Sabrina the Comic Code Approved Satanic mistress

Worried that Comic books are a bad influence on your children? what you need is the Comics Code Authority, a bunch of faceless pencil pushers to enforce a strict code of rules that must be obeyed under any context. This includes banning of all things occult, to the degree that writer Marv Wolfman couldn’t be hired by DC because his last name is the same as a Universal monster.

The Comic Code Authority was more interested in enforcing the word of the “Code” than actually the spirit of it. And if you’ve made it this far and have no idea what the Comics Code Authority was, let me explain. After World War 2 the sales of Superhero books declined and in their place new comic genres became popular, genres like Horror, Real Crime, Romance and Westerns. But Comic books where thought of as a “Kids medium” and some of those genre’s are less family friendly than the adventures of Superman. With absolutely no censorship or age restrictions, kids where reading comics with any level of sex and or violence in them. Parents where livid and The Reverend Fredric Wertham answered their call and wrote the book “The Seduction of the Innocent”. With Comic book writers and artists as pariahs they came to the solution that they would create a self regulating body that would deal with this, the strictness of their rules put parents minds at rest because now Comics didn’t have words like “Horror” or “Fear” in the title and the undead didn’t grace the covers or interiors of their children’s funny books. The code actually had no power other than just being a symbol on the front of comic covers, it was entirely enforced by Elementary school teachers and store owners only complied with the ban out of fear that the school principal and a hoard of angry mothers protesting outside their premises. 

The code slowly eroded and Marvel became the badboys of the Comic industry flaunting their rules any chance they got and working around them as subtly as they could. I really hope you now have a mental image of Stan Lee hanging by the Bike racks wearing a Leather Jacket and smoking a cigarette. Marvel started their post Comic code authority days chasing after every fad, Romance comics, War Comics, Westerns all to keep the lights on. But the fad that changed things for them was Science fiction comics, which naturally lead to Jack Kirby drawing monsters. The popularity of Science Fiction comics lead their storied rival of DC to reinvent the Superhero starting with the new Flash, then Green Lantern, then to The Justice League of America. The popularity of the last one lead to Timely (that in a few months would become Marvel) to order Stan Lee and Jack Kirby to create a new Superhero team. A team of explorers who get exposed to the nations biggest fear radiation and ended being mutated permanently and one even into a literal monster. Marvel’s biggest hits of this era all of Sci-Fi Horror roots, as mentioned the F4 a team of explorers who fight monsters and fight an evil Warlock who dresses as Death, The Hulk who shares many similarities with Jekyl and Hyde and a Spider-man (who they almost got sued by a manufacturer of Halloween costumes for plagiarism). 

That’s all well and good but what of Sabrina? While Marvel Comics where working on eroding the system from within, Archie where more complicit with the code. Having experimented and failed earlier with new Superheroes (after the days of Comic’s being used as scapegoats). Archie found success with a series of B-Stories with a protagonist named after the company, Archie where anything but subversive. They portrayed the everyday adventures of a teenage boy who can’t decide who his “best gal” is while his best friend just wants to eat a lot of Hamburgers. Archie Comics image was so squeaky clean they got green-lit for a cartoon series about their band after the PTA had found a new folk devil in Saturday Morning cartoons, Cartoons that included a very faithful adaptation of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four comics made by Hanna-Barbera. 

But hiding within this wholesome slice of Americana was a Witch! A teenage witch who enjoyed Milkshakes. Debuting in Archie’s Mad House, a PG version of Mad Magazine (not a Horror Comic). Sabrina a debuted as a troublemaker, The Archie universes answer to Dennis the Menace, spiking drinks with Love Potion number 9. The character was envisioned by George Gladir and Dan DeCarlo as a one shot strip, but fans of Archie wanted more and with no backlash of her teaching children about the Occult (the original strip actually refers to Salem as her Familiar). The Choir boys managed to get away with something that the bad-lads at Marvel would’ve had to fight for. 

