What I Bought 1/31/2017 - Part 1

It's new comics day, but for now, I'm looking at a couple of books from last month I finally acquired. There'll be a couple more Friday, and by Monday I'll review what I picked up today.

JLA Rebirth: The Ray, by Steve Orlando (writer), Stephen Byrne (artist/colorist), Clayton Cowles (letterer) - I picked this cover because I thought it looked a little cooler, but something's off about how the helmet sits on his head. I think it's that it stops partway on the bridge of his nose. Also, his hand is a little large compared to his head, isn't it?

Ray spent his childhood indoors, away from light, until finally getting fed up and running away from home. He accidentally hurts some people when his powers flare up, so after that he spends years wandering the globe invisibly, until he finds his one childhood friend (who he's been telling this whole story via letters), now a politician, and short an eye thanks to Ray's powers, under attack by some evil so-called patriot with a shield. How HYDRA Cap made it to the DCU will have to be answered another day, because Ray saves the day, and decides to live his life and be a hero. Oh, and he is gay now, which is kind of what I expected after it was announced that would be the case with the version appearing on the CW. It's fine, doesn't alter the core of Ray's character, so whatever works.

I'm going to have to think about whether this version of Ray Terrill has a sadder origin than the pre-Flashpoint version did. The part where he spends years wandering the Earth, forming a negative opinion of humanity while observing it invisibly is definitely not cheerful. On the plus side, no sign of Happy Terrill and his Silver Age Superman style of parenting.

But it might have been good to see more of Ray being a hero and helping people. We're supposed to believe Batman would recruit this guy to be part of a Justice League, after all. Or maybe Orlando intends to cover that in the zero issue of the upcoming Justice League series. The fact Ray takes hope from his friend not letting one awful incident ruin his life, and decides to be an active participant, rather than an invisible observer, is not a bad ending. Ray quoting the Silverblade movie he watched on TV as a kid when he steps up to fight was a cute touch.

Stephen Byrne's work reminds me a little of Phil Noto's in the faces, but Byrne's work has more sense of motion to it than Noto's. The book is colored dark right up to the point where Ray embraces his powers and steps up to save Caden. All the scenes are at night, but even beyond that, shadows overwhelming everything. But Ray is sad, or lost, and either hiding or being hidden up to that point, so it fits. Somehow Byrne made Ray's haircut look even sillier than it did back in the '90s, though, which is impressive. This hasn't decided me on whether to buy Orlando's Justice League series or not, so indecision still reigns. 

Cave Carson has a Cybernetic Eye #4, by Gerard Way and Jonathan Rivera (writers), Michael Avon Oeming (artist), Nick Filardi (colorist), Clem Robins (letterer) - That's not a bad cover. The giant eye within the world. What's the significance of the two cities on opposite sides, or was Oeming just aiming for symmetry?

Cave and the others explore what's left of the underground kingdom, and then Wild Dog nearly kills himself because of something emanating from behind a door Chloe briefly unlocks. The recovery team in the Mighty Mole Mk. II show up, and most of them promptly get slaughtered by those crazy green guys. Our heroes reach a sanctuary, where Cave gets to tell the in-laws their daughter is dead. Meanwhile, Evil Corporate Guy has people draining a fluid from Old Drippy Fungus Man. I prefer to say draining to "milking", which is the word they use, and which makes me slightly nauseous.

I'm not sure where this is going to go. The mysterious door that causes suicidal hallucinations seems like it will be important later, but given the threat they seem to be facing, I'm not sure how. Paul doesn't seem likely to come to them, and I can't see the people being altered by the fungus juice as susceptible to the effect. Not sure what'll end up happening with Mazra's parents. I imagine things are going to be awkward between them and Cave, and I'm guessing there'll be some expectations they have for Chloe that are going to cause conflicts. But who knows what direction Way and Rivera will opt for? That's a major draw of the book for me, that lack of familiarity I have with the characters, the setting, the writers' tics. We're early enough the possibilities are wide-ranging, and that helps me get excited.

Oeming's art felt variable in this issue. Strong on some pages, weaker on others. Some of the faces were strange at times. But overall he and Filardi are maing a good team. The page of Cave going to explore the reservoir/fountain, where Filardi colors the arc of the glowstick as Cave tosses it looked very nice. I think they might be overusing the bit where at least half of Cave's face is in shadow, and the cybernetic eye is glowing out of it. It is very effective at making it appear something alien that doesn't belong there, though. I did enjoy the very satisfied smirk Chloe gets when she meets some inhabitants of Mul-Droog. And the effect when Chloe releases the lock on the door, and the glyphs on it drift down into the next panel where they start to work on Wild Dog's mind. There's actually a lot of panels and transitions in this issue I like, though there are times I start to lose track of which way to go one the page. Overall, the mixed bag is much more good than bad.

Any Excuse To Talk About The Ray

So CW is going to do a series of animated shorts, or animated somethings, with The Ray, similar to what they did with Vixen previously, probably with an eye to incorporating him into the various live-action DC shows they have down the line. Assuming that's how it goes, I don't expect he'll look as cool as powered-up Ray did in the comics, but that's not new. I don't think live-action can match artists for making superhero stuff look cool. There's just a limit to what actors and costumes can achieve versus art, where you can do anything you can draw, regardless of whether it'd be at all feasible in the real world. Not a big issue, though.

And it turns out he's going to be gay, possibly a nod to an issue of Grant Morrison's Multiversity, where he did an updated version of the Freedom Fighters. Or they just recognized there's nothing about Raymond's character that requires him to be heterosexual, so why not broaden the range of people represented. I hadn't ever seen that comic, so I didn't know that had happened. My thought when I read the announcement was someone had been reading some of Ray's ongoing from the '90s.

