Iceberg, 1993, David Banks
In the far-flung future of, er, 2006, while Benny and Ace are off trying to find the Doctor, the Doctor is in Antarctica trying to stop the poles from shifting while also dealing with some Cybermen in a plot that’s not at all like The Thing. Really.
Actually, the book isn’t too bad and Ruby Duvall, investigative journalist, is a pretty good “companion who might have been.” David Banks is probably better known to Who-fans as the guy who played the Cyber Leader in the original series’ later years, and a lot of this book reflects his somewhat proprietary attitude towards Cybermen continuity.

The results are in! And, well, no one guessed it. Now, to be certain, there are a number of good guesses. Gambit is well worth hating for being, well, Gambit. Snapper Carr and Rick Jones both deserve the ire they receive as well. Kitty Pryde is high on my hate list as well, both for being a blank slate for fans to project their fantasies of an ideal girl-friend on to, and her fans. And Penance is a great example of the worst excesses of Marvel’s pandering to the lowest common denominator, but that just makes me sad.

But there’s really only one character I hate so much that I would actually buy a Spider-Man comic by Mark Millar and Rob Liefeld if it featured Spidey beating this character to death with a blunt object:

In a universe that’s already littered with an embarrassing number of Superman and Captain Marvel knock-offs, Sentry is a redundant amalgamation of the two concepts. His method of introduction, the “hoax” of him being a lost Silver Age character, was so transparent as to be insulting to Marvel’s fans. He’s been shoe-horned into events and high profile books, where he does nothing. And his “woe is me, life is shit” demeanor is the worst kind of crutch in comics writing; the mistaken belief that melodramatic angst and self-pitying is the same thing as characterization.

But the prize goes to Mike Loughlin, who had this to say:

Green Arrow, because he’s a lame Batman wannabe with a stupid Peter Pan costume and a beard straight out of 1850. He fights people with guns with a weapon that fires *slower* than guns. He thinks he’s a liberal crusader when he’s really a condescending jerk (see: any time he talks to Black Canary, espeacially when he calls her “pretty bird”). Worst of all, he walks around like he’s the world’s greatest super-hero. He can’t see just how hard he sucks!

Yeah, there’s no way I can argue against that. Green Arrow pretty much sucks. Heck, I have an entire category here dedicated to how lame he is. So even if Ollie isn’t my most-hated character, Mike makes a good case as to why he should be, and that’s why he gets a copy of Boody, a joyfully anarchic comic with no sign of angst.

Dark Horse is publishing a book called The Art of Emily the Strange. Which is funny for all kinds of reasons.

Even before I had a concept for sexuality, I knew that there was something especially appealing about the Warlord comic. I’d be very surprised if I was the only gay comic fan looking forward to the Showcase edition of the first 29 appearances of the character.

Dear Marvel,
The cat is already out of the bag about Wiccan. This just looks vaguely insulting. Would you do a cover with Namor draped seductively over Reed Richards? Didn’t think so.

Herc has far too much clothing on in that pick.
On a related note, I finally picked up the fourth Hercules trade, Love And War. I never expected to see “eromenos” jokes in my super-hero comics, so good on Pak and Van Lente.

How to make sure I don’t buy your comic:

Actually, there are a couple of other “no sales” in that ad, but that’s the big one.

IDW has a new collected edition of Don McGregor’s Detectives Inc.. The add copy is a little lurid, promising “homosexuality, bisexuality, abortion, race relations, and domestic violence” in a somewhat salacious way, but McGregor’s series was one of the first American comics to feature sympathetic gay characters and it attracted a fair amount of angry condemnation from retailers, readers and distributors because of it.

How to insure you never get laid, ever, by anyone of any gender or orientation:

And they call it the “Joker: Salvation” shirt. The hell?

I’m genuinely curious to find out if the sexy transvestite from Final Fight sells as well as other girlie statues from Japan.

I’m glad I don’t work in comics retail anymore, because if I did we might carry these, and then I would know which people of my acquaintance want to buy “sexy Smurfette” figurines. And that’s information I don’t need.

• There should have only been one Star Wars movie.
• Doctor Who really is a children’s program.
• The fiscal impact of illegal file-sharing is probably insignificant, but it’s still a scummy thing to do.
• Internet petitions don’t work.
• Normal people don’t care what internet nerds think about anything.
• Your fan-fiction sucks.
• Wikipedia is pretty much useless for anything other than tv show and movie trivia.
• British television isn’t better than American television. They just know better than to run a show for more than thirteen episodes a year.
• Your blog is not important.
• Joss Whedon’s television shows are not feminist.
• Manga in America was just a fad.
• “Nerd” is not an honorific.
• Publishers, film producers, television networks, etc., are not trying to spite you.
• Comics are, if anything, probably too cheap.
• “Deconstruction” doesn’t mean what you think it does.
• Neither does “gravitas.”
• No one thinks your animated gif is funny.
• “Sexy vampires” have killed the horror genre.
• Film producers will stop making remakes when you stop going to see them.
• The so-called “casual” market for video-games is larger than the “hard-core” market. Deal with it.
• There is something creepy about grown men and women who collect toys.
• Saying “but I have gay friends” after you say something homophobic is a lie, and you know it.

Research into my ongoing analysis of the true emotional depths of Hank Ketcham’s Dennis the Menace, and the insights it provides into the lives of “quiet desperation” the American middle-class of the post-war era lived, continues at a rather glacial pace. But in the course of my studies, I took a look again at some of the Ketcham-inspired color comic books based on his existential opus. While not up to the high standards of searing insight as Ketcham’s own work, they do offer telling glimpses into the lives of these desperately unhappy suburbanites.

Alice Mitchell would rather live a life where she is in constant danger of being killed by poachers than spend one minute more with Henry or Dennis.

George Mitchell’s frequent outbursts of anger have so concerned his wife that she has begun periodically checking his recall for signs of Alzheimer’s Syndrome.

Alice was so heavily dependent on alcohol to make it through her pregnancy, she still sometimes is convinced that Dennis must have some form of physical malformation or mental disability.