Michael B. Jordan gets into character while the film crew shields themselves from the toxic work environment.

As a longtime comics fan, John Byrne’s Fantastic Four was one of my favorite Marvel series as a kid. Years later I developed an appreciation for the first 103 issues in which Stan Lee and Jack Kirby gave us some of the greatest stories among their many collaborations. My FF fandom came and went as creative teams, interpretations, and times changed, but I have fond memories of great runs by Walt Simonson, Dwayne McDuffie and Paul Pelletier, Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo, and the long-forgotten team of Doug Moench and Bill Sienkiewicz (#219, 222-231) who introduced Marvel’s First Family to this impressionable eight-year-old. I have those runs, and I have my warm memories, but my emotional attachment to them as individual characters has faded enough over time that I’m open to seeing new and different reinterpretations. Honestly, though, I haven’t encountered a worthwhile use of the FF in years.

Meanwhile in the more recent past, I previously named Chronicle my favorite film of 2012. A previous entry already used up a couple hundred words explaining what impressed me about this found-footage mini-epic that imagined what would happen if one of Disney’s Witch Mountain films were remade as an episode of Black Mirror. Credit remains due to lead actors Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, and The Wire‘s Michael B. Jordan; to screenwriter Max Landis making a heck of a feature-film debut; to cinematographer Matthew Jensen, editor Elliot Greenberg, and numerous other cast and crew members for an experience that still rattles me whenever I think back to key scenes.

In the MCC capsule summary I’d expressed my hopes of seeing big things from director Josh Trank in the future. Here we are today, living in that bleak future where the boundaries of Chronicle‘s imagination are visible in maybe two sequences from Fox’s newly rebooted Fantastic Four, which was mostly directed by Trank and finished by a producers’ committee using Trank as their contractually subjugated proxy/scapegoat. In a short-lived tweet last week Trank publicly blamed the studio for all the faults in the finished product. The multiple flaws that riddle this slipshod corporate product from start to finish belie Trank’s sorry attempt at a total cop-out.

Short version for the unfamiliar: The classic FF alredy hit the big screen in Tim Story’s two feature-length sitcoms and grainy back-alley VHS in Roger Corman’s infamous, unreleased joke. In this fourth try (putting this one numerically on par with Lethal Weapon 4 and Jaws: the Revenge) the filmmakers borrow the template from Marvel’s Ultimate FF, which reimagined the team as four precocious teens working for a top-secret Big Science program when a freak accident involving an experimental teleportation machine leaves them transformed, powerful, and argumentative. Your all-star lineup of science heroes:

* House of Cards‘ Kate Mara as Sue Storm, a capable scientist following in her adopted dad’s footsteps, who gains the power to create and manipulate force fields. Also, every so often she can make herself or other things invisible. But mostly her name here should be something like Force Field Femme, or maybe Wonderwall.

* Chronicle‘s Michael B. Jordan is Sue’s brother Johnny, who’s less scientifically inclined than Sue but works well with machines. Johnny sublimates his strained father/son issues through street racing and sarcasm. This combination of speed and burning comes in handy when an agonizing fire-and-radiation bath turns him into the Human Torch.

* Miles Teller, who was awesome and scary in Whiplash, is prodigal inventor Reed Richards, neglected by mediocre parents and scarred by bad science fair experiences. Reed yearns to better the world with his smarts, but then he’s stuck with the power of super-stretching. In comics that means he shape-shifts into other objects or rubber-bands himself around bad guys. Here, he can rearrange his facial features better than an IMF agent or develop his own hand-to-hand combat style you could call “stretch-fu”. It’s silly and exciting at the same time.

* Jamie Bell, star of several movies and AMC’s Turn, is Reed’s best friend Ben Grimm, an undertall scrapper who stood by Reed while the rest of the world laughed. He’s along for the ride because best friends, but cruel fate and an irradiated mini-avalanche turns him into an all-CG rock monster. This looming, misshapen Thing essentially swallows Bell whole and we never see him again. I guess that’s still Bell talking and glaring through fake eyes for the rest of the film, but I can’t prove it.

Their exotic travel experiment gone awry unites them through tragedy but estranges their fifth teammate: Toby Kebbell, last “seen” as a malevolent primate in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, is disgraced Latverian immigrant scientist Victor Von Doom. (Remember the rumors and interviews we all read last year about angry blogger-troll Victor Domashev? Either those parts were rewritten from the top down, or it was all pre-release balderdash, like that one time Benedict Cumberbatch played a Star Trek villain totally named Not Khan.) The project brings von Doom back into the fold when Richards’ new ideas dovetail with his own, but science disaster leaves him scarred, unhinged, encased in metal, and gifted with high-end telekinetic powers.

After an hour-long origin sequence, then there’s standard super-heroics and they fight and fight and fight. Once. And that’s it. The movie is shorter than this entry.

Hey, look, it’s that one actor!: Sue and Johnny’s dad is the marvelous Reg E. Cathey, a.k.a. political adviser Norman Wilson from The Wire. In a better movie, he would’ve been the main character acting as the wise Professor X to a quartet of plucky young mutates looking to him for leadership through every single film in the series. Oh, man, if only.

The Simpsons‘ Dan Castellaneta is the dumbest science teacher in the world. Tim Blake Nelson, who last popped up in the Marvel Universe as scientist Sam Sterns in The Incredible Hulk, is a military man whose attitude is either “Your work belongs to US now!” or “Your work belongs to THEM now!” depending on which half of the film you’re watching.

Fair warning: this film contains no Stan Lee cameo. I hope it wasn’t deleted due to awfulness.

Meaning or EXPLOSIONS? From the first half of the film: friendship can come from the unlikeliest allies. Teamwork is cool. Science is also cool, but fame is cooler. Science plus fame is awesome.

Working as an inventor for a major government that’s funding your massively expensive experiments is cool until you find out the government that spent all that taxpayer money on your flights of fancy now owns said flights. Because obviously they misled you into believing they would spend an eight- or nine-figure sum, stand back and applaud you, then let you keep the patent, all rights thereto, and all profits derived therefrom. Because school taught us governments are all about trust-fund philanthropy, and you know all this because you’re a super genius.

From the second half of the film: everything military is bad. Period. Well, unless you save their entire home planet and species. Then it’s cool to negotiate a meal ticket with them so you can keep more of the profits from your weapons designs.

So what’s to like? Every performer in this movie gives the material more dedication and verve than it deserves. Teller is a convincing brainiac, Mara is possibly the most strong-willed of the bunch in the few scenes she commands, Bell works as a steely-eyed Igor, and Jordan is a stubborn young instigator determined to be his own man rather than let his dad and sister tell him how to live his life. Kebbell, who was previously menacing in a PBS Masterpiece Mystery miniseries we saw called The Escape Artist, could take or leave his faint Latverian accent, but his brooding, disenfranchised Victor eventually upgrades into a wrathful fiend who could easily eat some of the other Marvel Cinematic Universe villains for breakfast. For a few terrifying minutes, anyway.

Two effective sequences in particular point toward What Might Have Been. After the accident, Our Heroes each take turns awakening to their strange new reality, shocked to the core by the grotesques their bodies have become. (Well, the guys do, at least. Sue is seen but not central.) There’s no Peter Parker moment of “WHOA” followed by elated exploration. They’re straight through the Looking Glass, and the other side is a nightmare.