Sabrina continued to appear in Archie’s MadHouse until issue 74 when she would be spun off into her own ongoing book and a Filmation animated series. But in this time the character had been altered by an Archie Comics committee into a goody two shoes who only uses her magic for good. If anything she was now a High-School aged clone of Samantha from Bewitched with her own supporting cast, Salem was now her Pet cat. This was how Sabrina was until the 1990’s when changes like Salem being a former warlock where introduced. Archie’s characters where stagnant because the company often reused old scripts, believing their audience wouldn’t notice if they only used the script once every four years because the audience for comics either threw them away after reading them or would only collect them between the ages of 8 and 13. DC also did this in 60’s and the early 70’s on their B Superman books (World’s Finest, Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane and Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen). Sabrina’s Comics changed with whatever TV series they where tied to, sometimes Fummetti (an italian word for “photo comic”) or redrawings of the show packaged as a comic.

But whatever happened to the Comic’s Code Authority? Well they tried to use the power they never had and it imploded on them. Marvel where given a letter from the White House that said “This drug situation is getting pretty bad could you write a story with Spider-man warning kids about them” and Stan Lee and Gil Kane (with John Romita Sr illustrating the cover) obliged President Nixon’s stationaries request. But the CCA did not approve of this and tried to pull Amazing Spider-man 97 from stores and… nothing happened, no parents protesting, Newsstands sold the comic without their logo and the world moved on. From that day onwards Marvel published all their comics with the Comics code Authority logo on them without even sending their scripts or pages for approval. The Comic Code Authority was a corpse that only DC and Archie supported. DC obviously didn’t submit every comic but their standard ones (things that aren’t Watchmen or Vertigo) did go through processing until 2006. Where the Comic Code Authority was one retired Fourth grade teacher who was reading free copies of Archie and DC who would sometimes 9 months after the comic was published sent them a note saying “This Batman comic is too violent”.

Of course once the Comic’s Code Authority was a complete non-entity, Archie Comics where deeply uncool, being sold at Supermarkets and bought by parents in vein attempts to shut up their kids while they buy groceries. Archie needed reinvention, they needed to get with it, and stop the Superheroes from giving them wedgies and stealing their lunch money. 

Archie first dipped its toe into the water with the introduction of Kevin Keller an openly gay character, this got Archie comics good media coverage. No longer where they the butt of an unfunny joke, they where revolutionary not just being held by a Sitcom character to show what a Dork they are. The next step was simple kill Archie, which they did having him leap in front of a bullet meant for Kevin. The US media was in shock, and of course the other thing Warner Bros second comic company stole from it’s first was Reboot. Now Archie comics where more mature or self aware and subversive, Archie vs the Punisher wasn’t a one-off now he could meet the Predator or Debbie Harry or live in a Zombie Apocalypse. Sabrina also got a reboot, a new version that wasn’t inspired by her kids shows, now they could fully explore the occult. Sabrina’s first NEW Archie role was to bring the dead back to life, After life with Archie was such a success that Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa was asked to do more. So in came a new version more in line with the original, a comics Sabrina who has Harvey under love spells and argues with her Familiar. What a strange ride.

Why DC Loves Batman, and only likes Superman?

I’ve written about Superman’s decline in popularity and I’ve written about Batman’s rise in popularity. But I never really discussed why that happened, other than the rise of a new cynical wave of comics. However “Cynical Comics” are a symptom not the disease, Batman’s greatest power is money both in reality and the comics and that is also Superman’s greatest weakness (not that Superman has trouble acquiring money, he crushes coal and makes it diamonds, no one can do that will ever need to file for bankruptcy). Batman is very exploitable for cash, think about it from the stance of a kid playing dress up in their back garden, to be Superman all they need is a piece of red cloth, to be Batman they need, a cape (properly cut to look like Batwings), a mask, a utility belt full of assortment of gadgets and a toy car. Because Superman has Superpowers that can’t be replicated in the real world, all of what makes Superman special exists in the child’s mind, Warner Bros can’t get a toy manufacturer to make real X-ray glasses or a Superman branded flight suit but they can make ride on pedal cars that look like the Batmobile or plastic Batarangs. Superman’s powers even get in the way of toy manufacture, how does a Superman toy fly? a kid runs around the living run holding it over their head yelling swoosh. a radio controlled one is expensive, but also by Superman never requiring new gadgets unlike Batman, less variants can be made to seem authentic, although DC have tried in various ways to create more variants like how Superman the Animated series took away his ability to survive in outer space so they could make a rocket ship and space suit variant toy or the abysmal non sensical Red vs Blue from the comics which literally doubled the amount of action figure variants they could make. Simply Batman is very Toyetic, Superman is not, and when you’re owned by a company that cancelled production on a popular TV show (Young Justice) because “it didn’t sell enough toys” guess whose the golden boy (and getting ANOTHER cartoon series).

