420 special: The Top Ten Pot-Heads in Comics

It’s 4-20 you degenerate low-lives.

Welcome to my blog.

It's "Mary Jane" and her dreaded catch phrase. We all know what it means.

As a straight laced kid from the suburbs growing up in the late sixties, I never cared much for the drug culture or its humor.  I didn’t like Cheech and Chong records or Wonder Warthog comics, and the Grateful Dead were for those bigger kids who skipped auto-shop a lot.  But around the time I turned 18, Paul McCartney was busted for possession of one hundred and thirty-eight kilos of wacky weed in his luggage by the Japanese, and I figured pot smokers can’t be all bad.  The man wrote Hey Jude, for God’s sake.

My drugs of choice turn out to be caffeine and sugar, conveniently blended into a Coca-Cola, which I treat like a life altering addiction, but in celebration of today’s hippie holiday, for all the great music that cannabis brought my generation, and in some sense of minor protest for all the poor innocent people in jail because of insane prohibition laws, I present to you…

#10- Buddy Bradley

It's morning in America.

As our art-form’s most self-destructive asshole (and I’m including Doctor Doom in that), Peter Bagge’s delightful anti-hero, Buddy Bradley obsesses over old records, argues with everyone he knows, and gets high a lot.  That thrilling lifestyle has sustained the character for decades of a drain circling angst-com unfolding in various series alternately named “NEAT STUFF” or “HATE”.    Lately, Buddy’s dream is to become the crazy, one-eyed, old man who lives at your local junk yard, proving that stoners don’t always let their ambitions atrophy.

FUN FACT POT-HEADS WON’T REMEMBER TOMORROW:

Peter Bagge has said Buddy is part auto-biography, so when visiting Peter, bring thai stick and an eye-patch.

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#9 – Tank Girl

It's impossible to find an image of Tank Girl without some smoke in her mouth.

Like most of the young women you know, Jamie Hewlitt’s Tank Girl lives in an armored assault vehicle in a post-something Australia, devotes herself to anarchy, smokes da blunts like Snoop Dog’s chimney,  and dates a mutated kangaroo. Tank Girl comics are exercises in delightfully surreal nonsense with no discernible point, which is also what you get after a good drag of some Toledo Window Box, so I’m told. The 1995 motion picture (starring Lori Petty) turned this obscure cult character into a much more famous obscure cult character.

FUN FACT POT-HEADS WON’T REMEMBER TOMORROW:

Mr. Hewlitt also created a fictional cartoon band called the Gorillaz which made some amazing albums and videos about ten years ago.

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#8 – Jughead Jones

He barely opens his eyes, he’s lazy and aimless, he plays a musical instrument, he’s constantly got the munchies and has a strange disinterest in his sex drive….when you add that to the fact that “jug” and “pot” are almost synonyms, Pothead Jones has been hiding in plain sight for decades.
There are moments where he believes he talks to his dog.

FUN FACT POT-HEADS WON’T REMEMBER TOMORROW:

He’s been so blitzed for fifty years, Jughead never noticed other  people stopped wearing that hat.

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#7 – Spider Jerusalem

Created by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson in 1997 for a series called TRANSMETROPOLITAN, Spider Jerusalem was reportedly inspired by Doonsebury’s Uncle Duke, who was originally inspired by Hunter S. Thompson, who was entirely inspired by illegal substances.  Spider lives in a futuristic world that has eliminated the bad side of drug use, including addiction and lung cancer, so every citizen is free to smoke the remains of Keith Richards if the mood hits them, and with Spider, it often does.  In between trying a little of every chemical he can find, Mr. Jerusalem is a cyberpunk/gonzo journalist that topples governments with his columns, all created while he’s so baked he has no hope of remembering a word he’s written by the next day.

FUN FACT POT-HEADS WON’T REMEMBER TOMORROW:

Before Spider shaves off his beard and gets a haircut in the first issue, he resembles legendary grass-ingester, Alan Moore.   It’s a “tribute”, apparently.

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#6 – Fritz the Cat

Robert Crumb’s iconic underground comic character became iconic because it was adapted into an iconic underground movie by Ralph Bakshi a few years after the not-so-iconic comics came out.  A casual glance at anything Crumb worked on at the time involved illicit sex, racist imagery, misogyny and drug use on nearly every page, so Fritz wasn’t especially important in the grand scheme of things.  But the animated film blew America’s mind when movie-goers across the heartland watched a cartoon cat do this in 1972:

Pictured: Things Sylvester Pussycat did not do.