There was an issue, #19 I think, that was part of Underworld Unleashed, where Ray is making out with this woman, who then reveals herself to be Neron, basically DC's Devil. And Neron makes Ray the old, "I'll give you X in exchange for your soul." Except Ray is more focused on having kissed a guy than about the fact the "guy" was the Devil*.

It's generally played as a joke; Neron even grows frustrated that Ray won't focus. I've always read it as Ray still being naive, not recognizing that as a superhero, these are the kind of things that will happen to him. Having seen the announcement about his character coming to TV, I thought, "Well, you could read that as his having been confused about his feelings after finding out it was a guy**." Then I started thinking about his other romantic relationships. The aborted one with Jenny Jurden, the only friend he had as a kid living inside in the dark all the time. There was Galeon, a young woman he meets when he and Black Canary are lost in time, who he finds out future him is having a relationship with. She also gives him a note with instructions on how many times to circle the sun to get home, which he gives to her as a kid when he meets her basically the moment he and Dinah reach home, and Child Galeon instantly develops a crush on him, which apparently persists to adulthood. Or there's whole puppy-dog thing with Dinah.

Jenny was the one person his age he had any connection with growing up, so he cares deeply for her. If his childhood friend had been John Jurden, would that have changed things for him? Dinah's the experienced older woman that mostly doesn't even seem to want him around, except when she can use him for something. She also seems like what popular culture tells young guys they should find attractive (especially as drawn in the '90s) Long blonde hair, big chest, fishnets, impractical heels for all that jumping and flipping, but what the hell. Maybe Ray's going with what everything around him says he should (or he's bisexual). As for the relationship with Galeon, I don't know. She saves him in the future, then he saves her as a kid, and she develops a crush on him, which apparently develops into something more, to the extent her future, cop, self travels back in time to try and straighten him out by stabbing Vandal Savage. I'm not sure what to make of all that. Future Ray doesn't seem to treat her that great, but Future Ray is a dick to everyone, a pitiless corporate ass, Justin Hammer with superpowers, so who knows.

It doesn't have to be read that he was a closeted (unknowing?) gay/bisexual who's trying heterosexual relationships because he thinks he's supposed to, but I could see that interpretation. Or he could be a young heterosexual guy with limited life experience making poor relationship decisions without a good support network. Relationships are tough, and Ray didn't have a lot of experience with people in general growing up. But it could also be that he was a young guy with limited life experience and no good support network, who is also gay.

We don't know much about his childhood, except that he was raised by his uncle (pretending to be his father), in a house kept perpetually dark***, and taught by nuns, I think. I have no idea what he learned about love, or sexuality, at all, but I can't imagine they spent much time explaining to him that sometimes boys are attracted to boys. They probably didn't mention the possibility at all. Now he's out in the world, but the man who raised him is dead. His birth father is a dick who has done nothing but lie to Raymond. His mother doesn't even know he's alive, because his father told her he died while being born (Happy Terrill may be the worst comic book dad ever). His boss is Vandal freaking Savage. His only other surviving relative is Hank, who looks and acts like the Fonz. I get the impression most of his Justice League teammates treated him like a dumb kid (J'onn seems like someone who'd be a good sounding board, but I don't think they were close). He's got effectively nobody to work through this stuff with.

I doubt much of that is playing into the character as he'll appear on TV, though I could be surprised.

*I think he actually makes the deal because he doesn't take it seriously, and that gets undone somehow. That's around the point in the series things started to get confused for me, because I think Priest was addressing things that were happening to Ray in Justice League Task Force, or Extreme Justice or something, and I don't really understand what those things were.

** Assuming a devil really has a gender. I guess they do if they want to.

*** Because his birth father's first son had the same powers, but stopped aging at 10, with the mind of a 4-year old, and was extremely dangerous. So Happy Terrill locked him in a missile silo for decades, alone.

31 Days of Scans - Day 17

It finally occurred to me last week I usually haven't been telling you what the category is. I title in the Word document I'm using, but then I don't transfer it over to here. Whoops. So, Favorite Legacy Character. Pretty much has to be a DC character doesn’t it? Marvel has a few characters I like who are legacy characters (Spider-Girl, the current Ms. Marvel will certainly merit consideration before too long), or could possibly be considered so – Patsy Walker wears a costume originally designed for Tigra when she was the Cat, rather than a cat lady, so that might work – but that’s still more DC’s balliwick.

The question is, does it have to be a happy legacy? Does the character taking the mantle have to be glad of it, and like their predecessor or not? If yes, the answer is Cassandra Cain.

Cass took being Batgirl seriously. At first, because she understood what the symbol meant, and what Batman expected of her, and she worked hard to live up to that. To the point of getting herself briefly killed, even. But Barbara was the one she turned to with questions about things. The scene above actually started with Cass asking Barbara what a soul was, and it went in other directions when Oracle didn’t have a solid answer. I have no idea what would have happened if Cass had asked Bruce that question, but probably nothing good considering the attitude he usually took in her book.

The end result of the conversation is Cassandra gets curious about Babs’ time in costume, which sounds very different from her own, and ultimately steals Barbara’s old costume. Which leads to a sequence where Cass struggles to adjust to fighting in boots with heels on them, and Tim behaves most unprofessionally when they have an impromptu team-up. The costume gets a little torn up, but Barbara’s not bothered at all. Her first real question is whether Cass had fun or not, to which Cassandra replies that she did.

