K Ben on Comics Presents: Two in One Team ups and The Bold

I’ll admit it either you get this title or you don’t, but with the impending cancellation of Scooby Doo Team up after 50 issues and the recent revival of Marvel Team up, it felt like time to write about the Team up books. 

The Team up book is easily the most underrated of all ongoing comic books. How often do you see a celebration of Marvel Two-in-One? The stories are rarely reprinted in collections and if they are, it feels more like they’ve been added to fill out the trade paperback. And with comics being written for the trade, a book thats meant to focus on one-shot stories with a different guest star on the cover each month (sometimes they would be multi-part stories but the star of the book eg. The Thing on Marvel Two-in-One would team with different heroes in each part). 

While a different hero every month makes the book harder to collect in Graphic Novel form, do you wait for Spider-man and Captain Marvel to team up 6 times before you put the trade together or do you just collect the first 6 issues and only put the two most popular character on the cover? Editorial decisions must be made. But showcasing lesser known heroes is the biggest bonus it gives to the publisher, sure an A-lister and an A-lister together should get both lots of fanboys to buy the book but you put a B-lister without their own book in there and you retain the rights to the character. Which is especially important when retaining copyright on the character DC infamously lost the rights to the name Captain Marvel, leading him to be known as Shazam on the cover until eventually everyone gave up on trying to distinguish him from Marvel’s array of Kree Warriors who used the name and just called Billy Batson’s alter ego Shazam. This system also seems more effective than having all your in-between-heroes together in one team like the Champions which was formed for this exact purpose, but didn’t make sense as it really felt like a hodgepodge of random heroes (Angel, Beast, Iceman, Black Widow, Hercules and Ghost Rider). The team never found it’s audience and ended up being a punchline for years to come despite guest-starring in Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider and Godzilla’s Marvel book. DC most blatantly used this trick in DC Comics presents 77 & 78 by teaming up Superman with a team called the Forgotten Heroes (the teams line up was Cave Carson, Immortal Man, Congorilla, Rip Hunter, Animal Man, Rick Flag, Dolphin and Dane Dorrance) to battle a team called The Forgotten Villains (Mister Poseidon, Faceless Hunter, Atom-Master, Kraklow, Ultivac and Enchantress), and yes that is the same Rick Flag and Enchantress featured in the Suicide Squad and the same Animal Man Grant Morrison would make a name for himself writing for.

The Team up book is a much more efficient way to tell if the Comic-buying public wants more of this B-lister, all they have to do is check to see how well that issue sold and if it proves sufficient demand for a new Amethyst princess of Gem-World solo series, although DC may always attribute it to being a red comic book cover (yes DC believes that Red covers sell the best, then blue and nobody buys yellow).

Now the biggest flaw of the Team up book is that sometimes the Hero feels like they don’t belong in the story, the most notable instance I can think of is Marvel Team up 41-43, where Spider-man teams up with Scarlet Witch and ends up in the Salem Witch trials, the the pair need saving by Wanda’s husband the Vision in the next issue only for all 3 to team up with Doctor Doom in the last issue. At no part in that story did it need to be Spider-man, however this does allow the other characters to shine as the audience on a Spider-man book will most likely know how cool Spidey is. This problem was not found in the 2009 Deadpool Team up which pretty much lived off Deadpool breaking the fourth wall and pointing out that his co-star was a B-lister and that they hadn’t shown up in a while. But sadly the book was cut short and not reaching it’s lofty goal of 900 issues (as the series counted backwards and ended on 883). 

I should probably mention Brave and the Bold the comic that inspired the Batman cartoon that referenced Silver-Age and Bronze Age stories and made Aquaman cool. That’ll do, but Mark Waid used the book in a more interesting way, removing Batman as the A-lister and having both members on a rotating door. Under Mark Waid the Brave and The Bold was an epic crossing the DC Universe with different heroes at different times (and sometimes different earths) being effected by the same by the same maguffin “The Book of Destiny”.

Disney/Marvel's Children of the Atom

Ok after the Atomic Box Office Bomb that was Dark Phoenix, Marvel has stated they’re in “no rush to reboot the X-men”, but that doesn’t mean I can’t post my notes and ideas for the reboot online, it also means it has longer to reach Kevin Fiege who MUST implement them all. So here we go my list of ideas of what the new X-men must do different to the original film series owned by Fox.

New Creative team.

This may seem obvious (thats because it is) but don’t hire, Bryan Singer or Simon Kinberg to oversee the whole new Disney Marvel X-men. They’ve had their turn and they fucked it up. Now I’m not saying I’m the man to do it, I have literary zero film industry experience (despite the sheer arrogance to post about films almost as much as comics on this blog) unless we’re accepting a writing a couple of skits for youtube as film experience. I could get behind James Mangold (Logan’s Director) or Noah Hawley (Legion and rumoured to be working on a project involving Dr Doom) it should be somebody fresh.

Don’t make Wolverine the main character.

Yes we all love Wolverine, and casting rumours are flying everywhere suggesting Keaunu Reeves, Jason Mamoa or Taron Eggerton being in the role. But Wolverine was the main character of the last incarnation, and yes he is the most popular X-man ever. 

