Darylsurat

What is Fuji-Q Highland aka Fujikyu Highland aka 富士急ハイランド?

Simply put: it’s a Six Flags style theme park at the base of Mount Fuji in Japan.  For purely anime geek reasons (which will soon be made clear) we decided to make a stop and visit the park before driving back to Tokyo.

First off, those roller coasters are HUGE. Sadly, I didn’t get to ride any of them because we got there at the end of the day and Japanese theme park lines have INSANELY long wait times. (Just wait until we get to Tokyo Disney Resort – but I digress.)

So we parked the car and started heading into the park. One of the first things we saw near the entrance was this sign:

I have no idea what it says since I don’t speak/read Japanese.  My best guess (and the phrase I kept saying to Shannon throughout the day as we walked around and saw the sign posted all over the park) is “please do not fight with bears.”  If you are reading this blog post AND can read Japanese, please feel free to translate it and leave a comment.  I’m sure other random readers from the Internet will thank you.

For me, I will continue to believe that it says ”please do not fight with bears” because I WANT it to say that.

We made our way past the entrance gift shop and towards the park itself.  Outside near the entrance they had one of those wooden cutout photo ops for folks heading into the park.  Apparently, the mascots for Fuji-Q Highland are sentai warriors.  I made Shannon take this photo:

Amy Jo Johnson ain’t got nothing on her, AM I RIGHT?

After fumbling through the usual Japanese/English exchange of buying tickets, we walked into the park and straight to the main reason I wanted to go…

That’s right: EVANGELION WORLD. More to come…

enlarge Paul Kevin Curtis, the man suspected of sending ricin to President Obama, Senator Wicker and several other Mississippi politicians, was released from custody and all charges dropped on Tuesday after no evidence of ricin could be found anywhere on the premises of his home or vehicle.

When the news broke of his release, I wondered how the right wing would process it, given that they were reveling in the news that Curtis was a Democrat who sported a bumper sticker saying "Christian and a Democrat." It didn't take more than a few minutes for Gateway Pundit to unashamedly post this headline:

enlarge Jim Hoft's shameless smear

But now the plot thickens. Via TalkingPointsMemo, an emerging story of a frame by former GOP candidate J. Everett Dutschke:

On Monday, Curtis’ lawyer, Christi McCoy, said she believed Dutschke could have been responsible for mailing the letters noting he had argued with Curtis over email.

Dutschke denied any involvement in the ricin case in an interview with a local newspaper, though he admitted he spoke with FBI agents on Thursday and allowed them to search his home. TPM spoke with Dutschke Tuesday shortly after the news of Curtis’ release.

“I’m alive,” Dutschke said when asked how he was.

Dutschke expressed disbelief when told of Curtis’ release.

“What did you just say?” he asked.

We repeated that Curtis had been released.

“You’re kidding me,” said Dutschke. “For what?”

We told him we were unsure and asked whether he knew if officials were still investigating him in the case.“I really can’t answer that question at this exact second,” he said.

Dutschke then said he had to go. Subsequent attempts to speak with him were unsuccessful. Less than an hour later FBI agents arrived at Dutschke’s house and he told local reporters on the scene they were there to question him.

From the rest of that TPM article, it appears that Mr. Dutschke had far more motive to send ricin than Curtis.

Dutschke had many interests in addition to taekwondo. In 2007, he ran for a seat in Mississippi’s House of Representatives as a Republican. He lost to incumbent Democrat Daniel Holland.

Along with President Obama, ricin-tainted letters were sent to a local judge named Sadie Holland and Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS). Judge Holland is a local judge named Sadie Holland, mother of the man who defeated Dutschke in his 2007 campaign.

I realize politics is a dirty business, but if this man turns out to have framed an Elvis impersonator for his own act of domestic terrorism, it speaks to the depravity Republicans have encouraged in their constituents.

For nearly a week, the right wing has been reveling in Curtis' Democratic affiliations. Will they now look as closely at their Republican suspect? No, of course not! Here's what they're saying, even as I write this:

enlarge

In case that print is too small to read, the comment is "Sure, let's release the guy who tried to kill the president. That really makes a lot of sense, eh?"

On the Breitbart News article, a sampling of initial comments:

enlarge

I'm guessing there will be a lot of heat and no light from the right wing netroots in the days to come if the initial reaction is any indication.

Update: For those concerned that the initial article did not mention the complete dismissal of charges, here's TPM with the details. Yes, charges were dismissed, without prejudice, meaning they are gone for now, but the US Attorney reserves the right to refile. This doesn't mean anything other than that the feds want to keep all options open.

Series is available through select digital outlets with a home video release to follow later this year

After bringing Hyakka Ryōran Samurai Girls to North America, Sentai Filmworks is back for the sequel, Samurai bride. The series is available through select digital outlets with a home video release to follow later this year. More after the jump.

Michiko & Hatchin should have been a bigger hit in Japan, and it should have been on Cartoon Network's Toonami anime block years ago. Just look at all the winning components! It comes from Manglobe, the studio behind 2004's Samurai Champloo . It features Champloo and Cowboy Bebop director Shinichiro Watanabe as music producer. As if those weren't enough reasons, Michiko & Hatchin is directed by Saya Yamamoto, who either popped tops or left heads shaking in the end, depending who you ask, with Lu...

Retia Adolf figure to be re-released in July

Fans of Japanese media will doubtlessly be familiar with the various works that depict the Sengoku Era warlords as cute girls. If you apply that irreverence to World War II and add sci-fi, you get strategy eroge game Daiteikoku, In it, the Third Reich is ruled by Retia Adolf - a genius who neglects self-maintenance, but whose idols status is propped up by the doting affecting of Grecia Goebbels. See the upcoming Adolf figure after the jump.

Tsutomu Mizushima directs the exploits of the second generation of The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture

In January, manga magazine Afternoon revealed that Shimoku Kio's Genshiken will be getting a new anime adaptation. The series follows a college club calling itself The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture, grouping a broad passion for anime, manga, games, cosplay and so on. The staff on the porject has now been announced. See who's on board after the jump.

Newly discovered 90-second scene to focus on Jonah Matsuka

Nobuyuki Fukumoto to start matchup between Kaiji & Kazuya on Saturday

It has finally come to pass. After all the years of idle chatter, we have finally sat down to interview the man, the myth, the LEGEND~! that is Mike Reynolds. For decades, Mike's voiced tons of "old man" characters in anime as well as done work for Power Rangers, VR Troopers, and the like. Visit www.animeworldorder.com for full show notes and supplemental links.

I frequently bemoan the fact that Studio Ghibli, despite its status as the single most prestigious anime studio of all, has trouble cultivating new creative talent beyond its principal founding members. But I kind of understand why they became that way. It’s because of I Can Hear the Sea , their most lackluster film in comparison to everything else they'd done until Tales from Earthsea came along. Also known as Ocean Waves —please note there are almost zero actual ocean waves in this film as the story r...

Prefacing his comments by insisting he knows "how foreign affairs work," Glenn Beck on April 18 announced that his website, The Blaze, was breaking news about the Boston Marathon bombing: A Saudi national student on a student visa and was "absolutely involved" in the Patriot's Day blast was being deported by the U.S. government for security reasons.

Beck went further, claiming the student, or "dirt bag," as the host described him, was "possibly the ringleader" in the bombing that killed three people and injured more than one hundred, and the government was deliberately covering it up.

Beck urged listeners to spread the breaking news via Twitter and Facebook because, he warned, the mainstream media would ignore the revelation. But the right-wing media would pick up the slack. Fox News' Sean Hannity helped launch the story on April 17 and continued to fan it yesterday, claiming the student had previously "been involved with a terrorist or terror activity," while a swarm of right-wing sites pushed the paranoid tale.  

By making his wild allegations, Beck was asking listeners to ignore the fact that law enforcement officials had previously, and repeatedly, denied earlier right-wing media claims that the Saudi student had been taken into "custody," or was in any way responsible for the blast.  

Indeed, officials at Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security both soundly denied the story, explaining that there were two different Saudi nationals: one recovering in a Boston hospital who had witnessed and been injured in the explosions but was not a suspect, and another in ICE custody who was unrelated to the bombing investigation. Beck responded by calling for President Obama to be impeached for what he considered the sprawling government cover-up that now surrounded the student, Saudi Arabia and Al Qaeda.

