Marvel Comics

Year of Superman Week 32: Crossover Chaos

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Last week, I wrote about some of Superman’s strangest team-ups. This week  I’ve decided to focus on some of his more conventional crossovers, meetings where Superman has encountered the heroes (and villains) of other worlds. I’ve already written about a couple of them, most notably the first Superman/Aliens miniseries from Dark Horse, but this week I’ve got a list of times he met with characters from Marvel Comics, Image Comics, other Dark Horse heroes, and more. It actually may wind up being more than one week, honestly, it’s a long list. But I’m going to begin at the beginning. 

And as always, you can check out earlier blogs in the Year of Superman Archive!

Wed., Aug. 6

Comics: Superman Vs. the Amazing Spider-Man

Battle of the corporate icons!

Notes: This special from 1976 was the first official meeting between characters from the Marvel and DC Universes. Gerry Conway, who had written both characters, teamed up with penciller Ross Andru and inker Dick Giordano for this one, a pretty substantial endeavor at the time. 96 pages, a hefty $2 price point, and an oversized book demanded a story that was worth it…and Conway delivered. The book opens up with a pair of extended prologues where Superman and Spider-Man face off against and capture their respective arch-foes, Lex Luthor and Dr. Octopus. Either of these prologues, by the way, could have easily served as the first half of a story in the heroes’ individual comics, with a standard set-up and nothing that indicates that these two formerly separate universes had begun to bleed together. That doesn’t come until Prologue 3, when Lex is marched into his new prison cell in a maximum security facility in New Mexico, only to find that Otto Octavius is right down the hall. Luthor asks Octavius if he’d be interested in a team-up before revealing he’d hidden a set of tools beneath a layer of fake skin that allowed for a prison break.

Finally, a third of the way into this mammoth comic book, we reach “Chapter One,” in which Peter Parker and Clark Kent finally encounter one another for the first time at a science conference. Both newsmen are having a rough time – Peter finally quits the Daily Bugle in a fit of rage at ol’ J. Jonah Jameson’s frequent abuse, and Clark learns that he’s having a major story ripped out from under him at WGBS because the network wants a “bigger name” reporter. They’re each licking their respective wounds when Superman – or rather, someone who looks like him – swoops in and kidnaps Lois Lane and Mary Jane Watson by zapping them with rays that make them disappear. The heroes both duck out and change clothes, only to encounter one another on the roof. Spider-Man thinks Superman was behind the kidnapping, whereas Spidey’s reputation (thanks to the aforementioned J.J.J.) makes Superman suspect he’s involved, and we get the requisite fight scene. Luthor and Doc Ock are nearby and decide to make things more fun by zapping Spidey with a ray that temporarily enhances his powers, making him strong enough to hold his own against the Man of Steel. After throwing enough punches to satisfy the readers, they calm down, compare notes, and decide to team up to get to the bottom of things.

From there, the story goes largely as you expect – they track down the villains who are holding the girls hostage, they’re sent on a few wild goose chases, and ultimately, the day is saved. But it’s really great to see how well the two of them work together. Honestly, the fight scene is the weakest part of the book, because it requires you to believe that both of these veteran heroes are going to go in spoiling for a fight. It MAY be justifiable if they were totally unfamiliar with one another, but in this iteration where the DC and Marvel heroes co-exist, they know each other by reputation. Superman MAY think Spidey is sketchy thanks to his bad press, but there’s no way Spider-Man would go in swinging against Superman.

Once you get past that, it’s much more satisfying to see them working together, fighting the bad guys, and rescuing Lois and MJ. Conway cleverly aligns things so that each hero gets a moment at the end that gives them a win that they couldn’t have done without the other. Luthor’s schemes wind up cooking up a tsunami Spider-Man could never stop it on his own, but Superman can…only the bad guys would escape were he to do so…if not for Spider-Man. Neat little trick that allows them each to have their moment in the sun.

It took time, but this was the pebble that eventually led to an avalanche of crossovers in the 90s, to the point that it started to feel less special. The sad thing is that familiarity – plus a bit of bad blood – led to the publishers doing nothing together for close to two decades. Next month’s Deadpool/Batman is finally bringing it back, and I couldn’t be happier about that. I love a good crossover, a good combination of characters that don’t usually appear together.

Thur., Aug. 7

Comics: Superman/Madman Hullabalo #1-3

A crisis of philosophical proportions!

Notes: Next up on my tour of Superman Crossovers Past is this little gem from 1997, Mike Allred’s Superman/Madman Hullabaloo. I discovered Allred’s Madman in college (which I believe is scientifically proven to be the best way to discover the character) and I quite quickly became a fan. Madman is markedly different from most other superhero characters. He is — or was, at this point — an enigmatic creature, a corpse brought back to life with no memory of his past except for a fleeting vision he believes to be the Hand of God. Taking the name Frank Einstein (there is no reason to be subtle in comic books) he becomes a sort of science hero, having adventures in the face of the strangest things imaginable. 

In this story, Frank and Superman — in their respective universes — are each working on an experiment that causes them to collide. Their bodies remain in place, but their minds swap places and universes, leaving each hero wearing a mashup of their uniforms and possessing a fragment of Superman’s powers. As Superman is found by Frank’s team, Lois Lane finds Frank and brings him to Emil Hamilton. On two different worlds the heroes look for a solution. 

Superman and Frank’s team manage to snap over to Metropolis where they meet up with Lois, Hamilton, and Frank. They quickly manage to restore the heroes to their proper bodies, but fragments of Superman’s powers have been absorbed by various people in both dimensions, leading to the heroes teaming up and hunting them down to restore Superman to full power. In their search, they discover that Mr. Myzptlyk is behind their difficulties, leading Frank to challenge the imp to a contest to give up the game…the greatest contest of them all. It’s Mxy versus the Madman in a game of…(drumroll please)… TWISTER. 

It’s really impressive to me just how easily Superman mixes in with Allred’s universe. He looks fantastic in Allred’s art style, and I love the two mashup designs for the blended heroes. Even more than that, though, Superman works so well with the Madman tone. Madman is perhaps the most philosophical ongoing superhero comic book of all time, after all, just as prone to quietly contemplating the meaning of existence as he is to getting into fisticuffs. In fact, one of the first things he does after he and Clark are separated and get to have a real conversation is ask the Man of Steel if he believes in God. How often does that sort of thing turn up in mainstream comics?

Allred also easily evades the trap of having the heroes fight each other for no real reason before the team up begins. As Superman himself points out, he and Frank were literally parts of one another for a while there — if he can’t trust him, who can he trust? They work together very well. If they appeared in the same world on a regular basis, in fact, I could truly believe the two of them are friends. It’s a lovely, quiet, unorthodox little crossover, and I love it.

I don’t think Superman always gets enough credit — from fans or writers — for his intelligence. I don’t mean the whole “Super scientist who builds robot duplicates of himself” either, I mean his emotional intelligence. He’s shown himself often of being so capable of connecting with people on a deep, real level. And in a way, that’s kind of what Madman is all about — connection, trying to find out how the universe is all tied together. Frank is literally a walking corpse, but he’s found love. He’s found a home. He has friends and people who care about him. I’m gonna put on my English teacher hat here for a moment and posit that the reason that Victor Frankenstein is “the monster” in Mary Shelley’s novel isn’t necessarily because he “played God.” Doctors do that every day. But where Victor failed — and where those surrounding Frank Einstein succeed — is that he didn’t give any love to the creature he willed into existence. Jo and Dr. Flem may not be the creators of our ginchy hero, but they give him what Frankenstein didn’t. Earlier in this year we examined Superman as the Frankenstein monster in an Elseworlds tale, and I think the combination of these two heroes would be an interesting place to explore that further.

Allred worked on Superman again just a couple of years ago, in the “Not an Elseworlds Because We Weren’t Using That Label At the Time” miniseries Superman: Space Age where he was teamed with writer Mark Russell. And it was good. But I would love to see Frank Einstein and Clark Kent cross paths again.

Fri., Aug. 8

Comics: Superman/Gen 13 #1-3

Nope, Kara didn’t get a dye job…

Notes: When Image Comics was founded in the early 90s, Jim Lee’s Wildstorm Studios was one of the major players, with hits like WildC.A.T.S., Stormwatch, and Gen 13. And I think all of us were pretty surprised when, in 1998, he signed on at DC Comics, selling his studio and characters to DC and becoming one of their executives. Since then he’s only risen higher in the ranks, now serving as co-publisher. But in those early days of the marriage of DC and Wildstorm, when the two universes were still separate, this crossover was a nice little event.

Written by Adam Hughes with art by later Lex Luthor: Man of Steel artist Lee Bermejo, it begins with the Gen 13 kids – super-powered fugitives running from the government project that gave them their powers – taking a trip to Metropolis. Their leader, Caitlin Fairchild, is an unabashed Superman fan, and is ecstatic when they almost immediately run across a battle between Superman and Titano. Caitlin is knocked out in the chaos, and Superman puts his cape over her for protection as he goes off to tussle with the super-ape. When Caitlin wakes up she has lost her memory. She wanders into traffic and is hit by a fire truck, but survives without a scratch, and looking down at the cape that was draped over her when she woke up she comes to the obvious conclusion: she must be Supergirl.

Superman promises the Gen 13 kids to help them track down Caitlin, and they wind up at the Daily Planet, where Lois immediately figures out that they’re super-powered, because she’s smarter than the entire team put together. Meanwhile, Caitlin has acquired a store-bought Supergirl costume and makes her “debut” thwarting a bank robbery. Trying to embark upon a superhero career, Caitlin’s natural clumsiness comes out, causing one disaster after another as Superman and her teammates are always stuck one step behind her, cleaning up the messes that she’s made. And it all gets even worse when the real Supergirl gets wind of the chaos being done in her name. 

As you’ve probably noticed by now, I have a preference for crossovers that don’t do the standard “meet, fight, team-up” formula that we’ve seen so many times, and this particular series has the most clever sidestep for that I’ve ever seen. Not only do the respective heroes never get into a physical fight, there’s not really even a traditional antagonist. Oh sure, there are a couple of bad guys that need to be thwarted, but they’re all pretty incidental and interchangeable. The real story here is about Caitlin going missing and the ideological struggle between Superman and the rest of the Gen 13 kids. With the exception of Caitlin, the rest of the team is stuck in the mindset of Superman being a boring stiff, with Grunge at one point even expressing this to Clark Kent’s face, unaware of who he’s really talking to. We even get to see a nice conversation with Lois and Clark in which he does his best not to show how deeply hurt he actually is by the way the kids perceive him. As the story goes on, one by one, they slowly come around to realizing his true worth…although this kind of has the side effect of making them seem childish sometimes. From a character standpoint, it may be acceptable that a group of 90s teenagers would think of Superman as lame, but to have three of them making fun of the fourth for cooperating when Superman is actively trying to find their missing friend makes them all seem…well, not “lame,” but a much harsher word for it.

It’s a very nice workaround that tells a very different kind of crossover story. I don’t even mind the cliched depiction of amnesia here – nothing realistic about it, but you’ve got to allow for a certain suspension of disbelief. This one is just fun. 

Sat., Aug 9

Comics: Superman & Savage Dragon: Chicago #1 & Superman & Savage Dragon: Metropolis #1

When you draw the whole Superman crossover but you only have time for roughs of the cover, who do you get to finish it? Alex Ross.

Notes: I’ve never been a Savage Dragon reader, but I get anything with Superman in it, so I’ve had these two books in my collection since they were first released. That was over 20 years ago, though, and I don’t think I’ve read either of them since. I had to check the League of Comic Geeks website to even remind myself which one came out first, and as it turned out, that was a mistake. I got a few pages into Metropolis when Superman and Dragon first encounter each other and start talking like old friends, which got me confused. Metropolis came out in 1999, according to the website, whereas Chicago wasn’t released until the beginning of 2002. But I picked up Chicago instead and saw that I was getting the story of Superman and the Dragon’s first meeting. I wasn’t sure why they were published this way, although I have to wonder if Erik Larsen’s Chicago book was intended to come first but wound up suffering from the kind of delays that frequently plagued Image Comics at the time. When I got to the point where Lois Lane mentions that she’s engaged – an engagement that had ended in marriage several years earlier at that point – I figured that must be the case. The point of this paragraph is that if you happen to have both of these books, read Chicago first.

In Chicago, with story and art by Larsen, some of Superman’s foes are cropping up in the Windy City, having joined forces with the Dragon’s enemies in a crime organization called the Vicious Circle. Superman is called in to help with the menace, something that doesn’t sit well with Officer Dragon of the CPD. The two of them partner up, although the Dragon deeply resents this intruder into his city. Eventually, they manage to mend fences and beat the bad guy. And hey, at least they didn’t actually come to blows with each other.

Larsen has always kind of been hit or miss with me. I like some of his work, but the few times I’ve tried Savage Dragon I haven’t really found it to be to my taste. I can say that he doesn’t mind making his own character look like the jerk in this book, something that a lot of creators would refuse to do, and I appreciate that he writes a pretty solid Superman. Perhaps the best bit, though, is when Lois gets the Dragon to admit that at least part of his animosity against Big Blue is just because of simple jealousy.

Note: this scene does not appear in this book. But isn’t Bogdanove’s artwork nifty?

I was a bigger fan of Superman & Savage Dragon: Metropolis, written by Karl Kesel with art by one of my favorite Superman artists, “Triangle Era” mainstay Jon Bogdanove. Superman and the Dragon’s second meeting (although the first published) begins with Superman crashing to Earth in a burning field in a scene highly reminiscent of how the Dragon was found in his own very first issue. When he wakes up, Superman has no memory of the last few days, and the Dragon is called in to help him piece together the mystery of what happened to him and how it’s linked to a series of strange murders in the city’s homeless population. Their investigation brings them across Killroy, son of Steppenwolf, and into battle with Darkseid and the forces of Apokalips.

As I said, I prefer this book to the other one. It’s more steeped in the Superman world, which is of course more engaging to me, and Kesel has some fun with it. When Superman and the Dragon visit the Daily Planet office to look into what Clark Kent had been working on before Superman’s disappearance, for instance, there’s a funny scene where Superman and Lois have a strained discussion over what Clark’s password is on the computer system: Superman insists that “Clark” told him that he had changed it, whereas Lois insists that “he” would have told her so. Yeah, they’re married at this point, and the scene, played out in front of Jimmy and the Dragon, is highly amusing. We also get to visit with Bibbo in Suicide Slum, who declares that the Dragon is okay because any pal of Superman’s is a pal of his too. The fun here is seeing how the Dragon responds to the way that the people of Metropolis treat their hero, as opposed to the treatment he’s used to. 

