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DC Universe Surgery

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18:46 / 16.08.05

Well, I'd disgree that Millar has ever written Batman as a loon, but I think I'd rather carry on that discussion in another thread.

As for the size of the Bat family, I think it's a little swollen and unwieldy and frankly I'd rather watch Bats take on the world singlehanded.

18:52 / 16.08.05

Swollen?

How did "Azrael : Agent of the Bat" die, anyway?

Are Being Stolen By Bandits

19:23 / 16.08.05

He toppled off a balcony, fighting a bad guy, in Azrael #100. His costume was recovered riddled with bullet-holes, and he was presumed dead, but no body has ever been found.

19:49 / 16.08.05

Something wrong with the word swollen?

19:51 / 16.08.05

Perhaps there can be two Batmen? One that operates in his books, devoid of "help", and then one that inspires and sometimes leads the battle for the Gotham Knights. Two different kinds of stories. Maybe a DCU Earth-Team and Earth-Solo? S'what I'd do, at least.

I'd almost argue that until recently we did have two Batmans, though not quite along the lines you specify...

In JLA, Superman/Batman and miscellaneous guest appearances throughout the DCU, we had likeable, mentally stable, ultragifted strategist, gadget-building supergenius Batman.

In Batman's own titles, we had unlikeable, unstable, interpersonally abusive, generally constipated with no healthy relationships walking-time-bomb Batman.

Sadly, the current IC buildup seems to be extending the latter characterization throughout the DCU...

19:59 / 16.08.05

Something wrong with the word swollen?

Not at all. Actually, perfect.

Jake, Colossus of Clout

20:03 / 16.08.05

Lunatic is probably not the right word. He's not Punisher-crazy, but Batman is definitely obsessive, incredibly rigid and he deals with the loss of his parents by dressing up like a Bat and beating the snot out of muggers. He may not be a lunatic, per se, but he's definitely not stable.

20:04 / 16.08.05

In JLA, Superman/Batman and miscellaneous guest appearances throughout the DCU, we had likeable, mentally stable, ultragifted strategist, gadget-building supergenius Batman.

In Batman's own titles, we had unlikeable, unstable, interpersonally abusive, generally constipated with no healthy relationships walking-time-bomb Batman.

But which is better? Which is the definitive Batman? One's more FUN, true, in that we get sci-fi closets and strategy. But the other sells movies, and talks about thematic psychodrama.

I shall mourn the promise of Hypertime in the Post-Post-Crisis DCU.

Jake, Colossus of Clout

20:16 / 16.08.05

Well, I LIKE the Morrison sci-fi closet Batman, but he isn't particularly Batman-ish. I think the darkness and the brooding and various tragedies are what makes him Batman. Otherwise hes just... I dunno, a really smart, nonpartisan Captain America.

21:37 / 16.08.05

I don't disagree that a certain degree of brooding darkness is integral to the character; I'd simply argue that the current portrayal in the Bat-books is so unsubtle as to stray into self-parody the majority of the time. Unfortunately, in their endless ham-fisted mimicking of late 80s Frank Miller, the Bat-editors have pretty much written themselves into a corner at this point...

Jake, Colossus of Clout

21:56 / 16.08.05

I can't really comment on the current Bat-books, because I've heard they're awful. I read a bit of the Bruce Wayne: Murderer? storyline, and it was so awful that I don't even bother to skim in the store anymore. Apparently a lot of people like that shit, though.

The grim psychodrama Batman can be done very well, though. Just because the people doing it right now are hacks doesn't mean the approach isn't valid.

07:30 / 17.08.05

he's a complicated man, and no-one understands him like his butler

that's wayne. can you dig it? bruce wayne.

all batmen are fine and can exist within the same batpersona, most of us are different people at work to how we are mashed up down the front at a gig. why can't bats be too? the company in JLA obviously does him good.

12:33 / 17.08.05

Well, we've been trying to figure out Supergirl for the entire length of this thread, and I think the general consensus is "fucknose". So. Does anyone pretend to understand the Hawkman situation? I mean, is there even a Hawkman right now?

13:06 / 17.08.05

So. Does anyone pretend to understand the Hawkman situation? I mean, is there even a Hawkman right now?

