Random Thoughts! It's my favourite Random Thoughts from throughout the year presented in chronological order! Get excited!
Random Thought! I want to revamp Resurrection Man with a teenage partner named Suicidekick.
Random Thought! For the record, how much a comic sells shouldn’t be a factor in reviews. That has absolutely nothing to do with its quality. So don’t lay the blame on me when your favourite low-selling comic churns out a crap issue and I say so. And don’t get pissed off because I dare to enjoy a comic that sells a lot. If only because I don’t pay attention to sales charts. Yeah, I have an idea of what’s selling and what isn’t, but I don’t care.
Random Thought! I would have thrown a curveball at everyone and made it so three members of the Fantastic Four died. SURPRISE!
Random Thought! To follow-up on something I said last week: every issue of Marvel Boy had a Canadian cover price for $4.50. Every issue of The Filth was $4.95. I say again: PRICE DECREASE FOR ME. You whiners.
Random Thought! Though, I was annoyed by Avengers #9 for something that’s pretty specific to me: Steve Rogers, America’s top cop, acting like being given a job by the president means he gets to rule over everyone. To an extent that’s true since the Avengers are under his purview, but that only extends so far. Like showing up in the remains of Attilan and acting like you have any authority. Pretty sure his power ends where the border does. But, his attitude towards Tony Stark forming the Illuminati is another one of my pet peeves: self-proclaimed figures of authority getting pissed off when someone else dares to declare themselves an authority of some sort. Superheroes are all people who decided that they can do their job — no one hired them or deemed them qualified. So, it always comes off as incredibly hypocritical when one takes the attitude of “You’re not qualified to do this! Fuck off!” My ‘favourite’ example was during Joe Casey’s Uncanny X-Men run where Banshee began the X-Corps in Europe and Angel and Nightcrawler acted like he wasn’t allowed to do that. How dare he act like he has the authority to deal with mutant situations on a continent the X-Men barely visit! Especially, because the X-Men were entrusted with the sacred duty of protecting mutantkind and dealing with all mutant-related matters by Professor Charles Xavier who was allowed to open a school for gifted children! THEY HAVE THE FULL MIGHT OF THE NEW YORK STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION (or whatever it’s called) BEHIND THEM! THAT’S ALL THE AUTHORITY THEY NEED OR WANT!
Random Thought! Wolverine: The Best There Is is like a Garth Ennis comic written by someone who doesn’t actually understand Ennis’s writing.
Random Thought! I’ll sum up Invincible Iron Man #500.1 for anyone who missed it: TONY STARK USED TO DRINK AND FUCK. NOW, HE JUST FUCKS.
Random Thought! Um… if the Ultimate Avengers fight the New Ultimates, who’s side is Captain America on? OH GOD, MARK MILLAR IS WRITING ULTIMATE CIVIL WAR, PEOPLE! ALREADY! HIS OWN STORY ULTIMATE-ISED!
Random Thought! Thinking about the end of Captain America #615, I decided to check into things and discovered that the US has no extradition treaty with Russia. But, there have been many cases of extradition between the two countries, most often (from what I could see) from Russia to the US. So, while no formal treaty exists, I guess they do negotiate these things on a case by case basis. Then, I wondered about whether or not James Barnes would be someone the US government would approve extradition for considering he’s Captain America. However, he did plead guilty to his charges in the US, making any arguments for why he shouldn’t be sent to Russia somewhat moot.
Random Thought! I still say that using James Gordon, Jr. was one of the coolest ideas of the past year… Scott Snyder definitely hit on one of those “Of course, it’s all so obvious NOW!” moments when he showed back up.
Random Thought! Big hint to people for the future, both here and on other sites: when there’s a discussion of a comic, expect there to be spoilers. Especially when it’s meant to be a detailed discussion.
Random Thought! Spring was here… now it’s not.
Random Thought! Imagine, if you will, a trade paperback for Fear Itself. Now, imagine that it contains the main series plus the Book of the Skull one-shot. Now, imagine turning from a page of Scot Eaton art to a page of Stuart Immonen art. Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah.
Random Thought! Worse: I wouldn’t be surprised if that eventual trade didn’t include the prologue… and no one notices.
Random Thought! It’s Batman, Incorporated, dammit! Not Batman Incorporated!
Random Thought! On Sunday, I briefly confused Amy Adams with Amy Smart and wondered what it would be like to go from Chev Chelios to Superman. A letdown no doubt.
Random Thought! Quote of the week: “But [Ultimates Adventures] was pretty pointless!” — Duncan Fegredo, artist of Ultimate Adventures.
Random Thought! I would watch the Wonder Woman TV show if it had William Shatner as Zeus basically playing Denny Crane again. Okay, no, I wouldn’t.
Random Thought! Someday, I hope Brian Cronin reveals his true, mean as hell side to you all… he’s awesome.
Random Thought! “I am baceteria. I am the lowest form of life. I am a super hero.” I read this shit when I was a little kid. Over and over and over and over again. Marshal Law, motherfuckers!