They had their differences. Barbara tried very hard to not only act as buffer between Cass and Bruce’s worst tendencies, but also to introduce Cassandra to things she thought a girl her age should get to experience. Things Cass was not terribly interested in, like vacations and cruise ships. Barbara got frustrated with Cass’ slow-to-indifferent progress learning to read, and Cass was sore at Barbara when she had a falling out with Batsy after War Games. But they reconciled before the end of Cassandra’s series, and were willing to help each other (I’m just going to ignore that whole post-Infinite Crisis stretch where Cass was nuts/brainwashed and Oracle didn’t seem to be doing anything, because that was just a bad editorial decision all around).

On the other hand, there is one DC character I like more than Cass, and he’s also a legacy character.

It just isn’t a real great legacy.

Ray Terrill’s dad was the original Ray. He was also a HUGE jerk, at least throughout Ray’s mini-series and ongoing. He had his brother pose as Ray’s dad and pretend any exposure to light would kill Ray, as opposed to granting him awesome power. Christopher Priest would later explain why Happy feared that outcome, but for a long time the apparent explanation was, “He’s an asshole.” When his brother dies, he finally reveals himself to Ray, but with some nonsense about how he’s a ghost now, and needs Ray to save an island from a volcano.

When Ray sees through that ruse, after almost failing to save the village, and then almost dying in the eruption he redirected into the ocean, Happy tells another load of bull. This time he’s an alien who was stranded on Earth, where he met Ray’s mom. So Ray is half-alien. This also turned out to be a lie, and Priest later revealed Ray’s mom didn’t die in childbirth, but she thought Ray had been stillborn. So when she meets Ray (at the same time he’s learning she’s still alive, living with his dad in the countryside out West), she thinks he’s Happy’s kid from some affair her husband had. Sheesh. Maybe Ray should have asked that New Genesis guy if he could adopt his name as a legacy. He’d only have to add “Light” to the front of his name. Still, a legacy is a legacy, I guess.

Batgirl panels from Batgirl #45, Dylan Horrocks (writer), Rick Leonardi (penciler), Jesse Delperdang (inker), Jason Wright (colorist), Clem Robins (letterer). Ray panels from The Ray #3 (mini-series, not ongoing), Jack C. Harris (script), Joe Quesada (penciler), Art Nichols (inker), Steve Haynic (letterer), John Cebollero (colorist).

Favorite DC Characters #1 - Ray Terrill

Character: The Ray (Ray Terrill)

Creators: Jack C. Harris and Joe Quesada

First appearance: The Ray #1

First encounter: The Ray #3. Pretty sure I grabbed this right off a spinner rack.

Definitive writer: Christopher Priest. I feel like Harris spent a lot of time trying to establish how Ray came to have his powers, and the characters around him, while Priest was the one who did more for his personality. Also, he ramped Happy Terrill's dickishness to nuclear levels, which made Happy fun to hate. Too fun? MAYBE.

Definitive artist: Joe Quesada. I have disliked a lot of decisions he's made as Editor-in-Chief, but he has a strong design sense.

Favorite moment or story: The Ray #6, the final issue of the mini-series. Ray had been trapped within the Light Entity which, look, I'm only clear on what that is in the 5 minutes after I read the mini-series again, which isn't right now. Suffice to say, Ray needed to get it off Earth, and he did, but there's still the fact that the Entity somehow fused Ray's dad (the Golden Age Ray) with Dr. Polaris, and they're out of control. But then. . .

That was really awesome to me. The way he's hitting him from every direction, how he cuts off the attempted villain response, the badass pose.

What I like about him: My earliest comics I remember were bought for me, Big packs of comics, a random assortment of issues from the mid to late 80s. Or they were leftovers from my father's collection of late 60s, mostly DC and Archie. So by the time I had an allowance and could actually purchase comics on my own, I knew a pretty wide array of characters, and my purchases tended to reflect those experiences. Spider-Man, X-Men, Batman comics. I think The Ray #3 is the first comic I bought where I knew absolutely nothing about the character prior to that book.

Which is odd, because it's the least dynamic cover from that mini-series. I can't say what it was that made me have to have that book. I probably flipped through it in the bookstore, and that's why. Quesada was doing some really good work with negative space in that mini-series (it's a technique he employs a lot), and he made Ray look dynamic and distinctive. The costume looks ridiculous, with the pixie boots and the white-and-yellow pants (not a color combo I've ever been a fan of), but I liked the metallic sheen of the helmet, and I would wear that jacket today if I owned it. OK, not today as I'm writing this, it's 94 degrees outside, but in appropriate weather, sure. But it was Ray's, let's say "powered up" form that got my attention. When all that white shifts to black, the yellow pops against it. And the way he seems to project that field around him in a long rectangle, it makes him look faster, as though he's slicing through the air like a blade. It even made a certain amount of sense, as Ray absorbs light to power up, so he wouldn't reflect light, thus all the black.

No, that doesn't explain why the yellow parts still show up. Or why sometimes the aura around him is yellow. I said a certain amount of sense, not all the sense.

Beyond that, The Ray #3 showed me a young man struggling to control his powers, trying to find his childhood friend Jenny, both to help her, and for her to help him, while dealing with a manipulative and deceitful father. Oh, and he saved a village from an erupting volcano. That was pretty cool, and made Ray look good for dealing with all of it. Plus, he punched his jerk of a dad in the face, which was something he really needed to do more often.

One of the things that gets played up with younger superheroes is the idea of superpowers as a metaphor for adolescence, or puberty. The X-Men for example, with mutant powers typically not emerging until puberty, or Spider-Man, whose body underwent drastic changes at the time. Ray has a bit of that in his initial mini-series, where he tries to fly across Philadelphia to visit Jenny, but because he doesn't understand his powers, goes way too fast and crash lands in Germany an instant later. Also, because he can't control his powers, he incinerates all his clothes besides the jacket (which his father made by bending light into a solid construct, so it's heat resistant). Meaning Ray is left pantsless in public, in a foreign country, and then arrested for exposure in front of a bunch of people (I seem to recall there being quite a few women about). It's like all those nightmares about taking a math test in your underwear made real.