But it’s more than Superman’s lack of a Malibu beach houses that have hindered him, Superman has often been used to explore anti-consumerism ideas. The Monicker the Man of Steel actually stems from John Henry, a proletariat hero who smashed a machine because it stole livelihood from workers and died destroying it. Superman as the Man of Steel can do that and survive as he’s made from the same material as the oppressor, he can smash through and save the people. Superman’s archenemy Lex Luthor is even a selfish capitalist (based on Donald Trump in John Byrne’s Man of Steel mini-series). Lex seeks power for power’s sake and doesn’t care about anybody else, and the only one who can stop him is Superman. Of course Marxist ideology was downplayed in Superman comics in the 1950’s after Siegel and Shuster where accused of being Communists. This lead to the new version of Superman, The Man of Tomorrow. The new spiritual Superman, a smarter, kinder man with more power than anyone else, in touch with his higher self. A more ascended being who thought more about others than himself, the Super in his name does not refer to his immense Superpowers but to him being a manifestation of the Super-Ego (from the Freudian trio). As the Super-Ego man, he feels the weight of the world on his shoulders and must try to figure out whether to help or not as sometimes short term help is long term hurt. This version of Superman is still used by Grant Morrison and the ideas where first explained to me by a Buddhist Guru. But what do Buddhist and Marxist ideologies have in common? well they both believe the acquisition of material objects is bad for you, leading Superman to being an anti-capitalist hero.

Of course the corporate overlords of Warner Bros can’t have a flagship hero who says “don’t spend all your money”, especially as they’ve survived on a Whales not Fish. This probably needs explaining “Whales and Fish” comes from freemium online games, a Whale is a player who will drop lots of money on the game and help sustain the games longevity for longer, (like how a Whale will feed a village for months) whilst a fish will only give them a little bit of money if they ever payout. DC has been using this kind of economics for years, in fact Wonder Woman has always had fairly bad sales in the comics but been a very popular license for clothing and other more expensive items. To make up for being in 3rd place in comic sales (first being Marvel and second being Image), DC sell a lot of Toys and massively expensive variant covers.

Batman is a much easier sell to a creepy Billionaire filling his penthouse with Toys, that doesn’t mean DC have never tried selling Superman to these people, but the results have been divisive at best. Look at Zack Snyder’s vision for the character; a first movie where he only cares about the hot redhead, then a movie where he fights Batman and then a 3rd unmade movie where he becomes an evil overlord. 

Modern Batman seems modelled on James Bond, film’s most profitable misogamist. The preferred idea of Batman is an angry loner with a Harem of action figure ready ladies who he attracts by being emotionally distant and abandoning at the drop of a hat. Some are allies other are enemies but one things constant an underlying sexual tension even when it’s creepy or doesn’t make any sense. Poison Ivy is portrayed as lesbian except when she’s around Batman then she wants to find out whats under his utility belt, Harley Quinn has the mind of a child but DC Comics will have her posing suggestively licking a baseball bat as a phallus, Bat-Girl his best friends girlfriend he has no qualms about banging. Meanwhile Superman has had the same love interest in Lois Lane, a progressive hardworking girl trying to make it in a man’s world that Superman treats as an equal and stays with even if she has some negative personality traits. Well Batman and Superman do share a love interest, Wonder Woman, often the one woman in the Justice League reduced to the middle of a love triangle, DC made it officially canon a Superman and Wonder Woman after years of shipping between the two (see Dark Knight Strikes Again or Red Son both storylines that reduce her to nothing more than that), but it made some sense. Wonder Woman and Batman only makes sense in Bruce Timm’s mind as many version of the two have Wonder Woman hating Batman, Wonder Woman respects truth, honesty and vulnerability three things Batman can never be or he’d lose his bravado. But who cares about character consistency when you can have some creepy Batman fan buy his girlfriend Wonder Woman themed lingerie for Christmas that year and claim “She’s like totally empowered” as he ties her up remember that’s the characters only weakness. 

