DC Versus Marvel Omnibus Pt. 11: Silver Surfer/Superman #1

Okay, serious question for those who were reading Marvel comics at the time: Was the Silver Surfer a really popular character in the mid-90's...? 

I only ask because this was the second consecutive DC/Marvel crossover in which he starred, and if we look at all four of the standalone crossover one-shots that the two publishers released in 1995 and 1996, the Surfer was prominently featured in three of 'em. 

I know he was carrying his own ongoing title back then—according to Comics.org, The Silver Surfer launched in 1987 and lasted through 1998, running 146 issues—but when I think of popular Marvel characters of the '90s, I tend to think of Spider-Man, Wolverine, The Punisher and Ghost Rider, not Norrin Radd. 

Was he really one of their top characters, or was he simply over-represented in these crossovers, a Marvel character that the various creators involved just saw fit to repeatedly meet with members of the Distinguished Competition's roster? 

At any rate, the character returned to the spotlight in Silver Surfer/Superman #1, a one-shot special published just six months after the DC Versus Marvel miniseries wrapped; obviously, that event series wasn't meant to be any sort of climax or culmination of the publishers' 1990s crossovers, as they would continue unabated for a few more years. (Which means, of course, there are still plenty more posts yet to go in this series).

This time the creative team would consist of the popular and talented George Perez, here relegated to scripting only, with no hand in the art, and the prolific Ron Lim, who had by this point produced plenty of pages for the Silver Surfer comic, not to mention many of Marvel's other titles. (He'd also drawn Superman at that point, but not for any great length.) 

Perez, meanwhile, had written a run on Silver Surfer, and had plenty experience drawing Superman in different capacities for various titles.

Finally, rounding out the creative team was veteran inker Terry Austin, whose name didn't make the cover, as you can see above. (Nor did that of colorist Tom Smith.)

Their Silver Surfer/Superman story really seems premised on the meeting of the villains in the piece; while Superman and the Surfer do indeed have a couple of things in common, it's the villains of this story fulfill similar niches in each publisher's respective universe. In fact, a pretty strong case can made that one's portrayal is based on that of the other.

These villains are, of course, Mr. Mxyzptlk, a character dating back to a 1944 comic from Superman's creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and The Impossible Man, a one-time Fantastic Four character created in 1963 by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee who had since gone on to mess with various other Marvel characters, the Surfer included.

Though their exact natures and powers varied a bit—Mxy was a fifth dimensional imp with seemingly limitless magic powers, while the Impossible Man hailed from the planet Poppup and had extraordinary shape-shifting abilities—both were diminutive pranksters that enjoyed teasing strait-laced heroes, and the stories featuring them were generally more comedic in nature, offering a temporary respite from the more standard and serious superhero fare. 

Thus, this story, entitled "Pop!" is really more of a Mr. Mxyzptlk/Impossible Man crossover than a Superman/Silver Surfer one. 

It's kind of too bad that the villains, if we can really call them that, are so prominently placed on the book's wraparound cover, as it spoils their presence, draining the What's going on? melodrama that our heroes experience at the beginning of the tale, when they find themselves in strange, even impossible circumstances. 

Superman is just finishing up a routine patrol of Metropolis when he disappears in a "Pop", reappearing on what seems to be an intact and populated Krypton...although he can tell from the positions of the stars that he hasn't traveled back in time, and that, as impossible as it seems, this Krypton exists in the present day.

After tangling with Kryptonian soldiers, he's faced with a much more formidable foe: The Super-Skrull!

Meanwhile, The Silver Surfer is investigating a mysterious planet in deep space, when he also disappears in a "Pop", reappearing in Metropolis, where he finds things are very wrong. It's not just that everyone's afraid of him and calling for a "Superman" to come save them, but his powers don't seem to be working quite right, and when he tries to flee for space, he rams into and shatters some sort of glass barrier.

