Imaginary time capsule

I'm finally reading Justice League: Generation Lost (a.k.a. "oh God is there some way to salvage Infinite Crisis"). Yeah. Remember when I fell into the Infinite Crisis rabbit hole, desperately searching for some kind of in-universe fallout following the murder of Blue Beetle? Remember how there was none? That's what Generation Lost was for. Allegedly. I only started reading it today.

It's only five or so years old, which is shockingly current cape comic reading on my part. Of course, the storyline piggybacked on one of those huge unwieldy cross-title events I can't stand (Brightest Day). Basically a bunch of characters came back from the dead, including poor retconned Beetle-mudering Maxwell Lord. So Generation Lost is about getting the ol' Justice League International gang (well its few surviving members) back together to take him down again.


First issue was quite good in that kind of "whoa did shit hit the fan VERY FAST" kind of way, Lord broke both mine and Booster's hearts in one fell swoop. It's been going sort of downhill after that (both writing- and artwise) but luckily I get to read the concurrent Booster Gold issues (written by the original JLI creators) inbetween and it's fantastic so far. It deals with the fallout of the dramatic stuff happening in Generation Lost so well and asks all those questions I've been pondering about Infinite Crisis too:

How could Maxwell Lord go from morally grey but ultimately kind-hearted father figure to maniacal blood-thirsty supervillain overnight? If he was evil all along, why weren't there any signs?

There's also Booster passionately defending JLI as something more than a punchline. "We weren't a joke! We mattered!" I might have choked up a bit. Reading my garish super soap opera.

Got a job as an assistant editor for an ad company, been working there two+ weeks but they're really struggling financially (and with some other major issues) so we're sort of expecting the company to go belly-up any day now.

That's you up to date, now I want to talk about comic books again.

I know these days DC are trying to sorta make Harley Quinn into their own Deadpool (off-beat comedy, insane protagonist, fourth wall-breaking gags), but I don't see why they'd need to when they have Ambush Bug. In a sense he's more Deadpool-y than Deadpool, because he doesn't have a tragic origin story and everything about him is satire about something else.

Ambush Bug started out as a Superman villain in the early eighties (created by one of the guys who went on to make Justice League International) before he became one of the good (if mentally unstable) guys. His real name is Irvin Schwab (God I love that name) and he wears a mysterious costume that came from outer space, and it grants him the ability to teleport all through the Multiverse.

This character doesn't just break the fourth wall, he moves backwards through his own comics, switches genres mid-story, visits his own creators, namedrops Marvel characters (!!), all sorts of crazy stuff. There are more jokes than plot in Ambush Bug comics.

One recurring theme is how Ambush Bug just wants comics to be fun again, so there is a lot of ridiculing grim and violent trends in cape comics. Reading the eighties' comics had me going "Haha yeah I guess that was a trope" but now I've moved to the most recent A.B. miniseries I really get to explore just how upset I still am about a lot of DC editorial mandates (I swear DC fans still have PTSD after the death of Ted Kord. I get violent flashbacks whenever a comic revisits the line "Rot in hell, Max.")


I guess I see why DC has largely moved away from Ambush Bug. They don't tolerate anyone making fun of them anymore, not even their own characters.

So I while I was working on this drawing some startling Blue and Gold news hit the net.

1. Ted Kord and his Charlton buddies are gonna feature in a new DC comic titled Multiversity, which is gonna be Nu52 but with alternate universes. Am very ambivalent. I'm happy about Multiverses and Ted being alive again, but I have so little faith left in DC I'm almost certain they're gonna screw this up.

2. If the rumoured Booster Gold TV series is gonna be made it's going to be DARK AND GRITTY. I did not know it was possible to feel so much hate.

So anyway, just wanted to draw a cute decowled Booster and Beetle pic.

( Trouble brewing )

On the other hand, I love when superheroes take off their cowls and are left with that tight little spandex turtleneck. I'll never figure out how either Ted or Booster's cowls are actually attached but -- any excuse to draw spandex turtleneck.