The one knock on this book is that the Dragon himself is kind of secondary. The other book plays off of the differences between the two of them more, with Dragon’s animosity grinding Superman and vice versa. In this one, the hatchet has been buried and they’re friends, which means you could swap out the Dragon with pretty much any other character that has super strength and the changes to the plot would be negligible. It does end on a really cute note, though. Feeling bad about Lois being worried about him during his disappearance, Superman asks the Dragon to cover for him in Metropolis so he could have a night off from fighting crime. His buddy the Dragon agrees, which leads to a last page that is just the kind of winking-at-the-camera nonsense that a reader like me digs. 

An obvious and amusing tribute to the cover of Wacky Squirrel #4.

Sun. Aug 10

Comics: Superman/Fantastic Four #1, Jon Kent: This Internship Is My Kryptonite #2

When you draw the whole Superman crossover but you only have time for roughs of the cover, who do you get to finish it? ALEX ROSS.

Notes: For the first time since this project started, I’m going back to re-read something. At the beginning of the year, I was finishing up the mammoth DC/Marvel Omnibus that came out last fall, and I read a few books at the tail end of that, but I didn’t write about them in detail. But this week, when I’m talking about great Superman crossovers, I felt like I really should address that time Superman met the team that he’s sharing cinemas with this summer in Dan Jurgens’ oversized Superman/Fantastic Four one-shot from 1999. 

In this one, Superman finds a message from his late father, Jor-El, who tells him that he wants his son to avenge the destruction of Krypton, which he now claims was destroyed by the world-devourer, Galactus. But in this book, which came out post-DC Vs. Marvel (which I’m planning to read soon), Superman is aware that Galactus is a cosmic force that has been encountered by the heroes of the “Other” Earth (aka, the Marvel Universe), and decides to seek out the world-hopping metahuman from that crossover, Access, to help him traverse the universes. (Access is name-dropped but, like “Sir Not Appearing in This Picture” from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, he is mysteriously absent.) In the Marvel Universe, meanwhile, Franklin Richards is playing with the action figure of his favorite cartoon character, Superman, who is apparently a fictional hero on Earth-616. No one is more delighted than Frank when the real deal shows up at Four Freedoms Plaza asking for their help. But Superman winds up having to fight for the Four when their defense systems turn on them, having been hijacked somehow by the Cyborg Superman. Things get worse – much worse – when Galactus shows up and decides he wants Superman for his new herald.

You know how I keep talking about how I dislike crossovers where the heroes fight each other for no reason? Well thank Rao, this story actually gives us a reason. Superman being transformed into a Herald of Galactus is a more than legit reason for him to face off against the FF, but even then, the conflict is brief and has more of a feeling of a rescue mission than actual combat. The FF know that Superman is a hero, and they’re trying to free him from Galactus’s control rather than actually take him down. 

I also like the fact that this crossover – as well as a few others from this time period – recognized the fact that DC Vs. Marvel happened and used that as part of the fabric of the story. It allows this story to fit into the continuity of both sets of characters, which the early crossovers like his encounter with Spider-Man simply can’t do. Unfortunately, by the time JLA/Avengers rolled around a few years later, that angle was dropped. The heroes were still from separate universes, but there was no recognition of the fact that any of them had met in the past. I can’t help but wonder what the plans are for Deadpool/Batman and the assorted back-up crossovers that are going to come in those two books.

Finally, although this isn’t really about Superman, this issue makes me wish Dan Jurgens had done a run on Fantastic Four at some point. He has the voices for the characters down very well, and I love his rendition of the Thing (my #2 all-time favorite character), but peeking at his credits I only see a handful of FF-related comics, and none on any of their regular titles. There’s still time, Marvel. I love what Ryan North is doing these days, but how about hitting Jurgens up for a miniseries or something?

Mon., Aug. 11

Comics: Superman/Tarzan: Sons of the Jungle #1-3

And yet we still haven’t seen the John Carter/J’onn J’onzz crossover.

Notes: I love a good crossover. I love a good Elseworlds story. To the best of my knowledge, the two have only collided twice. The first was John Byrne’s excellent World War II romp, Batman and Captain America. The other was this three-issue miniseries by Chuck Dixon and artist Carlos Meglia. In this one, the mutiny that leads to the abandonment of Lord Greystoke and his wife is thwarted when a star streaks through the sky. Taking it as a sign from God, the mutineers retreat from their plan and the family makes its way back to England. That streak, however, lands in the thick of the jungle, where a familiar ape tribe finds what appears to be a human baby in the wreckage. When the child demonstrates remarkable strength, they adopt him and name him “Argo-Zan,” meaning “Fire-skin.” The Greystokes have their child, named John, and the two babies grow into very different men. In the jungle Argo-Zan finds the wreckage of the craft that brought him to the apes, along with a holographic vision of his true parents. As he learns of the legacy of Krypton and adopts his true name, Kal-El, in England John Greystoke advances through school – a brilliant scholar, but somehow lost and empty, as though there is some hole in his life he cannot account for.  

After some struggles, Kal-El finds himself able to bond with a human tribe, but an enemy ape has an eye out for a mysterious glowing rock that seems to plague his rival. Greystoke, meanwhile, has been wandering the world trying to find himself, finally planning an expedition to Africa. Along with him is a correspondent for the Daily Planet, Lois Lane, as well as Lois’s aide, Jane Porter. Their dirigible is brought down by a hostile tribe but, believing the aircraft is from Krypton, Kal-El leaps to their defense. In the ensuing battle, both men find themselves and their purpose. Kal-El returns to civilization with Lois, while John Clayton chooses to remain in Africa with Jane Porter, adopting the name the friendly tribes have given him: Tarzan.

As I said, I’m a big fan of crossovers. I am not, however, particularly steeped in Tarzan lore. I’ve seen a few of the movies, read a few of the comics, but I’ve never dove into the original Edgar Rice Burroughs novels (I’m more of a John Carter of Mars fan) so I can’t really say how closely this comic traces any of the original lore. I’m not even sure which characters (aside from Lois, Clark, Tarzan, and Jane) are Burroughs characters and which are original creations of Dixon and Meglia. That said, there’s a lot I like here. We’ve got the classic Elseworlds concept of taking the hero and switching his origin with somebody else, as we saw when Kal-El became Bruce Wayne in Superman: Speeding Bullets or when Bruce Wayne became Green Lantern in Batman: In Darkest Knight. And although the book ends in the old “What If”/“Elseworlds” format of bringing the heroes as close to the “real” status quo as possible, it does so without giving us obvious analogues for Lex Luthor or any of Superman’s main villains, which is a nice change of pace.

As a crossover, it’s pretty unique. Not only do Superman and Tarzan not fight each other in this one, but Kal-El and John Clayton never even interact until the last few pages of the three-issue story. In some ways it’s more like a crossover of worlds than of characters. The book ends (as these often do) as soon as a new status quo is established, something ALMOST the same as the “real” universe, and we don’t really get to see any of the aftermath. Sometimes that can be a good thing, but in this case, I actually wish there were more. It feels like we’ve read one act of a story. I’m left wanting to see how the ape-raised Kal-El adapts to a society that he doesn’t truly understand, especially with the power at his disposal. I’m curious as to what kind of man Tarzan is when raised by his human parents instead of an ape tribe. And I really want to see the two of them interact a bit more. And you know, leaving the audience wanting more is typically considered a good thing. The problem is when that desire is because it feels as though the story is unfinished, and to a small degree, that’s kind of how I feel here.

It’s not unusual in comics for a different artist to do the covers than the interior artwork, but in this case I think you’ll forgive me for not realizing that happened until I double checked the credits to write this. Carlos Meglia’s style is reminiscent of an adventure cartoon, with the kind of big eyes and oversized feet that bring to mind Japanese manga, so you can understand that I didn’t notice Humberto Ramos ONLY did the covers for this series. Their styles are very similar at first glance, and should Mr. Meglia ever somehow read this, I hope he knows I mean that as a compliment. 

This is a unique crossover, and one I enjoyed. It would be nice to see more Elseworlds crossovers. And now that DC has brought that imprint back from the dead, it doesn’t feel impossible.  

Tue., Aug 12

Comics: The Darkness/Superman #1-2

Wait — why does the mobster get top billing?

Notes: I’m going to close off this week of Superman crossovers with the two-issue team-up between Top Cow and DC from 2005, The Darkness/Superman, written by Ron Marz with art by Tyler Kirkham. I know even less about The Darkness than I do Tarzan. I know it’s a Witchblade spin-off, and I believe that the main character is the son of a mafia kingpin or something, but that’s pretty much it. Did that stop me from getting the crossover when it dropped? Absolutely not. Seriously, it’s been 32 weeks, you’d think you would know me better than that by now.

Fortunately for me, the book gives me a quick rundown on who the character is – Jackie Estacado, mafia hitman who becomes the controller of a mysterious demonic power called “The Darkness” on his 21st birthday. After he killed the guy who killed his girlfriend, he became…I dunno, not a hero. He’s still a mobster – the book even starts off with him meeting up with Metallo in Metropolis to flex his muscles and show he’s the man to take over their organized crime rackets. The Daily Planet gets word that Estacado is in town and Perry sends his top people out to find out what they can, which leads to Superman stumbling on an encounter between Estacado and Metropolis’s Grasso crime family. Estacado tries to convince Superman that he’s the better crime lord for Metropolis – that he would run a smooth organization that doesn’t let innocent people get caught in the crossfire, unlike the current regime. But the meeting is interrupted when Metallo shows up again, brandishing his Kryptonite heart as usual, and takes Lois Lane hostage, because it was like already February 3rd and Lois had only been held hostage four times so far that year.

When Metallo escapes with Lois, Estacado offers to help Superman get her back, recognizing that the Kryptonite keeps the Man of Steel at bay and that Lois is, and I quote, “More than just a cute reporter to you.” Superman reluctantly takes him up on his offer and is forced to watch from a distance as Estacado invades the Grasso’s hideout in an effort to save her. Once Lois is safe, he returns to Superman and reiterates his plan to move into Metropolis…but Superman stands his ground. The two of them come to blows before Superman defeats him because…the sun comes up? That seems to be what happens. I guess Jackie Estacado’s powers go away in daylight? At any rate, once that happens he gives up and promises to stay out of Metropolis. Superman lets him go out of gratitude for saving Lois. The two part neither as allies nor as friends, but at least not as enemies.

At least this time the requisite crossover fight makes sense. This isn’t Superman teaming up with a hero, he’s forging an uneasy alliance with an anti-villain. Jackie even tells him at one point, “I’m a bad guy, but I’m not a BAD GUY.” (This was seven years before Wreck-It Ralph used almost exactly the same line, so good for you, writer Ron Marz.) And I concede, that’s the vibe I’m getting here. Jackie isn’t really a pure villain, but there’s definite Michael Corleone energy here. And to be fair, he works pretty well as that kind of character. I’ve enjoyed Marz’s work for a long time, so I’m not surprised that he made this work for me as well.

That said, there are a few things that don’t quite gel. Superman sitting on the side while someone else fights Metallo for him, first of all. Sure, Metallo has the whole Kryptonite thing going on, but when has that ever stopped Superman from going in for the fight? And although I suppose Jackie was written in-character (I assume, since Marz was the writer for The Darkness’s ongoing series at the time, that he knew how he would behave), but it still seems a little bit of a stretch to think he’d really believe Superman would turn a blind eye to his operations just because he’s the lesser of two evils. Superman isn’t going to settle for ANY evils if he’s got anything to say about it.

It was a fun week, poking around at more Superman crossovers, and there are still more that I haven’t looked at yet, including the epic DC Vs. Marvel event and its several spin-offs, such as the Amalgam Comics line. I’m looking at the big, gorgeous omnibus edition that DC published of that series last year, just waiting to be read, and I think I’ll get around to that pretty soon. Maybe even next week. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. You can join in the Kryptonian Konversation every day in the Year of Superman Facebook Group!

Geek Punditry #130: Three Wishes Presents Crossover Madness

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Well, my friends, once again the powers that be in the world of entertainment have proven that they turn to us here at Geek Punditry for their ideas. Last year, DC and Marvel Comics announced that they were going to be reprinting their classic crossovers of the past (stuff like Superman meeting Spider-Man, Batman fighting the Hulk, and the two universes actually merging as Amalgam Comics) in two hefty hardcover omnibus editions after two decades of the companies holding off on any kind of collaboration. At the time, I suggested that this project could potentially be a precursor for NEW crossovers to finally appear, and sure enough, earlier this year they announced a two-part event in which DC’s perennial cash cow Batman will meet Marvel’s insanely popular Merc with a Mouth, Deadpool. As this is clearly an idea that nobody else could have come up with had I not proposed it here on my blog, I am comfortable taking full credit for this world-changing news.

I expect Deadpool to thank me personally.

The fun will start in September, when Marvel’s Deadpool/Batman will arrive, written by Zeb Wells with art by Greg Capullo. In November it’ll be DC’s turn: Batman/Deadpool by Grant Morrison and Dan Mora. While this particular pairing wouldn’t have been my first choice for the new era of crossovers, I can’t pretend I don’t understand the reasoning behind it. You’re combining two of the most popular (and profitable) characters in comic books, and honestly, a fourth-wall breaking character like Deadpool is liable to be a laugh riot no matter who you partner him up with, so I’m looking forward to these two books. 

But the fun doesn’t end with Deadpool and Batman! Recently, Marvel announced that their half of the crossover – in addition to the Deadpool/Batman meeting – will include three back-up stories with other pairings. Chip Zdarsky and Terry Dodson will team up Captain America and Wonder Woman, Kelly Thompson and Gurihiru will bring us an encounter between Jeff the Land Shark and Krypto the Superdog, and perhaps most excitingly, Adam Kubert will draw a meeting between Daredevil and Green Arrow written by someone who had magnificent runs on both of those characters in the past, filmmaker and Geek Emeritus Kevin Smith. 

In many ways, I’m actually more excited for the back-ups. Not to say I don’t think that there’s fun to be had with Deadpool and Batman, but Captain America and Wonder Woman is such a natural matchup that it’s shocking it never happened in the past. Thompson and Gurihiru’s comics starring Jeff are delightful all-ages fare, and I think adding Krypto to the mix will be a blast. And again, having Smith return to the two characters with whom he arguably has done his best comics work is pretty darned exciting to me.

But let’s remember, these backups are coming in Marvel’s half of the event. DC’s book comes out two months later, so the solicitation information that tells us about the DC backups, if any, likely won’t be available until August. Considering the way these crossovers usually work, with the two publishers wanting equity for their characters, I think it’s almost certain that the DC book will give us three additional backup stories of their own. The question, then, becomes obvious: who will be the stars?

As we have already established that the two dominant publishers in the American comic book space are mining my little-known blog for their ideas (guys, just put me on the payroll, I work cheap), I’m going to take this opportunity to dust off my “Three Wishes” format, in which I throw out three things I would like to see. If it were up to me, these are the backups you would see in Batman/Deadpool come November, with an added bonus of which creators I would have handle the stories.