The Surfer soon finds himself standing outside a miniaturized, "bottled" Metropolis, in what appears to be Superman's Fortress of Solitude...although the fortress seems endless, ever-changing, sentient and...to have a sense of humor...?

Superman eventually figures out what's going on—or at least thinks he does—and he punches out the Super-Skrull while shouting in big red letters, "GAME OVER, IMP!!"

It turns out he's got the wrong alien prankster though, as the Super-Skrull was really the Impossible Man in disguise, not Mxyzptlk. Impossible Man then explains the situation to Superman: He ran into Mr. Mxyzptlk (who he continually refers to as "Mixed Pickles") in one of the "dimensional interfaces" that he travels through when popping. They hit it off, and came up with a challenge of sorts, where they would swap playmates with one another. 

Mxy doesn't play entirely fair, however, leading to he and Impossible Man battling one another in a fun four-page sequence where they each take on the appearances of heroes from their respective universes, only color-coded, so that green and purple Marvel characters fight orange and purple DC characters. This gives us a rapid succession of strange panels like Thanos punching out Plastic Man and Wonder Woman blocking Wolverine's claws with her bracelets and so on.

Eventually, thanks to the Impossible Man's trickery and some similar quick-thinking from our heroes, all four end up in the same place at the same time, and Mxy is prevailed upon to join his powers with the Impossible Man's and put the heroes back in their home universes.

This is, by the way, another crossover in which the DC and Marvel characters are explicitly denizens of two separate universes, their crossover only made possible by the villains' extraordinary powers piercing the border between the DC Universe and the Marvel Universe. Perhaps also worth mentioning? At one point, Access from DC Versus Marvel is name-dropped by the Impossible Man: "Mixed Pickles and I found out it took both our combined powers to make the switchover between you and the Surfer work," he explains to Superman, "Neither one of us is Access after all."

Overall, it's a rather fun outing, and the best kind of crossover, one that finds similar characters from each publisher and lets them play off of one another, comparing and contrasting them. It's just that in this case, somewhat unusually, it's the antagonists more than the heroes who are most similar.



Next: 1997's Batman & Captain America #1

Review: Emperor Joker

If you're reading this collection of the millennial Superman line story arc of the same name, which comprised two issues of each of the then extant four Superman books, plus an over-sized one-shot, then you already know the basic premise, as the title Emperor Joker and the crown and ermine wearing Bat-villain is right there on the cover.

The story would have been a bit more mysterious as it originally played out, however, as the first four issues merely presented the reader with a world gone mad. A semi-amnesiac Superman, now wearing a black costume and some serious five o'clock shadow, escapes from Arkham Asylum every night, using his scaled-back powers to try to figure out what's gone wrong with the world around him. And every night the leader of the JLA, Bizarro #1—a pure, undiluted, unapologetic version of the Silver Age Bizarro—fights and re-captures Superman, bringing him back to Arkham.

In this world, there's no Lex Luthor, but a bald, Lois Lane is Metropolis' maniacal, super-villain industrialist. Jimmy Olsen is Bizarro #1's pal and sidekick, Gravedigger Lad, enthusiastically tending The Graveyard of Solitude. Supergirl is a nun in a convent that worships Alfred E. Neuman, Superboy flips burgers at a fast food restaurant run by The Guardian and Steel is an asylum for scientists.

The JLA's lunar watchtower is where Bizarro meets with a group of "heroes" who look and sound more like villains—Bounty, Ignition, Scorch, Poisonous Ivy, Skizm and, um, Gorgeous Gilly—while the old Justice League are criminals appearing in strange, cartoonish forms (Martian Manhunter is more like the Martian from the Looney Tunes cartoons, for example).

The Justice League, by either Duncan Rouleau or Carlo Barberi; I'm leaning toward Rouleau.

No one's heard of a Batman, but every night the blood-curdling screams of someone dying horribly can be heard, and Mr. Mxyzptlk is somehow mixed-up in all of it, although he's not responsible.

