Shiny, indeed!

I don't care, I'm still free...

Despite Fox' best efforts I watched Firefly in 2002, when it first aired, in its weird anarchic order.  I bought the dvd box set basically as soon as it was released.  I dragged every friend I had to see Serenity in theatres, on multiple occasions.  I own both the regularly and collector's edition of Serenity.  I've read Those Left Behind, and Better Days, and The Shepherd's Tale.  I even know what Inara's secret needle kit was going to be.

So you can only imagine how thrilled I am by this announcement:

Everything Old is New Again

Behold, the cover of World's Finest #12, on sale May 1.

So, that lasted a year; longer than I'd actually expected it to.  And frankly, longer than it deserved to have lasted.  Power Girl's nu52 outfit was brutal, from her weird 70's hair to the bland white onesie to the loss of her boots.  And sadly, they changed her character just as badly.  Here's hoping the return of her old costume heralds a return of her old character!

This Is Why I So Rarely Bother

I wouldn't consider myself a major comics fan, but I've been known to pick up a book or two. Empowered, Transformers, Morning Glories, Power Girl. A few others, here and there. Mostly, though, I don't get drawn into that world too deeply, because the big two so rarely put out the sorts of stories I want to read. Things look good at first, but once you actually get into it everything sort of falls apart spectacularly.

Big Hero 6 is a pretty good example of that.

Shocking, I know, but bare with me.

On the surface, it all looks solid. A kid. A robot. A girl in high-tech armour. A giant monster.  A dude with swords. What more could you ask for out of a Japanese superhero team? And the action starts off pretty well, too. The kid, Hiro, is attacked at school by a trio of supervillains. When the rest of the team arrives to rescue him and defeat the villains, it turns out they were unwitting human pawns, possessed by some mysterious force. Worse, they were just a diversion, a cover for the real criminals, men in suits and ties who slipped into a nearby bank while everyone was distracted and walked out with a mysterious and powerful artifact, one piece from a set of six. With several other pieces already missing, and a past connection between the artifacts and BH6's mysterious commander Furi, the team is dispatched to America to guard the the lab where the last of the artifacts is being studied. What is the danger these artifacts represent? Who sent those three supervillains? Why is the team called Big Hero 6 when it's only made up of five people? All these questions, and more... are never really answer.

BH6 starts off strong, with a good fight scene, some nice teamwork, establishing moments for each of the characters and their abilities, and a solid mystery hook. And then it just absolutely collapses under the weight of its own terrible plotting and a frankly baffling refusal to resolve anything. The miniseries is kind of a perfect snapshot of why I'm so frustrated by mainstream superhero comic books these days. The one thing I will say for it is that it's not hair-pullingly decompressed. In fact, this five-issue miniseries actually finishes (though not resolves, mark) its main plot early enough that it needs to bring in a secondary plot in order to fill out the space. Not that it actually has any connection to the miniseries' overall plot, other than a tenuous geographical one. But that's about it. The supervillains' origin is revealed, but that only raises more questions, on the part of both the characters and the reader. It's flat-out stated that the person orchestrating them (who never even gets a name, nevermind a real motivation or character) must be working for someone else, but who, or to what ends, is never even suggested. The artifacts are maguffins from start to finish. With absolutely no establishment Furi's false eye suddenly gains a villain-defeating ability. And the racial stereotypes, and the sexism...

Honestly, superhero comics are sort of uncomfortable to read these days if you're even the tiniest bit sensitive to things like realistic depictions of non-Americans or fair-minded depictions of women. And BH6 manages to hit just about everything. One of the team's members is Wasabi no Ginger, a sushi chef who can use Qi energy and knows martial arts and constantly wears a headband and a chef's overshirt. He also looks like he's about thirty-five, which isn't a stereotype, but makes his going undercover as a high school student particularly idiotic. And the two young women, GoGo Tomago and Honey Lemon, are just... just...

Look. They're attractive young women with power and confidence, so it's not unthinkable that they would dress in a daring manner. But there's daring, and then there's just having clothes defy physics in order to more completely and totally hyper-sexualize a teenage girl. At one point GoGo is wearing a North American school gym uniform whose shirt, in defiance of all the memories frustrated teenage boys have of those years, the behaviour of fabric under tension and the possibilities of cutting-edge bra technology, manages to cling to both of her breasts. Simultaneously. Separately. That is, up the outside of one breast, down to her ribcage in between, and then back up the inside of the other. Linkara coined the term 'boob-sock' for this sort of thing while reviewing a Catwoman elseworlds, and there's really no better way to put it. These are boob-socks with a neckline and sleeves; actual shirts do not work this way!

One of these women can only be seen by people 18 and older with a valid credit card, and the 

other by any schoolkid with some pocket change.  Care to guess which is which?

And as for Honey Lemon?  Her tendency to go into battle wearing street clothes could almost, almost make sense, given her lack of powered armour and reliance on her deus ex machina-generating magic purse (yes, a woman with a magic purse). Except that towards the end Hiro, a total noncombatant, is given a lightly-armoured combat suit, that in no way restricts his movement and provides at least some small protection, right out of the blue. Making it clearly wasn't laborious, since a second, minor character gets a similar outfit (but she's a girl, so of course hers is pink) at the same time. So why hasn't Honey been wearing any kind of protection at all, why has she been fighting in a pair of incredibly low-cut skintight pants and a bra masquerading as a shirt, given that she's no more invulnerable than any other human on the planet?

Big Hero 6 was a pretty thorough disappointment. Despite a strong start, it just collapses into all of the worst excesses of modern comic books; non-Americans reduced to national stereotypes, attractive young women drawn in the skimpiest, most skin-tight, physics-defying clothing imaginable, a refusal to tie up loose ends and adequately resolve plot threads within a storyline, heroes who will fight each other at the drop of a hat, and superpowered individuals nonsensically sticking it to The Man by breaking the law and interfering with the police when it's completely unnecessary. I'm glad this was just a miniseries, because at least with a finite run there's a hard limit to the amount of fail you can work into it.

Mine? Eh, it Wasn't That Great.

I'm not a huge comic book fan, but there are a few titles I enjoy. I've been a Transformers fan since pretty much day one, and I'm still collecting IDW's current run, though only in TPB form. I've hugely enjoyed Power Girl's most recent solo series, and was greatly upset to learn that she's not a continuing force in the New 52 universe. And then there's manga, like Fullmetal Alchemist and 20^th Century Boys and Mardock Scramble. But I must admit, as far as actual, single-issue comic books go? Well, it's been a while indeed since I picked any of them up from the racks of my local comic shop.

But I was in there the other day, doing a bit of post-Christmas shopping with the lovely Madam Meagan, and a rather striking cover caught my eye. And so, for the first time in I-can't-recall-when, I bought myself a few comic books.

Seriously, what's not to love here?

The big draw? Robotman. I read some of the really old Doom Patrol run, and some of Alan Moore's fantastically deranged series, and Robotman was always the most compelling character. He's a classic, of course; a man given phenomenal power, but at the cost of his humanity. So when I flipped through the first issue of My Greatest Adventure and found out that Cliff Steele is now, not just Robotman, but Robotman, PI (Of Weirdness)? Well, hell, you couldn't sell that to me any better if you tried. And I'm pleased to say that the comics, rather than just coast on that idea, which let's face it is good idea enough for at least a few year's run, managed to add in another delightful storytelling wrinkle. You see, the nanites that make up Cliff Steele's body? They've got Asimov's Three Laws programmed into them. Which is all well and good in terms of making sure they obey Cliff, but directly and subconsciously (and Cliff's mind is the only human they can 'hear'), but they recognise non-Cliff people as being human, too. Imagine being a superhero whose bones and muscles literally will not allow you to harm a human being. Luckilly, at least, he doesn't seem to have the 'or through inaction allow humans to come to harm' commandment, but still. It's kind of a serious restraint, and forces Cliff to be pretty inventive in how he resolves any kind of human-level situation. Giant robot snakes? No problem. A couple dozen brain-controlled people at a diner? Potentially deadly threat.

It's a really interesting inversion.

Leads to a lot of this sort of thing, obviously.

The other two stories in the anthology are good, too. Garbageman's story is likewise pretty classic; a white-collar worker runs afoul of his employers, who are doing things Man Was Not Meant To, and when he Learns Too Much they try to silence him, inadvertently turning him into a hero in the process. The appearance of Batman is well handled, the Dark Knight managing to put in a solid appearance without stealing the show, but the real draw is going to be the dinosaurs in the sewers of Gotham, I suspect. As for Tanga, she seems to be set to give Robotman a run for the title of 'most interesting story'. A superpowered alien trying to save the meek and downtrodden, Tanga is pleasantly snarky without being Deadpool-esque, and has the benefit of the most interesting world of the three, an alien land where monsters appear out of portals, a giant head runs the government and an opposing superhero with serious narcissistic tendencies threatens to bring the whole thing down for reasons clear only to his own, entitled self. Add in a long-suffereing tentacle monster and a very pleasant and possibly-mad scientist, and the Tanga storyline has quite a definite draw.

Not that sort of draw.  Mind out of the gutter, you!

Not quite as strong a draw as Robotman, PI, of course. But a draw, nonetheless.

Sadly, it seems that My Greatest Adventure is only to be a 6-issue miniseries. But what the heck, I just spent years collecting the entirety of Fullmetal Alchemist, maybe a quick six-month commitment is more my speed.