PROLOGUE:

DC, you ____ing b______s!

NOW ON TO THE MAIN EVENT:

It has been said that, if the entire population of China was to walk in front of you nine abreast, the procession would never end due to the rate of birth. Well, if the readers of DC Comics--and any person who loves decent comics in general--were to somehow form themselves into an orderly queue to deliver a kick in the balls to Dan Didio, James Robinson, and anybody else involved in the production of the just-concluded Cry for Justice miniseries, that line would also never end because they would keep lining up for more kicking, and keep on lining up until their feet were eroded down to stumps, and then they'd have corrective surgery and get new titanium feet just so they could keep on kicking.
Why?
Justice League: Cry for Justice is a 7 issue miniseries made to lead into an upcoming crossover event. It was written by James Robinson, who made his mark writing Starman during the 1990s, a run that brought acclaim from readers and critics alike, and has since made it onto many "best of" comics lists. Robinson then proceeded to fritter away all the goodwill he gained from this until it reached nil with Cry for Justice.
The series started out a as being simply reviled, a relic of the Dark Age, with overblown dialogue and actions and cliched grimdark storytelling. The main villain was Prometheus. Prometheus started out as one of the greatest threats the DC heroes had ever faced right off the bat. Subsequent appearances, however, made him less and less threatening... until it was revealed that this was an impostor, and the original, hypercompetent Prometheus had been imprisoned. He was reintroduced to the DCU in an impressive special issue of Faces of Evil. The buildup then and throughout his appearance in Cry for Justice was intense.
Then he just got killed quite easily, but not before destroying a city, offing several minor heroes, and capping it all off by killing Lian Harper.
Who?
Before I continue, let me state that DC has absolutely no idea how to deal with child characters. Practically the only child ever allowed to age and reach teenagerhood is Robin, or rather the three individuals who took up the Robin mantle as children and grew out of it (Dick Grayson as Nightwing, Jason Todd as Red Hood [another snafu, but we won't get into that here], and Tim Drake as Red Robin). Yes, three. And there's currently a fourth Robin, Damian Wayne. Formulaic much?
Anyway, the only time this rule was excepted was in Young Justice, a series about a team of underaged superheroes. It was completely AWESOME, and I'd show you pictorial evidence of this but scans of the series are hard to come by ever since writer Peter David pissed off many fans by complaining about too much of his work being shared online, leading to one of the dreaded Inernet Backdrafts. (Despite it being one of the very few positive-attitude, family-friendly mainstream comic books in recent years, YJ was canceled so that some members could reform the Teen Titans, via the "Graduation" storyline, which was bad but nowhere near as bad as CfJ.)
Back on topic. Quick history of Lian Harper: daughter of the hero Roy Harper, a.k.a. Speedy a.k.a. Arsenal a.k.a. Red Arrow, and the villainess Cheshire. Made her debut in New Teen Titans #21 back in 1986 (with red hair even though it's been black in every other appearance, but let's not hold that against her). Grew up into toddlerhood and childhood in her father's home. Friends with some of the DCU's heaviest hitters.

Cute as a button

and twice as awesome.

She also--
Whut.