Batman pays the bills, Batman is aspirational to creepy dudes, caring for others doing the right thing, they’re not profitable. That’s the truth, but superheroes where meant to teach little kids to be a good person and do the right thing. Chasing after money is what DC do, with bespoke services like a Brazilian hotel that lets you pretend to be Batman for the night. But those who can afford that, often didn’t get that way by being good people, more Billionaires are like Lex Luthor rather than Bruce Wayne. In the real world parodying comic, Lex became president and we have his inspiration as the real world president. The only real difference is Trump has molested more women than Lex and doesn’t have Superman to stop him. But DC doesn’t want to lose their gravy train by making people question this status quo. Both characters are completely successful at what they’re creators wanted, Siegel and Shuster wanted to create a new American folk lore hero for the Sci-fi-Atomic age and that’s what Superman is, he even in the real world fought the Ku Klux Klan and poses with eagles. Bob Kane he just wanted to make money, he even stole from anywhere he could, Batman comics even stole antagonists from Superman. Seriously a fair amount of Batman villains are clones of the Prankster and even more on the nose is Riddler and the Puzzler (the Puzzler debuting a year earlier in the comics), The Planteer and Maxie Zeus are almost indistinguishable, is it any wonder that Superman the Animated Series feels like sloppy seconds. But at least Superman gets the seconds while Batman cartoons steal his stories, there has never been a Flash or Wonder Woman animated series, I would even say the Flash is tailor made for a cartoon show, the characters known for witty comebacks, using science (sometimes highly suspect science) to defeat his enemies and has a main power with a long history in cartoons (Super speed being shared with Speedy Gonzales and Road Runner). Green Lantern was given a brief a chance to shine, but it was hardly given a chance his movie was originally meant as a slapstick comedy and his cartoon was cancelled in mid-production. Meanwhile Batman is on what his 12th cartoon series now? If anything DC needs to stop having one flag bearing hero and let all of it’s heroes shine, especially as more and more derision is being laid at Batman, except by his fanboys of course.

10 Comic Book Characters who Debuted outside the comics (who are NOT Harley Quinn)

There’s this phrase that gets occasionally uttered when you discuss comic book characters, “They’re like Harley Quinn”. Meaning they debuted outside of the comics and somehow weaselled their way into the “main canon” of the comics. But she’s not alone in this in fact I’d argue she’s not even the best example, so I’ve compiled this list of 10 such examples ranking from least important to most important characters who debuted outside of the comics (and of course some trivia about these marvel and DC characters along the way).

10. HERBIE

I wasn’t kidding about my earliest entries being obscure (I promise more well known characters are coming later). But HERBIE debuted in the 2nd Fantastic Four cartoon as a replacement for the Human Torch, now there are 2 stories as to why Johnny Storm was not in this series one was that TV censors thought he would encourage kids to douse themselves in petrol and set themselves alight the other the less bizarre rights hold ups on the Human torch. 

HERBIE does sporadically appear in Fantastic Four comics either as Franklin’s Robo-Nanny or as Reed Richards floating robot multi-tool and either way Dan Slott if you’re reading this (or the writer of F4 after him, I don't know who you are I can't see the future) use HERBIE more look at how cute the little robot is.

9. The Wonder Twins

Form of a walking punchline!! Of course DC didn’t really create these 2 and their monkey. But somehow over all the other ethnically diverse characters added to the Super Friends cartoon, they made the leap while; Apache Chief, Samurai, El Dorado and Black Vulcan (who probably didn’t make the leap due to DC having the very similar character of Black Lightning). The Super Friends creative teams also designed Cyborg but due to production delays he was fairly established as a Teen Titan by the time Super Friends made it to air (the Super Friends version is also voiced by GhostBusters Ernie Hudson). Super Friends also popularised Firestorm after his 5 issue mini-series was cancelled as well as defining what his powers are (even if his weakness to organic materials is vague and inconsistent).

8. Firestar

Debuting in Spider-man and His Amazing Friends, purely because Marvel didn’t want to give Mary Jane Super powers or have her know Spider-man’s secret identity, Marvel’s animation (Marvel in the 80’s where an animation studio, their other projects include GI Joe and the Muppet Babies) added a girl who looked exactly like her and gave Angelica Jones fire powers and teamed her with Spider-man and Iceman who was currently absent from the X-men.

