Just Stay at Home

I want your help figuring out/finding something that I haven't been able to, even with the magic of the internet.

And, when I say "you" I mean you, too.

When I was a little boy I had a Batman toy that I can barely remember, but that haunts me all the more for it. This would be contemporary with the Adam West television show. It was a set of cutboard or paper cut-out figures that stood up by means of a cross-piece in their bases. I think they would have been about 2 inches tall, perhaps.

I really don't remember exactly whether there were Batman and Robin figures, but I particularly remember that there was an Alfred, a grandfather clock, and the Hot Line on telephone stand.

Honestly, that's all I can remember, but I've never been able to confirm the existence of this pieces, let alone what they were and where they might have come from.

Can you?

On Monday, President Bush’s former spokesman, Scott McClellan, will be a best-selling author, adding to the canon of insider criticism of the administration. But will he be willing to put what he knows in the service (REAL service) of the public. Friday, McClellan, said he’d be willing to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on a host of issues being investigated (the intelligence leading to the Iraq War is the doozy).

But I tend to believe, if he does testify, he is not going to give any valuable information that would incriminate Bush, Cheney, or Rumsfeld. If his interview with Wolf Blitzer is any indication, McClellan won’t totally admit to any definite wrong-doing, especially his own. (As the White House spokesperson, he was responsible for keeping up the lies). And when Blitzer asked McClellan if he was willing to apologize to the American public for going along with the Bush administration’s misinforming the public about, among other topics, the War, he skated nervously around the words “I’m sorry.” Though he did include the words “I talk about in my book” in explanations throughout the interview. Which leads one to think this new behind-the-scenes look at a woefully deceptive president is more to sell books that to serve the public

in my comics this week.

• Dr. Hector Hammond, as he originally was.
• Knowledge?! I wanted a leather jacket with my name on the sleeves!
• And they were on sale, too? I suspect Blockade Boy, frankly... .
• Fire stick = cigarette = Libra's staff. Nice.
• That Alfred, in the midst of a raging fire, is still an unforgiving film critic.
• Yeah, I'd probably just wear whatever my closet told me to wear, too.
• "Condition Amber" made me laugh out loud.
• Hal getting hit in the head with a yellow frisbee.
• Oh my god. That's John. In an office. Like... like an architect. Seeing it feels like ... sacrilege.
• Is that the Man-of-Bats shield?
• The perfect cocktail.
• The cover of "Recipes for Revenge".
• Oh, Lex, sweetie; will you kill me if I tell you those pants make you look fat?
• Well, of course he's naked; duh.
• Even at the end, Clark has to scoop Lois.
• Jaime's understated inability to let go what happened. Or what didn't.
• Actually, Mr. Norg, I myself am quite disappointed about his serious interest.
• Rolex Chronoberg?
• Blindingly obvious. Heh. Heh heh.
• Geoff Johns, who is clearly some sort of superhuman, fixing everything about the Toyman in, essentially, one panel. Sheer genius.
• Orion = God of War = Mars = Manhunter = D.O.A.
• "Hit 'em like Napoleon" is the new "Bend it like Beckham".
• It's really hard to overuse the word "orrery".
• I... I love you, Solaris.
• "I'm twenty-two!"
• Okay, who set up those two for a date?! Not E-harmony!
• Hey, Batman's doing "Someone's taking my life apart piece by piece" and "Everything I know about myself is lie" at the same time. Grant Morrison is SO innovative!
• H is the eighth letter of the alphabet.
• That Ocean Master is at the table.
• How is it possible that 1011 doesn't mean anything significant in binary. Morrison so loves speaking binary.
• I dunno--don't children always look like that? They do to me.
• I'm sure J'onn would agree with you, Dan.
• It took me a while to figure it out, but that's the toy train Clayface knocked Batman out with 60 years ago. Nice memory, Grant.
  
• Wait... she kissed JO?! Good lord, it's like Degrassi in the 31st Century!
• Beagle.
• Nasty.
• Air hammers.
• Welcome mat. Heh. Of course.
• Now that's heartburn.
• Dark Side's limp.