Random Thought! Superheroes don’t have three-foot erect penises. In fact, you can’t be a superhero if your penis is three feet long erect. Sorry.
Random Thought! Fuck yeah Thor beats Batman.
Random Thought! Waiting for packages sucks. Also, because of tracking numbers, you can see just how slow the post office and package delivery companies are.
Random Thought! I don’t know, when I listen to “We are the Dead,” I hear it more as DIT DIT DIT DAH DAH DAH DIT DAH. How about you?
Random Thought! Screw an omnibus, I want Absolute Marshal Law now that DC has the rights. If Identity Crisis gets one, not doing one for Marshal Law just seems criminal…
Random Thought! Greg has finally walked away from The Unwritten, but I’m sticking with it. Someone has to.
Random Thought! I love how all of my questions about James Barnes’s deportation were answered with one word: Gyrich. That explains everything!
Random Thought! I’ll forever be disappointed that the soundtrack to Thor isn’t just a bunch of Led Zeppelin songs. It’s irrational, but that’s how it is.
Random Thought! Wow, 4:45 is a pretty random time to post this every Tuesday, don’tcha think?
Random Thought! I want to see Patrick Stewart and Jason Statham in a Metabarons film. Why? I dunno. They’re both bald and awesome and we could watch them kill people using sci-fi magic weapons. That seems like a good enough reason to me.
Random Thought! I got engaged on July 1. Don’t think that was ever mentioned here. Wedding is set for October 13, 2012.
Random Thought! Also, why is it that every time I go to look for a special Essential book it’s out of print? Not so ‘essential,’ eh, Marvel?
Random Thought! The pitch I came up with for an Adam Warlock series the other day: "Adam Warlock is Grant Morrison. The Magus is Alan Moore. Thanos is Neil Gaiman. Drax the Destroyer is Garth Ennis. Pip the Troll is Mark Millar. Gamorra is Warren Ellis. Moondragon is Peter Milligan. Mentor is Frank Miller. Starfox is Paul Pope." Paul Pope as Starfox was Tim Callahan’s idea. I didn’t come up with anything else, because the book writes itself from there.
Random Thought! I boycott nothing except comics that I think are bad.
Random Thought! Reading The Trial of the Flash, I’ve learned that I was wrong about Barry Allen. I used to argue that he had no personality and was boring. He wasn’t. Like most DC Silver Age heroes, he was a fucking asshole. An absolutely horrible human being.
Random Thought! Random bits taken from Twitter last week as part of the #DCnUSpoilers hashtag (not all of them are winners, of course — and, later in the week on Twitter, I went insane with #wrestlingpickuplines):
* New city beat reporter at the Daily Planet: Spider Jerusalem
* The Superman in Action Comics? Actually the High after he trapped young Clark Kent in the Phantom Zone.
* No Weatherman in Stormwatch, the leader is the Monitor; and the main villain is former leader, Henry Bendix the Anti-Monitor.
* Voodoo is just Zatanna, but actually takes her clothes off and uses voodoo magic.
* Earth 2 counterpart of Batman now called Nite-Owl.
* Africa is a continent AND a country ala Australia.
* Year one of Action Comics ends with the creation of Superman, Ltd.
* “Wally West? Who is Wally West?”
* Maxwell Lord now drawn to look like Samuel L. Jackson.
* Geoff Johns’s Aquaman is an adaptation of Craig Ferguson’s Aquman sketches.
* Blue Beetle vs. Danny Duoshade & the Spiders from Mars!
* Grant Morrison is alive again.
Random Thought! At this point, anyone who thinks the Justice League needs an origin story is an idiot. “World’s most powerful heroes team up to fight threats too big for one of them to handle.” Boom. Done. Fucking get on with it.
Random Thought! Exciting time for comics? Sure. Much I feel like saying about them? Apparently not.
Random Thought! I do love it when Bendis gets all metafictional and mocks ‘Avengers fans’ that hate his work on the title(s). It’s so petty — and he’s right at the same time.
Random Thought! Some are upset that the actor portraying Tony Stark/Iron Man in the porn parody is too short. While they’re speaking about his height, I would have loved it if they were concerned over penis size, because, in their world, anything less than a foot and a half just doesn’t seem right.
Random Thought! David Aja is the fucking man.
Random Thought! Daredevil is on the New Avengers for the sole reason that Bendis wants him on the team. That’s not an insult or complaint. Every character that’s on a superhero team is there for one of two reasons: the creators/editors/publishers want said character on the team, or the character is traditionally part of said team. Even characters created as part of the team aren’t essential or necessary. No one is.
Random Thought! Anyone else ever get the urge to make up crazy rumours they’ve heard and send them to Brian for Comics Legends Revealed? You know, something like “John Byrne created Puck after submitting a sketch for Alpha Flight and Marvel wondered where the hockey-influenced hero was. Their thinking being that this is a Canadian superhero team and Canadians love hockey, so there should be a hockey-themed hero. Byrne, thinking the idea stupid, created the dumbest possible hero he could, hoping that would cause Marvel to drop the subject. Instead, they loved the character and went ahead with Alpha Flight with Puck as a member.” Because I get that urge at least once a week.