But that in itself is problematic, Wolverine is a mysterious angry loner, that was how he was introduced as the scary guy in the corner (well he was actually introduced getting his ass-kicked by the Incredible Hulk). That’s his appeal, more screen time and the more we peal back and often you don’t want to actually know the real answer, that’s part of why X-men Origin’s didn’t work, the origins Mini-Series in the comics isn’t universally accepted (I only begrudgingly accept as works by Jason Aaron mention his brother Dog Logan). I would also be remised to not mention I know exactly who should play Wolverine, Henry Rollins. Rollins has everything you need to be Wolverine he’s short and angry, and don’t forget Wolverine was never a teen character, even when X-men Evolution put all the X-men in High School, Wolverine was still a middle-aged man who had to take orders from Cyclops.

So if not Wolverine who do you make the main character, well X-men is littered with point of view characters; Jubilee, Kitty Pryde, Iceman, Barnell Bohusk the list goes on… almost anyone who was a later recruit was the audience point of view as they had to have everything about the Xavier institute explained to them. The first X-men movie almost did this with Rogue, but seemed to after act one get cold feet or Bryan Singer wanted to focus more on Wolverine and Cyclops being petty little children arguing over Jean.

Have Jean be already dead.

Yes longtime readers will be familiar with my feelings towards Jean Grey, but if you’re not here the cliff notes. The most interesting thing Jean Grey ever did was die and the worst thing she did was come back. 

But with Jean’s death came character development, theres tension in the air for our new recruit, something is bumming out the team and nobody will say what it is, why do Scott and Logan hate each other. The X-men are in splinters racked with guilt and need to learn to trust each other again and that’s your character arc for the team, how do you move on from loss and thats very MCU.

Use more than one villain.

The best way to open this movie is with action, yep I said it, it worked for Indiana Jones it’ll work here. It also worked in the MCU for Winter Soldier.

The only problem is who do you use to open the movie? Well I have a couple of thoughts, first Arcade, a lesser known X-men villain who is basically Jigsaw from the Saw Franchise minus the Edge-lord philosophy bullshit and just murders people with Killer clowns because he can. Arcade lacks depths but his visual style is far removed from the “Realistic look” of the previous X-men movies and more in line with James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy.

Second thought is Krakoa, a mutated land mass that is responsible for the formation of the second X-men line up, and this would be a good in joke and would also show a major change from the previous as mutated land masses were too out there for Singer (who didn’t even like characters flying). 

As for your main Villain… I actually have no idea somebody whose a threat to the X-men (so not Apocalypse as he’s just full of hot air)

Embrace the weird.

Seriously the X-men where originally labelled as The Strangest Heroes, don’t take that away from them now the Guardians of the Galaxy are mainstream with their talking cyborg Racoon. 

The Mutant Bomb

The (Fox) X-men franchise has just sung it’s end song, and it was a major Box office bomb. A bigger one than expected, and a pricey bomb at that with extensive reshoots to make the film “Watchable”, but in the words of Adam West “Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb”. Of course it can’t be as simple as bad film equals bad reviews which means poor Box Office turnout, no. One Fox executive believes the X-men films where failing because “the team name isn’t progressive enough”. While. Pro Life lobbyist are claiming this is their first boycott to actual make an effect on the Box Office (similar Right Wing Boycotts where in place for Star Wars Rogue One, Last Jedi and Captain Marvel, all of which made around 1 Billion Dollars at the Box Office), due to Sophie Turners comments on Georgia’s abortion law and Disney (who recently purchased Fox, all hail the overlord mouse) refusing to work with Georgia which used to have the biggest Sound editing studio, a movie they can make owning exclusively the second (being Skywalker Sound).

So why have the X-men movies gone from beloved by Comic book fans to so unloved that the latest instalment made less than a 10th of it’s budget back in it’s opening weekend. Well the simple fact is they never got any better (the ones directed by Bryan Singer), the first one to be beloved by Comic fans only had to be better than Steel which to be liked had to be better than Batman and Robin which is often seen on worst ever lists (and Steel in my opinion is far worse because at Batman and Robin is entertaining). With a bar that low almost anything could jump over it and the X-men movies did despite their directors feelings toward the series varying from contempt to hatred, going so far as banning the comics from the set of the movie because “he didn’t want his actors drawing inspiration from them”. Singer's goals with X-men where singular, as a soapbox for him to talk about the persecution of Homosexuality, a stance that got Ian McKellan interested in playing series Antagonist Magneto, completely ignoring the idea that the X-men are all different and represent all diversity and persecution (this is why they have different powers). 

The first X-men ushered in the era of Superhero movies that where sometimes watchable, the other notable superhero film franchise of this time was Sam Raimi's Spider-man and these 2 franchises directors couldn’t be more different. Raimi is a massive fanboy of Spider-man and was a maker of cult hits like Darkman and the Evil Dead Trilogy, while Singer had before the X-men had only one hit film The Usual Suspects. 

After the first X-men movie came X-men 2 (logically) but while this film is more beloved than the first, it would cement how Singer viewed used the source material far more. X-men 2 is based on the storyline “God Loves, Man Kills” (the best single story in X-men history) but very loosely. Everything that made the original story interesting or worth telling, gone was the discussion of religious zealotry, instead the stories villain the Reverend William Striker who believed all mutants where an abomination and the devils work was made into a military colonel who hated mutants because. The movie was not devoid of christianity because added for this movie was Nightcrawler, but a one dimensional version of the character who is just Catholic guilt, not the fun loving prankster. Nightcrawler lost his “Mutie and Proud” identity, whilst the comics version declined a Holographic projector to hide his unusual appearance movie Nightcrawler actually asks Mystique “Why doesn’t she look like a normal human all the time” which is completely different to Nightcrawler’s belief that “God made me like this for a reason, who am I to question why” also gone was the most powerful moment of the story where Nightcrawler confront the religious zealot Striker and explains that “Mutants can’t be godless because he feels Gods love” and exposing Striker as a Bigot using religion as a platform for his hatred. The film also failed to show that Magneto and Striker are more a like, instead Magneto is less of an Antagonist but feels more like a victim fighting back. 