Ray's situation is a little different, though, because if you think of his learning about his powers as a stand-in for adolescence, or maybe even adulthood, they're freedom. Ray grew up being told exposure to light would kill him. He was known as the "Night Boy", kept in a darkened house with few visitors or friends. Then the man he believed to be his father (actually his uncle) dies, Ray's on his own, and suddenly he learns the truth: Light won't kill him, it makes him stronger, it makes him special. Ray talks about how much better he feels when he's charged up, how great it is. If he gets too much power, he can even get a bit tipsy on it, which happens the second time he saves the Earth from the Light Entity, this time in the ongoing. Which is why he's wearing the dress in the picture below, if you were wondering. Still, it's a distinctly positive outlook on those changes, rather than a nightmare that makes you feel like an outcast hated and feared by society (meaning adults).

In the mini-series, one of the other themes seems to be "lies my parents told me". Ray learns the truth about his condition, obviously, but also that his father was not the man he called "Dad" all those years, but the original Ray. But then that guy (Happy Terrill, never has a name been less apt) keeps lying. First he tells Ray he's actually dead, while trying to hound Ray into doing what he wants. Then when his "ghost" shtick gets blown to pieces (almost right alongside that island with the volcano), he goes for "we're aliens". It got to the point that when he ran afoul of Dr. Polaris, he thought it was just another test engineered by Happy, and it took nearly being crushed underground to clue him in this was a real fight.

In the ongoing, Ray will learn his mother didn't die in childbirth, and she has no idea he's alive, either. Even though my parents always seemed to be straightfoward with me, as a kid and a teen, it's hard not to think they're trying to make you do what they want. Most of the time it's rather obvious, like when they outright tell you to do something, but they could be playing tricks on you and you wouldn't even realize. I'm pretty sure I related the story of how my father utilized my adolescent contrariness to trick me into taking German back in junior high. So the idea you have to be on guard to catch them in double-talk undoubtedly struck a chord, as well as the idea that sometimes you'll have to clean up their messes, and that sometimes they're even right about things. Not often, though.

Looking at his ongoing series, I feel like Christopher Priest really focused on the difficulty of growing up, the reality versus how kids perceive it. Ray was on his own, an adult, but he had no idea what that meant. So he was excited to sell his old home, to get an apartment, to get a job at a fast food chicken chain. He could be out in the sunlight, and he was gonna be a hero, and pay his bills, and he and Jenny were gonna be a couple, and it was gonna be great. It feels very familiar to what I thought adulthood was like when I was a kid. I was gonna make the rules, go to bed when I wanted, and not have to go to dumb school.

But then the best apartment he can find is a cruddy one with no fridge, but some hideous metal sculpture. His furniture ends up being a card table and one chair, because he blew his money on a new computer and a Superman standee. Things didn't work out with Jenny, working at a chicken joint kind of sucked, the training program he devised for himself and gave physical form to began running on its own, killing people, and took over an entire country. And Ray couldn't beat it. Every time he tried, Deathmasque just stomped him, and meanwhile he's got Happy breathing down his neck about this and that, criticizing everything Ray does. And Ray keeps learning new things his dad lied about, and then Deathmasque appears to kill his father, so Ray has to deal with that guilt, and with all the unresolved issues he had with his dad that never got cleared up. He finds out being an adult doesn't mean people stop trying to run your life. It doesn't mean people stop trying to hurt you, or that you're suddenly able to understand why they're doing it.

And Ray makes some bad decisions. He gets so spooked about Deathmasque, and feels so rejected by the Justice League when he goes to them for help (thanks, Triumph), he turns to Vandal Savage, of all people. He actually fights his way through Savage's defenses, right into his office, and then asks for help from a mass-murdering caveman. He ends up running one of Savage's tech companies, gets a new apartment, meets a different lady, and lets Savage lead him around by the nose, the bad guy always promising he'll help take down Deathmasque soon. Of course, "soon", never became "now". Ray had to eventually handle it himself, and when it counted, he did. It was really close, nearly lost his mother (before he'd even explained who he really was - she realized he was Happy's kid, but thought he was from an affair or earlier marriage), but he pulled it off. Some of that is about trusting in yourself, and some of it is the idea that being an adult means not simply running to some older person and expecting them to fix everything for you. That's part of being an adult, people look to you to help with their problems, not the other way around. You can't go running back into your past, hoping you can lose the stuff dogging you.

It's a process, though, which is something Ray found out. You learn, you grow, you hopefully get better at handling things. Ray went from being the new kid in the Justice League, the guy everyone seemed to pick on from what I could tell from the one issue I saw - super-strong Ice shoves him out of the way for telling her Oberon needs them in the monitor room, Guy yells at him for interrupting his conversation with Ice, Captain Atom grabs him by the collar and drags him off to answer some distress call from the Army - to a guy who was a veteran, calm presence on Young Justice. When Secret lets Empress go after her father's soul (since Secret is a gateway between life and death), Ray charges in after her, when even Robin is hesitant. He keeps his cool, even while he recognizes he's going to run out of power if they stay in this endless void for long. He doesn't barge in and try to take over - though he does run for team leader when they hold an election - but he's observant, supportive, follows orders, offers suggestions when appropriate, and generally is a good team player.