The only real clue as to what the hell was going on for the four-issue prologue were the covers, which featured various members of the Superman family and various villains of the story arc in a playing card design, echoing that of the cover of the collection.

That and, of course, the fact that Superman finds himself incarcerated in Arkham, I suppose.

What the hell is going on is this: Mr Mxyzptlk had the bright idea to recruit The Joker to help him mess with Superman, intending only to grant him a tiny fraction of his Fifth Dimensional magic powers, but accidentally giving him all but a tiny fraction, so that The Joker was able to reshape the entire universe as he saw fit, with only a few tiny flaws in his now omnipotent mastery of the universe (Like the fact that Mxyzptlk is still around to offer exposition, that Superman has an indomitable will and the ability to inspire those around him and that The Joker just can't bring himself to do away with Batman, choosing instead to have him horribly killed every night...and then resurrected to wash, rinse and repeat).

I returned to the storyline just recently, inspired to revisit some previous Joker vs. The DC Universe storylines by my reading of the recent The Joker: The Death of The Family collection. It holds up pretty well, but, like all such story arcs involving so many of the always-moving pieces of a Big Two superhero universe, it's very much a product of its time, reflective of rather particular versions of the many characters (versions that have gone through a good half-dozen changes in the 13 years since it was originally published serially) and of the particular talents and publishing strategy of the DC Comics of the time.

Ed McGuinness, a quintessential Superman artist, able to rather seamlessly fuse modern, stylistic sensibilities with the stripped-down, simple designs of the Superman characters, and a real master at drawing big, beefy looking characters that nevertheless seem to bounce, float and fly weightlessly, draws the opening chapter and a later 22-page chunk of the story, as well as providing five of the nine  covers.

As this was a story that ran "triangle"-style through the Superman books and in a special, there are an awful lot of artists involved, with Mike Miller, Kano and Doug Mahnke handling the bulk of the non-McGuinness pencils, and Duncan Rouleau, Todd Nauck, Carlo Barberi and Scott McDaniel pitching in as well. It's a wide variety of artists, but it's not too hard to see them all bunched rather close together on the spectrum of cartoony, manga-influenced superhero art, with Mahnke's more realistic style being the greatest outlier—although it's worth remembers that Mahnke is a pretty consumate drawer of superhero comedy, as he's demonstrated in the short-lived Major Bummer and that Hitman/Lobo one-shot, and he acquits himself nicely here.

The writers involved were those of teh Superman line at the time: Jeph Loeb, Joe Kelly, J.M. DeMatteis and Mark Schultz.  The style of the scripting, not unlike the style of the art, shifts widely from chapter to chapter, but this being the "graphic novel" about a madman given the power to warp any and every aspect of reality to suit his whim, that's hardly the drawback it would have been in other works.

This Joker, like that in Last Laugh (and unlike the one in Death of The Family), is presented as a dark cartoon character, always making jokes and, indeed, here making the world one full of his jokes, and the sense of humor on display tends to feel pretty flat and forced, seeing that it is forced, the various writers all trying to write funny. Or, more specifically, Joker funny. As far as humor goes, it seems to work best where Bizarro is concerned, as the opposite talk with ever-shifting rules is such a perfect comic book gag, akin to the backwards spells of Zatanna or, more appropriate here, Mxyzptlk's return trip spell.

Ed McGuinness, obviously.

Mahnke's artwork brings much of the humor that is here to the fore too, whether it's really going to town filling in backgrounds with his idea of "crazy" imagery (which is a lot more twisted under his more realistic style than in that of the others)...

...or the manical expression on Bizarro's face...

or the wide-eyed surprise on that of our hero...

