Mix & Match Super Villains

It’s no secret that the Eisner Award-winning Invincible Iron Man is a pretty consistently solid comic book (or so the scoreboard would indicate). Matt Fraction’s writing is sharp, Salvador Larroca’s art is slick, my main man Alejandro Arbona edits the heck out of the whole shebang and Tony Stark has become a wonderfully complex and charismatic lead.

So it’s no surprise I dig the book as I do, but even I was a bit taken aback at how much I’m digging the current “Fix Me” arc in which Spider-Man archfoe—revealed to also be a former Stark peer in his younger years—Doctor Octopus is squaring off with Iron Man as he attempts to get Tony to cure his life-threatening physical ailments or at least admit his failure. It’s well-written, well-drawn, all that jazz, but honestly one of the biggest draws for me is simply seeing Doc Ock, generally an Amazing Spider-Man fixture, mixing it up with somebody new (and he brings Sandman and Electro along for the ride to boot).

Heroes trading their villains around is, of course, nothing new and has been going on since at least the Silver Age if not longer (I truthfully do not know if, say, The Red Skull ever appeared in Sub-Mariner during the 40’s or if Golden Age Lex Luthor fought that era’s Batman) and has been a fixture ever since. Particularly in the 90’s, if a villain was popular—Venom is the number one example that jumps to mind—you’d see them everywhere whether it made sense or not (A-listers like The Joker or Doctor Doom aren’t in the discussion here as part of what makes them great is that they can face off with anybody and it works).

In recent years, as restraint has returned to the medium, super villains have tended more or less to find a home title/hero and stick to it, so when something like “Fix Me” occurs it feels a little more special, as I’m sure it did the first time Magneto fought the Avengers back in the 60’s. More than that, though, if you find just that right “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that” pairing, it’s so sweet to see a bad guy out of the element you associate them with, but making such a perfect adversary for their unfamiliar dance partner. No matter how good “Fix Me” ultimately is, I’m sure Doc Ock will remain primarily a Spider-Man baddie simply because there’s such a rich history there, but developing a side feud with Iron Man can only up his profile and make for more great stories. I’m hoping for similar goodness in the just-announced “Storm Hunter” story this summer where Kraven goes after The Black Panther in another matchup that just makes total sense.

Following that train of thought, I wracked my brain for some shuffled hero vs villain showdowns I think have a lot of potential—and by the way, I fully recognize that as much as I know about comics I’ve got decades of continuity working against, thus I’m sure at least one of these has happened already and I look forward to hearing about it in the comments, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done again and even better.

(Also, I don’t have Photoshop at home, so I’ll assume you all know what the good guys look like and instead display pictures of the baddies)

SUPERMAN VS BANE
First and foremost, Superman always needs more villains he can just get into punching matches with, because the rotation between Metallo, Bizarro and Parasite in between cerebral wars with Lex Luthor and Brainiac gets played pretty quickly. Realistically, maybe Bane isn’t in Superman’s weight class, but then again, neither are a lot of the guys he fights. Besides that, Bane is a lot smarter than your average musclehead (when he’s being written right), as he’s the guy who not only physically dominated Batman, but weaved the psychological web of destruction that allowed that to occur. The optimum time for this to happen would have been right smack dab in the 90’s when Bane could taunt Superman with the “I broke your best friend” card, but done right today, this could bump Bane up a level and give Superman a fresh sparring partner for when you just need an issue of Action Comics full of double page spreads.

THE X-MEN VS THE DEVIANTS
It’s tough coming up with opponents for the X-Men particularly in the here and now as they are literally an army living on their own private sanctuary. However, the Deviants’ numbers dwarf even Cyclops and company, plus they’re an entire race bred more or less to go to war. Really there could be no more perfect threat for the X-Men to play against, as the Deviants are mutants gone down the worst possible scenario and any last remnant of Xavier’s dream torn to shreds: they’re an offshoot of humanity feared for their power, shunned for their differentness and driven to isolate themselves and lash out against the Eternals, Celestials and every either “normal” or “gifted” group that has been able to ascend into the light they’re denied, so of course they would really hate the X-Men. I’d love to see Cyclops’ strategic skills pitted against the likes of Warlord Kro and the X-Men forced to look into the dark mirror of what they could become—and are actually moving closer to if they really take a minute to think about Utopia—in the Deviants.

GREEN ARROW VS CAPTAIN BOOMERANG
Ok, maybe pairing off the two specialized weapons guys is a bit cliché, but just because it’s sensible doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be fun. Awesome arrow vs boomerang dual aside—and once they get to the gimmicks it would be seriously amazing—the personalities would be an interesting mesh as well. Going after Green Arrow would be a sensible move for Boomer, as he’s one of those villains constantly trying to prove he’s better than his reputation and targeting the perceived “weakest” member of the Justice League falls right in line with his character. For Ollie, looking at Boomerang would be—as with a the X-Men/Deviants pairing I just discussed—a glimpse at the road not travelled but that could still be. Digger is a guy who has let arrogance and his vices consume him and lost his family because of it; Ollie isn’t that far off from that. Both guys are arrogant and snarky and would have I suspect a spirited battle of wits, words, fists and projectiles.

SPIDER-MAN VS BATROC
This may be my personal favorite. I have already read the amazing Captain America & Batroc one-shot by Kieron Gillen and Renato Arlem headed to stores this Wednesday, and it only renewed and strengthened my affinity for “Ze Leapair,” a truly fantastic pseudo-villain and just fun character. I’d love to see Batroc gain a higher profile in the Marvel Universe, and Spider-Man is the perfect opponent for him. Captain America and Batroc always have cool dustups, but at his core, my favorite Frenchman is an acrobat, not a scrapper, so Spidey would be a great opponent for him just from a physical and fighting style angle. Batroc is also a guy who leads with his pride, preferring to prove himself against Cap rather than beat him or even pull off the big score and he’s all about the honorable opponent, so you know he and Spider-Man would start off trading barbs, but the Wallcrawler’s ceaseless banter and deprecating sense of humor would ultimately drive him—no pun intended—up the wall. And yet, underneath the surface, Batroc and Spidey actually have more than a little in common: both are underdogs, both seek and generally don’t get respect, and both stand by their morals at the end of the day (seriously, read any good Batroc story and he’s not really a bad guy, more of a thrill junkie and swashbuckler). Put the right artist on this and it would be an instant classic fight sequence, but the correct writer could also forge a cool rivalry/friendship in the end—paging Mr. Gillen and Mr. Arlem!

THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES VS BLACK ADAM
Probably the best Legion of Super-Heroes story ever is The Great Darkness Saga, with Darkseid emerging in the future, and a modern highlight of Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning’s run came when Ra’s al Ghul showed up as the out-of-nowhere mastermind trying to take over the United Planets. Long story short: Present day villains are gold in the 30th/31st century. Black Adam is immortal and this could certainly still be around somewhere in a thousand years or so, plus he’s one of the few figures who simply on his own could present a viable physical challenge to a fighting force as vast and diverse as the Legion. I’d love to see Captain Marvel’s toughest opponent lock horns with Mon-El and Ultra Boy, trade sparks with Lightning Lad and Lightning Lass or match magic with The White Witch. Black Adam is an unstoppable force and some of the Legion’s greatest battles have come when they go up against that type of threat; I’d love to see Cosmic Boy or Brainiac 5’s battle strategy, but I’d also like to see what happens when BA shrugs it off and ignites the tempers of Legion hotheads like Wildfire and Timber Wolf, leading to the inevitable dog pile. Throw in Isis and Osiris as well and this is a slobberknocker for the ages for sure.

