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I've seen the movie serial!

Movie Review: Spy Smasher – SKJAM! Reviews

Laurel and Hardy read

Spy Smasher # 7. Oct

Art by Alex Blum, Mac Raboy, Dave Berg, and Emil Gershwin.

Thank goodness the "famous quintuplet doctor" took a look at this first.

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So, when you were working on your degree what was your favorite class?

Oh that's an easy one. Or an easy two that were taught by the same professor. Metahuman History and The Superheroic Idea. Like the names imply they were about superhero history coming at it from two entirely different angles.

(A mural by the ever amazing Alex Ross that was the first thing I was shown on my first day of class)

You'll notice that I often speak about the difference between Metahumans, Superhumans and Superheroes. Metahumans are a distinct set of genetic mutations that exist in a small subset of the population activated by extranormal stress. Superhumans are any beings with powers, abilities, skills or backgrounds beyond the normal parameters of everyday life. Aliens, wizards, that sort of thing. And Superheroes are those who use intentional motifs, a firm sense of right and wrong and their own natural or unnatural gifts to battle crime and injustice wherever they find it. These are classes where those distinctions were made clear to me, and the importance of those distinctions doubly so. Metahumans have ALWAYS existed, its an inbuilt genetic potential of mankind. Superhumans have existed for longer than civilization, anatomically modern humans, and the planet Earth. Superheroes are more than a decade away from being a single century old in their anatomically modern context. The first superhuman and the first metahuman are designations we will never be able to make. The first superhero was a label that human beings created for ourselves and as such entirely ours to define: The Crimson Avenger, Lee Travis, in 1938. I got to learn basically everything you could want to know about the context that created the modern superhero in those classes. We talked about classical heroic archetypes dating back to the first human stories, like the Anthro Theory. We talked about the Knights of the Round Table, or the gunslingers of America's old west. How every society we know of has stories of heroes who stand up against darkness and use power, skill and cunning to save lives and defeat villains. But we also learned that they were NOT the heroes of the modern day. Jonah Hex was a confederate civil war veteran, the Knights of the Round were a class of entrenched nobility, the Golden Gladiator escaped slavery only to then serve the emperor that that slavery enriched. They were, for the most part, human beings that existed as products of the times the produced them.

That's what the other class was for. Starting in 1938 we learned about the Justice Society, not as untouchable icons of heroism cast in bronze. But as frightened and unknowing 20 somethings who were staring down the barrel of the greatest war the world would ever know and trying their best to keep innocent people, their comrades and themselves alive in that order. We learned how every decision they made, purposeful or not created the world we currently live in. How the Sandman took the heroic ideals of his day and transformed them, only for those transformed ideals to be taken up by others and transformed and so on until a modern day where we not only BELIEVE a man can fly, but we know it to be true. These classes are why this history is so important to me. Because we are standing at a (current) apex of an idealism that has been in process since the big bang settled from swirling dust particulates into the first feeling animals that could tell right from wrong.

Every single question you guys ask me, I know how to answer because of that class. Or at least where to start looking.

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I was boggled recently reading Dandelion Wine, and learning that Ray Bradbury's fictional rural town of Green Town, Illinois had 69,000 citizens. In 1928. By comparison, my home town has less than 2,000 human inhabitants and is considered one of the biggest in the county.

Gonna say it right out. 110,000 is WAY too many people for the kind of town Smallville is supposed to be. Remove a zero, make it 11,000 and its STILL a bit on the high side. Action Comics 815

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Ah, so many memories...not all of them good.

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Just me enjoying drawing Ranma Saotome on Wiggly Paint! look how cute he is!

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"As is the custom of our people!"

(1964)

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How does it work for superheroes we know to on the rolls of multiple teams simultaneously? Has anyone talked about how they juggle that?

That mostly comes down to the fact that superhero teams aren't a full time job (most of the time) and aside from some pretty easily fitted meeting schedules for the teams that have them, team efforts or whatever you wish to call them wouldn't be something that could be planned around in the first place. The nature of what superheroes actually DO, the fact is that the only kind of work they HAVE is being on call VERY unexpectedly basically all the time.

(A staged photograph released by the Justice League showing what a typical weekly meeting looks like)

So, using the Justice League as the holotype example. The League has, throughout most of its history had a "schedule" where the only thing that's fully expected from a member of the team is to sit in on a meeting once a week. It will go between one to a few hours depending on the amount of pressing business and members ARE allowed to call in if they're under stress that keeps them from leaving their current location, using a holographic projection to stand for them during the meeting. This is done for two reasons.

