Oh God, Tuesday
Yes, it is Tuesday, the most depressing day of the week...at least for me. And it's raining. And still cold, although not as cold as it was, but certainly not as nice as it could be.
Bleh.
So, naturally, this means that I am going to inflict my usual stream of conciousness drivel upon you. And incidentally, to all of the people who write "dribble" on message boards...that is incorrect, unless you mean drool. Drivel means nonsense...and it simply drives me to drink. Of course reading message boards is probably the worst thing that one can do. I've noticed that people will actually stick to the topic for a couple of posts, and next thing you know, they veer wildly off into tangents, and politics always rears its ugly head, and the whole point of the topic is completely lost.
*sigh*
So...veering completely off topic...there is something that has been puzzling me for years. If eating human flesh turns you into a Wendigo...but only if you do it in the woods of Canada, what if some kid out hiking with his parents eats a booger? Disgusting? Yes, completely. But still...would the little tyke turn into a little Wendigo? Things like this bother me.
I also wonder about the kind of people who actually would chose to live in Gotham City. Do they have a Tourist Board? How would you like to work for the Chamber of Commerce in Bludhaven say? What are their taxes like? Who pays the taxes on all of those abandoned warehouses that have been turned into supervillain lairs? I would think that a Lair Tax would do quite well, all things considered.
Do superheroes get royalties on the merchandise sold that bears their likenesses? Wonder Woman and Black Canary were in Japan a while back, and Diana was quite stunned to see all those anime statues of her. That's probably how Bruce Wayne manages to keep his family coffers replenished, but I don't know if the others in the Justice League are quite so smart.
It has really just started to dawn on me, that in a few short months, Geoff Johns, Doug Mahnke, Peter Tomasi and Fernando Pasarin will no longer be drawing and writing about my favorite Green Lanterns. I'm starting to panic just a wee bit. Especially since the promos say that Guy is going to be a Red Lantern. Been there and done that, and Guy is a GREEN Lantern, through and through. Although I am pleased that Hal is supposed to be back. And Kyle looks to be a White Lantern for a while at least. John seems to be going through the fewest changes, and I don't have a clue about what is going to happen withe Simon, except that he'll be hanging out with the new Justice League,which I suppose is as good a place for him as any. This way the rest of them can actually help the rest of the planets in their sector.
Does anybody have any weird unanswered questions about the Comic Book Universe too?
posted by SallyP @ 12:10 PM
12 Comments:
Sally, I think there can only be one Wendigo at a time. And I'm pretty sure it has to be true cannibalism.
I have no idea why anyone would live in Gotham. Seems like it's just a matter of time before the city gets nuked. That's one of those things the writers just hand-wave away, like why hasn't anybody killed the Joker yet?
Licensing is tricky, in that the hero needs some way to collect the checks. Wonder Woman has no secret ID, so back when she was a public figure, she could probably have set up a foundation to collect money. Good luck when somebody whose building gets trashed sues you for damages, though. If you'd like more information on superhero legality, I recommend a blog called Law and the Multiverse, written by two lawyers. It examines comic books from a legal perspective, showing what works and what doesn't. Very fascinating, at least to me.
1. I already touched on my biggest head-scratcher (Joker, above).
2. Another would be the proliferation of Green Lanterns on Earth. Seems like the Guardians should just raise the number from 3600. Let every sector have four or five. They're getting slaughtered a lot lately, considering they've got what used to be called the greatest weapon in the universe.
3. If Captain Marvel is now Shazam, how is he going to tell people his name? It's pretty much the old Captain Marvel, Jr. problem. I assume he's going to have to concentrate or something, but I don't know, it just bugs me.
4. How does magic work in the DCU? Marvel has some pretty defined rules (tapping and manipulating extradimensional energy), but DC is all over the map. I just wish somebody would define some limits some time. It seemed like Zatanna could do damn near anything, which was weird for a second-tier hero.
5. Are any of the Milestone heroes besides Static around in the New 52? Icon would probably be a good fit.
You know, I never thought about how Shazaam would tell people his name! That's brilliant Bryan!
There are sure a whole lot of dead Lanterns lately, so there have to be a lot of sectors without ANY Lanterns. I don't know how this is all going to shake out in the post-Johns books.
I don't think that there are any Milestone characters around, although I suppose they could just be in the same limbo as Wally and Donna and others.
Sally, the merchandising issue is one of the reasons I love Booster Gold. Part of SECRET ORIGINS #35 was a tongue-in-cheek discussion of how the Justice League International merchandised. Later in the JLI series it was implied that the JLI had a souvenir shop in its own headquarters.
(And the "Hello, my name is SHAZAM!" issue is one of the many, many things I hate about the Captain Marvel reboot, which I do consider to be the very worst thing about the New 52.)
Sally: Message boards will drive you crazy, just bringing up Batgirl in passing ususally starts up a screaming match over how awesome one of them is. That's no where near the worst of it.
I think some are too poor to go anywhere else. Gotham is kind of weird, in some cases it has the best business (mostly because of the Waynes.) Companies likely transfer employees over there because of the profits to be made. I think they showed bat toys in the past but I think Bruce likely has the rights now that he has Inc. (Proving that he's actually listening to Boosters' advise.)
In general I don't think heroes usually get income from toys and such. If they did a lot of them would be better off. I'd say either they get screwed or the money goes to a good cause.
Dini likely knows alot of this, he did create a character that supplied supervillains with hideouts.
My question is why is the Joker still alive? According to a study he wouldn't be legally considered insane and that's the only thing keeping the law from putting him down. Is he magically protected from being killed? Really, I want an answer because at this point there needs to be a better reason.
How the Spider-Man deal with the devil actually works. I heard the explaination but it doesn't make any sense.
