week.

In fact, there are very few superheroes at all who have great rogues galleries. Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and Green Lantern are all about on par with Wondy, and she does better for herself than characters like Aquaman and Hawkman.

3) Everybody Hates Steve Trevor

Well, she’s not entirely wrong there, either. Of course, Steve Trevor has been a retired Air Force officer in his 60’s for, like, the past twenty years, so I’m not sure how much of a difference it makes.

2) No Supporting Cast (Besides Steve Trevor)

Actually, Ashby gets this one entirely wrong. The problem isn’t that Wondy has no supporting cast. The problem is that she has way too much supporting cast that nobody ever uses.

When Wondy rebooted in the 80’s, she hung around people like the Katepalis family (Julia and Vanessa), Myndi Mayer, and the revamped Steve Trevor. When John Byrne took over the book, we got the Sandsmarks (Helena and Cassie, the latter of which is now Wonder Girl) and characters like Micah Rains and Etrigan the Demon. Then there are the reoccurring Amazons like Artemis, Phillipus, and Diana’s mother Hippolyte, with Greg Rucka adding Io to the mix a while back. Diana’s current supporting cast consists of Etta Candy, the secret agent Nemesis, and Sergeant Steel (basically a ripoff of Marvel’s Nick Fury). In between you had characters like the odious Trevor Barnes, Hercules, and the various workers at Diana’s embassy, as well as her former sidekick Donna Troy.

So yeah. The problem isn’t any inherent weakness in Di’s supporting cast; the problem is that writers love changing her status quo, and there aren’t strong editors around to step in and stop them. However, Di has had the same supporting cast since her relaunch, so that’s a step in the right direction.

I do want to point out that Ashby takes Wonder Girl playing a bigger role in Teen Titans than Wondy’s book to be a sign of weakness on the part of Wondy’s character. That is not the case; Wonder Girl as a separate entity was created specifically for Teen Titans (before that, "Wonder Girl" was just what Diana was called when she was young; it was not a separate character), and that has always been her primary home.

1) We Already Have Superman

This final criticism of Ashby’s is one of the most common and fundamental misunderstandings of the character around.

Yes, we already have Superman.

That has nothing to do with Wondy, because they’re completely different characters.



Superman’s entire purpose is to maintain the status quo. When a building explodes, he fixes it. When a mountain crumbles, he puts it back together. When a giant robot invades the city, he repels it.

That’s not what Wonder Woman is about. She’s not just out to save the world – she’s out to change it. Wonder Woman’s superheroics are only incidental to her overall mission, which is to make the world a better place by teaching, through example, the virtues of empowerment and empathy. Wonder Woman’s greatest stories are the ones in which she demonstrates not only her strength, but her compassion and desire to work with and reform the villains she fights.

That was one of the coolest things about Wondy from the onset: Superman sent villains to the Phantom Zone. Batman locked them up in Arkham Asylum. Wondy brought her villains to Paradise Island, where they could learn the errors of their ways and eventually put their talents to use for the good of mankind. That’s something that Mark Waid got right at the end of Kingdom Come, when he has Diana take the surviving anti-heroes back to Paradise Island with her. It’s something that Gail Simone gets when she has Diana drop her defenses against the genetically-engineered gorilla army she’s fighting so that she can talk to them and eventually turn them into friends.

Simply put: a story in which a super strong flying person beats up a giant robot and saves the earth could be an excellent Superman story. But it would be a terrible Wonder Woman story, because that’s not the point of the character. Wonder Woman is not Supergirl. Wonder Woman is a challenging, complex, difficult character to get a grasp on, and if writers have had difficulties with her over the years, it's because of how rich the character is, not because she's just a lot of silly stuff cobbled together.

Basically, the things that Ashby points out are either false, misconceptions (widespread though they may be) based on ignorance, things that apply to pretty much every superhero, or strengths of the character that she takes to be weaknesses for one reason or another.

Keep in mind, for instance, that the things she dislikes most about the character (the invisible jet, the lasso, the costume, Steve Trevor) are all elements that were present in what were by far the character's most popular incarnations (her golden age comics and her 70's television show).

