I am woefully out-of-date when it comes to stuff like this, but in case you haven't seen it, I recommend playing a round or two of Assteroidz: Diamond Dave Editon, an all-David Lee Roth version of the classic arcade game Asteroids.

Command the legendary Clown Prince of Rock as he fires his crotch laser at giant VH logos, Eddie Van Halen's massive head, or the creepy dancing burger from Better off Dead. There's even a pesky Sammy Hagar flying saucer. The good folks at Shitbagz.com have peppered the game with brilliant sound effects and Rothisms, and the end result is a thing of frickin' beauty.

You will weep.

With joy.

For about five minutes anyway, and then you'll move on to something else.

Labels: greatest thing ever

Many thanks to S.A.D. reader Moises Tavera, who is my favorite person named Moises, for creating this image in honor of the new website. I love it so much I want to marry it. Look familiar, Mr. Chris Sims?

Because I am ancient, Legends is the massive crossover mini-series that I measure all other massive crossover mini-series against. Your crossover is either better than Legends (i.e. Final Crisis, Infinity Gauntlet) or it is worse than Legends (i.e. Secret Wars II, Millennium).

Like most comic book fans, my affection for the comics of my youth has little to do with their actual quality. Sentiment trumps merit for geeks like me, and this is definitely the case with Legends. In reading through the series again, I was shocked - SHOCKED, I say - to find that it just wasn't as good as I remember. But as a piece of nostalgia, as a snapshot of the state of DC comics in the Eighties, as a gateway comic for new readers, Legends holds up. This was the mini-series that launched the Giffen/Maguire "bwah-ha-ha" era of Justice League and introduced the Suicide Squad. Plus, there was that bitchin' Cosmic Boy mini-series that tied into Legends!

OK, that one sucked. Even as a youngster I remember thinking, "Cosmic Boy? Really, DC?" I would have loved to sit in on the meeting where that book was greenlit. What were they thinking? "Kids love Cosmic Boy and his pink and black costume! Plus: his name is COSMIC BOY. It's like printing money!"

But enough mocking Cosmic Boy, I'm sure that's pissing somebody off out there. Let's talk Legends.

A six-issue mini-series that tied into a number of different DC books, Legends was plotted by my man John Ostrander and drawn by John Byrne, with dialogue by Len Wein and inks by Karl Kessel. The story involves a wager between the mysterious Phantom Stranger (DC's better dressed version of Marvel's The Watcher) and Darkseid, in which the arch-villain bets the Stranger a twenty-sack of weed and a couple White Castle burgers that he can turn the population of Earth against the superheroes.

This is not an easy task, since we're talking the DC Universe here, home of Superman. Unlike the bigotry that mutants like the X-Men face in the Marvel Universe, on Earth-One everybody pretty much remembers all those times that Superman & Co saved their collective asses and has a certain tolerance, if not affection, for their superfolk. So Darkseid send his lackey, the hypnotic Glorious Godfrey to Earth wearing a big puffy jacket to stir up anti-superhero sentiment. He means to destroy the legends of the heroes... hence the name of the comic. Clever.

I know: it's a bit of a stretch, isn't it?

Lots of bad stuff happens. Captain Marvel is blamed for the death of a generic giant villain named Macro Man, who has a cool double-M belt buckle. Ronald Reagan passes an executive order banning all superheroes. Robin gets trampled by a mob. Actually, that last one was more in the "funny" category.

In the end, Dr. Fate gathers all the heroes for a last ditch battle against Godfrey's minions, including a rabid mob, parademons from Apokolips, and hate-filled people who pilot giant mechanical dogs (it's cooler than it sounds). Fate collects the greatest heroes on Earth in the fifth issue, appearing out of nowhere and intoning in his eerie word balloons, "You are needed!"

Fate's task force of titans includes Superman! Capt. Marvel! Guy Gardner! Black Canary! The gosh darned Batman! The Flash! Blue Beetle! And, um... Changeling? I'm not sure what Fate was thinking. Maybe Fate wanted to give the angry mob an obvious target to throw rotten fruit at.


I've pasted together most of the "You are needed!" panels above. As you can see, the most common reaction to Dr. Fate's appearance is "HUH-?!"

You'll notice that Batman gets to say, "--EH?" It's hard to imagine Batman saying "Huh-?!" under any circumstances.

Superman doesn't say "HUH-?!" at all, but Capt. Marvel sure is surprised. I think Legends provides us with the first documented usage of "WTF?" What can I say, the comic was ahead of its time. Maybe he was just surprised to see Dr. Fate snapping a Nazi salute.

OK, I might have altered the good Captain's dialogue for a cheap laugh. That's the only kind of laughs we offer around here. On closer inspection of that panel, it looks like Marvel's surrounded by characters from the webcomic The Rack. Now I know where Benjamin Birdie swiped his character designs from: John Byrne himself!

The heroes prevail in the end, with the help of The Children. That's not a super-group, I literally mean a bunch of kids act as a human shield between Godfrey's hate-filled mob and the heroes. You see, Godfrey's hypno-hate can't effect The Children. In a fit of pique, Godfrey backhands a little girl --

-- and that snaps everybody out of it. The hate-filled mob is all, "OMG, dude! What have we done?" and "That motherf%$#@r just smacked that little girl!" and "Let's use these pitch forks and torches on HIM!"

I really enjoyed Legends at the time, primarily because of Byrne and Kesel's art. It was cool to see them draw so many different DC characters, and Legends sort of established a baseline visual aesthetic for the DC Universe. For me, Legends established how all the DC heroes should look, except for Jazzercise Black Canary and her headband. This was also the comic that provided fans with a truly snarky inside joke, an extended piss-take on Marvel EIC Jim Shooter.

