The Age of Drewatu

GREETINGS, MORTAL!

I AM DREWATU THE WATCHER!

I SHALL TELL THE TALE OF AN AGE OF MARVELS

Ahem. Sorry about that. So, yeah, I'm getting ready to embark on the long promised reboot of the Marvel Universe. Finally after long years I will justify my scribbling a beard on Fing Fang Foom, Elektra, and Cyclops in the banner above.

In doing research for this project (subscribing to Marvel Unlimited, digging up my tattered Essential Marvel Saga, etc), I'm starting to get a grasp on the sheer scope of what lies ahead. This looks like it will be much harder than the DC Reboot for a few reasons.

First, I'm not writing to a list of titles. The framework of the 52 allowed me the armature to mold the clay around. I knew I had limited space (52 titles) and certain requirements (# of Bat-books >5) which weirdly gave me more freedom to tweak the setting. No disappearing down a rabbithole of the history of Thanagar or the origins of the Lazarus Pits. I mean, I did do that, but not in any of my blog entries.

Second, the approach I want to take is difficult. I mean, basically what I want to do is come up with the story of the Marvel Universe if Marvel Time did not exist. Obviously, taking a concept named after the setting from the setting is not easy. Marvel Time, that sort of fuzzy flux around the Marvel universe where things happened 'a few years ago' rather than 'in 1962' is a core part of the setting. That's why Marvel avoids all the reboots good ole DC goes through - because characters don't really age and history compacts itself to fit a given timeframe. Look at Spidey, for example, the dude (or his body at least) is currently, what, in his early 20s? Yet he's had how many adventures? How many experiences? Surely much more than could fit into the 7 or 8 years he's been Spider-Man (and that's even accounting for those experiences Brand New Day'd away by the Devil). To pin down events to a given year then move forward would unwind the tapestry holding everything together. If Spider-Man got his powers at the age of 15 in 1962, he'd be 66 today.

Third, the scope of the Marvel Universe is bugnuts insane. Villains range from dudes who use stilts to steal things from second story windows all the way up to godlike aliens who eat planets. Same thing for heroes - you have guys who are good with a bow standing next to gods of myth and thunder. DC gets some of this too, but you never get the same sense that some characters are simply out of their league in a given situation. Call it the Batman Effect, but in DC, any mortal with a certain level of training has a chance to defeat a cosmic conqueror. Maybe their chances are not as good as their pal who just happens to be the Last Son of Krypton, but they're not bad. You can see the Batman Effect play out semi-weekly in Young Justice, a show on the Cartoon Network based around the idea that the overlooked sidekicks are actually the most dangerous heroes. Hell, after catching up on that show over this past snowy winter, it's pretty clear that the most dangerous members of the Young Justice setting are the humans - Artemis, Robin, Sportsmaster, Cheshire, etc (and that's before to even get to Normal People in Power Suits). The closest thing Marvel has to the Batman Effect is Squirrel Girl and her ability to bring down baddies several magnitudes bigger than her is played like a schtick, the exception that proves the rule.

Fourth, the higher up you climb on the Marvel Power Ladder, the more insane things get. Galactus. Celestials. The Living Tribunal. Mephisto. The Elders of the Universe. Beyonders. Eon. The Asgardians. Even Death plays a part. You also have a heaping Celestial-sized handful of super-powerful MacGuffins like the Ultimate Nulifier, Cosmic Cubes, Soul Gems, Infinity Gauntlet, and probably dozens more pieces of junk that were Items of the Week in the 1960s. Getting all these cosmic powers to work together in a logical way has been the work of Marvel writers for decades. While DC spun its wheels in the Silver Age, Marvel kept ramping up the dangers. I mean, Galactus first appeared in 1966. The Living Tribunal in '67. If we keep plotting that trajectory, where the hell are we going to be in 2013?


Still, this looks like it will be a fun project. Marvel's roots are in sci-fi and there's much more of a sense that anything can happen (minor villain constructs a copy of Earth on the other side of the sun? Why not.), a sense that will be magnified once we get to a place where the classic Marvel heroes of yore start to age out of the business. Peter Parker will need to hang up his webslingers at some point, so Ben Reilly will get his chance, ultimately passing the torch to Miles Morales in the modern age.

