I am the Reason They Invented the Word "Belated"

Here I am, back again and filled with residual holiday spirit. Hope everyone had as delightful a holiday as I did, with roasted beasts and dogs and children underfoot and a nice soft couch to curl up on at night. As a special super-late present to you all, here is the post that I intended to put up on Christmas Day:

 

There are a lot of Batman Christmas comics out there, and a lot of good ones, but I have to say that this is my favourite. It's part of a small subgenre of super-hero Christmas tales in which everything is magical and peaceful and nobody commits a crime due to seasonal Santa voodoo, only with Batman singing.

We open with Commissioner Gordon laying a cunning trap in order to de-Grinch the Dark Knight Detective, if only for one night. I think that this is really where this issue gets me, as I grew up with a post-Miller Batman who would have called Gordon weak and smashed the Bat-signal for this. Instead:

We get the best "aw, shucks" face that Bats has ever sported, and the entire rest of the story consists of he and the GCPD's Finest belting out seasonal tunes.

Well, almost the whole issue. A series of silent montages reveal all of the things that might have happened if there wasn't so much Xmas cheer floating around the city: a group of children return a present that they have stolen, a man refrains from shooting and robbing a blind man collecting for charity and a woman does not commit suicide. It really does convey the spirit of the season.

Also: in Gotham City a blind man not being shot and robbed constitutes a Christmas miracle.

Merry retroactive Christmas, everyone.

The Complements of the Season to All Y'all

I'm off to the Internet-less wilds of rural Nova Scotia for a couple of days, so Merry Christmas and so forth to all of you wonderful folks from everyone at Living Between Wednesdays. I'd have pictures of Batman caroling with police officers for your delighted eyes to gaze upon but I seem to be in a low-bandwidth area - no holiday uploads for me. Don't worry, I still have last year's Christmas Batman on the server:

Man, that still chokes me up every time I see it.

See you next week!

John Buys Comics: I WILL CHOP YOUR HEADS OFF!

A lot of highly enjoyable comics came out this week - Skullkickers, The Sixth Gun, Invincible, an issue of Chew that practically guarantees that I will be eating fried chicken over the holidays, the Larfleeze Christmas Special - but I'm afraid that they will all have to take a back seat to the book that has given me untold joy from the instant that I picked it up: Axe Cop.

 

If you're not already familiar with Axe Cop, well, shame on you. Still, I always try to help the underprivledged, so here's the skinny: Axe Cop is a collaboration between Ethan Nicolle (age 30, illustrations) and his brother Malachai (age 6, story) and between the two of them they have created something wonderful. Malachai's ideas are as bizzarre and delightful as those of any imaginative youngster - Axe Cop is an axe-weilding, head-chopping supercop; his partner Flute Cop regularly mutates due to exposure to dinosaur blood, avocadoes and unicorn magic; Axe Cop rides Wexter, a flying Tyrannosaurus Rex sporting sunglasses and machine gun arms - while Ethan's art is clean and precise, which underscores just how sublimely ridiculous the whole thing is.

Also ridiculous: Axe Cop (website here) is only a year old and in that time they have produced 3+ amazing story arcs and fifty installments of the possibly-even-better Ask Axe Cop - an impressive output for what averages out to a couple of eighteen year olds.

In conclusion: Axe Cop.

Why is This Not Already in the Holiday Canon?

Once again, the day goes to Mr. Doily.

The Unfunnies: Robbie the Robot

Whenever I feel less than satisfied with my job, I just look at this cartoon.

Because, hey, at least I get to sleep and/or eat in the course of a regular day. 

Of course I can always feel a bit dissatisfied that I don't have a sweet gig like that robot, but one must look at the bright side.

- from Strange Adventures No. 7

John Buys Comics, the Cad

Dungeons & Dragons – I just picked up issues 0 through 2 this week, and as a – and I’m surprised how tentative I am about admitting this, given the forum – as a Dungeon Master I am enjoying it a great deal. The basics of the plot are similar to those in basically any comic based on any RPG: a party has some adventures in the official setting. Unlike a lot of the RPG adaptations that I’ve read in the past, however, this one actually reads true – goals are reached despite all parties involved following their own semi-random course of action, party members are added with little to no preamble and larger-than-life tactics are constantly employed. Plus: a lot of bickering.

Aside from the “Perry White vs. the Internet” aspects of Superman no 706 (news-bloggers! You are wrong even when you have noticed a legitimate pattern of interview bias! Also, you will leap onto a low-paying position at a newspaper at the drop of a hat!), this issue is remarkable for the truly ridiculous level of fake swearing. (examples, separated by periods). This is unacceptable.

Green Lantern, Green Lantern, Green Lantern – I was set to make a snide remark about Emerald Warriors No. 5 being maybe the hundredth time that someone’s been barfing on the cover of a DC comic in the last year, but looking at it now I choose to believe that this specific instance is actually a Christmas thing. Green/Red Lantern is the jolliest being in the DC Universe! Plus, bonus barfing both in this book and in the regular Green Lantern title, which features people upchucking entire metaphysical entities! Gross!

Meanwhile: a Green Lantern/Plastic Man one-shot, and it’s a yawner. No, scratch that – it’s okay, but it utilizes Plastic Man’s Lazily Clever Story Idea. You know, like Spider-Man Almost Gives Up or Batman Relates Current Events To Memories of his Parents or Superman Doubts His Humanity Even Though He is the Most Human of All (currently ongoing!). Every character has one or more – they’re the plot ideas that lie somewhere in between a story where the character acts exactly as he usually does and a legitimately clever idea. In this case, it’s Overly Serious Character Teams Up With Plastic Man and Treats Him With Contempt Because He’s Goofy Until He Realizes That Goofiness Doesn’t Preclude Effectiveness, and it’s been done before and better (Morrison’s run on JLA and recent episodes of The Brave and the Bold are good examples).