Firestar after the series end joined the team the New Warriors in the 90’s lead by Nova and full of B-listers.

Spider-man and his Amazing Friends also debuted Aunt May’s dog Ms Lion, who has gone on to be in the Pet Avengers.

7. Spider-Woman

Marvel Animation decided that they needed to make another Spider-man series, but this time make it different, inspired by He-man’s She-Ra they made a Spider-Woman, and the character is popular. Jessica Drew the more popular Spider-Woman. The other spider-woman is the reformed X-men villain Arachne/ Julia Carpenter, both versions have been Avengers but the Jessica Drew one has been in more line ups as well as having a close friendship with Carol Danvers.

Side note Jessica Jones was almost Jessica Drew living a new life.

6. Mr Freeze

This one way actually be a bunch of technicalities because Batman fought an ice themed villain called Mr Zero back in the 1950’s but Batman 66 renamed him to Mr Freeze. Mr Freeze also had no origin story until Batman the Animated series created one for him in the Episode Heart of Ice. So maybe it’s more the Comics didn’t care about Freeze as much as TV did, but I say he counts.

5. X-23

Wolverine but a teenage girl first debut’s in an episode of Wolverine and the X-men as a clone of Wolverine… what more do I have to say? 

Now many may point to Morph appearing in X-men The Animated Series but the version in the comics looks nothing like him and only appears in the Exiles while X-23 has become a staple of modern Marvel much to the chagrin of progress hating fans cursing “All New, All Different Marvel”. 

4. Barbara Gordon

William Dozier was given 2 choices as of what to do to save Batman from low ratings, his first option was to make a series long arc about the Killer Moth coming to the aid of all of Gotham’s criminals, the second was to take Elvis Presley’s ex girlfriend and dress her in a skin tight purple outfit. He chose the Second. 

This entry is specifically Barbara Gordon and not Bat-Girl because there was a previous Bat-Girl introduced in the Silver Age with the simple goal to prove Robin wasn’t gay after The Seduction of the Innocence called Batman and Robin “a pair of Homosexuals living in sin”. 

Barbara’s comics debut was rushed into production and features as an in-joke her in her first ever story vanquishing the Killer Moth. But due to this production rush the confusion about Barbara and Jim’s relationship emerged with her in the comics being his daughter and the TV show she’s his niece who just moved to Gotham City.

3. General Zod

Ask somebody who doesn’t casually write Comic Book blogs to name 5 Superman villains and I bet after Lex Luthor they probably said General Zod. Appearing in 2 Live Action Movies Zod is probably the most well known Superman antagonist after Lex. But Zod didn’t debut in the Comics until The Man of Steel (1986) mini-series by John Byrne and Superman killed him by tricking him into opening a box full of Kryptonite. And if that didn’t make it clear Superman 2 was released in 1980. 

2. Jimmy Olsen and Perry White

Superman’s boss and the little office boy where both unnamed until the radio series. Sure DC have tried to claim Jimmy Olsen debuted in Action Comics 6, but that’s not Jimmy the character is unnamed and blonde. I’ve also seen claims that Jimmy debuts in the Max Fleischer Superman cartoons but, the paperboy in one of those cartoons proclaims “My Name is Lewis”. So maybe DC would’ve given these 2 the same names if it wasn’t for the radio series but they weren’t the first to name this pair of Daily Planet employees so… they made it on this list.

1. Alfred Pennyworth

Yes, I bet you can’t imagine Batman with his trusted right hand man, but if it weren’t for the original Batman film serial he’d be somebody different. Batman 16 debuted Bruce Wayne’s Butler Alfred Beagle and bumbling overweight oaf who fancied himself a great sleuth but was never told the Bruce and Dick where Batman and Robin. In the same month as Batman 16 theatre’s across the US where projecting the first Batman serial (which was in production before Batman 16 was graphite from Jerry Robinson’s Drawing board) with Alfred Pennyworth Batman and Robin’s trusted confidant and maker of cups of tea. 