Yeah, it's fun to have a laugh at old Wondy bondage stories, but trying to pin Wondy's relative lack of popularity compared to, say, Batman on some of the most unique and fun aspects of the character overlooks actual phenomena, like the aversion on the part of fanboys to female superheroes in general, or the difficulty DC has had in the past five years promoting any of its monthly titles. Ashby never mentions the Flash, for instance, who has also had a ton of promotion in the last few years and who completely crashed and burned.

I must also briefly address the assertion that...

"In her monthly comic, which DC doggedly struggles to keep in publication (...)"

Wonder Woman routinely sells between 35,000 - 40,000 copies per month. This makes it a solid performer for DC, whose titles range from the 80,000 copies per month mark with Justice League of America, to something like Blue Beetle, which only moves 12,000 copies on a good month. What's more, Wonder Woman is usually the top-selling superheroine comic every month, aside from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Shouldn't that be telling us something about how fandom in general receives women superheroes?

What's more, this figure is up some 15,000 - 20,000 copies from the end of Wondy's last series under Greg Rucka, indicating that the character has generated more interest in the last few years.

And there you have it. I really do encourage anyone who reads this to take a look at some of the stories that I mentioned for yourself.

It's certainly fun to bash old comics for being hokey, but by immediately dismissing them because they are hokey, it's possible to miss out on some really great stuff. Wonder Woman is an important, unique, and extremely interesting character. She's worth checking out.

In Defense of Batman & Robin

Okay. I haven't abandoned my Wondy project - I have the next entry more or less ready to go; I've just been too lazy to edit it and collect the necessary images.

But, of course, the big news of the hour is Batman. Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight made over $150 million last weekend, breaking a bunch of records that nobody really cares about because they'll be broken next year by a big-budget Sleepwalker adaptation.

Mark my words: Future summer blockbuster.

It's an amazing movie, as you probably know by now. But I don't really feel like talking about it at the moment; that'll come a couple weeks from now after I've had more time to digest it and maybe see it again and think of something funny to say about it after I get all of the tasteless jokes revolving around Heath Ledger being dead out of my system.

No, I want to take a look at a movie that something like 75% of Batman Begins and Dark Knight reviews go out of their way to trash - 1997's Batman & Robin.

You could add a babydoll dress, Doc Martens, and Lisa freaking Loeb to this poster and it still wouldn't look any more 90's than it already does.

The movie is infamous among fanboys as one of the worst comic-to-film adaptations of all time. Its name is practically synonymous with "bad movie," and there was much rejoicing when Christopher Nolan took the character in a grittier, more down-to-earth direction.

But that's a bunch of bullshit. As is often the case, fanboys are guilty here of taking themselves and the characters they read about way too seriously. Because while it may not be the dark, pseudo-realistic take that Dark Knight is, Batman & Robin is, it its own way, a really awesome movie that's too readily dismissed by just about everybody.

I'm going to say it right now: B&R has some of the finest dialog of any live-action Batman film or TV show ever. Don't believe me?

Poison Ivy: Mammals! A day of reckoning is coming! That's right, the same plants and flowers that saw you crawl from the primordial soup will reclaim the planet. And there will be no-one to protect you!
Gossip Gerty: You must be new in town! In Gotham City, Batman and Robin protect us... even from plants and flowers!

Poison Ivy: There's just something about an anatomically correct rubber suit that puts fire in a girl's lips.
Batman: Why is it that all the beautiful ones are homicidal maniacs? Is it me?

Mr. Freeze: I will blanket the city in endless winter. First Gotham, and then the world!
Poison Ivy: Just what I had in mind. Everything dead on earth, except us. A chance for Mother Nature to start again. Behold - the dawn of a new age! My mutant plants have the strength of the deadliest animals. Once you have frozen mankind, these babies will overrun the globe, and we shall rule them, for we will be the only two people left in the world.
Mr. Freeze: Adam... and Evil!

Mr. Freeze: Allow me to break the ice. My name is Freeze. Learn it well. For it's the chilling sound of your doom!

Mr. Freeze: Ice to see you!

There is nothing not to love about this image.

The last one is noteworthy as a representative of the ten million puns Arnold Schwarzenegger's Mr. Freeze makes about cold stuff throughout the movie.