It began when I started reading this series:


It was rather continuity heavy (seeing as the plot largely concerned Booster time-traveling through the DC universe setting things right) but nothing I couldn't wing with an occasional peek at Wikipedia. It was a bigger obstacle figuring out its jumping-on-point when I hadn't read 52, which the entire series was a direct continuation of (notice the issue title!).

And so...

( I had to go back )

When it comes to cape comics I kinda both love and hate the convoluted continuity -- it's so different from the other comics I read. I like how all the characters are connected in some way, even if they've hardly met.

It's actually the only way I can really appreciate DC's heaviest hitter (pun unintended), Superman. I'm loathe to pick up a comic where he's the main character, but I absolutely love seeing him through other characters' eyes.

And while tracking the continuity of these two characters (Beetle and Booster) is hard (Booster debuted in eighties for chrissakes, it's not that long ago), I comfort myself with the knowledge that it's not as complicated as, say, Cyclops or Wolverine.

After all these years I can't believe I've never drawn my favourite superhero duo together. And after that heart-rending final issue of 52 I really felt like drawing some fluff.

(And this is totally my drawing for June - it was juuust about finished last night, I just had to put on some finishing touches.)

( So happy, so happy to meet you )

Now I've decided to more on to Countdown to Infinite Crisis. I've been dreading it for years - so there's a chance there'll be more Beetle/Booster fluff drawings in the future!

Hi, I'm not dead! Been sorta busy for once this month - first my sister had her big wedding party (one year after the wedding). It was Rockabilly themed and they'd hired a band and everything, it was great. Secondly, it was time for my school reunion (roughly equivalent to middle school/junior high). Everybody'd become adults, it was really weird. Thirdly, I was best man in my best friend's Maria's wedding. Had to don a bunad for the first time since I was a teen. Marriage equality rules, by the way.

So all in all, not dead. In fact I had a dream last night I posted a list called "Ten random comic book things that make me happy". And here I am.

So. Why not?

10. Namor the Submariner's and Black Adam's pointy Spock ears.
09. That one time Chas was unavailable and John Constantine had to ride with some random long-haired biker.
08. How Ralph (Elongated Man) Dibny's nose twitches when he gets intrigued by a mystery.
07. The debate on whether Ralph Dibny can't help it or whether he does it as a gimmick.
06. Mucous Membrane.
05. Plastic Man's dumb sense of humour.
04. When The Spirit gets flummoxed by an unexpected kiss.
03 Ted (Blue Beetle) Kord's costume.
02. The height difference between Big Barda and Mister Miracle.
01. How Blue Beetle helped young inexperienced Booster Gold grow as a person and they became soul mates and I get all emotional about this relationship between two fictional superheroes and just shut up don't tease me.

Spotting Booster Gold front and center on the cover of the new Justice League TPB in my local comic book shop and getting excited before I remind myself "No silly, this isn't your Booster Gold. This is some Canadian asshole with the same name living in a universe where his soul mate never existed".

I still haven't found one thing I like about the New 52 (I'm not even finished with the old 52!). John Constantine's apparently some sort of Magic Police now? Who died and made him the only authority on magic, and why should he care? Is DC really so intent on cutting every tie to Alan Moore?

And Booster Gold, I don't get it. This was a dynamic character, his arc of redemption and morality was at it's peak, and then - hey, let's make him just like he was in the eighties, only with meaningless changes to his origin. Why do they feel the need to tell the same stories over again, with slight differences? It's like, I dunno, reading Oliver Twist and reaching the part where he starts living with Mr. Brownlow, only for the book to go "No wait, let's start over again from Oliver's infancy, only this time he's a gypsy girl."

Sure I know the old comic book stories aren't lost to us ("You act like DC broke into your house and burnt your entire collection!"), but man, what's the point of having a big, cohesive comic book universe at all if you're going to randomly change everything around or begin all over again every few years?