The Joker thing is a HUGE issue, Erin, and it grows every. single. time. he goes on a mass-murder spree. I'm not even talking about capital punishment (presumably it's not legal in Gotham) -- I'm talking about one or more of the cops or citizens who've lost family and friends simply putting several bullets in his head the next time he's dropped off by Batman at police headquarters.
The problem is really an editorial issue. If he's a mass-murdering madman, Joker can never, ever be captured by Batman. He must always escape. The second he's in custody, he's dead. I do like the fact that Snyder had him get away after the latest rampage. Of course, then you can't have him in Arkham Asylum, which writers LOVE, so you get paradox.
I also hate the mass-murdering characterization anyway. It's stupid and one-note, and serves only to let (some) readers oooh and aaaah over how "evil" the Joker is. And it ratchets up with every appearance. It's like Superman's powers -- what happens when there's no place else to go? Joker could be evil and scheming with a much lower body count, and one that is not tied so overtly to him, so there's at least some doubt about whether or not he's responsible. Leaving everybody with a Joker smile pretty much closes the case when he gets to court.
They pretty much have written the Joker into a corner, haven't they? When you rack up the sort of body count that he has, it begins to get absurd. And sending in shrinks to talk to him has worked out SO well in the past!
I realize that we have to keep our powers of the suspension of disbelief going, in order to even READ comics...but still sometimes you just have to wonder.
Bryan L: I think they can put people to death in Gotham. There was a issue in Batgirl (Cass) where she tried to save a man that was going to be put to death. Then that one time Joker was going to be killed and Batman saved him because he was innocent of that one crime. Either way, whether by the law or by his victims/their loved ones, he should be killed off. The fact Batman doesn't allow it just makes Bruce look like an idiot.
One of the things that got me about the ending to DOTF was Bruces' latest excuse for not killing the Joker off. Because he worries that Gotham will send him someone worse? Seriously? Batman is paranoid that he'd be tempting fate? In a story that's supposed to be about his family which has two members that Joker screwed over?
Sally: It really doesn't help that the doctors that aren't killed become super villains.
Yeah, how much would you have to pay a doctor (or anyone, really) to work at Arkham? Talk about a dead-end job. Literally.
How on earth could someone be worse than the Joker?
First, I wanted to say I enjoy the blog, which is charmingly unpretentious.
I often find myself drawn out if a story with random thoughts about the mechanics of the in-story world. It's actually one if the reasons I've traditionally preferred DC to Marvel. Marvel tries so hard to pretend it's universe is "realistic" that it actually comes across as being even more ridiculous than the more overtly fantastical DCU. Random questions:
1. How does anyone afford property insurance in cities with superheroes? All that random destruction would have the actuaries' heads spinning. And what about health insurance? ("sorry Mr. Smith, but your HMO doesn't cover Joker Venom"). No one should be able to afford to live in Metropolis or Gotham.
2. Aren't Clark Kent and old-DCU Lois violating just about every standard of journalistic ethics by reporting about Superman?
3. On a Superman roll, if Krypton was such an advanced planet, why weren't there thousands of survivors? Weren't some ships in space? No one was off world on a business trip or on vacation or visiting their in-laws?
4. How does STAR Labs stay in business? What do they actually make?
5. What exactly are the different jurisdictions between the 17,000 shadowy government agencies in the DCU? You'd think that would be one of the things they'd have cleaned up in the New 52, but not only did they bring ALL the old DCU ones AND import shadowy government agencies from Wildstorm, but they went and created new ones, like ARGUS, too. Exactly how big are the defense and intelligence budgets? And the UN dues must be insane.
6. If the Atlanteans can breathe air, why didn't they all just swim back to the surface when the city sunk? Why stay underwater in the freezing, pitch black water?
7. What's with all the fretting about who's going to be king over in the Throne of Atlantis storyline? Here's an out-of-the box solution: introduce the Atalanteans to democracy.
8. Why hasn't every criminal who was ever beaten up by Batman and every owner of a business or property damaged in a fight sued the pants off of Bruce Wayne? Batman, Inc = Massive Liability. And in the teeny-tiny compressed timeline of the new 52, I bet the statute if limitations hasn't run out on any of them.
9. What exactly was up with the pre-52 Amazons? While far from perfect, Western Civilization has actually come a long way from the days of Ancient Greece (a deeply misogynist society where women basically had zero legal rights). Meanwhile, the Amazons spend 3,000 years in paradise and no one manages to invent new clothes or a new style of architecture, or, see #7 above, a new form of government?
10. Do universities offer interdisciplinary Mad Science degrees? Every scientist in comics seems to know every type of science.
11. How messed up is the practice of psychiatry in the comics world? How do you know that your patient wasn't really kidnapped by aliens or isn't really bring secretly monitored by a shadowy government agency?
Heh.
Anonymous, you raise some excellent points. To which I can only reply...COMICS!
But yes, insurance must be incredibly lucrative or incredibly complicated in the Marvel and Dc Universes.
And there ARE all these fantastic other civilizations such as the Amazons and the Atlanteans running around, not to mention Alien invasions every other Tuesday. If you had Superman around why would you ever even need a standing army?
As far as I can tell Star Labs just makes stuff for Argus and the Suicide Squad, and all the rest of the secret government agencies.
But you have to admit that the general populace probably have incredibly exciting lives.
Lots of good ones, Anonymous. Again, I'll mention "Law and the Multiverse." They've looked at superhero liability, journalistic ethics (Peter Parker falls in here too), and property insurance.
Other than that, once upon a time Kryptonians couldn't survive off-planet (Byrne reboot, maybe?), and Jor-el did something to Kal to make it work. But that's out of the question with Kara and Kandor and Krypto and what-not, so your point is valid.
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