For all that, Ray's still a really amusing character, prone to acting like a silly kid with way too much power. Which he is, so that makes sense. When he was running to be leader of Young Justice, he used his light powers to give himself especially sparkly teeth, so as to impress Arrowette. He got arrested in Germany for public indecency, which as humiliating and awkward as it was for him, was kind of hilarious. Also, when he flew back to Philly and burned up the pants the German cops had given him, his father formed a pair of bellbottoms on him which Ray described as 'Michael Nesmith's pants'. He saved that Philippine village by diving into the volcano and redirecting the magma underground and out to sea. Very cool, but once he's in the water, he remembers no one ever taught him how to swim. Whoopsie-daisy. Neron offers him anything he wants in exchange for his soul, and Ray almost takes him up on the offer because he thinks it's a joke, or a hypothetical. Because he forgot he's a superhero and demons tempting you to lose your immortal soul is a thing that happens. Ray was more freaked out because Neron had originally met Ray as a woman and things were progressing nicely, right up until Neron got tired of Ray treating the whole thing as a joke and revealed his true form to speed things along. Watching Ray be all, "Oh my God, you were actually a dude?!", while Neron is standing there like, "Focus Ray, I want your soul!" was more funny than it ought to be. The whole idea of selling his soul is so out there to Ray, even at that stage in his superhero career, he just glosses right over it.

And of course, there was the time he danced in the skies of Philadelphia.

That is apparently how Ray celebrates losing his virginity. To the Black Canary. Look, Dinah had already nearly died multiple times in the course of that story, and she was feeling a little vulnerable. And to be fair, while the Ray is no Dr. Mid-Nite, he's still a considerable step up from Oliver Queen or Ra's al Ghul. I love that, though. Ray's excited, he probably thinks this means he and Dinah are a couple (while back in her apartment, Dinah is laying there under the covers thinking, 'Damn.' And not an impressed "damn", a "what the hell did I just do?" damn.), and he's back home after a harrowing ordeal that involved travel to another world, fighting Lobo at a truck stop in space, then time-traveling and almost erasing himself from existence. But he's back home, feelin' good, and he's gonna show it. How could I not love that?

I'd Like To Blame This On Post-Turkey Gorging Brain Haze, But I Can't

One series I've been trying to piece together a complete run of is the first volume of Resurrection Man. I'm a little over halfway there. It's slow going, because I like to collect them in order, so I'm not trying to read issues with big gaps between them. Sometimes I break that rule, which is how I wind up with issue 25, when I haven't made it past #18 otherwise.

By the 25th issue, Mitch had crossed paths with the Forgotten Heroes, because they think he's their old friend Immortal Man, and they need help to stop Vandal Savage. The thing that caught my eye* was Cave Carson sporting a cyborg eye. Because it was the Nineties, I assume. I couldn't find any explanation online for that. I'm pretty sure he last appearance before these was in Wonder Woman, and judging by the covers, he wasn't rocking any techno-parts then. At least he hadn't started wearing massive shoulder pads.

Everyone on the team was wearing these matching collars. Basically three rings stacked on top of each other going around the neck, which seemed like an odd choice. The belts with "FH" on them made a little sense, but the neck bands, I don't know. When I saw Shelly and Carson wearing those and talking, I figured they were prisoners, and those were power inhibitors, or something designed to shock them if they tried to escape. Nope, just part of the team uniform. Like those bomber jackets the Avengers were fond of a few years earlier.

* Besides the fact The Ray was on the team, whoo! Ray Terrill appearance, and it even makes sense, considering Ray spent the second half of his series trying not to be manipulated by Savage. When he wasn't fighting a sentient computer program he'd created that was obsessed with pushing him to his limits, that is.

What Manner Of Skylarking Has Permitted This To Occur?

Now, a brief word from the 19th Century's own Cornelius Potfiller:

Oh calamatations. This day finds me most vexed. I endeavored to inspect the electronic cataloging of illustrated stories being offered by the Timely/Atlas, oh pardon my error, the Marvel Publishing Company for the forthcoming month. It is a great enjoyment of mine to discern which serials, and how many, shall be available for my purchase each week. But woe and lamentations, my seekings found no evidence of the fourth chapter of the delightful Pasty Walker: Hellcat story listed for the 11th month of this year. This despite it having been solicited with various other (inferior, might I add) products for November several months. While I had accepted its absence in October due to there being no solicitation for that month, this was an unexpected conundrum. Where might the particular issue reside?

Further inspection revealed to me the issue emblazoned with the numeral our neighborhood sausage-maker refers to as "vier" would not arrive at my corner newstand until the eve of Christ's birth, rather than by my family's Day of Thanks, as I had hoped. Upon learning this, my visiage grew as red as the beard of the Irishman I cudgeled about the crainium this past weekend, after he made lewd comments towards a upstanding young lady with whom I had just attended the opening of A Trip To Chinatown. Truly, I was wroth, sending the housekeepers scurrying from my presence in terror. Then in my unrefined fury, I did hurl my Nana's favorite snow globe against the wall. Oh, catastrophe! This miscalculation, combined with the earlier bad news as to the multicolored novella, and with my butler Pittsley delivering the message that a shipment of silks I had planned to sell was hijacked by raiders in Manchuria, sent me into a state of severe melancholy.

Wait, what news is this? Reputable sources inform me that the hero known as the Ray has been observed performing admirably in service of Earth's defenders in another ongoing short story. That encouraging news fills me with new strength and resolve.