So yeah, it was that kind of week for the right-wing media. It was a debacle.

In the same week that Pulitzer prizes were announced honoring the finest in American journalism, many in the far-right media worked to set news standards in mindless, awful behavior in the wake of the Boston attack.

Faced with covering the most important American terror news story in a decade, too many players opted to just make stuff up. Prompting witch hunts, they cast innocents as would-be killers and then couldn't be bothered with apologies.

As police and federal officials hunt down the suspected Boston marathon bombers, USA Today contributor, Daily Beast columnist, and Fox News contributor Kirsten Powers made this absolutely baffling assertion via Twitter: "Just b/c the bombing suspects were Muslim, that doesn't make it 'terrorism' any more than a crazy abortion clinic bomber is a terrorist."

The intent behind this tweet isn't immediately clear, but the message it conveys -- that an anti-abortion zealot who sets off a bomb inside of an abortion clinic is not a terrorist -- is absolutely false. The FBI treats attacks against abortion service providers as acts of terrorism and anti-abortion movements that resort to violence as terrorist groups.

Abortion clinic bombers are terrorists. This shouldn't need clarifying.

UPDATE: After the publication of this post, Powers tweeted the following about abortion clinic bombers:

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) said Tuesday that most opponents to his controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) are teenagers in their basements as the Obama administration threatened to veto the measure for its potential to violate civil liberties.

"People on the Internet -- if you're, you know, a 14-year-old tweeter in your basement … I took my nephew, I had to work with him a lot on this bill because he didn't understand the mechanics of it," Rogers continued. "I hear that a lot. Once you understand the threat and you understand the mechanics of how it works and you understand that people are not monitoring your content of your emails, most people go, 'got it.'"

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, reflected concerns shared by the White House and many civil liberties groups, arguing that the bill did not do enough to ensure that companies, in sharing cyber threat data with the government and each other, strip out any personal data of private citizens.

"They can just ship the whole kit and caboodle and we're saying minimize what is relevant to our national security," the Democrat said. "The rest is none of the government's business."

Rogers stressed that his bill doesn’t extend any extra surveillance powers to the federal government, despite condemnation from critics that say exactly that. “It does something very simple: it allows the government to share zeroes and ones with the private sector,” he said. Rather, he called it "a critical bipartisan first step for enabling American’s private sector to defend itself" and "improves cybersecurity without compromising our civil liberties."

“We have yet to find a single United States company that opposes this bill,” said Rep. Rogers.

But companies do in fact oppose CISPA. Facebook rescinded their support of the act, according to Cnet’s Declan McCullagh, because a spokesperson for the social media site says they prefer a legislative "balance" that ensures "the privacy of our users.” Facebook made the decision to rescind their support for the legislation after facing pressure from Demand Progress, the Internet freedom advocacy group founded by Aaron Swartz.

Silicon Valley’s Mozilla Corporation publicly denounced CISPA last May:

“While we wholeheartedly support a more secure Internet, CISPA has a broad and alarming reach that goes far beyond Internet security,” reads the statement. “The bill infringes on our privacy, includes vague definitions of cybersecurity, and grants immunities to companies and government that are too broad around information misuse. We hope the Senate takes the time to fully and openly consider these issues with stakeholder input before moving forward with this legislation.”

Groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and the Republican Liberty Caucus raised privacy alarms. CISPA would "waive every single privacy law ever enacted in the name of cybersecurity," Rep. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat and onetime Web entrepreneur, warned during a House of Representatives debate.

Reporters Without Borders, sent a letter (PDF) to Congress last month opposing CISPA. It says: "CISPA's information sharing regime allows the transfer of vast amounts of data, including sensitive information like Internet records or the content of e-mails, to any agency in the government."

A Sunlight Foundation report recently revealed that interest groups in support of the bill spent $605m from 2011 to the third quarter of 2012 -- 140 times as much lobbying Congress as those on the other side of the debate, who spent $4.3m.

The Senate, however, may not vote on CISPA at all:

The discussion now shifts to the Democrat-controlled Senate, which appears unlikely to act on the legislation in the wake of a presidential veto threat earlier this week, and an executive order in January that may reduce the need for new legislation. Today's House vote, on the other hand, could increase pressure on the Senate to enact some sort of legislation.

Sen. John Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat who was involved in last year's cybersecurity debate, said after today's vote that "CISPA's privacy protections are insufficient." Still, Rockefeller said, "I believe we can gain bipartisan agreement on bills that we can report out of our committees and allow [Majority Leader Harry Reid] to bring them to the Senate floor as early as possible."

This would be a "tragic" blow to the TeleComs and their lobbyists, as well as Mrs. Mike Rogers who I'm sure it's just a big coincidence stands to benefit a great deal from the passing of the bill championed by Mr. Mike Rogers:

It has seemed quite strange to see how strongly Rogers has been fighting for CISPA, refusing to even acknowledge the seriousness of the privacy concerns. At other times, he can't even keep his own story straight about whether or not CISPA is about giving information to the NSA (hint: it is). And then there was the recent ridiculousness with him insisting that the only opposition to CISPA came from 14-year-old kids in their basement. Wrong and insulting.

Of course, as we've noted all along, all attempts at cybersecurity legislation have always been about money. Mainly, money to big defense contractors aiming to provide the government with lots of very expensive "solutions" to the cybersecurity "problem" -- a problem that still has not been adequately defined beyond fake scare stories. Just last month, Rogers accidentally tweeted (and then deleted) a story about how CISPA supporters, like himself, had received 15 times more money from pro-CISPA group that the opposition had received from anti-CISPA groups.

So it seems rather interesting to note that Rogers' wife, Kristi Clemens Rogers, was, until recently, the president and CEO of Aegis LLC a "security" defense contractor company, whom she helped to secure a $10 billion (with a b) contract with the State Department. The company describes itself as "a leading private security company, provides government and corporate clients with a full spectrum of intelligence-led, culturally-sensitive security solutions to operational and development challenges around the world."

And what does Kristi Rogers do now that she is no longer with Aegis LLC? Why, now she's the "managing director of federal government affairs and public policies" at Manatt, a big lobbying firm, where she's apparently focused on "executive-level problem solving in the defense and homeland security sectors."

After lashing out at critics for highlighting his "sarcastic" tweet that all Muslims should be killed following the Boston Marathon bombings, frequent Fox News guest Erik Rush doubled down on his anti-Muslim rhetoric, calling Islam "wholly incompatible with Western society" and saying America is at war with the religion.

In the wake of the bombings at the Boston Marathon, Rush tweeted, "Everybody do the National Security Ankle Grab! Let's bring more Saudis in without screening them! C'mon!" After another Twitter user criticized Rush for blaming Muslims, Rush responded, "Yes, they're evil. Let's kill them all." Rush later claimed that the now-deleted tweet was "sarcasm," but in his weekly WorldNetDaily column, Rush lashed out by calling his critics "dhimmis" and smearing Islam as "wholly incompatible with Western society." Rush went on to claim that America is at war with Islam and that "While killing people is definitely undesireable, that is what war tends to be about":

It is important that we know the extent to which many of our fellow citizens have been indoctrinated into this suicidal worldview. Despite the interpretations of my words and liberals' tiresome claims that the right is prone to violence, we know that with very few exceptions, violence is the way of the left (as well as Islamists). This also gives rise to curiosity as to what evil deeds large numbers of these dhimmis might be willing to do if properly motivated. As we have seen relative to the Occupy movement, violence -- whether throwing rocks, Molotov cocktails, or engaging in recreational rape -- is a natural progression.

In the end, of course, this is just another case of the words of someone on our side (as it were) being manipulated to malign and discredit, whereas our enemies and those on the left - whether in the press, politics, entertainment, or elsewhere - are allowed to say whatever dangerous, irresponsible, malicious, slanderous things they like with impunity.

For the record, I still maintain that Islam is, by its nature, wholly incompatible with Western society. I analogize liberalism, which is promoting this dhimmitude, to Stage 3 cancer in America's body politic. For the record: While killing people is definitely undesirable, that is what war tends to be about.