As a superhero story, I suspect this might have rather sharply divided readers at the time, as it so prominently includes two aspects of the Superman mythos that some readers seem to be somewhat embarrassed by—Mxy and Bizarro—and, hell, even some DC creators seem embarrassed by them. Note chief creative officer Geoff Johns' repeated attempts to present us with a scary version of the backwards-Superman, like the monster threatening a school bus full of children in the opening arc of  his short Action Comics run, or the brutal killer version that beat The Human Bomb to death with his bare hands in Infinite Crisis #1, or the Frankenstein-like, New 52 version currently receiving an origin in the pages of Forever Evil (On the other hand, Johns did do a pretty fun story with Eric Powell in "Escape From Bizarro World," in which he presented the more traditional version of the character).

As for me, those are my two favorite Superman adversaries.

The day is eventually, ultimately saved, in a scene that would be echoed in Paul Cornell's Action Comics story arc "The Black Ring" a decade or so later, with Superman facing a Joker with the god-like powers to do almost anything, and the hero managing to exploit that single weakness, allowing the villain to defeat himself (In "Black Ring," of course, it was an omnipotent Luthor who was facing Superman at the story's climax, rather than the omnipotent Joker).

What's impressive about it is the way the writers start with Superman and then draw a circular, spinning, curlycue-ing line out from that point, until their story isn't just one of Superman fighting a Batman villain, but a story that involves all of Metropolis, all of the world, all of the DC Universe (By story's end, "The Quintessence," Darkseid and The Spectre are also involved, in addition to all of the heroes and villains and supporting characters already mentioned. Oh, and there are even some cameos like those in the panel below).

See Pandora? Swamp Thing was part of  the DC Universe as late as 2000.

While the New 52 ultimately wiped this and these versions of all the characters out of continuity, the story was also noteworthy for a time in presenting the origin of the post-Crisis Bizarro that lasted the longest and most resembled the pre-Crisis Bizarro (prior to this, the in-continuity Bizarros were merely short-lived, failed cloning experiments conducted by Luthor) and for adding a few new minor characters to the DCU, in Ignition (who would play a role in a future Superman storyline) and Scorch (who would be involved in both future Superman stories and a significant portion of Joe Kelly's JLA run, when she dates Martian Manhunter, helps him overcome his aversion to flame, and accidentally unleashes Fernus).

It was at least well-liked enough to generate this trade collection, and to have inspired an episode of The Batman: The Brave and The Bold, in which The Joker gets 5D imp Bat-Mite's powers and uses them to kill Batman over and over, albeit it in more cartoon friendly ways. That is, nothing as grisly as the scene in this story in which Batman is eaten alive by vultures, tastefully shown just off-panel. It's actually kind of strange to see the restraint in scenes like this...

Kano

...given all the gore of the DCU of just a few years later.

There's even a scene where Jimmy Olsen apparently kills "Krypto" (Superman in the form of an ordinary dog that looks like Krypto) with a shovel, that not only happened off-panel (we don't see the shovel strike the dog, just the sound of the shovel hitting the ground), but then it's edited in a way that doesn't really make any sense, as if DC were trying to soften the act of killing a dog with a shovel.

I actually can't really make out what happened:

The falling fire hydrant seems to imply The Joker smooshed Superman-as-Krypto with his magic powers, but the dialogue refers only to Jimmy killing Superman-as-Krypto.

But back to the book at hand: Not bad, and a great example of Superman as the center of the DC Universe, in addition to being its greatest hero.

You know you've been writing about comics too long when

you no longer even need to double check the spelling of Mr. Mxyzptlk's name.

Mr. Mxyzptlk:

Meanwhile...

Here’s a completely accurate one-panel, no-word review of Kazuo Umezu’s Reptilia:


Would you prefer a review with more words? Well then, you should check out this week’s Las Vegas Weekly comics column—it’s chockfull of words about Reptilia.



Meanwhile, elsewhere in the blogosphere…





Grim and gritty, or just grim and shitty?: Over at When Will The Hurting Stop, Tim O’Neil makes fun of what must be the stupidest thing I’ve seen in my weekly in-shop flip-throughs of Countdown. Putting aside my knee-jerk nerd reaction (But Mxyzptlk is a fifth-dimensional being! How can a third dimensional being like Prime hurt him? And why how does Mxy vomit? Does he even eat food? Or have a digestive system?), what’s really galling about this scene isn’t merely the usual ludicrous darkening of DC’s superhero universe, but the target of that darkening on display here.