Herewith, I shall retain the services of Wilson Wadell, noted gun for hire, to reacquire my silks. It is a mark of my fine bearing that I hire him despite his face resembling uncooked meat which has been trampled beneath a carriage wheel, and that I instruct my servants to make no comments regarding his appearance until after he has departed the premises. Through the rear door, naturally. It would hardly be proper for those jabberwocks at the club to know I consort with a known scoundrel. Perhaps Wilson can resolve this interminable delay in the conclusion of the Hellcat story, without connecting his actions to me, of course. I believe I shall ruminate further on this with a sifter of cognac while I soak in my lithium vapor tub. That should help restore the vigor this chilling drizzle has stolen from my bones. Then, with my mood improved, perhaps I shall adorn my spats and bowler hat, and amble down the promenade, giving silver dollars to the street urchins. *pause* Oh ho ho! A pity the fellows from the club were not present to hear that jest. The merriment would have grown exponentially.

Current Day CalvinPitt: Isn't he great? Give him a big hand. Or, alternatively, throw things at him. I really don't care which, just watch out for his primary housekeeper. She's pretty accurate when it comes to throwing cooking implements from up to a furlong away (her spectacles double a telescopes).

A Series Of Weakly Related Thoughts

First order of business. No posts Friday through Sunday. I'm going out of town, visiting friends to engage in acts of debauchery. OK, truthfully, I'll probably be the one trying to rein in their debauching, as I am the "straight line", as they call me.

Where exactly this post was going to go has shifted several times over the last few days, but I suppose The Ray is the common equation. Originally it was going to be about DC's December solicitation for Teen Titans, which has Ray on the cover, hinting he might be joining their depleted ranks. Of course, the solicit promises to reveal who makes the team, who doesn't, and who didn't even get an invite, so there's no guarantee he'll even make the team. Still, it's the sort of thing that makes me consider picking up Teen Titans again.

That thought lead me to thinking about how I dropped the book because it seemed terribly joyless, and that based on the scans I've seen, and the times I've flipped through in the store, that really hasn't changed much (though the story where Kid Devil and Blue Beetle appeared to reach an understanding looked kind of pleasant). Given that, would I really enjoy the book, just because the Ray was in it (assuming obviously, that he actually made the team)? Even if he joins the cast, it seems unlikely that he would abruptly become the center of attention*. That was one of the reasons I could never get around to buying the two recent Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters mini-series, I had the impression Ray wasn't really a focal point of the series**. If it had been an ongoing, where you figure with multiple arcs, each character gets some spotlight, that's not such an issue, but mini-series are a different matter.

The thoughts about the tone of Teen Titans also veered into the whole "Wonderdog" thing, but my thoughts there were mostly that I was surprised because it wasn't what I was expecting. I was figuring on some cute story about one of the Titans finding this dog on the street, and bringing him back to the Tower, and maybe the dog does something brave or clever in a crucial moment during the Titans 7,567th battle against evil opposites of themselves, and so they name it Wonderdog, and it would be cute, and that would be that.

No, I don't know why I was thinking that. Maybe the cover tricked me. Yes, it played a mind trick on me! Once I actually got to the end of the issue, I think my reaction was "Um, really? OK, interesting choice there." *places book back on shelf* Back to the Ray.

Thinking about the recent Freedom Fighters minis reminded me that Ray's dad showed up, with weird new powers, trying to save his son from their whacked out Red Bee. This reminded me of how Happy Terril acted towards his son during Ray's ongoing series. There were times, I'd say Happy learned his interpersonal skills from Silver Age Superman. Case in point, somewhere around #6: Ray has just saved the world from the "Light Entity", but he's a little overloaded from the experience, so he's behaving erratically. Happy shows up, suspects Ray is - gasp! - drunk, and starts chastising him. Ray's too out of it to explain, so he continues acting silly. Then Happy makes a gun from nowhere and steals his son's powers. Then he transports him to various crappy places of the world, so Ray can be scared and depressed by the horror of it (this included the remains of Chernobyl). Later still, his dad fakes a robbery of the place Ray works, so he can threaten his now powerless son with a gun, just to scare him some more. Then we find out Happy just hypnotized Ray into thinking he had no powers. Jeez, I know he had to give up his son for Ray's own sake, but what the hell, man? What parenting manual tells you that's the way to go about teaching your kid to use his powers responsibly?

As to Ray on the Titans, I don't know. I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get there. In my totally sweet black Pontiac Trans Am***.

* And truthfully, that would probably be a jarring experience for the readers that were already reading the book, if it did happen.

** Which is not entirely surprising, since it was Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters, after all.

*** It is unlikely I will get to the bridge in a black Pontiac Trans Am, unless I take up carjacking.

Solid Light Reanimation

So I've been trying to figure out this whole "Dazzler resurrection" thing going on in New Excalibur. My initial theory was that since we're dealing with Claremont, and Captain Britain, Dazzler was somehow drawing on the lives of other Dazzlers spread out across the multiverse (or whatever Marvel calls it), kinda like Jet Li in The One. But I couldn't figure out how that worked so I've come up with a new strategy: Dazzler has become like Ray Terrill. 

When Ray powers up, he becomes pure energy, immune to physical harm. This is why Lobo was once able to punch clean through Ray's head, with no ill effects for Ray, and why I was amused in Infinite Crisis when Psycho Pirate tried to control Power Girl into beating The Ray to death. I suppose we can forgive the Pirate for that, what with the Eye Gouge of Death he was about to receive from Black Adam. 

Clearly that isn't happening with Dazzler, seeing as she does keep getting injured. But there's another aspect to Ray's powers that I think could come into play. Once he took a bullet in the neck while in human form. The bullet was lodged next to his spine, and Ray was terrified to move. So Vandal Savage (who had taken an interest in Ray for some reason I've forgotten) staged an attack on the hospital to force Ray to get up. Lo and behold, when Ray had finished fighting, he found that converting to pure energy had atomized the bullet, and he was fully healed upon reverting to human form. 

