Catwoman Purrrsday :: Catwoman 1,000,000

From Batman #1,000,000

From Catwoman #1,000,000

Catwoman Purrrsday :: JLA

Meet the newest member of the JLA...Catwoman?!?!

From the New 52 Justice League of America #1, on shelves now.

I have Super Powers...

I recently lucked upon a couple super cool and super cheap DC Super Powers action figures at the flea market - Mantis and Brainiac! I don't generally collect Super Powers figures (I still don't even have a Batman from the line!) but Jack Kirby Fourth World stuff is always epic and of course this is one badass Brainiac design, so how could I resist at fifty cents each?

First up is Brainiac. This robot skeletonesque design has grown into my favorite Brainiac design of all time. I have the DC Superheroes version put out way back when Mattel could only make Superman and Batman heroes and villains. Had we only known what the future held for us!

Like all Super Powers figures, Brainiac has a lame action feature. You squeeze his arms and one leg pops out like he's trying out for the Rockettes or something. I couldn't resist humming the 'Start spreading the news' intro every time I did it. I almost made you fine folks a video of that too. Maybe someday.

Another bonus to this figure is tha vac-metal finish. He's all shiny!

My intern helped set up a meeting between Brainiac and Kalibak...

...but they had nothing in common. Kalibak just steamed up Brainiac's finish with his gruntish breathing until Brainiac simply turned and strutted away to the tune of "Start spreadin' the news!"

Next up...Mantis!

This is the re-designed Super Powers version of Mantis. Kirby's original version was more of a bug suited guy with a cape tied to his wrists and ankles. This version is more robotic (or is it a full on robot this time?)

Very Stormtrooperish. I like this design because it is more space-suity but also because it's a neat alternative version of a wacky Jack Kirby character from Apokolips, and you can't have too many of those around the house!

I also like the scale of the Super Powers Mantis against the scale of my DCUC Kalibak. A couple fun Kirby creations indeed!

A Death in the Family

As a huge Bat-fan, I have a confession. Until this past weekend, I had never read A Death in the Family, the storyline that sees the death of Jason Todd/Robin.

I started reading Batman comics religiously shortly after this story appeared in Batman issues 426 through 429 and shortly before Tim Drake came in as the new Robin.

When I found a collected edition at the flea market for $3 I figured 'what the heck' and 'why have I not read this yet?'

Upon reading it, I remembered why I hadn't. I never wanted to in the first place.

You see, I'm one of the people who believes superheroes shouldn't die. Especially the non-super powered ones. Because they're human, and death is serious business with them. And although I love a good Batman solo story as much as anyone, I have always liked Robin.

I have always seen Robin as Batman's son. Sure one of them may be more of an asshole than another but that doesn't stop them from being important to Batman. Which should make them important to the reader. That doesn't mean you have to love every Batman/Robin team-up, or that they have to do everything together always. But that also doens't mean you gotta kill the poor S.O.B. and force Batman to carry out his lifeless body!

And besides, Batman is supposed to be one step ahead of his villains - always - at least when it comes to protecting others. Protecting children.

So to kill a Robin, even if it's Jason Todd, is low.

I always felt that way, and so I pretty much just didn't care to track the story down. Knowing it had happened was enough.

But I finally decided to read it, if nothing but to say that I have done so.

Then I read how they killed Robin, and it's actually pretty sad.

You have to get past the oddness and political datedness of the story that finally sees Joker become ambassador for Iran's Ayatollah, but once you do you find a story of a boy who lost his parents, only to discover his real birth mother is still alive, only to discover she'd just as soon sell him out to the Joker. Which leads to a savage beating that is actually quite out of character even for the madman Joker. I mean, the Killing Joke is hard to read, and Joker brutalizes Barbara badly, but he does so with a flair that only the Joker would. And he doesn't kill her, because he understands that letting everyone who loves her and herself live with what was done to her is worse than killing her. But with Jason Todd he just beats him to near-death with a crowbar and sets a bomb. Where's the panache at least?!?!

The whole story reads like it straddles the line between what comics were in the seventies and what they became towards the nineties. And it straddles it without the grace of the leaders in the field at the time; without the flair of a Miller or Moore to guide it along. It feels forced and graphic for graphic's sake.

It was a stunt, for sure. Not a well realized stunt, and the harbinger of many stunt storylines to come and many still running today.

Did the death of Jason Todd add pathos to Batman for years to come? Yes, and one may argue this alone made his death a valuable story. Did it prove that Batman didn't need a Robin? No, if anything it proved the opposite, since he wasn't without a Robin for more than a couple years before Tim Drake, a hugely successful and popular Robin, hit the scene. Now Batman even has his own biological son cavorting around rooftops as Robin!

Did it prove a grouchy insolent Robin was a bad character to have at Batman's side? Well, with Damian Wayne running around, Jason Todd's brashness, impulsiveness and intensity seem almost quaint today.

So what did it prove? If you ask me, it proved that there were trolls before the internet and that they were willing to call a 1-900 number and spend fifty cents just to be assholes.

But that's my opinion.

Of course as with all things comic-book, Jason Todd is alive and well again nowadays in some form or another; depending on if your Bat-universe looks like the one Grant Morrison is painting or the one the DCnU has created for the masses. Honestly, I'm not sure what his storyline even is now, with so many re-boots and re-tellings. Was he re-born of the Lazarus pit, or of Superboy's cosmic fit? Is he Red Hood? Wingman? Skippy the Wonder Sidekick?

Who cares - he should never have been killed in the first place.

At least he died a hero.

Poisunday Ivy :: Doesn't everyone?

Who doesn't love you, Harley?

I think i t was Paul Dini who originally paired these two up and for whatever reason it works. Ivy is stoic and angry, while Harley is impetuous and freewheeling. Ivy knows the Joker is no good for Harley (and let's face it, so does Harley deep down) but Harl's heart will always belong to her Mr. J.

From Gotham City Sirens #24.