IRON MAN VS THE LEADER
I’m biting a little on the Iron Man-Doc Ock feud I started the post talking about, but if anything, that story has shown me that Tony Stark up against other smart guys makes for quality stories. For years and years The Leader has been banging his giant head against the wall trying and failing to put mind over muscle against The Hulk, so it would be interesting to see him step up to somebody of his own intellect. Conversely, I don’t think Iron Man has ever gone against anybody with the brain capacity of The Leader, so it would be a different kind of challenge for him than battling The Mandarin or one of his numerous armored rivals. I don’t hate The Leader’s chances here, as a guy who has come within inches of putting The Hulk down despite no physical abilities can surely give Iron Man a run, while Tony would be in the uncomfortable position of not being able to necessarily fall back on his knowledge, having to opt for finesse and firepower instead.

Five Favorite (Non-Flash) Speedsters

Since I spent some time last week waxing on how awesome super speed would be, it only seems right I now list off my favorite practitioners of said ability in comics, right?

To make things a bit more interesting though, I’m taking my obvious number one, Wally West, out of the—pun intended—running. To make things even more interesting, I’ll also remove anybody called The Flash (or Kid Flash) just because. And finally, I’ll endeavor to make this a list where it’s more about how the characters relate to and reflect the ability of super speed than their overall coolness, but of course the lines will inevitably blur.

Dig? Cool.

Honorable Mention: MEANSTREAK
No real discernibly cool personality, but I always just thought he had a rad codename.

Honorable Mention: JOHNNY QUICK
I like Johnny, but I haven’t read enough of All-Star Squadron to really know him as anything else but the dude from The Golden Age, and one story alone—even a really good one—doesn’t get you on the list.

5. XS
Combine your typical overexcited and oft-insecure teenage girl with the hyper kinetic nature of a person with super speed and you get XS, a bundle of fun from the 30th century. I always got a kick out of how Jenni would be incredibly enthusiastic over everything to the point where she spoke fast than her teammates could hear and then immediately flipped to extreme embarrassment once she realized just what she had done. Very endearing character and I hope she gets some play in Legion soon, as every team can use a good speedster.

4. MAKKARI
The Eternals’ Makkari combines my love of speedsters with my love of mythology in one gaudily-but-awesomely-costumed package. Mak’s the most inquisitive and adventurous of the Eternal bunch as befits an immortal god-type who can run really fast. Rather than cool his heels in Olympia with the rest of the gang, he made frequent incursions into the mortal world, be it to teach Plato philosophy or serve among the Marvel heroes of the Golden Age. Besides just the fact that he’s fast, I’m a fan of Makkari since he’s always on the move, jumping from one thing to the next with a natural curiosity that matches his ability to physically accelerate—he’s the James Franco of the Eternals.

3. JESSE QUICK
They don’t really play it up at all these days, but the era where Jesse Quick was not just a super hero but also a high-powered business executive always seemed an appropriate and interesting use of a speedster character to me. Of course whether they used their powers or not somebody with super speed like Jesse would be ideal in the corporate world where deadlines and innovation are key and of course she’d be a workaholic able to create more hours in a busy day because those are her powers and the environment she likely grew up in given her parents creeping into her personality. Her status as a headstrong female character who in my mind was assertive but certainly not the b-word also made Jesse Quick a favorite of mine during her Flash and even Titans stints.

2. MAX MERCURY
This is the flipside of my number one, but there is of course the aspect of super speed that allows you to live each moment as if it stretches a lifetime, so the idea of a “zen master of speed” such as Max Mercury both appeals and makes a lot of sense to me. After you pass the just running fast period of being a speedster, you’re going to get bored, and while frustration is one response, it’s cool that at least one guy took the road less traveled and spent the extra time his power affords him learning as much about it as he could. It’s neat the way Max has a better intuitive understanding of stuff like the Speed Force and also how he counters pretty much every other person with a similar ability set by having also learned near infinite patience and becoming the ideal mentor figure (though Impulse forced that “near” qualifier pretty well). There’s also a lot of untapped potential in Max Mercury as far as his crazy origins and not-fully-explored traipses through time, so an appearance by him is always welcome.

1. QUICKSILVER
In the years since Pietro Maximoff was introduced and then fully fleshed out and then further fleshed out as a character, there have been other speedsters who do the “I’m a total dick because I’m perpetually frustrated by how slow the rest of the world is” routine, but none as well, and of course inarguably none who innovated it. Quicksilver is a great character because cool powers aside, you really do have to find a reason to root for him; sure he loves his family and does generally save lives, but he’s also a former terrorist with a superiority complex who tends to lose his mind every so often. Probably no writer did him a great service than Peter David in X-Factor when he established the idea that Pietro isn’t a tool for no reason at all, he’s really just annoyed for the rest of us to figure out how to work an ATM machine. Kurt Busiek also had the great bit in JLA/Avengers where Quicksilver finally meets somebody faster than him in The Flash and rather than embrace him immediately becomes jealous, insecure and obsessed with winning a race. Quicksilver isn’t the most likable character and never will be, but he’s wonderfully layered and, more than that, probably a pretty realistic depiction of how most folks would handle super speed once the initial buzz wears off.

Underrated/Overlooked: Legion of Super-Heroes "Year One"

I was, once upon a time, one of those great unwashed who found the Legion of Super-Heroes too intimidating and complicated.

To be fair, my primary exposure to the Legion growing up was through house ads for the “Five Years Later” incarnation in the DC books I did read, so to me it was a book about sad-looking middle-aged people dressing in shabby rags, sitting around looking forlorn (I’ve since come to appreciate that era of the mythos, but with no sense of context or what came before, it did not look terribly appealing, particularly to a kid who liked shiny super heroes). I picked up a couple issues of Legionnaires, but could not make heads or tails of where it fit with the other book or reconcile why there were all these characters with the same names and powers.

The first Legion book I vividly remember buying and reading was one of the middle chapters of the “End of an Era” crossover running through all three of the group’s titles (including Valor) prior to Zero Hour. It involved trying to collapse pretty much all of Legion history up to that point, attempting to sort out decades of inconsistencies in six issues and wrap up the group’s story once and for all to clear the decks for a full reboot.

In short: It doesn’t seem like there could be a worse issue for a Legion neophyte already wary of the towering continuity to try out.

And yet, it worked.

Or rather it worked in concert with something that struck me in the base framework of Legionnaires as well as the fact that both books were starting from scratch to tell a new version of the old story after Zero Hour wiped out all that had come before. The Zero issues of Legion of Super-Heroes and Legionnaires were great, and before I knew it, I became a full-fledged Legion junkie, with the franchise becoming probably the first DC one I really latched onto in the way I did Marvel books.

It’s interesting to me that when the publication history of the Legion gets summed up, generally it tends to jump straight from the Paul Levitz glory days of the 70’s and 80’s straight to when Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning came onboard in the late 90’s. If you go looking for the great Legion stories, you’re going to get directed to stuff like The Great Darkness Saga and Legion Lost, perhaps with a recommendation to check out Jim Shooter’s Silver Age stuff or Mark Waid’s “Threeboot” if you really want to look. And I love all of that stuff; Great Darkness is one of my favorite stories ever, the DnA run was some fantastic sci-fi that put my boys on the map, and I championed the Threeboot long and hard at Wizard. Yet it always confounds me that the post-Zero Hour re-launch gets more or less swept under the rug. Not only did it start off really strong, I do remember it being fairly successful commercially for a bit there, with lots of internal press for the books and the Final Night event more or less spinning out of Legion (before becoming a Green Lantern story in the end).