Later in the film, it’s Victor’s turn to show us what he’s got…and what he’s got isn’t pretty. His first trip back to the military base is a gruesome rampage that evokes memories of Carrie, Scanners, and, once again, Chronicle. Frankly, I wouldn’t recommend it for younger viewers and I’m surprised it cleared a PG-13. In early interviews Trank talked about his interest in taking a “body horror” approach to the powers process. That interest remains very much evident and, had his vision been fully realized, would’ve given us the grimmest, grittiest FF of all time. I wager quite a few comics fans would’ve embraced it and demanded Marvel reboot them in comics exactly like that. (It might be a more dignified fate than the current plan — shelving them and using them only in summer crossover events.)

Nitpicking? Unfortunately, David Cronenberg homages aren’t gonna sell toys to boys. Those moments are short-lived and quickly overthrown by the final act, which kicks off with an unambiguous signal to the audience that Josh Trank’s FF is over and a completely different popcorn flick has begun. (Trust me, when that signal is given, you can’t miss it.) Before the shock of transmogrification has finished setting in, let alone worn off, we learn that Our Heroes got used to their powers when we weren’t looking and everything’s brighter and closer to super-heroic now. We’re rocketed from “powers are scary” to “powers are cool” in an eyeblink, denied the experience of our five victims dealing with their trauma and learning how to use their powers at the same measured pace as the previous acts, because someone in charge wanted to hurry up and get to the part where everyone punches Doom in the face.

Not that everything in the first half was thumbs-up material. Reed, Ben, Johnny, and Victor make the initial teleporter voyage not out of intellectual curiosity, but because they decide while they’re drunk that they want to be famous astronauts. I mean, Armageddon proved it only takes about a week of training, and they’ve been scientists for lots of weeks, and an astronaut pretty much is a scientist, like Batman, so why not. At this point it’s clear that the Ultimate FF rascally-teen paradigm was trumping both the original “family” interpretation and the part where Reed and Victor are quote-unquote “smart”.

Later in the second movie, Ben does a stint working for the government as an overseas troubleshooter in various hot spots. I’m not sure if he has a military rank or is treated as an independent contractor, but at one point a home base monitor confirms 43 kills to his credit. That’s arguably in line with the original Thing, who was a WWII veteran. Johnny decides he’s up for some action too because they’ve offered and he has skills he thinks he can use to serve his country, or maybe because shooting down enemy drones is awesome video game fun. While they’re making their career choices, Reed’s all like, “NO, you guys! The military is bad! Because, like, they stole my patents!” As far as the movie shows us, that’s the military’s worst sin. We don’t get any sense that Ben is taking down innocents, or that Johnny is being duped. And yet the military are the bad guys because…they’re military? Period? That’s it?

That enmity and an early malnourished Reed/Sue/Victor love triangle subplot are swept aside for the inevitable super-hero showdown, by which time the grunts and adults are equally useless, Our Heroes are a team even though they’ve settled none of their differences, and Victor’s morphed from egotistical scientist to deranged, incoherent nihilist. In some camera angles he’s a spooky monster; at other times, he’s Dark Iron Man. And yet, most of the murderous, unstoppable abilities he had are quickly forgotten as the showdown reduces him to literally throwing rocks at everyone.

Meanwhile in the background, a generic super-showdown light-beam show throbs and roars and kills civilians and is pretty easy to ignore because the foreground drowns it out with lines like, “THERE IS NO VICTOR. THERE IS ONLY DOOM.” An actual line not left on the cutting room floor, bellowed with no trace of self-awareness.

Even before that jaw-dropping moment, I’d already been shaking my head at what passed for “dialogue”, so much of it artless and perfunctory, like coming up with lines for all the cast was such a chore that the writers would’ve skipped it if they thought they could get away with doing this as a silent film. But much to their chagrin, there had to be lines. No one said they had to be good (“His biochemistry is off the charts!” “Check out ‘Dr. Doom’!”), but the audience expects some. Several exchanges exist only to explain things they couldn’t bother to show, such as how totally useful and desirable the other dimension/planet/whatever is. I have to go all the way back to X-Men: the Last Stand to recall a film of equal verbal banality.

I don’t even want to get started on how badly they ruined the Thing’s immortal catchphrase “It’s Clobberin’ Time!” Someone thought that needed its own origin. The resulting psychological implications of its source suggest a darkest-timeline Ben Grimm who may just be a damaged powder keg in dire need of extensive counseling before he’s allowed anywhere near a battlefield or a toy aisle.

If Fantastic Four had been two-thirds awesome thriller and one-third conventional super-hero product, I might be inclined to subscribe more readily to the simplistic schism of Trank=good/Fox=bad. I’m not convinced all the worst parts are his fault, but if he has any intention of staying in Hollywood, first he’ll need to take responsibility for his mistakes that made it into the final cut and for the missteps that necessitated a producer intervention in the first place. I had high hopes for this ostensible reinvention of the FF, but I think the characters were better off without this intrusion into their history.

If we assume everything in Act Three is creative damage control (most likely led by producer/co-writer Simon Kinberg), then…well, let me randomly put this in Simpsons terms, as befits a high-profile Fox misfire: in my mind, the first half of the new FF is “Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie”, and the back half is “The Death of Poochie”. Trank is Poochie, and Kinberg is Roger Myers sending Trank back to his home planet using one animation cel and a black marker.

How about those end credits? No, there’s no scene after the Fantastic Four end credits. I recognized the names of Tim Burgard and Aaron Sowd among the storyboard artists who once worked in comics. Onetime FF artist Bryan Hitch receives billing above them as a “Consultant”. Near the end I noticed it’s one of several thousand films partly shot in Louisiana, which has practically become the new Hollywood.

In between those bits, it was hard to pay attention because my family and I couldn’t wait to start bickering over what we’d just put up with.

Once upon a time, at the very first comic book shows I attended as a teen, rooting through back issue bins for missing comics was the only thing I wanted to do. Once a year or so, my mom would drive me to the Marriott out at 21st and Shadeland, where the Ash Comics Show brought a bunch of dealers and collectors into a single ballroom and let them sell the heck out of comics — shelves, spinner racks, and packed longboxes from wall to wall. A few published artists would come in as guests. A TV and some chairs set up near the entrance passed for an anime viewing area. There may have been related events in another room or two. But mostly I wanted to plug the holes in my comics collection. The thrill of the hunt, the joy of discovery, the satisfaction of completism — whatever you call it, that’s how comics were my anti-drug.

I tried to get into the spirit in time for Wizard World Chicago last month. I took the above pic while going through my organized accumulation as a reminder to myself of the joy I once had rifling through hundreds of comics at a time in hopes of striking reader gold. I spent a couple of nights shifting from box to box, reuniting with old series, reliving classic arcs, stumbling across #1s I forgot I had (Reign of the Zodiac? That was a thing?), and generally immersing myself in the old-timey smell of newsprint and the nostalgic sight of crinkled, battered covers from decades past.

I was thiiis close to wanting more back issues. It almost worked.

I’ve been in the throes of lamentable back-issue withdrawal for a while. Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

While I’m thinking about dealers: my long-standing back-issue want-list largely comprise two kinds of comics: issues that were part of storylines from previous decades that mean nothing or make no sense if read today; and the really obscure stuff you’ll never, ever bring to sell at a con because no average customers would want them. To this very day my run of Alan Weiss’ six-issue Marvel/Epic miniseries Steelgrip Starkey and the All-Purpose Power Tool is one issue short. I would pay double cover price to buy the last several issues of Steve Moncuse’s Fish Police in person instead of online, and finally find out whatever happened to Inspector Gill. But when I’m surrounded by bulk supplies of Spider-Man and X-Men and Avengers and DC’s New 52 and dozens of Marvel Ultimate trades going for a dollar a pound, I know better than to waste my time searching.