I was late in getting a fax machine in the early 90s. I was late to the Internet in the late 90s. I was late to get a cell phone (two years ago). And I was late seeing the power (and the lack thereof) in a blog. But as with all things techy and new fangley, I see I must join the ranks, and have officially joined the ranks. And now my chatter becomes part of the incessant chatter and the billions of voices in the world who feel that what they say and think matters. So here I am..... And, oh, by the way, some of what I say has been put in a book. Of course, my first entree would tell you to check it out. But, I promise, from here on out I have more than a book to impart to you. This is an only an introduction.......

Now, it goes without saying that Justice League writer Dwayne McDuffie knows his stuff, so I can only assume that the apparent gaffes and oddities in the most recent issue of JLA are, in fact, coded commentary on Final Crisis and the like. Because his story has the Human Flame in it, and any story with the Human Flame in it must be deep with meaning.


Baltimore? They have banks--with vaults-- in Baltimore?!

Dwayne's being clever here. Instead of overtly saying "the Human Flame is a second-rate loser" he simply places him in Baltimore, making it implicit. Very clever.

Psst, hey, Mike; there's no big tank on your back. The fire shooting out of your nipples is fueled solely by the same thing it was in your first appearance: the imagination of the writers.

By the way; isn't that a little too hot? Conventional oxyacetylene torches run between 3200 and 3500 degrees C; even a frickin' Henrob 2000 model only burns at 3800 C. Imagination is a powerful fuel, it seems.

Mike's self-deception continues, when he tries to pin the blame for his odd moniker on tabloid editors:


To which I can only reply:

A mistake? Certainly not. It's part of showing us how self-deluding the Human Flame is. The Human Flame, remember, symbolizes over-reaching human ambition. And ambition never blames itself for its failures; it displaces the blame on others. "Oh, I didn't give myself my stupid name; someone else did that to me. The press; yes, it was the press!" I bet he even remembers it that way now, having repeated the lie to himself and others often enough. Yeah, if you get sent to prison with a name like the Human Flame you better have a good story to go with it.

Anyway, speaking of self-deception....

"Anymore"?! "I'm not a glamorous super villain ANYMORE"?!?!?!?!. Mike. Mikey, Mikey, Mikey. You were NEVER a glamorous supervillain. You were never even a super villain at all. You were a presumptuous hermit tinkerer who robbed exactly ONE bank, and the World's Ugliest Bank at that. And it doesn't stop there...

A long time ago? Yeah, and in a galaxy far, far way, I guess. Meanwhile, in this galaxy, you were never in the Big Leagues, Mike. You know who was Bigger League than you?
Cutlass Charlie, who fought the Justice League; Bug-Eyed Bandit, who died in the Crisis; Colonel Computron, who got an entry in Who's Who; the Penny Plunderer, who has a permanent memorial in the Batcave. You, Mike, are not in their league, let along the Big Leagues.


You've never been in a supervillain group in your life, Mike, not even the Secret Society of Supervillains and they took anybody, including Torpedo-Man. No, Mike, you haven't seen this movie. Unless you're being literal and you actually meant, "I watched Challenge of the SuperFriends on the video player at the Apex Prison Library one night."

One more thing to show how far Mike has fallen out of touch with reality:

A police response time of 8 minutes... in Baltimore?! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!!! Perhaps if there's a police station next door and there's no reruns of the Wire showing on the tube.

As for the non-professional aspects of Mike's self-deception... well, I'm just going to be kind and completely not mention how Libra goes out of his way to tell all the big time villains that Mike's a husband and father. Who knows, maybe the California Supreme Court on New Earth is just a lot faster than ours, and somewhere off panel a balding, cancer-impaired Joey is pointlessly polishing his unused Kenneth Coles with his old wedding dress and remembering his heyday with Mike in "the Big Leagues".

Oh, by the way, did you notice Mike's new affectation?


Now, we all know that the fire doesn't come out of the gloves on the Crime Suit (tm); it comes out of the polyareolar array on the chest. In fact, putting out your hand in front of you while concrete-incinerating flames burst forth from your chest seems not merely pointless, but both unnatural and unwise. It is just a meaningless flourish that Mike picked up from reading too many Fantastic Four comics?