At the time, a DC book that had such a sweeping scope was relatively novel. Now crossovers are old hat, but back in the Eighties they were rare enough to be a big deal and fanboys like me didn't regard them with the same jaded stink eye that we look through today.

But the central concept of Legends just doesn't work all that well. It was a Marvel Comics story at heart, and the idea of widespread hatred of superheroes - mind control or not - just didn't seem to fit.

The script really beat the "legends" angle to death as well. Wein used the word whenever possible, and it seemed a little self-conscious and forced after a while. It's like when you're watching a movie and a character says the title of the film: "I guess this time the Empire strikes back!" or "For your eyes only, darling." It just pulls you out of the story.

Take this sequence from Legends #6. A parademon snatches Dr. Fate's magic helmet of Nabu off his head, robbing him of his ability to speak in cool word balloons:


This has happened to Dr. Fate like, a million times. Dude should invest in a sturdy chin strap; I'm sure Nabu wouldn't mind. He's not powerless, though. A few panels later Fate flies off to find the parademon that 'jacked his helmet and kick his ass. But Godfrey is convinced that this minor setback is the death of another of Earth's legends.


We get it, we get it. The name of the book is Legends. Enough already.

Fate's helmet is recovered - by Godfrey! Ha ha! Thus ends another of Earth's legends! But the dumb-ass tries on the Helmet of Nabu, which is never a good idea. Nabu hates redheads, and Godfrey receives a mystical lobotomy. Game over.

In the end, The Phantom Stranger wins his little bet with Darkseid and the Justice League is formed anew!

Flaws and all, I still love Legends. Nothing can sever that lifelong bond between a geek and his first massive crossover mini-series - not even Darkseid.

Someone - or something - put three rolls of colorful paper party streamers under the hood of my car, and I'm going to find out who.

I'll need your help solving this mystery, so here are the facts:

We own a 2000 Subaru Legacy. It's the primary car for my wife and our two daughters, but occasionally I like to drive it to feel the raw power of the high performance Subaru engine. What a rush. I pulled the Subaru into the garage the other night and popped the hood to check the fluids, which is totally not a masturbation joke. To my surprise, I found three rolls of multi-colored party streamers and their plastic wrappers (pictured) sitting on the engine of the car.

What the hell?

The streamers can't have been there for very long, because we had a tune up and oil change a few weeks ago at a trusted local mechanic. As far as I can tell, they did no damage to the Subaru. But how did they get there, and why?

There are two possibilities:

1) The party streamers were placed under my hood accidentally.

2) The party streamers were placed under my hood on purpose.

I've been trying to think of plausible scenarios that explain how the streamers got under my hood by accident.

Was I really drunk one night while checking the wiper fluid levels and in my delirium I tossed the streamers under the hood? "New wiper fluid for you, car! Lesh have ush a party! Woo!" And then I blacked out and completely forgot about my engine block celebration.

Or maybe I was sleepwalking one night and I went out to the garage, opened the hood of the car, threw a few rolls of streamers in, and then went back to bed?

Or maybe I was working on the car in the garage and one of my little girls hurled the party streamers on to the engine just as I was closing the hood, and I didn't notice. But wouldn't the mechanics at the auto shop have noticed the streamers when they were working on the car?

The thing that I find particularly baffling is that the streamers come from Party City, a party supply store. I have been to Party City, both literally and metaphorically. I was practically the mayor of Party City in high school and college - I say practically because we all know Sammy Hagar is the official mayor of Party City. If memory serves, and often it does not, I visited Party City in October 2008, but I don't recall buying any streamers. So where did they come from?

As you can see, the accidental scenarios all seem unlikely. The streamers may have been placed inside the hood of our car on purpose.

Let's break down the more sinister scenarios that explain the presence of the Party City streamers on the car's engine.

1) Fiend - There may be a maniac mechanic working at the local auto repair shop who has a pathological need to put foreign objects inside the cars he works on. The guys at the auto shop were the last people that we definitely know had access to the engine, but we've used the same auto shop for years and have never had a problem.

Alternately, a random fiend could have stumbled upon our Subaru, found it unlocked, popped the hood, planted the paper streamers on our engine, then ran off into the night, cackling wickedly.

Evil knows no logic.






2) Those Damn Kids - It's possible that a horde of punk kids, high on meth and listening to Insane Clown Posse, wandered up the street, saw the Subaru, and targeted it for the party streamer treatment.

Why would they do such a thing?

They're Juggalos, agents of chaos - who knows why they do anything? The likelihood of the Those Damn Kids scenario is diminished somewhat by our house's location on a sleepy street on a semi-rural island in Puget Sound. We just don't have that many Juggalos around here.





3) Monster - A monster put the streamers there.

I think this needs no further explanation.

In a world where party streamers can magically appear in your car's engine, monsters may very well be real.

Now...

I have to type a few more lines so my picture will fit and I won't throw off the formating. Thanks for your patience.





4) Vengeance - Maybe somebody in our community has a grudge against me or my wife. I can't imagine who - maybe somebody who is jealous of my inherent awesomeness? This may be the most improbable scenario at all, due to my lack of awesomeness. However...

Consider this: my wife is a moderator for an online community of local moms, and we all know how popular mods are. Recently she's had some minor conflicts with members of the group who either don't understand the rules of the group or feel that the rules don't apply to them. Typical stuff. But my wife is not exactly anonymous, and our island is not all that big - it's possible that a deranged member of the group planted the streamers there in a fit of pique.