We planned to be at WWC for three full days. We’d have a lot more time to spend than usual. I was worried about finding ways to make the most of the experience. A week before showtime, I got the idea of returning to the hunt once more. Somewhere out there are old comics I never got to buy or read, a lot of which have never been collected in trades and probably aren’t in line for legal digital purchase in the near future. And I thought maybe diving into my stash — the immediate, tactile old-book experience — would rekindle that old flame.

I had a second reason for box-diving: I had no idea what I was missing anymore. Back in July we suffered the heartbreak of a surprise hard drive crash that wiped us out and had virtually nothing backed up except photos:

My comics want lists, what I used to search for missing back issues at conventions, are likewise lost. The idea of going through all 10,000+ comics and writing down all that info again is not tempting yet. At all. I’m not sure my back could take the strain of lifting that many boxes in succession anymore. I have until our next comics convention (i.e., August’s Wizard World Chicago) to decide if I still really want to have a complete run of the original Incredible Hulk and am willing to go back and see which issues I need, or if I’d rather drop that longtime personal goal, among several other fan-based goals that just got a lot harder. A small part of me that’s angry at the rest of me wants to set the collection on fire and start a new spreadsheet tracking just the survivors.

So I gave it a shot. My current plan is I will never re-catalog all my comics ever again for the rest of my life. I love making lists, but I hate recreating former lists from scratch, especially one that would need a weeks-long undertaking. But at the very least I figured I’d skim quickly through each box, see which series jump out at me as works I want more of, and track only the gaps in those select runs. Focusing the hunt might be easier than a scattershot approach across the board, I reasoned.

I ended up with a short makeshift want list, 90% of whose prospects fit into one of four categories:

* Series I’d been slowly amassing for years exclusively from bargain boxes: Quasar, Incredible Hulk (of the original 454-issue series, I have a complete run from #224 to #454, but lots of gaps before that),.
* Christopher Priest books I missed back in the ’90s: The Ray, Steel, Extreme Justice
* Milestone Media books, which I lost track of in the mid-’90s: Hardware, Static, Xombi, Blood Syndicate, Kobalt, Shadow Cabinet, and especially Icon
* The earliest Marvel/DC books I collected as a wee lad, if they’re affordable: The Flash, Brave and the Bold

…and some other obscurities. Fun trivia: dealers routinely bring none of these to shows. They’re slow-moving non-starters, so much dead weight that only an frazzled old loon would be interested in buying off them. These stay behind in dealers’ basements or on their shop’s sales floor, and instead they bring wheelbarrows full of unwanted X-books on the hunch that someday their fortunes will change and suddenly everyone will once again be dying for anything with Wolverine’s face on it.

(Just once I’d also like to see a single dealer at any Indianapolis or Chicago con carry a single item from Fantagraphics, Top Shelf, Drawn & Quarterly, or trendy bookstores. This never happens. Might be time to start looking into cons in other nearby markets.)

While the longbox run-through was fun for its own sake, its primary objective turned out kind of pointless in the moment. I took my list to WWC and hit the dealers’ rooms, but only took it out of my pocket once. I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t look through un-alphabetized, unsorted piles of randomness. I couldn’t bear to look up one more Incredible Hulk divider only to see their “early” issues were published in my college years. I couldn’t weigh myself down with ten pounds of non-sequential yesterdays rendered irrelevant by time passage and reboots. I couldn’t bear to see how many thousands of blank looks I could net by asking all comers if they’d ever heard of Pirate Corp$.

Maybe it’s one of those symptoms of old age, even for geeks, watching the things of this world fall away and recoiling at the thought of chasing after all of them. I’m really not feeling that “Gotta catch ’em all!” spirit. Maybe I’ve hit Peak Collection and, outside of a couple dozen Marvel Essentials omnibuses I don’t have, have reached the point where I’m just burnt out on old-school super-hero stories. Considering that my weekly new-comics hauls keep getting more selective over time, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to see my back-issue cravings wither likewise or worse.

In the eyes of those who make a living selling comics of all ages to readers of all ages, I’ve become one of the hundreds of things that are What’s Wrong With Comics. Sorry, dealers. Call me when you change your mind and bring some Milestone books with you.

DC Comics house ad from The Flash #339, cover-dated November 1984. A lot of ’80s characters are no longer around, and it’s been decades since fans begged DC to bring back “legends” like these.

We live in an entertainment culture where we take it as given that all the best ideas were conceived before we were born, so trying to forge new universes seems like too much effort. Reboots used to be a desperation move, but anymore they’re the norm for luring in new fans — not just for work-for-hire companies with an intellectual property catalog to keep fertile and growing, but for artists, writers, and filmmakers all too happy to make a lifelong career out of perpetuating the lives and histories of worlds and heroes they didn’t invent themselves. It’s a living.

It’s easy to scoff at reboots when they’re happening to characters that don’t matter to you. If you’re a geek for long enough, though, sooner or later they’ll get to a universe you do care about.

I’ve been there. I remember the first time I had a universe yanked out from under me.

In 1985 I was 13 years old and had been following along for seven years, because comics were cheaper than snacks and fit easily into our family’s grocery budget. I glommed onto the Marvel and DC universes in equal measure; for the latter The Flash and The Brave and the Bold were among the first series I collected regularly, back in the days of Barry Allen, Iris’ untimely murder (the first major comics death I ever witnessed, and at such an impressionable age), and the one true Batman in my young eyes as drawn by the great Jim Aparo. Eventually I expanded to other heroes and titles, learning more about DC’s history from the 741.5 section of my local library as well as from their own ongoing comics. I found it easy to keep track of Earth-1 versus Earth-2, between Golden Age and Silver Age, between the JLA and the JSA.

As the ad prefacing this entry shows, DC seemed pretty happy with its results and its diverse lineup. I didn’t collect all the titles shown above, but I found plenty of reasons to buy in.

Less than six months later, fans were put on notice that everything they held dear was about to change forever.

House ad from The Flash #343, March 1985. The original maxiseries’ title and logo were a work in progress, apparently.

I didn’t take them seriously at first. I was young. I wasn’t yet plugged into the meager fanzine culture, not until another six months had passed and my local Waldenbooks began carrying Fantagraphics’ Amazing Heroes. The first issue I saw had a cover story all about Crisis on Infinite Earths, the milestone event that would save or toss out fifty years of comics continuity as they saw fit, combine all their multiple Earths into a single DC Earth, start over from scratch, provide a company-wide entry point for new readers, and redefine their entire fictional milieu for a new generation of readers.

I wasn’t thrilled, especially not by the deaths of dozens of characters great and small throughout the series and the official Crisis Crossovers happening over in all the other DC books. Even as a lowly ragamuffin I thought it was a shame to see so much legacy relegated to the forgotten bins of ex-history. While Crisis was in the middle of its twelve-issue run, I discovered the wonder of my first local comic shop, the secret joy of direct-sales comics, and The Comics Buyer’s Guide, another publication about comics like Amazing Heroes, except weekly instead of biweekly, in a larger newspaper format, and, as I recall, filled with letters and comments from fans two or three times my age who were absolutely livid about all of this. I don’t have those issues at hand anymore, but many were the speeches about the indignities of childhood heroes whose sagas would no longer continue uninterrupted like soap operas, who would see their original timelines come to definitive stopping points and their stars regress to Day One to relive all the same triumphs and tragedies over again, or to potentially have to endure inferior, stupider, awful ones guided by the hands of greedy whippersnappers who care only about the bottom line and just want new moneys from new customers.