And as much as I’ve grown to love the Levitz Legion, DnA’s Legion, the Threeboot Legion and so on, that post-Zero Hour group remains the Legion I truly think of as mine.

I think the first year following Zero Hour is the strongest case for the “forgotten” Legion. After that, there were peaks and valleys and somewhere along the way when half the team was stranded in the present for what felt like forever I jumped off, but those first 12 months from the Zero issues to the Year One-themed annuals were rock solid, building a new mythology while also constructing a focused super story that paid off in spades. Mark Waid and Tom McGraw (I believe with the assistance of Roger Stern, though I’m having trouble confirming it, and later Tom Peyer) seemed to have a really clear idea of how they were going to prove to folks like me who had been so terrified of the Legion that here was a great concept when you stripped it down and focused on the basics of what made it cool.

Rather than being introduced as a sprawling and established organization coming back in time to recruit Superboy to their cause, this Legion started from the start, with three super-powered teens unexpectedly joining forces to save the life of a rich old man and giving him the idea that the future needed heroes. From there, Waid and McGraw did the slow rollout, introducing a couple new members each month, quickly enough so that they could fill out a clubhouse within a few issues and the requisite friendships and romances began to form, but with sufficient deliberation that we actually got to know the characters as individuals and not just names and powers in a virtual army.

Cosmic Boy was the natural leader. Live Wire was the dreamer with the wandering eye. Saturn Girl was the ice queen. Apparition was too perfect. Triad was conflicted. Leviathan had an inferiority complex he tried to mask with a false superiority complex. Invisible Kid was the guy you wanted to be friends with. XS was the schoolgirl in over her head. Chameleon was the foreign exchange student. Brainiac 5 was the arrogant jerk.

Each character was somebody you knew or could at least relate to, and as they interacted, you saw your own youth played out on a level you could only imagine. Because as I always say when it comes to the Legion, there is nothing better than the high concept of teenagers with super powers getting to live alone with other kids their own age in an awesome headquarters with no parents in sight and seemingly unlimited resources. Plus they got to save the universe every month. As somebody who loved summer camp, I think the Legion tapped into that part of me that thrived on escaping society a couple of months every year and getting to have responsibilities beyond my age thrust at me while also getting to act way younger—it still does.

Anyways, rambling aside, when you forget about the continuity crap, Legion is just a cool as it gets idea that should always be a lot of fun and wish fulfillment to the highest power. Waid and McGraw’s Legion was the embodiment of cutting through the smog of comic book complications and making the books a place you really wanted to spend time every month. It also helped that they had great artists in Stuart Immonen and Jeff Moy, each of whom brought something different to the table. Immonen in that early stage had a neat sort of gritty realism that he could pull off without making the stories seem dark. On the other end of the spectrum, Moy’s art was buoyant and full of life, but he could bring it for the emotionally heavy stuff as well. They complemented each other and what the writers were trying to do perfectly.

While the Legion grappled with an assortment of threats, Waid and McGraw also continued to add members like Shrinking Violet, Kinetix and the xenophobic Andromeda while also casting pre-Zero Hour Legionnaires like Ultra Boy in new roles—he was on a rival team but had a Romeo and Juliet love story going with Apparition in a nod to their classic romance—and throwing in curveballs like Live Wire being kicked off the team and replaced by his twin sister Spark. While I didn’t know everything about the Legion as it was before Zero Hour, I at least recognized many familiar characters or relationships, and enjoyed the wink by the creators as they found new ways to use old favorites like Matter-Eater Lad as the Legion’s chef or Bouncing Boy being a non-powered sort of intern (and having a crush of pre-Zero Hour wife Triad).

And the whole time, beginning right from Legion of Super-Heroes #0, something larger was going on off to the side. The people that tried to assassinate R.J. Brande were tied to a larger group called the White Triangle, a cabal of Daxamites founded on considering all other races inferior. Andromeda had ties to the White Triangle but hid them early on and also seemed to be slowly coming around. Members of the group beat one of Triad’s selves nearly to death. The plotline was very heavy stuff, dealing with tough issues like intolerance and hate crimes and doing it with maturity and weight in a fantastical setting like that of the Legion’s supposedly idyllic future. It hung around the fringes of the first year’s worth of stories, but with mastery, Waid and McGraw (at this point I believe with Peyer) brought it closer to the forefront until it reached a boiling point.

The Legionnaires Annual that wrapped the White Triangle story and carried the Year One banner which most books used to tell origin stories but here marked the conclusion of the new Legion’s first year of existence, felt very much like a season finale. The White Triangle finally found a way to get their Superman-level powers working on Earth and launched a full scale out in the open invasion. After months of working behind the scenes, the bad guys were here and they were terrifying.

It was all hands on deck as anybody who had left the team came back and every guest star available showed up to pitch in. Live Wire’s hero arc reached a dramatic crescendo as he returned to the team that had spurned him to help save the day. Andromeda was forced to finally pick a side. R.J. Brande showed up at the very last minute with a secret weapon that would make old school fans smile. Everybody got their big moments—and there were casualties. The deaths were not at all tossed off and had extreme gravitas to them; I remember getting quite emotional watching a couple of these new friends I’d gotten to know over the previous year get snuffed out.

That story still stands out to me well over a decade later as one of the best examples I’ve ever seen of how you build expectations and tension over the long haul and then end it right. It was just great storytelling.

So if the current Legion seems appealing to you but you’d a bit put off by the sheer number of characters or amount of continuity changes, let me make the suggestion that you try and track down the Legion of Super-Heroes: Beginning of Tomorrow trade and then scrounge up all the back issues you can. The post-Zero Hour Legion really is the ideal gateway to the concept working without any baggage, and if you’re like me, you’ll then be ready to take the training wheels off and start exploring forwards and backwards in the franchise. It’s a truly wonderful world to explore, you just need the right entry point, and I’m telling you, it’s the one even most hardcore fans forget ever existed.

Who Digs Teen Super Heroes?

The short answer to that question is me—it’s the more in-depth version I’m interested in trying to figure out, and will attempt to do so with a little impromptu history lesson wherein the facts will hopefully be at least close to accurate given the minimal research I plan on doing.

As we all know—right?—the first major young character in comics was the original Robin, Dick Grayson, introduced in 1940 to be the boy/teen sidekick to Batman. Bucky, Speedy, Toro, etc. and a horde of other pre-pubescent tagalongs were created throughout the 40’s to accompany the hordes of hit or miss super heroes the industry was churning out at a feverish pace. The idea was that since a lot of kids and teenagers read comics, they’d like to have a character they could imagine themselves as; they could hero worship Batman and Captain America, but they could actually be Robin or Bucky.

Robin and other young boys hanging out with strapping men in spandex of course became a major target of Fredric Wertham in the mid-1950’s, so a lot of them went away over the course of that decade, as did super heroes comics as a genre in large part. This was likely just as well, since the kids who grew up in the 40’s were now hitting the cusp of adulthood and didn’t feel like identifying with a cheeky circus performer in pixie boots or precocious army mascot in a domino mask, preferring the edgier EC Comics-type fare you’d expect twentysomethings to cotton to. The only teen heroes who really thrived to any degree in the 50’s were Superboy because he was just Superman as a kid and Robin because he was mostly an accessory to Batman. The exception to the rule would be the Legion of Super-Heroes, introduced in 1958, but I attribute the fact that they had a unique gimmick—that whole being from the future thing—as offsetting a malaise in young protagonists at the time.