X-men 2 ended with a teasing of an Adaptation of the Phoenix saga, but Bryan Singer left the franchise to go and make a Superman movie where instead of saving people he stalks his Ex-wife. Why did Singer choose Superman over another X-men? Halle Berry asked for a bigger part in the movie. Halle Berry of course played Storm who happens to be Chris Claremont’s (writer of X-men comics for over 20 years) favourite character and his favourite in a comics franchise known for strong women. Singer wanted to focus on the men, as far as he’s concerned if you’re not Wolverine, Professor X, Magneto or Cyclops why are you there? Jean Grey was allowed screen time because she was a vehicle to get James Marsden and Hugh Jackman to take off their shirts and he has a warped view of the Phoenix saga. For those who don’t know, the Phoenix saga is a storyline which starts in Uncanny X-men 102 when Jean Grey to save the other X-men becomes host to a malevolent alien entity and tries to maintain her own personality (or lack there of). The Hellfire club seeing how powerful Jean is try and make her their puppet to control by psychically raping her and destroying everything she is from within. They succeed in this and Jean becomes a warped Dominatrix version of herself before eventually the malevolent psychic alien entity eats a sun and the X-men are put on trial for Galactic crimes, with Jean coming to her senses and using the phoenix force to destroy her body and the entity itself. Somehow Singer and others have viewed this story of rape and casual genocide as a “Coming out” story, and in Singer’s case he has a reason and it’s disturbing. Bryan Singer likes to molest 14 year old boys, this isn’t slander even if he has been acquitted of these crimes, he’s had multiple accusers and his acquittal has been based purely on “lack of evidence” like most rape cases. Bryan Singer believes the Hellfire Club are the Heroes like he is, because through rape, he has unlocked their potential or shown them who they really are.  

With Singer gone we got 2 terrible X-men movies, and despite adding fan favourites Beast and Kitty Pryde (my favourite X-man), they still failed to capture the spirit of the X-men comics that is until X-men First Class. X-men First Class is a prequel to the first X-men movie directed by Matthew Vaughn, and in it Magneto is on a killing spree to kill all the Nazi’s who mistreated him in a concentration camp while Professor X tries to convince him to let go of his hatred and to use his mutant gifts to help all of Humanity. Xavier is unsuccessful at convincing him this long term but he does convince him intervene in the Cuban missile crisis. This being a core ideal of the X-men that being yourself and working to help people is better than succumbing to hatred be you, Black, Gay, Autistic or Blue Gorilla man (not limited to those 4 groups), or to quote the Tick “Choose Love not Hate”. 

After this came The Wolverine a movie that film critics deemed boring, but they couldn’t be more wrong. This movie is introspective, it’s about dealing and learning to live with consequences, (something that X-men comics did when they where at their but post Claremont forgot about) and then Wolverine fights a man in a giant robot suit wielding a Katana. 

Of course the good times couldn’t continue, Bryan Singer returned to the franchise and decided to remove all the interesting part of one more Claremont Era storyline Days of Future Past. Singer of course changed the main character of the story from Kitty Pryde to Wolverine, thus making another character nothing more than a helper to Wolverine. But again the Antagonist has been made into a simplified caricature of his comic counterpart (odd because a comic book has less time to expand on a one shot villain than a film), instead of being a parody of Walt Disney wanting to maintain family values by creating giant robots to kill all misfits (Mutants) because a misfit is obviously a delinquent, the movie version is a short man suffering from “Napoleon complex”. The jab at Disney (then rival company they where in a blood feud with) is lost because of Singer’s lack of care, not to mention the film ends with lazily retconning everything to the second scene of X-men 3 before Jean murdered everyone, no consequences for anything Wolverine.

The films after that weren’t all losers in fact the ones not directing by Bryan Singer are good, Deadpool although detached from main continuity is a fourth wall break of bad-taste jokes. Not to mention the never afraid to be weird TV show produced by Fox Legion, which acts as the anti-thesis to Bryan Singer’s play it safe and make it bland ideas of super heroics, even introducing concepts from the comics like Astral duelling which are visual stunning and weird. But the real nail in Singer’s X-Coffin is Logan, a movie so good in a genre hated by the academy it got an adapted screenplay Oscar nomination (normally superhero movies only get nominations for technical awards). But Logan gives a finality to the 2 out of 3 characters who audiences actually liked from the early films in the franchise, which causes the feeling of why bother following that, and the answer really is there isn’t nothing can. Wolverine finally found closure and nobody really liked X-men Apocalypse so why follow it up other than so Singer can cut anyones part if they beat him in X-men trivia (see Olivia Munn explaining why Psylocke’s costume is purple).  

U.S Godzilla relations

You might think Godzilla is as Japanese as Pikachu in a Kabuki Mask drinking green tea, but you’d be wrong I think, I’m not sure the origins of Kabuki or green tea. No Godzilla is American, well sort of, he’s the symbol of the relationship between the United States of America and Japan. 

The role of Godzilla has changed over the years, starting in 1954 when he made his debut. Godzilla in the original movie is a wrecking machine unleashed on Japan by America’s careless testing of nuclear weapons near his cave. The Atomic bomb woke the Dinosaur now mutating him, irradiating him and he now destroys Tokyo. The Japanese version of the film is a much darker film than it’s American re-release with scenes of Japanese peasants crying and praying for a quick death while the American has Steve Martin (played by Raymond Burr, and not being the popular comedian) doing newscasts about the monster with random Asian-Americans as stand-ins for the Japanese actors. 