FUN FACT POT-HEADS WON’T REMEMBER TOMORROW:

After the film came out, Crumb was so disappointed in it, that he quickly killed off Fritz the Cat with an ice-pick to the head, delivered by an groupie/obsessed fan who loved Fritz’s movie and didn’t take rejection well.  She was also an ostrich.

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#5 – Bluntman and Chronic

Artwork by Mike Allred

From the moment he released his indy-darling uber-movie, CLERKS, Kevin Smith has been associated most prominently with his on-screen and in-comic book alter-ego, “Silent Bob”, a pot dealer with conversation issues.  In the film CHASING AMY, the already fictional alter-egos of Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes are turned into fictional alter-alter-egos in comic book character form.  To add to the meta-textual confusion, both Jay & Silent Bob and Bluntman and Chronic became actual comic books, published in the real world.

FUN FACT POT-HEADS WON’T REMEMBER TOMORROW:

Kevin Smith still makes films, but no one sees them anymore.

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# – 4  Marijuana Man

Created by multi Grammy award winning recording artist Ziggy Marley, (son of the equally legendary Rita Marley), written by Joe Casey, illustrated by Jim Mahfood, and published (theoretically) by Image Comics in 2011, Marijuana Man is an alien from the planet Yelram (spell it backwards and be amazed!) who is traveling the universe to bring back life giving THC to his dying planet.  I swear to Rasta I’m not making this up.  I’ve never actually seen a copy, though there are a few articles online from last year promising the issue is just about to come out.  If it did, I didn’t see it.  Perhaps the creative team got distracted by something…

FUN FACT POT-HEADS WON’T REMEMBER TOMORROW:

Ziggy insists the character can’t be considered a bad influence on readers because Marijuana Man doesn’t actually smoke the ganga. He gets his superpowers from mystically “connecting with it” through contact alone.

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#3 –   Zonker Harris 

If Peter Pan had never grown up in the 1970s, instead of not growing up in the 19th Century, he would be Zonker Harris.

One of the original lead characters in the long running Doonesbury comic strip by Garry Trudeau, Mr. Harris is a full time professional slacker who has been a competitive sun-tanner, low-stress nanny, and outspoken advocate for hemp since the early days of the series. And Zonker shows no sign of stopping in his lifestyle choices as of 2012.

He started off as the crazy roommate everyone had in college, and evolved into the crazy unmarried uncle that can’t hold down a job.   I’m waiting for the day that Garry Trudeau writes a series of strips where Zonker is actually arrested and put in jail for his lifestyle, to give America a taste of how horrible and unfair it would all be to see it happen to someone you know and love.

FUN FACT POT-HEADS WON’T REMEMBER TOMORROW:

Lest you think America’s favorite cartoon deadhead is exclusively a comic STRIP character, he and a friend appeared in Spectacular Spider-Man #56.  Check out the bottom right corner, it’s Zonker and Mike Doonsebury, courtesy of John Byrne.  You’ll notice someone is enjoying some Mary Jane, man.

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#2 – The  Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers

The clown princes of comix, Gilbert Shelton’s Freak Brothers appear in stories that are exclusively about the finding of, purchasing of, and smoking of weed.  I think there’s ONE story that focuses on their car breaking down, but it was driving to their dealer to buy weed when it did.  Just so you don’t think they’re a one-joke idea (and that idea is weed), Fat Freddy is often looking for things to eat, and he has a cat that spends a lot of time confronting his poop issues.  But other than that, it’s about weed.

Is it just me, or is there something wrong with all their noses?

FUN FACT POT-HEADS WON’T REMEMBER TOMORROW:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YINWUjFQRDU

There’s actually a few minutes of a stop motion Freak Brothers Film online.  It  was in motion for a while, but it stopped.

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#1 – This Guy

This single one-page gag strip by Crumb features the anonymous comic character most associated with getting high for an entire generation.

I saw this poster in a thousand bedrooms when I was a teenager.  It was certainly my first head-on encounter with the work of Crumb, Comix and nefarious, unauthorized behavior that was rampant in the early 70s.  Even though I never smoked those awful doobies as a teenager, and was suspicious of people who did, this poster was somehow very appealing.  I hope it wasn’t the obvious limp phallus in panel four.

Maybe it was simply a choice of this poster, or the one with the cat gripping a metal pipe,  saying “Hang in there, baby.”

That decade was difficult.

FUN FACT POT-HEADS WON’T REMEMBER TOMORROW:

In the over a thousand viewings I have had with this comic strip, I did not notice until today that the second word is misspelled.  That’s how observant I am when I’m sober.

Ty the Guy OUT!

Here now, you comic book stoner bonus moment.