And we are at war -- just study the history of Islam, or ask any Islamist.

Rush is a frequent guest on Fox News, where he regularly employs inflammatory rhetoric to attack President Obama, Democrats, and Muslims.

Kouichi Yamadera, Shokotan voice Pokémon in films with ties to Pokémon X & Y games

In the new issue of Otaku USA , one of our features by Daryl Surat dives into the latest anime movie from Studio Ghibli, From Up on Poppy Hill . Though the film is directed by Goro Miyazaki—son of beloved Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki ( My Neighbor Totoro , Princess Mononoke) —it's interesting to see just how conservatively his style sticks to the established, and hugely successful, Ghibli standard. From Up on Poppy Hill premiered in Japan in summer 2011, but its New York International Children's Festi...

As the nation mourned the April 15 bombings at the Boston Marathon, media figures used the attacks to offer conspiracy theories, make Islamophobic comments, and push petty political and personal attacks. 

Conspiracy Radio Host Alex Jones: U.S. Gov't Is "Prime Suspect" In Attack

Radio host and noted conspiracy theorist Alex Jones responded to the bombings by suggesting that they may have been a "false flag" operation staged by the government:

In a special webcast on April 15, Jones expanded on the conspiracy, saying"You saw them stage Fast and Furious. Folks, they staged Aurora, they staged Sandy Hook. The evidence is just overwhelming. And that's why I'm so desperate and freaked out. This is not fun, you know, getting up here telling you this. Somebody's got to tell you the truth."

WND Columnist Erik Rush's Attempt At "Sarcasm": Kill All Muslims In Response To Attack

Shortly following the bombings, WND columnist and occasional Fox News guest Erik Rush tweeted: 

Rush lashed out at critics of his tweet and claimed it was "sarcasm" intended to show that liberals' "precious Islamists say the same about us EVERY DAY." 

SHAZAM

Alias: Captain Marvel, Billy Batson, Captain Thunder
First Appearance: Whiz Comics #2 (1940)
Powers: The wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles and the speed of Mercury. Able to summon lightning by saying, “Shazam”
Other Media: Old-timey film adaptations, had his own live-action show in the 70′s, an animated series, was on Legend of the Superheroes, guest-starred on Justice League, Batman: the Brave and the Bold and Young Justice.

I might as well get the name thing out of the way because I’m sure it’s confusing as hell for people out of the Shazam loop. The magical wizard is Shazam. The superhero is Captain Marvel, only sometimes they call him Shazam, like in current comics and this game. It’s for silly legal reasons that I’ll get to, but for the sake of simplicity, I’m just going to call him Captain Marvel throughout this thing.

It’s a little sad that your average Joe doesn’t know who Captain Marvel is because during the 40′s, he was THE top superhero. Published by Fawcett Comics, his adventures sold more than Superman and Batman. He was the first superhero to get his own movie (which featured him taking out a bunch of enemy soldiers with a gatling gun. Times were different back then). Elvis Presley based his on-stage wardrobe on Captain Marvel’s sidekick Captain Marvel Jr. Captain Marvel was the man.

Only he really wasn’t a man, but a young boy named Billy Batson. Chosen by the wizard Shazam for his purity, orphan news reporter Billy was bestowed the power of becoming Captain Marvel upon saying the word, “Shazam!” Powered by the gods, Captain Marvel fought the likes of Dr. Sivana, Mr. Mind and many others. What made the character work was that he was just a kid. It was pure power fantasy. The idea that you could become this great superhero no matter your age.

So what made him so much better than Superman in the nation’s mind? Well, to be brutally honest about early Superman comics, Captain Marvel was interesting. Superman was a novelty act. He was in God Mode, going through the motions, taking out criminals who were no threat to him. Watching him beat up wife-beaters or throw around mobsters was fun in its own way, but even the mad scientist characters didn’t work all that well. It was usually, “Haha! Let’s see what happens when I pour molten lava over Superman! Nothing? Well, shit. What if I send my giant robot forces? Torn apart with ease? Damn it.”

Captain Marvel had an amazing supporting cast for the time. He had your Luthor-like mad scientist in Dr. Sivana, but he also had guys like Black Adam and Captain Nazi who could fight Captain Marvel on his own physical level. His main threat was a mysterious mastermind named Mr. Mind who turned out to be a talking caterpillar with glasses. And after he lost, he got the electric chair! That rules! Then on the other side of things, Captain Marvel had his own Marvel Family. Most notable were his long-lost sister Mary Batson and a little boy crippled by Captain Nazi named Freddy who were each empowered like Billy to become Mary Marvel and Captain Marvel Jr. Then there was Uncle Marvel, an old guy who conned people into believing he had powers when he was really just a fat guy in red tights. Best of all was Talky Tawny, a clothes-wearing, talking tiger who hung out with the Marvels.

A talking tiger man. Beat that, Superman!

And so he did. Fawcett Comics got sued for Captain Marvel being a ripoff of Superman. Fawcett could no longer publish Captain Marvel. A lot of ridiculous legal issues snowballed out of this situation (namely the creation of Miracleman and the Gordian knot of headaches that came from that), but the big one was Marvel Comics’ involvement. See, in the 70′s, DC decided to make a deal with Fawcett that they’d license out the release of Captain Marvel comics under their banner. Problem was, during the years when Captain Marvel was off the table, Marvel Comics introduced their own character named Captain Marvel and trademarked the name. That meant that DC could still call their character “Captain Marvel” inside the comic, but they couldn’t promote him as such. In other words, his name couldn’t appear in the very title of his own comics. They had to toss “Shazam” into the title instead.

Captain Marvel and his peeps lived in a separate world than Superman, referred to as Earth-S. After Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Captain Marvel characters were all streamlined into regular DC continuity, where Captain Marvel joined the Justice League. The big change with him post-Crisis was that Captain Marvel retained Billy’s personality when transformed, albeit still evened out by being endowed with the Wisdom of Solomon. This made him more innocent and upbeat compared to even Superman.

That also led to an interesting storyline when Captain Marvel was a major player in the Justice Society comic. Billy Batson was dating teenage team member Stargirl on the side, who knew about his secret identity. Problem was, the rest of the team didn’t know that Captain Marvel was really a youngster, so when they saw what looked like a romantic connection between this adult hero and an underage girl, they demanded he cut that shit out ASAP. Captain Marvel had to break up with Stargirl because if he came clean about his identity, the team probably wouldn’t take him seriously. Stargirl begged him to reconsider as Billy (so he wouldn’t have the Wisdom of Solomon controlling his judgment), but he refused.

They released a miniseries called Superman/Shazam: First Thunder that told of the first meeting between Superman and Captain Marvel. It ended with probably one of my all-time favorite Superman moments. After Dr. Sivana killed Billy’s best friend, Captain Marvel went on a bit of a rampage. Superman found him in the arctic and was halfway into reading him the riot act when he noticed Captain Marvel bawling his eyes out. Superman was stopped in his tracks and Captain Marvel tried to explain his actions. When words didn’t explain it well enough, he said the magic word and transformed back into Billy. Superman stared at him for a moment until saying, as if he just saw the world’s most bizarre instance of child abuse, “Who did this to you?” Then he barged into Shazam’s home and chewed him out for ruining this child’s life with his magic whims. This action held extra weight due to Superman being relatively powerless against the magical Shazam. The two agreed that while Billy was a child, he needed guidance and Superman ended the story becoming Billy’s mentor.

Around the time of Infinite Crisis, the Spectre went crazy and started a war against all magic, blaming it for all of the world’s sins. Captain Marvel fought valiantly against him, but he was only powered by some gods while Spectre was powered by THE God. Captain Marvel survived the encounter, but when Shazam himself challenged the Spectre, he wasn’t so lucky. Once all that Spectre business calmed down, Captain Marvel took over for Shazam as the keeper of the Rock of Eternity.

Captain Marvel Jr. and Mary Marvel each lost their powers. Captain Marvel Jr. earned his back through heroic trials, but Mary got hers back through dark means. Until Flashpoint, Mary’s whole thing was that she’d go back and forth between wanting to be heroic and wanting to wear the smallest black skirt in the world while being evil. The wizard Shazam eventually came back and depowered Captain Marvel and Mary Marvel, insisting that they failed him.

