So, apparently there's life out there in space

So, apparently NASA is saying that they've found the fossil evidence of alien life in a meteorite.

You can read the article here. 

So, upon realizing what I was reading, my immediate reaction was a sort of weird, physical thing where my body went cold and I felt sort of nauseous.  You get this, right?  I mean, these findings don't just suggest, but they are fairly significant evidence - there is something else out there.  Even single-celled warbly things are something.  Our planet is completely covered in single-celled warbly things, so it makes sense that there are chunks of Earth flying through space with bits of amoeba and flagellates embedded somewhere in the rock.

Now, of course you sort of have to believe in fossils to buy the evidence, and given the current state of things, it seems more likely that someone will cut this guy's funding and/ or burn down his home and office rather than suggest that fossil evidence means anything, but I tend to be completely amazed that scientists (the people who spent their lives dedicated to figuring this stuff out, and not you - the person who saw this thing once on the Discovery Channel), are going to go ahead and put their names in with this review.

Completely amazing.

Oh, right, I have a blog

Hi.  Its just totally not coming this evening.  I'm not even going to spend the ten minutes looking for an amusing picture to talk about.

So here's Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.

At the risk of practically inviting you people to rob my house, I'm out of town starting tomorrow. We're headed to Houston for some birthday festivity-having fun in honor of The KareBear.  Apparently, this year's birthday fun will include a trip to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.  I am kind of excited about the opportunity to see the cows, which probably sounds weird.

We'll be back in Austin on Sunday.  So Austinites... please hold down the fort while we're off roping burros or whatever one does at the rodeo.

Ma Kent to be terribly attractive in new Superman film (Diane Lane)

So, this is an odd bit of casting. According to Bleeding Cool, Diane Lane is cast as Martha Kent in the upcoming Superman movie.

Math isn't my strong suit, but I believe Lane is about 46 years old. Which... I guess if Snyder is casting her as Martha finding little Kal-El, that's still a shade on the youngish side. And while Lane says many things to me - Aging Midwestern Farmer's Wife is not at the top of that list. And "Kindly Old Lady" is just absolutely nowhere on that list, and I checked five times.

I will never say anything against Ms. Lane, but this...



is not this



nor this


Now if you wanted to tell me Diane Lane is Lara.  Fine.  She looks like a being from a highly evolved race of very good looking space people.
Snyder - doing his bit to reinforce ideas about Hollywood and "women of a certain age".

Well, I guess we'll see where he's going with this trainwreck soon enough.

Now, Smallville did cast Annette O'Toole as Martha Kent, but they made it pretty clear that the Kent's were not an older couple in the TV show.  And, hey, O'Toole was Lana Lang in Superman III, so you have to give props where they're due.

He's using his X-Ray vision to look at  her brains

Anyway, Movie Industry, this sort of thing is why we tend to think you're kind of dumb and people over a certain age quit seeing movies at some point.

comics and a new superblog

In case there was any confusion - I am not on hiatus.  I took last night off after reporting on the passing of Jane Russell as I was reading and had nothing to ad.

I was reading X'ed Out, a newish comic from Black Hole creator Charles Burns.  I quite liked the book, but only figured out in the last few pages that its not a self-contained volume, and only the first in a series.  That's quite fine, as I was pretty well hooked by Volume 1.

yes, this is about the world's worst Easter Egg hunt

Also read James Sturm's much-hyped Market Day.  The book is definitely worth checking out at some point, but, frankly, I think nothing was going to live up the hype that this book received last year upon its release.  I don't want to take anything away from the book, because its a lovely story and well crafter, but...  sometimes a book is just exactly in that space where the former-English majors just sort of lose their lids as the creator hits on all the right sweet spots that tell the reader "this story is meaningful".

yup, it is exactly about what you're thinking its about

Mostly I just thought it was a well written book that used the comic medium and Sturm's style and the immersive world of the character particularly well.  Otherwise, it sort of fell into the "yeah, that's about what I'd expect" sort of book I figured from the solicits and reviews.  Its a good comic, absolutely...  X'ed Out may just be a little closer to my personal wheelhouse, so reading the two on top of one another might not have been fair.

After suggesting I read it for, oh...  three years, NTT was kind enough to send me a copy of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Vol. 1.*  I don't read much (ahem: any) manga, but even I know (a) the name Miyazaki is synonymous with good comics and (b) a thoughtful, lovely comic when I see one.  I'm only partway in, but so far, so good.

giant monster: check. flying device whatzit: check.  flashing weaponry: check. - what's not to like?

A new Super-blog?  It seems that there's a new Superman-themed blog out there in the world, hosted by a gentleman named TomO.  Let's give a warm welcome to Superman 101 (aka: Superman Daily)!  (Daily? Man, pace yourself...  Its a marathon, not a sprint.)