I know nobody will really see it outside of random mentions on discussion boards (Hi, Space Battles!), but I didn't spend all those years reading Marvel Comics and not learn a little something about courage. But if you did happen to stumble on this site while googling (and I've seen the search terms that bring people here *shiver*), please stick around and enjoy

THE MARVEL AGE OF DREW!

Toddler Reboot: Fireman Sam

So I may have mentioned that I'm a dad. My son is only 2.5 years old, so he's still way to young for comics. I tried (when Mom wasn't looking) to get him started on Marvel's Super Hero Squad, but he didn't take too kindly to Fing Fang Foom or the Hulk. Maybe when he's a bit older. At the very least, he now calls the Jolly Green Giant the Hulk, so the foot is in the door.

He loves cartoons, though, and one cartoon in particular: Fireman Sam. It's set in the Welsh village of Pontypandy and everyone there is suicidal. This probably explains why there are only like eight people in the entire place (despite seeing row after row of houses) - the rest of the population succeeded in offing themselves and those that remain are just too dim to get the job done.

Not for lack of trying, mind you. Norman Price, the red headed son of the owner of the local market, endangers his life and others on a routine basis. He's always getting stuck on top of things (cliffs, towers), in things (fences, burning rooms), on things (doorknobs in said rooms), or at the bottom of things (wells). There's the town handyman, Mike Flood who is pretty clumsy and falls down pits or ends up dangling from roofs with a frequency that's even more disturbing when you consider his love of fireworks and rocketry. There's also a fisherman who gets stranded at sea, a sidekick firefighter who explodes ovens, a bus driver who really needs to pay better attention to the maintenance of his bus, and a handful of kids who just love to hide in underwater caves, under crates, or in burning buildings. Fireman Sam is called upon to rescue them all.

So what I'm saying is, it's a grim place. You think the writers of the show would have run out of emergencies by now, but Sam is actually in its second iteration. The original show was all claymation animated (and was originally all in Welsh) and the new version (the one my son loves) is computer animated.

Which leads me to my reboot, or at very least, my attempt to explain what the hell is going on.

Fireman Sam is dead. He is in Purgatory. The limited cast of characters that populate his limbo are the souls of those he could not rescue. Sam died in the transition between stopmotion animated and computer animation. This explains why the stereotypical Italian restaurant owner is now longer around - as a good Catholic, she ascended to Heaven.

Sam does not realize he is dead. He just goes through the same motions day after day. He will be free when he admits his failures, his sins, and his own death. There is an angel present - Charlie the Fisherman (get it!?). In the show, he's Sam's brother, a brother that was never mentioned in the show's initial run. That he is family in the Purgatory version is important as one of Sam's greatest sins is his refusal to acknowledge his own son, the only other ginger in town, Norman Price.

Norman has no stated dad and his mom, Dilys, has shown herself to be rather forward in her conquest of new lovers (Trevor the Bus Driver). So I imagine on some lonely night, perhaps while Sam was new in town, he and Dilys got it on. Dilys was blackmailing Sam - why else would she insist on calling him over every little thing? All those random visits were not just to "check the smoke detector," there was money exchanged. So when The Great Fire came, Sam took his chance and let Dilys burn. Unfortunately, he let the rest of the town burn as well.

So until he admits what he did, he's trapped, doomed to endlessly rescue the same crew of suicidal shades (they yearn to be free as well) from the hell of his own creation.

I sympathize with Fireman Sam, because until my toddler finds a new obsession, I'm damned as well - doomed to endlessly watch Fireman Sam endlessly rescue the same crew of suicidals.

What If Superman Were Gay?

Like most people who lurk on the fringes of the comics world, I've been following the whole Orson Scott Card Writes Superman debacle for a few weeks now. I'm not sure if anything else needs to be said about it beyond the broad strokes - famous author who actively campaigns to withhold the rights of others gets opportunity to write beloved character, fans of beloved character who (like the character himself) want equal rights for all get mad and promise to withhold support. DC is tone deaf on the issue which causes more consternation leading to the original artist who was paired with controversial author to bow out, delaying the whole comic.