Not just cocaine, but HITLER'S cocaine. I wouldn't mess with that stuff...

THE SEVEN BEST GAY CHARACTERS IN COMICS.-

Last week, the seven most MISGUIDED attempts at Gay Characters in comics.  This week:  The Seven Best Gay Characters in Comics –   Because the glass is half full, and I know how to swirl it around.

Who am I to make such a list?  What are my credentials?
I’ve read more comics than you have – (Unless you’re Mark Waid, and then I’m sorry for being presumptuous, my superior master) –  And because I have a blog and you don’t.   I found this one on the street near my friend Kevin’s house, and now it’s mine , so no one can stop me.

7) Wiccan

(BILLY KAPLAN) – (and his boyfriend Hulkling (TED ALTMAN)

Can you guess which one's called "Hulkling" and which one's "Wiccan"?

Wiccan is part of a Mighty Marvel Royal Family.

Kissing cousin to damn near everyone.

He is (more or less) the son of mutant Wanda Maximov (the Scarlet Witch), making him the grandson of Magneto (X-Men bad guy), nephew to Quicksilver (X-Men/Avenger asshole), twin brother of SPEED (Young Avengers teen), and step-son (?) to the Silver Age Vision, who used to be the golden age Human Torch –  also Wiccan is first cousin to Luna, daughter or Crystal, who was the ex-girlfriend of the CURRENT Human Torch, which makes Billy Kaplan part of the extended families of the Fantastic Four, the X-Men and the Avengers – requiring every Marvel hero but Daredevil to let him crash on the couch for two days, unannounced.

And Wiccan’s boyfriend, Hulkling, is the son of Captain Mar-vell and a Skrull Princess named Analee.  So he’s an Avengers brat too.

Young Avengers Presents #3

It’s often said that there’s someone gay in every extended family in America (whether you know it or not) and Marvel finally acknowledged it with one of the main families of the Marvel U.

But what really lands BILLY on the list are these scenes from YOUNG AVENGERS PRESENTS  Issue #3…. Wiccan has spent the issue with his brother, trying to find his missing, presumed dead mom, the Scarlet Witch, and along the way, they’re told she’s not going to be found, and handed this piece of advice….

-and when he’s home later, with Hulkling, he realizes how wonderful THAT moment with his boyfriend is…

Notice, the gay boyfriend isn’t a temptation to deny, or a problem to solve, or a secret to hide from his family – the boyfriend is a magical blessing in Wiccan’s life.  There’s yer hopeful ending, right there, and it comes from someone in the family… the “Dick Cheney’s daughter” of the Marvel Universe, if I may use a metaphor bluntly and badly.

6)  Batwoman

-KATE KANE

Pretty. pretty...

After the first few Batwoman issues of Detective I found I liked the comic, but didn’t love the protagonist.  It was BEAUTIFULLY illustrated by J.H. Williams III, over an action -packed Greg Rucka plot about a weird Alice in Wonderland cult -all entertaining as hell — but I hadn’t had that “moment” where I was won over by Batwoman, (or Kate Kane), as a character in her own right.  There was much butt kicking and leaping, but ALL the bat-gang do that.

–
But then, we came to this scene in Detective 856, where Ms. Kane arrives at a charity function dressed in a formal tuxedo, rocking a post-goth, post-Patrick Nagel thing, and strutting like it was her palace.

Her confidence in facing down disapproving relatives and openly flirtatious police captains, won me over but good.
I love her body language, her dialog, that touch of arrogance, all while working clues to a super-crime in her head.  Dare I say it, it reminded me of Bruce Wayne – in a way that Dick Grayson, Tim Drake or Barbara Gordon never did – the way Kate just OWNED that room and the story.

So as of ‘Tec 856, Kate Kane had “it” for me.
As the next few issues followed, and we learned of Kate’s bizarre back story, her brutal family tragedy, her “honorable” discharge from the Army, and her wonderful, complex relationship with her father, this comic became the surprise hit of the year for me.  More of this, thanks!
And oh, yeah.  She’s gay.  Just part of the overall weave, my friends.

5) Mark Slackmeyer

From Doonesbury.

Mark is one of the four founding characters of one of the five best comic strips of the 20th Century  (Pogo, Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts and L’il Abner are the other four) and DECADES into Mark’s story in the strip, he turns out to be gay.  It seemed a little forced when the idea first arrived, but I never should have doubted Mr. Garry Trudeau, Lord of the Doonesbury.  In fairly short order, Megaphone Mark, the ultra liberal student radical turned NPR radio host settles down with a man who is his opposite in nearly every way – a log cabin Republican, conservative money-pusher named Chase Talbot III (who is the embodiment of Mark’s much hated, ultra-conservative father) and they become a bickering married couple on the radio.  BRILLIANT comics, great satire and very real human comedy for anyone with a passing recognition of the Oedipal Complex or the tropes of 70s family sitcoms.