The game changed again in 1962 with Spider-Man, not just another teen character but a full-on leading (young) man with angst and depth his predecessors of 20 years earlier never came close to demonstrating. With Spidey, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko invented not just a hero their younger readers could fantasize about being, but in Peter Parker an alter ego who wasn’t all that far off from how they actually were real life, mixing the tried concept of a wish fulfillment character with an identifiable protagonist. It no doubt helped that the Wertham storm had been weathered and there were actual young readers to appreciate the effort again.

Whether because of Spider-Man, the return of teen fans, just because or a combination of them all, DC brought back their younger heroes in full force, grouping Robin, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Aqualad and Speedy together as the Teen Titans while also giving the Legion their own ongoing series in Adventure Comics. At Marvel, the X-Men were created perhaps in least in part with the idea that if one awkward kid did well, five would do even better, while Rick Jones became a fixture in Incredible Hulk, Avengers and later Captain America and other titles.

While the late 60’s did not bring the return of Frederic Wertham, there was the inevitable aging of another audience and ensuing lack of interest in teen heroes that killed off both Teen Titans and X-Men for a good bit. However, rather than go gently into that good night, the folks responsible for Spider-Man and the Legion came up with the novel solution to simply age their charges ever so slightly, meaning as their fans were going off to college, so was Peter Parker; as the readers were discovering romance, the Legionnaires were hooking up. Rather than lose that young audience who found Iron Man too old but were over the youthful adventures of Supergirl, a middle ground of hip characters in their early-mid 20’s were established, with many tenured leads being subtly slid back towards that demographic as well.

Once you buzz past the early 70’s and get toward the end of that decade on into the 80’s, things get interesting as far as teen and just-past-teen super heroes. The three most commercially successful ongoing series of the period for quite some time were Uncanny X-Men, New Teen Titans and Legion of Super-Heroes.

In the case of the X-Men, a cast certainly not fit to be attending high school shot the book to popularity in the middle of the 70’s—Wolverine has never been a teen hero—but the ultimate entry level character for kids in Kitty Pryde cemented it’s spot as in many ways it became about the one kid being your access point to hanging out with the coolest group of older friends you could imagine.

New Teen Titans showcased a mix of high school and college age characters that all happened to be extremely physically attractive—but in distinct and thus more believable ways thanks to the talent of George Perez—having incredible adventures and also exploring their friendship and sexuality. Legion of Super-Heroes was a similar set-up but in the far-flung and awesome 30th century. Whereas Robin and Bucky had been endearing but fairly goofy wish fulfillment fantasies to kids in the 40’s, the Titans, Legion and X-Men were far sexier versions who were able to hold the attention of their audience regardless of age—young readers wanted to spend time with them, slightly older fans wanted to be them, and those who had been following along since the 60’s saw their glory days. As a result, these books stayed on top for most of the 80’s.

As the 90’s dawned, for whatever reason, the 70’s backlash of disinterest in teen heroes seemed to resurface and the answer of the comics community was to take the previous solution of aging their young characters even further. The X-Men—the presence of Jubilee aside—became comprised more or less entirely of adults, and ones with a hard edge at that. The Teen Titans became the New Titans, ditching the optimism of youth for a seemingly endless wave of tragedy (see Donna Troy’s life). The Legion jumped ahead five years and became grown-ups in a now dystopian future. Even the New Mutants, who remained among Marvel’s younger characters, transitioned into the paramilitary X-Force, with gray-haired Cable at the helm and as the focal point.

In spite of this, there were a lot of great teen books and characters in the 90’s—I should know since it’s when I started reading comics. You had my beloved New Warriors, Tim Drake as Robin and the new Superboy, not to mention a wave of would-be Spider-Man surrogates who went on to various levels of success like Darkhawk and Sleepwalker. Even A-listers like Green Lantern and Flash became part of the youth movement, with Kyle Rayner and Wally West taking the mantles, plus good stuff outside of Marvel like Harbinger at Valiant or Prime at Malibu.

Of course there were also simply so many comics in the early 90’s that the “throw everything at the wall” approach to publishing was guaranteed to yield at least a bit of quality in every category across the board including with teen heroes.

Give or take 10-15 years or so that brings us to today. We’ll leave out the bit where the market collapses and nothing is doing well because it’s not really relevant to any points I’m trying to make or explore.

The comic industry has rebounded from the abyss with vigor over the last decade, experiencing rebirth in publishing as well expansion into other mediums like film and television. There’s a whole component about the indys and how coming of age graphic novels and standalone stuff about growing up has surged of late, but again, not really what I’m talking about here, so we’ll stick to super heroes.

If there’s been any knock on mainstream super hero comics in the 00’s—and there has been more than one, but this is a biggie—it’s that kids don’t read them anymore. If that is the case—and for the sake of the argument we’ll assume it is—then the original reasons why we had Robin in the 40’s, Spider-Man in the 60’s and Kitty Pryde and the Titans in the 80’s has evaporated somewhat in that the median age older reader probably doesn’t want to self-project as a younger character, particularly when the big guns are perpetually situated around the late-20’s/early-30’s age range most fans find themselves at or wish to get back to already.

Indeed, these days the rules that apply to an “adult” book like Avengers or Green Lantern carry over to “teen” books—or to put it more simply: It doesn’t matter how old the hero is, if it’s a good comic, it will succeed. Thus even with a dearth of younger readers, quality stuff like Ultimate Spider-Man or Young Avengers continues to experience success. Geoff Johns’ Teen Titans or Brian K. Vaughan’s didn’t so much do well because they spoke to a younger generation; they did well because they were kid. On the flipside, I don’t think Blue Beetle or Young Allies had trouble because they starred teenagers; they had trouble because it’s a tough market to launch new books in period (which sucks because those were some quality comics).

So coming full circle, what is I like about teen super heroes? It may have started out as an “Ooh, I could be Superboy!” or “Ooh, I want to hang out with the New Warriors!” thing back in the 90’s, but at this point I’m 28 and comics starring the younger set like Avengers Academy or the latest iteration of Teen Titans still tend to grab my interest.

For me, I think it’s that I’m an unabashed fan of the soap opera element of comic books just like I am of television or movies, so I’ll naturally gravitate to stuff starring teens or young adults where that is dialed up to 11 (I love Gossip Girl, but my parents have been on me for months and I still haven’t given The Good Wife a shot). If I’m going to get lost in a world of pathos, angst, romance and heroics, I want my escapism writ large and to the extreme, the way teenagers tend to view life (and the way me and most of my friends do too, since we’re largely in a collective state of arrested development). There’s something about every new crush being the love of your life, every test you face (written or super villainous) being the most devastating ever, and this group of friends being the one you’ll keep forever that appeals greatly to me.

Do I love teen super heroes because I’m a romantic? Because I’m a drama queen? Both? Does it matter? I don’t think it does.

I do hope more kids read comics again someday for lots of reasons—health of the industry, good way to learn to read, etc.—but for sure one is so that teen super heroes get another shot and another generation gets to see how cool they are.

And I’ll still be reading too.

Election Night Special: Vote Timber Wolf!

I’m somewhat sad to say I did not vote today. I’m glum about it because it wasn’t so long ago I felt like American politics was maybe something I could really get into, but these days, it seems like it’s more about “My guy won!” and cheering for your party regardless of the candidate they field, not exercising our right to choose and picking the best man or woman or the job. I see a situation more resembling a Thanksgiving day football game than a spirited debate, and it bums me out.

Fortunately, one electoral process never lets me down and it’s returned just when I needed it most: The Legion of Super-Heroes Team Leader Election!

Yes, seminal Legion scribe Paul Levitz in his latest LSH run has brought back with him one of the title’s most time-honored traditions from his initial stint during the 1980’s, that being fans getting to select who will in fact lead the team into the next year or so worth of adventures. Back in the day, you’d address a letter and send it off to DC headquarters, but as we inch ever closer to the 30th—well, 31st now, I guess—century, the election has now gone digital!