TomO has already blog-linked me, or whatever we're calling it these days. I take this as a sign that I am Tom's personal hero, and somewhere out there, he's built a small shrine to your host, The League (I've already got a motion for a restraining order on him started, just in case).


*We're always happy to take a free comic!  Just, you know, not whole crates full at once.  JimD.

Goodnight Dune now a complete children's book

found by @chris_roberson

I think this looks about right for this crowd...

A while back I linked to an image that was a pretty clever idea/  just a joke called "Goodnight Dune".

Well, its the 2010's, so of course, somebody actually went and made it into a book.

Here.

I strongly suspect Harms will now wish he had children.

"The Rack" is Back?

Looks like our friends at webcomic The Rack might not have shut down after all, and that they may have just been on break.  Good news!

You may recall we eulogized the abrupt end to the series here a few weeks back.

Looks like the characters are set up in a new shop with a new focus.  Now may be a great time to jump on board.

Welcome back, Church and Birdie!

Taking a break

even Superman chillaxes every once in a while

I posted plenty over the weekend. Scroll down and catch up.  Feel free to send in questions.

Jane Russell Merges with the Infinite

It appears that film icon Jane Russell has passed at age 89. 

Russell is most famous for her roles in The Outlaw and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (I have only seen the latter).  Curiously, I only added The Outlaw to my Netflix queue on Saturday night while watching a different movie and wondering why I'd never seen The Outlaw, a movie that had censors and moral watchdog groups bleeding out of their eyes.

apparently being this much woman in 1943 was too much for some people

Russell's performance in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is every bit as good as that of Monroe, in my book.  Check her out in "Ain't There Anyone Here for Love?"

Godspeed, Ms. Russell.

Quick follow up on Alison Brie post - Prosopagnosia

I have decided that I have a very limited form of a rare condition called Prosopagnosia that may or may not be directly Allison Brie related.  Apparently that's a condition where one has a hard time telling faces apart.

You can read up on the condition here.
 
So I've decided I'm not an idiot, and that its a genetic issue or some such.  I declare my Brie-blindness a medical condition. You now owe me sympathy or something.

Curiously, some of the photos one finds when Googling Alison Brie mean I will most definitely remember who she is a bit better.

Found this article courtesy the Twitter feed of artist/ writer Phil Jimenez. 

Comic writers: The Moment you add "Dark" to the name of a character, you have failed

Chris Claremont gets the only exception to this rule.  He pioneered the "Dark" prefix to character names with "Dark Phoenix" during an era that wasn't so far gone from an era when Magneto self-identified his organization as The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.  If it is 2011 and your character is suffering from a "Dark" prefix slapped onto their name, please turn in your keys, badge and gun.

I get that many comic readers get locked into ideas of "edgy" around the age of 13 and never let those ideas go.  And I get that many comic readers become comic writers.  What I don't get is the un-ironic use of "Dark" to describe a character, or when a character supposedly decides "you know what, I'm feeling moody.  I'm now Dark Steve."

The fact that I keep seeing references to a "Dark Supergirl" in the pages of JLA has leaped to the top of the reasons I will not pick up the current run by James Robinson.

so is that "Dark" Donna Troy laying there?

In the very specific case of Supergirl,we just got done with a multi-year run of pretty much a "dark supergirl" (that somehow managed to never call her "Dark" Supergirl).  Adding the prefix AND seeing her put on a black outfit and a sneer is, frankly, a wee bit redundant 

But, really, comics...  isn't this kind of the ultimate break in the "show don't tell" rule of writing?  Even if someone is a bit "edgier" or more prone to suddenly listening to Nu-Metal, is this the best way to convey that idea of character growth/ change?

I'm not against writers exploring characters going down some twisted alley ways, but if your median reading age for your title is over the age of 10, do we really need it spelled out?  Don't writers owe it to readers to at least try to show a small bit of subtlety?*

But, you know, at least I get the feeling there's some level of camp to Dark Supergirl.

Hey, did you know X-Men comics gave Wolverine a be-mohawked, tribal tattoo'd son?  Who, no doubt, listens to Korn?

he is to the 00's what Cable was to the 90's.  "Dark" Wolverine: in 2021, regret shall be thy name.

They did.  He isn't Wolverine Jr. or Son of Wolverine.  He's "Daken" (seriously) the "Dark Wolverine".  This character, from a third person perspective, is, of course, very silly.  I'm sorry.  He's a trainwreck of suburban white bread totems for edginess that you pick up in high school and feel a little silly about when old classmates start posting forgotten scanned pics to Facebook.


Here's Your Problem

Let's recall that it doesn't matter if we're talking about Ben Grimm or someone whose name is, quite literally "Victor Von Doom", every character believes that what they are doing is the right thing.  Every single one, going right back to old Lucifer thinking his management style was better than that of The Big Guy.  Every character (and actual person) is the hero in their own narrative.  And this is exactly why we find characters like Lex Luthor so compelling.  Every once in a while, Lex has a point. 