Outside of wanting two people who love each other to be able to legally bind their lives together and not have to worry about being denied visiting their loved ones in a hospital, I don't have much of a horse in this race. I mean, the last time Card wrote comic story featuring a pre-existing character, he turned Iron Man into a big blue brain slug that was just shaped like a person.

Yeah, pass.

But it did get me thinking about what would happen if Superman was gay? This line of thought distracted me for all of ten seconds on the train ride in this morning because, well, it wouldn't change much. Would Superman still rescue people? Yes. Would he still fight intergalactic badguys? Sure. He'd be pretty much the same hero he always was, only instead of smooching Lois, he'd smooch Jimmy.

Hell (H'eL?), you wouldn't even need to change much of his backstory. I mean, he's a person with a secret who grew up in a conservative farm town in Kansas. In Superman's case, that secret is that he's an alien. For a lot of people, that secret is that they are gay, bi, or transgender and feel that they are unable to admit it due to societal pressures. Compared to being an alien, being gay is so far down the list of Things Clark Needs to Worry About (below 'Pa Needs To Watch His Cholesterol,' above 'Warranty on the Tractor is Running Out in Two Years') that he'd probably be out by his senior year just to get Lana off his back.

Would we see a change in Superman's behavior? Maybe. It'd be hard for him to be more of a champion for equality, but then again he is an immigrant and I don't recall him speaking up on those issues as well. He might have been distracted by all the alien-punching, plane catching, and Luthor-thwarting he does.

Because Superman's sexuality is rarely at the forefront, it really doesn't matter where on the Kinsey scale he falls. It's just not important to the character or the stories he appears in. He'd still appear to be the same hero he is now.

I wonder, though, if the same could be said about changing Superman's ethnic appearance or gender? In those cases, you'd have a hero who would physically appear different than what we have now. We'd still have the Kents' upbringing guiding the hero's behavior, giving him/her a sense of right and wrong. The character would do the same things - fight Mogul, throw missiles into the sun, jump tall buildings - and would probably be treated much the same in the world of the comic. Given that the majority of people are okay with a big green guy from Mars flying around, I'm pretty sure they could take a darker skinned Superman. They have no problem with Wonder Woman, so I'm sure Superwoman would get a pass too. In the setting, Superman is Superman is Superwoman is Superman.

No, the big change would come from how the creators and the readers would treat this Alternate Superman. Think about how Wonder Woman is drawn. Think about all the lazy stereotypes applied to minorities in comics. Could the current comics industry pull off a Superman who isn't a white dude?

Yearly Check In

I should really keep up on this blog. I'm reading comics again (but nothing from the New 52) and even will be going to Comic-Con this summer.

My consumption of comics has changed over the year - mostly iPad based ComiXology binges. I still make sure to buy Adventure Time single issues from the Favorite Local, but have started to falter on picking up trades, mainly because I can't remember where I am in a given series.

I listen to a few comic podcasts as well - House to Astonish and Wait, What? mainly. I tried some others, but they didn't stick. I'm not sure why - W,W? is essentially two hours of rambling, but it's two hours I like for some reason. Looking over my podcast pull-list, I see a trend for favoring podcasts featuring "friends with accents who are enthusiastic about a topic" so I guess my fondness rests solely on Graeme McMillan's cheery shoulders.

Anyways, I was pondering doing a Living Marvel Universe type thing where I move through Marvel history and actually have characters age and die and so on, but I realized I'd be stuck when I finished the Bronze Age. Are there any new Marvel characters after, say, 1995? If so, would they be compelling without the Old Classics still kicking around?

My Little PLony

Yeah, yeah, long time, no post. Between the academic semester resuming and my preference for trades over single issues, I've not had much to say about comics.

So instead, here's a digression involving English Premier League Teams and My Little Pony!

Adventure Time!

It's Lovecraft Time!