If it weren’t for adaptations Alfred might be absent from Comics now as the character was killed off in 1964 and replaced with Dick Grayson’s Aunt Harriett who was more like Beagle than Pennyworth. Alfred was revived in comics the next year as the Villainous “Outsider” and then before the 66 TV series debut was performing his old duties as if nothing had happened.

Justice For Lori (An Open Letter to DC Comics)

Well done DC, I didn’t think you could do it. You have truly sunk to a whole new low, everyone knew that Superman Year One would be bad, everyone except you. From Frank Miller’s (the book’s Author) previous comments on “How he hated Superman”, to well what more do you need?. Now you could call Superman Year One a deconstruction of Superman, but it’s not Superman Secret Identity by Kurt Busiek was a deconstruction, what Miller and Romita have produced is a sabotage of Superman. The book that is only on it’s second issue has many problems reflecting the character of Superman, unlike many of other versions The Man of Tomorrow retains his super-intelligence but lacks any of his usual altruism, instead of being a champion of the few he’s part of the military complex he’d often fight against. But that’s nothing, you have the big blue boyscout do one of the worst things I’ve ever heard of, not only did he rape somebody, he raped a Mermaid, a literal Mermaid with a fish tail and everything. So not only did he penetrate somebody a feeling person with callous disregard, he did it violently, perforating her tail and then what was probably gushing with blood continue to stick his dick in her, in and out lubricated by her blood, all uncaring, without compassion or empathy. Thankfully this was only done in words, but Lori (the mermaid in question) reacts with approval and admiration for her violator. Now Superman is supposed to be somebody to look up to, the man who fights for “Truth, Justice and The American Way” and this is what he is now, his truth is an abuser of women and gets away with it because they live underwater isolated from the rest of the world. No that’s not Superman, that should never be Superman, this character does not deserve to use that nom de plume. Superman’s reputation and character could bounce back from this, this is just one out of continuity story written by somebody who doesn’t know what good taste is, but Lori. Lori Lemaris is an obscure character, she’s rarely featured in Superman stories, and this series when it’s completed will be on book store shelves. But her original back story and earlier stories won’t they won’t be accessible to new fans, they won’t know of the sweeter version. The version where she was Clark Kent’s college finance who hid her tail under a blanket and went round college in a wheelchair. They won’t know that Clark didn’t know she was a mermaid until after she broke off the engagement, no she’ll be the Mermaid he forced himself on.

What’s most shocking to me, is this is not an isolated event. Tom King’s run on Batman had a scene where a “Jokerfied” version of Hal Jordan used his Green Lantern ring to commit suicide, in front of Booster Gold who responded to this with “That was pretty cool”. And King actually won an Eisner award for writing this. Is this what you want now, violence and shock for no value and to get patted on the back? is it all for the approval of the vocal minority of Comicsgaters who think your competition is just a bunch of SJW’s. Because thats not what your heroes should be, they’re the Justice league, they fight for Justice, they fight for everyone. You shouldn’t be giving hate monger’s like Frank Miller a soapbox to scream their agenda from, as to use their own rhetoric is virtue signalling, but those are bad virtues. Hate Minorities, Hate Islam, Hate Women. These ideas would make Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster spin in their graves. You would take their creation, the creation of two Jews and make him the voice of White Supremacists and Nazi’s.  

To quote a DC writer who isn’t Frank Miller, Grant Morrison “Superman is the greatest idea mankind’s ever had”. Yes that is true an all powerful being who always does the right thing and is a constant doer of good. A god who walks among us care’s for us, stands up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. A being of great intelligence who does what he can to guide us to a greater future is a wonderful idea. What you’ve made in Superman Year One Issue 2 is a bad idea, it even sounds like the parody of a bad idea, “Commando Mermaid Rapist”.

The question I really have to ask is “Why did you let this happen with Superman?”, why did nobody in editorial or John Romita Jr say no to this idea? This was after all Romita and Miller’s “Passion project” why this? Would you let this happen with Batman? why Lori? is it because Lori is a lesser known character? would you let Batman rape Harley Quinn? 

Right now DC Comics I hope in a few years you fail to renew the copyright on Superman and he enters the public domain so we can all write our own Superman stories, because I guarantee they’ll be better than the one you’ve just released. 

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).