I mean, Mr. Mxyzptlk is perhaps the single silliest, goofiest concept ever attached to Superman, a character whose history is bursting at the seams with silly, goofy concepts. While the ‘80s reboot saw the culling of a lot of that Silver Age silliness—the various super pets, his cousin from Krypton, Jimmy Olsen’s total awesomeness—Mxy survived, the least plausible, least realistic element of modern Superman comics.

From the outside looking in, the character is a symbolic representation of everything that’s lighthearted, fun, funny and childlike in the Superman mythos.

So of course he’s chained, beaten, tortured and scarred in the pages of Countdown.

I’ve always assumed it was unintentional that so many of the characters symbolic of fun in the DC line have been raped, killed and tortured in the last few years, that the same relative unpopularity of the characters that allowed them to be made into fun or funny characters also made them disposable (That is, you can get away with a lot more in your depiction of Blue Beetle than you can Batman). But it’s only been a matter of months since they buried Impulse, and a few weeks since they slaughtered everyone in that Teen Titans special, and now they’ve got their mischeivous fifth-dimensional imp shirtless, shackled and puking his guts up.

Surely at some point the thought must have crossed someone’s mind that eventually this is going to start looking like a conscious campaign to pervert everything fun left in the fictional universe.




Wonderful!: If you haven’t already, be sure to check out Project Rooftop for a slew of Wonder Woman costume redesigns by some very talented folks, with responses from the usual commentators, plus special guest commentators, like current Wonder Woman writer Gail Simone.

Long time readers know Wonder Woman is a popular subject of conversation here at EDILW, and I think her costume is something pretty problematic in general.

That thing is constantly being tweaked along a rather small spectrum of changes (with only mod “New” Wonder Woman and biker shorts-and-bra Wonder Woman really breaking out of that spectrum), many of them so subtle the artists paid to draw her don’t always take note (The shape of her belt, the shape of the design on her bodice, the cut of her boots, etc).

The result is that Wonder Woman’s costume is constantly being messed with, but never really changes much.

What really struck me while looking through the designs on Project Rooftop (I posted Maris Wicks’ at the top there; I love the invisible horse, and the look on her Wondy’s face as she rides it; a Wicks Wonder Girl one-shot from Earth-Justice Riders would be aces, wouldn’t it?), were the comments like, “This would be good for Donna Troy or Wonder Girl, but looks a little young for Wonder Woman.”

You know, Donna Troy and Wonder Girl have had a succession of some truly godawful costumes. While Wonder Girl finally has a decent one (the jeans and Silver Age Wonder Girl top look), Donna’s still wearing an extremely uncomfortable mixture of her Perez red leotard re-colored to resemble a night sky.

Isn’t it weird that there are all these great designs for Wonder Woman costumes literally just lying around the Internet, and DC dresses their gals as they do? It seems like a real shame.

Also, it’s interesting how much enthusiasm there is for the characters, by so many very talented artists, ones so passionate about the characters that they put the necessary thought and time into creating these costumes, and it’s being spurred on by a third party. Wouldn’t it be nice to see DC try to harness the energy of these sorts of events somehow? Like, by hosting their own contests, with the winner getting to draw a Wonder Woman back-up story or something, or even just publishing a book full of pin-ups and costume designs? I don’t know, I’d buy a book full of pages of Project Rooftop redesigns of DC hero costumes, but maybe there isn’t a very big market for it.

Or would DC actually getting involved, making something like this “official,” just kind of ruin the spirit of it?

I don’t know, it’s just kinda odd that there’s so much interest in and excitement about Wonder Woman in the world—as evidenced here, and in the recent Wonder Woman Day—but there seems to be so much less interest and excitement about her within DC’s line of comic books, in which Wonder Woman has been bad to unreadable for the last few years, and spin-offs featuring her and her supporting cast have generally been much, much worse (Amazons Attack, Wonder Girl, JLoA, Teen Titans, Countdown etc).