WHUT.
That, my friends, is what was revealed in Cry for Justice #7 yesterday.
The first intimations of impending disaster were revealed on the Titanstower blog, which found disturbing implications in the dialogue of an issue set after CfJ. Their suspicions, sadly, have been proven correct. How can this possible be a good thing to do, DC? How??
It's Lian Harper! Lian freaking Harper! She was sweet and funny and adorable and she was just an innocent little girl, you shmucks! How dare you, James Robinson? How dare you, Dan Didio? This is vile. This is nauseating. I would say that this is "everything wrong in comics today", except this is worse. You knocked off this cute little girl who had inoffensively been a cute little girl for 24 years--longer than I have been alive--and the apple of her father's eye, loved by all! Why? Why??
"Character development"? You think Lian's death was required for character development? Let me tell you, I can think off the top of my head ten dozen ways to give a character development, and, get this, not one of them involves the death of a little girl! It's nothing more than a cheap trick, a shock for the sake of no more than shock value, a revolting offense against all modicum of good taste.
Sometimes bad things happen to good people? Bad stuff happens in the real world? Guess what! I don't read comic books about aliens from other planets and millionaire vigilantes and alternate dimensions for realism! It's escapism! How hard can this possibly be to understand? Comic books are (meant to be) one of the best sources for fun escapism ever created! I want tragedy, I'll go read Shakespeare or something! I'm not saying comic books ought to be devoid of death and disease, but KILLING LIAN HARPER--?
NO.
Remember when I metioned Internet Backdrafts earlier? This one has set off the Mother Of All Internet Backdrafts, at least in the part of it that concerns itself with comics. I have not had an active online presence for very long, but I doubt there's been much like it in the history of ever--no single event immediately incurring such wrath. (Except "One More Day".) I mean, other series like Ultimatum or Countdown have been hated for their permeating stupidity, and issues like the way Stephanie Brown's death and legacy were handled became a byword for incompetence, sure, but this takes the issue of quality, throws in callous offensiveness, and drags the series beyond So Bad It's Good, beyond So Bad It's Horrible, beyond So Horrible It's ____, and into some uncharted realm of awfulness where, by some horrible quirk, it practically circles around to become a masterpiece.
As one internet commentator has put it, DC has gone from women in refrigerators (trope namer Alex DeWitt) to raped women in refrigerators (Sue Dibny) to girls in refrigerators (Lian). What's next, RAPED GIRLS in refrigerators? Wait, don't answer that. I don't want to give Mr. Didio any ideas. In fact, all this made is even odder by the fact that Didio is supposedly moving DC into a "newer, brighter" mode with the "Brightest Day" event set to follow the awesome ongoing "Blackest Night" crossover. This is brighter and happier? This plumbs new depths of depravity, and to what end? To provide a cheap shock, to propel characters into more moneymaking miniseries. What characters? Roy Harper and her grandfather, Green Arrow.
.
Whut.Yes, her grandfather. He's the one who killed the mighty Prometheus (with an arrow, through his armor. How the hell does that make sense?), he's the one who went out and avenged her death. What the...?! Green Arrow was never this close to his granddaughter! He was never even that close to her father! In fact, it's a misnomer to term him her grandfather, as he never even formally adopted Roy Harper. And when he found out he'd become a heroin addict, he threw him out onto the streets. Way to parent, Ollie! Recently, however, DC has perplexingly been ignoring all this, making Roy willingly go into the "family business" by changing his alias and costume to resembles Green Arrow's and encouraging the latter when he began teaching Lian archery despite the fact that he'd previously said that he didn't want her to be a part of his dangerous world. Tough luck there, Roy! Hey, guess what else? Now you've actually lost all character depth you had when Lian was around and are about to become a one-note "hero" fueled by angst and vengeance!
(Roy also lost an arm in this miniseries but even that was not so facepalmingly awful, not even when they milked that particular development beyond all its worth in subsequent cover imagery and planned storylines.)
Why do such revolting stories still get published? We can't just blame the writers and editors--a not-insignificant portion of fans actually like this type of drivel. As of this writing, 46% of the voters on a Newsarama poll have rated this issue 2 out of 4 stars or higher, with over 250 fans giving it the highest ranking. Money talks, bull____ gets printed, and all in all I have to say is this is very lousy time to be a comic book fan.
Capping this all off, Lian Harper may have been unique in that readers saw her growing up from the sidelines from birth to... um, whatever age she had reached. 6? 10? Comic book ages are left deliberately ambiguous, which can be a pain. But the point is, she was the first. Let's take a look at some other kids born to DC characters:
*Aquaman's son Arthur, Jr.. Asphyxiated in infancy.
*Tempest's son Cerdian. Killed along with his mother off-panel, age about 1.
*Donna Troy's son Robert. Killed in a car crash, age about 1.
*Catwoman's daughter Helena. Taken away soon after birth, location unknown--and perhaps, seeing this list, that's all for the better. Like I said before, DC has no idea how to deal with children, or at the very least the concept of them aging and developing into something--gasp!--new. The exceptions to the rule, the underage Young Justice members, were introduced when they were already almost teenagers; tellingly, the only one without superpowers was... Robin (version tim.drake), who as I've pointed has character immunity (except for Jason Todd, sort of, but we won't get into that here either) (EDIT: Arrowette [another archer!] had no superpowers either; she just retired and dropped off the radar completely except for the Wonder Girl mini a few years back). Apparently you need abnormal abilities if you expect to reach maturity in the DCU.
Lian Harper found this out the hard way.
RIP.