Booster Gold/TVA

If you didn’t watch Loki on Disney+, I should explain that the Time Variance Authority, or TVA, is an entity in the Marvel Multiverse which is tasked with protecting the integrity of the timestream. In older stories, the TVA was literally made up of a legion of faceless bureaucrats and was a nice satire on corporate politics. The Loki TV series, though, fleshed out the concept quite a bit and made it an engine that could actually support stories of its own rather than just react to things happening in other comic books. They even got their own miniseries earlier this year, in which they built a task force of multiversal heroes including Spider-Gwen, Captain Carter, and an alternate dimension version of Gambit, among others. 

So for an organization dedicated to defending the timestream, who better to have them cross paths with than DC’s Booster Gold? Michael Jon Carter, a disgraced football star from the future, decided he would be better off in another time, so he stole various pieces of technology he knew would essentially make him a superhero and travelled back in time to our present day. Booster, as a character, started off very self-centered and egotistical, but as time went on, he grew and developed greatly, eventually accepting a role of defending the timestream, even though most other heroes (except Batman, who knows the truth) picture him as a jerk and a screw-up. 

The conflict would be that Booster and the TVA basically have the same job description, but from their perspective, the TVA would view Booster as one of the time anomalies they’re dedicated to preventing. There’s room for some great storytelling here, as this would be a far more believable misunderstanding than the usual hero vs. hero battle. As for who should tell this tale, I’d recruit Ryan North – a writer with a sharp sense of humor who has done work with the TVA in the past – and Booster’s creator Dan Jurgens as co-writer and artist. 

Captain Carrot/Spider-Ham

This would build off of the Krypto/Jeff story from the first volume – something that’s a little sillier. Both Marvel and DC have a world in their multiverse that’s basically full of living cartoon animals, so matching up those characters would be natural. DC’s Captain Carrot – a character longtime readers know I’ve loved since childhood – is the leader of his Zoo Crew, the primary heroes of his Earth. Spider-Ham, on the other hand, was originally a little spider named Peter who was bitten by a radioactive pig and transformed into a pig with the powers of a spider. It’s a ridiculous reversal of Spider-Man’s origin, and that’s what I love about it.

I’m not really sure what story I would tell with these two, to be perfectly honest, but it would be enough for me just to see them share a page together. You know who I think would be able to tell a good story with them, though? Comic scribe Gail Simone, who has not only a fantastic flair for comedy, but also tells some of the best character-driven stories in comics. As for the artist, it would have to be somebody who’s shown a proclivity towards more “cartoony” comic books in their artwork. Captain Carrot’s co-creator Scott Shaw wouldn’t be a bad choice, but I think he’s retired, so instead I’d hire somebody like Roger Langridge, who did a beautiful job on the Muppet comics several years ago and recently has done a little work on Dynamite’s Darkwing Duck – another comic about a cartoon animal superhero. 

Superman/Fantastic Four

Now I know what you’re thinking. “Blake, they already DID a Superman/Fantastic Four” crossover back in 1999. Dan Jurgens wrote AND drew it. You’ve been reading and watching Superman stuff every day this year, do you mean to tell us you didn’t KNOW that?”

Of course I knew that, you dork. I’m not talking about THAT Superman or Fantastic Four. I mean the ones from the movies. 

As you may have heard, this summer’s two big superhero movies are going to be Superman and Fantastic Four: First Steps. Both of these are relaunching the respective properties for their new cinematic universes. And both of them look absolutely wonderful. As a teacher, I usually don’t look forward to July – it’s like one big month-long Sunday afternoon before I have to go back to work. But this year, these two movies have me excited and thrilled for July to come. 

Some people, however, have to turn everything into a competition. Marvel fans who reflexively hate anything with the DC stamp on it, Superman fans who talk as though Clark is going to swoop in and beat up the FF…and all of that is ridiculous. The idea of the movies being in competition with each other is largely manufactured by loony fans rather than rationality. Marvel and DC have shared creators for decades in comic books, and even in the current cinematic landscape it’s still happening. (Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten that James Gunn directed Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy or that Reed Richards himself, Pedro Pascal, was in Wonder Woman 1984.) There is literally no reason not to root for BOTH of these films to be huge, massive, entertaining success stories. And what’s more, the characters themselves would feel that way as well.

So that’s the story I would tell. I’d have a story where an entity from each universe – let’s say, for example, Marvel’s Grandmaster and DC’s Superboy Prime– would encounter each other in the Multiverse and get into a debate about their respective heroes, then try to pit Superman and the FF against each other…but SPECIFICALLY, the David Corenswet Superman and the MCU version of the Fantastic Four. They would meet and be told to do battle, then the Grandmaster and Prime would be utterly BAFFLED when they refuse to fight each other, citing that there’s no reason to do so, and then teaming up to defeat their captors.

The meta commentary would make the more bloodthirsty “fan’s” heads EXPLODE. So worth it.

The creative team? Well, if they don’t let me write this one myself, I think it would be a nice project for Mark Waid, who knows and loves these characters better than just about anybody. As the artist, I would get somebody old-school, such as Jerry Ordway, to put his spin on it. 

There you go, friends – three epic crossover stories that are coming soon to a comic book near you…or at least, they would be if I had my way. But these are just MY picks. What about yours? Feel free to share your own “three wishes” for potential Marvel/DC crossovers in the comments!

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. This is usually where he’d make a joke about how much he loves Captain Carrot, but he already put that in the main article, so frankly, he doesn’t know how to end this. Hey, is that a rabbit over there? [Scurries away.]

Geek Punditry #119: It’s the Little Things

blakemp Geek Punditry , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Here at Geek Punditry Global Headquarters and Communications Hub and Lawn Care Emporium, we have five separate but equally important departments: the Department of Movie Stuff, the the Department of TV Stuff, the Department of Book Stuff, the Department of Comic Stuff, and the Jimmy John’s down on the third floor. And we try our best to balance those departments out, spending a little bit of time on each and not overwhelming our legion of adoring readers with any one topic above any other. But even though last week’s topic was about comic books, and I feel we’ve gotten a little comic book heavy lately, we’re going back to DC Comics again this week. There are two important reasons for this:

  1. The topic we’re going to discuss is of great significance and, if studied properly, has the potential to turn into a great boon not only for DC Comics, but for the entire comic book landscape.
  2. I couldn’t think of anything else to write about.

Last year, our friends at DC kicked off a publishing initiative called “Compact Comics.” This new line of paperback editions, all bearing a distinctive trade dress, collects some of DC’s most popular and important storylines in volumes smaller than the usual trade paperback design. At 8.5 by 5.5 inches, these full-color editions are almost exactly the size of a current fiction paperback that you might buy at any bookstore. They sell for $9.99, and have become a hit in both comic shops and in other retail outlets. And frankly, it couldn’t have come at a better time.

“You see, we call them COMPACT because they’re SMALL.” –Guy who paid $250,000 for his marketing degree.

Comics are in a bit of a crisis, although to be honest, there’s nothing new about that. I’ve been reading comic books for 40 years and I can’t remember a time when people didn’t fear that the industry was in the midst of some crisis or another. But we’re in a time where the distribution model is in absolute turmoil, with so many publishers abandoning Diamond Distribution (which had a monopoly on the comic book distribution market for decades) that the company had to declare bankruptcy earlier this year. As Diamond scrambled for a new owner to right the ship, all of the comic book publishers were flailing about, trying to make sure that they could still get their product into the hands of readers.

What does this have to do with Compact Comics? Nothing – at least not directly. DC abandoned Diamond some time ago, and they’re one of the few publishers big enough to weather this particular storm without any real chaos. But the issue here is how to get readers to pick up the comics, and what DC has done is found a format that is inherently appealing to those readers, something that will draw people in and get them not only to read one volume, but to go back to the shop and pick up another one. And that’s exactly what everybody in comic books should be trying to do.

I didn’t have a banana for scale so, as per FDA guidelines, I used Dean Koontz instead.

First of all, the size is important, and don’t let anybody tell you differently. Traditional graphic novels in the larger trade paperback format have been fine for a long time, but they’re not as portable as the Compact Comics. They’re good as archival editions, whereas Compact Comics are the sort of thing that will appeal to a casual reader – someone who is browsing the stacks at an airport bookstore or shuffling through the available volumes at Barnes & Noble looking for their next great read. It’s not a coincidence that the Compact Comics size is very similar to that of Japanese Manga, which is enormously popular. (The day I realized that Manga now had a section three times as large as the traditional graphic novel shelves at Barnes & Noble, I died a little inside.) Some may see this as an attempt by DC to court the Manga reader, and I think there’s at least a little truth to that. But I think it’s even more true that they simply recognized that the portability is one of the things that contributes to the success of Manga, so they decided to run with it.

This isn’t new, of course. Manga has been growing in popularity for decades, so why has it taken American comics so long to catch up to this smaller format? Honestly, I think it’s the printing technology. Most Manga is in black-and-white, and therefore easier and cheaper to print. Most American comics, on the other hand, are in color, making them not only more expensive, but more difficult to reduce in size to the smaller format without muddying the colors or losing detail in the artwork. But printing technology has improved, and anyone glancing through a Compact Comic will be able to tell you that the artwork looks just as good now as it did in the original printing – in the cases of some of the older stories that have been remastered, even better. 

“He’s big! He’s blue! He’s right in front of you!”

The next thing, and this cannot be understated, is the price. TEN BUCKS for a complete graphic novel? These days, that’s the deal of the century. A full-size graphic novel of comparable length will usually go in the $25 to $30 range. In fact, most individual comic books these days sell for $3.99 or $4.99. That means that for the same price as two issues of Action Comics, I can get all twelve issues of Watchmen and have a complete story. It’s an incredible bargain, especially for somebody dipping their toes into comic books for the first time. Imagine a  potential reader who, for example, is excited about James Gunn’s upcoming Superman movie and is interested in reading some of the comic books that inspired it. They may look at the trade paperback or hardcover editions of some of those books retailing for anywhere from $25 to $50 (depending on how fancy the edition is) and rightly blanch. Even four bucks for a 22-page comic book story is an awful lot. But over 250 pages of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s All-Star Superman for $9.99? That, my friends, is the sweet spot. With everything in the universe getting more and more expensive, seeing such a low price point is absolutely going to get a reader’s attention.

And I think it’s also important to note which stories DC selected to include in the first wave of Compact Comics. Aside from the aforementioned All-Star Superman and Watchmen, both bona fide classics, DC also included two of the more successful Batman stories from the past couple of decades, The Court of Owls and Hush. They populated the line with stories featuring their most popular (and – let’s be honest – cinematic) characters, including Wonder Woman: Earth One, Harley Quinn and the Gotham City Sirens, Catwoman: Trail of the Catwoman, and Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo’s chilling Joker graphic novel. Then they tossed in a recent hit, the Green Lantern science fiction murder mystery Far Sector. And as the coup de grace (which is Latin for “a cooper full of grass”) they gave us the first volume of Scott Snyder’s horror series American Vampire. Why is that so significant? Well, Snyder had a co-writer for the backup stories in the first six issues of this excellent series, a little fella by the name of Stephen King. 

And in case you didn’t know, King’s name on the cover of a book is the closest thing in the publishing world to a license to print money. For once, DC knew what they were doing.

Admittedly, his name is usually a bit larger.

The line was so popular that a second wave of Compact Comics will be hitting shops this over the course of this year, this time including Kingdom Come, Static Season One, DCeased, Batwoman: Elegy, Superman: Birthright, The Authority: Book One, Superman/Batman: Book One, DC: The New Frontier, Wonder Woman: Blood and Guts, Harley Quinn: Wild at Heart, Batman: The Long Halloween, Y: The Last Man Book One, V For Vendetta, and We3. As with the first wave, we have a good mix of perennial classics, more recent favorites, properties that are linked to upcoming DC Studios releases, and a few really strong comics from outside the DC Universe itself that have proven popular to folks who don’t read superheroes. 

And of course, as the initiative has proven successful, it’s being imitated. A few months after it was clear that Compact Comics was a hit, Marvel Comics announced its own new “Premier Collection,” a similar-sized set of graphic novels (9 by 6 inches, just a half-inch larger per side) with a $14.99 price point (a bit higher than the Compact Comics, but still more palpable than a traditional graphic novel to a new reader). This line kicked off in February with a new edition of Daredevil: Born Again, which – what a co-inky-dink! – just happens to have the same title as the recent hit show on Disney+. Isn’t it nice how stuff like that just works out sometimes?

“Kevin? C.B. What’s the slate for 2025 again?”

But DC (and anyone who copies them) has to play it smart. So far they have, but it’s imperative that they make sure that the books they’re putting out fulfill the needs of the reader. For standalone books like We3 or The New Frontier, the task is done. Put out the book and keep it in print. Maybe throw out a new cover or a new afterword for an anniversary edition, but there’s not much else to think about. But go back and look at that list of titles again. Did you notice how many of them include the words “Book One?” And even several of them that don’t have “Book One” in the name have follow-ups (Batman: The Long Halloween was followed by Batman: Dark Victory, and Jeph Loeb is currently finishing his trilogy with The Last Halloween) or were originally released as part of an ongoing series that readers would like to continue reading (Wonder Woman: Blood and Guts was part of Brian Azzarello’s 2011 run on the character). 

If the intent on DC’s part is that the readers will be drawn into the Compact Comics and then drift over to the standard-sized graphic novels for the rest of the series, that would be a huge mistake. Readers may like convenience, but we also like consistency. And if you don’t believe me, ask any book reader how they feel about a series of fantasy novels that doesn’t put the publisher’s logo, author’s name, or volume number in the same PLACE on the spine of every volume. Have a bucket handy when you do so, though, because just the thought of that may cause some bibliophiles to throw up.

No, if a reader STARTS reading Y: The Last Man in Compact Comics format, they’re going to want to CONTINUE reading Y: The Last Man in Compact Comics format. Yes, DC, that means selling all TEN volumes in this new size when it’s time to do a new printing. I concede, it wouldn’t have made sense to put out all ten volumes at once when the format was still new and untested. But once the format has demonstrated it has legs, you’ve got to stick with it. Will each individual volume make less money than the larger editions? Yes, it will. But I honestly think that what you gain in the number of sales will more than make up for any shortfall in the single unit profits. 

“No, seriously, this thing is enormous. Where’s the real Volume 2?”

So what comes next for Compact Comics? Assuming the new wave (which will begin in May with Kingdom Come) is as successful as the first, I think we could see these books on the market for a very long time. In fact, outside of hardcore comic book collectors, I could see the compact size becoming the format of choice for the casual reader. I don’t have any trouble at all foreseeing a future where this becomes the standard way that people read collected editions and original graphic novels. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all. In truth, I think ANYTHING that makes comics easier to get in the hands of people who don’t have them there already is a good thing. 