"Evil", on the other hand, is only a motivation in children's stories.  While comics come out of a kid-friendly environment, we can agree that the last time we pretended we were letting kids read any mainstream comics was probably 1997.  So the label of "Dark" is even... odder.  It would seem that's a pretty loud way of making your new intentions or motivations known.

And frankly, I find the superhero comics industry's insistence on using the term as baffling as why anyone would think adopting the lifestyle of a juggalo signaled anything but that you make poor choices.

Do comic writers embrace that their characters believe that what they're doing is the best or correct thing?  As a reader, if the characters consciously select the wrong/ evil option, then the character begins to lack motivation, and in fiction (as in life) motivation is usually a character's reason for existing.  "Dark" may be how someone else perceives your character, especially if that character has made some sort of transition.  But self-identifying seems a little tricky.

Moral ambiguity in the heroic tale

Readers of this site know that I am a fan of Superman, who, to the untrained eye, stands above all other characters in demonstrating the sharp relief of "good guy" versus "bad guy".  He's the original guy in a white hat. 

But liking Superman doesn't preclude some appreciation for interesting tales of moral ambiguity.  I'm also a fan of the world of film noir, in which moral absolutes dissolve in a glass of bourbon (only to be reinforced by Hayes Code-era approved endings), spaghetti westerns, crime novels, and roller derby.  And part of what's been interesting to me about Superman stories is that he's a character who was developed in and who lives in exactly that kind of messy world.

The point of our friend, Logan (the Original Wolverine) was that he was a hero in spite of his memory lapses, flaws, and extremely rough edges.  He was, in the 1980's, the epitome of "dark hero".  There's just such a hint of "yes, but this goes to 11" that goes from interesting to bad writing.

Nothing about the comics medium nor the genre of superhero stories should mean that we can't explore the idea of moral ambiguity or moral relativism.  Adult readers should be able to manage ideas that don't fall merely into camps of good vs. evil and bad vs. good slugging it out in the street.

Curiosly, I think we were a lot better about exploring these ideas and taking them to their logical extreme in the 1980's.  Moore's Watchmen more or less exemplified this sort of exploratory reasoning for the super-powered set (both literal to the story and figurative).

somebody's got to make the hard decisions

And yet not one character in all of Watchmen identified as "Dark". 

In many ways, I have to blame the fact that Miller entitled his similarly complex exploration of superhero as righteous fascist in Dark Knight Returns and two and a half decades later, the xerox-of-a-xerox-of-a-xerox leads us to iffy concepts of moral ambiguity like "Dark Wolverine" or campy problem children like "Dark Supergirl".

The Exceptions

In addition to Mr. Claremont's invention of "Dark Phoenix", there are three additional places the use of the word "dark" is appropriate.

1)  I think its likely okay to use "dark" in the title for a character, maybe.  Batman can continue to go by "The Dark Knight".  Its descriptive, and sounds more like a sports nickname a reporter might have assigned than his actual name.  One can imagine Batman reading the paper in the batcave, seeing a headline that says "Dark Knight Protects City" and thinking well, I'm not going to fight press like that.  That said, its hard to imagine another character with a similar title in this era.  But Batman gets a pass. Batman will, rightly, always get a pass.

2)  If that was the character's name to start off with, indicating "hey, I'm a shadowy guy/ gal.  The whole 'Darkhawk' thing is meant to be spooky to begin with."  Its still a little hokey, but its the name.  We'll go with it.  But keep in mind, you're now in the company of "Darkwing Duck".

yes, this duck is strangely bad-ass

3)  This isn't actually a naming convention, but clearly, only Gail Simone understands how unintentionally hilarious the word "dark" has become, creating the battle cry for D-list new character "Misfit".  When I first saw her battle cry was "Dark vengeance!  Ssssssssss!" it was a great Simone moment, and perfect commentary on the whole concept of "dark vengeance" in comics and their suburban, white-bread readership.

When I think of characters in comics who went "dark and edgy" in their quest to save the world, the ones who were meaningful don't have "Dark" slapped on their name as some sort of code that's necessary for the audience of the typical Power Rangers episode.

4)  (late addition)  I also give Darkseid a pass.  He is, after all, a living embodiment of a concept of dictatorial fascism, which we westerners tend to think of as "evil".

5)  (late addition)  I'm also giving a pass to certain genre story titles.  Again, that's a 3rd person perspective on the story, not a character saying "hey, lookit me!  I'm evil."


Speaking of "dark", I think this video featuring a "grim'n'gritty" reimagining of Archie comics sums it up.






*Given the internet's reaction to Grant Morrison not laying exposition over every single panel in the picture books, I can see why you'd be reluctant to give the readers that sort of credit