Ha! As if. As we have previously discovered, NOTHING is without meaning when it comes to the Human Flame. He burns brightly with semiotic incension. So, what does this gesture really mean? There are three principal possibilities, which may all be true simultaneously.

1. The "hidden button" that activates the fire-nips is built into the gloves of the crime suit.
2. It's yet another reference to the Hand of Doom imagery that we've seen in DC Universe #0 that will be central to Final Crisis.
3. It presages that Mike will, courtesy of Libra, experience Power Internalization (tm) which will result in scenes where he create spontaneous fire through a classic "zappy power focused along extended arm" pose.

We'll all find out together; after all, it must mean something. It's the Human Flame.

Note that Mike is drawn as, well, hefty. Mike was NOT fat in his original story; you can tell by his head shot at the end of his first adventure that he wasn't a fatty. His "crime suit" was just very heavily padded. It would have to be, to insulate you against some 8100 degrees F!!! I mean, that's hotter than Vixen's pantie drawer.

Clearly, this is not a mistake; DC writers and artists simply don't make mistakes. Jeanette Kahn and T.M. Maple would never stand for it. So I interpret Mike's rubenesquiosity as another sign of his degradation. How fall he's fallen from when he lived in a unkempt wooden shack in the wilds of Florida! Must be all that fine prison food that's fattened him up.

Still, despite being a washed up, overweight loser, he still kicks Hawkgirl's and Red Arrow's patooties. By the way, Hawkgirl and Red Arrow patrolling ... Baltimore? Too perfect. I can just picture Roy field-testing his sodium bicarbonate arrow against the Citrus Gang from atop the Bromo Seltzer Tower or Kendra hurling her mace through walls at the Geppi Museum shouting, "Have you people never even heard of the principles of wayfinding?!"

Of course, you realize that Hawkgirl's wings aren't what keep her aloft; the Nth metal in her costume does that. The wings just let her direct her flight. So she wouldn't fall if she had to abandon her wings. Clearly, it's more meta-meaning from McDuffie: the Human Flame of amibtion has the power to topple the superhero gods from the altars on which they've placed themselves, a foreshadowing of the fate of you-know-who (because I've already read Final Crisis #1, ya know!).

That's one last strange "inaccuracy" in this JLA story. I've read the original Libra story -- after all, DC just republished it this month in the DC Universe Special : Justice League-- and there isn't the slightest intimation, suggestion, or clue that Libra is an alien, let alone an alien "warlord". I mean, what's up with that?

Ten "Arcs" that Most Superheroes Must Endure Even Though Almost None of Them Should

• The Year In Space
• A Shadowy Figure is Deploying All My Enemies Against Me, in Sequence
• What Do You Mean I've Been Replaced?
• And That's Why I Need This New Costume!
• My City Has Been Destroyed
• Well, Then, I'll Just Operate WITHOUT Official Sanction
• Someone's Taking Away My Life, Piece by Piece
• I Must Reclaim My Life, Piece By Piece
• I Never Thought of Myself as Leader, But Now I Have to be
• You Mean, Everything I Knew About Myself Was a Lie...?!

Consider asking your local comic book store to try PISTOLFIST from BlueWater Comics; we're trying it here at Big Monkey.




It's about a runaway slave in early America who dons a mask to fight for freedom. And, c'mon; you can't beat Benjamin Franklin as a supporting cast member: "I caution you again, sir, do not address me as 'Chief'!"

Pistolfist #1
Author(s): J.S. Earl and David A. Flanary, Jr
Artist(s) Andres Guinaldo
Cover Artist(s): 2 covers: Joel Robinson and Mario Gully
How precious is your freedom? Would you fight for it? Would you dare to die for it? Set amidst the American Revolution, this critically-acclaimed series follows the saga of a mysterious, masked runaway slave whose destiny is helplessly entwined with that of a famous, yet frail, Benjamin Franklin. Inspired by true characters and events, you’ll soon discover why fans and fellow creators alike have chosen to “rev it up!

Oh, and for those of you who are budding costume designers (Hi, Jeremy!), there's a contest to design a costume for a modern day version of the character. Oh, make sure it has pilgrim shoes; I just love the pilgrim shoes.

As I've mentioned before, and more than once, the real reason I pick on Hal Jordan so much is to try to mask and defuse my utter terror