And yet, they're in love.

Mark and Chase are separated now, but their time together was a high water mark in what is still the best comic strip running in  American papers.

4)  Midnighter

-(and his lovely husband, Apollo)
From the ultra right wing, ultra violent Wildstorm series, STORMWATCH, comes the most militant homosexual “super-hero” in history.
What’s not to LOVE about Midnighter?  He’s Gay Batman, for god’s sake.  PLUS he’s got a special instant super-healing power, and a murderous temper which makes him gay Wolverine-Batman.  Which is really gay Dark

Like this guy...only attracted to men, see?

Claw, and that’s the whole enchilada right there.  Gay Dark Claw. Dark Claw, only gay.  And his boyfriend is essentially gay Superman, only  named Apollo.  It makes me wish I was gay, so I could love Midnighter even more.

What started off as a Warren Ellis one-joke about a long believed super-hero subtext, became an actually interesting pair of characters over the next few years of Stormwatch, and then, AUTHORITY.   Midnighter and Apollo were a little more bloodthirsty than you expected, more fiercely loyal to each other than you expected, and more physically affectionate with each other than any other gay characters in comics were at the time, but they were written with wit and cleverness, even if the dialog tended towards sneering British ‘tude, And they were a genuine couple, in love and committed to each other, even adopting a child together.  (A reincarnation of a teammate, but let’s not go THERE).

They really do kiss a lot, these two...when they're not slaughtering super-villains.

When MIDNIGHTER launched in his own monthly series, the first couple of story lines included one of the BEST time travel adventures ever, and some of the best done-in-one comic tales being published.
He’s Gay Dark Claw.  Does this need to be explained again?

–

3) Lawrence Poirier

FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE

Coming out to your family or friends was a dangerous thing to do in 1993.  Lynn Johnson, creator of FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE, discovered it was a dangerous thing to do on the comics pages of your local newspaper.

When Michael Patterson’s life long friend Lawrence told Michael he was gay, Lynn Johnson received countless hate letters and death threats from around the world….just for showing the comic strip pages that a gay person simply existed.  Over one hundred newspapers in the United States dropped her very popular comic strip until the offendingly gay Lawrence was out of the spotlight … And the intolerance wasn’t just in the real world for this poor teen –  As his fictional story continued, Lawrence told his stepfather he’d met a college boy and fallen in love, and that bit of honesty got Lawrence thrown out of his house.

Now, in the middle of all that abuse and hatred, Lawrence does something remarkable:   He remains polite.  He rages very little, he tells Michael how much he appreciates his friend’s support, and quietly waits for the rest of the world to realize how badly they’re behaving towards him.  He makes this an epic story of dignity in the middle of intolerable behavior from damn near everyone else.  All from a small, slightly terrified 17 year old boy.

THAT’s a Super-hero in my book.

2)  Toland Polk

Stuck Rubber Baby
Toland Polk is a fictionalized character, very loosely based on the early life of writer/ artist  HOWARD CRUSE, one of comics’ more notably “out” underground cartoonists of the 70s and 80s.  The 1995 graphic novel STUCK RUBBER BABY is a dense narrative about Toland’s early adulthood, living in the American South in the 1960s, and slowly discovering that he’s slightly racist, and very gay, and that he can only learn to stop being ONE of those things.
One of the best novels I’ve ever read about growing up.  It won the Harvey and the Eisner for best Graphic Novel in 95, as well as a bunch of other best thing-on-Earth awards that year.  Stuck Rubber Baby, stands with Maus, Barefoot Gen or Contract with God, as a rare comic life story that NEVER leaves you.  By the time it’s over, Toland Polk is one of your favorite people.

–

1) Esperanza “Hopey” Glass.

LOVE AND ROCKETS.

Teen Hopey, mind you.

Ahh….Love and Rockets – the 80s comic book you could give your date, and she would “get it”.  QUICK HISTORY LESSON: Fangirls started hanging around comic shops because of Jaime Hernandez’ “LOCAS” series in Love and Rockets, long before Sandman was a gleam in VERTIGO’s creepy eye.