I asked this a few pages back in the thread. The answer gave me enough basic groundwork to be able to read a shitload of Hawkman and then sort of get it. I tried, just now, to type a quick answer, but immediately collapsed under the weight of the mythos. The best I can do is that he's a guy named Carter Hall who's been reincarnated thousands of times and who flies with the help of a quasi-magical metal called Nth-Metal from the planet Thanagar. The people of Thanagar, semi-coincidentally, are also hawk-people. Obviously it's way more complicated than that, but between reincarnation and Nth-Metal, you've got the basics.

And yes, there was a Hawkman up until a couple of months ago, when he was savagely disembowled and de-limbed by a coalition of his enemies in a sequence that I frankly cannot believe appeared in a mainstream DCU comic book. (Seriously, we're talking Vertigo levels of violence here.) So at the moment, he's quite dead, and his long-lost son Golden Eagle has taken his place as Hawkman, but considering the fact that the ENTIRE POINT of the character is reincarnation, it shouldn't take long.

13:06 / 17.08.05

oh, there sure is. He's Carter Hall and he is the curator of an archaeological museum in the created-just-for-the-new-Hawkman-ongoing-series St. Roch, sort of a New Orleans for the DC version of America.

Basically, when Geoff Johns and James Robinson brought him back in the early JSA stories, they figured that his character was best expressed as a sometimes brutal guy who has wings and a big mace. The series has focused on his struggle to keep the violent warrior part of him under control a la Wolverine, and his on-off-romance with Hawkgirl (I don't think she's called Hawkwoman but I could be wrong), who is the reincarnated version of his true love (both Hawkman and Hawkgirl are reincarnated versions; this is how they explained all the previous Hawkman versions - they're all reincarnated, every generation gets a Hawk avatar, something like that.)

Actually, as I recall, they cleaned up the continuity with this reincarnation explanation rather nicely. The ongoing Hawkman series isn't great, it's ok superheroics at best. But he is back.

13:14 / 17.08.05

>> So at the moment, he's quite dead, and his long-lost son Golden Eagle has taken his place as Hawkman,

Hawkman came back to life the issue after he 'died' - I skimmed the issue in the store. So that's all sorted out then. I don't remember the explanation. He then attacked the villians who 'killed' him and of course, they were all like 'YOU?!?!? HOW --- !??!!?!'

21:55 / 17.08.05

I love a good gratutious bit of 'YOU?!?!? HOW --- !??!!?!'

m.

03:05 / 18.08.05

Guh. Reincarnation? But surely some of these incarnations- (Justice Society, Justice League, high-tech Robocop/Judge Dredd version, gritty vigilante, after-this-I-get-a-bit-fuzzy) overlap? Or are we talking about some kind of Crow/Grendel/Ghost Rider "Hawk Spirit" that turns random passersby into alien cops with antigravity belts?
Yeeechh. Marvel editors may ass-rape their writers, but at least they seem to be paying attention to what's happening. Mostly.

14:00 / 18.08.05

You can try reading the Wikipedia entry, it seems fairly comprehensive.

15:36 / 18.08.05

or you can check the Comics 101 entries.
Hawkman: Winging It, Part 1

Hawkman: Winging It, Part 2

Hawkman: Winging It, Part 3

19:34 / 18.08.05

Tell me everything about Metron. The New God.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

20:27 / 18.08.05

Um, one of Kirby's New Gods - other than Fastbak, he's probably my favourite of them. He was the "God of Knowledge," as it were, and is ambiguous in his loyalties - he didn't side particularly with New Genesis or Apokolips officially, although I think he was usually seen as a New Genesis partisan most of the time. He rides around on a time/space manipulating Moebius Chair and his greatest desire is to know the Source intimately - which is a bit of a problem, because anyone that attempts to penetrate the Source Wall ends up as a gigantic petrified body on the wall itself.

He's cold, methodical, Spock-like. I seem to recall he was the one that invented the Boom Tube technology - or at least discovered the "X-Element" used to create the Tubes.

Often seen as the harbinger of bad things.

22:00 / 18.08.05

I was sure Metron had a human past or aspect... Like he was an upgraded human or something... I swear I'm not mixing this up with the Spectre.

Phex: Dorset Doom

22:14 / 18.08.05

Tell me everything you can about: Calculator.

I've never seen him, or heard him mentioned, before Identity Crisis. I know, from IC, that he was once a d-list villain, and now works as 'the anti-oracle' and as a key player in the looming Crisis, but how did he get to the point where he's rubbing shoulders with Lex Luthor. Oh, and where can I get some of those gorgeous horn-rimmed specs he wears? They just scream upper management potential.