The film was a huge success for the Japanese film industry so of course sequels where made, and ones that attempted to hammer in the idea of Godzilla as a villain, but with more Kaiju (giant monsters), the first challenger was Mothra. A Beautiful protector of nature with painted butterfly wings looking like a giant Geisha, that got squashed by Godzilla in the final battle of the film. The next rival to Godzilla was King Kong, the cold heartless reptile that was killed in his first movie by a Japanese inventor vs the primal giant ape who in his film was killed by the US Air Force. Kong wasn’t Toho’s first choice, the movie was originally to be Godzilla vs Frankenstein which explains the ending where Kong is super-charged by Electricity and defeats Godzilla, but with this America’s enemy defeated Japans.

Despite Godzilla vs King Kong ending with the 2nd death of the giant lizard he returned to Japanese theatres, but after that he was a changed reptile. It was time for Godzilla to be the hero of his franchise, this was partially due to America and Japanese trade relations becoming more amicable but also because of the perceived idea that Rubbersuitmation (yes that is a word) was purely for kids like how in the west some deem cartoons and comics as “Kids stuff”. Godzilla being there most popular Kaiju, they either needed to make new heroes for him to fight every time or make him the hero. But how do you do this? Well Heroic Godzilla isn’t so much Superman but more John Wayne. He’s not a crusader for justice but more fighting for dominance over the other monsters, sure he’ll stop an alien invasion but it’s not because of loyalty to the humans it’s more “they’re messing with my stuff”. Over the course of the Toho-series Godzilla softens which would eventually cause the end of the series, starting with Son of Godzilla where Godzilla would find another Kaiju egg and raise it’s hatchling as his own son (who in later films would be called Minila with the l pronounced as an “r”). After this the series would implode on itself with the disappointingly long title “Godzilla: All Out Monsters Attack” where Minila helps a Japanese schoolboy to stand up to his bullies defying all rhyme, reason or logic. This would lead to one more Godzilla movie in this series that bombed so hard at the Japanese Box Office they did what any current Hollywood film producer would do, put the franchise into hibernation for 10 years and reboot.

Of course in 1978 during this hiatus, Toho sold the animation rights to Hanna-Barbera who would make a Saturday Morning cartoon losely based the film series. In it a bunch of scientists who are the adoptive parents of Godzilla’s other son “Godzooky” who judging by his behaviour I can only assume the other parent of Godzooky is Mutley. After 2 seasons of a cartoon Godzilla that didn’t topple building or blast his Atomic breath (it was changed to breathing fire), the film series was rebooted with a direct sequel to the 1954 original ignoring all the other films. Toho was so confident in this being a beloved international classic that while in pre-production they shopped the film rights around all the US Distributors to which all the major distributors said “no thank you” and they had to settle for Roger Corman’s production company. Now in 1984 Japanese art wasn’t as respected as it is now, Anime then was used to fill in gaps in US TV schedules and was often badly dubbed by writers and actors who plain didn’t give a shit about the source material. Godzilla however was an exception, Godzilla (1984) had one person who gave a shit about it, Raymond Burr despite years earlier getting really mad at Mark Hamil for telling him “that Godzilla was his favourite film with him in”, Burr wanted to do Godzilla justice. While Corman used it as a way to make a quick buck and to fill it with product placement for Dr Pepper (which sounds like the most American thing I’ve ever heard using a giant lizard to sell a worse tasting Coca Cola). Raymond Burr knew this version of Godzilla wasn’t a joke and reprised his role from the original under that condition. Despite Raymond Burr’s attempt Godzilla (1984) was a commercial and critical flop in the US, unlike in it’s native Japan where it was a success and relaunched the series.

Now it’s time to address the Elephant in the room the over bloated mess that is the first American produced Godzilla from 1998. Yes, we where still in the days when America looked down on Japan, so much so most fans of the real Godzilla dub the Kaiju in the film Not-Zilla. Of course a parody of this Godzilla would later appear in Godzilla Final Wars the last of the rebooted Godzilla movies. But thats it, in the 90’s and early 2000’s America wanted to steal any idea from Japan they could but didn’t respect it, this was the age when Pokemon was the big craze but every other show would insist on called it Pokey-Mon, while the US version of it tried to fit the Square peg of Japanese culture into the round hole of American ideals.

Japan needs America and America Fetishise Japan, but Japan is aware of this and uses it to it’s own benefit as much as they can, with Toho profiting off of another attempt by the US to make their own Godzilla franchise and this time a whole cinematic universe where he’ll get a rematch against Kong. While the first film in Warner Bros and Legendary pictures Godzilla was an uninteresting mess with subplots that are resolved as they are introduced the same year Japan made their own new Godzilla known as Shin-Godzilla. This movie reimagines Godzilla and brings him back to his roots as a history villain. In Shin Godzilla, Godzilla is an ever evolving unkillable irradiated sea creature, but as a rarity in a Kaiju film the human scenes are actually interesting as it delves into Japanese political satire almost being Godzilla meets the Thick of it. The United States are also involved in this one, but not as valiant heroes but as another threat. The President actually tells them to deal with Godzilla within 48 hours or he’ll nuke Japan out of existence, The United Nations do actually help Japan to defeat this version of Godzilla. 

Godzilla is what America is to Japan he’s saviour and oppressor, fighter of cosmic threats and the destroyer, America and Japan have an interesting duality that I just glanced over. 