EPILOGUE:

____ you, you b______s!

Labels: rant

This was actually the first time I exploded over the Internet, but the anniversary is later than the last one--November 8th, to be exact, two years ago. No one specific incident triggered it, but the anger built up gradually, mainly centered around the point raised in the last paragraph. But it's all from the heart.

"I come from a small country that has a population that is smaller than New York City's, and every single day we are under attack. Rockets, arm-smuggling, kidnappings. And who is to blame for all this? Why, WE are, of course.

Never mind that there never was any such thing as a 'Palestinian'. Never mind that the term was invented in the 1960s and based on the ancient Roman name for Israel. Never mind that they have always rebuffed offers of statehood in favor of bloodbaths. Somehow, according to the rest of the world, we are the ones at fault here.

Even according to about half of us we're at fault. Until 1993, Israel's responses to terror was unequivocal and exacting. Entebbe, the Yom Kippur War, the Six-Day War. We always knew that the only good terrorist was a dead terrorist. Come '93 and--well, what do you know! Turns out those bigoted creeps from beyond the Green Line are actually a bunch of really swell guys, 'freedom fighters' all, just sticking up for the poor 'little guys' and desperate for a peaceful end to this COMPLETELY unwanted conflict. Terrorist? No, no, Yasser Arafat was never a terrorist! He was a freedom fighter, and now he's a pioneer of independence. (Cue applause track as the Nobel Piss Prizes* are given out.)

BULL****.

Rabin gave them Oslo. Netanyahu gave them Oslo II and Wye and Hebron**. Barak offered 98% of their demands including the Temple Mount. Sharon pulled out of Gaza and Northern Samaria. And all this can be summed up in the words of our current Prime Minister, Mr. Olmert: 'We are tired of fighting... [W]e are tired of winning.' None of this has been enough for the Arabs. They want Jewish blood, and failing that, they want their land. It's not OUR land, you understand. It never HAS been. And to get their point across, they are destroying all the Jewish antiquities they can find (including those on the Temple Mount itself), and educating their children that our presence here dates back only to the Ottoman Empire--that is, when they're not teaching math using equations like, 'If 1 bomb kills 3 Jews, and you kill 1/2 of a group of 12 Jews, how many bombs did you use?'

But the French and the Germans and the Irish and the Italians and the Russians and the Chinese and the Libyans and the Dis-United Nations say we mustn't grumble, because all of the Palestinians' demands are true and require honoring. And if they kidnap us and kill us and maim us, we still mustn't grumble, because they are merely freedom fighters, doing what all peaceful freedom fighters around the globe do. (Besides, we deserve it, uppity stiff-necked people that we are.) 'Terrorism'? NO, NO, NO! Mustn't use the T-word! Mustn't grumble too loudly else the oil-bearing Arabs might cut off our precious flow! Ahamdenijad [sic]--eh, he's full of hot air, just ignore him. Remember, Hitler was in power for only 12 years, and he didn't reach his goal of killing all of you, right? So all's well, eh? That's right! We're all happy chums now, just so long as you never mean it when you say 'We will not capitulate.'"

* When Arafat was co-awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, one of the committee's members had the guts to resign in protest.
** Various "peace" agreements which, naturally, never panned out.


TODAY'S BOOK: "The Seventh Game: The 35 World Series That Have Gone the Distance", by Barry Levenson ((c) 2004)

TODAY'S WEBSITE: www.zootorah.com Rabbi Nosson Slifkin is one of the leading Jewish lights in the battle to show that science and religion are not irreconcilable. This is his website.