I know what you're thinking: If somebody wanted to sabotage my wife's car, they could have chosen a more effective method than placing party supplies on the engine. But what if the saboteur was a) crazy, b) spiteful but not murderous, and c) not mechanically inclined? They might have just impulsively thrown the streamers under there and scuttled off, their craving for petty revenge against the mod sated.

All these scenarios are complicated by the fact that my wife religiously locks the car, and the only way (that I know of) to get under the hood is to pop the lever inside the Subaru. We also park it in our garage at night, although we don't lock the side door leading into the garage. However, we own a pair of extremely jittery little dogs who bark when the wind blows outside, so they'd probably detect and then maul any intruders into the garage.

There is a third possibility which may have entered your mind: I may be totally full of it. This could be a classic case of an unreliable narrator, and I'm just fabricating the entire story.

But I'm not. If I was going to make up a story like this, wouldn't I have come up with something less lame? Like I found a dead squirrel or a bunch of wet diapers or a severed raccoon head under the hood of the Subaru? No, this mundane mystery is real - you're just going to have to trust me on this one.

So what do you think? Whodunnit? My mom thinks I should call the police, but I'm not convinced that there is a credible threat here. Help me, Internet. Help me solve the mystery of the Subaru streamer sabotage.

DOOMSTADT - Latveria has survived foreign invasions, civil war, and superhero attacks and has still endured. However, the global economic slowdown has affected the isolated and oppressive Eastern European state in a profound way, resulting in unemployment and mass liquidations. More mass liquidations than normal, anyway.

Latveria is run with an iron hand by Dr. Victor Von Doom, monarch for life, who personally oversees all aspects of the government and has appointed himself head of all public ministries, with the exception of The Ministry of Sanitation. Somebody else runs that.

The International Monetary Fund says it will be difficult for Latveria to avoid a sharp economic slowdown as the isolated country deals with a European tech sector collapse, weak consumer demand, the global credit crisis, and the aftermath of the so-called "secret invasion" of Earth by the shape-shifting Skrull, which has severely shaken investor confidence in financial institutions and governments.

"Nobody wants to do business with Skrulls," says IMF's Peter Osgood.

A combination of rising energy and food prices and increased tariffs on death rays and combat robots has led to a rapid rise in inflation, which reached 17 per cent in July 2008, the highest in Europe. With monetary policy constrained by the fixed exchange rate target, Von Doom has few means to address inflation aside from mass executions and imprisoning intellectuals, the traditional tactic of Latverian rulers for nearly all domestic issues.

Despite the rosy rhetoric coming from Doomstadt, experts agree that Latveria faces a raft of economic difficulties. Higher oil and food prices have squeezed the income of Latveria's tiny middle class. The downturn in the technology sector is hurting Latverian industry, drying up the market for the country's high-tech armaments and death-dealing robots. Purchase orders for the new generation Doombot XE have been 23% under projections.

In practical terms, many Latverians have been unaffected by the economic troubles. The majority of the Latverian population are superstitious gypsy peasants who operate in an unofficial barter economy and subsist off a diet of boiled shrubs, alpine rodents, and rock soup. Those bearing the brunt of the financial crisis are members of the Latverian aristocracy as well as government ministries, who have seen their budgets slashed by as much as 65%.

Fortunately, unemployed government workers have not been a strain on Latveria's scant entitlement programs, as most laid-off employees are liquidated and used as bio-fuel.

Von Doom has cancelled several programs, including the mysteriously named "Weather Control Satellite" and the so-called "Tunnel to Hell" public works project deep under the Latverian Alps, which analysts believe is either a geo-thermal power project or a means for invading the hellish underworld of the demonic entity Mephisto. Regardless of its true purpose, the program has been mothballed. The despotic Von Doom, who has presided over the construction of over 24 neo-Gothic castles in the past two decades, has ordered work stopped on Doomsturm, his latest multi-million euro public works project (pictured).

The masked dictator of Latveria has been uncommonly laconic regarding his country's financial condition, but during a visit to the United Nations in November 2008, Von Doom explained the root of the global financial crisis with one word: "Richards."

The Latverians seem to be willing to acknowledge that there is a crisis, a departure from their usual modus operandi. In a rare public statement, the Latverian government addressed its unique economic challenges before reporters this week at the annual meeting of the EEK (Eastern European Koalition) in Brussels, Belgium.

"Currently the sovereign nation of Latveria is reassessing its long-term economic policies and evaluating the efficacy of our institutions," said Hans Von Reichert, spokesperson for the Latverian Ministry of Economic Domination. "We realize that we are not immune to the global economic downturn and... and..."

At this point Mr. Von Reichert clutched his temples, screamed in pain, and collapsed into a twitching mass behind the podium.

"The economy of Latveria is solid, and the genius of Doom will shelter our great nation from any economic problems," said Maximillian Schechter, the new spokesperson for the Latverian Ministry of Economic Domination five minutes later.

"Hail Doom," he added hastily.

I have always wanted to live under the sea, even though it would be a huge pain in the ass.

I can trace my interest to several sources: Carl Stromberg's subsea headquarters in The Spy Who Loved Me, the Nautilus in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Man from Atlantis, and several Beatles' songs which celebrate undersea habitation in yellow submarines and octopus' gardens. Ever since I was a kid I thought it would be the coolest thing to live underwater, preferably with a pet dolphin and crack team of wetsuit clad scientists, one of whom is a dusky-eyed female Russian seismologist named Olga with a penchant for tank tops and back rubs.