And so, so nice to look at.

I’ve got a few of the Compact Comics myself, and I couldn’t be happier with the format. They look good, they read great, and they look oh-so pretty on a shelf. If I had the money and space, I’d put up an entire bookcase with each of the ten that have been printed so far, leaving room for the next wave, Marvel’s Premier Editions, and anybody else who wants to play along. I sincerely believe that this is a great thing for comic books, and I hope that every publisher out there is paying attention to how well this line is doing. Because if you’re thinking about the future of comics, this just may be where we find it. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. Yeah, he’s the kind of nerd who can write 2,000 words about a printing format, but YOU’RE the kind of nerd who READ 2,000 words about a printing format, so let’s not pretend we’re so different, all right?

Geek Punditry #112: Who Are the Thunderbolts? (And Does Even MARVEL Know?)

blakemp Geek Punditry , , , , ,

With Captain America: Brave New World currently in movie theaters, eyes of Marvel fans are turning to the next film from the studio, coming out in May, Thunderbolts*. Yes, that asterisk is part of the title. No, as it turns out, it isn’t actually important. But we’ll get to that later. Although they’re not exactly the Avengers (more on that later, too) the Thunderbolts have been bouncing around the Marvel Universe in one form or another for nearly 30 years, having first appeared in 1997. Despite the pedigree of having been around for such a long time, a lot of people don’t seem to quite understand who the Thunderbolts are, and honestly, you can’t blame them. If you look at their publishing history, it seems as though Marvel doesn’t really know who they are either.

Pictured: Even we don’t the hell know.

Let’s go into the history, shall we? It started in 1996, when the Marvel Universe came under attack by a villain named Onslaught. Powerful and ravenous, he started off fighting the X-Men before taking on virtually every superhero in the world and, when he was finally defeated, both the Avengers and Fantastic Four were killed in the battle. Or so it appeared, anyway – as it turned out, Franklin Richards saved them at the last second by shoving them onto an Alternate Earth, because things like that just happen in comic book universes sometimes. But the world at large BELIEVED that they were dead, and that was enough to cause serious chaos. With the Avengers and Fantastic Four gone, it was open season for villains, who saw an opportunity with the biggest, boldest heroes in the universe unavailable to thwart them.

Then the Thunderbolts appeared. 

I’m confused, which one of these guys is played by David Harbour?

A brand new team of brand new heroes, paragons of courage who had never been seen before, burst on the scene and began cleaning up the town. The gigantic Atlas! Armored hero MACH-1! The cosmic-powered Meteorite! High-flying Songbird! The scientific wizard Techno! And their sword-wielding leader, holder of a mantle of a forgotten World War II hero, Citizen V! After an appearance in Incredible Hulk, the Thunderbolts slid into their own series, written by Kurt Busiek and drawn by Mark Bagley. I was – and still am – a huge fan of both Busiek and Bagley, and so I naturally was eager to read the book, but it was a little confusing before we got there. Who were these new characters? Why should we care about them? Did they REALLY think they were worthy of replacing the Avengers?

And then, at the end of the first issue, Busiek hit us with a curveball that comic books have not been able to duplicate since. Citizen V traded his heroic mask for another one, a purple one…he was really Baron Helmut Zemo, arch-enemy of Captain America, and each of the Thunderbolts was a member of his Masters of Evil in disguise. When the Avengers and FF vanished, they decided to masquerade as heroes and win over the public trust as part of Zemo’s plan for world domination.

There will never be a reveal this awesome again, and I blame Mark Zuckerberg for that.

And we, the readers, were FLOORED.

It’s so hard to imagine, in today’s landscape, how such a reveal could have been pulled off. All of the press leading up to this issue just talked about these great new heroes and how awesome they were and how cool it was going to be to have new stars in the Marvel Universe. Honestly, it felt like standard comic book hype, and were it not for the fact that I enjoyed the creative team so much, I probably wouldn’t have read the comic at all, which would have been a huge mistake because it turned out to be phenomenal. But such a magic trick simply couldn’t happen in the current landscape. If Marvel tried to tell this story today, three days before the issue was published you would have a headline on the site formerly known as Comic Book Resources, shared on Facebook, announcing something like “Ending of Thunderbolts #1 will shock Avengers fans!” with a thumbnail image of Citizen V wearing Zemo’s mask just to make sure that everything was good and thoroughly ruined before it could be read.

The modern media is so, so stupid.

Anyway, the Avengers and Fantastic Four eventually returned to the main Marvel Earth, forcing Zemo to accelerate his plans for conquest, but in the time when they pretended to be heroes something funny happened to many of the members of the Thunderbolts. They began to realize that it wasn’t such a bad thing that they got to WIN a fight once in a while instead of getting beaten up. They started to enjoy the cheers and applause of the hero-starved citizens of New York. They actually found satisfaction in helping people instead of committing crimes. And when Zemo took action, the rest of the team rebelled against him, deciding that they’d rather remain heroes than go back to their old lives of villainy.

From there, the book underwent the first of what would be countless shifts in status quo. Instead of the adventures of villains pretending to be heroes, it was now a book about former villains seeking redemption, and this is the golden age of the franchise. They tried to make good. They even were joined by Hawkeye, who left the Avengers to help them out. Hawkeye himself had begun his career as an adversary for Iron Man, and he credited Captain America giving him a chance to join the Avengers for turning his life around. He saw leading the Thunderbolts as an opportunity to pay it forward. And so the book went on for some time – some of the members backsliding at times, new members joining, the roster shifting around, but for the entirety of Busiek’s run, then that of his successor Fabian Nicieza, it was one of my favorite books Marvel was publishing.

Then in issue #76, they inexplicably dumped the entire concept. Issue #75 ended the story of the Thunderbolts we knew and loved and the next month we got a whole new story with new characters in what could best be described as “Supervillain Fight Club.” It was baffling, it was awful, and it was Thunderbolts in name only. It also only lasted six issues before the book was cancelled. Not too long after that, they brought back the original team for a second run that lasted a few more years, and it was good, but once again they took a sharp turn. This time around the team was replaced by a new group of villains – not reformed ones this time – rounded up to do tasks for the government. It felt like a carbon copy of DC’s Suicide Squad at this point. And it didn’t get better.

Pictured: Your guess is as good as mine.

Since then, the team has been reinvented seemingly dozens of times. The Suicide Squad knock-off has been done more than once. At one point the team was re-christened “Dark Avengers” and made of villains pretending to be heroes (ESTABLISHED heroes this time, like the Scorpion pretending to be Spider-Man, Daken pretending to be Wolverine, and so forth) . One time it was made up of antiheroes like the Punisher, Deadpool, and Elektra. Another time it was villains trying to HUNT the Punisher. Once it was villains deputized by the Kingpin of Crime while he was mayor of New York, and another time it was a group of HEROES deputized by Luke Cage when HE was mayor of New York. And on occasion we’ve even got a group of super-spies like the Winter Soldier and the White Widow, which seems to be the version that the upcoming movie is based on.

Pictu–oh, whatever.

The problem, then, comes when somebody asks the question “Who are the Thunderbolts?” because you just read about 1300 words on that very subject, and we STILL don’t have a definitive answer. Ever since the original version of the Thunderbolts ended, Marvel has recycled the name over and over again but has never found any concept that STICKS. Even the super-spy incarnation of the team seems to have been willed into existence so that they have something to synergize with the movie.

And let’s talk about the movie, while we’re at it. Some time back, the title was slightly changed from Thunderbolts to Thunderbolts* with an asterisk. People asked Marvel if the asterisk was, in fact, part of the title, and they confirmed that it was. This led to mass speculation on the internet as to the significance of that asterisk. Why was it there? WHAT DID IT MEAN? It’s the kind of rabid online speculation that movie studios love because they don’t have to do very much to get the audience talking about the film. It did wonders back in the day for movies like The Blair Witch Project and The Matrix, which managed to get an enormous amount of word of mouth with relatively simple ad campaigns back in the early days of the internet. It’s a great strategy when you have a good payoff.

Spoiler alert: this time there was NOT a good payoff.

Like, not even the Great Lakes Avengers?

When the most recent round of posters for Thunderbolts* was released, we saw what the asterisk stood for, and the revelation was met with a resounding “Meh.” At the bottom of the poster, with the asterisk attached to indicate the footnote, was the tagline “The Avengers are not available.” It’s actually not a bad tagline. It seems to indicate the tone of the movie – slightly tongue-in-cheek, indicating that this is NOT a story about paladins like Captain America or knights in armor like Iron Man. If they had never made a big deal out of the asterisk and simply released that poster without comment, I would have thought it was a cute detail. But after the buildup it got, it may have been the biggest letdown in the MCU since everybody forgot there’s a giant hand sticking out of the Earth after the events of Eternals. 

I obviously haven’t seen the movie yet, and I am not here to talk trash about it. I never want there to be a bad superhero movie. I want every one of them to knock my socks off, and I really hope that this one does too. But the trailers seem to have that same feeling of a wannabe Suicide Squad with a group of characters that seem assembled not because it makes sense but because these are the pieces Marvel has on hand and they don’t know what to do with them.

Which, frankly, is a pretty good description of what it’s been like to try reading Thunderbolts comics for the last two decades or so. 

The Thunderbolts were at their best when it was a story about villains trying to make good. It was a compelling book then and it could still be one now. There are even seeds, I think, in recent comics, such as the recent Venom War tie-in miniseries Zombiotes. The old Spider-Man villain Shocker was on a quest to bring back his friend Boomerang from the dead, and wound up fighting alongside the heroes She-Hulk and Hellcat during an invasion of…let’s just say “monsters,” because I don’t want to spend another 1300 words explaining THAT one. But that story could easily be a germ for a new Thunderbolts team. And it’s a book that would allow for reinvention WITHOUT changing the concept, with characters rotating in and out – some of them succeeding in their heroic goal, others falling from grace. There’s drama to be mined there and SO MANY villains that could be used, if Marvel did it right.

No offense, Bucky, but I’d rather read this group.

Or, you know, we could spend another 20 years throwing Thunder spaghetti at the wall in the hopes that something, ANYTHING sticks.

I suppose the real test will be to see if anything sticks to the movie screen.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. If Marvel is looking for a writer to try this obviously brilliant concept, they should know that Blake can be hired relatively cheap.

Geek Punditry #100: If I Were King of Comics

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Here we are, my friends, 100 Fridays later. In the first week of January 2023, I was thinking of how much I missed the days of writing for Comixtreme and recording my podcast, and I wanted to find a regular way to get my voice back out there in the world. How could I do it? I asked myself. How can I reach out and gift humanity with my invaluable thoughts, insights,and trademark witticisms, in this era where the world clearly needs me more than ever before?

Then I remembered I had a blog that I was barely using, and maybe it would be a nice little challenge for me to find something – once a week, just find SOMETHING – that I liked enough to write a few paragraphs about. 

And of course, it has become the global phenomenon and world-altering sensation you see before you today. 

As I approached the 100th installment of the column hundreds of voracious readers have called “on the internet somewhere,” I tried really hard to decide what to write about. What, in the enormous global marketplace of popular culture that I had made my home, was worthy of dedicating the landmark 100th column to? Star Trek? Stephen King? Superman? Bluey? I feel like I’ve kind of talked about those various topics…well, “extensively” seems in some ways to be too mild a term, but we’ll roll with that right now. No, I needed something a little bit different.

Then I remembered an idea I’d had some time ago, but that I had pushed aside. Something I thought needed to percolate a little more. Something that the world would HAVE to sit up and take notice of. And it seemed perfect. So this week, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to explain to you what exactly I would do if I were in charge of comic books.

You all know I’m a comic book geek, and I have been since I was a small child. Not to discount my love of movies, TV, or novels…I’m a fan of storytelling in general. But comics are in many ways my medium of choice. I’m a regular Wednesday visitor at my local comic shop, I know all the members of the Legion of Super-Heroes, and I can tell you – in order – every publisher that has ever had the Star Trek license. (Gold Key, Marvel, DC, Malibu but only Deep Space Nine, back to Marvel, Wildstorm – which was by then a DC imprint – and currently IDW. Sorry, ladies. I’m taken.)

As much as I love comic books, though, there are certain practices in the industry that I’m not a fan of, certain things that I think could be done better. In this era, where there’s so much competition for the attention of an audience coming from virtually every region of our culture, it’s imperative that comic book publishers find ways to draw in new readers and retain existing ones. Ways to make the sometimes complex mythologies of American comic books a little less of a roadblock, and make the space a little more welcoming. For the 100th Geek Punditry, guys, here are some rules that would be implemented if I were King of Comics.

Numbering

As most people know, comic book series are numbered, and for many decades the numbering convention was simple. You started with issue #1, proceeded to #2, and so forth. You just put the numbers in order. Seemed like a simple idea. But at some point things started to get a little more convoluted. After World War II, many of the existing superhero comics had been cancelled. But in the 50s, looking for a new hit after public favor turned against things like horror comics, DC decided to bring back some of their defunct characters with a new incarnation. A new Flash was created – Barry Allen – and after a few tryout issues in the pages of Showcase, they gave him his own title. Barry took over the numbering of the Golden Age Flash, Jay Garrick, and his first issue was #104. Here’s where it gets confusing: they then did they same thing with Green Lantern. But in this case the new guy – Hal Jordan – did NOT pick up from Alan Scott’s title with issue #39, but instead got his own first issue, Green Lantern Vol. 2 #1.

Make it make sense.

It would not be the last time this happened. In the 80s they gave new first issues to Superman, Wonder Woman, and The Flash, and in those cases, the lapse in publishing between the previous volume and the new was not nearly as long as it had been in the silver age. Then in the 90s, Marvel did it with four of their flagship titles at once – Avengers, Fantastic Four, Iron Man, and Captain America – as part of a new initiative where the titles were essentially farmed out to Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld and set in a different world than the “regular” Marvel Universe. When the books were brought back to the “regular” Universe a year later, they were given a THIRD first issue…and then all hell broke loose.

Since then, virtually every comic book published by Marvel or DC Comics has been canceled and relaunched with a new first issue, most of them multiple times. Batman, at last count, is on its conservative third volume. Superman is at six. Punisher – if I’m counting correctly – has recently concluded volume FOURTEEN. The longest running comic book at either publisher that has not been restarted at least ONCE? Looney Tunes, which recently celebrated issue #281. (It should be noted, though, that even this is the fourth volume of Looney Tunes, having been published by various other companies before Warner Bros. wholly absorbed DC Comics.)

Winner of the gold medal in “not starting over for no reason.”

The conventional wisdom seems to be that a new first issue will bring in higher sales numbers than issue #482, and that might be true. But increasingly, it has proven that a tenth issue #7 does NOT have appreciably more readers than issue #489 would have. In other words, the restarting game gives a short-term sales bump, but does nothing to retain readers, which is what the goal should be.