It was a rough introduction to the corporate world, to a completely different dimension from our own fanboy bubbles, where professionals in suits expect increasing profits every year, not just flatlined returns year-in-year-out. Where the key to beating inflation, growing as a company, and maybe handing out occasional raises isn’t to depend on the exact same customer base to hand over the exact same dollar amounts over and over and over and over again. Where sooner or later the reality of maintaining a successful product line is to retain customers to an extent where possible and to keep actively courting new clientele to replenish and surpass the attrition of the old.

I mean, I didn’t realize all of that at age 13. It took a while to get it.

House ad from The Flash #344, April 1985, now featuring the official Crisis on Infinite Earths logo and most of George Perez’ amazing wraparound cover to the first issue. My scan of thirty-year-old newsprint doesn’t do Perez justice, obv.

Sure, I lamented losing some of the pre-Crisis concepts. Batman’s fun team-ups in The Brave and the Bold as well as Superman’s own in DC Comics Presents. The original SHAZAM!/Captain Marvel (acquired from the late Fawcett Comics) and what little flair he’d retained from C.C. Beck and Otto Binder’s original, whimsical tales (I’d found a few in some books for comparison). The Legion of Super-Heroes before Byrne’s deletion of Superboy muddled their entire team origin. But there were pre-Crisis things I didn’t miss, too. Both Superman and Action Comics had turned into aimless anthologies. Barry Allen’s depressing ordeal after killing Professor Zoom had dragged on for two-and-a-half years with no hope in sight. I was a little relieved to see those axed, to be honest.

And, granted, not everything in the post-Crisis DC universe worked. Some folks were less impressed with John Byrne’s Superman than I was. Hawkman was a butchered mess with multiple backstories that took years to vet and reconcile. The addition of drunk driving to Hal Jordan’s origin was a questionable move. The new “street-level” Jason Todd was more irritating than a cloud of mosquitoes.

But the next twenty-five years also saw a lot of astounding, unforgettable work in the all-new all-different DC universe. Perez’ revamp of Wonder Woman. Wally West’s long reign as the new Flash after Barry Allen’s death in COIE #8. The Giffen/DeMatteis/Maguire sitcom-like Justice League. Denny O’Neil and Denys Cowan on the Question. Cary Bates, Greg Weisman, and Pat Broderick on Captain Atom. Roy Thomas’ Infinity Inc. adjusting to super-heroing without their dead or retconned Golden Age super-parents, while enjoying the radically different art of a young Todd McFarlane. Miller and Mazzucchelli’s “Batman: Year One”. New Bat-villains over time like the Ventriloquist, Azrael, and Bane. Tim Drake as a Robin competent enough to headline his own series. James Robinson and Tony Harris on Starman.

I’m skipping around a lot, but you get the idea. Crisis on Infinite Earths saw a lot of concepts retired and never brought back again. It saw a lot of concepts revived and retooled into worthy works. It paved the way for a lot of brand new heroes, villains, and antiheroes to join the stage and make their individual marks in the annals of DC Comics. Crisis most certainly did not mean we would never, ever, ever have good DC Comics ever again.

I’m sure I went through the five stages of grief in my own way. And then I came out the other side and enjoyed the ride.

In 2011, here they went again. DC’s “New 52” initiative did the exact same in a more thorough, sweeping manner. All titles were canceled, the 1986-2011 DC universe came to a close (except the Bat-parts Grant Morrison had borrowed, and maybe some impenetrable Green Lantern leftovers), and another all-new all-different DC Universe began afresh for still another generation of potential new customers. Of the fifty-two new titles I tried something like eighteen or twenty of them. By the end of Year 1 I was down to less than a handful because I got the impression I wasn’t their primary target anymore. I understood, complied, and found other uses for my money. Today my monthly DC list comprises Prez and Batman ’66.

For a while it kind of sucked. I was miffed at first as DC and I grew apart, but then I realized it was for the best. I type this today with neither rage nor contempt. I’m in my 40s. I have myriad other things on my plate, from other fictional universes to non-superhero comics to non-comics-reading to non-print hobbies to fellow living humans to adult responsibilities, and so on. I’m not out of things to do, and my life doesn’t seem to be a meaningless shambles without a monthly fix of Serious Aquaman.

The characters who live in the DC Comics Universe aren’t my family or my idols. They’re the puppets of a corporation that can use, disuse, refurbish, leave alone, or destroy as they see fit. Their heroes are not my gods. If there are other hands directing their actions from behind the curtains, they’re not gods. That means it’s okay to walk away from them.

In all my stages of coming to terms with their justifiably capitalist behavior, with this two-time shattering of the foundations of one of the many universes I liked, not once did it ever occur to me that maybe DC would bring back all my favorite DC stuff and cater to me, and only to me personally, no matter how much business sense it would totally lack, if only I would renounce personal morality and start pushing lots of people around until DC collectively surrenders and gives me what I want. Not once.

But that’s just me.

That brings me to another universe.

This is my wife’s collection of Star Wars Expanded Universe books. Almost all of them, anyway. The comics and graphic novels are in another bookcase in another room, but they’re a smaller set because she’s less completist about those.

She’s read them all, more than once. Out of pure fun and enjoyment, for the Star Wars message board we call home, she’s spent the last nine years writing her own coverage of each and every Expanded Universe novel that’s one part SparkNotes and one part Nitpicker’s Guide. She has dozens of novels she hasn’t posted about yet, but literally years’ worth of chapter summaries she’s written in advance for posting, one per day, until she’s someday caught ’em all. After our hard drive crashed in July, she had to retrieve many portions of those advance writings from emails she’d sent back and forth between work and home as she’d added to them during downtime. What she couldn’t recover that way, she’s having to rewrite from scratch, hoping she can recapture the same plot points, questions, and Easter eggs she’d noted the first time around.

And that’s not even talking about what the movies mean to her. It’s safe to say she’s a big Star Wars fan and has a vested interest in the Expanded Universe.

It’s also safe to say when Lucasfilm announced in 2014 that they were rebooting the entire SW prose universe, Anne wasn’t thrilled. Her reaction was, quoted here word for word, “Well, that sucks.”

When George Lucas sold his precious moneymaking babies to Disney, when The Force Awakens was announced, and when every division of the Lucasfilm empire began buzzing with new life, she knew a line-wide reboot was one possibility. She also knew she had no control over it. She was bummed for a while, and, as she summed it up to me just now after waking up for a few random minutes in the middle of the night, “I’m sorry that it happened…in some cases.”

But I know what she’s going through. I’ve been there. More than once, and with a much older universe. I’ve shared my experiences with her. I like to think it helped put things in perspective, though she still had a few bummer days to let the news sink in.

In discussions like these, we hear the inevitable nutshell about how those old stories haven’t been erased and how they’re perfectly intact on our bookshelves where she can still read them anytime. That’s not the point. The part that hurts most is when you realize the company that once considered you its target audience has decided you’re not so much anymore and is moving on to captivating your successors instead, for its own good from a commercial perspective.