Oh, but back to Wonder Woman costume design, if DC actually took on one of these for the “official” Wonder Woman costume, I’d go with Daniel Krall’s:


It’s really a nice mix of the costume in the original Golden Age book (still the best Wonder Woman comics) with the interest in mythology that has become increasingly important in post-Crisis Wonder Woman comics.

In addition to those posted at Project Rooftop’s page, the runners-up have all been posted here. Check ‘em out.





This is why comic book characters should always just say “@#$%!”when they swear: Comic Book Resources’ critic Hannibal Tabu kinda sorta almost starts an interesting conversation in this week’s “Buy Pile” column, regarding usage of the “N-word” in comics, using white creators Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s usage of it in The Boys to bring comics into the traditional dialogue of who gets to say it in popular entertainment, whether keeping it, um, taboo grants it too much power, and so on. Tabu gets into it a bit deeper at his myspace blog, where he can be a bit freer in discussing swear words.

Tucker Stone, whose caustic commentary makes his “Comics of the Weak” reviews among the most fun to read each week, obliquely makes fun of where Tabu draws the line in his own review of the last issue of The Boys:



You know, because a comic that doesn't have respect for common decency, contains graphic violence, sex and language, satirizes every aspect of mainstream comics including dead creators, ridicules American shame regarding hetero-,homo-, and ear canal sex, should somehow know better than to use a racial epithet. Cut a guy’s face off, put it on a pizza, but God forbid you drop an n-bomb. That's Across The Line.



As a white guy, these kinds of conversations can be pretty awkward to enter into, particularly when it’s started by someone who says that white fiction writers can’t put the word in the mouths of fictional black characters. (Can we talk about talking about it, then?).

I think Tabu’s got a damn good point, and I know Quentin Tarantino’s liberal usage of it in his films always rings false and seems in particularly poor taste to me, but I haven’t given usage of the “N-word” by comic book writers the same sort of thought I’ve given its usage in other media, like film and music (And I think I’ve heard it several billion times in music at this point in my life, almost exclusively by black performers, with the sole exception of Patti Smith’s Rock ‘n Roll Nigger, and covers of the same).

Perhaps that’s because it comes up less often in comics than in other media, or perhaps it’s because fewer people read comics than watch movies or listen to rap music, and thus there are fewer people pontificating on the opinion pages and cable punditry shows on the language used in comics.

At the moment, I’m kind of having a hard time thinking of instances of it being used in comics, actually. Tabu mentions Brian K. Vaughan using it in Y: The Last Man but I don’t remember it, nor do I remember it being used in Ennis’ Punisher arc “Kitchen Irish,” which Tabu also mentions (What sticks with me most about that story was the amount of violence—there was a dude whose job was to saw people into small pieces—and Indictment #26 of the religious/ethnic violence in Ireland from Ennis).

I’m pretty sure it was used in Dock Walloper #1, by a racist character in a period piece set in the early part of last century, but which was also written by a coupla white guys (I think; one interesting thing about comics is that so many of the creators are just names, and often times there’s no way of telling what race the people who make them actually are; for example, I have no idea if Jimmy Palmiotti, who wrote Dock Walloper with white guy Ed Burns, is black or white or neither).

Did James Sturm use it in his baseball story at the end of James Sturm’s God, Gold and Golems? I think he might have had an angry member of the crowd use it in reference to the big, black guy who later plays the golem, but, again, I don’t recall.