During Flashpoint, Captain Marvel was renamed Captain Thunder and instead of just being Billy in an alter-ego, he and a handful of orphans would call upon him not unlike Captain Planet. “Captain Thunder” was one of the original ideas for the character’s name back when the character was initially conceived, but once again, legal issues prevented the promoted use of the name.

Post-Flashpoint, the character is simply known as Shazam. He doesn’t have his own series yet, but has appeared in the pages of the current Justice League comic. The big change is that teenaged Billy Batson is a tremendous asshole and only got the power because he told the wizard that pure-hearted people don’t exist and the wizard was just like, “Welp, good enough.” While Black Adam is out there, ready to fight him, Captain Marvel and his buddy Freddy Freeman intend to use his newfound abilities for profit. So far it’s pretty great.

Captain Marvel’s main role in DC is to act as that guy who can fight Superman head-on. This is best illustrated in his one Justice League cartoon appearance where the two have a crazy knock-out-drag-out fight, as well as the comic miniseries Kingdom Come. Though Captain Marvel’s most memorable moment in that series is standing over Superman and smiling insanely while showing off his gigantic man-bulge. Artist Alex Ross really has a thing for being anatomically correct in his work.

SINESTRO

Alias: None
First Appearance: Green Lantern #7 (1961)
Powers: Wields a ring that allows him to create solid constructs out of yellow (or green) light powered by fear (or willpower), flight and other neat bells and whistles
Other Media: Pretty much everything Green Lantern’s been involved with.

On a storyline level, it’s really interesting to have Sinestro as a player in Injustice, considering Superman’s in-game actions are exactly what got Sinestro in so much trouble in the first place.

While Sinestro debuted as simply a villain with a yellow power ring, it was later explained that he was a Green Lantern who lost his way. Coming from the planet Korugar, Thaal Sinestro was an anthropologist and revolutionary whose life was turned upside-down the day a dying Green Lantern crashed nearby and gave him his ring. Then it turned out the dying Lantern’s condition wasn’t as severe as he thought and could survive if given back the ring. Sinestro selfishly left him to die, feeling that he could do much as part of the Green Lantern Corps. Sinestro used his power to help the revolution, though the death of his wife Arin Sur (the sister of the guy who gave Hal Jordan his ring) badly affected his ideals.

Sinestro was known as one of the top Green Lanterns and was given the job of training new guy Hal Jordan. Despite Sinestro’s cold demeanor and Jodan’s hotshot attitude, the two mostly got along, partially due to their joint distrust in the Guardians of Oa. Their friendship came to an end when Hal visited Korugar to find out that Sinestro’s desire to protect the planet transformed into a complete dictatorship. In his obsession to create order, Sinestro ruled his own planet through fear, which was totally against everything the Green Lantern Corps stood for. Jordan brought Sinestro to justice and the Guardians had him banished to the antimatter world known as Qward. Meanwhile, to the freed Korugar, its inhabitants from that day regarded the Green Lantern symbol in the same way we regard the swastika.

The inhabitants of Qward created a yellow ring for Sinestro to wield, since they too hated the Green Lantern Corps. Sinestro fought against the Green Lanterns, mainly Jordan, for years and always had the advantage. After all, his ring was the weakness of the Green Lanterns while having no weaknesses of its own. Eventually, he was captured and kept prisoner within the Green Power Battery. When Jordan went rogue and stormed Oa, the Guardians decided to let Sinestro loose to fight him, feeling that he was the lesser danger. Jordan defeated Sinestro and snapped his neck, furthering his descent into madness.

It was revealed years later that Sinestro didn’t really die. In fact, that wasn’t even him, but a construct created by himself and the yellow fear entity Parallax from within the Green Power Battery meant to send Jordan over the edge. Sinestro just laid low for a while, negating all the stories DC had done that involved Sinestro’s ghost flying around. Shortly after Sinestro revealed himself to be alive, Jordan came back from the dead. Although Parallax was defeated, Sinestro escaped. He joined up with the Secret Society during Infinite Crisis, since they were also opposing the Green Lanterns, but that went tits up too and he once again escaped.

The Green Lanterns were no longer weak to the color yellow, taking away Sinestro’s advantage. Sinestro sought out the ever-powerful Anti-Monitor and got him to create hundreds of yellow rings like his. Sinestro looked through the cosmos to find aliens of all kind who were capable of spreading great fear. Cool thing was that one of those rings flew to Earth, jumped onto Batman’s finger and then retreated after it realized he had been corrupted by recently wearing a Green Lantern ring. Sinestro and his Sinestro Corps made their presence known by storming Oa and freeing the likes of Parallax, Superboy Prime and Cyborg Superman. The full-out war with the Green Lantern Corps spread to Earth for the big climax.

One of my favorite little moments in all of this was how the guy writing the Sinestro Corps War, Geoff Johns, was also writing Action Comics. Action Comics was telling a story about Superman on Bizarro World that introduced Bizarro Hal Jordan, a hideous and idiotic freak who wore a Yellow Lantern ring. Halfway into the story, he abruptly flew off due to an order from his ring. During the Sinestro Corps War, Bizarro Jordan could be seen being blasted by a Green Lantern in a big group shot.

Despite his overwhelming forces, Sinestro’s side lost. Sinestro didn’t see it as a loss. In order to get the edge to win, the Guardians had to change the laws of the Green Lantern Corps to allow their rings to kill their enemies. Without that failsafe, the Green Lanterns won, but at the same time, Sinestro had molded them closer to his vision. Order through fear.

Various different Lantern Corps started to appear and the War of Light began. Sinestro fought against the Red Lanterns and Violet Lanterns, but all differences needed to be put aside once the Black Lanterns started popping up throughout the universe. If that wasn’t enough, Sinestro was facing mutiny at the hands of the supervillain Mongul, who himself had been recruited into the Sinestro Corps. Sinestro defeated him and imprisoned him in the Yellow Power Battery, concerned that killing him would only bring him back as a Black Lantern.

Due to the events of Blackest Night, all the various Lantern Corps agreed to an uneasy truce, especially between the Green Lanterns and Sinestro Corps. They were all brought together once again to face Krona, a Guardian who had gone evil eons ago and desired all of the Lantern powers for himself. Although Sinestro lost his yellow ring, he watched as Jordan bravely defied Krona and, inspired by his old friend, attacked the mad Guardian from behind. The ring of a dead Green Lantern flew over and forced itself onto Sinestro’s finger, once again making him a member of the Green Lantern Corps due to his immense courage.

This decision wasn’t popular with anyone other than comic fans. Sinestro didn’t want it. The Guardians didn’t want it. Jordan didn’t want it. The Green Lantern Corps didn’t want it and the Sinestro Corps members were absolutely pissed. Green Lantern and its corner of the DC Universe was unaffected by the Flashpoint reboot, but the new Green Lantern #1 started off with Sinestro as the title character. Since he didn’t need to start from scratch, he was easily the most interesting character in DC’s New 52. He was a redemption story for a character who insisted that he shouldn’t have to redeem himself for any of his actions. Whether it was the Green Lantern Corps or the Sinestro Corps, he feels that he never betrayed anybody.

Jordan was stripped of his ring for killing Krona and was sent back to Coast City. Sinestro visited Earth and deputized him with his own ring that Sinestro would have ultimate control over. Sinestro needed Jordan’s help because the Sinestro Corps had taken over Korugar. The two reluctantly worked together and saved the planet from the Yellow Lanterns, which changed the minds of many of the planet’s citizens about how to feel about Sinestro.

The buddy cop adventures of Jordan and Sinestro led to them facing Black Hand, one of the major players from the Black Lantern invasion. After being betrayed by the Guardians, the two Green Lanterns were sucked into Hand’s ring. They found themselves in a dimension of dead souls, but Sinestro eventually figured out a way to escape. By that point, the Guardians had already been defeated by a being called the First Lantern.

The First Lantern has control over all the different emotional colors and has been acting like an emotional vampire, devouring the feelings of different Lantern characters while increasing his ability to change history. Soon, he’ll be able to remake history in his image. In the latest issue of Green Lantern, he fought Sinestro on Korugar. Sinestro protected a group of his people via a force field and a little boy pleaded with him to help. Sinestro looked to him and explained, “That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, child.”