With the previous ballots being cast way before my time, I’ve never had the opportunity to participate in this fine example of future democracy in action, but rest assured, my vote has already been made and I’m here to tell you the right candidate for the job.

See, while David Uzumeri may be stumping for Quislet, MightyGodKing has endorsed Gates and Phil Jimenez is perennially in the tank for Dream Girl, the only Legionnaire truly up for the challenge is the man, the myth, the guy who carried out Karate Kid’s crazy will for him…Timber Wolf!


Allow me to now lay out my argument with a series of points I shall make up as I go along.

He’s got tenure
Ok, granted it’s easier to understand Middle Eastern foreign policy than Legion of Super-Heroes continuity, but pretty much no matter how you slice it, Timber Wolf has been with the team bordering on forever. He doesn’t take hiatuses to get married, have kids, teach at the Academy or even discover new drugs to protect Superboy from Kryptonite or whatever, he just keeps on plugging away on the front lines, punching stuff and getting punched back until Mon-El or Saturn Girl save the day.

He’s got experience
T-Wolf served as Deputy Leader under Sensor Girl during the Magic Wars, over the course of which only one Legionnaire died, and then was leader for an undocumented term during the presumably-no-longer-in-continuity “Five Year Gap,” during which I’m sure he performed with stellar skill, in no way contributing to the team’s collapse and bleak universe that emerged from that period.

He’s got nothing else going on
Seriously, outside of being a Legionnaire, Brin Londo does, like, nothing. His personal life is crap. He dated Lightning Lass for awhile, she ditched him for Shrinking Violet, and he’s been single going on three decades through multiple reboots. He’ll always give the Legion his all if only because he has literally nothing better to do.


He had his own series
Suck on that every other Legionnaire but Karate Kid and Cosmic Boy. And it was set in the 90’s. And he was responsible for creating Jamm!

He gets shit done
Remember when I mentioned earlier that thing about Karate Kid’s will? Basically after Val Armorr died, his final request to his buddy Timber Wolf was for him to go the planet Lythyl, a world populated by hundreds of bad ass martial artist ne’er-do-wells, fight his way through all of them, use his bare hands to pound a hole in the rock-hard soil and plant a friggin’ flower or something—and he does it! If you can’t count on Timber Wolf given something like that, who the heck can you count on? (This all went down in Legion of Super-Heroes v3 #13, by the way, and if you haven’t read it, do so immediately as it is awesome)

He deserves a turn
I don’t want to see Cosmic Boy, Element Lad or even Wildfire as leader again, I want something new.

He’s awesome
Seriously, though I poked some fun at him with most of these items, Timber Wolf is one of my favorite Legionnaires. He’s so rough around the edges, yet has the true heart of a hero; he’s dumb enough to not realizing he’s being a jerk sometimes, but also too sincere to ever really mean it. His powers are strictly middle of the road—bit of enhanced strength, touch of above average agility, super senses here and there—but like I said he is always first into the fray whether he should be or not; bro’s endearing.


He’s really not qualified…
…and that makes for the best stories.

Five Comics Worth Reading Extra: Dope Debuts

When I was compiling Five Comics Worth Reading last week, I had a surplus of books to choose from, in large part because so many new series have made a great impression on me just in the last month. In order to trim the herd, I decided to cut anything I hadn’t read a second issue of yet, but I’m gonna talk about five of those comics now, because they keep up the tone they’ve set thus far, they’re most certainly worth reading.

AVENGERS ACADEMY
It seemed like this one would be a gimme, as Christos Gage and Mike McKone are one helluva creative team and this book would get to ride the momentum of the Heroic Age, but I think there was a lot of pressure here as well, given not only that the title would have to stand up with the higher profile Avengers launches, but there’s also already a much-beloved team of young Avengers out there (called the Young Avengers). I’m pleased to report that from where I sit, Avengers Academy has bucked any jinx and lived above the hype with the first issue. Gage had a tough task as far as creating yet another group of teen heroes in a Universe and industry already filled with them; thus far he has made them distinct by willingly taking risks and going to a dark place psychologically yet one that does not rely on graphic violence or anything like that. He’s writing a smart book here and his characters’ flaws are complex, not surface level, in a way that makes them instantly compelling (that he has described one cast member as “maybe on the autism spectrum, maybe a sociopath” more than once gives you an idea what I’m talking about). As for McKone, he’s redefining himself and his legacy here already, and for a guy whose work and career I follow with as much reverence as his, I think I’m making quite a statement there; Mike’s work over six years ago on Teen Titans was breathtaking, but the experimentation in mediums and techniques he’s doing here is really something.

HAWKEYE & MOCKINGBIRD
Full disclosure: Yes, Jim McCann is a dear friend, so I have certainly been in his corner and delighted as he has ascended to a real bonafide writing star on the rise over the past couple years. At the same time, I am very much honest with Jim in terms of assessing his work even when I find some flaw in it (and for his part, he takes criticism as well as anybody and takes it to heart). So it’s with a lot of pride that I read the first issue of Hawkeye & Mockingbird and not only saw so much of what Jim has set out to do with this, a dream project for him to be sure, realized, but also how hard he has worked to elevate his work to a level it wasn’t at even a few months ago; Jim not only has more evident love for his work and the characters in his charge than most, he also puts in that extra mile to write for the guy least likely to enjoy what he’s doing and bring them around. I know what affection he has for Clint Barton and Bobbi Morse and at times during New Avengers: The Reunion I felt those personal feelings may have overshadowed creating something everybody can process, but I’m so pleased to report that’s in no way the case here, as both Hawkeye and Mockingbird as well as the neat little world Jim has built for them remarkably quickly shine in a way I don’t believe decades of familiarity is a requisite to dig. Jim sets a lot of stuff in motion simultaneously in terms of solid mysteries and adventure, but he also never loses sight on selling that central relationship. He’s also got a tremendous creative partner in David Lopez, whose work I have enjoyed since Catwoman and who puts—if it’s possible—just as much enthusiasm and effort into the artistic end of this book as Jim does the writing. Very much looking forward to seeing this book continue to grow both as a fan and a friend.

LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES
So far, so good; Paul Levitz is proving to me that even two decades later, you can indeed go home again. Levitz of course famously wrote Legion of Super-Heroes for nearly 15 years from the mid-70’s and late-80’s, taking the franchise to heights never before—or arguably since—seen both creatively and commercially, deftly balancing a cast that at times included two dozen or so characters and making each and every one of them his own in the process. Understandably there had to be some skepticism over whether or not the old master could do it again in an industry that has come a long way since 1989, but I must say I enjoyed the heck out of the first Paul Levitz-written issue of Legion of Super-Heroes in 21 years and felt like it didn’t miss a beat from one of my all-time favorite runs. The most impressive thing is that Levitz’ work here doesn’t feel dated and meshes well with the evolved feel of the medium, yet he doesn’t seem to have sacrificed any of the tricks that made his first go-around so great, from the constantly-shifting focus every one-three pages—I really didn’t realize how much I missed that—to the soap opera-on-steroids feel of the book’s teenage protagonists. Elements introduced in recent years by Geoff Johns like the jingoistic Earth Man or the Legion’s problems with the United Planets don’t feel like inherited items Levitz feels he must deal with, they seem more like challenges he relishes. As for artist Yildiray Cinar, I’d say my judgment still needs to be formed, as he’s brilliant one page and then a bit unfocused the next, but the raw material is certainly there. For now though, I’m mostly just in awe of how this book settles so nicely into a niche that has been sorely missed; welcome back, Mr. Levitz.