Top 10 Sidekicks

Sidekicks, Under Appreciated and only Occassionally getting there own book or recognition for even existing in comics. But where would comics be without them? Well we'd have fewer uninspired Gay-Jokes about comics and less secondary characters, which is important in a medium almost defined by bland protagonists. So lets tip our hats to the great supporters of superheroes and countdown my picks for the creme-de-la-creme.

10 ‘Dum Dum’ Dugan

Ex circus strongman and one of the original Howling Commandoes, Dum Dum Dugan has played second banana to everyone from Nick Fury and Captain America to Iron Man and fricking Howard the Duck. He’s even been the Commander of SHIELD during several of Fury’s many fake deaths, proving too vital to SHIELD to resign from it during World War Hulk.

The only real superpower he has is that he’s is basically a copy of the original Dugan’s mind in an LMD, or Life-Model Decoy. But he has been completely unaware of his situation throughout most of his adventures. And that’s the real cool factor to the character. He thought he was a mortal man with no hope of resurrection after death and he still went into dangerous missions with all guns blazing. He doesn’t need any powers or augmented armour or anything like that to go up against the forces of evil. He just his fists, his moustache and his hat. Badass.

9 Pip the Troll

The thing about Sidekicks is they’re inherently a bit pathetic, no Superhero sidekick lives up to this idea more than Pip. Adam Warlock even gave him the Space Stone because the only thing Pip would do with it is run away to somewhere safe. Yet somehow this cowardly troll has stood up to Thanos and other universe wide threats so kudos. (Pip has also been Sidekick to the Silver Surfer, Captain Marvel, Dr Strange and been a member of X-Factor)

8 Clea

This character fits perfectly into two forms of Sidekick, the Sidekick as love interest (other examples include Black Canary and Gamora) and the Sidekick as apprentice (like any of the Original Teen Titans). While not the most well known of Dr Strange’s sidekicks, but Wong has certain problems being his Asian Man-servant who teaches Dr Strange Kung Fu (also in the Comics, Wong isn’t a Sorcerer). 

7 Lockheed

Ya know whats cool, Dragons, Ya know what else is cool, Aliens. So logically an Alien Dragon whose also a secret agent for Sword (intergalactic Shield) and Kitty Pryde’s pet Dragon has to make the best sidekicks. Sure there was that period when he wasn’t in Excalibur because Ken Lashley couldn’t draw him but… who doesn’t want a dragon he’s a friggin’ Dragon!!

6 Bat-Girl

There are many Bat-Girls, but the most famous and popular has to be the Barbara Gordon Bat-Girl, introduced in Batman 66 to boost ratings. 

But Barbara’s more than a pretty face and a purple and yellow colour scheme, she’s also the Batcave’s tech-expert, even after the events of the killing Joke Babs had a role in the Bat-Family and was even an aid to the whole Justice League.

5 Black Widow

Best known for being played by Scarlett Johanson, but Black Widow was originally Iron Man’s Archenemy. Now a Career Sidekick for everyone for almost anyone including; Daredevil (whom she was once engaged to), Hawkeye (another Ex-Boyfreind), Captain America, Wolverine and Nick Fury. Now she’s not the only former Villainess turned Sidekick, but unlike Catwoman or Black Cat, Black Widow doesn’t seem like she’s going back to being a villain anytime soon. 

4 Arthur Everest

The Pancho-via to the Tick’s Don Quixote, do I need to say anymore? Arthur and the Tick are inseparable and a great crime fighting duo. Arthur functions as the brains and the responsibility to the Tick who is the ultimate Socratic hero, he only 3 things, He must do good, he must stop people doing bad and Arthur is his friend. And with this he never exploits the Tick he is always there to lend him a hand.

3 Jubilee

The point of view character for the X-men in the 90’s, who wouldn’t want to be Wolverine’s sidekick? seriously he was and still is the most popular character in the series. 

The Dynamic forged between these 2 is really want needs highlighting, the dark brooding mentor and the big mouthed brat sidekick, I think DC have tried to replicate this with Batman and Jason Todd and then later Damian Wayne. But it’s never worked as well as this possible Father-Daughter duo… and even if she isn’t his daughter Wolverine is so Badass he can hang out with a 14 year old asian girl and it doesn’t ruin his street-cred or popularity despite the fact many people hate Jubilee.

2 Jimmy Olsen

What kind of Sidekick do you give the Man of Steel? a Dog of Steel, a little cousin of steel? Well the answer is actually yes to both of them, but his most enduring sidekick is Jimmy Olsen. A teenage Dork in a Bowtie with freckles who looks up to him and no matter what will never learn not to drink whats in Professor Potter’s lab.

Jimmy Olsen was also allowed in Earth-One to grow into his own hero and fought Darkseid. And Bonus Trivia he was introduced in the Superman Radio series way back in the 1940’s before making his way to the comics, making him one of the first characters to do that pre-dating Harley Quinn by 50 years.

(Honourable Mention) Ebony White

The Black sidekick to me always come off a bit racist (see Captain Caucasian and Blackie the Wonder-Negro from Love Bunny and Mr Hell), but Ebony White is the first non-white character in comics and while he is in fact an ethnic stereotype which and most modern versions of the Spirit ignore him (interestingly Brad Bird’s test-footage for a Spirit animated film features him quite prominently).

1 Robin

Of Course it had to be, you think Superhero Sidekick and Robin is the first one you think of, but which one? 