I guess it could be explained by his converting his matter into energy, and when he reverts back to matter, his state is controlled in some way by his mind. So he reverted back sans bullet hole. But what's that got to do with Dazzler? 

Dazzler converts sound into light in any number of ways. Shields, flares, swords, lasers, and Claremont's captions say that she's feeling more comfortable with her powers all the time. So if she's no longer holding back, could she be using her powers subconsciously now? In each case where she's died, it's been in the middle of a fight, lots of noise all around. People shouting, guns, explosions, so on and so forth. Could she being absorbing that sound, and changing it, first into light, and then making that light into solid matter, to repair the physical damage that's been done to her? 

Of course, even if I'm right, it raises the question of what would happen if she died in the vacuum of space, or if someone tried to destroy her mind telepathically (almost a sure bet to come up, if what everyone says about Claremont's love of combat in the astral plane is true. I haven't read enough of his work to think it's that prevalent).

I Feel Great Joy...

And surprisingly, it isn't because of Annihilation #6. Oh, that was good, no mistake, but in a "Aw, yeah!" way.

And it wasn't because Geoff Johns may have provided a glimmer of hope in Teen Titans #43. Because I'm now too cynical and jaded, thus I believe I'm being shown that glimmer so it can be pulled away and used to beat me over the head.

No, the joy came from Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters #7. Guess what?

Ray Terrill is in the house!!

Yes! He's back in actual action (not counting his attempt to help Supes repower, bah!) for the first time since he was somehow unable to keep up with the Supermen at the end of Infinite Crisis #7 (there is no way they should be able to outfly him. None.) And he's handing a beatdown to this poser that took his name. Respect! I'm not sure I dig the changed outfit, but who cares? He's back on the field

That's right, not even seeing Major Force (again?!) at the end of the issue could diminsh my joy. The character that originally made me give even a tiny crap about DC is back in play.

Mmm, Frankfurter. Is That Something?

Couple of DC-related things, one from Jeff and two from me.

- When explaining to me why DC feels the needs to cancel JSA, then start over with Justice Society of America about three months later, Jeff mentioned that he thinks he knows who the new Starman is. Ragnell has previously suggested that it might be a time-displaced version of the Legion's Star Boy, perhaps a holdover from an earlier version of the Legion, with gravity-related powers. Jeff suggested that it's "Starman" as in "solar powers", and that it's actually The Ray, seeing as how he's abandoned his codename so that feeb with the new Freedom Fighters can have it. Being a fan of the Ray, I'd really like that, but he doesn't have the connection to those Golden Agers that Damage does, does he? Ah well, time will tell.

- As for me, I was reading Superman/Batman #26 and a thought struck. The title characters feel they must stress how important it is to keep the young Toyman on the right path, emphasizing that 'everyday Hiro Okumura walks the razor's edge between heroism and villainy.' While I'm happy that they care what happens with the kid, I think I may have noticed a trend:

Hiro Okomura - Apparently straddles line between helping the heroes and becoming a villain.

Katana - Works with Outsiders, who do the things that are too morally questionable for the "regular" good guys to get their hands dirty with.

Cassandra Cain - Based on my theory, she's turned the League of Assassins into a criminal-killing organization, meaning she's also on that line between dark and light, at least as someone like Superman or Batman would define it. Or, she's flat out crazy/evil.

Is this just a freak coincidence? Probably, but don't be surprised if we find out the new Atom is using the shrinking abilities for personal gain, regardless of whether it helps or hurts others. Because, you know, "right" and "wrong" probably don't exist at the sub-atomic level.

- Also, do we have any idea if Hiro has survived to One Year Later? I kind of doubt he's that freaky Toyman running around with Luthor. If so, I got a newsflash for him: Bearing a resemblance to that dude there on the left and teaming up with Luthor, is probably not going to net you Raven's phone number. Just a thought.

I don't have a problem with this evil Toyman. He's creepy, and probably dangerous, and that's fine, it's just I'd like for the kid to have survived. Sure he's goofy, and needs to take some medication to get his hormones under control, but damn it, he made a giant Composite Superman/Batman (or is it just Composite Superman?) robot! A character like that must survive! As Len put it 'It's a hell of a lot better idea than bringing back Titano.' Couldn't have said it better.

Of course, I love giant robots, and hate most primates (damn poo-flingers), so you might feel differently, but that's what comments are for, right?

Because Everyone Else Is Doing It

I'm going to talk about Infinite Crisis #7. I won't discuss whether it was good or not, whether it accomplished what it was supposed to or not. I've already spent a considerable amount of time on this blog kvetching about this huge event, and how DC seems determined to piss me off, so objectivity is a non-factor. Still, a few things need to be said.

How is Dick Grayson still alive? You're telling me Alex Luthor was firing at Batman with intent to damage fabric? That guy can recreate the multiverse, but can't kill an ordinary human? The funny thing is when Nightwing got hit I went "Oh shit! They killed Grayson! That means we have two new Nightwings, Jason Todd and the guy Todd thinks is Grayson." Of course, that isn't the case.

Why couldn't Power Girl be involved in the Kryptonian fight? I suppose I should be thankful, if she had they'd have probably killed her instead of Old Fart Superman and I'd have burned DiDio alive. Still, we can't see Power Girl wailing on SuperPunk Prime?

Now when he's powered up, the Ray is pure energy, moves at the speed of light, can travel between star systems. Yet he couldn't keep up with SuperPunk Prime. But the Supermans can, but they can't go fast enough to hit the Speed Force? I call editorially mandated bullcrap. Ray could have done some damage, hit the little punk with concentrated red solar radiation, while leaving the Supermen full powered. Would have been some serious whupping going on.

At least I got to see him one more time, before he's shifted out in favor of this guy in the new Freedom Fighters book. Ugh.