YOUNG ALLIES
So this is the Sean McKeever I’ve heard so much about. In all seriousness, Young Allies does seem like it’s going to be the long-awaited breakout book for Sean after years of under-the-radar success and near-hits, and it could not happen to a nicer guy. It’s a great array of characters, with an old standby like Firestar, McKeever’s own pet character Gravity, new blood in Toro and then the square pegs he has impressively made fit with Nomad and Arana really providing quite a unique blend of personalities. But as much well-deserved credit as Sean has gotten via books like Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane for providing an entertaining look at the teenage experience, he’s also dynamically good at taking that old-fashioned struggle between good and evil we a lot of us came to comics looking for in the first place and both explore the shades of grey while also stripping it down to its component parts. His new villains, the Bastards of Evil—who are literally the supposedly discarded children of existing bad guys—are great examples of this, with a really twisted yet strangely endearing motivation that goes out the window as soon as they start trying to blow everything up. The old school fan in me really grooves on McKeever’s dedication to showing via Gravity, Nomad and friends why even in the mixed up world both they and we live in why morality and heroics still have a place, albeit one found via much angst and self-exploration. David Baldeon is a nice match on art as his work similarly has a surface-level simplicity that belies much more thought-out and even sinister stuff going on deeper within.

ZATANNA
As he demonstrated time and again via his work on the Batman and Superman animated series as well as his collaborations with Alex Ross, Paul Dini very much understands the core of what makes certain DC character tick and is able to distill that essence into highly enjoyable stories perfect for hardcore fan and interested observer alike. I was a big fan of Dini’s work on Detective Comics immediately following the One Year Later event where he showed that the sensibilities he brought to those projects carried over nicely to done-in-one stories set in an ongoing series as well. Now Dini has finally got his dream project: a monthly platform to showcase his favorite character of all, Zatanna, and it’s off to a very nice start. Again, Dini seems to be playing to his strengths as the first issue while setting up a bigger tableau also stood nicely on its own both as an introduction to the character and neat little adventure that combined mystery and magic, so I’m hopeful this is a pleasant sign of things to come. Dini’s enthusiasm for the character makes the stories enjoyable to read and it’s nice to see Stephane Roux on sequential work where such care is clearly being given, so I’m hoping for a monthly treat here.

It would seem bright times lie ahead for us fans, my friends.

Hallmarks of the Silver Age part one

Obviously the Golden Age of comics is where it all started, so it’s always going to have that going for it. In the 80’s, revolutionary work by guys like Alan Moore, Frank Miller, John Byrne and more turned the industry on its ear and forced it to grow up while the underground underwent a revitalization as well. The 90’s was the era of access and the past decade has been nothing to scoff at with leaps and bounds both creatively and commercially.

But after all is said and done, no period in comic industry proved as pivotal and creatively fertile as the Silver Age.

From 1956 to 1969 (which is what we’ll be classifying as the Silver Age for our purposes), dozens (if not hundreds—maybe hundreds) of iconic comic book characters were created and a generation of incredibly talented creators picked up their pens and pencils to make their mark. These were the years that established comic books—and the super hero genre in particular—were here to stay as a fixture of pop culture that would spread like wildfire over the second half of the century in beyond into all facets of media.

The other day, Rickey and I were having a conversation about some of the more incredible concepts that sprang out of the Silver Age and how amazingly rich they’ve proven for a time often considered simplistic until you take a closer look. That chat prompted me to do a little digging, figure out what characters debuted when, and try to tag year-by-year what I thought were the most innovative, dynamic and influential creations to emerge over that 14-year stretch; here’s 1956 through 1962.

1956: The Flash
Though I’ve made no secret that the Flash has long been one of my favorite characters (though since we’re talking Barry Allen here, that’s more in the broad, abstract sense that I love the costume and powers in this case), he doesn’t need my personal endorsement to be the undisputed king of 1956, the year that kick-started the Silver Age. Make no mistake: had Julius Schwartz not rolled the dice and commissioned Robert Kanigher, John Broome and Carmine Infantino to give DC’s old Golden Age Flash concept a sci-fi-heavy sprucing up, and had Barry Allen not succeeded, there may not have ever been a Silver Age, and comic books might all still be about war and romance to this day. So yeah, in addition to being the character of 1956 by a long shot, the Barry Allen Flash is also in my mind one of the top five most important super hero characters of all-time.

1957: Challengers of the Unknown
Compared to 1957 with the Flash’s dynamic debut, 1958 was a pretty lean year for comic book creations, but Jack Kirby did produce one standout concept that would end up being even more notable for influencing his more high profile work down the line in the Challengers of the Unknown. With the Chals, Kirby became one of—if not the—first creators to delve into protagonists who weren’t just square-jawed good guys getting into fist fights with society’s undesirable elements, but rather a quirky group built around a family dynamic whose adventures emerged from their ongoing quest to chart the undiscovered regions of our world. And the whole “living on borrowed time” because they survived a plane crash together thing? Pretty cool.

1958: The Legion of Super-Heroes
Super hero teams were not an altogether new idea when Otto Binder and Al Plastino introduced the Legion of Super-Heroes into Superboy’s life in 1958, but whereas the Justice Society of America and Invaders had set a certain precedent, the Legion broke new ground. Unlike those aforementioned teams, the Legion did not come about from a company taking all its biggest name characters and using the surefire recipe for success of putting them all in the same book, but consisted instead wholly of new characters who appeared for the first time as part of a pre-existing team. Obviously this approach stemmed from the original intent of the Legion being to supply Superboy with fresh supporting cast members, but the group proved so rich and popular that they would eventually supplant their ostensible lead in terms of popularity and even longevity. Also making the Legion unique from the start was their membership consisting solely of young characters that represented the ultimate wish fulfillment fantasy for readers and their setting in the future putting them completely apart from the rest of the DC Universe.

Honorable mention for 1958 has to go to another character that came into existence via Superman: Bizarro, who has proven the most popular and enduring in a long line of “evil twin” villains.

1959: Green Lantern
The thing that got this whole ball rolling in terms of the conversation I mentioned between Rickey and I was Green Lantern, who was DC’s next big Silver Age pillar three years after the Flash, with John Broome and Gil Kane stepping even further into the realm of sci-fi for this twist on an old favorite. Honestly, I don’t think Hal Jordan on his own would necessarily have been a hugely impactful character, but the incredible mythology he helped his creators introduce into the DC Universe is virtually unparalleled in terms of grand scope. While Batman and the Flash both have superior rogues galleries, the idea of 3600 space cops from every alien race the folks writing and drawing could imagine has produced some truly amazing characters and stories over the years. Beyond that, the huge ideas behind the Guardians and their Green Lantern Corps have beget such monumental contributions to the DC Universe as Krona, Qward, the Manhunters and so on and so-forth; no franchise has done more to enrich the vast galaxy beyond Earth than Green Lantern, and as the success of the Sinestro Corps War and Blackest Night as well as the seemingly endless parade of new ideas Geoff Johns keeps churning out demonstrate, it continues to be incredible relevant and productive.

Believe it or not, I did think for a moment about giving Sgt. Rock the nod for 1959 as he was the character who first pulled war comics through into the Silver Age, but ultimately Nick Fury became a far more prominent character and Rock can’t hold up against Green Lantern besides. Supergirl was also introduced this year and has merit as the first female version of a male character to really last as well as on general popularity and visibility, but she falls just short as well.