When you think that you and a company have a quote-unquote “understanding”, it’s never fun when they pull rank and dispel the notion. It’s a form of rejection. And some people take rejection better than others. Some can’t handle rejection. At all.

Some write angry letters. Some now take to social media and contact the responsible parties. Some flood said parties with messages endlessly for days and weeks on end without regard for decorum, manners, civility, or other traits that make human interaction a desirable experience. Some attend conventions and all but bully other fans into joining their hivemind, so that theoretically all shall rise up as a single, entitled mob and demand the large corporation go back to catering to them Or Else, no matter how much business sense it would totally lack.

Thankfully for me I married a wonderfully level-headed woman who has no use for such movements.

She’ll miss plenty about the old Expanded Universe — the Republic Commandos, the Han Solo Trilogy, Corran Horn, Rogue and Wraith Squadrons, Jagged Fel, Grand Admiral Pellaeon, Anakin Solo in the New Jedi Order, and anything written by Jude Watson. She’d be fine with more of those. For now, there’s not. She soldiers on.

The EU also gave her plenty she won’t miss and wishes she could erase from our timeline: The Black Fleet Crisis, the Jedi Academy Trilogy, the Lando Calrissian Trilogy, Callista, Jacen Solo walking straight into the Dark Side with his eyes wide open, The Crystal Star, Luke Skywalker’s wishy-washiness as a supposed Jedi Master, every strong woman turning into an idiot when she becomes a wife and mother…

…and then I realized Oh, no, I got her started! as she kept trying to go on and on for several minutes with more detailed examples from specific scenes, books, and series where assorted authors went off-track and failed at bookmaking. When her bullet points threatened to become paragraphs I had to call time-out and invited her to write up a separate “1000 Worst EU Moments Ever” entry of her own sometime, because I’m not sure I would be the best stenographer for that. Updates as they occur.

At this point she hasn’t read any of the new stuff beyond A New Dawn, the prequel to the Rebels animated series. EU books haven’t been a week-of-release must-buy for her for a long time now. At this point it’s too ridiculously early to gauge the EU reboot as a success or failure based on the scant evidence and the fact that we’re barely months into this new universe and there’s a little movie on the way to shake things up even more. Anne remains open to the possibility that The Force Awakens may be watchable, possibly even above-average. And in my eyes she’s weathering the transition with an enviable grace and dignity.

And who knows? Maybe a lot of EU concepts will stay retired and never brought back again. Maybe a lot of concepts will be revived and retooled into worthy works. Maybe the reboot will pave the way for a lot of brand new heroes, villains, and action figures to join the stage and make their marks in the annals of the post-Lucas galaxy far, far away.

And regardless of whether you love or hate Chuck Wendig’s Aftermath, it most certainly does not mean we’ll never, ever, ever have good Star Wars books ever again.

This weekend ushered in the inaugural Cartoon Crossroads Columbus, an intentionally different comics show from what we’re used to seeing here in Indianapolis. As conceived and executed by Bone creator Jeff Smith, Comics Reporter journalist Tom Spurgeon, and no doubt a sturdy support network of other talents, CXC promised no actors or celebrities, no mainstream publishers, no costume contest, no cosplay, no gaming, no super-sized convention center, no inedible convention center food, no back-issue longboxes, no action figures, and no bobbleheads. CXC was an aesthetically purified form of literary/art show about comics, featuring a lot of people who make comics better, from within the local community as well as from distant parts.

As a longtime comics fan who needs more than super-heroes in his reading list, I found their guest list intriguing and populated with the kind of principled names we’re likely never to see at a Wizard World show. I deeply regret we had a limited time frame to spend there, but my wife, who only recognized one name on the entire guest list, was happy to tag along and let me immerse myself for a few hours, even though it meant a three-hour drive each way through an unsightly rainy day. We met several creators, we attended one Q&A, I came away with a potentially fascinating reading pile, and we had just enough time left over for some bonus comics sightseeing a few miles up the road.

CXC’s itinerary was spread among five different buildings from downtown to two different college campuses. Thursday and Friday comprised numerous presentations Ohio State University, while Saturday’s daytime focus was the CXC “expo” — what other cons would call an Artists Alley — at the Cultural Arts Center. Fascinating in its own right, this historic structure was erected in 1861 as a state arsenal and converted into its current identity in the 1970s.

The Center has three stories, open ceilings, beautiful hardwood floors, and a courtyard outside lined with artifacts and a sofa. It seemed the perfect size and ambiance for the festivities, if a bit warm from all the bodies. The ground-level space was crowded nonstop with artists and fans alike. I should mention admission to nearly every CXC activity was free (including all Saturday events), thanks to several generous sponsors.

Tabled near the front entrance was the name most familiar to mainstream comics fans today — writer/artist Jeff Lemire, who staked a claim in the biz with creator-owned books like Essex County and Sweet Tooth before DC Comics lured him into trying corporate-owned super-hero books with their New 52 relaunch. The horrific weirdness of Animal Man (with Travel Foreman) led to other Big Two gigs, but Lemire still sets time aside for his own projects like the mind-bending, narrative-twisting, cross-time romance of Trillium, the recently launched Plutona (with Emi Lenox), and the beautiful yet jarring sci-fi drama of Descender (with Dustin Nguyen).

Naturally he had an autograph line, but a totally bearable one. The creative table arrangements made for some odd flanking in our pic.

He signed my copy of Lost Dogs and added a quick sketch using the old-school combo of dip pen and bottled ink. I don’t think I’ve ever watched an artist sketch with one of those at a con. I don’t think I’ve even seen a dip pen since high-school art class. For that momentary nostalgic art thrill alone, the long drive was worth it.

Three of the biggest names in the house showed up at the other end of the floor — the aforementioned Jeff Smith (with hat), renowned indie editor/publisher Françoise Mouly (with scarf), and her husband Art Spiegelman (with vest), whose two volumes of Maus are among the very few graphic novels that my wife, my son, and I have all read. That area seemed more crowded than any other in the Center, but Anne tried her best to take a pic before Spiegelman left to attend other matters. And in a space this cozy and literary-minded, I began to feel self-conscious about us taking too many pics.

Unfortunately all the best speaking engagements with these comics legends were scheduled on Friday when we couldn’t get out of work, or Saturday evening after we needed to return home. I’ll be kicking myself for missing those grand opportunities for some weeks to come, but our allotted time in Columbus was what it was. Thankfully the official CXC Twitter account live-tweeted the Friday night presentation, and I understand video was shot of the Saturday night finale, which I’d love to see if/when it’s available online.

Our limited presence means this entry is obviously not the definitive recount of the full CXC experience. At the very least, though, I was elated to show up, see what Year One looked like, and donate over supportive wads of cash to creators in person, like a Kickstarter but with instant tangible results. All told, I can say it was a pleasure to meet and buy from Lemire, “Derf” Backderf, Dara Naraghi, and Keiler Roberts, among others. (Full disclosure: Tom Spurgeon’s Patreon supporters were treated to an incisive interview with Roberts shortly before CXC that sold me on her book Miseryland in advance.)

Derf won my personal award for Best Banner of Show, with his copious use of the Ramones.

CXC also took advantage of the Center’s other two floors for more in-depth purposes. While podcast interviews were conducted up on the third to a limited audience, the second was used to host a conversation series with assorted guests. We attended the one whose work I’d read the most: Grace Ellis, co-creator/co-writer of the surprise hit series Lumberjanes.

If you’ve never read an issue of this all-ages series that reimagines the Girl Scouts as plucky action-adventure heroes, here’s an excerpt from #5 that captures its best elements in no particular order: optimism, surprises, danger, bravery, and monsters.

Art by Brooke Allen and Maarta Laiho.

It’s extremely rare for me to have the opportunity to witness a comics Q&A conducted by an interviewer with Spurgeon’s professional qualifications, so it was refreshing to hear prompts beyond the insight level of “Where do you get your ideas?” or “Which Marvel/DC characters would you love to write?” or “What actors would you cast in the movie version?” Random tidbits from their chat:

* Ellis attended OSU for as long as she could; her writing background was primarily in the theater. Lumberjanes #1 was her first published comic. Each medium has its own requirements, but her editors and co-writer Noelle Stevenson have given her quite a learning experience.

* “Lumberjills” was already taken by actual loggers who kept the chopping industry going while all the manly woodcutters were fighting overseas during WWII. (My wife’s a massive WWII buff and made a point of stopping by Ellis’ table later to express her gratitude for this heretofore unknown-to-her wartime trivia.)

* She set aside an entire day just to write the Lumberjanes Pledge for the first issue.

* Ellis now has a much longer list of comics ideas than she did before the series began. She hasn’t ruled out autobiographical or more “adult” works in the distant future, but for her right now the watchword is “fun”. She and co-creator Shannon Watters are working on their next project, which is officially in its nascent too-soon-to-talk-about-it stage.

* Their publisher, BOOM! Studios, is a pleasure to work with, though she admits she has no other basis for comparison in the field.

* Lumberjanes has been optioned for live-action Hollywood treatment, because that’s a kind of thing BOOM! really loves to make happen. Ellis isn’t actively involved in its development and diplomatically hopes it’s great and that it sells a lot of Lumberjanes books.

* She’s among the millions who highly recommend the new hip-hop Broadway musical Hamilton, concerning the life of Alexander Hamilton, which in the past two months has become the New Thing I’ve Never Heard of That Everyone Keeps Talking About. Consider yourself notified: Hamilton is hereby a Thing.

…

After taking our leave of CXC we’d hoped to walk around downtown for a few minutes of basic tourism (e.g., the Ohio State Capitol down the street), but the rains that had dogged us all along I-70 finally arrived and dashed those hopes. This giant gavel was the only non-comics attraction we spotted before Mother Nature tried to wash us down the sewers.

Its sculptor has the same name as the actor who played Moriarty on Sherlock. Let’s all pretend that’s relevant somehow.

After lunch, we weren’t done with comics yet. Our last Ohio stop for the day was up in OSU’s Sullivant Hall, at a topical repository called the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum. CXC’s activities dovetailed nicely with a strong recommendation from writer/cartoonist Evan Dorkin that I’d read two weeks ago. Also, like CXC, admission is free. Its inclusion in our short Columbus day was a no-brainer.

Dorkin was treated to an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour, but the public displays are sufficiently worthy for comic art aficionados. After a courtesy docent greeting your first sights are the drawing-room furniture of Dick Tracy creator Chester Gould.

On display are original pages and strips from the likes of Jack Kirby, Jeff Smith, Pogo‘s Walt Kelly, Todd McFarlane, and Prince Valiant‘s Hal Foster (honestly, now I get why he’s revered) alongside vintage newspaper pages from Krazy Kat‘s George Herriman and Little Nemo‘s Winsor McCay.

Delightful discovery: a Calvin and Hobbes Sunday strip in which you can see where Bill Watterson decided the title panel had too many spotty shadows for his liking and remedied the details with some whiteout.

This damaged Charles Schulz Peanuts page cries out for a plaintive Martin Scorsese speech about the importance of art preservation. I winced hard when I noticed the rips.

Other rooms featured walls and displays of WWI political cartoons, local political cartoonist Billy Ireland, and a retrospective on Puck, the first American humor magazine. Those subjects were largely new or ignorant territory for me, but I enjoyed the exposure and I wrote down names like Joseph Keppler Jr. and Nell Brinkley that I need to know more about at some point.

Their backroom archives are vast but require prior arrangements to access specific materials. The museum has an extensive reading room, but it’s closed Saturdays. I tried not to kick the walls on my way out. I love that there’s a college with seminar halls named after Will Eisner and Charles Schulz.

Normal art museums are fine, but visiting comics museums would be my primary nonstop post-retirement activity if we can open hundreds more of them nationwide by then. See to it, America.

…

Thus concluded our joyous comics day in Columbus, as we resigned ourselves to the comicsless three-hour drive home. I trust all other attendees had a wonderful time and availed themselves of the astounding opportunities afforded by this festival. I can’t wait to hear next year’s lineup, though here’s hoping for sunnier weather in 2016. Until then, I expect I have some quality reading ahead.

Ransom Riggs’ Library of Souls, one among a handful of 2015 books I actually read in 2015.

Presented below is my full list of books, graphic novels, and trade collections that I finished reading in 2015, mostly but not entirely in order of completion. As I whittle down the never-ending stack I’ve been stockpiling for literal decades, my long-term hope before I turn 70 is to get to the point where my reading list is more than, say, 40% new releases every year. That’s a lofty goal, but I can dream

* * * * *

That reading list, then:

1. Jay Faerber, Fran Bueno, Patrick Gleason, et al., Noble Causes: Archives vol. 1
2. George R. R. Martin, editor, Wild Cards: Busted Flush
3. Steve Bryant, Athena Voltaire: Compendium
4. Roger Ebert, Life Itself
5. Charles Schulz, The Complete Peanuts 1993-1994
6. Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs
7. Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book
8. Brian Clevenger and Scott Wegener, Atomic Robo, v. 3: Atomic Robo and the Shadow from Beyond Time
9. Brian Clevenger and Scott Wegener, Atomic Robo, v. 2: Atomic Robo and the Dogs of War
10. Stephan Franck, Silver v. 1
11. Rick Remender and Wes Craig, Deadly Class v. 2: Kids of the Black Hole
12. Brian Clevenger and Scott Wegener, Atomic Robo, v. 1: Atomic Robo and the Fightin’ Scientists of Tesladyne
13. Brian Wood and Brett Weldele, Couscous Express
14. Robert Kirkman and Jason Howard, Super Dinosaur v. 1
15. Ben Avery and Javier Saltares, The Book of God: How We Got the Bible
16. Jeff Lemire, Lost Dogs
17. John Ridley and Ben Oliver, The Authority: Human on the Inside
18. Jane Espenson, Brad Bell, Ron Chan, Ben Avery, et al., Husbands
19. Greg Pak and Paul Pelletier, Incredible Hulks: World War Hulks
20. Warren Ellis and Terry Dodson, X-Men: Storm
21. Thom Zahler, Love and Capes, v. 2: Going to the Chapel
22. Ken Jennings, Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs
23. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
24. Charles Schulz, The Complete Peanuts 1995-1996
25. Jamie Munson, Money: God or Gift
26. Joe Sacco, Palestine: A Nation Occupied
27. Mark Harris, Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War
28. Ransom Riggs, Library of Souls: the Third Novel of Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children
29. Scott McCloud, The Sculptor
30. Jeff Lemire, The Underwater Welder
31. Sam Glanzman, A Sailor’s Story
32. Kate Beaton, Hark! A Vagrant
33. William Gibson, Spook Country
34. John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell, March, Book One
35. Dara Naraghi and Brent Bowman, Persia Blues, vol. 1: Leaving Home
36. Rick Remender and Wes Craig, Deadly Class vol. 3: The Snake Pit
37. Kathryn and Stuart Immonen, Russian Olive to Red King