Though it started as the sci-fi story of two giggling, pro-solar mechanics named Maggie and Hopey (and Maggie’s major crush, RAND RACE), the series, LOCAS, quickly became about two unemployed EX-pro-solar mechanics/ slackers who hang around the LA Hispanic 80s Punk Rock / Wrestling world, falling in and out of trouble (and love) while picking up an ASTOUNDINGLY complex and interesting supporting cast.
What holds the series together, is that EVERYBODY loves the adorable lead character, Maggie Chascarrillo —

Ray loves Maggie.  Speedy loved Maggie.  Penny loves Maggie.  Izzy loves Maggie, and the readers love Maggie, but MOST of all, HOPEY loves Maggie.

Hopey really, really loves her.  It makes Hopey’s jackboot-wearing street-cynic party-girl butch-punk lesbian heart melt every time she’s in a room with Mags, and Maggie loves Hopey right back, except Mags couldn’t give up men forever, even for Hopey….which is the basis for much of the drama in the first decade of their relationship.

We’ve all watched Hopey’s heart break a few times, and along the way, I think we all fell in love with the abrasive little bitch who couldn’t play the bass worth a damn.  She was annoyingly human, after all.

Jamie's not mean to Hopey...she gets to kiss Mags every now and then.

The stunning artwork by author/artist  Jamie Hernandez didn’t hurt the reader’s enjoyment of the series either.

THERE WAS NO ROOM for MORE

I didn’t write about Anole, or Graymalkin, or any of the gay X-Men, because I confess I rarely read X-Men books (there’s simply too many), and I’m not familiar with their stories, sorry.  Krazy Kat was strongly considered, but Kat went from being male to female so regularly, that Ignatz may have been bisexual, instead of gay, without knowing it, and who needs that confusion?  There was simply no room for Bitchy Butch (Roberta Gregory’s wonderfully awful dyke character from Naughty Bits), or Element Lad, or Constantine, or any from the legion of lesbian detectives, wonderful characters all.

-And finally…

Get yer mind out of the gutter right now, soldier!

… I never brought up Peppermint Patty and Marcie because they aren’t lesbians, all right?  Get over it people.  They both had a crush on “Chuck”, and ONLY Chuck, never each other… and you can’t tell a person’s orientation simply because of how they wear pants.  Marcie didn’t even LIKE softball.  Good GRIEF! Don’t be such a hater.

TY THE GUY OUT!

Here now, your comic book moment of zen:

Top Ten Dead Characters in Comics

It’s Memorial Day weekend, now coming to a close.   So we memorialize, just a wee bit.

We’ve lost a few recently.  Dennis Hopper, who was alternately too f-ing cool for god, and too f-ing messed up for reality, or the safety of his wives…  Gary Coleman, who was kidney-punched by fate too many times to make fun of, and Art Linkletter, who once killed a grizzly with his bare hands, just to feel the warm blood against his skin.  And oh, we’ve also lost the Gulf of Mexico, probably because the locals thought it was an illegal immigrant, and got a little trigger-happy.

And the grim reaper scores another three to nothing shut-out!

But I say, let’s focus on death in the more “zombie and ghost” way this Memorial Day weekend.  It’s irreverent, cost-free, and harmlessly offensive!

It’s the TOP TEN DEAD CHARACTERS IN COMICS.

Not the ones that death took from us, but the ones that death made entertaining!

#10:  DARK HORSE’S GHOST

pretty. all so pretty.

She was a murdered reporter named Elisa and I think her sister did something she didn’t approve of, and her parents drank…and she  had guns and a real low cut top under her cape/hoodie thing and she was very attractive, especially for the issues drawn by Adam Hughes.

pretty

But OH, those issues by Adam Hughes, and those covers, and those collected graphic novels with the all new covers, and those special edition posters, and all those amazing images of this character “GHOST” were just EVERYWHERE for a while.  It sucked us all in.  We all liked her.  I wish I could remember a thing about what happened in any of the stories.  I know I read some.  I know it’s my fault for not remembering a thing but those Adam Hughes posters.

#9:  DEADMAN

Not the one you’re thinking of.  This is the Deadman co-created by Neal Adams and Henry Beard for the National Lampoon.  It featured the adventures of Hamster Tollhousecookie La Brea, the IV – Eurotrash heir to La Brea fortune, who dies in a car accident (after purposely swerving into a tourist family to cushion his impact).  Hamster’s body is stolen by a passing scientist, curious to see what he can do with this curiously unscathed corpse, and through a series of curious events, the impervious cadaver becomes a weapon in the fight against crime.

“Deadman” is hurled from rooftops, left in the road as a speed bump, and shoved against doorways, righting wrongs and bringing the city to justice.  A Weekend at Bernie’s super-hero, only created years before, when it was a still funny idea.