One, its a holdover they kept from the Justice Society which also met on a weekly basis because it was the easiest way to keep everyone up to date on the same information in an era where communication was a lot less fluid and easily accessible. The easiest way to pick ten brains about a case that was stumping you was the physically have those ten people in the room with you. The JSA was also, at the time, under the purview of the War Department so regular meetings allowed marching orders to be given at a time when it was reasonably certain all the members would receive it.

The second reason is democratic. The League never does anything unilaterally, they see the power and position they wield as too heavy for that. While the League has "leaders" usually in the position of an elected chairman every important decision, from new members to the group's stances and interjections on non-immediate issues are put up to a vote. The Leaguers are not subordinate to one another they are a group of like minded protectors who are all equal in one another's eyes.

For other more "organized" teams like the JSA and the Teen Titans a similar structure usually wins out but for less full chartered teams it could be even less organized where "team business" is just everyone being in the same group chat and showing up when the person monitoring the police band sends out the SOS.

The fact is that a superhero team can be called into action at any time, for a whole myriad of reasons almost exclusively without warning. If a giant alien dinosaur crash lands off the coast of Metropolis (again) then the League isn't going to have to schedule a press conference a week from tuesday, they're going to show up, deal with the alien dinosaur and probably get sucked into dealing with the aftermath. If someone doesn't show up its because they're busy with something equally life and death, not because they're using up their PTO.

A hero on multiple teams probably just has a couple extra pager alerts every so often and whoever gets their time and energy that day is whoever texted them first. I'm sure there are some days where its one thing after another and some weeks where there are few to no alerts at all. That's kind of how being on call works for anyone who works that way save this one is WAY worse.

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Okay, okay, you got me. Her room is down here in the cellar, behind the Amontillado.

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The Crimson Avenger

Art by Dan Schkade

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Manga Review: Blade of the Moon Princess Volume 2

Manga Review: Blade of the Moon Princess Volume 2 by Tatsuya Endo Quick recap: Princess Kaguya Takenouchi is banished from the Moon by her mother, Empress Fujiya Takenouchi for petty offenses. This is actually an excuse to send Kaguya to the Tainted World (Earth) to protect her and the empire from a power grab by the Umenouchi branch of the Imperial family. The rambunctious princess is armed…

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As I am old, I remember every year seeing a newspaper article with a headline along the lines of "Zap! Pow! Bam! Comics Aren't Just For Kids Anymore." I think they finally retired that headline sometime in the late 1990s.

I have actually read this comic before. For some reason a collection of this arc was in my middle school library's tiny graphic novel section. Action Comics 812

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Maybe we should take off this guy's goggles and check the prescription.

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Movie Review: Detour (1945)

Movie Review: Detour (1945) directed by Edgar G. Ulmer When we first meet Al Roberts (Tom Neal), he’s hitchhiking east, unshaven, haunted-looking, and reacting badly to a jukebox song. That song used to mean something different, when he was a pianist in a small club, hoping for a break into the big time, and singer Sue Harvey (Claudia Drake) was his sweetheart. His memory flashes back,…

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My partner decided to have us watch the Solo Leveling anime and as we started approaching the end I kept thinking “are they developing a bootleg HunterXHunter Chimera Ant arc in the background as a final boss?”

It feels weird to make that kind of connection but with the overarching thing being an organization called Hunters being called in to stop an invasion of super powerful mutant magical ants what am I supposed to do, forget that I read HxH twice?

Would I be more or less reminded of it if I had read Solo Leveling rather than watched it?

Whatever, I only made this because it was bothering me and I had nobody to talk to about it. I don’t even feel that strongly about Solo Leveling, it’s just fine. Maybe I’d think more highly of it if I read it.

But also I feel like if you’ve seen one “this anime is about one dude who gets the ability to become super powerful in the world” you’ve seen them all?

I haven’t been this “meh” on the other power fantasy anime my partner’s had me watch but this is the first one that directly reminded me of something 10 times better in the middle of it.

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Conservative: When did Archie Comics get political?

Me: (facepalm)

Archie Comics

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lol because I follow so many furries, art I commissioned keeps showing up in my feed

and I'm like

yeeeeeeeah that's him

that's my guy

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Comic Book Review: Botticelli's Apprentice

Comic Book Review: Botticelli’s Apprentice by Ursula Murray Husted Sandro Botticelli actually has several apprentices, from senior apprentice Nino to rookie Datus. But the person we’re concerned with here is Mella, the chicken girl. Her duties include feeding and tending the chickens and collecting their eggs to make tempera paint with. She also cleans paintbrushes and does other small chores…