Visually, the movie is garish. Every single actor hams it up as much as they possibly can, to hilarious results (Uma Thurman's Poison Ivy at one point, when foiled, actually yells out, "Curses!"). The plot of the movie doesn't really make sense (for starter's, Poison Ivy's plan to repopulate the planet might not work so well after Mr. Freeze kills everything on it), nor does it pretend to. And it's all totally awesome.

Actual line: "Men, the most absurd of God's creatures. We give you life... and we can take it away just as easily."

Here's the thing. Fanboys have in the past and still do have to deal with the fact that the objects of their hobby of choice - comics - are looked at by most people as either simple kiddie fare or as a substitute for pornography. How far from the truth that is (and often times, the answer is "not very") isn't really important; lots of fans feel as though they have something to prove in regard to their hobby, which means that they want representations of their favorite characters in other media to be as serious and "adult" as possible. Just look around at how many people said in regards to Batman Begins something along the lines of, "Finally, somebody taking Batman seriously!"

And that's not to say that there's anything wrong with serious, gritty takes on various characters. Dark Knight is awesome, and Heath Ledger's Joker is genius, and blah, blah, blah.

The problem is that there tends to be a huge backlash among certain groups against non-serious adaptations in general, and campy ones in particular.

The completely brilliant 1960's Batman show often falls prey to this, with lots of fans thinking that they're clever and sophisticated for pointing out how absurd the whole thing is.

Likewise, there's a ton of bagging on Batman & Robin for how goofy it was.

Well, no kidding. You know what? Batman is a goofy character. He's campy, flamboyant, and theatrical. Bruce Wayne is a tortured soul, sure, but he's also a guy who comes up with cute names for all of his accessories and ensures that, as much as possible, they resemble tiny bats. His regular foes include a clown, a dominatrix, a chubby dandy with a bird motif, and someone who based a criminal career on the number 2.

Quiz: Are you looking at A) a photo of Robin from Batman & Robin or B) promo art from a new series on Bravo?

It's really not surprising that these ingredients should occasionally turn out something bright, colorful, and silly. In fact, one of Batman's big strengths is how ridiculous and colorful his world is. That's one of the reasons he can change so much and still be recognizable as Batman - if the 1960's Batman show is Batman with the color setting on the TV turned all the way up, then Dark Knight is Batman in black and white. But they're both great.

Batman & Robin isn't as good as the 60's TV series; don't get me wrong. It's not even close to the best modern Batman movie. The 1966 Batman is still the second-best Batman movie ever (right behind Batman: Mask of the Phantasm). But B&R isn't the travesty a lot of people think it is, and certainly doesn't belong in the category of truly awful comic book films like Roger Corman's The Fantastic Four or the 1990 Captain America. The whole thing is goofy, loud, hilarious, and, if you don't go into it with some sort of chip on your shoulder regarding silly takes on a guy who runs around in a cape and beats up the mentally ill, a ton of fun.

Michael Turner

So I'm taking a break in my series of Wondy articles to talk about something considerably more important than comics that ship late and stories that don't go anywhere.

On June 27th, 2008, superstar cartoonist Michael Turner died from complications related to bone cancer, which he had been battling for years. He was thirty-seven years old.

Teen Titans #1

With the possible exception of Jim Lee, Michael Turner was the single most popular cover artist working in comics today. More than Alex Ross. More than J.G. Jones. More than Steve McNiven. Whatever one might think of his style, it was distinct, consistent, and wildly popular.

Turner basically put Top Cow Comics on the map in the mid-90's with Witchblade. In high school, I had a huge poster of his character "Fathom" on my wall. In college, I had pin-ups he did of various characters on my wall and a poster of the cover to Identity Crisis #4 - featuring Wonder Woman - on my door. Which, I suppose, goes to show that one didn't have to be a horny straight teenager to appreciate the way he rendered women.

Witchblade #1

Wondy vs. Dinosaurs.

Identity Crisis #4

There are lots of things that you can say about his art, and I'm not going to pretend that I was always in love with it. But there was always an energy surrounding the things he drew. His drawings looked cool. Take a look at his drawing for the cover of the upcoming Uncanny X-Men #500. He was one of the few artists who could make me feel like I was ten years old again, just in awe of how cool everything looked.