Anyway, to appease fans (such as myself) who prefer maintaining the original numbering rather than the constant restarts, Marvel and DC have begun featuring “legacy numbers” on the covers of their books – in other words, what issue would this be had the book never been restarted? Which is why the recent Superman Vol. 6 #20 also bears a little symbol indicating that the “Legacy Number” of this issue is #863.

Only long-time Superman fans will understand what I mean when I say “at least it’s in a triangle.”

Confused yet?

Making it even more confusing is the way that many series have changed titles over the years, and trying to figure out which is which. Thor started as Journey Into Mystery, one of Marvel’s assorted sci-fi titles. But after he made his debut, Thor quickly took over the comic book, and the title was changed from Journey into Mystery to The Mighty Thor with issue #126 When calculating the Thor legacy numbers, the original JIM numbers seem to count, but JIM itself has been re-started several times over the years. Journey Into Mystery Vol. 2 does NOT count, apparently, as it ran concurrently with Mighty Thor. And let’s not forget that the current series carrying the Legacy Number is actually called Immortal Thor, which has the same legacy numbers as did previous volumes like Mighty Thor, King Thor, Thor: God of Thunder, or the (at last count) six different series that have just been called Thor. 

According to the legacy numbers, these are all issues of the same title.

Then there’s the fact that it’s inconsistently applied, especially at DC. Superman (on Volume 6), Batman (Volume 3), Flash (Volume 6), and Green Arrow (Volume 7) all have Legacy Numbers on their covers. Nightwing (Volume 4), Harley Quinn (Volume 4), and Titans (Volume 4) do not, and I can see no particular reason why. 

It’s an absolute mess. True story: when the Captain Marvel movie came out in 2018 my wife – who is a geek but not as big a geek as I am – was interested in reading some of the comics to learn more about the character, but after several attempts to figure out which volume to start with, she gave up. If the plan here is to get MORE readers, it’s failing miserably.

So how do we fix this problem? 

Here’s what I would make the standard rule: first of all, the Legacy Numbers should be mandatory for any series that continues the title or star of a previous series. The editors would need to get together right away, decide which books count towards the “legacy” and then stick with it from then on. 

Second, I would have them stop with the constant relaunches. If a character is returning after ten years away…okay, a new first issue might be justified. If we’re going back to issue #1 because there’s a new inker, it’s not. It’s become a common practice to start over with a new first issue any time there’s a change of creative team, especially when there’s a new writer. It’s too much. So here’s the rule: there must be a minimum of three years since the previous volume before a new first issue is justified. If the final issue of Captain Dudeman was #47 and it came out eighteen months ago, then you either have to start with Captain Dudeman #48 or you have to change the title. 

That second stipulation, I think, would start to get used very frequently. One of the reasons that the renumbering has gotten so rampant is that every time a new writer is brought onto a series they want to make their own mark – which is fair. But in so doing, they often want a clean slate, a sort of “back-to-basics” approach for the character, which has resulted in several books in the last few years where the first issue shows the heroes in a wholly different situation than they were in when the previous volume ended, and then it’s not until several issues later that the reasons for the change are actually explained. Sometimes it works (Fantastic Four and Daredevil both did this effectively in their most recent relaunches) and sometimes it doesn’t (the current run of Amazing Spider-Man should be studied by scholars as a cautionary example of what NEVER to do).

I don’t want to take away a writer’s ability to tell the stories they way they see fit, that’s not what this is about. But if the plan is to tell a totally different story, changing the title of the series is a good way to reduce confusion. Telling somebody “You have to read Green Lantern – but not that one, or that one, or that one…” is a recipe for the kind of bafflement that drove my wife away. But saying “Green Lantern: Emerald Champions is a great series” is a HELL of a lot easier for the casual reader to comprehend. You can keep the legacy numbers that way, but having a subtitle or supertitle (that’s when you preface the main title with something else, such as Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man) makes it a lot easier to differentiate one run from another. 

What this really boils down to is that I never again want to see a comic book called Fantastic Four #1. When I was a kid, owning that book would have been a gold mine. Now I’ve got six different books called that, and it’s ridiculous. 

Cover Confusion

The way the comics industry handles its covers is also an issue, and there are two primary problems I want to tackle. First, let’s talk about pin-up covers. This isn’t as bad as it once was, but for a while there in the 00s and 10s, there was an awful trend of comic books having generic pictures of the main character or characters on the cover, something that may be a fabulous piece of art but doesn’t tell the reader anything about the story between the pages. The argument at the time, I believe, was that they wanted every issue to be an accessible first issue for a new reader. While that may be a noble goal, that doesn’t make a damned bit of sense. Anybody who picks up a comic because they like the picture of Spider-Man on the cover is going to have a hard time keeping up if they open up the comic and run into “Revenge of the Return of the Colonoscopy of the Sinister Six: Part Five of Seventeen.” Congratulations – you sold that one issue…but they aren’t coming back. 

“Wow, great cover!”
“Thanks!”
“What’s the story about?”
“What the hell is a story?”

Pin-up art is fine, but a great comic book cover should tell a story. Think about some of the all-time most memorable covers: Amazing Spider-Man #129 features the webspinner dangling in front of the faces of his friends, agonizing over which of them was going to die in that issue. Green Lantern (Vol. 3) #49 shows a power-mad Hal Jordan brandishing a set of rings stolen from his fallen comrades, a look of pure chaos in his eyes. Wolverine: Blood Hunt #2 shows the ol’ Canucklehead on a motorcycle with a French vampire babe being chased by a mob of vampire stormtroopers while fleeing an explosion that is also being escaped by an overhead passenger jet.

If just that description isn’t enough to make you pick up the book and look inside, I don’t think you actually like comic books.

Now THAT’S art.

These days it’s better, although many variant covers still have what I call the Pinup Problem. So here’s going to be the rule for this one: cover art MUST be relevant to the story inside. That doesn’t mean it has to be a depiction of an actual SCENE from the story. Thematic covers, like the above Amazing Spider-Man #129, are fine. Covers promising a twist or a mystery, anything like that is just dandy, provided it has SOMETHING to do with the story. The only exceptions, the only time a simple pin-up is acceptable, are when it’s the first issue of a series (and presumably a good jumping-on point anyway), if it’s the introduction of a new character, or for certain milestone issues, such as an issue number that ends in a double zero.  

Now that we’ve cleaned THAT little problem up, let’s talk about the REAL issue: variant covers. 

There’s debate over when, exactly, variant covers became a thing, although most people seem to agree that the first mainstream example of printing copies of the same book with two different covers was probably Man of Steel #1 in 1986, the John Byrne relaunch of the entire Superman mythos. That was an instance where it was novel and interesting and fun. People made an effort to buy both covers to make their collection “complete.” It was really cool.

You could get with this, or — alternatively — hear me out on this one…you could get with THAT.

But like so many good things, it got overdone. It didn’t happen overnight, mind you. It was quite some time before having two covers became a regular practice, and even longer before it reached the heights it has today. Even as late as ten years ago, having multiple covers was still more of an exception than a rule. But the rules have changed and HOW. 

If you pick up any random issue of a new comic from a mainstream publisher today, odds are that you will have between two and five covers to choose from. First issues are frequently more. For the first issue of this summer’s Uncanny X-Men relaunch, League of Comic Geeks (the website I use to track my own collection) lists 32 separate cover variants. And even THAT is chump change compared to the most recent relaunch of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from IDW Publishing, which currently stands at – 

Are you sitting down? Are you sitting down in the sewer?

ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-SEVEN DIFFERENT COVERS.

If you are the sort of person who feels the need to get every available cover and you’re a Ninja Turtles fan, I hope you can still afford your insulin.

I’M SAYING IT’S KIND OF A LOT.

The reason they do this, of course, is because people continue to BUY them. And when there are stories every other day about some comic shop or another closing down or a publisher being unable to pay its creators, I can’t fault them for looking for ways to increase revenue. But the problem is that this simply bleeds money out of the existing fans until they get fed up and walk away entirely. And like the renumbering problem, this doesn’t do anything to actually get NEW fans into reading, which is what the long-term goal should be.

This is not to say that I hate variants in their entirety. I rather like them when they do something CLEVER with them, such as what I call “theme” months, where all the variants have a different trend. For instance, DC recently did a run of variants covers that were mock-ups of the packaging of the old Super Powers action figures. (I should point out that other publishers, including Marvel, have been doing action figure variants for a long time, but this was the first time I recall them being used as a monthly theme.) In October, there were a series of variants by artist Kelley Jones showing the DC heroes as kids in Halloween costumes. Marvel did a series not long ago of variant “homage” covers based on some of their old vampire comics, and another run that showed their characters facing off against Godzilla. That kind of stuff doesn’t really bother me, except for the fact that they add to the preposterous number of variants on the shelf.

I don’t know art, but I know what I hate. And I don’t hate this.

I also really like the “sketch” covers that have become popular in recent years. These are blank covers printed on a different cardstock that fans can use to draw their own artwork or have an artist draw something for them. They’re popular for commissions at comic book conventions and events like Free Comic Book Day, and I don’t think the blanks really cause a lot of confusion on the racks compared to the 30-plus X-Men covers. 

The worst part, I think, is that so many of these “variants” are barely worthy of being considered a separate cover. You commission a piece of art from an artist and you’ve got a cover. Print it with no logo or trade dress and it’s a “virgin” variant. Print it without colors and it’s a “sketch” variant. Print it with metallic ink and it’s a “foil” variant. You can crank out a dozen different covers with one sketch and people will continue to buy them. It’s insane.

I recognize that there are a lot of people who LIKE these variants, even if they aren’t MY thing. So in my capacity as the benevolent overlord of comic books, I don’t want to ban them entirely. Here are the restrictions I’ll put in place:

  • A standard issue of a comic book shall have no more than three covers: the “main” cover, a variant cover, and a “theme” variant for that month. 
  • First issues will be limited to five covers, including the theme cover.
  • Milestone issues, such as anniversaries, will be allowed extra variants consisting of no more than one-tenth of the number of issues the book has run. For instance, the 50th issue will be allowed 5 variants, the 100th issue will be allowed 10 variants, and so on. 
  • Retailer-exclusive variants will not count against the total. These are covers commissioned by – and only available from – specific retailers, such as an individual comic shop, store chain, or online retailer.
  • There will be no restrictions on “sketch” covers, nor will they count against the number of variants allowed. 

See? I can be as flexible as the next guy, provided the next guy isn’t Plastic Man.

Anyway, there we have it, guys. Comic books are fixed!

Well…okay, maybe not. There are still plenty of other things in the world of my favorite medium that need to be addressed. Other problems to solve, other fires to put out…but I’ve already gone on for nearly 3500 words, which is pretty massive for one of these Geek Punditry columns. So I think it’s time to put this topic aside, at least for now.

But that’s okay. After all, I’ve got to save something to write about when Geek Punditry #200 rolls around.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. His goal to take over all of social media after it has started to slide towards irrelevance continues. 

Geek Punditry #99: Blake’s Five Favorite Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade Displays

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Hello, everyone, and welcome once again to “Blake’s Five Favorites,” that semi-regular Geek Punditry mini-feature in which I pick some aspect of pop culture and just wax poetic about my five favorite examples of that thing. As always, “Five Favorites” is totally subjective. I’m not saying these are the BEST five examples, just that these are five that make ME smile…and it’s important to note that, when it comes to ranking things like this, I can be kind of fickle. If I were to write this column a week from now, I might pick five totally different examples.

Well…four different examples. Number one for this week holds a permanent place in my heart.

Next week is Thanksgiving, the second in the great Halloween-Thanksgiving-Christmas extravaganza that makes the last three months of the year my favorite time. Last year, if you’ll recall, I wrote about the sad dearth of Thanksgiving-related entertainment: with few movies other than Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, few specials beyond Peanuts and Garfield, and few bingeable TV shows other than Friends and Bob’s Burgers. But that doesn’t mean there’s NOTHING fun to watch for Thanksgiving, and this week I’m going to talk about one of my favorites: the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. This year is going to be the 98th annual parade, and I have to admit, I’m already kind of a-tingle looking forward to 2026 and wondering what they’ve got in store for the centennial edition of the greatest Thanksgiving tradition since Ben Franklin stuffed the first duck inside of George Washington’s chicken and then fed it to Alexander Hamilton’s turkey. Or whatever happened.

A tradition as precious as Uncle Fred making comments about Aunt Judy’s ‘vacation to Motel California” and making everyone feel awkward.

This week, I’m going to look back at the great parades I’ve watched over the years and talk about some of my favorite displays, be they floats, musical performances, or the legendary balloons. These will be in no particular order except for number one. I’m saving the best for last.

#5: The Spider-Man Balloon

I remember, for Spider-Man’s first crawl down the skies of New York in 1987. That first Spider-Man balloon was remarkably exciting for me, for reasons that are maybe a little difficult to articulate, especially to modern fans. It’s hard to remember, in this day and age when geek culture IS popular culture, that there was a time when things like comic books, sci-fi, and fantasy were looked down upon. They were considered “low” culture by the hoi polloi and expressing a love for such things was as good as placing a target on your back from the schoolyard bullies. So seeing Spider-Man appear in the Macy’s parade was…kind of a revelation. In a strange way, it was a sort of validation, seeing something that meant so much to me get mainstream attention. It was the first time I had an inkling that MY culture COULD be pop culture…and let’s face it, guys, the years since have proven me right.

Spidey’s original balloon lasted from 1987 until 1998. He came back in 2004 with a new, updated balloon that continued to fly along until 2014. And that was it…until next week.

“Peter One…Peter Two…Peter Three!”

A brand-new Spider-Man balloon is going to debut this year! Yes, May Parker’s favorite nephew is making his return to the Macy’s Parade for the first time in a decade, and I cannot wait to sit on the couch with my son and watch him soar across the sky once again. I don’t know how long Spidey Mark III will last, but I feel like the wallcrawler has become something of a perennial. And I can only hope that if Eddie ever has kids of his own, he’ll be watching Spider-Man on Thanksgiving day with them. 

#4: The Marching Bands

I was a band geek in school.

I know, it’s shocking, but try to compose yourself.

I was a band geek all through middle school, high school, college. And of course, that means I was a marching band geek. I spent a lot of Fridays and Saturdays glide-stepping across a football field, slinging my trombone and wearing pants that rode entirely too close to my nipples. And to this day, I still love watching a marching band…but I hate the fact that they never seem to get any love on TV. Nearly every one of these college football games we watch has at least ONE marching band out there at halftime, playing their hearts out. I’d love to see them get a little credit for once.

You laugh, but you’d be shocked at how many girls swooned over the guy who could play “Land of 1,000 Dances” on trombone.

…None. The number is zero.