As a critic, I’m not sure it’s responsible to publicly say something like, “I’ll never review another comic by this writer, because he did something in his story I find morally repugnant.” (Actually, Tabu said, “This column is officially done with the work of Garth Ennis.”) But then, the field of comics criticism is a little different than, say, literary criticism or film criticism, in that the space between professional, semi-professional and amateur critics is so much smaller, and it’s so much easier to become a critic (Basically, anyone with an Internet connection can become a critic, and reach roughly the same audience; there’s relatively little in the way of print criticism). Some of the better comics critics may or may not get paid for what they write (i.e. be “professionals” in the traditional sense) or not get paid very much, or paid less than critics who aren’t quite as astute. (For example, I’m not sure how much Tom Spurgeon makes for the work he does, but he seems a much better comics critic than those who write for, say, Entertainment Weekly or The Onion’s A.V. Club, who most certainly are “professional” in the traditional sense; likewise, pretty much everyone at TheSavageCritics.com is a better critic than pretty much everyone at Wizard, but the former get a share of donations, as I understand it, while the latter get some sort of paycheck).

The weird thing about Tabu’s protest is that due to the specific nature of his column, the fact that he reads everything for free, and only buys a few of the books, with those being bought constituting the designation of what’s best, there’s no real economic component to a boycott of Ennis’ future work (I should probably here note that I read Tabu’s column every Thursday morning, and kinda like the set-up; if nothing else, it’s a unique way of rating comics). In fact, if “The Buy Pile” just completely ignores The Boys, it may prove more helpful to the book; a negative review a month is probably less helpful than no review at all, you know?

Finally, as someone notes in a response on Tabu’s myspace entry, Tabu himself noted that he knows lots of black folks who use the word regularly (including his significant other), which seems to indicate that Ennis having a black character use it in casual conversation is simply observant, naturalistic writing, not the same as Ennis himself using it to describe black folks.

As for Ennis’ usage of the word in The Boys, I can’t say how appropriate or inappropriate it actually is, as I lost interest in and dropped the series a long time ago, and am just going off the one panel Tabu posted and what he had to say about the book.

I did read enough issues—the first four, maybe?—to understand that it’s a series devoted to trying to be as outrageous as possible, so the presence of the “N-word” doesn’t seem out of place there, and if Ennis is simply putting it in the mouth of a black character using it in casual conversation, it doesn’t strike me as offensive, particularly in relation to all the other stuff going on in that book, some of which Stone alluded to in his review.

So I don’t know—is this just the same old debate we’ve seen over movies, music and daily conversation, with the same old questions? Who can say it? When can they say it? Is it better to say it a lot and rob it of its power, or never ever say it at the risk of keeping it powerful? Or is there anything specific to comics as a medium that bring a fresh angle to the discussion? Or to criticism, of comics or otherwise, that brings a fresh angle?

I don’t know. Like I said, Tabu almost kinda sorta started the conversation, but not really, so I’m not sure where we can go from here anyway. Personally, I don’t see anything comics-specific about the debate, but if anyone does, I’d be very interested to hear about it.

Hoppy Easter from Hoppy The Marvel Bunny

Let's talk about Hoppy The Marvel Bunny, who is billed on his comic book as the "World's Mightiest Bunny."

It's true enough, of course, and it makes for a good boast, at least until you stop and think about it. He's still a bunny, after all.

Like, I might be the "World's Mightiest Guy Named J. Caleb Mozzocco," but that doesn't mean most 13-year-old girls couldn't defeat me in a round of arm-wrestling, a bench-pressing contest or hand-to-hand combat.

Of course, if you're a super-powered rabbit, there are worse ways to describe your physical prowess than "World's Mightiest Bunny!"



You could always go with "World's Mightiest Cottontail!"

I love all these old Hoppy covers, and would love to read the contents, although I doubt there's much chance of a Hoppy The Marvel Bunny Archive Edition in the near future. It's not just that I think animal versions of human superheroes are inherently interesting (although I did by that recent abominable JMS-written Spider-Ham special), but the artwork looks fantastic, and well, Hoppy just looks like such a total maniac, with his huge glassy-eyes and fixed, open-mouthed grin, that I'd really like to see just how insane his adventures are.