/Aggressively sticking to post-Crisis pre-Flashpoint comic book continuity.

I have to return my lovely new smartphone because there's something wrong with the battery, buhh. Just when I was getting good and dependent on it.

And my digital comics! In Norway, comic book shops (the one chain we do have) mostly sell TPBs, so if you want to get into a new comic you usually have to splurge on one of those and pray to the Allfather you'll like it. The Android Comics app has revolutionized all of that for me, with first issues of a series often being completely free to download, and subsequent issues costing as little as 5 or 11 kroner.

So I read the first (free!) issue of Grant Morrison's Animal Man, and immediately saw something I took as a good sign - references to Justice League International (I know they were the active Justice League at the time but still I'm all "Ooh! Aknowledgement!"), with Booster, Beetle and the rest participating in some kind of cheesy Live Aid parallel. Beetle posing with Stevie Wonder, God I love eighties' comics.


What can Blue Beetle do? (Pushes glasses with finger, wipes Cheeto dust off lap) Uhh, actually Ted Kord (Blue Beetle) besides being a fine acrobat, was one of the greatest inventors of the DC universe, and headed K.O.R.D. Industries (Kord Omniversal Research and Development), which rivaled even Wayne Enterprises (BATMAN'S company!) at one point (before becoming on of its subsidiaries). So there.

(/Kidding, I've never eaten Cheetos in my life).

I know I recently posted a Justice League play-by-play but suddenly the plot took a weird turn and I HAVE FEELINGS TO SHARE OKAY.

Like, first one of the League members died - not the way Superman dies, or Batman dies, but died died, gone, the whole shebang, thereby being the first member of the feel-good Justice League International to be sacrificed for cheap drama and a minor increase in sales. Hint: It was one of the two women. Of course it was.

But okay, death I can handle, obviously you need stakes.

Then Zero Hour happened, which as far as I've been able to piece together was meant as a sort of quick continuity fix after the clusterfuck that was Crisis on Infinite Earths. Sure. So during Zero Hour, the Justice League was split in three (Gotta up those sales numbers, right!): One fraction led by Wonder Woman, the second by Martian Manhunter, and the third one by (groan) Captain Atom.

Guess which fraction my favourite characters wound up in.

Okay, sure, I'm flexible. I'll jump right on to this new series to follow their adventures. Only... You know how I've been bitching about how "nineties" these Justice League America issues have been? You know, with the scritchy lines, the grim'n'gritty plots, the terrible anatomy?

Check out what I'm forced to read now:


Yes. The comic title is seriously EXTREME JUSTICE. Appreciate, if you will, Captain Atom's 80s rocker hair, or Blue Beetle's final descent into "roided Spider-Man", or just the horrible muscle-y ninetiesness of it all. And after three issues, I can testify that the writing is just as atrocious as the art.

Oh my God. Why do I do this to myself.

Yes here I am again. There've been some troubles with unstable internet access, but things are getting better all the time, and I'm switching companies tomorrow.

So what do you do in the evenings without internet when there's nothing but boring Olympic Games on the telly?

Games. You do games. Gaming.

Personally, I just finished Dragon Age II!


Also I played and completed L.A. Noire!


Right now I've gone on to the first Mass Effect game. I'm really intrigued by the "your choices carry weight in the sequels too" thing (which was very neatly done in Dragon Age 2), but eh, I really don't like those kind of dour grey sci-fi settings. I'm nine hours in and so far I just feel like I've done nothing but gotten lost in a lot of grey corridors, and done a lot of cover-based shooting at Geths.

Sometimes when I'm not gaming I'm reading. Right now it's The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht, and a massive one that I bought for my bachelor research but never read, about the plight of the common woman throughout Norwegian history.

Oh, and I'm still reading Justice League comics. Still early nineties issues, oh dear.


Oh wow, it's been so long since I wrote a long, random post just because I'm bored. And I'm not used to sitting on this hard sofa like this, ow ow ow.