Mmm... Russian seismologists...

In the years since the idea of living beneath the waves first caught my fancy, I've sort of talked myself out of my boyhood dream. Living underwater may be possible, but I'm probably not cut out for it. I don't even know how to SCUBA dive. I get bummed out after a few sunless winter months here in the Pacific Northwest - living in perpetual darkness on the ocean floor would drive me mad. I'm not a scientist, or an engineer, or a biologist. Even my first aid is rusty. Oh, and I have a deep and irrational terror of swimming in deep water. The only thing I have going for me? I'm sort of skinny and could fit through the hatches with no problem. Surely I am not the absolute last person you would want living in an undersea structure, but I'm pretty damn close. An aquanaut I am not.

That's why I'm so excited that architects and shipbuilders who surely have better things to do with their time have designed semi-submerged environments that incorporate everything I could want in an oceanic dwelling. It's the perfect solution: a house (or crime fighting headquarters) that floats on the water but has a sizable underwater "basement." You can have sunshine and fresh air AND enjoy the undersea swinger's lifestyle.

The Trilobis 65 is a floating house designed by visionary architect Giancarlo Zema that might fit the bill for Phase 1 of my aqua-plan. A "self-sufficient, non-polluting dwelling cell," The Trilobis 65 is a hybrid of flying saucer and houseboat that is ideal for living in sheltered waters like bays, atolls, and marine parks. It sleeps 6 comfortably and offers above-the-wave luxury as well as an underwater viewing chamber with exterior lights so you can check out coral reefs and shipwrecks while you drink a gin and tonic or get a back rub from Olga.

No, I'm not giving up on Olga, she's a crucial part of the team!

Zema has envisioned a special docking structure that the Trilobis 65 can snuggle into, but I imagine you could just drop anchor anywhere a boat could go. In fact, the Trilobis is a boat, with an engine that can push it along at a few knots. It's nothing you'd want to cross an ocean with, but the Trilobis could scoot around the Bahamas or Puget Sound with no problem. These would be perfect homes for visiting dignitaries, loyal henchmen, or hot Russian seismologists.

Sure, the Trilobis 65 would be a good starter home for the semi-submerged life, but since I plan on amassing a vast fortune before the ice caps melt, I'm thinking of the big picture, the long haul. I want a floating city.

Fortunately, Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut has designed the Lilypad, a completely self-sufficient amphibious city that can house 50,000 people and an unspecified number of cats. You gotta have cats, man.

The Lilypad is a big floating island that looks like the Mothership from Close Encounters after a water landing. The standard prototype consists of a floating habitation ring built around a central freshwater lagoon that collects and purifies rain water. Three "mountains" hold the Lilypad's housing, work, and shopping/entertainment, and the entire structure can be accessed by one of three marinas (and presumably a helipad or two). A large section of the Lilypad lies underwater, where residents can enjoy the sub-aquatic lifestyle - which by my way of thinking includes pet dolphins, personal submarines, and Olga.

Callebaut's Lilypad is part utopian dream, part eco-pragmatism. He argues that as sea levels raise over the century, many people in at-risk zones like the Polynesian islands will become climatic refugees, forced off their land. The Lilypad can offer housing to this new type of refugee and usher in an era of ecologically-minded oceanic nomadism. The entire structure theoretically produces more energy than it takes in, with a wide spectrum of power sources: solar, thermal and photovoltaic energies, wind energy, hydraulic, tidal power station, osmotic energies, and phytopurification. I have no idea what "phytopurification" is, but clearly Callebaut does.


Me, I'd want the Lilypad as my own private city-state, complete with torpedo defenses, Aquabots, and orange jumpsuits. There's no point in having a Bond villain home if you don't have all the Bond villain toys. It solves all of the nagging problems I associate with living completely underwater, plus it has the added benefit of looking cool as hell. My only concern would be algae and barnacle build-up on the the undersea sections - nobody wants a thin sheen of green goo blocking their view of the ocean. I guess that's what you have the Aquabots for...

Semi-submerged living environments - GIVE TO ME!

Labels: give to me

Labels: taco tuesday

Victorian Fortnight continues, only momentarily derailed by my grief at the passing of Ricardo Montalban and Patrick McGoohan.

If you take Herbert Asbury's book The Gangs of New York at face value, you could be forgiven for thinking that 19th century Manhattan was, as they say, a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Lynchings, muggings, riots, piracy, eye gouging, ear biting, prostitution of all kinds, brawls, voter fraud, stabbing, arson, robbery, and rude behavior in general were the order of the day in the saloons and back alleys of The Bowery or the Five Points district, where decent folk and police feared to tread. This was the kingdom of the gangs, a cesspool of violence and depravity that rivaled Sodom or Bartertown, depending on your frame of reference.

But be careful, gentle reader! Not everything one reads can be believed (especially blogs written by egocentric hacks.) Herbert Asbury, a journalist in 1920s New York, embellished the core historical reality of the Victorian-era gangs with sensationalistic anecdotes, dubious facts, and a heaping dose of bullshit. New York City was a rough town back in the day, sure, but it was mostly populated by hard working decent folks who went about their business without once gouging out an eye.

But who wants to read about boring nice people?

As long as you keep the subtitle, "An Informal History of the Underworld" in mind and remember that Asbury was trying to sell books, not document history, then The Gangs of New York is a fascinating read.