So the Macy’s Parade is great because that actually happens. For one day a year, we get to watch as dozens of schools from across the country strut their stuff on the biggest stage a marching band can get. The thing to remember is that the kids you see in that parade busted their butts to get there. Not only have they given countless hours rehearsing music and practicing drills, but the schools also have to pay their own way to the parade. So bands do fundraisers of all types: car washes, bake sales, soda sales…even mattress sales seem to have become popular in recent years. For those of us watching at home, we see 30 seconds of a marching band performance, but that could be the result of up to two years of hard work, planning, fundraising, and rehearsal. I love to see them get to show their stuff, even if half the country uses their appearance to go baste the turkey. 

#3: The Marvel Superheroes Float

The same year that Spider-Man’s first balloon premiered, we got another Marvel presentation, the Marvel Universe float. The float rolled three times before retiring after 1989, but similar to the Spider-Man balloon itself, it left an indelible mark on my geek psyche. (Side note: I’m realizing that this column is getting much deeper into my assorted nerdities than I would have expected.) The float was full of costumed performers dressed as characters that – in the 80s – were pretty damn obscure to the general public. I mean…Dr. Strange? Wolverine? Who the hell would ever make a movie about THOSE guys, right?

Pictured: Life before High Definition

This was long before Marvel was purchased by the Walt Disney Corporation and Global Underground Shadow Government and Falafel Stand, so the production values were at a level that I would describe as “Six Flags Knock-Off Amusement Park Show.” The costumes look like they were sewed together by somebody’s mother, and calling the “stunt” work stunt work is a bigger gift than anything Santa could bring. Despite the incredible cheese factor, I’ve never forgotten how much I loved watching that float, and in the week before Thanksgiving every year, I still pull up the clip of the 1989 parade on YouTube and watch it again, immersing myself in lovely, lovely memories. 

#2: The Garfield Balloon

This is another one that scratches that nostalgia itch, but when I think about Macy’s parade balloons, if it’s not Spider-Man, the first thing that comes to mind is Jim Davis’s legendary fat cat. I know, in this day and age it’s not fashionable to be a fan of Garfield. It’s bland. It’s homogenized. And the most recent movie took WILD liberties with established series canon. But I feel like I need to remind you that I was born the year before the first Garfield comic strip came out. The cat and I literally grew up together, so I have a soft spot for him. Plus, the old Garfield and Friends cartoon show was actually really good, and the holiday specials were great.

Garfield never rides in the Canadian Thanksgiving parade because he hates Mondays.

All that said, I remember seeing Garfield in the Macy’s Parade for years. It was the sort of thing that felt like a perennial to me, something that was just always there and always would be. Looking back, I see that it wasn’t QUITE that constant, but he did have a heck of a run. The original Garfield balloon traveled down the streets with the parade from 1985 until 1989, with a second stint from 1992 through 1999. A new Garfield balloon, this time carrying his teddy bear Pooky, showed up in 2003 and lasted through 2006. 

It’s hard to explain what exactly it is about the Garfield balloon that I find so comforting. Yeah, the character is as corporate as it gets, and in fact, Jim Davis deliberately crafted the comic strip to be as inoffensive and all-encompassing as possible. But in a way, that’s kind of appropriate. Hell, the parade itself is put on by a department store, and every float and balloon comes with a sponsor whose name is announced on national television during the broadcast – are we really going to pretend we’re NOT watching a three-hour commercial every Thanksgiving morning? And for that reason, I think Garfield is actually kinda the perfect mascot for the whole shebang. So yeah, I love seeing that balloon for the same reason I get a little smile every time I’m reminded of the days when every other car on the road had a Garfield plush stuck against the rear window. It just kind of feels…right.

#1: Santa Claus

I mean, what else could possibly take the top spot on my rating of the greatest parts of the Thanksgiving parade? I’ve often said that I think gatekeeping is stupid and that anybody who tries to tell anyone else that they’re wrong to start celebrating Christmas “early” is only showing their own prejudices. That said, in my house, I don’t think it’s Christmastime until that last minute of the Macy’s parade, when Santa’s sleigh rolls down the streets of Manhattan. It’s at that moment that I really feel like the holiday season has “officially” begun and there’s no longer any rationale from any of those Scrooges who claim that it’s too early for Christmas to keep flapping their gums.

“Ho, ho, hooold on a second there, save me some pumpkin pie!”

Santa’s most famous ride is still a month out, of course, but seeing him in the parade reminds every kid in the world that he’s on his way, that it’s time to make a list, that they better start behaving themselves, consarn it. And it feels like THE most constant part of the parade to me. Floats and balloons come and go, you don’t see the same marching bands every year, the musical performances are carefully crafted to support whatever is hot on Broadway that season…but no matter what else is going on in the world and who else is being paid to show up in the parade, Santa Claus is always going to be there. Hell, the whole tradition is the centerpiece of the movie Miracle on 34th Street, and I’ll never get tired of either one of them.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. If he had a genie available to him, one of his wishes would be to create a character so universally beloved that they would be immortalized in the Macy’s parade. The next wish would be for an official Red Ryder, carbine action, 200-shot, range model air rifle, with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time.

Geek Punditry #88: Blake’s Five Favorite Superhero Movie Scenes

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It’s time for a new Geek Punditry feature: Blake’s Five Favorites! In Five Favorites, I’m just going to talk about something that’s been on my mind and discuss my…well…my five favorite examples of that thing. Now keep in mind that this list is inherently subjective and not at all comprehensive. You may disagree with my choices, and that’s fine. And there may be other examples out there that I’d like even better, but I haven’t seen them yet. And if we’re being totally honest, if you asked me again tomorrow, my list may be totally different. I’m funny that way. But for now, as of the time I’m writing this, I want to tell you about my five favorite scenes from superhero movies. This is NOT a list of my five favorite superhero movies (although there would definitely be overlap), but a list of the five individual scenes in the history of superhero cinema that make me feel the happiest, proudest, most excited, or most touched. And obviously, these are going to be FULL of spoilers, so if you haven’t seen these movies by now, you may want to skip. Let’s see if any of your favorites make the list.

#5: James Gordon Lives (The Dark Knight, 2008)

Very few superheroes can really do their job alone, and those that try usually wind up learning early on that attempting to do so is a mistake. And for all his talk about being a lone wolf, decades of storytelling have built up a sizable contingent of heroes surrounding Batman. He’s got sons (biological, adopted, AND surrogate), daughter-figures, father-figures, friends, allies, lovers, and even frenemies. And of all the characters that have taken up arms with the Batman during the years of his crusade, my favorite is police commissioner James Gordon. There’s something inspiring about the one good cop trying to clean up a filthy, corrupt department and forging an alliance with an agent outside of the law to do it. I don’t really care for any version of Batman that casts Gordon as an incompetent, which is perhaps the most unforgivable of the many sins in the Joel Schumaker movies. 

Of all the actors who have played Gordon, Gary Oldman in the Dark Knight trilogy is hands-down my favorite. He really sells Gordon as a good man who recognizes that things are out of control and takes the necessary steps to set things right, and I absolutely LOVED how this film showed the pact between Gordon, Batman, and Harvey Dent that worked so well for all characters in The Long Halloween.

“I believe in Crystal Lig–I mean, Harvey Dent.”

So I was pretty darn startled when, partway through the film, Gordon is killed. I was shocked. I was stunned. And although the large part of me didn’t believe it could be true, I also recognized that director Chris Nolan had already taken some liberties with canon and I couldn’t be TOTALLY sure that he wouldn’t make that big of a turn. A while later, Batman and Dent hatch a plan to trick the Joker into attacking a convoy. The plan works, the Joker winds up on the ground with a gun to his head, and the cop holding that gun whips off his mask to reveal Gordon, alive, his faked death revealed to be all part of the plan.

Gordon: I’ve got you, you son of a bitch.
Me, in the back of the theater, screaming: YEEEAAH, YOU DO!!!

It is a testament to the love of my girlfriend at the time that, after I jumped and CHEERED in that movie theater, she still agreed to marry me. Someday I hope our son gets as thrilled at this scene as I am every time I watch it.

#4: You Are Who You Choose to Be (The Iron Giant, 1999)

Let’s get this out of the way before we go any further: Hell YES, The Iron Giant is a superhero movie. A childlike creature of immense power comes to Earth from outer space and chooses to use his powers to help people. There is no adequate definition of the term “superhero” that can justifiably exclude Brad Bird’s gargantuan guardian. As if that weren’t enough, the Giant befriends a young boy, Hogarth, who teaches him about being human using what is arguably the greatest possible source material: Superman comic books. (The argument, by the way, is whether or not these are a better source than Charles Schulz’s Peanuts, but the movie is set in 1957 and Schulz’s greatest philosophical work was still ahead of him.)

Plus, this looks a lot better than painting a zigzag stripe around his midsection.

Lost on Earth and with no memories, the giant goes through the usual sort of mishaps that ETs usually get into, only with fewer Reese’s Pieces, while the military picks up on his trail and tries to chase him down. Late in the film, the Giant’s true nature is revealed: he was created by some distant alien civilization as a weapon. As he struggles against his own programming, a panicked government agent orders a nuclear attack on the robot, one that will destroy not only the Giant, but an entire town of innocent people. The Giant, however, overcomes his programming and remembers something Hogarth told him earlier in the film: “You are who you choose to be.”

The Giant makes his choice. He is not a weapon. He is not a gun.

He blasts into the sky to intercept the missile, choosing to sacrifice himself to save the town full of innocents, and in the last second before impact, he whispers the name that he has chosen.

“Superman…”

If you can watch this scene without tears, I don’t know if I want to talk to you.

You can’t tell me that Clark wouldn’t be proud to see this guy wearing his shield.

In this scene the Giant proves he understands sacrifice, he understands selflessness, he understands choosing to believe in the fundamental goodness of humanity. He understands what being a hero actually is.

He understands Superman.

A hell of a lot better than most other people, I would argue.

#3: Peter One, Peter Two, Peter Three (Spider-Man: No Way Home, 2021)

Tom Holland, as I’ve often said, is my favorite of the actors who have played Spider-Man on the big screen. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a fondness for the other two, Toby Maguire and Andrew Garfield. And it was immensely satisfying to me to see the three of them share the stage together in the final act of Spider-Man: No Way Home. In this film, the MCU version of Spider-Man has screwed up badly, breaking a spell Dr. Strange was trying to cast to wipe memory of his secret identity from the public, and drawing in people from alternate realities, destabilizing the very fabric of the multiverse back before people were doing that every other week. The whole thing builds to a battle against the nastiest rogue any live-action Spider-Man has ever faced, Willem DaFoe’s Green Goblin, who ups the ante in this film by (last time I’m warning you against spoilers) murdering Peter’s Aunt May. 

While the MCU never showed us Holland getting bitten by a radioactive spider or the death of Ben Parker, they found a different way to demonstrate Peter’s character development by spreading it across three films. Homecoming was about him learning how to be a hero. Far From Home was about him learning to be his OWN kind of hero, separate from Tony Stark. This film is about learning the COST of being a hero. It’s May’s death, not Ben’s, that really hammers that home for us all. 

But Holland doesn’t have to learn this lesson alone, because the multiversal rift hasn’t only brought in villains. Holland’s Peter finds himself allied with his previous incarnations, Maguire and Garfield, each of whom has some baggage to bring to the table, and each of whom is essential to the full development of Holland’s character.

“Wait, you’re the youngest, why are YOU Peter One? This is worse than when Barry Allen called Jay Garrick’s universe ‘Earth-2’.”

While Holland wrestles with his own failures, he sees Maguire, who is implied to have found a sort of stability and love with his version of Mary Jane Watson. In Maguire, Holland sees that there is hope for the future, even in the wake of seemingly unsurmountable tragedy. Garfield, meanwhile, has tortured himself over the death of Gwen Stacy ever since the end of Amazing Spider-Man 2 and become a darker, more broken Spider-Man because of it. But in perhaps the greatest moment of this movie, Garfield saves the MCU version of MJ from suffering the same fate. The look of simultaneous anguish and relief on Garfield’s face is tectonic: he has atoned for his failure. He hasn’t failed again. In him, Holland sees the hope for redemption.

We should all have a moment where we can find that kind of peace.

When the girl who just FELL OFF THE STATUE OF LIBERTY has to ask if YOU’RE okay, it’s an emotional moment.

Seeing what the other two have gone through and how they came out the other side is perhaps the most important part of Tom Holland’s journey in this movie, guiding him to the new life he has to lead at the end with no family and no friends who remember his existence. He’s striking out on his own – lonely, yes, but with the knowledge that hope and redemption are real and possible. And no matter what movie he shows up in next or who directs it, if Tom Holland swings again, that’s the Spider-Man I want to see…the one shaped by the lessons of his multiversal brothers. 

#2: Avengers…Assemble (Avengers: Endgame, 2019)

You want to know what makes Avengers: Endgame so great? You know what it does that so many other attempts at a “cinematic universe” (and even much of the MCU in the years since then) have failed at? Payoff. What’s the point in a cinematic universe if not to introduce long-term story threads that eventually are brought together in a satisfying way? Endgame pulled together the threads of eleven years of storytelling and almost two dozen movies to put together a finale that served as a powerful conclusion for every part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, provided you pretended that there weren’t any TV shows that were related to it.

And the best part of that film, for me, was the final battle scene, probably the most thrilling such scene in the history of superhero movies. The Hulk has undone the “snap” from the end of the previous film, bringing back all of the people Thanos killed five years ago, and as he launches his attack on the broken Avengers, their friends start to filter in. 

It starts with “On your left.”

We remember this signal from the Falcon – one of the lost – and the rest of the heroes begin to arrive. The Avengers who were dusted in Wakanda. The Guardians of the Galaxy, along with Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, brought back from the far reaches of space. The armies of Wakanda, the acolytes from Wong’s temple. The battlefield is populated with more heroes than we’ve ever seen in a superhero movie before, and Captain America kicks it off with the words that fans have been waiting a DECADE to hear: 

Me, squeezing my wife’s arm: He’s gonna say it, HE’S GONNA SAY IT…

“Avengers…assemble.”

But even that wasn’t the greatest part of the scene, wasn’t? Oh, no, as fantastic as that was, there’s still one more bit of payoff to come, when Thor and Thanos grapple on the battlefield and suddenly the mad Titan is struck by Thor’s hammer Mjolnir, scavenged from the past along with the Infinity Stones. The hammer smashes into Thanos’s face, flying through the air, hurtling back to the hand that threw it…but if not Thor, whose hand is guiding it?

It returns to the hand of Captain America, and the movie theater EXPLODED. At least, the theater where I was sitting did. In all my life, I have NEVER heard such an outpouring of cheers and excitement from a movie audience as I did in that moment, and I seriously doubt I ever will again. This, my friends, this was payoff for the entirety of the franchise. As we all know, Mjolnir is enchanted, and can only be lifted by someone who is “worthy.”