He succeeded in protecting his people and wounding the First Lantern with his determination and ring-slinging skills. First Lantern then caught Sinestro off-guard by going back a moment and seeing what would have happened had Sinestro failed. First Lantern powered himself on all the hope, anger and fear that Sinestro imprinted into the world and then blew it up. Last seen, Sinestro floated through the rubble and summoned his Yellow Lantern Battery, ready for round 2.

Outside of comics, Sinestro’s most notable appearance is in the Green Lantern movie. There, he was depicted as being a total good guy, even if he was kind a hard-boiled dude. I kept waiting for them to show some character flaw, since we knew that he’d eventually lose his way. Nope. Instead, he just acted like a good guy until the post-credits stinger showed him getting a yellow ring and going evil just because he was a Yellow Lantern in the comics. God, I hated that scene.

SOLOMON GRUNDY

Alias: Cyrus Gold
First Appearance: All-American Comics #61 (1944)
Powers: Varying levels of super strength, resurrection
Other Media: Appeared as a villain on Superfriends, Justice League, the Batman, Batman: the Brave and the Bold and Legend of the Superheroes

Well over a century ago, a rich man named Cyrus Gold was murdered and his body was dumped in a place called Slaughter Swamp. He rose from the swamp as some kind of bizarre super zombie with no memory of her previous life. He wandered around until being befriended by some drifters, who took him in as one of them. Of all the things from his previous life, the only thing the walking corpse could remember was that he was born on a Monday. One of the drifters pointed out how that was just like the morbid poem called Solomon Grundy, about a man who is born, lives and dies over the course of one week. The zombie from there on started calling himself Solomon Grundy.

The drifters used him to help steal money from various places, garnering the involvement of original Green Lantern Alan Scott. Scott’s ring didn’t work on wood and for some reason Solomon Grundy’s body was heavily composed of wood. In the 90′s, it was explained that Grundy’s origin was nature trying to create its own plant elemental (ie. Swamp Thing), but failing because there was no fire to go with the water, wind and earth needed for the process. Ergo, Grundy was like some kind of reject prototype version of Swamp Thing.

Green Lantern defeated Grundy by hitting him with a train, but Grundy returned another day. And another day. Again and again. He never stayed dead and went from strictly being an old-timey Green Lantern villain to a Justice Society villain. Then he went on to become a villain for pretty much anyone.

He’d show up so often, but there was rarely ever consistency. Sometimes he would be skinny and lanky. Other times he’d be built like a house of muscle. Sometimes he could talk like a normal person. Sometimes he would only speak in grunts and growls. Sometimes he would only say his own name or even recite the Solomon Grundy poem. Sometimes he’d be weak enough that Batman could defeat him in a fight, while other times he’d be strong enough to trade blows with Superman.

In the 90′s, Grundy briefly became a supporting character in the wonderful series Starman. The series was mainly about the hipster son of the Golden Age hero Starman and his reluctance to take over the mantle. The name “Starman” had been a go-to name for DC over the years with a bunch of characters being given that handle, even if they had nothing to do with the others. The comic was able to find links between all of them, including Mikaal Tomas, a blue-skinned alien named Starman who appeared in one comic in the 70′s. At the time of this comic, Tomas was in an almost catatonic, amnesiac state.

The title character of the series Jack Knight was asked to help find Grundy by Alan Scott’s daughter Jade, who had befriended Grundy before back when she was on the team Infinity Inc. Jack found Grundy, who appeared more timid and innocent than anyone had ever seen. He took Grundy in and Grundy created a kinship with Mikaal, as both were in rather childlike states and got along.

The original Starman Ted Knight was confused over Grundy’s behavior and also disturbed, mentioning how decades ago, Grundy mercilessly killed one of Ted’s friends. Grundy secretly heard this and ran away in shame. He later reappeared to save Jack from a crumbling building, sacrificing himself. His last words were, “Tell Tedstar, I’m sorry if bad Grundy killed Pemberton. Tell Tedstar that good Grundy was good Grundy.”

In an attempt to save Grundy, Jack, Alan Scott, Batman and the Floronic Man magically entered his mind to find out the truth behind Grundy’s decades of behavior. Cyrus Gold was cursed to always walk the Earth. Even if killed, his body would be recreated. It’s just that it would always be inconsistent. Not only in stature and power, but in personality. Gold was a terrible person, so almost all of the time, Grundy had been a monster. It was a rarity that he was to exist as a genuinely kind creature like they had just witnessed. Grundy did resurrect, but not in the way Jack had hoped.

Grundy returned towards the end of the series, part of a teaming up of most of the series’ villains. Grundy was back to his evil self, though capable of conversation. He fought Mikaal, who had also long regained his intelligence. During the fight, Grundy jumped in front of a missile meant for Mikaal. As he died, Grundy swore that he didn’t do it for any stupid sentimental reasons based on their prior friendship, but was unable to come up with a proper excuse.

Grundy made more appearances through the years as a stock villain. When a new Justice League was formed, Grundy showed up as their first villain. In this incarnation, he was both terribly strong and had Cyrus Gold’s full intelligence. His plot was to create a permanent, unkillable android body for himself so he could no longer feel the pain of death and resurrection. Coincidentally, the main story of this arc was that the android Red Tornado had been able to put his soul into a human body so he could be mortal. In the final battle, both reverted to their status quos as Grundy mortally wounded Tornado (who had to return to his robot body) and Tornado tore Grundy apart with his high-level tornado winds, returning him to the never-ending cycle of life and death.

Grundy got his own miniseries based on him having a week to find out the truth about who killed him. It was way too long and wasn’t very good and the only part that was in any way interesting was when Grundy befriended Bizarro Superman (there was a great moment of the two of them sharing the contents of a hotdog cart). Grundy eventually discovered that Cyrus Gold killed himself all those years ago. This revelation was meant to free him from the curse, but then the Black Lantern invasion began and Grundy was one of its soldiers. He fought Bizarro, who ended up destroying his friend by throwing him into the sun.

After Flashpoint, Grundy has only shown up in the Earth-2 continuity, where he’s portrayed as a god of decay. He is currently stranded on the moon, where his powers are worthless.

Grundy is pretty memorable for his appearances on both the Superfriends cartoon and Justice League (where he was basically a tear factory because holy shit, his death scene). In Superfriends, his hillbilly Hulk voice practically made the show and translated well when Cartoon Network did a parody where a meeting with the Legion of Doom fell to pieces once everyone started making demands of having their own utility belts and magic lassos. When Brainiac – who only wore a polo shirt and white briefs – pleaded for a pair of pants, Grundy famously growled, “Solomon Grundy want pants too!” Awesomely enough, “Want Pants Too” is the name of one of Grundy’s attacks in Injustice: Gods Among Us.

My personal favorite Grundy appearance is from Legend of the Superheroes. I’ve mentioned that a bunch of times here, but I’ve never talked about just what it is. Legend of the Superheroes was a pair of hour-long specials (or pilots?) from the late-70′s that begged the question: “What is the Justice League like in the world of Adam West Batman?” Adam West, Burt Ward and Frank Gorshin all reprised their roles while introducing everyone from Hawkman, Sinestro, Huntress, Black Canary, Captain Marvel and more.

While one episode was your basic heroes vs. villains thing, the other was – and I kid you not – an hour-long roast hosted by Ed McMahon. Said roast featured a scene of McMahon trying to coexist with live-action Solomon Grundy and it’s every bit as fantastic as it sounds.

“Can I call you Sol?”

“Grundy’s friends call him Sol!”

“Oh, good!”

“Not good! Bad! Grundy hates his friends!”

SUPERMAN

Alias: Clark Kent, Kal-El, Superboy, Gangbuster, Jordan Elliot
First Appearance: Action Comics #1 (1938)
Powers: Super strength, speed, endurance, healing, invulnerability, ice breath, x-ray vision, heat vision, intense control over senses, flight
Other Media: EVERYTHING!