Asbury describes in lurid detail some of the hellish living conditions that immigrants lived in, tenements that were the breeding grounds for street gangs, murderers, and thieves. One infamous tenement, The Old Brewery, is straight out of Dante's Inferno - a nightmarish warren where "fights were of almost constant occurrence, and there was scarcely an hour of the day or night when drunken orgies were not in progress." The police wouldn't enter the Old Brewery, according to Asbury, unless they had a death wish, for "it has been estimated that for almost fifteen years the Old Brewery averaged a murder a night."

Let's see, a quick bit of math... fifteen years, one murder a night... OK, according to Asbury, approximately 5,475 New Yorkers were killed in this one apartment building alone. Talk about high tenant turnover! I bet the landlord made a fortune in safety deposit money alone.

If you can sift through some of the factual embellishments, there are some great stories in Gangs about colorful, hardcore criminals and the evil that men do. Many of the gangs were coalitions of petty criminals and street toughs, but the more powerful gangs had political ties and were often called upon to influence the outcome of local elections... with their fists.

The Dead Rabbits, the Pug Uglies, the Bowery Boys, the Slaughter Houses, the Whyos, the Daybreak Boys - these gangs would pour out into the streets and fight with each other or the police "leatherheads" for any number of reasons ranging from the political to the personal. They fought with their hands, feet, teeth, bats, knives, paving stones, sling shots, axes, and the occasional firearm. Gangs is stuffed with anecdotes about the personal weapons used by the combatants, like custom-made eye gouging implements or axe blades hidden in boots. These guys were serious. God help you if you got knocked to the ground during a gang brawl, because you'd either get stomped to death or get back on your feet missing some teeth or an ear.

And the nicknames! Many of the gangs were Irish, and if I can indulge in a sweeping generalization based on personal experience, the Irish love their nicknames. For your amusement and mine, here's a list of some of the more colorful names that 19th century gang members went by:

• Battle Annie
• Gallus Mag
• The Bottler
• Circular Jack
• Eat 'Em Up Jack McManus
• Cow-Legged Sam
• Terrible John Torrio
• Bill the Butcher
• Razor Riley
• The Grabber
• Sadie the Goat
• The Allen
• Hell Cat Maggie
• Joe the Greaser
• Goo Goo Knox
• Ding Dong
• One Lung Curran
• Crazy Butch
• Baboon Connelly

I just really love that there was a guy known as The Grabber who may or may not have hung out with Goo Goo Knox or Sadie the Goat. You can't make stuff like that up.

Or can you? I'm unclear as to where reality begins and ends in The Gangs of New York, but I intend to follow up by reading Luc Sante's Low Life to get a better understanding of crime in the New York of the 1800's. Has anybody out there read Low Life? I've heard good things.

I'd be shirking my blogging duties if I didn't recommend Martin Scorcese's Gangs of New York, which is based on Asbury's book. Scorcese also takes some liberties with the facts, but the production design in that movie is fantastic - like the book, the movie captures the scummy allure of old New York perfectly. Just remember that it's not a documentary.

Damn, man.

Heaven just got a little more awesome today.

Well, crap. Actor Patrick McGoohan has died at age 80.

Most geeks like me know McGoohan from The Prisoner, one of the greatest sci-fi shows ever produced on the planet, or perhaps from his role as Edward Longshanks in Braveheart or even (if you're really reaching) as Billy Zane's predecessor and father in The Phantom.

I will always associate Patrick McGoohan with his role as the Reverand Dr. Syn, aka The Scarecrow in Disney's The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh. I've read all of Russell Thorndyke's Dr. Syn books, and although McGoohan doesn't really resemble the literary Syn, McGoohan made such an impression on Young Dave that he IS Dr. Syn. For his work on The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh alone McGoohan has earned a place in The Society for the Advancement of Dave Hall of Awesome. The Prisoner seals the deal.

I like to think that somewhere in a pub on Romney Marsh, someone is lifting a drink in McGoohan's honor. I'll do the same tonight.

Batman: Master of the Future is a sequel to the superior Gotham by Gaslight that pits 19th Century Bruce Wayne against a crazy French guy with a blimp, a giant magnifying glass, and a moustachioed robot. I know: sounds awesome, right?

Well, it doesn't totally suck, but Master is a weak follow-up to the grim, fog-shrouded Gaslight. Mike Mignola is a tough act to follow, even for an artist of Eduardo Barreto's caliber. Writer Brian Augustyn discards Mignola's moody urban hellhole in favor of a breezy, sunny Gotham City that seems destined for a bright and promising future. We all know how well that's going to turn out.

In Master, Gotham is remaking itself as a world class city with the American Discovery Exposition, the comic book equivalent of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. Things seem swell; Bruce Wayne has hung up his cape and cowl after defeating Jack the Ripper and everything is blue skies and songbirds. Gotham City actually looks like a nice place to live.

Of course, the previously mentioned madman threatens to fuck everything up for reasons that I still don't quite understand. Something about how the future the leaders of Gotham are embracing is a sham. "You celebrate nothing but infantile daydreams," says Alexandre LeRoi, the self-proclaimed Man of Tomorrow, which is not as cool a nickname as Ted Dibiase the Million Dollar Man or Nature Boy, but it still works. Anyway, to prove his point, LeRoi intends to burn Gotham to the ground with his airship-mounted-retrofantastic-solar-cannon. Why? Because he so crazy!

Augustyn clearly based LeRoi on Robur, a mad inventor from Jules Verne's Robur the Conqueror and The Master of the World. It's more of an homage than a rip-off, because Augustyn clearly intended this to be a Batman vs Robur comic. One wonders why they didn't just go for it and call the villain Robur; surely the character is in the public domain by now, yes?