I laughed til I peed when I was twelve years old.  It was drawn by NEAL ADAMS and DICK GIORDANO furshlugginer’s sake!  Easily as  funny as TARZAN OF THE COWS, only with more dead bodies.

#8:  The Haunted Tank

This was a twisted favorite with me.  The Haunted Tank is about a little Sherman Tank in WWII, and the squad who runs it, and the bickering ghost of some Confederate General who haunts the tank, because he’s related to the squadron’s leader.   It’s SORT of a spooky/comedy/action book, where the ghost gets the tank out of scrapes by saying “Lookie over thar” a lot, or sometimes it wakes them up by shouting at them, or it says encouraging things like “I nevah gave up when I was fighting to keep slavery legal, now was I?”, or did I just imagine that?   Anyway the ghost didn’t participate so much as nag and act sort of holier than thou and stuff while Nazis shot at them.  And the still-living members of the team usually figured a way out of a death trap by answering some riddle the sadistic ghost would make them solve.

I don't think the Germans can see me, bwah...so you're on your own again!

It was drawn by the legendary Russ Heath, possibly the best illustrator of war and/or  western titles the industry ever had.  So I had no choice but to collect as many of these as I could.

#7:  CASPER and L’IL HOT STUFF.

It's the silly kind of morbid!

This beloved spokesperson for the “fun” aspects of Early Onset Death, was everywhere when I was a kid, but some dreadfully unfunny big budget films, finally killed Casper the Friendly Ghost off about ten years ago.

The thing about Casper, was that he was a GHOST.  And that meant that every time I read a Casper comic, I had to envision THIS…

The sky is blue. The sun is warm. My foot is stuck. I hear a train.

EVERY TIME, I saw this image of living Casper, mere moments before his death.  What was he like?  Who were his parents?  Did anyone ever solve his obviously grisly murder (or else why is there a ghost left chained to this earth, huh?)?!?   I was waiting for this mystery to be solved, and for the idiot girl in the red outfit to go the hell home!  “Screw you, Wendy.”  After all these years, yeah, I said it.  “GO HOME! We don’t LIKE YOU!”

It also took me no time to decipher that Casper is clearly the same cursed soul that separated out to form the demon-sprite Hot Stuff, Casper’s Demonic Evil twin in the Harvey Comics Mythos.  Sadly,  HOT STUFF is  remembered primarily as a tattoo hiding somewhere on the dried-up body of Baby Boomers who recall being tough at some point.

Trust us, if someone your grandmother’s age saw someone with some manly HOT STUFF ink fading into the yellowing haze of his arm skin, she’d think he was “Hard-Core”.

I promise you nothing but a world of hurt, baby.

#6:  DEAD GIRL

Shwinggg. Yeah, baby! My references are as dead as her skin!

First off, she was created by Peter Milligan and Mike Allred, so we’re two-thirds of all right before we begin.  Add to the fact that she’s named “Moonbeam” and can reanimate the recently dead, talk to spirits, take machine gun fire, hang out with Gwen Stacey, and look pretty hot doing it, all while being technically, and actually dead.  That’s a kick-ass zombie-girl you could take home to mom.

What the...? Is that who I think it is...?

Her crowning achievement was never published, however, for back in 2003, Dead Girl and the X-Statix gang were involved in a story in which they would revivify the corpse of Princess Diana and make England’s Rose into a zombie-X-Man mutant crime fighter.  I’m not making that up.   Dead Girl would be TOP of the dead heroes list if she’d pulled that one off.

Damn, that is so weird. How can I not have it?

But the world never saw it, as the stories were halted before war broke out between the allies, killing millions.  But for one brief, shining moment, X-Statix was sticking it to the man.  Or the Ma’am, in this case.  The ones on the money and the stamps.

#5:  Phantom Cop of Hong Kong, from PLANETARY #3. 1998

With their series PLANETARY, Warren Ellis and John Cassady had me at “Hello”. (Actually the first line of dialog is, “Your coffee tastes like a dog took a leak in it.” which is how we say hello in Canada.)

The comic was about these kooky “field” investigators who go looking for the paranormal, and constantly find it, in weird versions of trademarked characters the author didn’t want to actually pay for.  I was dug in for glory with issues #1 and #2, but  issue #3 cemented me as a fan for life, because of the Phantom Cop of Hong Kong.