Now I don’t want to start a fight but… Dick Grayson, he can’t stop being Batman’s sidekick. Even as Nightwing when he’s fallen out with Batman what does he do, help Batman. He’s Batman’s sidekick whether he likes it or not.

He also ushered in the trend of mini-me sidekick’s in DC Comics which then led to the Original Teen Titans, featuring the Justice League’s sidekicks and Donna Troy a character created be cause they couldn’t think of Supergirl.

SJW you mean Superhero right?

Ever come across an insult so non-sensical it makes you wonder what could anyone mean from it, if so you’ve not seen an internet comment section about something related to Marvel comics, Star Wars or Doctor Who. Yes I know such a phrase SJW standing for Social Justice Warrior, this phrase makes even less sense in the context of Superhero comics, the premiere superhero team is called the Justice League because they fight for Justice. I genuinely wonder what people expect from comics if they use this term, like do they want Spider-man to refuse to help a hispanic family from a burning building or did they think that Lex Luthor was the good guy not the guy who fights for “Truth, Justice and the American Way”. The term SJW is synonymous with the Alt-Right and if you don’t know who they are they’re Trump supporters, members of the KKK and the kind of people who think “Hitler didn’t do anything wrong”, and there claim of any form of ownership over comics as an art form is questionable at best. 

So other than ranting online what have these groups done to try and control the Comic book industry; well there was organised harassment of Marvel Assistant Editor Heather Antos because she had such a role in the company and a vagina, the most ridiculous incident was over her posting a photo of her and her friends drinking Milkshakes. While you could argue that her having an assistant editor’s role and very few writing or art credits means she hasn’t earned her seniority a more useful form of harassment would be to send her unsolicited Thor scripts. 

Let’s not forget the Breitbart scandal that removed James Gunn temporarily from the Director’s seat of Guardians of the Galaxy vol.3. What was it over? 8 year old bad jokes about the things Bryan Singer (Director of the Fox X-men movies) actually does (Singer has of course had minimal backlash, he even while it was public knowledge he had molested an non-consenting 14 year old boy directed an Oscar winning movie). Of course thats what they’d have you believe however it was over Gunn being critical of Donald Trump and his policies and not his offensive jokes, similar celebrities got targeted by Breitbart include; Kathleen Kennedy (head of Lucasfilm) Patton Oswald, Sarah Silverman and Dan Harmon however their attempts to remove them from high paying media jobs. 

Of course we can’t forget the poor victimised Richard Meyer who lost his job because of the mean Mark Waid who told his employer Arctic Press, that he wrote hate speech all over the internet under the name “Diversity and Comics”. Wait a second why is Meyer the victim, well he believes he is and has decided to sue Mark Waid claiming Waid abused his power as a writer and editor for Marvel and Archie Comics and is now trying to censor him and is working on a court case to defend his free-speech, but it’s not like Waid went and deleted all of his crap, or all the people on his side claiming that those who side with Waid are “Virtue Signalling idiots”. Virtue Signalling of course meaning a person affirming their beliefs and fighting for whats right which sounds a lot like a group of fictional characters, what are they called, oh yeah Superheroes.

Lets not forget the recent Captain Marvel hoopla, which had groups “review bomb” the upcoming movie to reduce it’s Rotten Tomatoes score. This lead to Rotten Tomatoes changing it’s user review policy which now allows studios to delete any review they think is spam. But why did Captain Marvel get this treatment, well Black Panther and Wonder Woman both did get this treatment, but to lesser degree. Black Panther got annoying “White Panther trolls” who had that one joke. Wonder Woman was made by DC after 3 critically panned movies, it also has a whole host of other problems, some being story changes that seem to be made to appease the Alt-Right like her origin being set in World War 1 not 2 because we can’t just have Wonder Woman punch Nazi’s, or not injuring Steve Trevor just winding him because having her altruistically protecting a man would offend these people, or having the Amazon’s be lead and worship Zeus thus replacing the roles and function of 2 women from Wonder Woman lore (this could be them assuming that Zeus is the only greek god audiences know but thats another from of insulting). That was just what was on screen in the Wonder Woman movie, that doesn’t include known rapist Brett Ratner producing the film and raping someone during a set visit, though after the woman spoke out against Ratner the films star Gal Gadot said she would not do a sequel if Ratner was involved only for the whistleblower to then turn around in the press and accused Gadot of helping Ratner rape her. 

Of course there was a more moderate response of why is Captain Marvel a big deal we had Wonder Woman, even ignoring all the above problems, Captain Marvel was written by 3 women (beating the previous record for women writing a big budget superhero movie by 2 which was previously held by Guardians of the Galaxy) and one man and was directed by a duo (featuring a man and a woman), while Wonder Woman was directed by a woman, but a non-writing Director (which to me means responsible for all the blame and undeserving of the credit) and a writing team of all men which included Zack Snyder (for story only), who is an outspoken Objectivist (a far Right philosophy) and director of the movie Suckerpunch so incoherent and confusing I genuinely think it was actually pro-rape but I’m not sure. Zack Snyder also directed the previous DC Movies that Alt-Right activists have been known to target the fans of for recruitment into their causes.

Lastly I can’t mention the outrage Captain Marvel’s leading lady Brie Larson caused by saying “Can I be interviewed by people who aren’t 40 year old white men”, which Menninists (a group of Men’s Rights activists who deal exclusively in petty first world problems) interpreted as I hate all men everywhere, no men should see Captain Marvel. I can say as a White man Captain Marvel is an Awesome movie. Larson decided to use her powers as star of the movie to help movie journalism become more diverse, which is a good thing, but not to mention some of the creepy shit male interviewers say to actresses on press tours for movies, standard are drooling questions about their costumes, but some are outright disturbing like Kate Mara while promoting Fant4stic got told outright by an interviewer that he “liked her toes and that he had a toe fetish” and that was how he introduced himself. 