“I KNEW IT!!!” Thor shouts.

We all did, Thor. We all did.

I mean, this scene was amazing, but you know the Iron Giant could lift the hammer too, right?

#1: You’ve Got Me? Who’s Got You? (Superman, 1978)

But my favorite scene, guys…my single favorite scene in superhero movie history, the scene I would ask to have playing on the screen if they were strapping me down on one of those tables from Soylent Green, comes from the first Richard Donner Superman movie. We’ve spent half the film watching baby Kal-El become Clark Kent, watching him grow up into Christopher Reeve, watching him shape the persona he’s going to wear as a mild-mannered reporter, but we have not yet seen HIM. We have not yet seen more than a glimpse of the title character. Until Lois Lane – of course – is involved in a helicopter accident. The whirlybird falls and Lois falls OUT of it, and it’s curtains for the Daily Planet’s star reporter.

Until she falls harmlessly into a pair of waiting arms.

This strange visitor, this proud figure in red and blue, lifts Lois in one hand and catches the helicopter in the other, and he reassures her that everything will be fine by simply saying, “I’ve got you.”

And Lois, flabbergasted, shouts, “You’ve got me? Who’s got YOU?”

How anybody can call Romeo and Juliet a love story while this scene exists in the universe is beyond me.

I think we take for granted, in superhero stories, the miraculous things that these characters are supposed to be capable of. We’ve seen so many movies, read so many comic books with people who can fly and shoot lasers from their eyes and walk through walls that we forget how astonishing these things would be in the real world. But Superman was the first movie to attempt such a thing on this scale, and in-universe, it’s something that has never existed before. Up until this point, the world of this film is ostensibly our own. The astonishment that Margot Kidder brings to that moment is absolutely perfect, as is Christopher Reeve’s reaction. He gently places her (and the helicopter) back on the roof, but before he can leave, Lois asks him who he is.

And he gives the only answer that matters:

“A friend.”

There are two things, I think, essential to the character of Superman. One is the protector, the defender, the man who will stop at nothing to save the lives of everyone around him. The Iron Giant showed us that side of Superman. The other side, though, is the man of infinite compassion and kindness, a belief in the better angels of human nature if only there is someone to guide them. Superman is the hero who never gives up on anyone, even his bitterest enemy, because somewhere inside of them he KNOWS there is a flicker of good waiting to be fanned into a flame. Batman tries to strike fear into the hearts of criminals. Superman is there to show us all that there is a better way. 

And when he looks at you like this, can’t you actually BELIEVE it?

I’ve got high hopes for James Gunn and David Corenswet, but it’s hard to believe that anything they can do could ever capture that essence as simply and perfectly as the two words, “a friend.”

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. Next time: his five favorite McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches! (Spoiler alert: steak, egg, and cheese bagel.)

Three Wishes: The Toys That Made Us

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A few days ago, a long national nightmare ended when Nacelle announced two new seasons of their hit documentary series, The Toys That Made Us. I became a huge fan of this series right away, and it’s been a long five years since we got any new episodes, so I’m absolutely ecstatic. To commemorate the news, I thought I would re-present to you a piece I wrote between seasons two and three for a sadly-defunct pop culture forum, a “Three Wishes” column where I suggested potential topics for future episodes. I’m happy to say that one of my three suggestions was included in season three, and the other two are going to be in the new episodes that were just announced, albeit in slightly different forms than what I suggested. It’s incredible that my ability to predict the future is incredibly accurate, provided that I only use it in ways that have absolutely no potential for monetary advancement on my part. Anyway, here’s what I wrote way back in 2018.

The best reason to subscribe to Netflix these days isn’t Orange is the New Black or Arrested Development. Heck, it’s not even Bright. The shining jewel in the streaming service’s crown is The Toys That Made Us, a documentary series that looks into the history and impact of some of the most popular toy lines of all time. With a lighthearted tone, the series dives into things that the viewer grew up with, chock full of interviews with the people who conceived the toys, creators who made the TV and comic book tie-ins, and supercollectors. Plus, you get all the classic toy commercials you grew up with.

The eight episodes, to date, have explored the worlds of Star Wars, Barbie, He-Man, G.I. Joe, Star Trek, TransFormers, LEGO, and Hello Kitty. That’s a ton of toyetic goodness. But if you’re like any other human being, you probably read that list and immediately asked, “Hey, what about…” and then filled in whatever your own favorite toy line is. That’s natural, there are hundreds of toy lines that have achieved enough success to have their fans, and while not all of them may have an incredible story to go with them, there are bound to be enough to fuel several more seasons of this show. Considering how popular and relatively cheap the show is to produce, Netflix would be bonkers not to ask for more. In Three Wishes, we take a look at something in pop culture and express three hopes for the future, whether those wishes are almost inevitable or pie-in-the-sky dreams. Today, we’re going to talk about three toy lines the producers should consider for their next round of episodes.

1. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The first choice here is pretty much a no-brainer. When you look at the independent comic book bubble of the 80s, it would be virtually impossible to argue that there was a bigger success than Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. From their humble beginnings as a parody of Frank Miller’s Daredevil, the Turtles exploded into a global phenomenon. Their comics, through countless relaunches and spin-offs, have been featured at no less than five publishers They’ve starred in five television series and six theatrical films, and most significantly, they have dominated toy shelves for years. 

Playmates Toys has held the Turtles license since 1988, producing thousands of action figures and playsets. In addition to the countless iterations of the Turtles themselves, there have been figures of their allies and foes, movie- and TV-specific versions, the turtles in costumes such as (not officially) the Universal Monsters and (officially) the cast of Star Trek, and pretty much any other piece of merchandising you can name. With a documentary, the challenge is to find what’s compelling in real life and push it to the forefront. Although I don’t know anything about the Playmates company or how they have worked with Eastman and Laird or the Turtles’ current owner, Nickelodeon, the sheer volume and popularity of this franchise seems like it would be a ripe property to focus on for 45 minutes. 

2. Toy Biz/Marvel Toys: On the other hand, here’s a property where there is undoubtedly enough drama to make for a compelling TV episode. It may be hard to believe today, but there was a time in the 90s where the future of Marvel Comics was in serious doubt. Bad business decisions and bad acquisitions sent the biggest comic book publisher in the industry spiraling into bankruptcy, and things looked bleak at the house that Spider-Man built.

One of the things that helped pull Marvel Comics through was an unexpected merger of sorts with Toy Biz, a Canadian-based company that had the license to make Marvel toys at the time. The story of the twisting, winding relationship between the companies has been written about extensively, but that doesn’t mean there’s not more gold to mine. I’d love to hear the story told by the players in the game, as we learn the truth about how, without this little toy company, Marvel Entertainment may not have lasted long enough to make your kids cry all the way home from Infinity War.

3: McDonald’s Happy Meal Toys: In my house, we have a term for people who didn’t love McDonald’s Happy Meal toys: filthy liars. Because no matter what kind of Keto-adherent, La Croix-chugging diet you may be on today, when you were a kid there was nothing better than a cheeseburger, fries, and a new toy. Since 1979, McDonald’s has released thousands of toys, from licensed Disney characters to Chicken McNuggets in Halloween costumes to the legendary McDonald’s Changeables (toys that transformed from McDonald’s food into robots. That I never completed this series is my one regret in life.)

Not only can’t the Happy Meal toy be beaten in sheer variety, but it’s also ubiquitous as anything you can imagine, touching virtually every child in North America for the last four decades. What’s more, some of them are insanely collectible. Give me a tour of some guy’s crazy attic Happy Meal museum and, I promise, I’m watching to the end. Let’s see if anybody feels that strongly about the Burger King Kids’ Club. (Answer: no.)

Blake M. Petit, whose college roommate once said he could never date a woman who didn’t “get” Grimlock, has been pontificating about pop culture online for over a decade. You can follow him at BlakeMPetit.com and, if you’re feeling generous, check out his books on Amazon.

Geek Punditry #82: I’m Going to Go Back There Someday

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It’s that time again, friends. Every year, as July races to a close, kids sharpen pencils for school, and teachers spend an inordinate amount of time and money getting their classrooms suitable to post on Instagram, the geeks of the world converge on San Diego, California for the annual bacchanalia officially known as Comic-Con International. And every year I sit here in Louisiana, gazing to the west, and wishing I could be there with ‘em.

Goals.

It’s a bucket list thing for me, guys. Some day, at least ONCE, I want to go to San Diego Comic-Con. I’ve got a lot of friends who have been – heck, with the pals I have who work in comics, I’ve got a lot of friends who go pretty much every year. I see the posts and I gaze at the photos shared on social media and I think about what it would be like to be there, even though I know it’s not going to happen any time soon. It’s expensive, first of all. Admission to the convention aside, I think about the costs of airfare, food, car rental or Ubers to get around, and hotel rooms (some reportedly going for over $1000 a night on this particular weekend) and I know there’s no way this can be swung on a teacher’s salary in the current economy. Then there’s the kiddo – making this trip would either require my wife to take time off work to stay home with our son or her take off work so all three of us could go together. Going together is my preference, but not really feasible at the moment. So it stays on that bucket list, unchecked, right next to “Play Benjamin Franklin in a production of 1776.”

Also goals.

“Ah, it’s okay Blake,” say some of my friends. “Comic-Con isn’t what it used to be anyway.” And that, at least, is true. It’s been a really long time since Comic-Con was actually about comic books. The media empires have taken it over – movie and TV studios are the stars of the really big panels, and video game companies flock there to shill their upcoming games. And while I don’t begrudge any of them, comics are my real jam, and are what I’d really want to see. I’d rather go to a DC Comics panel than a Warner Bros. panel most days…although if it were James Gunn and company talking about the upcoming Superman movie, it’d be a heck of an internal battle. 

Still wanna go, though.

It also doesn’t seem to be quite as big in terms of making news as it used to be. For years in these waning days of July, I would refresh my web browser all day long, waiting for news reports coming from San Diego to tell me what was going to happen over the next year in the world of entertainment. Marvel would unveil whole slates of films there back when such a thing seemed like a wise thing to do, and fans like myself would teeter on the edge of Firefox to see what was coming next. I don’t feel like that happens as much anymore. Studios are so desperate to stay relevant that they squeeze out announcements all year long, often prematurely, very often promising things that wind up never happening. It’s frustrating, to be sure. But in terms of what it does to Comic-Con it’s even worse, as so many of the “big” panels have changed. There’s no longer an opportunity to blow our minds with announcements of what’s to come, but rather just a recap of the announcements that have been made since the last time they recapped their announcements. 

Yet I still wish I was there.

It’s not like I’ve never been to a convention, of course. When I was young, I went with my Uncle Todd to a few Star Trek conventions (these don’t really exist anymore, as Comic-Con and its many imitators have become a catch-all for pop culture and cons specific to a single franchise have become much rarer). When the Chicago Comic-Con was still a big deal I did a road trip with my buddies Mike and James. I’ve been to Philly and Houston, and many Wizard World-turned-Fan Expo shows here in New Orleans. And I’ve been to dozens of smaller shows, which are honestly better when it comes to the comic book side of things. Back in April, Erin and I took Eddie to a small show in Covington (right across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans) and it was honestly the BEST show I’ve been to in YEARS when it comes to the number of vendors selling comic books and comic paraphernalia, as opposed to thousands of headshots you could get signed by whatever actors are in attendance. I loved that little show, and I’m looking forward to the next one.

Observe the Native North American Geek in his natural habitat.

But I still feel that COMPULSION to go to the BIG one.

Why?

Because in a weird way it feels like home.

I don’t know if younger readers will get this, because the stigma about being into “nerdy” stuff seems to have largely gone away. With Marvel and Star Wars being so mainstream and things like Game of Thrones and The Boys becoming media juggernauts, things that we used to consider niche entertainment have become dominant parts of the cultural zeitgeist. But when I was in high school in the 90s, I was always made to feel like I didn’t belong because I read comics and watched cartoons. I clung to the things I loved, but often felt the need to hide them, lest I become even more of an outcast than I already was. I’d even quit Disney and Archie comics not because I didn’t like them anymore, but because I let people put it in my head that if I was in high school and reading Uncle Scrooge something must have been wrong with me. If I was seen with a Star Trek novel or an X-Men t-shirt, the reaction quite clearly elicited the same response every time: you do not belong here. High school was a bitch of a place, guys.

I’ve got a core memory of a time in 1993 when Superman: The Man of Steel #22 came out. This was during the whole “Death and Return of Superman” storyline, and John Henry Irons IMMEDIATELY became my favorite of the four potential heirs to the throne. I brought the comic to school with me and, on a break outside, I sat on a bench to read it. And within seconds, a jerk from my PE class yanked it out of my hands because I was such a “nerd,” threw dirt into the die-cut cover, and stomped away laughing.

I can’t help but feel that John Henry would have known how to deal with it.

I don’t remember the guy’s name. I couldn’t pick his face out of a lineup. But I’ll never forget what he did, because you CAN’T forget anything that makes you feel that small.

I look at my own students, and I don’t see that anymore. Oh sure, there are still cliques and groups, there will ALWAYS be cliques and groups, but they aren’t really based on things like what kind of pop culture a kid is into anymore. I see a lot of kids who read Manga (not enough into western comics, but that’s a separate issue), but I never see anyone get bullied for that. You want to pick on a kid for playing video games? Dude, that’s a club whose membership is EVERYBODY. Things have changed and, in this respect at least, have very much changed for the better.

But I come from a time BEFORE those changes, when I only knew two or three other kids in my school who were openly comic book fans, and most of them wound up moving away before we graduated. It was a lonely time.

The first time I walked into a comic book convention, it was like I had finally found my tribe. There were people here who not only wouldn’t MOCK me for reading Superman, but would join me in a spirited debate over the credentials of the Man of Steel, Cyborg, Superboy, and Eradicator, and which of them (if any) were the real deal. There were people here who could ALSO explain why some crew members on the Enterprise wore red while others wore gold or blue. There were people who not only wouldn’t mock me for loving Uncle Scrooge comics, but they would join me in line to get a print and comics signed by Don Rosa, perhaps the greatest artist ever to draw the Laird of the Clan McDuck. (Yeah, I love Carl Barks too, but I said what I said.)

If my house caught on fire I would save my son, and then this. My wife is faster than me, she’s already outside at this point, that’s why I didn’t mention her.

Nobody should ever have to feel the way I felt on that day back in 1993, certainly not because of what they like to read or watch. But I wish that EVERYBODY could have that experience of walking into a room and suddenly feeling like that’s where you’ve belonged all along.

I still get that when I walk into my local comic shop (BSI Comics in Metairie, Louisiana – and I’ll never be shy about giving them the shout-out). I feel that way on Free Comic Book Day, when hundreds of like-minded folks come together to see what’s new. And I feel that way when I attend a show full of people selling, drawing, reading, and talking about comics and movies and TV shows. And even the people who aren’t into the same comics and movies and TV shows as I am are still part of the same tribe, because we know that even if I’m into Star Trek and you’re into Star Wars, we’re still more alike than we are different.