Random Thought! Spoiler for Detective Comics #3: the Dollmaker and his people steal Batman’s mask. The issue ends with the reveal that the Joker has sewn it on as his new face.
Random Thought! You know what’s awesome? Pink lemonade! Yummy.
Random Thought! OMAC will last as long as Giffen and DiDio can keep coming up with issue titles that are acronyms of ‘OMAC.’
Random Fear Itself: Book of the Skull #1 Thought! This issue needed a scene where Bucky fights the Red Skull and gets stabbed, but survives. It’s called foreshadowing, people!
Random Fear Itself #2 Thought! Biggest disappointment of the series: that Matt Fraction couldn’t end this issue with Steve Rogers saying “I’m calling Avengers from all over the world — this is Captain America calling!” (Tip of the hat to David Brothers for mentioning that song on Twitter with relation to this event…)
Random Fear Itself #4 Thought! While everyone is fighting bad guys, Iron Fist is acting as a human campfire for some people in China.
Random Fear Itself #4 Thought! The fear of a small child is the final bit of fear the Serpent needs. He drinks your fucking milkshake.
Random Fear Itself #4 Thought! Rednecks angry at superheroes and acting like any of them are afraid of his puny shotgun will never not be funny to me.
Random Fear Itself #4 Thought! Odin and Asgard are Led Zeppelin. The Serpent and the Worthy are Motörhead. Think about it. Also, the Serpent looks like Lemmy. Thor vs. the Serpent is basically Robert Plant vs. Lemmy. It’s like when Triple H and the Undertaker fought at WrestleMania and it turned into Motörhead vs. Johnny Cash. Of course, Motörhead needed to call on Metallica for back-up then… wait, what was I talking about?
Random Fear Itself #4 Thought! Thor is tired of people dropping him in random places.
Random Fear Itself #5 Thought! BRAWL!
Random Fear Itself #6 Thought! I don’t even know why characters are doing what they do anymore…
Random Thought! In the comments to last week’s Fear Itself-centric Random Thoughts, no one defended the series. No one spoke up for it. No one really said anything positive. My Random Thoughts weren’t all negative, but they did skew towards snarky (not my intention, that was what came out as I reread the series). And no one tried to argue with me. If anyone from Marvel reads this, stop and think about that. This isn’t some dinky site that’s only read by people who like and agree with me, this is the oldest blog on one of the most popular comics sites in the world. And no one said they liked your big event book. Maybe people will now that I’ve said this, but take that for what it means: Fear Itself was pretty bad.
Random Thought! If you ever wanted to know the biggest difference between Tim Callahan and I, it’s this: he spends his time rereading and writing about the complete works of Grant Morrison and Alan Moore; I spend my time rereading and writing about the complete works of Joe Casey and Jim Starlin. Tim is, obviously, far more successful than I am. Smarter, too.
Random Thought! While I’m ‘hating’ on things, I’ll add a brief one: the continual need for everything to be part of a legacy or continuum. Ghost Rider isn’t just a cool flaming skull guy on a motorcycle, he’s just the latest Spirit of Vengeance. Animal Man isn’t some random superhero, he’s just a temporary replacement for the avatar of the Red, the next one being his daughter. In opposition to the Green and the Red is the Black. There’s a rainbow of magical wishing ring Corps. Hell, is there a DC hero left who isn’t part of a longer line of heroes in some way? Can nothing stand alone? Coming soon: the Punisher is revealed to be the Spirit of Righteous Vengeance with each avatar coming out of war or something dumb like that.
Random Thought! I don’t like how, when I go to the bank, they call me by my first name. There’s something about that lack of formality that bugs me. I may not want to be ‘just a number,’ but that doesn’t mean I want to be friends either.
Random Thought! Dean White is a pretty awesome colourist.
Random Thought! I’m a sucker for comics that work off a grid foundation and play around with it. Secret Avengers #19 worked the nine-panel grid with ease it seems. I absolutely love the Steve Rogers fistfight in the street, the way that it’s two pages of nine panels before BOOM! TWO PAGE KNOCKOUT PUNCH! Fuck yeah.
Random Thought! I would read Cable MAX by David Lapham and Kyle Baker.
Random Thought! Am I the only one who’s wondering if How I Met Your Mother is secretly being written by Vince Russo at this point?
Random Thought! Tim Callahan wants me to explain the influence of Jim Starlin upon Grant Morrison’s work. I’d rather just talk about Starlin.
Random Thought! The news that Brian Michael Bendis will be leaving the Avengers titles in 2012 has left me feeling empty in a way. Those comics have been a constant for me the past five years. I started reading New Avengers in the fall after I moved to Windsor for grad school and the two have been linked to a degree. Bendis Avengers comics is what living in this town is all about — at least as far as comics go. If the timing works out, my next Blogathon will pick up where the 2009 Blogathon left off and cover the rest of his Avengers comics. And, then, I’ll write a book about them. And no one will read it.
Random Thought! I’m tired.
That's it for this year. Thanks for reading. Later.