Superman was the creation of Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster. Originally, they worked on a story called Reign of the Super-Man based on a creepy mad scientist trying to take over the world, but reused the name to create what was to be a take on Hercules and Samson, only in modern times. His physical appearance was a bit of a mix between leading actors Clarke Gable and Kent Taylor, hence the name Clark Kent. Possibly based on how Siegel’s father died in a robbery incident, the idea was that Superman would protect people from criminals, ultimately looking out for the little guy.

And so, Superman was a huge hit. Siegel and Schuster famously got pretty screwed by practically being forced to sell the rights to the character to DC for a couple hundred bucks, which led to decades of lawsuits. Hilariously enough, Schuster went on to draw a bunch of S&M fetish comics with characters who looked an awful lot like Superman and Lois Lane in his own form of bitter revenge.

The early Superman comics depicted him as a little on the rugged side. He was ultimately noble, but kind of a jerk compared to how he is now. He was almost a bully in the way he’d delight in throwing common criminals into the distance to teach them a lesson. At the time, his only weakness was Lois Lane, who tended to get captured an awful lot and be used as a hostage. The idea of kryptonite didn’t show up for a few years. In fact, it originally showed up in the Superman radio show and wasn’t brought into comics until 11 years after the character’s first appearance, due to the fact that people were starting to get pretty bored with his constant invincibility.

They did later explain another weakness for Superman in the form of magic. This one gets people confused because the basic idea was that if a sorcerer can turn people into frogs, there’s nothing stopping him from turning Superman into a frog and stomping on him. It’s magic and he has no defense for that. That evolved into the belief that if, say, Captain Marvel punched Superman, it would hurt him even more because Captain Marvel’s fists are laced with magic. It kind of depends on the writer, I guess.

His powers were initially claimed to be from some kind of jump in evolution, but it was quickly changed to him being from Krypton. In a story that remained mostly the same to this day, the planet was going to blow up, Jor-El tried to warn everyone, nobody believed him, so he was able to send his son off to Earth to survive. The rocket was discovered by a kindly couple of farmers and the rest was history. There had been changes over the years. Originally, everyone on Krypton was a super-evolved being, so Superman had those powers by default. They changed it so that his planet had a red sun, meaning that our yellow sun enhanced his physiology. In the 80′s, the Crisis reboot brought up the idea that practically everyone on Krypton was cold and emotionless, with Jor-El and Lara as the exceptions. That concept was also done away with sometime later.

The 50′s to the 70′s gave us the Silver Age of comics and Superman got pretty goddamn weird. Not only did they have years of Superman comics to write, but supporting characters Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen each got their own spinoffs, so they used any idea they could get. This was known as the era of Superman being a dick, which gave the internet plenty of fodder with its goofball stories led by a never-ending series of covers that showed Superman in all sorts of nigh-unexplainable situations. The rumor is that the covers would be drawn well in advance and the writers would have to write their stories based on whatever crazy nonsense was going on. Usually, the stories involved Superman teaching his friends a lesson in some way. Superman comics back then were like a fever dream sitcom more than anything else.

My personal favorite wacky Superman cover is one where a villain named the Prankster is mocking him by saying that there’s no law against putting pennies in one’s own ears. Superman, being held back by his supporting cast, looks insanely pissed and screams, “Stop it, Prankster! Stop it or I’ll… I’ll KILL YOU!”

My favorite goofball Superman moment came from the 70′s, where there was an increased emphasis on Clark Kent’s adventures. One of these stories had him as a dance judge at a newly-opened disco. During the competition, he noticed a shady guy from a rival disco sneak in and place bombs in the basement. He couldn’t go do anything because he was forced to watch the dancing and couldn’t blow his cover. Then he stood up, held his arms out and said, “Everybody clear the dance floor!” He started disco dancing, causing Jimmy’s jaw to drop. Shaking his super-ass all over the floor, he stomped down in just the right spots to deactivate the bombs in the basement below. The greatest moment.

He dated a mermaid back in the day too. I don’t know what that was about.

After the Crisis, they rebooted Superman and changed some stuff. Writer and artist John Byrne became obsessed with explaining every little thing about the character. Like how the S on his chest is the Kryptonian symbol for “hope” and since it looked like an S, Lois just coined the name Superman. Or how instead of just being really strong, his powers were some form of telekinesis to explain how his tights never get torn and how he can lift large stuff without it falling apart in his hands. Whatever.

Shortly after the Crisis reboot, Superman ended up fighting Zod, the Kryptonian villain from Superman 2. Other than a strong try a couple years ago, nobody has ever been able to make anything interesting out of that guy comic-wise. Superman defeated Zod, Ursa and Non, but they mocked him and threatened to one day find Earth and destroy it in revenge. Superman, feeling he had no choice, exposed the three of them to kryptonite and killed them. He moped about this for a while and spent some time fighting crime under the name of Gangbuster as his way to deal.

In the early 90′s, Superman finally revealed his identity to Lois and popped the question. For years, Lois had always tried to prove that Clark was Superman, but would get fooled by Superman standing around Clark Kent robots, Bruce Wayne dressed as Clark and even JFK dressed as Clark. Personally, I always liked the version of it from the Superman: Doomsday animated movie. Lois (played by Anne Heche) knew Superman was Clark Kent, but chose not to say anything because if he truly cared about her, he’d come clean. Lois got over Clark lying to her and agreed to marry him, but then Doomsday happened and Superman died.

Like I said back in the Doomsday profile, Reign of the Supermen was a good time. After everyone sulked over Superman’s death for a few months, four replacements showed up with people wondering which one was the real Superman. They were each introduced through a series of four-page segments that depicted their first public sightings. I absolutely love this sequence. A being looking like Superman hunted down and coldly murdered a common criminal. A young-looking Superman escaped a laboratory while yelling at somebody for referring to him as “Superboy”. A large, black man with a giant hammer stumbled out of some wreckage while deliriously muttering that he needed to stop Doomsday. A man who appeared to be Superman flew down to the plaque commemorating Superman’s death and proceeded to melt it down with his heat vision before flying off and revealing a 70% robot body.

All four guys were based on nicknames for Superman. The Man of Steel. The Man of Tomorrow. The Last Son of Krypton. Superboy was called the Metropolis Kid, which I don’t think was ever a term for Superman, but whatever. It was a decent enough mystery with some cool moments. Even when the REAL Superman came back with a black costume and mullet, it was still well done and clever, as he had appeared alive in the comic long before the readers had realized. Superman came back, beat up Cyborg Superman, had three new allies in Superboy, Steel and Eradicator (who got the least amount of play after this story despite being the best fake Superman). Oh, and Clark and Lois finally tied the knot.

Superman kept that mullet for much of the 90′s until his transformation into Electric Blue Superman. They decided to change him up in both appearance and powers, removing his super strength and replacing it with electric powers. Everyone hated it and the only writer who could make it work was Justice League writer Grant Morrison, who eats up that weird crap. Then there was a second Superman who was red and… I don’t even know. Superman returned to normal and nobody ever brought it up again.

In the 00′s, Superman comics were a crapshoot. Sometimes you’d get something truly brilliant, like Joe Kelly’s one-issue story What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice and the American Way, which later got turned into an animated movie Superman vs. the Elite. Other times, you got, “THIS ENDS NOW!” comics. “THIS ENDS NOW!” is a Superman trope from lazy action sequences where after a brutal beating, Superman’s eyes would suddenly go red and he’d yell, “THIS ENDS NOW!” and punch out the villain as if he just remembered that he was Superman. Glad to see that Superman uses that line during his Clash Attack in Injustice.

The 00′s also gave us Grant Morrison’s brilliant love letter to the character, All-Star Superman. If you ever wanted to give a Superman comic a chance, this would be one of the top choices (Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow would also be a top choice). If anything, read it for the heartwarming scene of Superman stopping a teenage girl from committing suicide off a skyscraper. One of the all-time best pages in comic history.

Unfortunately, Superman got pretty bad during the last few years before Flashpoint. The most infamous was Grounded, a story by J. Michael Straczynski, a writer most well-known for creating Babylon 5 and writing most of the episodes of Real Ghostbusters. He used to be one of the better comic writers until becoming the deadbeat dad of the comic book world. Grounded had Superman return from his last big storyline to have a woman slap him because her husband died of an inoperable brain tumor and if Superman wasn’t off saving the world, he could have maybe removed the tumor with his x-ray and heat vision. Instead of congratulating her for being the biggest dunce in Metropolis, Superman moped about it and decided to spend his time walking (as in not flying) across the country to get in touch with his American roots or whatever. It only got worse from there until JMS stopped writing halfway into the story and walked away, which had become his trademark for the past decade.

The Flashpoint reboot showed that during Superman’s initial year of fighting crime, he was again a brasher fighter for the little man like back in the 30′s. Instead of the tights, he wore a Superman t-shirt, cape and jeans. This depiction sadly didn’t last so long. In the new continuity, he’s no longer married to Lois and both of his parents died when he was still in Smallville. He’s less of a superhero father figure and has a bit more attitude to him. I think he has a romantic thing going on with Wonder Woman right now? I don’t know. I stopped reading Justice League a long time ago.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention: in the 70′s, there was a comic called Superman vs. Muhammad Ali. Superman boxed Muhammad Ali for the right to save the world from an armada of boxing aliens. You may not believe me when I say this, but the comic is 100% kickass. Trust me on this.

WONDER WOMAN

Alias: Diana Prince
First Appearance: All-Star Comics #8 (1941)
Powers: Super strength, speed, endurance, healing, flight, wears unbreakable bracelets, wields a magic lasso that compels people to tell the truth
Other Media: Showed up on pretty much any DC cartoon, had her own live-action TV series, an animated movie and a failed pilot

Wonder Woman started out like many of the superheroes from the early 40′s by fighting Nazis and stuff because of World War II being such a big deal. Thing was, her comics were really weird. Not weird in the “Superman shoots tiny Supermen out of his hands” weird, but more in an unsavory way. Like, Superman’s weaknesses back in the day were kryptonite and Lois being used as a hostage. Green Lantern’s weakness was wood. You could easily write multiple stories based on that. Wonder Woman’s weakness was being bound by her lasso. Which happened all the time. Wonder Woman’s comics were bondage fetish stories in the form of superhero stories, which helped keep sales strong when superhero comics in general started to dwindle in sales. The fact that she was seen as a great feminist figure in light of this didn’t hurt either.

The original idea behind the character was that Diana lived on an island of Amazons known as Themyscira and an American soldier named Steve Trevor ended up there, terribly injured. Diana nursed him back to health and her mother Hippolyta decided that someone from their island should help the Allies fight the Axis Powers. She held a tournament to decide and against her mother’s wishes, Diana competed and won. Then she stole the identity of a military nurse so she could stay nearby Steve and eavesdrop to find out information for where she’d be needed.

In the 60′s, they added more of a mythological edge to the character by having her empowered by the gods. It was explained that Diana was actually a sentient statue. Hippolyta created a little girl out of clay and prayed to the gods to give her a daughter. The gods accepted Gepetto—I mean, Hippolyta’s wish and transformed the statue into flesh and blood.

During this time, Wonder Woman’s comics started dedicating a lot of time to her adventures as a teenager and then her years as a little girl. Then the three versions of Wonder Woman started teaming up. Somewhere along the line, they decided that the teenage Wonder Woman should be her own character and gave her the identity of Wonder Girl, otherwise known as Donna Troy. Donna is the most boring clusterfuck of a character in comic history, so I won’t mention her again.

In the early 70′s, a writer decided to spruce up the character concept by completely changing what Wonder Woman was about. She sacrificed her powers to remain on Earth and spent a year fighting crime with her judo skills, looking like something out of Austin Powers. It was thought that she’d be considered more of a feminist ideal if she was more Batman than Superman, but female readers rejected it and wanted her super strength and star-spangled outfit back.

After Crisis on Infinite Earths, Wonder Woman’s series became a huge hit thanks to writer and artist George Perez. He dove even deeper into Greek mythology and rebooted her story so that she was a representative sent by Themyscira to help bring peace to the world. In this incarnation, Diana found no reason to have any kind of dual identity.

Over the years, Diana lost the mantle of Wonder Woman one way or another and was briefly replaced by Amazon friend Artemis and later Hippolyta. John Byrne wrote a story where Hippolyta went back in time to the 40′s to fight alongside the Justice Society as a way to explain how Wonder Woman was able to be a member of that team when she existed in the present. Only this didn’t need to be explained in any way because, you know, continuity was rebooted!

Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman became known as DC’s Trinity, being their top three characters and all. Naturally, Wonder Woman would be paired up with each of them. Based on their relationship on the Justice League cartoon, Wonder Woman and Batman had a bit of a fling, but since DC didn’t want to make that last, they just did a cool issue where Wonder Woman saw various possible futures of where that pairing would lead to. Perhaps Wonder Woman would have murdered the Joker to avenge Batman’s death despite Batman’s final words telling her not to. Perhaps Batman would have led the charge against Hades’ army. Perhaps Wonder Woman would have fought alongside him as the new Batwoman, becoming more violent in her actions. Perhaps the two of them would have cleaned up Gotham and allowed Bruce to finally feel hope again. Either way, the two decided to call off the relationship.

She had tried getting with Superman, but he turned her down due to his loyalty to Lois. That said, Superman/Wonder Woman is a pairing that’s shown up numerable times in non-canon stories, such as Injustice: Gods Among Us. The most notable instance of them becoming a couple is Kingdom Come, where they ended the story by asking Bruce to be the godfather of their new baby.

What separated Wonder Woman from Superman and Batman – outside of the ovaries – was that she didn’t share their zeal for making sure that nobody died ever. She was a warrior and made no bones about it. While nobody seemed to have much of a problem with her beheading Medusa on live TV, things became really strained for everyone when Wonder Woman twisted the neck of Max Lord. Lord was a former government liaison to the Justice League with minor mind control abilities. He focused his power on Superman for years, burrowing down into his brain until getting full control and at one point making him beat Batman half to death under the belief that he was fighting Darkseid. Wonder Woman wrapped Lord with her magic lasso and demanded to know how to release Superman from his control. Lord said she’d have to kill him and she granted that. Unfortunately, the footage of the murder was broadcast across the world without any context.

A few years ago, J. Michael Straczynski took over writing duties on Wonder Woman and people made a big deal over it because they were finally giving her pants. It was about time because iconic or not, it was hard to take a scene of Superman and Wonder Woman comforting a distraught Alfred over Batman’s death seriously when Wonder Woman had blue spandex creeping up her crack. While the pants were welcome, the new design looked pretty atrocious. Not that it really mattered. JMS stopped writing halfway into the story as he’s wont to do and they brought back the star-spangled swimsuit.

After Flashpoint, Wonder Woman’s series became one of the consistently better DC comics. The series is based on the revelation that the story of Diana being a magic statue is completely false. In actuality, Hippolyta got mad rutty with Zeus way back when and Diana came from that. The goddess Hera took revenge on Hippolyta for this and Wonder Woman’s been gathering together all of Zeus’ bastard children from across the globe. One of them is late musician Wesley Willis. Not even kidding.

Oh, and when the new Wonder Woman series was announced, the promotional art had her wearing pants. By the time the first issue came out, her pants were gone. I don’t know.

Wonder Woman had a hit show in the 70′s, but these days, Warner Bros hasn’t been able to commit to giving her another shot. They did create a TV pilot in 2011 starring Adrianne Palicki as “Diana Themyscira”, Elizabeth Hurley and Cary Elwes. I’ve only seen a couple minutes of it, but it’s embarrassing in how laughably terrible it is. I’ll sum it up with this quote, said by Wonder Woman in a board meeting: “I never said to merchandize my tits!” Yeah. Lovely.

Joss Whedon wanted to direct a Wonder Woman movie with emphasis on the mythological aspects of her character, but Warner Bros turned him down. Instead, he went on to direct one of the most successful superhero film adaptations of all time. Great move, guys.

FIN.Similar Posts:

• In the tradition of Edited Crisis 04…
• Which Lantern Would You Choose?
• And Now, a Look at the Oan Presidential Race
• Retroactive Continuity
• “Reruns of Your Grief”

Shain did a drawing of "Count Dante, Deadliest Man Alive", so I did one too. He was a mail-order martial arts guru who advertised in comic books in the '70s; if you own a comic book from 1975 chances are his ad is in it. He had a pretty colorful life that involved fights with rival dojos and alleged involvement in a bank robbery. It's heartening to find out that these shadowy martial arts characters had lives just as nutty as you'd imagine.

Line of merchandise commemorates fifty years of televised anime

In January 1963, Osamu Tezuka introduced the first Japanese produced animated TV series in Astro Boy. In October 1962, Tatsunoko Production, the studio that would go on to produce Speed Racer, Gatchaman and Casshan would be founded. The two have now joined forces for a special 50-50 cross-over promotion. Get a look after the jump.

Click here to view this media

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) on Wednesday explained that Al Gore and the United Nations get most of the blame for what he called a global warming "hoax," but filmmaker Michael Moore and billionaire George Soros deserved some credit too.

At a Environment and Public Works Committe on President Barack Obama's nomination of Gina McCarthy to be the next head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said that he wanted the agency to listen to scientists instead of climate change deniers like Inhofe and Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY).

"What Sen. Inhofe has written and talked about is his belief that global warming is one of the major hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people, that it's a hoax pushed by people like Al Gore, the United Nations and the Hollywood elite," Sanders told the committee.

"I think that is a fair quote from Sen. Inhofe. Is that roughly right, Sen. Inhofe?" Sanders asked the Oklahoma Republican.

"Yes," Inhofe agreed. "I'd add to that list MoveOn.org, George Soros, Michael Moore and a few others."

"That's exactly the issue," Sanders said, turning back to the committee. "Do we agree with Sen. Inhofe that global warming is a hoax and that we do not want the federal government, the EPA, the Department of Energy to address that issue? Because it is a -- quote -- unquote -- hoax, according to Sen. Inhofe and others? Or do we believe and agree with the overwhelming majority of scientists who tell us that global warming is the most serious planetary crisis that we face, and that we must act boldly and aggressively to protect the future of this planet? That is what the issue is."

(h/t: The Hill)

Former GameStop pre-order exclusive now available for 99¢

Anarchy Reigns didn't exactly make a big splash when it arrived in North America, which is too bad. Still, those who have been enjoying the action and didn't originally take advantage of GameStop's pre-order bonus can now nab the playable Bayonetta character DLC on PlayStation Network. More after the jump.

On the April 5^th edition of Real Time with Bill Maher, science education activist Zack Kopplin confronted The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore over myths about science funding, pointing out that Moore, who questioned the need for funding research on "snail mating habits," is "not a scientist":

As it turns out, the reason actual scientists are conducting this type of research is because snails carry parasitic worms that kill children:

Anime remake scores well with adults, kids & ranks #1, #2 on Twitter's Hot Word list

Anime directed by Persona 4 The Animation's Seiji Kishi to premiere in July

Manami Matsumae joins Jake "virt" Kaufman on indie soundtrack

NES-style platformer Shovel Knight continues to roll out great news, with 8 days left to go for its successful Kickstarter campaign. It's well past the $75,000 goal now, and the latest announcement sees original Mega Man composer Manami Matsumae composing for the game! Read on for more.

Future generations will look back on the current Era of Warring Idols (アイドル戦国時代) in pure wonderment and stark terror. Maybe there will even be memorial buildings and military museums filled with hundreds of bizarre and sparkly girl’s dresses hung up behind bulletproof glass, along with galleries of autographed relics, and interactive “survivor’s tales” from fans and performers alike.

The war’s inevitability will be one of the major study points for visiting students, and how, short of going back in time to prevent the invention of the microprocessor, there really could have been no way to stop it: the Rise of the B-Grade Idols.

The flashpoint occurred the moment that indie producers latched onto affordable tech which made it cheap and easy to create idol music, idol promo videos, and, of course, idol groups. AKB48’s and Perfume’s marches out from the otaku underground into the mainstream helped to map out a new world, and “Idol Units” became the coins of the realm.

It’s been this way for years now: every month, a new indie idol group comes down the line, buzzes up the Japanese net for a bit, and gets a shot at either becoming some kind of next big thing (Momoiro Clover Z occupying that spot now) or remains stuck in idol limbo with regular gigs and maybe -- if they are lucky -- a TV theme song or two.

Either way, the idol scene is now crazier than a cuckoo clock (neophytes would do well to investigate BABY METAL, Team Syachihoko, and 9nine for proof) and you either dig it, or you don’t.

I’ll be writing up a piece about idol audiences later on (with a particular emphasis on female fans, who have been totally ignored in the Western dismissal of idol culture) but to these eyes, it’s like pro wrestling: you can either hoot and holler at the dumb show biz spectacle or take great offense to it. The line is drawn, and for some doubly so after the recent AKB48 “apology video” scandal, but most "Japan pundits" probably stood on the sanctimonious side of disapproval already. Even so, I have a sneaking feeling that history will sort it all out for us and get the last laugh. Pop eats itself, and in 20 to 30 years, people will be “discovering” old indie idol gems much in the same way that people continue to “discover” obscure kayokyoku singles today. But seriously, why wait for an expiration date when Linda III Sei is happening right now?

Pardon the long preamble and background set-up on B-grade idols, but I think it is necessary to try and explain how something as spectacularly odd as the new idol unit known as Linda III Sei (リンダIII世) could even exist in the first place.

 Let’s look at what we got here: Linda III Sei is five girls, ages 11-14, bound together by their background as third-generation Brazilian-Japanese living in Gunma Prefecture. As a bonus to their presumably working class backgrounds (Gunma is one of Japan’s major manufacturing centers, and has a large, decidedly non-prosperous, Brazilian populace), they were hand picked by the fickle finger of fate to be idols performing near the exit signs at electronic stores like Yamada Denki in Ota city (below).

Their official bio claims that their sound is “not K-pop, not J-pop”, but “B-pop” influenced by Brazil’s Baile Funk party scene. But in truth, the group’s first release, “Future Century eZ zoo” (未来世紀eZ zoo) is an ear bending Frankenstein monster of auto-tune settings, 8-bit sounds, some English and mangled Japanese, that bravely remembers to include a full-on samba interlude on the bridge. The result is something strange and shockingly new.

 The song’s stylistic mash-up is the sonic equivalent of the inexplicable outfits the girls are forced to wear: steampunk tops, medieval torture straps, tattoo tights, and sneakers. Again, we are in the realm of indie producers, and the ones behind the scenes here are said to have worked on songs for Johnny’s boy band V6 and some anime themes. But everything goes out the window once you see the video for "Future Century eZ zoo", which first erupted two weeks ago.

Linda III Sei look like they put together hours before the video was shot; dance like the choreography was taught seconds before. The sheep and chickens probably just wandered into the frame. I get the same feeling I get from Wassup Rockers, Diane Arbus pics and early Harmony Korine films: “I am gazing at something that cannot possibly exist, but the world is so fucking weird that I guess it must”. The only major misstep in a work of otherwise synapse rattling chaos, randomness, and literal darkness are the zombies. Is there anything more plebian and ordinary than zombies at this point?

Lots of questions begin to whirl about, and the group is so new that there’s just not a lot of answers. But decoding names can turn up some clues. As mentioned before, the girls in the group are third-generation Brazilian-Japanese, hence the name “Linda the Third”. Also, the girls have said in interviews that “they want to steal fan’s hearts”, just like anime/manga anti-hero Lupin the Third, and their use of a familiar-looking retro font for their official logo seems to hint at this connection. And would you believe that Terry Gilliam is also part of this goulash? His 1985 film is known as “Future Century Brazil” in Japan (未来世紀ブラジル), a reference that bonkura fans will immediately pick up when considering the title of Linda III Sei’s first single.

Either way, identity politics and outsider status are the key to Linda III Sei’s gimmick and could effectively be mined by academics for days. For others, the Brazil-Japan connection will be about as culturally enlightening as a drunken night out to a Philippine Pub. The Japanese net is intrigued for now, and their facebook and YouTube pages are swarmed with comments in Portuguese. While it is unlikely that you will see them on NHK's Red and White Singing Contest anytime soon, seriously, how often do you see Brazilian-Japanese people in the spotlight, even one as wobbly as this?

Call it exploitation, call it trash, call it pre-apocalyptic performance art. It's a motherfuckin' ZOO and future history will call them IDOLS.