Not like that Stargate weirdo.

So why would I possibly want to go to the big, bloated, past-its-glory-days Comic-Con International in San Diego? 

Because in a way that I don’t know if you can understand if you’re lucky enough to never have felt like an outcast, it’s where I feel like I belong. With my people. With my tribe. Just because I’ve never been doesn’t mean it doesn’t call to me like home.

Ah well. Maybe next year.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He believes the Great Gonzo said it best when he sang, “I’ve never been there, but I know the way,” and a tip of the hat to Steve J. Rogers for putting that bug in his ear. 

Geek Punditry #74: Playing Favorites With Summer Part Two

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It’s time for part two of Playing Favorites with Summer, folks! In case you missed part one, when I do a “Playing Favorites” column I ask my pals on social media to suggest categories related to a given topic, then I share what I think are the best examples of each from the worlds of movies, TV, books, and comic books. In part one of “Playing Favorites With Summer,” I talked about my favorite summer road trip movies, coming of age movies, and beach movies, as well as some of the best summer reads for students. Let’s delve into part two, shall we?

Baseball Movies

Lew Beitz wanted to know what I think are some of the best baseball movies out there. Although baseball season starts in the spring and ends in the fall, almost any great baseball movie will also qualify as a summertime movie, since that’s when most of the season falls and, frankly, we’ve all pretty much decided that baseball is the official sport of summer. Last week I mentioned The Sandlot when I was writing about coming-of-age movies, so let’s just take that one as a given.

Beyond that, there are plenty of great baseball movies out there. A League of Their Own is one that frequently comes up, for example. Penny Marshall directed this 1992 film loosely based on the real story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, a  women’s baseball league that was founded during World War II, as too many of the male baseball players had joined the fight against the Axis powers to put on a baseball season. The league folded in 1954 because AAGPBL was far too unwieldy an acronym to compete with MLB, but the league still has its legacy today, by which I mean this movie. The film stars Geena Davis, Lori Petty, Rosie O’Donnell, and Madonna as members of the Rockford Peaches, with Tom Hanks doing a great turn as a washed-up coach trying to redeem himself with the girls’ team. There’s something about sports movies that lends itself really well to the “dramedy,” that hybrid film too serious to call a pure comedy but too funny to be called a drama, and A League of Their Own is one of the all-time great examples of that.

It’s a shame Jeter never wore that uniform.

If you want something more dramatic, there are a pair of numeric “true stories” well worth watching. 42 is the story of Jackie Robinson, the man who famously broke the color barrier by becoming the first African American to play major league baseball. The late Chadwick Boseman is phenomenal as Robinson, bringing the same sort of strength and dignity that defined not only his most famous role as Marvel’s the Black Panther, but also defined the man himself. Also well worth watching is 61*, directed by Billy Crystal, about the year that Roger Maris (Barry Pepper) and Mickey Mantle (Thomas Jane) raced one another in an effort to beat Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record. Crystal’s love of baseball is legendary, and he really puts every bit of that love on the screen in this film. 

You know what makes a great baseball movie, right? Math.

But my all-time favorite baseball movie, one that I have never grown even the slightest bit tired of, is the 1989 fantasy film Field of Dreams. Kevin Costner plays an Iowa farmer who is persuaded by a mysterious voice to turn his cornfield into a baseball diamond. Although it seems crazy to risk his livelihood in such a fashion, once the diamond is finished, it becomes populated by the spirits of lost baseball players, miraculously brought back into the game. It’s a beautiful story, with great performances by Amy Madigan, Burt Lancaster, Ray Liotta and James Earl Jones. However, I would be remiss not to point out that this movie is, at its heart, a story about a father and a son. That didn’t quite resonate with me when I was 12 years old. But like a lot of other stories that I’ve revisited since my own child was born, it hits differently now. I hope I don’t sound like a broken record with this kind of thing, but there’s an emotional component to parent/child stories that I don’t know that anyone can quite understand if they aren’t a parent themselves. I know I didn’t get it before 2017. I get it now, and it makes the movie all the better for it.  

If you show it on HBO 492 times a month in the early 90s, we will watch it.

Summer Annual Crossovers

Cameron James asked me what some of my favorite comic book “summer annual crossover events” were. Here’s a quick history lesson, for those of you who aren’t comic book fans. Comics, historically, have come out once a month, twelve times a year. Fairly early on, though, publishers started releasing giant sized special issues once a year, hence “Annual.” In the early days, these were often reprints of popular stories, but later they started to produce original stories, bigger stories. The first Amazing Spider-Man Annual, for example, was the issue where his greatest enemies first banded together as the Sinister Six. 

For a time in the late 80s and early 90s, Marvel and DC Comics both observed a tradition of using those annual editions – traditionally published throughout the summer – for a special crossover event, with one story that threaded throughout all of them. Marvel started this in 1988 with a storyline called The Evolutionary War, but I’ve always found their BEST summer annual storyline to be 1989’s Atlantis Attacks. In this story, a despotic ruler takes over the undersea kingdom of Atlantis and plans a war against the surface world – at first in secret, but later openly – as part of a master plan to resurrect the ancient Egyptian serpent god Set. The story serves as a sequel to several older Marvel stories in which Set had played a part, and in addition to the main story each issue had a back-up feature re-telling the story of Set with art by Mark Bagley, who would later become one of my favorite Spider-Man artists of all time. The story itself was really good, and the back-ups gave a lot of interesting insight into classic Marvel history that was pretty cool for a 12-year-old Blake who hadn’t been born yet when a lot of those stories were told.

The funny thing is that the world nearly ended because a bunch of people were fighting over a hat.

Since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, DC followed suit in 1991 with their first – and, as it turned out best – annual event, Armageddon 2001. In a not-too-distant future, Matthew Ryder lives in a world controlled by a fascist dictator named Monarch who has shaped the world into his own Orwellian version of perfection. Nobody knows who Monarch is, although rumors persist that he was once one of Earth’s superheroes, before he killed the rest of them back in the year 2001. Ryder subjects himself to a time-travel experiment, gaining powers and taking the name Waverider. He travels back to the “present” of 1991, ten years before the rise of Monarch, to read the futures of DC’s heroes and stop the Monarch’s reign before it can happen.

He’s a 10 but he doesn’t use his power to see the future to tell you the Powerball numbers.

The practical result of this was that each issue told a story of a possible future for the hero, freeing the writers up to do wild stories free of the consequences of continuity. Like any crossover with lots of different writers taking part, the individual stories can be hit and miss, but I’ve always had a great affinity for certain ones in this crossover: the Flash retired and in the witness protection program, Batman incarcerated in Arkham Asylum, and Superman becoming President of the United States. The story was great, but the ending was derailed because somehow the identity of Monarch was leaked early. Fans found out that Monarch was going to be revealed as Captain Atom in the final issue of the story, and DC balked. It’s funny, since these days comic book publishers release spoilers to their OWN stories months in advance, but back in 1991 that was considered serious enough that they changed the ending, instead revealing Monarch to be Hank Hall, aka Hawk. The rationale here seemed to be that, since the comic Hawk starred in (Hawk and Dove) was being canceled anyway, no one would be upset. The problem, though, was that since Hawk wasn’t as popular as Captain Atom, it felt anticlimactic – not to mention confusing, since in the future that Waverider observed, Hawk was one of the few heroes shown to actively fight AGAINST Monarch, seeming to make it IMPOSSIBLE for him to be the despot. Every time I look back at that series I wonder what the original ending would have looked like.

The summer annual crossovers only lasted a few more years after that, although both DC and Marvel have brought them back every so often. With the modern compulsion to relaunch and renumber their titles every year and a half, though, it’s gotten pretty confusing to keep track of them all, and it’s just one of many things I’m going to fix when they all come to their senses and put me in charge of comics.

Summer Comedies

And finally, my wife Erin asked me to chime in with the best summer comedies. I knew I would have to save this for last because a lot of the best summer comedies also fall into one of the other categories that I’ve already covered. So let’s take it as a given that National Lampoon’s Vacation, Back to the Beach, The Sandlot, and A League of Their Own all belong on this list. 

That said, let’s get to some of the great summer comedies that haven’t already been covered in one of the other categories, shall we? And let’s start with the greatest summer comedy of all time, perhaps the greatest movie ever made, perhaps the yardstick against which all cinema – past, present, and future – shall invariably be measured. 

Project ALF.

The real Project ALF are the friends we made along the way.

My favorite summer comedy is, like many of the other movies on this list, a film that has been near and dear to me since my childhood: 1987’s Ernest Goes to Camp. I unironically and unapologetically love this movie. Jim Varney’s “Ernest” character, created originally as an ad pitchman that was hired out to assorted companies for regional commercials across much of the south (I remember him originally as a spokesman for the Louisiana Gas Service Company) has his first great adventure as a handyman at a summer camp who gets his shot at a dream job of being a camp counselor for a group of troubled young boys. The film has a lot of the staples of 80s comedy: the “slobs versus snobs” mentality, the bad guy is an evil land developer, and there’s a startling lack of supervision for the children in this story…but at the same time, Jim Varney is charming and endearing as the most iconic goofball with a heart of gold since Gomer Pyle. The world just didn’t deserve a star as bright as his, did it? 

If he had been the counselor at Crystal Lake, Jason wouldn’t have stood a chance.

Ernest has achieved a nice sort of renaissance in recent years. People sincerely love many of his movies (especially the Christmas and Halloween films), the camp where the movie was filmed hosts an annual Ernest Day celebration every summer, and a documentary about Jim Varney and Ernest is in the works. When the temperatures soar and school lets out, this is a movie that I have to return to just as surely as I watch him save Christmas in December and see him Scared Stupid in October. 

Summer camp, of course, serves as the setting for a lot of great comedies, such as Meatballs (the beginning of what I think of as the Bill Murray Summer Trilogy along with Caddyshack and What About Bob?), and last year’s indie darling Theater Camp, all of which are summer comedies I greatly enjoy. Of course, in the interest of fairness, I should point out that summer camps are also a popular setting for horror movies, like Sleepaway Camp, the Friday the 13th series, and the truly gruesome Wet Hot American Summer. 

Moving away from camp, though, let’s take a look at some other great summer comedies. When Erin proposed that I write about this category, she specifically asked if I’d ever seen the John Cusack movie One Crazy Summer. I told her that, no, I hadn’t. She acted shocked. I told her, “Yeah, well, you still haven’t seen The Rocketeer.” And she said, “Yes I have!” And I shot back, “No, you fell asleep while I was watching The Rocketeer, that doesn’t count.” And there’s your little glimpse into married life for this week, kids. 

But Erin, you’ll be happy to know that I DID watch your precious One Crazy Summer in preparation for this column, and I found it to be…okay. In this 1986 comedy, Cusack plays “Hoops” McCann, a fallen high school basketball star who takes off after graduation with his pal George (Joel Murray, meaning we’ve pulled off the Murray Hat Trick if you count Brian Doyle-Murray’s appearance in National Lampoon’s Vacation) to spend the summer on Nantucket Island. Hoops winds up getting involved in the efforts of a local girl (Demi Moore) to save a family home from some land developers, because in the 80s a full 87 percent of movie villains were land developers (as opposed to a mere 79 percent of villains in real life). 

Am I the only one who thought the sun in this poster was supposed to look like Jack Nicholson?

Like I said, I thought the movie was okay, and I imagine that I would have much warmer feelings for it if I had seen it in its intended context (that being 1986). The thing is, it doesn’t quite seem to know what it wants to be. There are moments, especially during the Bobcat Goldthwait antics, where it seems to be treading the line with the kind of surrealist slapstick we get in movies like Airplane! or History of the World Part I, but if that’s the intention it doesn’t quite go far ENOUGH. If you’re going for surreal comedy, it kind of needs to be over-the-top to land. In One Crazy Summer, though, the first real hint that it may be that kind of humor is when George denies being lazy just before the camera pulls pack to reveal a dead Christmas tree strapped to the roof of his car (this is in June, remember), then it’s several minutes before we get anything else that feels like that brand of comedy (some girls making faces at George’s sister who get stuck that way). If you’re trying to party with the Zuckers or Mel Brooks, you’ve gotta go all-in, and with all due respect to the great Savage Steve Holland, he doesn’t quite reach that peak.

Okay, this column is already getting super long, so let me throw out two more summer comedies that couldn’t be more different than each other. The first is a movie that STARTS as a summer camp film before leaving the camp for other family summer activities, the 1961 Disney classic The Parent Trap. Haley Mills plays a pair of identical girls who happen to meet at summer camp and figure out that they’re twin sisters, separated by their parents when they divorced years ago, and hatch a scheme to force them back together. The sheer cruelty of doing that to a pair of siblings aside, this is a movie I DID grow up watching over and over again, and it’s always held a warm place in my heart. Aside from growing up with a crush on Haley Mills despite the fact that she was some three decades too old for me, the movie features Maureen O’Hara at her loveliest as their mother, while Brian Keith does his best John Wayne impression. I am aware of the Lindsay Lohan remake, and while it has its good points, this is one of those times that nothing will ever conquer the original. 

Sassy sister films.

And finally, let’s bounce ahead to 2010 for the Alan Tudyk/Tyler Labine comedy Tucker and Dale Versus Evil. Tudyk and Labine play a pair of good-hearted rednecks on a camping trip who run into a pack of college kids on their own vacation. The guys in the college group, showing a shocking lack of genre awareness, mistakenly believe that Tucker and Dale are Wrong Turn-style psycho killers and go on the offensive, only to find themselves on the wrong side of the fight. The movie is kind of a horror/comedy, with Tudyk and Labine giving hilarious performances in a movie that upends the “Killer Hillbilly” subgenre of horror by turning the usual victims into the bad guys. Both of our stars are so sweet and charming that it’s incomprehensible anybody could think of them as dangerous, and you quickly find yourself rooting for the snobs to get their goofishly gory comeuppance. I dearly love this movie and, frankly, I don’t think it’s too late to give us a sequel. Tucker and Dale Save Christmas, anybody?

There are so many great summer movies out there. While writing this column, I wound up putting together a Letterboxd list (because that’s what I do), and I would welcome anyone to fill in any omissions I may have. Summer is long, my friends, and there’s plenty of time to spend indulging in the greats of cinema and comics while we wait for the chill of autumn to hit the air. Have a great summer, and I’ll see you next time when, once again, I decide it’s time to Play Favorites.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. In response to his wife’s unspoken question, no, he hasn’t watched Better Off Dead yet, but he’ll try to get to it soon. Erin seemed to have a crush on young John Cusack that rivals Blake’s fondness for Haley Mills.