The Twilight Zone/Hong Kong action/ Tarentino Phantom Cop takes over issue #3.  Murdered by a dirty partner, Phantom Cop spends his nights blowing holes in the heads of various bad guys, with his suspiciously un-spectral guns, and casually revealing the most basic secrets of the universe to anyone who will listen.  Life, death, god, he’ll tell you everything he knows, then he’ll shoot you in the temple.  I rolled around in this comic and made it my secret friend for about a year after it came out.  A decade later, I’m STILL waiting for more of my PHANTOM COP.  MORE PHANTOM COP!  YOU HEAR!

#4:  JUDGE DEATH

This character is so ripper top-gear it makes me want to fair dinkum up the apples and pears, cor, rightie matey-o, or whatever they say in the UK when they’re not drunkenly savaging their cousins with  bagpipes, one way or another.

I’ll just say it straight: Judge Death is the thrice re-animated zombie corpse of an inter-dimensional serial killer/evil twin of Judge Dredd, looking to execute everyone in its path as a preemptive strike against doing something illegal, as only the living can do.

If you couldn’t follow that, you shouldn’t be reading comics with the big boys.  Judge Death was created by Alan Grant and Brian Bolland, because they’re that nasty-schoolyard cool, or they were when it was the Eighties, and cool people pushed nails through their face.

Judge Death’s biggest claim to immortality comes from something he said a lot in his earliest adventures.  “Gaze into the face of Death!” he would hiss at you, all mean-mutha and stuff.  Not a bad catchphrase.  But it led to this:

When I saw this, I went just a little bit gay for Judge Dredd...just a little.

#3:  MARVEL ZOMBIES

Okay, like all slowly rotting corpses, the darlings of the double 00 decade have overstayed their welcome by now- but it’s hard to pretend we didn’t LOVE the Marvel Zombies when they first showed up.

After a delightfully evil debut in the Ultimate Fantastic Four, (by Mark Millar and Greg Land), the Marvel Zombies spun off into a miniseries by Kirkman and Phillips that changed the game.

Brains. Brains. Brains...

The miniseries played the story as such a punch-to-the-face satire of bloated, ignorant consumption culture, all the while disguising itself as a harmless, viscera-flinging romp, that fans ate it up like the sugary dessert topping it was.

My favorite recurring bit came in the second series, when Zombie Hank Pym lost the top half of his skull, including most of his brains, and continued to insist he was smarter than everyone else.

best FF team EVER.

EXTRA POINTS:  The Zombie FF eventually perform the single best escape-from-a-trap scenes in Fantastic Four history, IMHO, proving that Zombie Reed Richards is still going to outwit you, dumbass.

#2:  DEADMAN

AGH! I'm being shot by a TV Character!

Yes, THIS is the one you were thinking of earlier.  Created by Arnold Drake and Carmine Infantino but mostly made famous by Neal Adams, and I love it just because I do.  I don’t care that the ghost who solves his own murder had been done before.  I don’t care that the one armed man he’s hunting is stolen directly from THE FUGITIVE TV series.  I don’t care that the story ends up making no real sense… and god turned out to be a really hot chick who could turn into trees or something, and mostly the afterlife seemed to be a vacation spot in Tibet.  Who knows what any of that was about?

Do you care what it's about? It's pretty...like GHOST was!

It was mostly drawn by Neal Adams when I was a kid, and that was enough for me.  He teamed up with Batman a lot, too, and I can’t shake me my Deadman jones.  I will always show up for a Deadman comic, just to be disappointed, I’m sure, but I’m there like he’s my bestest friend.

#1:  The Spectre

The Beheaded store dummy trick!

This is the badass of undead super-characters.   The embodiment of god’s wrath.  The shaker of worlds.  The most powerful being in the DC universe.  If you get him angry, a cross-crisis miniseries breaks out and DC continuity is doomed.  KEEP HIM AWAY FROM ME!

AGGH! AGHHH! He took my THUMBS! My THUMBS!!

Created originally by Jerry (Superman) Siegel and Bernard (The Spectre) Bailey, in the 40s, the Golden Age Spectre was the ghost of murdered cop, Jim Corrigan, brought back to life to hunt down his killer.

But 1974 was when the Spectre found his spark, his bliss, and his power tools.  Under direction from the gooey, shocking brain pan of writer, Michael Fleisher, and the gorgeous pencil and ink work of Jim Aparo, the 70s Spectre didn’t just punish murderers, he turned them into pudding and sucked them through a straw, and then spread the pudding on hot coals, and then smashed the hot pudding with a shovel, and he did this with such casual sadism EVERY MONTH, that I’d have crawled through broken glass, and slept in a dog cage to see the next issue.  I’ve may have said too much, right there, but I don’t care who knows.

Seriously, what is WRONG with this guy?