Master is a decent enough story, although it suffers in comparison to the more inspired Gotham by Gaslight. I enjoyed artist Eduardo Barreto's classic rendering and deft storytelling - he's sort of got a slick Joe Kubert thing going on - but the inks get a little bit too heavy at times for my tastes.

I would have liked to see some Batman uses some archaic steampunk gadgets in Master, but he only borrows a pair of DaVinci bat wings at one point. It seems like a missed opportunity to not include a Victorian utility belt in the story, but that's just the fanboy in me talking.

Barreto's version of Bruce Wayne is tops, though. Check out those sideburns. They really knew how to rock the facial hair back in the 19th Century, didn't they?


Bruce Wayne and his sideburns are forced to take up the mantle of The Bat once again when Robur - er, LeRoi - threaten Gotham, which leads to an inevitable and very satisfying battle inside the villain's airship high above the city.

In the panel below, LeRoi and Batman engage in the climactic sword fight. There's only one problem for LeRoi...

...Batman isn't here to sword fight, he's here to TOTALLY KICK HIS ASS.


That's what you get for crossing swords with the Batman, son: a sock in the jaw.

No matter what century he's in, it always comes down to Batman beating the bejeezus out of somebody, doesn't it? It just wouldn't be a Batman story if he didn't pummel some poor, out-classed schmuck into oblivion.

Batman: Master of the Future and Gotham by Gaslight are collected in a trade paperback called Batman: Gotham by Gaslight.

As I mentioned previously, in Gotham by Gaslight Inspector Gordon makes a casual reference to a killer that was recently apprehended who might seem familiar...

Gordon tells us this unnamed fiend married no fewer than ten rich women, and then murdered each one of them with strychnine. When the police caught him, the killer drank some of his own poison, and although the results weren't fatal, they were certainly grisly.

I appreciated that Gaslight writer Brian Augustyn was trying to establish a 19th century pantheon of villains for his Victorian Batman, it lets one extrapolate beyond the single comic and imagine further adventures for him. Plus, Victorian Joker looks creepy as hell.

There's a metric buttload of information online about the Victorian era, steampunkiness, and Victoriana in general online.

Everybody here knows how to use Google, so I won't regurgitate what you, dear reader, could find on your own in five seconds. However, I do have some recommendations, for what it's worth...


First off, the cool map/diagram above of 221B Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes' London residence, is from Strange Maps, one of my favorite blogs. It's not a Victorian website per se, but it's loaded with odd and archaic maps of all sorts and is worth checking out.

While we're on the subject, The Victorian Dictionary offers those interested a means to explore 19th century London, the epicenter of the Victorian universe.

For a ridiculously comprehensive overview of all things Victorian, you can't do better than The Victorian Web. It doesn't have the most user friendly or aesthetically pleasing design, but the info is there.

The Steampunk Workshop is dedicated to folks who enjoy making the retro-technology of 19th century fantastic literature come to life in the here and now. Some of the stuff featured on the site is incredibly clever, if you can get past the high minded hyperbole about "sustainable rebellion" surrounding what is essentially just a cool hobby.

Pseudopod is billed as "the world's premiere horror fiction podcast," and I believe them. Their podcasts are short "radio plays" in the grand tradition of spooky broadcasting, and although it's not exclusively Victorian, The Tales of the White Street Society, written by my homeboy Grady Hendrix, serves up some old-fashioned gaslight horror. Check it out.

Zvi Har'El's Jules Verne Collection is pretty much the ultimate destination for all things Verne on the web. If you're not familiar with the works of the visionary French writer who gave the world the likes of Dr. Moreau, Captain Nemo, and Phileas Fogg, you should take a look. Speculative fictionand science in general owes a great debt to Monsieur Verne.

OK, that's enough for now. Coming up: a Victorian reading list, with heavy emphasis on crime and butchery! Fun!

Wow, sorry about the delay. It looks like this is going to be Victorian Fortnight, which sounds very appropriate for the period.

This is one of those comics that I am positive I must have written about on Dave's Long Box, but I can't find any mention of it, so here I am, posting about Gotham by Gaslight with a nagging sense of deja vu - either that, or I've forgotten to pay my car insurance bill and my subconscious is trying to remind me. Regardless, I approach Brian Augustyn's Victorian Tale of the Batman with a certain unease. Maybe it's because in this comic book Batman fights -

- JACK THE MOTHER%#$@ING RIPPER!

See how work-safe we are here at The Society for the Advancement of Dave? No all caps swearing here.

If memory serves, and it often does not, this comic book kicked off DC's Elseworlds line of alternate history comics, where 20th century heroes were reimagined in different settings. Gotham by Gaslight, as the name implies, deals with a seedy, foggy Gotham City in 1889, and the mysterious vigilante named the Bat-Man who prowls the cobblestone streets and perches atop sooty chimneys like some giant crow. OK, or a bat.

Like I said, in this comic Batman matches wits with the prolific British serial killer Jack the Ripper, who comes to America after the heat gets turned up in London. It doesn't take long before Jack begins carving up women on the streets of Gotham - and the number one suspect is socialite Bruce Wayne.


This is the first comic written by Brian Augustyn that I read. I'm a big fan of Augustyn's, but he constructs the Gaslight story with only a fraction of the precision and style that would become more evident in his later work. Here the plot seems a but perfunctory and the Ripper mystery isn't particularly mysterious. Since there are only a few original supporting characters populating the book, the identity of the Ripper is pretty easy to guess from the first few pages. I mean, the killer isn't going to be Wayne, or Alfred, or Gordon... so it has to be the only other major character.