Alt-Right Comic fans hate Kelly Sue Deconnick, I remember seeing someone make a big stink of her saying “if you don’t like my politics don’t buy my book”, as if this is an unreasonable thing to do and she should be villainised for this statement. In the same interview they got the snippet she commented on people’s belief that Superhero Comics should be apolitical and that they have some belief that they used to be, but the question is when? when was the first SJW Comic book? well for hiring somebody who wasn’t a white male to work on it was Will Eisner’s the spirit, and while the Spirit to some might be the movie where Samuel L Jackson ramblings about eggs and Scarlet Johanson wears a bunch of fetish outfits but it was an important landmark in comics hiring the first female artist Toni Blum (who used other pseudonyms and her real name was Audrey). The Spirit also had the first Black sidekick in Ebony White and although his appearance now is a racist stereotype he was still a first and a progressive move as he often helped the hero and was a character. But it’s not like Will Eisner had any more impact on comics like creating a whole format? wait he did Will Eisner wrote a Contract with God which is often considered the first Graphic Novel the format that most comics are written for and makes up 8/10 of all comic sales now, which nullifies the other claim that SJW characters don’t sell comics because they don’t sell monthly comics but, they sell loads of Graphic Novels. This doesn’t even mention the fact that the biggest award in comics is named after Will Eisner.

But when where Superhero comics Alt-Right friendly? well the 1940’s Captain America and Wonder Woman where punching Nazis, the 1950’s Superman was fighting the Ku Klux Klan and calling them un-American scum, the 1960’s Marvel’s readership where so left-wing they created Iron Man an industrialist billionaire to try and get another opinion in the book, the 1970’s when Green Lantern was accused of being racist and was replaced with a black guy, the 1980’s when the X-men are culturally diverse group of misfits fighting for Civil rights? I guess the answer must be the 1990’s when Marvel filed for bankruptcy. Which is symptomatic of how selfish these people are, they want to take Superheroes away from little kids, Superheroes who are designed to give exciting adventure stories for kids and teach them not to be shi

Holy Over-Baturation

So Batman’s great we all agree on that don’t we? Everyone loves him, his movies gross loads for Warner Bros, I myself have heard people say “I’m a Marvel fan but I like Batman”. Batman is easily the flagship hero for DC Comics, whats the problem? Well thats it really, DC overuse him. You look at DC Comics any month he has about 8 new books being released, if theres a new movie it’s usually Batman (in either Animated or Live Action). The surprising thing is that Batman has spent a good chunk of his publication history as DC’s second-banana.

So why is Batman now so popular? Well it’s because Batman actually stands for nothing. Seriously Superman “Truth, Justice and The American Way”, Wonder Woman “a Champion of Peace and Love” (except in more modern times). Batman has been able to satiate para-military niche (like in Batman vs Superman) but can also be an outspoken pacifist like in Death of Innocents the Horror of Landmines. He can moodily declare “I work alone” meanwhile having more sidekicks than any other Superhero those being; Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Carrie Kelly and Damian Wayne who all used the name Robin (at some point, some have used other codenames), Betty Kane, Barbara Gordon, Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain who also use the name Bat-girl, Kathy Kane as Batwoman, Ace the Bathound, Bat-mite, The Huntress, Bat-Wing and others that are more questionable like Catwoman, Talia Al Ghul, Clayface and Azrael (all who are often written as villains) or support players who don’t help out in the “Field” like Commissioner James Gordon (who gives Batman cases) or Lucius Fox (who supplies Batman with Gadgets) or Alfred Pennyworth (Batman’s Second Butler, his first was conveniently called Alfred) and of course he works with all these people while being on multiple Super-teams like The Justice League and The Outsiders, He’s truly a loan wolf. The only thing thats consistent about Batman is he doesn’t have superpowers, but wait he managed to make a Sinestro Corp Ring fly away scared. So he has no powers other than being Supernaturally scary that he can make a ring that feeds off fear runaway and there was that time he got shot by Darkseid and started reincarnate into former family members or when he had the Black Glove break him mentally and through Buddhist meditation he created a second personality that believed he was from the planet Zurr-En-Al. How could I forget the time he managed to by to perform an indian rope trick to escape a basement (although that was the last season of Batman ’66). Not to mention the ability to simultaneously convince a city your an urban legend and appear on TV with the rest of the Justice League or be able to come up with unescapable death plans for each member of the Justice League (see Tower of Babel) something that Darkseid, Brainiac (a Super-intelligent android with an IQ in 4 digits) or Maxwell Lord (a telepathic billionaire who knows the league intimately).