This Spectre cut up the villains with spectral buzz saws and flying phantom axes.  He turned one into glass and broke him into shards.  Some he set on fire.  Some he melted into puddles of cheese.   These stories were so deliciously sick, that former  wunderkind Harlan Ellison once said Fleisher had to be “certifiably bug-fuck crazy” to write like that, and Harlan was sued for defamation by Fleisher because madman Mike couldn’t tell that was a compliment (see the Harlan Ellison wiki entry: look under “Controversies”.

Help me, I'll never play Jenga again!

This is the gold standard about how ghosts should treat the living.  Toss us around like rag-dolls.  Beat us and turn us into rubick’s cubs and ground beef.  I for one, welcome our ectoplasmic overlords.

You know, it occurs to me, this column was better suited to Halloween.

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NOW JUST TO AVOID THE LETTERS:  THE DEAD SUPERHEROES WHO DIDN’T MAKE THE LIST

THE CROW:

I hate this guy. So should you.

I’m sorry for what happened to James O’Barr, and I understand that he created The Crow as a form of therapy to get over the senseless death of his girlfriend – but too many douche bags at too many Halloween parties dressed like this character all through the 90s, in the theory that it would get them some from a goth/emo chick, that I cannot forgive The Crow for starting any of that up.

SPAWN:

These are words. Spawn fans will therefore, never read them.

Yes, I understand Spawn is undead.  I understand that Spawn was a very successful comic book/movie/cable cartoon series.  But I’m afraid I’ve read Spawn, and I’ve seen the movie, so I know that the whole thing is sub-literate nonsense that sometimes looks real purty.

KID ETERNITY:

Couldn’t care less.

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That’s all for today.  See you in the coming days with new pages for sale, and new cartoons every weekend.  Plus THE WINNER IN THE HOVERBOY “NAME YOUR FAVOURITE VILLAIN” CONTEST!

Breathe…it will be okay.  Just breathe.

Ty the Guy

for more of my lists, check HERE

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New Comics Day!

After being trapped in my studio for months, working on the new Dexter: Early Cuts animated webisode, and some Simpsons stories, I’m finally free enough to go to a comic store for New Comics Day…something I’ve not done since November of last year.    They still have comics on Wednesdays, right?

For those of us in the biz in Toronto, heading to my local comic stores (the Silver Snail in Toronto, and Altered States out here in the suburbs where I live) It’s a little like going to CHEERS and having everybody shout “Norm” when you walk into the room.  It recharges the batteries and reminds me that I actually LOVE this job…and it inspires a competitive attitude in me to see all the great work coming out week after week.

Imagine:  We have Bryan Hitch, Michael Lark, Howard Chaykin, Alex Ross, Butch Guice, Ed Brubaker, Art Adams, Alan Davis, Kyle Baker, David Finch, Stuart Immomen, Leinil Yu, Danny Slott, Mark Waid, and HUNDREDS of other top flight creators making comics art for us RIGHT NOW.  Not at some nebulous, nostalgic time where everything was better…but right NOW.  Covers, scripts, full issues…all flowing from an overwhelming group of creators, and I’m only scraping the surface of Marvel and DC type folks.  When you look at the panoply of available comix  out there in the indies, the self publishers, IDW, Dark Horse,  the online stuff…why don’t people call THIS the golden age?

My friend and co-conspirator in the Toronto Comics Workshop, Walter Dickenson, was with me at the last convention I attended, and he saw me heading over to the tables where they sell comics for a dollar, usually something from the last decade a dealer has overstocked.  When Walter saw me returning with about a hundred “dollar comics” he asked me why I bought them and I pointed out copies of Greg Land Ultimate FF comics, Jackson Guice issues of RUSE,  Busiek ASTRO CITY DARK AGE stories, Jerry Ordway’s RED MENACE, Warren Ellis Cliffhanger miniseries….all for a DOLLAR?   He asked me “What are you going to do with all those comics, Ty?” and I got confused by the question.

“I’m going to read ’em, Walter….and have a great time in doing so.”  Apparently, I’m like the last working pro who STILL can’t get enough of these funny books.  Does that make me sick?

Ty the Guy.  Smiling with anticipation at what glories the day might bring…

(Ty challenged me to hyper-link the bejeesus out of his entry…I hope you’re happy, Guy!  And I’m aware that Ty’s episode of Dexter: The Early Cuts is online…for various reasons, we are not linking to it at this time, but will at a later point).

(you never know who you’ll run into at your local comics store…like Jimmy Olsen.  Yes, that’s our son, Kellam–he’s a member of the clan, god help him.)