A Literary Gift

From a back cover blurb on Dynamite's Sherlock Holmes #1:

Why, yes, Jeph Loeb, Sherlock Holmes is a "brand new wrapper" for a Victorian mystery story. Because Batman inspired Sherlock Holmes, obviously. And any good Holmes story is just a gussied-up Batman story.

If he wrote a blurb for a Tarzan book, it would probably read "It's a Ka-Zar story with a brand new wrapper!"

Yeah, I'm being overly harsh and picky, but Loeb is (supposedly) a professional writer, so if he can't express his ideas better, well, he deserves the scorn. And then there's Heroes...

In the interest of fairness, here's the full blurb:

P.S. It was a pretty good issue, although I don't buy the characterization of someone that we're shown at the end. Although it's certain to be "all is not as it seems," so judgment is officially withheld.

Stupidity Is Contagious At Marvel This Month

Today it's Jeph Loeb's turn.

Yesterday, we saw how Bendis deftly ignored stories that he had written just 5 minutes ago just to get the the story points he needed to get to.

But that's nothing. Jeph Loeb just ignored 35 years of Marvel history to get to one (supposedly) cool moment that last about 2 pages.

Let's review that history, shall we? First, Incredible Hulk #162 (1973), by Englehart and Trimpe:


And Incredible Hulk #180 (1974) by Wein & Trimpe:

And Uncanny X-Men #139 (1980) by Claremont and Byrne (and narrated by Wolverine):

And Incredible Hulk #272 (1982) by Mantlo and Sal Buscema:

I could go on. In Marvel Fanfare #2-3, Michael Fleet became Wendigo after turning to cannibalism. In Wolverine #129, Andre became a Wendigo after eating his own fingers. And on and on. (I'm thinking there's an awful lot of canniablism up north of the border, eh? Maybe Canada needed a few more Mickey D's...)

The is one universal constant: You become a Wendigo by a curse, when you consume human flesh in the forests of Canada. The curse can be cured, or transferred to another, by magics. But you don't get the curse except by eating human flesh in the north woods.

So what does Loeb (and Art Adams) give us in the green Hulk section of Red Hulk #9?


Yup...apparently, Jeph Loeb thinks that you become a Wendigo just by being bitten by a Wendigo. In Las Vegas. Without having eaten any Flesh McMuffins. Unless, of course, the Hulk has been munching on people fritters without telling us...

Jeph, you galoot, Wendigo ≠ werewolf. You'd think the guy would have actually read at least one Wendigo story being bringing in a hole herd of them. But maybe he did, and just decided that doing it right would have just gotten in the way of the "cool" Wendihulk bit he wanted to do (and then throw away 2 pages later). 35 years of Marvel history, flushed away for one ridiculously stupid moment.

Of course, such attention to detail from Loeb probably explains an awful lot about what's happened to Heroes the past couple of years...

Check out the best appearance of Wendigo EVER here: