OBLIGATORY COMICS POST

Read the two trades of the Hudlin Black Panther. Gah. What a runny load of awful that is; a pointless revision of both the premise and the character, peeling away all the nuance and the mystery from the character and replacing it with second hand "hard man" cliches. The complex character Priest built is turned into Shaft, Jungle King. Who's the king that's a sex machine to all the ladies...T'Challa! Whose the cat that won't cop out, when there's danger all about....T'Challa! Not every black character needs to be Shaft. The sad thing is, Hudlin isn't a bad writer--his work on Birth of a Nation was really very good--but competence alone can't salvage a fundamentally flawed premise.

I really should learn to listen to Marc.

Shaft as sung by Chaucer here, offered as a pick me up to those depressed by all the negativity.

UP AGAINST THE WALL

When the revolution comes, the first to die will be the lactation consultants. Little better than witchdoctors, all of them.

A LESSON FROM THE WORLD OF "CALL YOUR OWN"

A suggestion for basketball referees everywhere. Go down to the park. Call next, wait in line. Play in some games with random guys, with everyone calling their own fouls. Notice how, often, no one contests a foul? Because everyone knows that it was an actual foul? Notice how though, sometimes, calling a foul results in fifteen minutes of debate, posturing, name calling, the abuse of innocent gatoraide bottles, and the occasional fisticuffs? Because the foul was imaginary, or questionable, or called to bail out a prima donna?

Now come back. Start reffing games. And think to yourselves before you blow the whistle: would this call start a fight in the park? If the answer is yes....don't blow the damn whistle.

For what it's worth, despite at least four horrible calls sending Wade to the line tonight, the ref's did not give this game (unlike Game Five) to Miami. Dallas lost this game on its own. If the deck is stacked against you, and you don't go out guns blazing, it's your own fault. They needed to attack, and they didn't. Simple as that.

Also, I should just come clean with it: I simply cannot root for Florida teams. I've tried so hard to overcome my upbringing. But no; I see Florida teams through the eyes of a Midwesterner still. Frontrunning jerks, all of them.

Sigh.

CHOP-SUCKY

Saw the article on the new diversity at DC. I don't honestly care that much about the lesbian Batwoman; that could sort of go either way, though I my guess would be tipping more towards titilation than not. I did, though, sort of chuckle at the new Chinese superteam; if you're going to design a group with the express purpose of creating diversity, you might, you know, want to do more than rehash old stereotypes.

I mean, c'mon: the Mother of Champions, who can, and I quote, "birth a litter" of superhumans every couple of hours? Why not just call her the Yellow Horde and be done with it. And no less than four characters who look like folks with homes on Zu, the Magic Mountain? This is like having an JLA made up of three cowbowys, Scarface, and two rappers (which was, the lineup of JLA Detroit, of course). And I'm not even touching the whole Ghost Fox Killer design, what with the whole "exotic erotic" thing it has going on; I'll leave that for Rose, maybe. This whole concept is diverse only inasmuch as appealing to all stereotypes about a culture, not just some, is diverse.

And besides, why this urge to tie "foreign" superheroes to their source culture? I mean, a well designed character--one who grows organically out of his setting--has no choice but to incorporate his culture. DC's Starman, for example, was an exploration of a specific location, a specific culture, as much as it was a story of a superhero; more importantly, it was those things despite the fact that Starman himself was pretty generic in terms of character design, in a Heroclix-y "what can he do" sort of way.

Why not a Chinese Starman instead of yet another rehash of the Seven Chinese Brothers? The biff-bam-pow bit isn't where diversity comes from, and which is why, maybe, Batwoman has more of a chance than does the Great Ten; homesexuality isn't central to the Batwoman concept in the same way that "being Chinese" is to the Great Ten.

Usual caveats, I suppose. Execution is everything, and there may be legitimate story reasons for the designs. Maybe the designs are preliminary, and maybe I'm overreading. Grant Morrision is involved, which doesn't suggest stupidity, though perhaps he's reaching his Bendis point at DC. We'll see.

THE INTERMITTENT GUIDE TO PARENTING

New parents unused to the business end of a baby should spend some quality pre-baby time at the local sewer plant. Changing diapers is a snap after some time hanging around a clarifier, or a bar screen. A little bit of liquid stink in a diaper is nothing after walking suspended across ten thousand cubic feet of roiling human filth, complete with greasy chunky floaty bits happily bobbing around and a guy reminding you that, sometimes, they actually have to use those life preserves.

WELCOME TO THE BLOG, KID....

I can't bring myself to type the rest of that oblique reference to X-Men 171 for fear of drawing too much attention on my house. Superstition rules the roost here on the homefront today, superstition and fear and doubt and love.

Which is a long way of saying that my wife and I welcomed Intermittent Lass into the fold last Thursday. Given that she weighed 12 pounds and change at birth, we thought about going with Giant Girl, or perhaps Titania, but fear of copyright lawyers bursting into the nursery scotched those options. That, and the fact that she might read this someday, and, you know, I do want to avoid a horrible crying "you called me big!" scene down the road fourteen years from now (Note to Intermittent Lass: you weren't big: you were adorable. End saccharine interlude). So Intermittent Lass she is.

What does this mean for this site? In the immediate future, maybe, paradoxically, more blogging. Work was gracious enough to give me time off (though what they give and what they expect me to take might be something else...the office culture does sort of frown on the latitudes of the office rules), which means I'm hanging out around the house, though in more of a Mr. Belvedere than a Mr. Mom kind of role. And after cleaning, and diapering, and rocking, and cooking up a batch of lentil soup, it turns out I have time. Go figure. So I might as well blog, he says on day five of an eighteen year commitment. What could go wrong?

Wait, don't answer that; I already know. Remember: fear, doubt, and superstition are my new friends, having been delivered with the Lass.

She's worth it.

BOOM!

I know, I know; thirty hours, I said. And I meant it, and it was. In my continum, at least, and an discrepancy between this site's timeline and yours is easily explained away as the normal byproduct of Superboy whaling hell out of the time stream.

Really.

NEXT ISSUE: EVERYTHING CHANGES!

Face front, true believers, and forget everything you thought you knew about the Intermittent....next issue, secrets three quarters of the year in the making are revealed, loyalties are tested, new members join the team, and nothing will ever be the same again! Hobbies will live and hobbies will die! Join us back here in thirty hours, as the Intermittent faces his greatest challenge, one he just may not survive....