Joker killed Alex Luthor? Good. SuperPunk Prime not dead? Bad. I admit I don't know what the purpose of Infinite Crisis was, but it seems like it was meant to clean up the leftover mess from Crisis on the Infinite Earths. Leaving one of the Pocket Dimension Four alive to cause trouble does not count as "cleaning up"!

OK, I'm finished.

Character Archetypes #1: Peter Parker

If you're like me, there are probably certain types of characters you gravitate towards. For whatever reason, their stories interest you, moreso than other characters'. I thought I'd do a few posts about the different types that appeal to me. In this case, I'm probably going to be combining American comics with anime/manga, as I've seen some carryover.

So it only seemed natural to start with my favorite character of all: Spider-Man. What you see here is the cover to the first Spider-Man book I ever read. I'll be honest, my original reason for liking Spider-Man was twofold. One, like Scipio alluded to in his post on Sunday, Spider-Man has an incredible variety of powers. He's not the fastest, strongest, smartest, but the combination of all his powers and skills means he has a chance against just about anybody. Second, that black costume just looked so damn cool. I thought it would be totally awesome, to be hiding in the shadows, up on the ceiling, then just drop down, scare somebody. Plus, Spidey was a bit of a smart aleck, which I readily identify with, being one myself.

This was actually a really good place to jump on because the next part of the story, the Beyonder pretty much lays it all out for you with regards to Peter Parker, the person. He worries, he ties himself up in knots over stuff that wasn't his fault, things he couldn't control, but at the end of the day, he thinks things are going to be alright, and if he can, he's going to help make things that way. That just seemed very unusual to me, as the only comics I'd read before that were my dad's Supermans and Batmans from the '60s. And I had never seen those people struggle with money, or have to repaint their home because some punks burned it up. And they almost never seemed to doubt themselves. On the rare occasions they did, it was something an enemy was doing to them, and it was over by the end of the issue, when they defeated the villain. So Peter, who often had real-life problems, seemed that much more approachable to a five-year old.

Yeah, he stopped the Beyonder from destroying everything, or the Puma from killing an innocent person, but he didn't get any pictures, which means his rent will be late, which means he's in trouble. Since then, I always seem to gravitate towards characters with those sorts of problems (it helps if they look cool or have cool powers).

Speedball was a goofy kid, one with seemingly academic talent, but no real desire to use it. Stuck in the middle of a couple of parents who seemed to constantly fight. Kyle Rayner was just a guy that got handed this awesome weapon, and was told to help save the universe. Plus the whole thing with his love life (well-documented elsewhere). Hey no pressure. Darkhawk (who looked Very cool) was stuck in a single parent household, with a father who had vanished under odd circumstances. Like Peter, he was trying to help the family, unlike Peter, he had the additional strain of younger siblings to watch out for. Tim Drake, who wasn't wearing the shorts, who had a cool staff, was dating, was trying to keep an eye on an injured father, and at the time his ongoing started, was working with an armored up lunatic that called himself Batman (I think it's kind of funny that Batman seems to have moved a lot closer to what Jean Paul was doing, which was part of why Bruce took the title back). The Ray (who looked VERY damn cool), who had been trapped inside his whole life, then finds out he has powers, then his dad pops up as a 'ghost', and tells him he has to be a hero. And now Ray has to adjust to trying to have a real life outdoors, with jobs and bills, and the fact he hasn't ever really known anything about his life.

Ultimately, I guess the common denominator is they're all close to my age (or closer than the Tony Starks and Bruce Waynes), and they all had problems that I could easily envision both interfering with attempts to be a hero, and that wouldn't be easily resolved because of the superhero aspect.

I don't suppose that's anything all that surprising or unique, seeing as that was the whole idea that Kirby, Lee, Ditko, etc., were going for with Spider-Man, make him accessible to young readers, but I did want to start with an easy one.

Randomness - Things I Think About #9

Infinite Crisis #4 left me with two major thoughts/questions.

Barry Allen said he would see Wally three times, when Wally needed him most. Did his appearance against Superboy count as the third time? Becuase I kind of figured Barry meant he would time travel and see Wally, which wasn't really what happened.

Second, I feel much better about the Ray's chances of surviving Infinite Crisis. Alexander Luthor seems at least interested in Power Girl, but he still put her in the machine. This, to me suggests that the machine doesn't kill the people being used to power it. Up till now I figured Ray was screwed under my "If I like them, they're doomed" theory.

Other stuff:

Thief: Deadly Shadows for the Xbox is a lot of fun. Basically, it's Splinter Cell in a medieval setting, which allows for magic and the undead. Plus religious factions you have to do things for, or they try to kill you on sight. Of course if you do enough, they'll have your back if you get attacked around them, which can be handy for escapes. I'm playing the game through a second time, and taking more time to explore, and so getting alot more loot. I'm hoping the upcoming level in the abandoned insane asylum/orphanage is still eerie the second time through. The lighting is great, listening to some of these people when they catch a glimpse of you can be amusing (I got a real laugh out of some drunk guard I spooked this evening. Then after he dropped his guard, I busted him over the head). Just a good time if you're a person into games built on being sneaky. Come on, indulge your inner Catwoman. Whip and leather not included.

Odd thoughts: I was looking up at the sky one night. I see stars. I know there are enough stars out there to cover the sky, but many are too dim or too far away for me to see them. So what I'm wondering is whether or not I'm actually seeing all those stars I see up there, or if my mind is filling in the blanks because it knows the stars are there, even if I can't see them. This feels significant to me somehow, like I'm on the verge of staring over the edge of the universe. Or not.

Sorry, I just didn't feel like talking much about comics today.