1960: The Justice League of America
Really the decision by Julius Schwartz and Gardner Fox to unite their seven most marquee heroes as the Justice League in 1960 wasn’t particularly innovative since it was just the Justice Society done over, but it was undeniably smart from a business standpoint and has certainly provided immeasurable entertainment for fans over the last half century. Unlike the Flash or Green Lantern, the JLA didn’t deviate much from the JSA formula of simply bringing huge draws together, but there’s no denying the impact of the group or that the success of this launch would raise the stakes as far as team books and thrown down the gauntlet to DC’s competition.

While certainly dwarfed by the events that took place around him during his first appearance, Snapper Carr was one of the first truly non-powered characters to earn himself an active spot as the Justice League’s trusted mascot. Also, Elongated Man never quite achieved headliner status, but his publicly-known identity—a major problem for him way down the line—as well as his more lighthearted persona and well-adjusted romantic life made him a unique creation.

1961: The Fantastic Four
I’ve written at some length before about the huge importance of the Fantastic Four in terms of changing comics and super heroes forever—and for the better in my humble opinion—so I’ll direct you there rather than rehash too much, but to touch on the big stuff, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby changed the game by introducing a group of protagonists who actually had flaws and distinct personalities and who didn’t always get along; in other words, they were human. With Lee, Kirby took his basic formula from the Challengers of the Unknown and raised it several echelons with the FF in terms of building on the idea of a family of heroes as well as a group that was concerned with exploration first and incidental do-gooding a close second.

1962: Spider-Man
Speaking of game-changers, when I spoke about Barry Allen being one of the five most important super heroes ever, Spider-Man is ahead of him on that list. While the Flash may have begun the Silver Age and the Fantastic Four gave comics its first feet-of-clay heroes, I don’t think I’m overstating that when Stan Lee and Steve Ditko created Spider-Man, they spawned a character that ensured the survival of their industry. For the most part, comics have always been the realm of young men when it comes to who is making up the fan base, and while guys in their tweens, teens and slightly above thrilled to the adventures of Superman and company, they connected with Spider-Man in a way they never had any other character. First and foremost, this was a young character who was not playing sidekick to an older hero, he was out there on his own the way the kids reading him longed to be. Second, while the FF had their flaws, Spidey practically made them look like the Justice Society; yes, at his heart Peter Parker is a fundamentally good person who wants to do the right thing and that has driven the success of Spider-Man for over 40 years, but he was not born with this innate nobility, he had to learn it through a series of costly mistakes, the same way most of us do in the real world. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, Peter Parker was an outcast in the same vein as many of his fans. Sure Clark Kent was a nerd, but only because he pretended to be, and besides, he was still a hugely successful reporter; Peter could not escape his put-upon persona unless he put on a mask—and even then his life was hardly bed of roses—and he was constantly bombarded by life’s mundane villains, from trouble with girls to bullies to making ends meet financially. I’ve not always been the biggest Spider-Man fan myself, but I could never doubt the nearly-unparalleled and universal appeal by virtue of being relatable the character has among a huge chunk of fandom and the amazing—pun intended—impact he has had on comics.

In any other year Thor or the Hulk would have a good shot due to bringing high fantasy to comics in a way not accomplished prior and the strength of a great Jekyll and Hyde dynamic respectively, but as far as this list goes, they had the misfortune to be “born” in 1962.

To be continued...

Ben's First Minute New Years Comics Spending Guide 2010

Welcome to a new decade, ladies and gents! It may be 2010, but we’re still kids, we’re still cool and this is still our table.

Ugh. That was awful. I apologize.

Let’s forget all that mess and start the New Year off on the right foot with a tradition I started 12 months or so ago: The First Minute Holiday Comics Spending Guide. To sum it up, while other folks give you last minute guides to gifts you can buy for others, I’m lazier, so I provide some of what I thought were comics’ best products in 2009 for you to cash those Amazon and Borders gift cards on.

As always, I begin with the disclaimer that I don’t cover every comic I loved over the last year in this space as it would take several days and blog posts, but this is a nice start.

Onward!

BLACK LIGHTNING YEAR ONE
For my money, Jen Van Meter is one of the most consistently underrated and underutilized super hero comic book writers there is, with a clear understanding of what makes a fun, exciting story and firm grasp on how to get it done. Complementing those skills, Cully Hamner is an artist who has great design chops as well as the ability to make a quiet conversation pop just as well as an electricity-tossing brawl. Combine these two great creators with Black Lightning, a truly unique character who really needed a polish on his origin given the way continuity has played ping pong with his past of late, and you get a hidden gem of a limited series.

THE BOYS: WE GOTTA GO NOW
If you were a fan of Garth Ennis’ perhaps best-loved classic, Preacher, as I was, and don’t check out The Boys regularly for whatever reason, you’re definitely missing out. Boys has that same delightfully naught mix of over-the-top sex and violence with genuine heart and characters who straddle that line between lovable and excessive that Preacher did. This particular collection sees my personal favorite Boy, Wee Hughie, infiltrate an X-Men knock-off team—well, more a New Mutants or X-Force knock-off, as one of the tropes this arc plays with is the proliferation of X-teams—and try to solve a murder mystery while Ennis pokes a healthy bit of fun as the idea of mutants’ “outcast” status making them big-time corporate money-makers. Herogasm, a Boys spin-off mini that came out this year as well, was also a lot of fun, but while the capable John McCrea handles art chores there, few can top the energy of the great Darick Robertson, the regular series artist, when it comes to my personal tastes.

CAPTAIN BRITAIN AND MI13: VAMPIRE STATE
No question that Paul Cornell and Leonard Kirk’s brilliant and bizarre Captain Britain and MI13 series was far too short for this world based on how fun and well-executed it was, but if nothing else the book got an appropriately gonzo send-off with the Vampire State epic. As it has been put more eloquently on other blogs, basically any story that involves Dracula launching vampires at England from missile silos on the moon and then following at their heels in a glorified pirate ship has a lot going for it from minute one. But stripping away the so-crazy-it’s-awesome twists and turns, Cornell is so good with the emotional stuff, from the little beats to the epic romance; the stuff between Cap and Meggan, between Faiza and the Black Knight, between Spitfire and her son, and Pete Wisdom’s whole hero’s journey, all just wonderful stuff. And I’ll go ahead and say perhaps nobody has ever used Blade as uniquely effectively as Cornell and Kirk did in this series. I also dug huge the whole large-scale game of chess Wisdom and friends were waging with Dracula the whole time and how every time the stakes got upped, the counters had to become more clever and unorthodox. Sorely missed, this book.

DEADPOOL: SUICIDE KINGS
No lack of quality material starring the Merc With a Mouth in 2009, the completely unexpected Year of Deadpool, but perhaps the most fun had with Wade Wilson and friends (in his head) came from this little firecracker courtesy of Mike Benson and Carlo Barberi. The big picture stuff of Deadpool getting conned into taking a job that leads to him being framed for killing a bunch of kids because a guy owns Tombstone a gambling debt seems like a lot to swallow, but it’s easy to follow as you go. More importantly, it puts ‘pool at odds with Daredevil, Spider-Man and the Punisher, all of whom Benson instantly nails and creates beautiful chemistry and comedy with. The Deadpool-Spidey banter is top notch and the Punisher-created cliffhanger that ends one chapter is just perfect. At the end of the day though, I’m not a hard man to please; give me Tombstone and Deadpool making self-aware jokes about how crazy it is that he has as many titles as he does and I’m a happy fellow.