The story is greatly enhanced by Mike Mignola and P. Craig Russell's art, which helps create a sinister, gloomy mood and propel the plot forward with some clever visual storytelling. I am an absolute fan of Mike Mignola's work - I think he's one of the best comic book artists EVER - and Gaslight really played to his strengths. Mignola makes bold use of shadows and hatching, and when he's teamed with a good colorist like David Hornung and some nice paper stock, the results are impressive.


Plus, Mignola can draw brick buildings like a mother&%$#er.

Next on Victorian Fortnight, we'll take a look at Batman Beats Up The Blimp Guy, the sequel to Gotham by Gaslight, which is not quite as cool. Wait [checking title], OK, it's actually called Batman: Master of the Future, but I promise you: Batman beats the living shit out of a blimp guy in it.

-DC

Oh, why not? Let's make this Victorian Week.

I've been on a 19th century kick recently, so I may as well get it out of my system with a series of posts about the Victorian Era, that period of posterity, chastity, and cool hats in the United Kingdom that was defined by the reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901.

Since I'm going to be talking about stuff that takes place outside of Britain - like New York and Gotham City - it should more accurately by called 19th Century Week, but that doesn't have the same ring to it as Victorian Week, so I pray that you, gentle reader, will indulge me and not look askance at my inaccurate nomenclature.

Let us begin. Take my hand, dear one, and tread the fog-slick paving stones of bygone London with me. What secrets lurk in the shadows cast by gaslight? I dunno, man, I'm just trying to be all fancy and shit.



(Illustration by Timothy Lantz for The Gaslight Grimoire, an anthology of Sherlock Holmes stories.)

There are so many ways for the world to end, it's hard to pick a favorite. I guess if I had to choose, it would be pretty cool to be collateral damage during Ragnarok, the final world-shattering, god-killing battle in Norse mythology. One sweep of the Midgard Serpent's tail or one stray blast of lightning from Thor's hammer and your ticket is officially punched.

But enough about what I want - let's talk about the Many Faces of Doomsday, the eight most likely ways mankind will end.



Robot Overlords - It doesn't matter where they come from. They could be from the future, like The Terminators. They could be from another planet, like the Cybermen on Dr. Who. Or they could just be vending machines that come to life after earth passes through a comet's tail, like in the fine film Maximum Overdrive. On thing is for sure, being slave to Robot Overlords would suck ass. Can you think of one instance where robots and humans lived in a state of happy co-existence? Of course you can't, it's because robots are total assholes. Fun means nothing to them. Art? Illogical. Music? Does not compute. Say goodbye to your books, your video game, and your weed, too! The robots won't let you keep any of that, man. Whether it's the octopoid robots in The Matrix, The Borg from Star Trek, or mutant hunting Sentinels, the story is always the same: working for The Robots is a big bummer.



Super Volcano - One day, Yellowstone National Park is going to go nuclear (probably Dec 12th, 2012) and if you happen to live anywhere within, oh, 3,000 miles or so of the epicenter, you are going to be in a world of AAAGH SCALDING ASH CLOUD AARGH DROWNING IN MOLTEN MUD!!!!! I'm serious, you should start thinking about moving someplace off-continent, bro. Not even Pierce Brosnan can save your ass. In the Yellowstone scenario, North America would be covered under a centimeter of ash, global weather patterns would change, plants and animal species would die off, and anyone within the huge blast zone would pretty much be screwed. I'm looking at you, Helena, Montana!



Boom Shaka Laka - I love the term "Extinction Level Event." That's what you call it when one of the hundreds of sizable (1 mile wide) asteroids in proximity to Earth scores a direct hit on our tiny little planet. A big enough meteor would snuff out most life on earth, triggering massive earthquakes, volcanic activity, a mega tsunami or two, and plunge the Earth into a nuclear winter. If you survived the initial "event" you'd be so screwed that you'd have to rename the planet "World of Hurt."



Rampaging Super-Monster - You know, the more I think about this the less likely it seems that our planet could actually be destroyed by a single rampaging monster, no matter how super or monstrous. It's just a hell of a lot of work for one monster. Let's take the pictured examples, for instance: Doomsday, Godzilla, and The Incredible Hulk. The murderous monstrosity Doomsday from DC Comics was so powerful that it even killed Superman, albeit temporarily. Still, you'd think that after killing the Man of Steel, Doomsday would live up to his name and destroy Metropolis, but no. He's incredibly powerful, but the destruction he causes is relatively limited, sort of like a tornado. Same goes for Godzilla. Sure, he's destroyed Tokyo a couple dozen times, but they always rebuild it, don't they? Given Godzilla's leisurely pace, I feel certain that mankind could repair the damage almost as fast as Godzilla makes it. The Incredible Hulk is frequently described as the most powerful being in Marvel Comics, but again, his actual path of destruction is fairly narrow and brief. The Hulk always stops to pet a kitty or take a nap or something, and everything calms down. Plus, the Hulk never actually kills anybody during his rampages, so I doubt he could actually destroy the world. I've talked myself out of it - rampaging super-monsters are just not that great of a threat to life on Earth.



Manmade Black Hole - Thanks, European braniacs who built the Large Hadron Collider! Thanks, eggheads at Livermore National Laboratory, with your crazy anti-matter experiments or whatever the hell you do down there! Because of you smart guys, the whole frickin' planet is going to get sucked into a black hole that starts in The Alps and then burrows its way to the earth's core, where it begins to eat all matter everywhere! Thanks a bunch! Actually, I'm kind of talking out of my ass here because I have no idea the level or risk posed by nuclear research and whatnot - I'm just a scientifically challenged slacker who fears what he cannot understand. That is the only reason that "manmade black hole" even made it on the list - fear and ignorance!