Heck, even the thugs he fights look like lunatics. Check out that giraffe firing on him in the cover above. The giraffe doesn't show any of the anger, fear or general consternation that you can read on the faces of the thugs that fire bullets at Superman or Captain Marvel. In fact, the giraffe seems to be just as overjoyed to find a bullet-proof bunny and be firing at it as Hoppy is to be bullet-proof and getting fired upon. Plus, there's this...



Thrill-chuckling! You don't see many comic books that promise honest-to-God thrill-chuckling inside.

Now, what the heck is "thrill-chuckling," and is it a good thing to have in a comic book?

Well, I'm sure it must be, since it's contained in a comic book about a barrel-chested rabbit who dresses like Captain Marvel and who battle joyous giraffes. As regular EDILW readers have probably noticed by now, I love Captain Marvel and his family of suporting characters and antagonists. It's always bugged me when people dismiss Captain Marvel as a Superman knock-off (which also describes ever single superhero from Batman on) or as too silly and childish for today's more sophisticated comics medium (with "sophisticated" usually meaning darker and more violent rather than, um, actually sophisticated).

I suppose that elements like an evil worm in coke-bottle glasses and a rabbit version of himself are among the things that Marvel haters have in mind when they say Cap's just too darn childish and retro, but, personally, I don't see them as any more ridiculous than, say, an evil imp in a bowler hat or a dog version of Superman. And that caped strongman has three ongoing titles, a JLA membership card and a team-up title with Batman.

Besides, it's not like Hoppy the Marvel Bunny existed in the same fictional universe as Captain Marvel—He lived in Funny Animal Land, which is either another planet or another dimension/Earth from the one Captain Marvel lived on, depending on what point of history we're talking about (At some points, Hoppy could read Captain Marvel comics). Hoppy was created in 1942 in Funny Animal #1 before earning his own eponymous title, where he was mild-mannered rabbit named Hoppy, who could transform into Captain Marvel Bunny by saying "Shazam!" and gaining the powers of Salamander, Hogules, Antlers, Zebreus, Abalone and Monkury (Oh come on, that's not any sillier than Winick's millions-of-Zeuses thing, is it?).





Jerry Ordway has written the only real post-Crisis, in-continuity story featuring Hoppy, in the above Power of Shazam! #29. At a birthday party, Billy Batson falls into a magician's hat, transforming into Captain Marvel as he goes down. His magic lightining is shared with one of the denizens of the funny animal land he finds himself in, however, which transforms a talking rabbit there into the Marvel bunny. After their adventure, Billy wakes up, and we're not sure if it was all a dream or not, which isn't a bad way to handle such things as diminutive interdimensional beings dressed like modern DCU superheroes.

I imagine this will probably remain the last Hoppy story for quite a while too, despite the existence of a Hoppy DC Direct action figure. While Jeff Smith would no doubt do the concept justice, I doubt he'll have time to get to Hoppy in his Monster Society of Evil miniseries (It's half over already, and he hasn't even gotten to Captain Marvel Jr yet). And given Judd Winick's mishandling of the Marvel Family on a conceptual level, I shudder to think what he might do with a funny animals superhero.

But who knows, DC has given Detective Chimp a one-shot and recently announced a new Captain Carrot series, so anything's possible, right?

In the mean time, we'll just have to settle for this tale of Superman, Captain Marvel and Hoppy the Marvel Bunny battling the evil alliance of King Kull, Mr. Mxyptlk and Mr. Mind (in an adorable little spaceship), over at Scans_Daily. I hope that makes it into a future volume of Showcase Presents: Shazam!.





Bonus rabbit strip from Scans_Daily: Green Lantern Alan Scott vs. a bunch of rabbits.







The Reason for the Season: Sorry about all the rabbits this Easter weekend. I know that, despite their ubiquity in modern American society this time of the year, they're not the real reason a lot of people celebrate the holiday. This guy is. So, in the interest of equal representation of Easter protagonists in comic books here on EDILW, here are some comic book versions of Jesus. Click to embiggen: