The New 52 - A Third Year Retrospective

I would like to take some time to give my take on the New 52.  For those of you unclear on the what the New 52 is, it is a 2011 reboot of DC Comics entire line of books that is no longer "New" and has at several times not lived up to his "52" status either.  The relaunch takes is name from the 2006 weekly series known as "52" which has nothing in common with the New 52, named such because of the number of comics DC promised to released each month, and follows Flashpoint, an event that rewrote the history of that universe.  Comics are weird.  Go with it.  Why did DC reboot their universe?  There are two main reasons:

1. As a member of the Big Four, a large comic book company encompassing many writers and 75 years of history filled with tons of stories featuring characters that all are meant to share a single contained universe, continuity errors begin to abound.  Readers of comics tend to be sticklers for continuity.  In order to free up some of the restrictions presented by having to constantly check back issues written by people forty years ago, a universal reboot allowed writers to create fresh ideas unfettered.
2. The other reason was simply to make money.  DC is business and their goal is to make some cash.  For ten years, they had been the #2 comic book publisher behind their leading rival, Marvel.  The New 52 was an unprecedented release of fifty-two new comics.  It is a fact that #1 issues tend to sell better, a fact that Marvel exploited in the early nineties speculator boom.  X-Men #1.  Look it up.

Something that should be noted about the New 52's continuity reboot is that DC has done this before.  Many times.  DC typically labels these as Crises.  Usually, some multiversal event forces the heroes to come together and vanquish some impossibly powerful foe that leaves the universe ravaged and battered in its wake.  In 2005, for example, Superboy-Prime, a younger, evil, alternate version of Superman, punches the universe so hard, it cries new yesterdays.  The end result has left the universe's past, present, and future irreparably changed.  Every Crisis has been DC's way of making large scale continuity changes to fit with the changing times and allow writers to make stories without being moored to 75 years of company history.

The New 52, however, has been the first major universe overhaul since the very first Crisis, the Crisis on Infinite Earths.  In fact, both events have had certain similar aspects to them.  After the Crisis, various titles such as Superman and Wonder Woman rebooted with new #1 issues and both events allowed DC to merge into its main universe various properties that the company had acquired over the years (i.e. Fawcett Comics and Charlton Comics).

Of course, DC handled the latest merger with WildStorm so well that of the three titles part of the relaunch, only a single comic from the line still exists and it barely interacts with the rest of the world in any meaningful way.  Any appearances of WildStorm characters into the New 52 besides this have since abruptly ceased.  The Vertigo characters meant to be reintroduced into the world were originally part of the DCU and bringing them back into the fold didn't do much save make them a bit more kid-friendly.  Constantine, I'm talking to you.  In fact, the the reboot was unnecessary to bring the Vertigo characters back as they had been slowly cropping up prior to Flashpoint in the pages of "52" and Brightest Day.

One of the biggest problems many have had with the reboot is that a lot of history has been ditched.  The entire line of Golden Age heroes and mystery men are gone and forgotten, which is a shame, but sadly understandable.  If you want to make Superman's arrival in Metropolis the kick-off point to the age of heroes, a precedent for them as far back as World War II would not make much sense.  Also, the series Earth-2 has been handled well enough, reviving the Golden Age characters for the modern era, that I have become okay with this, despite it meaning that various great series, such as James Robinson's Starman have been stricken from continuity altogether.

Other heroes, nonetheless, seem to have been deleted from the world for more baffling reasons.  The Blue Beetle got the worst of it, in my opinion.  After a fantastic pre-Flashpoint series that celebrated both Dan Garrett, the original Blue Beetle, a hero as old as Batman, and his successor Ted Kord as inspirations for the third Blue Beetle, Jaime Reyes, the New 52 Blue Beetle was an utter mutilation to the rich history of the character.  Both men were stricken from history and Jaime was left without a legacy to learn from, transforming him into an awkward shell of his character.

The other hero who got the worst of it was Wally West, the third Flash, who took up the reins from his mentor, Barry Allen after his death in Crisis on Infinite Earths.  West was Flash from 1985 until Barry Allen's return in 2009's Final Crisis.  This 25 year run encompasses virtually one third of the Flash's history.  In fact, with Allen having been gone so long and West being Flash for an entire generation or two of comic readers, to erase his existence is almost like replacing Wally with a total stranger.  Actually, I wonder if this is how readers felt when Wally took over for Allen in '85.  But at least Allen wasn't completely erased from history.  Time will tell what becomes of Wallace West.  He has been perhaps the character fans have been most vocal about making a return, but with the altered history of his family, it seems he is gone for good.

One of DC's big to-dos in the New 52 was to condense their history.  The present day stories all take place exactly five years after Superman's debut in Metropolis.  This event sparked an age of superheroes and metahumans cropping up rapidly throughout the world.  The reboot didn't exactly remove the entirety of DC's history, but it did remove various unknown chucks and shrunk the timescale of others.  As such. there are also some issues with timing in this new world that I have not quite been able to figure out.

From what I understand, part of the reason for this is because it becomes increasingly difficult to explain the health and skill of Batman as he advances in age.  To add some "realism" to the man, they needed to make Bruce Wayne around thirty years old.  Pre-Flashpoint, Batman takes up his mantle in his early-to-mid-twenties and is joined by a twelve year-old Dick Grayson as Robin three years into his mission.  Dick becomes Nightwing about seven years later and the mantle is passed to Jason Todd who is also around twelve at the time.  Todd is probably Robin for about a year before his death, at which point Tim Drake becomes the third Robin.  Tim must remain Robin for at least three years because Todd is clearly much older when he resurfaces as the Red Hood.  Damian is Robin for a few months before Flashpoint.  By the time of Flashpoint, Bruce has been Batman for at least somewhere between ten and fifteen years, putting him somewhere in his late thirties. In the new universe, somehow, in only five years time, Batman has still managed to partner with all four Robins with each probably only serving for about a year.  Dick Grayson is aged to sixteen when he joins Batman, a move that could be considered a bit more realistic, and probably served as Robin for two years before moving onto being Nightwing.  Todd still dies less than a year into his term and resurfaces later as the Red Hood.  Drake has just left Batman's service.  Damian is still ten years old.

Damian Wayne is the son of Bruce Wayne and Talia al-Ghul.  He is the creation of Grant Morrison and acts as Dick Grayson's sidekick after Bruce "temporarily dies" in Final Crisis.  Damian could only have been conceived after Bruce Wayne became Batman as this was how he came to meet Talia and her father.  While it was clear that Damian was a test tube baby, I had assumed that he aged naturally.  With a Batman who has been masquerading for about fifteen years, there is really no issue.  Was Damian's growth unnaturally accelerated?  I've read both Batman Incorporated and Batman & Robin and I really don't know.  A clone of Damian appears in Batman Inc and seems to have been aged to his mid-twenties, yet still has Damian's ten year-old face, leading me to wonder if he wasn't just enhanced in some way.  If his and Damian's growth were sped up, why was Damian's maturation halted?

I have been rather hard on the reboot so far and I would like to say that there have been several good things to come out of it.  Many of my complaints seem to be cosmetic, pertaining to a lack of oversight that could come with any written work in the comic book industry or otherwise, but just seem to be so much more blatantly obvious because of the scale.  There are several series that a wholeheartedly recommend, namely Animal Man and Swamp Thing which have been consistently good since the beginning.  Did either of them need a complete or partial company retcon to bring about these fantastic stories?  No, not really.  In fact, if I were to have any complaints about Swamp Thing, it would be that the creature has clearly never met John Constantine prior to the series, calling into question somewhat whether or not Alan Moore's absolutely excellent run on the series is still canon.  Additionally, Batman: The Court of Owls has been lauded as an absolutely wonderful Batman story.

There's not really much else to say.  I haven't been overly fond of this reboot and the stories that have come with it, but time will only tell if things begin to look up.  In the meantime, I'm kind of sitting in the back issues, enjoying the days of Sandman and Starman, Alan Moore's Swamp Thing and Grant Morison's Animal Man, the Blue Beetle and Booster Gold.  As for the here and now, I am ardently enjoying All-New Marvel NOW!  Something "Amazing" is coming!  *Thwip*

Blame it on my ADD, baby.

I am a scathing lunatic.  If you have not figured this out by now, I want to make this absolutely clear to all currently attending parties that there is something probably not all that right up in the old noggin.  I like to say this because it somehow validates some sort of need to constantly exist on a physical plane with what I consider peons and what you consider people.  I also say this because I can only validate my actions if I constantly insult myself. These are things you need to know before I continue.  

I am a white male in America, which basically means I should live a strife free life.  That in and of itself is a problem.  Man was never meant to live in harmony.  Harmony is a state of static and ensures a never ending state of failure.  Humanity creates conflict in order to strive for a better state of future harmony in which it will eventually become unhappy with.  This is why good men go to war.  And in all conflicts, there is a winner and a loser.  A winner moves to a greater state of static.  The loser becomes even worse off than he was before.  As long as one remains in a state of static rest, one can never be truly happy with one's standing in life.  Thus, people are constantly looking for whatever conflict they can create, despite the possibility of creating a worse world for themselves.

As I have stated, I am a white male, which makes my static life nigh inescapable.  People always questions white people problems, why their seemingly perfect little lives always seem to be fraught with self-created misery and disaster.  The reason is because so many of us don't know how to make our lives move in some meaningful way.  What little conflict we can create is petty, short-lived, and unsatisfying.  Often enough, any conflict that is created ends with us the loser.  As a result, people often get to enjoy the unchanging misery of existence simply because they are used to it.  This is the low point where people act out in desperation and some really horrible tragedies can happen.  Have you ever noticed that it's always the quiet, young white males?

I recently read an article on dating profiles and why they so often do not work.  The article, I found, was written to mirror my exact experiences with such technology that I found it ghastly.  What I learned from reading this article is that I will never find someone, not in my current static state.  I have hit a rut, being far too comfortable in my life, which while I don't find to be very happy or satisfying, I enjoy because it is conflict free. And while I may not go about committing acts of desperate life-changing tragedy, I can't say that it has never crossed my mind.  I remind you, I am crazy but I am not stupid.

The question is, what do I want out of a relationship?  This is something you will find on every dating website from here to Fallujah.  Everyone who has ever answered that question has lied.  Anyone who has ever answered that question and has never been in a committed relationship has lied poorly.  It is time for the truth.

I do not know what I want.  I have never been in a relationship before.  I have had very brief stints that have left me asking why do people go through all the bother of it all.  What I do know that I want is this: I want experience, the experience to know just what I do not want in a relationship.  Whoever I meet, I hope that such a person is horrible for me in every way and that I am just as equally bad for them.  I want both of us coming out saying, "this sucked and I need to change for the better for the next person who comes around."  I want a relationship that is so bad that I can finally ask all of my friends sincerely, "why do you put yourselves through this crap month after month, ending in misery?  Is there ever any happiness from this never ending crapstorm that we call love?" I want to finally stick it to my parents that I am far from ready for any meaningful human interaction so they will finally shut up about grandkids.  You aren't getting any.  Leave me the fuck alone.  I want a relationship that ends so badly that it finally kicks me in the ass so hard that I can finally have the conflict in my life necessary to change myself into the man I want to be.  What I want is a tool.  Not a person.

And this is why I will always be alone.  Because I am a horrible person amongst horrible people.  And I am probably the worst of them all.

Editing my match.com profile. I want to meet someone hopeless.

Run.  Run like your life depended on it.  I can hear the executioner's ax grinding across the floor as it comes for your head.  This is a house of horrors you've just stepped into and there may not be a way out.  Run.  Welcome to match.com, the last website you will ever visit with your sanity in tact.  It is everything you've heard and more.  There are no good people here.  There is only the stuff that nightmares are made of.  If you are searching for true love, you have come to the wrong place.  You can find only disappointment and disaster.

Welcome to the 21st century, a hopeless time where humanity has devolved into little more than bits of data on a screen.  Life is a never ending cycle of submitting information and awaiting response.  Thusly, we have crafted the online dating profile, an offshoot of the online stalker profile aka myspace/Facebook/tumblr/fukyuall.

Needless to say, I have found nothing but misery on these websites.  Nobody cares about anything anymore.  We all want a cheap fuck, a quick fling, and a lie about something more to make us feel less conceited.  Love is dead.  Chivalry is long buried.  Let's stop lying about what we want.  You will never find Prince Charming here.  You would sooner poison Romeo than kiss his blood stained lips.  "Oh happy dagger!  This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die."

Roses are yellow, violets are purple, I couldn't end this poem. Nothing rhymes with purple.

Happy Lupercalia!

Welcome dear traveler to the last sanctuary of insanity in this world for the hopelessly dull and destitute.  Today is V-Day, a horrible time where tiny fat angels fly around firing off red tipped arrows in the hopes of ruining lives and destroying dreams.  It is a day where people give each other their hearts, both symbolically, and perhaps most disturbing of all, quite literally.  These hearts are subsequently ripped open and devoured.  Those of us who choose not to celebrate in this sanguine merriment are considered unloved and outcast from society.

I've already told you what love is.  Don't make me repeat myself.  Whyever humanity sought to make a holiday for something so incomprehensibly anti-human I would never be able to explain.  Fortunately, V-Day isn't about love at all, not erotic nor filial nor any of the many Venusian complexities created to confuse the average heterosexual male when his female companion is angry at him.  (Sorry guys, but you can't win today... or any day for that matter.)  V-Day is a Hallmark holiday, and like all great Hallmark holidays, it was created for the sole purpose of selling cards and other oddities and not give a rat's ass about its namesake (examples: see Mother's Day, Father's Day, Christmas).  Saint Valentine has as much to do with romance as Saint Patrick has to do with booze.

The Church had long established the celebration of St. Valentine (who has nothing to do with the subject matter present) in mid February, possibly to supersede an older Roman fertility festival.  Roman fertility festivals tend to carry a lot of drunken orgies and a fantastic amount of sex, so it is perhaps because of this that an air of romance, which is really just something guys use to get girls in the sack, developed around V-Day.  By the mid-20th century this practice had become an excuse for men to pretend to be romantic in the hopes of getting laid and women to engorge themselves on sweets.  The whole bit with the cards, which had been around since the 18th century, stuck around, despite nobody really caring about that sort of thing.

Today, V-Day is a bustling mid-winter festival which still holds true to its roots: wasting time and money, the American dream.  To this day, I don't know how the cherubs fit in or how Eros/Cupid somehow got turned into one.  I was going to research it, but screw it.

Enjoy ripping out peoples hearts and eating them.  Kali-ma!

What If? A Retrospective.

For those of you who know me, I'm a really big fan of comics, especially Marvel's Spider-Man and other less renowned heroes from Stan Lee's soapbox.  For a bit of fun, I've been looking into Marvel's "What If?" line which has run on and off since 1977.  The series features glimpses into alternate universes in which popular tales are revisited and asks "what if one thing were changed?"

There have been some truly great stories to come out of the series, perhaps most notable comes from What If... Volume 2 #105 which asked what would have happened if Spider-Man's daughter had not been stillborn.  The comic proved to be so popular that it not only spawned an entire 100 issue series featuring the first ever woman to be given her own ongoing solo series, but an entire line of comics that existed in this tangent universe and continued to be produced for a good 15 years.

However, when you look at the book 35 years later, you notice that there have also been a lot of inane and ironically ridiculous stories to come from "What If?".  Marvel's mainstream universe continues to expand every week as new issues of comics are published.  And sometimes, perhaps inadvertently, writers have taken stories from "What If?" and made them canon.  And this leads me to look back at these "What If?" stories with a certain humorous flair.  So here are the Top 11 Silliest What If Stories in Retropect.  Why Top 11?  Because I won't make that joke.

(I warn you, there may be spoilers, but seriously, its the age of the internet.)

#11 What If Hulk Had Become a Barbarian?

This comic features our Great Green Goliath on another planet, decked out in viking horns and a battle axe asking what would Hulk be like if he were Conan the Barbarian.  Behind him is Hulk's then alien mate, Jarella looking positively green.

And here we have an issue from the 2006 Incredible Hulk storyline, Planet Hulk, where Hulk gets trapped on an alien planet and becomes... er... a barbarian complete with battle axe, helmet, and alien mate..  It's not that I don't like the idea.  In fact, Planet Hulk is one of the best Hulk stories ever and lead to some even more great stories including this gem:

That's Hulk's son, Skaar.  As you can see, he's a barbarian... on another planet... with a battle axe. God dammit, Hulk writers.  BE MORE ORIGINAL!!

#10 What If Phoenix Rose Again?

Seriously comic?  That's the best you could come up with?  How many times has Jean Grey been killed now?  She's like Gwen Stacy's antithesis.  It goes with the name really.  Phoenix, a mythical bird of fire that rises from its own ashes.  Obviously she's going to rise again.  Hell, Marvel just destroyed the Phoenix in the climax of Avengers vs. X-Men only to have current X-Men writer Brian Bendis almost immediately proceeded to revive Jean Grey two months later.  Even when they don't bring her back from the dead directly, there are clones, time travel incidents, alternate universe duplicates, clones.  Comics are weird.  The point is, nobody ever stays dead.  Except Gwen Stacy.

Screw you, Ultimate universe!!


#9: What If the Hulk Went Berserk?

Another Hulk comic.  I just wanted to ask, "when has the Hulk NOT gone berserk?"  That's sort of a central theme to his character.  He's a giant green raging hulk monster.  He gets pissed off and destroys stuff.  Was the writer missing something when he thought of this title?  Had he never picked up an Incredible Hulk comic?

The comic, based on the very first issue of Incredible Hulk, shows what would have happened if Bruce Banner had immediately transformed into the not-so-Jolly Green Giant after being caught in his Gamma Bomb explosion, rather than, as later continuity has it, his less vicious and somewhat more intelligent (than the Hulk, not Banner) grey form.  After several failed attempts by the military and the Fantastic Four to stop the monster, Thor comes in and snaps his neck.  Gee, that was easy.

#8 What If Spider-Man Joined the Fantastic Four?

I present the very first What If? comic ever made, which spawned all of this silliness.  If it weren't for some truly terrible tales to come, I might even be tempted to throw this at #1.  Not really.  Spidey joining the FF is actually, pardon the pun, a fantastic idea and he has more than proven it over the past 50 years.  This story stems all the way to Amazing Spider-Man #1 where Peter Parker, strapped for cash as per usual, attempts to join the FF and earn some dough.  Unfortunately, despite breaking into the Baxter Building, his pompous personality at the time proved to be too much for Richards and family to handle, as they already had a Johnny Storm.  It also didn't help that Spider-Man failed to show off his considerable scientific intellect or to comprehend that the FF was not-for-profit.  Oh well.  Still someone wanted to know what would have become of him and the team had they formed the Fantastic Five.

And years later, we found out!

Twice!

After the Fantastic Four gets put out of commission by Doctor Doom, Sue Storm recruits Spider-Man, Wolverine, Grey Hulk, and Ghost Rider to be the most badass Fantastic Four team of all time.  Years later, Spidey got inducted onto the team proper after his buddy, the Human Torch was apparently killed in action.  There he goes, swinging by on the cover of Fantastic Four #600.

#7 What If the Avengers Had Fought Evil During the 1950s

Long before the Marvel Comics that we know today, the company had gone under several different names.  In the 1950s, it was known as Atlas Comics Syndicate and featured several characters that would likely be unknown to most people today.  Among these characters were the Uranian hero Marvel Boy, Gorilla Man, and Venus.  In an attempt to revive the long forgotten heroes of Marvel's past, an issue of What If? featured them and other 50s heroes teaming up to form an Avengers years before the team had actually formed (ten years chronologically, but the gap grows wider with Marvel's sliding timescale).

In fact, someone at Marvel must have really liked the idea because 30 years later, the concept was revived and a mainstream version was born.  If that weren't enough, in the latest volume of New Avengers, Brian Bendis decided to write that an Avengers team was active during the 1950s as a covert ops team led by Nick Fury that just happened to share its name with the later super-powered incarnation.

#6 What If Captain America Had Been Elected President?

Okay, I really didn't want to do this.  I was trying to avoid using this one because it's sort of cheating.  I mentioned that pretty much all of these ideas were eventually, in some way shape of form, indoctrinated in the mainstream Marvel universe.  However, this one wasn't.

I present to you once more the Ultimate universe.  God dammit, the Ultimate universe.  What once had been a great idea has quickly spiraled into the greatest concentration of death, depravity, and unnecessary bleakness since DC's Countdown.  In 2001, Brian Bendis (who seems to keep showing up on this list) conceptualized the Ultimate universe and Ultimate Spider-Man as a way of attracting new readers to comics by creating brand new origin stories that modernized well known heroes and didn't require any knowledge of Marvel's then 40 years of story-telling.  Unlike previous attempts by Marvel to accomplish this, Bendis set his first experiment, Ultimate Spider-Man outside continuity  And I will be the first to admit that it worked.  I had been a fan of Spider-Man since the 90s animated cartoon, but had never read the comics.  Bendis' Ultimate Spider-Man was the first ongoing comic I ever read, and his later ongoing book, Dark Avengers, was the book that brought me into the mainstream universe.

Then, in 2008, it all went horribly, horribly wrong.  With the Ultimate universe being nearly 10 years old at this point and its longest running comic, Ultimate Spider-Man, having well over 100 issues, Bendis and team felt it was time to shake things up a bit.  Afterall, had it not been the purpose of the Ultimate comics to be an indoctrinating series without much needed continuity?  It was time for a reboot.  What we got was Ultimatum.

Now, I don't want to go into a long-winded angry discussion on how wrong Ultimatum is.  If you want that, I suggest watching the following videos.

http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/linkara/at4w/30958-ultimatum-1-2
http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/linkara/at4w/31045-ultimatum-3-4
http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/linkara/at4w/31138-ultimatum-5

However, here are the cliff notes.  Pretty much everyone dies thanks to Magneto, heroes and villains alike, with exception of Spider-Man, Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, and a few others.  Those who survived came back for round two of Ultimate comics, but now the world just seemed so much darker in its wake with heroes dead in scores and New York City and much of the world virtually destroyed.  If that weren't enough, two years later, Peter Parker would be killed, making his survival in Ultimatum feel almost pointless.  A new Spider-Man would take his place, the controversial Miles Morales, but not long afterwards, Reed Richards destroys much of the planet.  America is left shattered and Captain America is elected President of the United States.

So there you have it folks, if Cap were elected President, it would mean the world has gone straight to hell.

#5 What If Beast and Thing Continued to Mutate?

Two fan favorites have always been the gentle blue Beast and the ever-lovin' blue-eyed Thing.  Many people nowadays probably don't realize this, unless you've seen X-Men: First Class, but the Beast used to look a lot more human.  His blue form was introduced about ten years into X-Men's history when he underwent a secondary mutation.  The Thing while always rocky, has sometimes gotten even more jagged, such as this Fantastic Four comic which was released almost five years after the above What If?

Obviously nothing truly terrible happens to the Thing should he undergo more mutation.  He just becomes temporarily stronger and cliffier.  I will spare you the details on what happens to him in the Ultimate universe, but let's just say it involves a heck of a lot of purple.

The Beast, too, has gotten even furrier recently.  In Grant Morrison's run on X-Men, he underwent yet another mutation, making him more feline in appearance with lion-esque face complete with blue mane, cat paws, and a fondness for balls of yarn.

Brian Bendis again mutated him in a recent issue of All-New X-Men, turning our blue buddy into what appears to be a hulking gorilla creature.

Here you can see Beast being held up by his younger, time-travelling self for a point of reference.  Please, Bendis, please stop making unnecessary changes to characters who have already undergone unnecessary changes.  And bring back Peter Parker.  It's hard enough that mainstream is dead.

#4 What if Spider-Man's Clone Had Lived?

What would have happened if Spider-Man's clone, created by the Jackal had lived?

Wait, do you mean this clone?

Or do you mean this clone?

Or this clone?

Or perhaps these clones?

...

SCREW YOU, ULTIMATE COMICS!!

So obviously that comic was created loooooooong before Marvel's Spider-Man team of books decided to revive the concept and then owner, Ron Perelman, forced the writers to continue the Clone Saga for as long as he could milk the benefits from it, leading the Marvel's near bankruptcy.  So that's what would have happened, had Spider-Man's clone had lived.  We would have nearly lost a prized treasure and perhaps those great Avengers movies would never have been made.  Thank you, Disney.  With your great power and responsibility, we will never have to face such a crisis ever again.

#3 What If General Ross Had Become the Hulk?

I'll admit that the top three were a bit off a toss up, but I've decided first up will be:

Once more, and for the last time, I promise you, I present a Hulk What If?  As you may be able to tell from the cover, this is actually a fairly recent comic, having been one of the first to be released since What If?'s revival in 2005.  The irony of this has a little to deal with what I mentioned earlier with Planet Hulk spawning some truly great Hulk storylines.

This is the Red Hulk, and unlike the Grey Hulk, he is not some alternate persona the Banner transforms into rather than the usual Green Hulk.  Much of Jeph Loeb's run on Hulk was the eternal mystery to who this smart, powerful adversary to our classic green brute was.  The Red Hulk's first appearance was in 2007 in Hulk #1, two years after the What If? featuring Ross as a the Hulk.  Two years after his first appearance, in 2009, the Red Hulk was finally revealed by Loeb to be none other than General Ross himself, a fitting end the monster that Ross had become chasing after the Hulk for so many years.

#2 What If the X-Men Never Existed?

Once again, I must confess that I'm cheating a bit.  But just a bit.  The comic is referring to a very specific team of X-Men that were formed after the original team (Cyclops, Beast, Marvel Girl, Angel, and Ice Man) were lost on a mission.  Professor Xavier quickly put together a new team to track them down including many fan favorites including Wolverine, Colossus, Storm, Nightcrawler, and Banshee.

However, on first glance, you just have to think, what if the X-Men never existed in the Marvel universe?  God, wouldn't that be great?  If would certainly simplify things.  First off, you've got the problem with there being waaaaaaay too many characters with waaaaaaaay too many books that are usually all second or third tier at best, but that's looking at it from a reader's standpoint.  Many of the problems in the Marvel universe tend to stem directly from the mutants, a group of beings that don't even make sense in the world they belong in, and that's saying something.

Stan Lee created the X-Men when he wanted to make another superhero team, but was at a loss as to come up with an idea for where there powers came from.  He had already overused radiation, science, machines, and magic, so for the X-Men, he decided to that they were just born with their abilities and that was that.  This allowed for the added benefit of being able to write about bigotry and intolerance so that Lee could add moral fiber to his book.  However, while this worked when the Marvel universe was small in scale, after 50 years, on an earth where microwaving your hot pocket too long may inadvertently lead to you gaining superpowers, hating a group for being born with powers just doesn't really make sense.

As I mentioned, there are so many problems in the Marvel universe that tend to stem directly from the X-Men.  Here is a short list:
-Professor Xavier's insane son travels back in time to kill Magneto, but instead kills his dad, creating a pime taradox, destroying the universe and replacing it with one ruled by Apocalypse.
-Professor Xavier and Magneto's minds create a powerful psyonic entity, Onslaught, who looks like Magneto on Hulk steroids.  Onslaught proceeds to kill the Avengers and the Fantastic Four (notice not the X-Men).
-Scarlet Witch, daughter of Magneto destroys the Avengers.
-Scarlet Witch destroys the universe and replaces it with one suggested by her brother where mutants rule and their father is king.
-Cyclops' deranged brother conquers an entire galaxy, goes to war with another galaxy, and causes a bomb to explode, not only tearing an enormous hole in space-time, but also releasing Cthulhu and the Elder Gods.  That's right, Chulhu.
-Cyclops becomes the Dark Phoenix and tries to rule the world.
-Deadpool

#1 What If The Amazing Spider-Man Had Not Married Mary Jane?

Do I really need to explain this?  I have three words.  One More Day.  *shakes head in disgust*

Deals with the devil, J. Jonah Jameson becomes mayor, there's a grey Goblin woman who has a baby, Peter has an annoying fling with a cop, Spider-Man dies and get's replaced with Doctor Octopus, oh, and Peter Parker and Mary Jane aren't married!

Granted, there were some kickass moments, but One More Day was terrible and should never see the light of day.  You can watch Linkara's video of you like, but I warn you.

http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/linkara/at4w/36077-at4w-200th-episode

Saturnalia Update

Salutations friends.  I hope that you have all had a joyous and festive Saturnalia and gave many thanks to the gods of winter.  It is a joyous time for feasting and drunken debauchery, so grab a slave wench and have a grand old time the Roman way.

It has been quite some time since I've been on here (two moon years by standard human temporal evaluation) and I believe you all deserve some sort of an explanation.  You see, there was a storm. It was kind of a big deal.  You may have heard of it.  It was called Sandy and due to my current living situation being situated right in the northward path of that cyclopean cyclone, I was without home or water or power or heat or internet for quite some time.  Each has been restored to me as of the eighth night of Chanukkah, making this year quite the amazing haul as far as gifts are concerned.  In addition, I began a new job and have been trying to adjust and acclimate myself to a new schedule and lifestyle.  Before I knew it, the Mayan apocalypse was upon us and I thought, to hell with it; I'll just wait this out and should we survive, perhaps I'll return to my blog for the new year.

So there it is folks, my long and tiring war against the elements of nature and the repetitive memes of human mass hysteria.  I hope to be fully operational again and destroying planets with my giant laser beam as soon as the the new Star Wars trilogy arrives, but before that, my new year's resolution (the one I'll actually keep) is to return regularly to my blog with more updates from my deranged yet often entertaining piece of brain work.  Or as I call it, Davy.

For the future, I'll work at more Philosophical Fridays, some more In a World Gone Writes, and should my friend and I ever get the time, I have some ideas for vlogs I'd like to make for the site.  For those of you sitting at home who just said, "huzzah, what?" a vlog is a conjugation of "video log" much as a blog is a shortening of "weblog".  You may now all respond with, "ahhhhh."

That is all.  Transmission terminated.

Day 34 - The Terrible Truth About Tiggers

My humblest apple-hoagies, erstwhile travelers of the Internet and other such houses of ill repute. This hath been an unforgiving week of grueling exertion pour moi as I have undergone several changes in my life.

I have been so exhausted and overbusy that it has been impossible to find the time to write up a new Philosophical Friday. Please, I implore of you, seek not your most wrathful rewengi on me, for I am but the messenger to your own thoughts and dreams.

I suppose I could go into some spiel on the nature of time and the teenage existential angst of reality, but tempo non habeo cogere ergo non sum.

I seek to upload what I can and hope to put up a new rant… er, philosophical revelation by Monday. In the meantime, please enjoy the following video of cats doing adorable things, the highest form of Internet entertainment.