Uncanny X-Men #500

Incidentally, there seems to be some curse surrounding talented cartoonists named "Michael." In 1996, the insanely talented Mike Parobeck died at the age of thirty-one. Just last year, one of my favorite cartoonists in the business - Mike Weiringo - died at forty-four of sudden heart failure. I'll probably cook up entries for both of them in the future, because they really were great talents and the industry is poorer for their absence.


But this is about Turner, so take a look at the sample of his work here. As far as I know, the last interior work he did was at DC on the Superman/Batman storyline that introduced the new Supergirl. Rubbish story, but gorgeous art. Check it out sometime if only to gaze at the amazing pictures.

Supergirl

Who the Hell is Wonder Woman? pt. 3

Wonder-foe Giganta destroying Times Square. Typical redhead. Astute readers might notice her bold use of Donna Troy as a necklace. Hi, Donna!

So. Having read my last entry, you might be thinking, “Hey, this story sounds pretty cool; I wonder what happened next.”

Probably not, but you might be.

At any rate, that’s where I and many other fans were in July of ’06

But I’ll get to that in a second. To really get the full impact of what the Wonder Woman relaunch was like, you’re going to need to know a little about the history of how comic books are made and published.

Okay.

So back in the 1930’s and 40’s…

Hey. Hey.

Don’t you dare click away. I promise this will be interesting. And brief. Sort of.

So originally, when comics consisted of a mixture of new material, reprinted newspaper strips, and short, text-only stories, they were larger in dimension and page-count than they are now. Various books were released on monthly, bi-monthly, and quarterly schedules, and featured a number of stories and features per issue.

The 1940's Wonder Woman, seen here in a rare appearance where she doesn't look as much like she wandered off the set of a weird bondage porn as usual.

Lest you be tempted to raise your fist and shout, “Damn you, Greatest Generation!” for one-upping us technologically-superior slackers once again, let me assure you that almost every single comic published in the “golden age” was total garbage and completely unreadable unless you’re a six-year-old in 1941 shouting “Wuxtry!” on a street corner or something. There were exceptions – Will Eisner’s Spirit, Jack Cole’s Plastic Man, and some Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Captain Marvel material – but in general stories were simple, formulaic, and boring, and artwork was extremely crude.
Many is the fan who has gone through DC’s Archives in search of what they think will be some cool, pulp noir adventure stories, and come up with a pile of crudely-drawn nonsense that’s more notable for being full of really embarrassing ethnic caricatures than anything.

Fast forward to the 1960’s. Comics are now smaller in both dimension and page-count.

The 1960's Mod Wonder Woman. Sock it to me? Daddy-O? I have no idea.

At this point, it’s rare that you’re getting multiple features per comic. Early in the “silver age,” you’re still getting multiple stories per comic, but that increasingly changes to stories that take up a whole issue. When Marvel arrives on the scene and comics like Fantastic Four and Amazing Spider-Man become wildly popular, we begin to see *gasp* stories that span multiple issues in order to accommodate larger artwork by superstar artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, as well as Stan Lee’s ongoing, soap-opera style subplots.

This, incidentally, is when superhero comics really become readable en masse. 60’s comics like Superman, Amazing Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, Daredevil, Flash, and others are still a blast to read now assuming you can get past really dated pop culture references, the fact that everybody in the world is white unless they're the monarch of some African or Asian nation, and everyone treating women with as much respect as they would have given their dog had it learned to talk and started nagging them.

Once we get to the 80’s and 90’s, multiple-issue stories are the norm, and comics have shrunk once again.

Wondy trying out a rarely-used superpower: the ability to look really fucking 80's.

And that brings us to where we are now.

At this point, following a comic series requires you being okay with the fact that, in general, you’re going to have to pick up five or six issues in a row in order to get one complete story. The reason for this is that longer stories are easier to collect into sizeable trade paperbacks that can then be sold at Barnes & Noble.

If the issues are released monthly, that means that it can take half a year to complete one story.

And that’s a fairly big “if.” See, another reason that it takes so many issues to tell a single story now is that the way comics are drawn has changed a lot. Less happens on a given page of a modern comic book than happened on a page drawn in the 1960's.

Top: Superman page from the 60's. Superman changes out of his disguise, flies to the fucking moon, and pulls it out of the sky to plug up a volcano.

Bottom: Astonishing X-Men page from 2008. Wolverine is in a tree for four panels.