Here’s what they look like shelved together:

By way of comparison, my yearly book count from 2008 to the present has trended like so:

2008: 39
2009: 50
2010: 44
2011: 33
2012: 23
2013: 42
2014: 43

Best book of the year was unquestionably Five Came Back. Epic nonfiction about five famous directors who volunteered their film-making skills to the US military in WWII: John Ford, best known for Westerns like The Searchers and Stagecoach, who captured the Battle of Midway live in person; William Wyler, whose Mrs. Miniver became instantly dated, who lost his hearing while riding aboard aircraft during dogfights; John Huston, put on the map by The Maltese Falcon, who was sent on assignment to three continents all while being investigated as a potential Communist; Frank Capra, who was given his own wartime film division to supervise, but barely got half his to-do list completed in a timely or noteworthy manner; and comedy director George Stevens, who’d mostly done Laurel & Hardy shorts and Tracy/Hepburn films, whose travels through North Africa, D-Day, and the liberation of Dachau damaged his psyche so irreparably that he never directed another happy movie for the rest of his life.

Longtime Entertainment Weekly contributor Mark Harris weaves their five stories into an engrossing, tragic narrative with plenty of famous guest stars and (in)famous WWII moments. Essential reading for historical film buffs.

Other noteworthy favorites in the stack, in nearly random order:

* Life Itself: The autobiography of my all-time favorite film critic, even when I disagreed with him, even when his thoughts on religion drove me up a wall. I read this over a month’s worth of lunch breaks and kept emailing quotes and highlights to my wife daily after lunch because I wanted to keep savoring moments of it whether she cared or not. Ebert lived life the way a seasoned critic ought to: got bitten by the writing bug while young, got out of the house, got an education, became a certified journalist, spent years establishing his career, traveled worldwide, made lots of poor life choices, cleaned himself up, and then started reviewing movies, but only because someone offered it to him and not because he was dying for a job that let him sit around, watch stuff, scribble adjectives on Post-Its, and get paid. Millions of wannabes have taken what they perceive as the road more easily traveled, but that’s not the route Ebert took at all.

* To Kill a Mockingbird. My first-ever read-through came about in response to our 2015 road trip to New Orleans and Alabama. (Our still-ongoing travelogue will reach the relevant stop in due time.) It’s so thoroughly head-and-tails above 90% of what I normally read or watch that part of me now wants to burn a lot of my possessions and just become a hardcore literary snob and read absolutely nothing but books at least this great or greater. I made a point of saving the movie till after I’d finished reading. The book was better, but I’ll spare you the obsolete nitpicking over What They Left Out.

* Palestine: A Nation Occupied: A rare instance of comics as true journalism. Joe Sacco is a cartoonist who traveled over to Palestine for a good while, took lots of notes, then wrote and drew a nine-issue series about the hostilities and tragedies he witnessed (or his many interviewees told him about) between the Israelis who were given land way over there and the Palestinians they kept kicking around so they could take more and more as it pleased them. This volume collects the first five issues, contains a lot of eye-opening stories, and doesn’t shy away from Sacco’s guilty self-awareness of his steadily growing craving for more newsworthy, exciting, almost prurient tales of violence, which began to preoccupy him to such a fault that it began affect his decision-making processes.

* Library of Souls: The final chapter of the (first?) trilogy sees most of the time-displaced mutants and their beloved ornithothropic teacher captured, leaving the cast winnowed down for most of the book to our no-longer-powerless hero Jacob Portman, his 100-year-old pyrokinetic girlfriend, a talking dog, and a creepy hooded boatman. The quartet must negotiate the violent despair of Not-Knockturn Alley to rescue all the other Not-X-Men from the clutches of Miss Peregrine’s evil brother and his not-undead henchmen. Easily the darkest book in the series, with bizarre ideas about how souls work and gory violence that stretches a few miles beyond the “young adult” label, but the closure is exactly what was needed, Riggs knows how to build up to powerful rallying points, and the stage is set for Our Heroes to enter a brand new era at the end.

* A Sailor’s Story: A purchase from the gift shop at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, collecting two autobiographical graphic novels previously published by Marvel in the ’80s. The longtime comics artist is also a WWII Navy veteran (still alive today in his 90s) and was among the very, very few of those to tell his own story in comics form. The first volume tells the basic framework of his service on the Pacific Front aboard the USS Stevens; volume 2 is a more disjointed selection of additional anecdotes and incidents that slot into the first volume, some of them far more harrowing, particularly the haunting images of kamikaze wreckage and the Allied carriers they sundered.

* March, Book One: The graphic novel autobiography of Georgia Congressman John Lewis, a major participant in the 1960s civil rights protests, who was a character in the movie Selma and who’s still around today to tell the tales. Surprisingly, I found this on sale at the gift shop in the Alabama State Capitol, the last place you’d think would want to remember that era. Regardless: it’s great, important, firsthand history, and I regret not buying vol. 2 at the same time. I bought this from a notable shop in Montgomery, AL, but we haven’t gotten to that story yet, either.

Other random trivia and comments:

* Worst book on the list: the twenty-year-old Storm trade that was pointless to read this far removed from its original place in X-Men continuity.

* I’m withholding the names of the second- and third-worst books among these because I’d rather not pick on them. They each meant well in their own, diametrically opposite ways.

* The Sculptor might have been jaw-droppingly amazing to me if I were a secular humanist.

* I bought The Book of God at a tiny comic con on my birthday and it’s the best Christian graphic novel I’ve ever read. I wish that sounded more like a compliment and less like a sigh of relief.

* The Klosterman essay collection was, I’m pretty sure, the last book I ever bought at a Borders before their sad demise.

* The first Atomic Robo volume was a long-overdue Kickstarter reward.

* Several of these books were read on the same sick day. Looking forward to my next one. The free time, I mean, not the prospect of winter illness.

All-new all-different Scooby-Doo art by DC Comics VP Jim Lee. To the EXTREME.

Just when you thought entertainment corporations had cooled down on the idea of rebooting their property catalogs, along comes a day like today to remind you to stop overestimating entertainment corporations. This morning Entertainment Weekly reported Hanna-Barbera has struck a deal with DC Comics — that bastion of work-for-hire literary integrity — to jump-start some of its most well-known characters as 21st-century comics for a new generation who doesn’t know them and/or an old generation that will shell out money for any repackaged remnants of their childhood.

The article linked above includes teaser images from DC’s planned reboots of Scooby-Doo (now with weapons and tattoos!), the Flintstones (realistic proportions + painful Stone Age puns = PROFIT), Space Ghost and Brak (no more Adult Swim irony, natch), and more. (Jonny Quest’s cast looks surprisingly unchanged, but we’ll see what happens after half of them are killed in the first issue.) The official press release offers additional details omitted from the EW summation, including the part where the Scooby Gang will be fighting nanites, which are now officially Over if they weren’t already. (Trivia undisclosed in the article: DC, Hanna-Barbera, and EW share the same giant parent company.)