Well, I figure if they can do it with Fionna and Cake, why not Phin and Zeke? Phin is short of Phineas, of course, and Zeke is Ezekiel, two wholesome Lovecraftian names. Phin and Zeke live in the Eldritch Kingdom where they help out Princess Niggurath by protecting her against the constant incursions by the Nice King, a stuck up fellow with a strange obsession regarding reforming princesses. Occasionally, they hang out with Marzilkael the Wayward Angel (don't let her halo fool you - she's just as wicked as the rest of the bunch) or just wander the Land of Ia searching for that which man was not meant to know.

Tarot Tuesday: The Empress and Emperor

Whoops. I had a nagging suspicion yesterday that I had forgotten something but I just couldn't figure it out.

We're up to the Empress now, who of course is Wonder Woman. Who else could be described as a "daughter of heaven and earth," especially now in the Nu52 where it's been revealed that she's actually Zeus's daughter. I'm not a big fan of that turn of events, by the way, as it takes away one of my favorite aspects of Wonder Woman (that she's essentially a golem) and replaces it with what is pretty much Hercules' backstory. This means we can look forward to a slew of godly daddy issues that were already covered in recent memory by Marvel's Hercules titles. Given that Herc once punched someone into a Hell taken straight from the third panel of The Garden of Earthly Delights to the sound effect 'BOSCH!' I'm not sure Wondy can top that.

Still, in my preferred version, being a clay statue that has had life breathed into it by the gods still satisfies the "daughter of heaven and earth" description. Her outfit even matches - we're talking diadems and stars here, stuff that Wonder Woman has in spades. Despite being the most magical of the Big Three, Wonder Woman traditionally doesn't seem to deal with much magic. Sure, there was Circe, but her magic was pretty much straight out of the "zap you're a pig now" tradition. No real mysteries or mystical understandings, just good old fashioned punching and light bondage.

The Empress is a mother figure, which Wonder Woman, being the First Among Female Superheroes is as well. In post-Silver Age times, Wonder Woman has been an inspirational figure, laying the groundwork for more female superheroes in comics, while her TV version is considered a gay icon. Both the Empress and Wonder Woman are passionate figures, much more prone to action than introspection.


In order to make up for yesterday's slackerdom, let's toss in a bonus card - The Emperor. My iPad woes cost this series its pictorial back-up after all, so why not let loose on the throttle?

The Emperor, the King of the World, is Aquaman.

Aquaman, as ruler of the oceans that cover the majority of the planet, is pretty much the defacto ruler of the world. That he doesn't meddle with surface governments is akin to the USA not meddling with Canada too much. Yeah, we all know you're up there, just keep it down, will ya? Don't make me come up there, Atlantis' Hat. In addition to the sheer size of the oceans, remember also their vital role in the ecology of the Earth. Without the green algae that produce most of our oxygen, we'd be kinda fucked.

The Emperor represents stability. And though we've seen a few different versions of Aquaman over the years, from harpoon-handed-grizzled-warrior to swashbuckling bravo (The Brave and the Bold's version is by far my favorite), there has always been a certain stability to the character:

He's the butt of a lot of jokes.

Aquaman, though he doesn't, will forever suck. Too many standup comedians, animators, and cartoonists have seen to that. Even his recent reboot wasted a lot of time trying to make him look good, which is sort of pathetic in a "yeah, I have a girlfriend. She lives in Canada - you haven't met her" way. Even the Brave and the Bold Aquaman is a comic relief character to a certain extent.

Just as the Empress and Emperor are linked thematically, so are Wonder Woman and Aquaman. Beyond being stuck together in the invisible jet more often than not in Superfriends, both are important members of royal families based in semi-historical (Greek) inspired fantasy monarchies. Even the shambling travesty that was Flashpoint recognized that there was a connection between the two when it promptly set the Atlanteans and Amazons at war. Were I to plan out a Kingdom Come style What-If future of the DC Universe, I'd probably have Diana and Arthur get together long before Diana and Clark. As the other Big Name heroes fade away or leave the planet, it's up to Wonder Woman and Aquaman to take stewardship of the world, to help protect the entire planet even as humanity heads to the stars. Wonder Woman can speak with the animals, Aquaman talks to the fish - who better to watch out for the rest of the Earth that we leave behind?