Publishing schedules also aren't what they used to be. It was once the case that twelve issues of Amazing Spider-Man (or whatever) were published every year no matter what happened. If the regular writer or artist of the book had trouble getting material in under deadline, there were back-up scripts and fill-in artists ready to go.

That's not so much the case anymore. Both Marvel and DC have become extremely lax when it comes to giving popular creators the time they need to work on a book, even if that means that months go by without an issue seeing print.

One of the most egregious examples here would be All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder written by Frank Miller and drawn by Jim Lee. The latter is insanely talented, probably the single most popular comic book artist of the past twenty years, and also incredibly busy working on a number of projects at any given time while running his own publishing imprint, Wildstorm. The former wrote things like Sin City, Daredevil, and Dark Knight Returns.

Actual, unaltered panel from All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder.

All-Star Batman and Robin #1 was released in July of '05 and was advertised as a bi-monthly comic. Issue #2 was released in September of '05. So far, so good. Issue #3 was released in December of '05. Slipping a little, but whatever. Then you get to issue #4. Released in May 2006. And that was the only issue released that year. Issue #5 came out in May 2007, and the series has become somewhat more regular since then. However, to date there have only been nine issues of All-Star Batman released since July of '05. And keep in mind that this is one big story that we're buying in instalments that take about ten minutes to read.

While it's cool that comics have way higher standards for their art and higher production values than they had in the past, I tend to think that all of the time spent on getting these really elaborate comics to print negates one of the big advantages of the medium - that it's a visual medium that can be produced fairly rapidly. Having twelve issues of X-Men a year is, I think, a nice alternative to waiting a few years for a movie to be produced.

All this is just to show that following a monthly comic can really suck if you actually care about a storyline enought that you'd like to see it finish while you can still remember how it started.

Unfortunately, Wondy suffered from this problem.

As mentioned in a previous entry, Wondy #1 was released in June of '06 and sold a whopping 132,600 copies. Issue #2 was a few weeks late, arriving in August, and only moved 84,500 copies. Not as great as #1, but still excellent for a Wondy book. It was at this point that they announced that the book would be bi-monthly, so of course it immediately got even slower than that, and issue #3 didn't arrive 'til November of '06 and sold 77,000 copies. Wondy continued on its quarterly schedule with #4 in February of ' 07 at 69,847 copies. At this point the book has lost about half its readers.

We're then told that #5 is being pushed back. Then it's being rescheduled. Then it's being rescheduled indefinitely; when issue #5 is actually released in March of '07, a different creative team is behind the book, and the story that began in issue #1 is still totally unresolved. To finally read the ending of "Who is Wonder Woman?", we had to wait until Wonder Woman Annual #1 in September of '07.

In short, it was over a year before the 5-part storyline was completed. A story comprised of just over a hundred pages took over a year to be released.

The wonky release schedule caused sales to plummet, and fans were up in arms over the whole thing, accusing Heinberg of neglecting his Wondy-duties because of his recently-appointed position of executive producer of Grey's Anatomy.

The whole thing basically turned into a huge debacle, and that's even before we get into the quality of the story itself.

Next time I'll look at how the story actually progressed, and we'll see whether or not it was worth waiting a year to see Diana twirl her way back into our hearts.

Diana fights off her one weakness: bigness.

Who the Hell is Wonder Woman? pt. 2

Okay.

Now that anybody who actually read my last entry is a Wonder-history-buff, it’s time to look at 2006’s Wonder Woman #1.

It's all fun and games until all your eagle pals are sucked into a jet engine.

The issue was released in June of 2006, four months after the final issue of Wondy’s previous series.

Superman doing what he does best: crushing women and American soldiers with a tank.

The issue was written by Allan Heinberg, who you might recognize as a writer on shows like Sex and the City and Grey’s Anatomy. Prior to working on Wondy, he created and wrote Young Avengers over at Marvel, which is basically a super-gay ripoff of DC’s Young Justice.

They add a couple chicks to their team a few issues later. They're not happy about it.

Art chores were handled by Terry and Rachel Dodson, a husband-and-wife team of cartoonists well known for their cheesecake art. They became popular for their work on Harley Quinn (the clown girl from the Batman cartoons) and some Spider-Man/Black Cat miniseries that I’ve never read but I think was written by Kevin Smith and which we can probably assume was awful. They turned out some spectacular work on Wonder Woman, and made some slight adjustments to Wondy's outfit.