00:01 / 19.08.05

I was sure Metron had a human past or aspect... Like he was an upgraded human or something... I swear I'm not mixing this up with the Spectre.

Doubt it; Metron parents were old gods. Or so he says.

00:49 / 19.08.05

I remember the Calculator as a guy with a keypad on his chest and a screen on his forehead, who would fight Batman by frantically pressing the keys on his chest to make, um, baseball bats and balls fly out of his head to attack him. Because, you know, they were in a baseball stadium. He showed up in Hero Hotline, and he was moving with the times, because he shot razor-sharp floppy disks out of his head. Or maybe I'm thinking of the Human Calculator. They are the same guy, right?

01:46 / 19.08.05

Chad, maybe you're getting crossed wires with The Black Racer, the New Gods' personification of death, who possesses a comatose vietnam vet, and, unfortunately, flies through space on skis and poles...

02:09 / 19.08.05

I remember the Calculator as a guy with a keypad on his chest and a screen on his forehead, who would fight Batman by frantically pressing the keys on his chest to make, um, baseball bats and balls fly out of his head to attack him. Because, you know, they were in a baseball stadium. He showed up in Hero Hotline, and he was moving with the times, because he shot razor-sharp floppy disks out of his head. Or maybe I'm thinking of the Human Calculator. They are the same guy, right?

yes. he decided to retire from the front lines, and use his computer skills to become a behind-the-scenes information broker. he's basically, as noted, the anti-Oracle.

D Terminator XXXIII

02:45 / 19.08.05

Has any archive appeared containing Murphy Anderson's art from the silver(? -gold?) age? If not, any other readily available collections you know of?

13:03 / 19.08.05

>> I remember the Calculator as a guy with a keypad on his chest and a screen on his forehead, who would fight Batman by frantically pressing the keys on his chest to make, um, baseball bats and balls fly out of his head to attack him.

Best Special Attack Move Ever.

13:17 / 19.08.05

unfortunately, flies through space on skis and poles...

I disagree on the "unfortunately." For whatever reason, I thought the Black Racer was one of the cooler aspects of the New Gods. Althuogh I'll grant you that between the skis in space and the surfboard in space, it's probably a good thing that Kirby never worked for NASA.

01:30 / 20.08.05

From the FF's excellent array of rockety and other airborne things (Flying Bathtub!), Galactupuppy's very very cool ship, and... the Whiz Wagon, I must disagree with any 'Kirby can't design cool space travel thingies' comments. Seriously, though, if you could be the armored spectre of death... on skis... in space... drawn by Jack Kirby... wouldn't you at least consider it for a second?

01:59 / 20.08.05

The other day I got my Jack Kirby Jimmy Olsen Vol.1 TPB and I was actually surprised when I saw how freaking cool the desing of the whiz wagon was. Too bad about the name though, it sounds like a car for urine related emergencies.

03:00 / 20.08.05

There've been many a time I wished for a vehicle designed for 'urine related emergencies.' In particular, I'm thinking of listening to Bill Hicks, 'Arizona Bay', on a barren stretch of SoCal highway, much too fast on a nearly empty tank, trying for a straight shot to a gas station.
Vehicles for bathing, vehicles for whizzing, vehicles planet-eating purple-hatted Gods... even The Hairies and such had cool vehicles that could do many things quite nicely.
Thinking on those Jimmy Olsen comics: Was Kirby the first regular writer of a Super-family book to regularly - if gently - make Supes the dupe and [insert normal human character of choice here] a badass? As opposed to Superman making Lois or Jimmy look like a complete fuck up by the end of each story *and* doubly so on any given cover.
And did anybody else idolize scuba-boy Flippa as a kid? The kid was prepared! For anything involving, well, a wetsuit. I always dug him the same way I loved the Kirby/Lee Black Panther, Patsy Walker, and Zatara... when nobody else seemed to. And now he seems to have gone away - at least, I don't remember him from any of the mid-nineties Cadmus stories.

09:12 / 20.08.05

The late-70's/early 80's Lois Lane was a badass in her own book, she'd picked up the Kryptonian martial art Klurkor from somewhere, and when her ridiculous, Cluesou-like disguises didn't work, she'd just whup the tar out of everyone, Shang-Chi style. A bit like Sarah Jane Smith being such a wuss in Doctor Who, but when she got her own pilot, she was all JUDO CHOP! JUDO TRIP!

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