Labels: rant

I don't get mad often. When I do, it's like a flip is switched inside me from "simmering" to "volcanic". While I may not transform into a monster a la The Hulk, I think our mental states are roughly identical during those periods. And, like the Hulk, I try to stay un-angry at all times.
Seriously. You don't want to mess with me when I'm mad.
But sometimes I do get mad, and it's not over something physical I can lash out at with my fists. It's a concept, intangible, that frustrates me and eludes me.
So what do I do? I take my rage to the interwebs via the keyboard.
And let me tell you something: when I get mad physically, I can literally feel myself becoming stronger, faster, and more focused. Only that last part carries over into my Internet rants, but it's a beaut, giving me a "writer's high" I otherwise work very hard at to achieve. Rage, however, makes the words flow.
So far I've only done that twice. This was written exactly one year ago, October 1st 2007, in the Comments section on Metstradamus's blog.

"Anyone who didn't see this coming*, raise your hand.
...
Anyone?

Nah, me neither. The way the Mets have been playing ever since reaching the Seven Games Ahead plateau for the last time, I don't know if I should blame Mota, or Reyes, or Schoeneweis, or Wright, or Sele, or Glavine, or Lo Duca, or Wagner, or Delgado, or Beltran, or Sosa, or Heilman, or Minaya, or Randolph, but I do know this: the Mets did not deserve to play in this postseason.

That's right. You've read it correctly: the 2007 New York Mets did not deserve to play in the postseason.

Had we won the East--what of it? I would PRAY for a quick first-round farewell. HAD we won the World Series, I would not dare do what the fans in St. Louis did last year**, and cheer. I would mutter 'Fluke' and wait for April. They were fourteen games above .500 but that did not matter.

I shall not stop cheering for the New York Mets. I stopped cheering long ago for their 2007 version.

Because this team, as a whole, was so far less than the sum of its parts, it was unbelievable.

Besides when they were playing us, the Phils (whose 2007 roster--particularly Rollins--I shall hate forever, but not their franchise, or even their fans) didn't exactly come charging up San Juan Feliciano Hill***. After the 4-game sweep, they muddled their way back to 7 games behind. After the 3-game sweep, they continued to muddle right 'til the end of the season. The Mets could have swooped in for the kill at any given moment.

They did not.
They could not.

Because they lacked the ability to clinch their way out of a wet paper bag****.

ONE game against the Phillies, at any point in the season, ending up with a 'W' instead of an 'L', would have won for us the division. Any ONE of a billion gajillion excruciating losses all year that we could have turned around, and we still end up in a tie.
The 2007 Mets did not play with the heart, or the will, or the guts of a champion. As Metstradamus so correctly pointed out, a 5-1, 4-2, or even 3-3 run over the last six games was not only feasible, it could have--and indeed would have--won us the division.

The 2007 Mets went 1-5.

I'm not crying. I cried in 2000 (my first year as a fan) and in 2001 and at 5:00 AM local time, sitting in front of an unfeeling computer monitor, in 2006.
I'm not crying in 2007. I'm just resigned.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, all those shots with a sledgehammer to the solar plexus? They weren't capricious bad luck brought on via the baseball gods. They were the 2007 Mets in action. They were a truly bad team. All those billion gajillion excruciating losses were brought on by themselves and no one else.

Incompetence? Maybe. Lack of drive? Probably.

All-around general suckiness? Oh yes, definitely.

Farewell, 2007 Mets. I'm looking forward to meeting the new you in 2008.*****"

* The 2007 Mets blew a seven game lead with 17 to play, losing on the very last day of the season (in embarrassing fashion) to end up one game out of first.
** The 2006 Cardinals beat the Mets in the NLCS and then won the World Series, despite a regular-season record of 82-80.
*** An embarrasing gaffe on my part. Juan Feliciano was an IBL player; Jose Feliciano was a Met. The allusion pun was just too good to pass up.
**** My favorite line.
***** Ha. Ha. Fsckin' HA.


TODAY'S BOOK: "Odds on Miss Seeton", by Heron Carvic ((c) 1975)

TODAY'S WEBSITE: www.cartoonnetwork.com Forget what I said earlier about it. CN has finally figured out how to make their site run normally again.

Labels: baseball, rant