Boobs: The Series

It’s important to understand how high fan expectations were with this issue. Wondy had gone months without a series of her own, and the series that had just wrapped up had been mired in dreary politics and self-doubt. The last issue of her series wasn’t even really about her; it was about Superman. Fans were hungry for material.

In addition, you had DC’s blowhard editor-in-chief, Dan Didio, hyping up Diana’s new series at every opportunity. Here are some choice quotes to keep in mind for later:

“So, what I’m hoping is that one arc leads to the next leads to the next. We might give him breaks in between, but Allan is a guy who wants to be involved in Wonder Woman’s history for a good period of time, and we’re happy to let him play as long as he wants.”

From Heinberg:

"She's arguably as strong as Superman and as cunning as Batman, but she's not the archetypal Boy Scout or Dark Knight. She's been a princess, a goddess, a politician, an author, and a superhero. She's a pacifist, yet she's arguably the DCU's fiercest warrior. She has one of the most complex histories and supporting casts in comics history. But with Wonder Woman #1 we have an opportunity to peel back the layers a bit and simply ask, ‘Who is this woman? What does she want? And what's she going to do about it?’”

Sounds exciting, right? Lots of people thought so. It had been quite a while since someone who actually liked Wonder Woman and was familiar with her earlier comics history had written the book, and after years of Greg Rucka’s heavy-handed political and mythological stories, the promise of a fun, kinetic super-hero comic was very attractive.

This anticipation definitely showed, sales-wise. Wonder Woman #1 sold 132,600 copies the month of its release, and was the second-highest-selling DC title that month (only behind the $1, 80-page Brave New World special). That’s a huge number for Wondy, whose previous title used to move around 30,000 copies per month, and whose book currently pushes around 40,000. A really ugly variant cover courtesy of Adam Kubert boosted these sales.

Diana tries out her new superpower: an enormous fucking hand.

So how was the issue? Not that bad, actually.

In it, we find out that Wonder Woman’s sister Donna Troy took over for Diana during her year off. To her credit, she put together an outfit that didn’t primarily function to showcase her ass. So that’s something, even if it does look like she watched Spartacus too many times before getting dressed in the morning.

Donna makes a typically subtle entrance in a gorgeous two-page spread by Terry and Rachel Dodson.

Donna herself is an… interesting character. She’s sort of like DC’s low-rent answer to Marvel’s Jean Grey in that she has number of code names and occasionally gains god-like powers and goes insane. She also has the most fucked-up origin in comics, being a mirror-twin magical clone of Wonder Woman who was tortured for 1,000 lifetimes before being raised by the Amazons and eventually beginning a career as Wonder Girl.

Donna debuts a new costume in 1969's Teen Titans #33 on the right, and flies toward us in the first issue of what turned out to be an utterly irrelevant miniseries with gorgeous art by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez.

Over the course of the issue, we also find out that she’s totally incompetent. Three of Wondy’s regular villains – Cheetah, Giganta, and Dr. Psycho – team up in an attempt to bring Diana out of exile. Donna engages them, is immediately incapacitated, and spends most of the next four issues being worn as a necklace by Giganta, a character who’s code-name is only slightly less subtle than if she were named “Huge-ella.”

There were some wonky aspects of the issue. Donna’s incompetence is one; at one point the Cheetah just sort of waltzes up to her and grabs the golden lasso from her. Donna has her shit totally wrecked by the powerful telepath Dr. Psycho a few pages later, when he forces her to hallucinate being attacked by a crazed, murderous Diana.

Defeated by her one weakness: phallic imagery.

The big reveal at the end of the first issue is… Diana! Fresh off her year of self-discovery and dressed to impress in a skin-tight white cat-suit, hot pink-tinted glasses, and those weird moon boots that the Dodsons insist on putting everyone in. She is introduced as Diana Prince, a name not used regularly by Wondy since the mid-80’s.

So what exactly is going on? What has Di decided to do with her life? Will Donna prove to be anything other than useful? And just what is the horrible truth of this story’s release schedule? We’ll find out next time.

Diana, still unaccustomed to wearing an outfit that doesn't leave her boobs hanging out all over the place.