Now the whole not having Superpowers thing is weirdly how he was originally second-banana and how he stopped being the companies number 2 hero (at times). DC’s original flagship hero was Superman, the original Superhero. When Superman first emerged he literally built the comic up, now a common misconception is that DC stands for Detective Comics. That is completely false and one of those things people try to pass off as facts to look clever, in fact DC was originally National Comics and took the name DC after their first acquisition (which was All Star) and at this point the brag “our comics are read countrywide” was no longer a unique selling point, so they took the name DC to try and convince people that their comics where more relevant as they came from Washington which is where the President lives (this was completely untrue). Superman spent most of their shared publication history as top-dog, but Batman first got his taste of being numero-uno in 1966 with the rise of Batmania when after being 4th choice for William Dozier’s comedy superhero kids show, after Dick Tracy and of course Superman which could not be sold to 20th Century Fox due to the TV rights to Superman being sold to the makers of Superman The Musical. Now it was time for the Caped Crusader to outshine the Man of Steel but this infatuation was fleeting by 1972 Batman’s comics sales they where being outsold by Aquaman (so Aquaman’s recent movie success should feel a bit like Deja Vu) and it was even being threatened with cancellation. At this point DC also had the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Super-Friends and if you’ve ever seen that show Superman is the man, there’s a clear Hierarchy, Superman, Guest Hero, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Batman and Robin (who are so codependent I’m sure they have to go to toiler together in this series) and the Junior members (Wendy, Marvin and Wonder Dog in Season one or The Wonder Twins and Gleek in later seasons). Now humiliated and desperate to separate him fro past success DC editorial changed Batman’s creative team to writer Dennis O’neil and Artist Neal Adams. Under these two gone where the days of goofy gadgets and cries of holy, Batman was different a swash-buckling adventurer ladies man able to seduce women like Augustus St Cloud and Talia Al Ghul. O’Neil was a former Newspaper investigative journalist added this experience to his writing and Batman was given more realism than his previous incarnations and with Adams pencil Batman finally had an artist who could rival Supermans, no more of Bob Kane’s chicken scratches or Dick Sprang’s cartoonish characteurs. The creative team increased Batman’s sales so much that they could overturn Editor Julie Schwartz longtime no rogues policy reintroducing Batman’s Rogues first with the Joker in “the Jokers Five Way Revenge”. Although it would take longer for Catwoman to return to the pages of Batman, but she was later in O’Neil’s run on Wonder Woman used as one of her Villains. But even with this new direction it was not enough for The World’s Greatest Detective to get the advantage over the Man of Tomorrow.

Batman would finally beat his rival in 1986 when DC decided to make more “Adult” comic books like the Killing Joker by Alan Moore and Year One and The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, the latter which would have Batman symbolically reject Superman and his ideologies. The message was sent, the sun-god was banished to the underworld by the Dark Knight. Gone was the Bat-tusi and major ret-cons had to be made to reflect the new cynical world view the new Robin Jason Todd had to have a major retcon to his back story. Instead of a rehash of Dick Grayson’s origin, Todd was made to be a tough street-kid who stole a wheel from the Batmobile and with this his personality started to change. Todd went from Dick 2.0 to a brutal coldhearted killer and violent sociopath. Around this point we also had Batfans working on revisionist history which continues to today, the myth that Batman was always “Dark and Gritty” then Adam West came along ignores many facts like the Clock King episode of Batman 66 was written by Bill Finger the same guy fans who dislike Bob Kane claim is the real creator of Batman. 

Now I said this new direction was more “Adult” but thats what the marketers would prefer you to think of them as but a better word is Cynical, and this cynicism isn’t limited to just the Bat-titles. This new ideology of course stripped many heroes of their powers, in the name of “relatability” but this new weaker Superman was less popular and less likeable as a character. Stripped of his smile now forced to scowl and to be more edgy and grow a mullet. The Big blue boy-scout wasn’t the only victim Wonder Woman has in the years since Batman’s rise to top dog has been stripped of her compassion even losing her power of Super-Empathy (easily the most underrated Super-power of all time) and been turned into a Xena knock off. Her origin story has been written so many times it’s hard to find a Wonder Woman Graphic Novel that isn’t a retelling of her origin story, many of which rejecting the ideas of her creator. Of course this isn’t the first time Wonder Woman has suffered the most from Batman’s rise in popularity as her ABC pilot was basically Batman now as a woman where she is the CEO of a major company, reliant on gadgets and isn’t from a magical island populated entirely by women who where victimised by Zeus and Diana being an ambassador for them into the modern world. The only powered character who has benefitted from this mass-nerfing of heroes is Green Lantern as under this new direction his ring can’t just grant any wish to it’s wielder but can make a replica of it from Green Light. Lets not forget the boon it’s given to Green Arrow he now is no longer restricted to being a poor substitute for Batman on the Comic page he gets to do it in his own TV show where he fights Batman’s C-List villains, has an ever growing ensemble of sidekicks and sits in his basement brooding.

The biggest problem is this cynicism doesn’t really extend to Batman himself, the average Batman story has him getting knocked out at some point, and being rendered unconscious is really bad for you. If we where to adhere to the same rules that says we can’t have a man in red tights run faster than the speed of light well, getting knocked out as much as Batman would mean that after a couple weeks of nightly patrols he’d be a brain damaged and would be lucky if he could count to ten. After a few months Bruce Wayne would be confined to a wheel chair being fed soup by Alfred babbling about how he had to stop the Penguin.

DC’s current Alum seem to have no quibble with the current status quo, looking at the “Black Label” DC’s line of creators passion projects, it’s all Batman stories, even Batman stories like White Knight where Batman and The Joker switch roles (a story we’ve actually seen a few times before). The only exceptions of new stories being Kelly Sue Deconnick doing a history of the Amazons (which may be cancelled), the confirmed cancelled “Other History of the DC Universe” and Frank Miller/John Romita Jr. doing Superman Year One which doesn’t fill me with hope as it’s written by a man who has publicly said “I Hate Superman”.  

The worst part of all of this whole idea that Superman is unrelatable is that the concept of  somebody who can solve all the world’s problems, somebody who could enslave the entire human race but doesn’t because he believes in freedom is hard to believe in is really depressing.