The Unfunnies: Homer and the Terrors of the Deep

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This one is pretty terrible.

That's right Homer: pave the ocean so you don't have to deal with the inconvenience of irregular topography! Dynamite the reefs to save you the indignity of potentially cutting yourself on a coral protrusion! Drug the fish, for they might someday bite you! You jerk.

Homer, by the way, is one of DC's "everyman" characters - along with Ollie, Lucky and Stan - who skipped from job to job as the thematic gag strips demanded it, and since they were the chumps who usually showed up in Aquaman's comics, they all got to be skin divers. Horrible, lazy skin divers.

- this one's from Aquaman No. 34

Flashpoint Ramblings

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So I've been reading Flashpoint, and I while I've been enjoying some of the alternate timeline ideas, I haven't really been able to get into it as being consequential. This might be due to the upcoming reboot, or my disdain for Reverse Flash as a boilerplate EEEEVIL TORTURE VILLAIN, but the fact remains that I just can't bring myself to care all that much about the outcome of the whole thing.
Ironically, this has led me to think about it a lot. Specifically, I've been trying to work out what the theme of this alternate world is - every good alternate timeline story has a compelling theme, after all, like Red Son being all "what if Superman was a Commie?" or Justice Riders posing the compelling question "what if everybody was cowboys?". 

I know that the impetus of the whole thing was Reverse Flash evil torturing Barry Allen by messing with the past, but that's no kind of theme. Based on the differences that I've been able to glean so far, I reckon that the theme of this world might just be "what if The Nail was about the entire JLA instead of just Superman?" Consider:

[BIG SPOILERS IF YOU CARE ABOUT THAT SORT OF THING]

Superman - Kal-El's baby-rocket impacted in Metropolis instead of Kansas, leading to him spending his entire life in government custody. Also, his DNA was used to create a Super Sayan.

Batman - Lil' Bruce Wayne was shot while his parents survived. Thomas Wayne became a meaner version of the Batman as a result, while Martha Wayne became the Joker.

Green Lantern - Abin Sur never travelled to Earth and consequently never died. Hal Jordan still a test pilot.

Martian Manhunter - Captured by super-villain the Outsider, tortured, experimented on and then sold to the Russians. Became evil as a result of these torments.

Aquaman - Taken away from his human father at a young age and thus never given a gentler moral upbringing. Sinks Western Europe as a part of his war with the Amazons.

Wonder Woman - We'll come back to Wonder Woman.

So: DCU big guns removed = the world becoming a hellhole. But wait, now something else is bothering me: Reverse Flash went to great trouble to either kill (Batman) depower (Green Lantern, Flash) or scramble the morality of (Superman, Martian Manhunter, Aquaman) all of the A-list super-heroes, but what about Wonder Woman? As far as I can tell, Evil Time-Travelling Apparently Space-Capable Possibly-Magic Reverse Flash didn't mess with her past at all.

Therefore, baseline Wonder Woman is capable of being manipulated into a devastating war, the invasion of a sovereign noncombatant nation and the subjugation of its people. She can be fooled into not noticing her people deploying death squads to other countries and starting concentration camps in her own. She's foolish enough to try negotiating with Aquaman while wearing the helmet that she took from his wife's severed head. Flashpoint Wonder Woman is, evidently, a moron.

Whether this means something big or cosmic or misogynistic or pants-phobic (Moron Wonder Woman does, after all, wear those very controversial garments) I cannot say. All that matters is that it is on the Internet and thus will no longer be rattling around in my head.

What Have I Wrought

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In response to my recent post about Lois Lane's dentition and its implications for the larger DCU, extremely funny commenter damanoid had this to say:

Oh for god’s sake man, do you realize what you’ve done?! This could take YEARS to sort out!

First there’ll need to be a Dentistry Crisis, to explain that Lois Lane had her memories erased to cover up the fact that she was raped while under anesthesia.

Then you’ll have Infinite Caries, a massive crossover event in which an earlier version of Lois, with perfect teeth, attempts to ‘bite through history’ to ensure that her alternate self’s tooth decay never occurs– which alters the dental history of the entire DC universe!

That leads into “One Regularly Scheduled Appointment Later,” which reveals how everyone’s life has been changed by their gleaming new smiles, followed by “32,” a series that explores how each tooth in Lois’ mouth has been affected by these changes.

After that of course is “Blackest Teeth,” in which Lois’ missing tooth returns as a zombified fang bent on destroying all teeth everywhere, followed by “Brightest Smile,” in which all of Lois’ teeth change color and get superpowers, or something.

Not that it matters! Because right after that is “FlossPoint,” another massive crossover which explores the premise of what would have happened if Lois had lost a DIFFERENT tooth. This will result in another reboot, and an entirely new continuity that starts out before Lois had lost her tooth to begin with.

Once all that is out of the way, though, they’ll finally be able to move on to the good stories and solid writing we’ve been waiting for. It’ll be the perfect jumping-on point for new readers! Yes indeed, no doubt about it at all. Blue skies ahead, my friends; nothing but blue skies.

In addition to unleashing a much denser agglomeration of tooth/comic jokes than I'd ever imagined possible, damanoid is of course pointing out the fact that bad comics trends propagate just as readily as good ones. This is sadly true, though I hold hope in my heart that the continuity-heavy title-wide crossover will soon go the way of the foil-embossed cover.

Someday.

The Unfunnies: Honey in Hollywood

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"Honey in Hollywood" is a strip about a would-be starlet trying to achieve her filmic dreams. It's as innocent as any of these comics, but I'm afraid that decades of layered cliches have irreversibly sullied my mind. I can't read a "Honey" without mentally inserting sleazy casting couches and coke parties and similar debauchery just off-screen.

I will leave my thoughts on the potential subtext of this installment unsaid.

From the Adventures of Alan Ladd No. 5