Zombie Apocalypse - This would either be the worst doomsday scenario on the list, or the most fun. It sort of depends whether or not you have a firearms and ammo, love shopping, and don't have any close friends or family that you have to defend from the ghouls. Sure, it would suck to see your family get eaten by zombies, but if you were a sociopathic loner type, the Zombie Apocalypse would be kind of fun. Just barricade yourself inside a shopping mall with some food and high-caliber weaponry and have a ball! As long as a biker gang doesn't show up to crash your party...



Doomsday Bikers - It's a widely held belief that when/if society crumbles, people will instantly get mohawks and neo-tribal tattoos and race around on motorcycles (or jet skis or in muscle cars) and shoot other survivors with harpoon guns. That's just something we're all going to have to deal with. So although "Doomsday Bikers" is not an actual means of destroying civilization, they are present in nearly every post-apocalypse scenario. My advice is to invest in some kevlar body armor and crossbows in the event of raids on your homestead or peaceful commune, and start training with a medieval hand weapon in case you're captured and forced into gladiator combat. Don't laugh; post-apocalypse bikers will be a greater threat than mutant bears.



Alien Invasion - It's hard to say exactly how much an alien invasion would suck because there are so many different warlike alien races out there. It could be a stealth invasion, like in They Live or Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or it could be a full on monument-destroying conquest like in Independence Day or Mars Attacks! With any luck, we'd be invaded by the beautiful but warlike Glamazons from Venus, but we'll probably end up slaves of Darkseid, toiling and dying in his vast ash pits while he turns our children into monsters. Yeah, it's too hard to characterize how awesome or crappy an alien invasion would be, but chances are we wouldn't enjoy it very much.



The Up-Side - There's a little bit of fun in all the doomsday scenarios we've talked about - you just have to possess a positive mental attitude and lose your aversion to cannibalism in order to find it. You can have a kick ass time after doomsday, as long as you don't let something like nuclear winter or alien hunter-killer drones bring you down. No, now is the time to get yourself a trench coat and some weaponry and kick some ass. Most post-apocalyptic situations share one thing in common: no rules. You can make your house or the local mall into a fortress! Or speed down the wrong side of the road in your police interceptor! Or just get out there and take in all the wonders that the wasteland has in store for you in a futuristic armored vehicle! Now is the time to embrace anarchy, to become your own King and/or Queen! It helps to realize that your lifespan is now more likely measured in weeks instead of years - it just puts everything in a proper fatalistic perspective.

So you see, there's a potential for fun and personal growth lurking in most doomsday scenarios. Except maybe the black hole one, that would just um... suck.

Thank you! I'll be here until December 2012, folks.

Happy New Year from The Society for the Advancement of Dave!

Everyone here on the S.A.D. team - from the production and research staff to our interns to our bunker security specialists to our komodo dragon handlers all wish you and your family a prosperous and happy 2009.

Make the most of this new year, friends, because according to Mayan prophecy the world is going to end on December 21st, 2012. The verdict is still out on exactly how the Mayan doomsday will come to pass. Meteor strike? Yellowstone super volcano? Manmade black hole? Superflu? There are so many fun and exciting ways the world can end, it's hard to pick a favorite.

I'll be honest with you, I've never been too freaked out about the end of the world. What are the odds that it will happen on my watch? And how would Death by Meteor be any worse than Death by Auto Accident? I mean, both scenarios end up the same way: you, dead.

I suppose the tragedy of watching our species get squeegeed from the face of the earth by some cataclysm would be be traumatic. Knowing that your kids or your grandkids or entire generations of humanity won't carry on after you die is a bit of a bummer, true. But let's face it, most people are self-absorbed and are only interested in the here-and-now and don't give a lot of thought to the legacy of mankind. If we were all a little more far sighted, I imagine we wouldn't be plagued by a lot of the environmental, economic, and political issues that we have today. But we're not. I'm not dissing mankind; I'm as just as big of a self-obsessed wanker as the rest of the planet. Bigger, even.

Man, where am I going with all this? I confess, as a New Year's Eve present I bought myself a bottle of Glenlivet single malt Scotch which I've really been enjoying this evening, and it's kind of affecting my cognitive functions and writing ability in a pleasant way.

Anyway, I guess my point is that when each of us die, it's a little tiny armageddon, a micro-apocalypse. At that moment of death, for all purposes the world is effectively coming to an end. Sometimes we see death coming, like a meteor shooting towards us from deep space. Sometimes it's over before we know it, like a busload of Japanese tourists at Old Faithful when the Yellowstone Caldera explodes. And sometimes death is a long, protracted struggle against the inevitable, like when you try to escape from the hordes of zombies ravaging the globe by heading north into the Arctic Circle and end up starving/freezing to death over the course of weeks instead of a quick, violent death by undead. However you slice it or serve it, the death of self = death of the world.

So relax!

That's what I say. Sure, the world may get murdered on December 21, 2012, (although come on; really? The world's going to end on 12/21/12? Doesn't that strike anybody as a really tidy date?) but it won't be much worse than the inevitable day in the future when, for each of us, our world really comes to an end. That is something that we can predict with 100% certainty.

Another prediction: tomorrow, January 1st 2009, we'll take a look at popular and fun doomsday scenarios that the whole family can enjoy, until then... Happy New Year! More Scotch for me!