EX MACHINA: DIRTY TRICKS
There are certain books I consistently enjoy but don’t mention all that much because they’re so reliably of high quality month in and out that I don’t really have anything to say other than “still great” (Sean T. Collins during our Wizard days would probably have called this the “Brubaker Daredevil Syndrome”). Ex Machina is one of these books. However, I did think the “Dirty Tricks” arc, in which a sexed-up and crazed old groupie of the Great Machine attempts to become a super hero herself and causes Mitch Hundred all sorts of problems was a cut above even the excellent norm; Brian K. Vaughan is always good, and Tony Harris really shines in his design of the would-be super savior.

FABLES: THE DARK AGES
I’ve really been enjoying Fables with a renewed vigor of late, as the conclusion of the years-long war with the Adversary and brassy killing of several main characters has forced writer Bill Willingham to basically reinvent the series in many ways, and he’s taken to the challenge quite nicely. It all started here, with the post-war status quo of Fabletown and its inhabitants getting set up along with the introduction of Mister Dark, a comic book villain who actually creeps me out even when I close the issue I’m reading, so that’s something. Mark Buckingham remains one of comics’ artists most deserving of much more touting and there’s some stuff here with Boy Blue and Rose Red that is simply heartbreaking.

FINAL CRISIS: LEGION OF THREE WORLDS
Technically most of this series came out in 2008, but it wrapped in 2009 and it’s also just soooo pretty. Basically any excuse to see George Perez draw a zillion characters and I’m there, but this also happens to be the Legion of Super-Heroes, among my favorites characters, and is penned by Geoff Johns, one of my favorite writers, so I’m more than there (whatever that is). Kudos to Geoff for crafting a crackerjack cosmic epic here that has some great beneath-the-surface arcs going on, but also not losing sight of the fact that, again, perhaps the book’s biggest draw is the aforementioned Perez drawing a zillion characters, which he cheerfully provides along with all the continuity minutiae and trivia winks a true Legion nerd would ever want. Double kudos to both men for balancing a literal cast of thousands, bringing back two fan favorite characters, disposing of a big-time villain and much much more yet still finding time to give just about every character right down to Gates and Kinetix their moments to shine. And for the record I called the Legion of Earth Prime revelation two or so issues early, so ha!

HOUSE OF MYSTERY: THE SPACE BETWEEN
On a monthly basis, House of Mystery is a great series if for no other reason than you get double bang for your buck, with Matt Sturges’ ongoing story always being supplemented by a short yarn with a talented artist. However, issue #13 broke format (not the last time the book has done so) and presented a series of stories, some with the regular cast and some without, just focused on the number 13 and utilizing the artistic talents of no less than Neal Adams, Eric Powell, Sergio Aragones and Ralph Reese. This is the closing bookend for an arc in which we get to learn more about the intriguing quagmires surrounding our “heroes” and this creepy house they’re all stuck in; House of Mystery is kinda like the “LOST” of comics sometimes, both in its central dilemma and also in its willingness to push boundaries when it comes to neat format experiments.

INCREDIBLE HERCULES: LOVE AND WAR
It’s quite possible that Incredible Hercules is my favorite ongoing comic book being published by anybody at the moment—I’m not sure I could defend that opinion at gunpoint (primarily because I’d be distracted by the gun aimed at me over a really weird question), but it’s possible. Every issue Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente deliver the perfect blend of action, intelligence, humor and pathos as they craft one of the best buddy books ever in this medium starring Herc and Amadeus Cho. However, amidst a sea of killer arcs, “Love and War” may well remain my favorite. No it’s not just because Herc sees Amadeus about to score with an Amazon and gives him the greatest thumbs up and shit-eating grin ever, but if I had to sum it up in a panel that might be it. It’s the playful romance between Herc and Namora, mixed with Amadeus falling in love for the first time, mixed with Namor showing up and being a cock, mixed with the actual throwbacks to Greek mythology that the book does so well, mixed with Clayton Henry’s fun-tastic art, mixed with the big alternate reality brouhaha that ties it all in a bow and so on; it’s all good.

INVINCIBLE IRON MAN: WORLD’S MOST WANTED BOOK 1
Did you like the “Iron Man” movie? Of course you did; everybody did. But dig this: Marvel’s got a monthly comic starring Iron Man where writer Matt Fraction has mastered translating the smarmy brilliance of Robert Downey Jr.’s big-screen turn as Tony Stark and meshing it with all that has come before in terms of the character’s continuity while Salvador Larroca is in top form on art chores. This past year, they put poor Tony on the run as an international fugitive courtesy of Norman Osborn, and this is the beginning of the balls to the wall thrill ride that sees him jumping from armor to armor and getting dumber as time goes on since he’s erasing knowledge from his brain he can’t let the bad guys get their hands on while everybody from Namor to War Machine is chasing him down. Also, after years of being kinda grating, Maria Hill becomes awesome. Tell your friends.

IRREDEEMABLE: VOLUME 1
Yes, the whole “What if Superman were evil?” road has been travelled many times before, but when it’s Mark Waid behind the wheel, you (or at least I) pay attention, because he’s really good at this sort of thing. I’ve been a bit surprised at how invested I’ve gotten in the story of The Plutonian and his rampage against all he once protected and loved, but I guess I really shouldn’t be, given what a Waid mark I’ve always been (see what I did there?). The things that really make the series work I think are how far Waid is really to take things in order to convey how dangerous this guy really is without it ever being cheap or depraved, and also Mark’s real love of Superman shines through in his passion for writing this book. Also, Peter Krause is a solid artist from the Jerry Ordway school of drawing, so that helps quite a bit.

THE MUPPET SHOW COMIC BOOK: MEET THE MUPPETS
I already did a whole post on how much I love this comic, and I feel no real need to add anything other than I got to meet Roger Langridge at San Diego where he did a Nova sketch for me and he’s a lovely man.

RUNAWAYS: HOMESCHOOLING
In their brief tenure on Runaways, Kathryn Immonen and Sara Pichelli really did an incredible job at capturing that lightning in a bottle Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona harnessed way back when for a terrific little story arc collected here. The voices of the kids really rang true for me as Immonen brought them to life, not just because they resonated with what Vaughan did, but because I could really imagine teenagers in the Runaways’ situation sounding like that, which reminded me how simultaneously horrible and awesome the Runaways’ situation is and why I loved this book to begin with. Pichelli’s art sidles up nicely to this feel of fantastic but real, and I also totally have a crush on her Karolina. The idea of a prom for four people is a great place to start, and then the disasters that follow just spin you for a total loop—in a good way.

SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE UNIVERSE
The first Scott Pilgrim volume I actually had to wait for (I only read the other four towards the middle of 2008), so it was a different kind of experience, but totally worth it. Unlike the previous Scott Pilgrim joints, I found the fights and craziness to be less the star here, and the growing ennui of Scott and Ramona’s relationship to be more center stage, which intrigued me, as I’m a sucker for a good tale of romance realistically going sour as much as I am fairy tale love stories. Of course the usual Scott Pilgrim video game tropes and general weirdness isn’t traded in the bargain for this renewed focus on a young man whose personal life seems to be stalling out, but I guess I found this to be the most relatable SP yet. And as with every other book in the series, I flipped the last page needing to know what happens next in the worst way, so Bryan Lee O’Malley definitely still knows what he’s doing.

THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY: DALLAS
I did not expect to like the original Umbrella Academy, but I did, so this go-around I wasn’t taken unaware by how rockin’ the sequel was, but it still upped the ante nicely and blew my mind appropriately. I love the wacko layers Gerard Way adds to 00.05 and the funny/sad existence of Spaceboy. All the characters continue to be really well-realized and bizarre while at the same time endearing and the plot spirals all over the place in a finely-planned chaos that spins you round but makes you smile. Gabriel Ba is just a virtuoso on art, so that certainly helps.