It didn’t take long for Twitter to burst into laughter and kick off another round of reboot jokes. Within the first thirty seconds after I caught the news, I next saw other users lining up to brainstorm concepts for a grim-‘n’-gritty Yogi Bear, scoffing about a Jabberjaw revival, hoping Mighty Man and Yukk were up for grabs, and so on. By the time I got home after a long work day and in a better position to interact, I didn’t even bother checking Twitter because I assumed all the best jokes and obvious intellectual properties were spoken for, and my late contributions would be tired and redundant. What’s a sarcastic guy to do?

To an extent I’m fine with opting out this round. I’ve done more than my share of reboot jokes in times past. Longtime MCC readers may remember previous entries in that vein:

* My detailed overview of a young-adult series based on Disney’s Cinderella called “The Cinder-Earth Trilogy”, written over two years before I learned Disney themselves had a live-action reboot in the works. I’ve yet to watch it because I don’t want to know how many of my genius ideas they refused to steal.

* My list of suggestions for overhauling various old Star Trek villains, written during the short time frame when we believed JJ Abrams when he said Benedict Cumberbatch was totally playing not-Khan.

* The synopsis of what could be my first summer blockbuster extravaganza, E.T.: The Epic Traveler, which turns Steven Spielberg’s tiny leather gargoyle and Drew Barrymore’s precious urchin into a total ripoff of Edward and Bella.

* Capsule descriptions of the first thirteen episodes of The CW’s Snowman: the Series, my visionary reimagining of Frosty the Snowman that would be like Smallville on Red Bull Sugarfree.

* My predictions for the very real Teletubbies reboot. I’m pretty sure my version is better than what we actually got.

I could probably turn “MCC Reboots!” into a regular feature without really trying, but I’d rather not. On the drive home from work, I found myself — against my will, mind you — outlining a multi-season arc for a potential relaunch of Barney the Dinosaur that cruelly shuns his preschool fan base and appropriates the character for the TV-14 audience that grew up on him but are afraid to admit they miss him and need him back in their lives. Tentative story arcs so far:

Season 1: Barney travels to our time, takes a full 22 episodes to learn that he should stop murdering children.
Season 2: Slowly learns English from a high school in which no two kids belong to the same minority. The season’s Big Bad: some greedy old big-game-hunting white guy.
Season 3: Learns colors, shapes, numbers, and what “fruits” and “vegetables” are. Big Bad: his larger, hungrier father.
Season 4: Picks up singing; catches on quickly thanks to special guests who used to be on Glee. Has advanced surgery on his arms so his hands can finally reach each other and clap. Big Bad revamped from the old show: that annoying blond kid Michael who always looked ten years too old to be into Barney.

…you get the idea. I even mocked up sample concept art for All-New All-Different Barney using a coloring book page and as much MS Paint as I could throw at it before I got bored within minutes.

Cel shading easily on par with half of Cartoon Network’s current lineup.

Alas, news sites last fall insisted Barney is indeed up for a reboot circa 2017 because youngsters need their sincere dinosaur singalongs. I think we’re reaching a point where Hollywood can reboot all the media characters faster than we can crank out the wonder-who’s-next! quips. Unless we’re content to recycle the same silly what-ifs for the same ten cartoons over and over and over again, those of us who like to blaze their own comedy trail have no choice but to scrape the bottom of the barrel.

Fortunately I found a pair of pop-culture losers that time forgot. Meet Calvin and the Colonel.

The cover of Dell’s Four-Color Comics #1354, cover-dated April-June 1962. My 2006 Overstreet guide priced mint condition copies at $130.00. Mine’s not mint, but this is probably worth, like, fifty grand today, right?

I picked this up in a Mooresville antique store in 2013 when my wife and I were driving around southern Indiana for her 2013 birthday. (I posted pics from our tour of Martinsville, but not the Mooresville stopover.) I found this in a box with other oddities like Jeff Nicholson’s Ultra Klutz and a forgotten old Warren Ellis project called Ruins. It’s now officially the oldest comic I own, and I had to buy it because I knew Dell Comics used to be the kings of making comics based on cartoons, but I had absolutely no idea who these strangers were. The mystery was too tantalizing to abandon.

Some light research uncovered their short-lived history. Just as the Flintstones were cloned from The Honeymooners, Calvin and the Colonel — a dumb bear and a crafty weasel — were basically furry versions of Amos and Andy. If you know TV history, you’ll know that’s not a team that would play well today (as Nicolas Cage and Samuel L. Jackson found out to everyone’s regret). In 1961 someone thought it was good enough to kill airtime for twenty-six episodes before they came to their senses. You can follow the link for a sample on YouTube (complete with value-added ’60s laugh track and vintage commercials intact as palate-cleansers between segments), or you can pretend to enjoy this excerpt from the comic.

As was the standard of the day, the comic contains no credits for writer or artist. I’m not holding my breath waiting for them to step forward and confess.

A quick search for “Calvin and the Colonel reboot” yields no relevant results, thereby making this very entry the definitive internet hot-spot for anyone weird enough in the future to look for “Calvin and the Colonel reboot”. I’ve done it! I’ve found undiscovered country! I could be a reboot-joke pioneer, if only I could think of a single new joke to go with this!

…

…

…

…honestly, I got nearly nothing. All that comes to mind is reframing this dire duo in a dark, violent rehash in which Calvin is an actual ferocious grizzly; the Colonel is a short, weaselly, angry guy who dresses in a lot of fancy furs and thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room; and the whole series is the two of them fighting and fighting and fighting. Then I realized even that reboot has already been done and it was called The Revenant, except for some reason they left Calvin out of too much of the running time. And in this politically divisive era, I’m at a loss how you’d preserve the artistic integrity of those atrocious plantation accents. For once, the bottom of the barrel has failed to give me what I need.

So I guess it’s back to the internet-humor drawing board for me. Maybe I can crank out a 1500-word reboot lampoon based on the Book of Habbakuk, unless SNL already called dibs.

After 37 years of collecting, 2015 was the year I first bought more than two Archie comics in a row. From the new Archie #1; art by Fiona Staples and Andre Szymanowicz.

Comics collecting has been my primary geek interest since age 6, but I have a tough time writing about it with any regularity. My criteria can seem weird and unfair to other fans who don’t share them. I like discussing them if asked, which is rare, but I loathe debating them. It doesn’t help that I skip most crossovers and tend to gravitate toward titles with smaller audiences, which means whenever companies need to save a buck, my favorites are usually the first ones culled. I doubt many comics readers follow MCC anyway, so it’s the perfect place to talk about comics all to myself. Whee.

Anyway: time again for another list of lists with comics in them!

Favorite comics from 2015, in random order:

* Archie / Jughead: No, really! After a changing of the editorial guard, the survivors at Archie Comics HQ tossed dollar bills at Mark Waid, Chip Zdarsky, Fiona Staples, and Erica Henderson and hoped they’d go make the greatest Archie comics of all time. Gone are the ancient gag strips, the decades-old model sheets, the forgettable single-issue trifles; in their places are sharp wits, updated appearances, nuanced color tones, pop culture references that didn’t belong to your grandparents, and a cast of rebooted characters that remain true to the core of the originals, and who, despite their snark, every so often evince genuine affection for each other. The burger-addicted Jughead in particular has received a new lease on life and turned into the kind of breakout character who ought to be conquering other media any second now.

* Silver Surfer: Dan Slott and Michael Allred’s loving, unabashed homage to Doctor Who featured one of my two favorite comics moments of the year when he introduced his companion Dawn Greenwood to his former boss Galactus. Fighting once again to save billions of lives and stop his old master’s epic bingeing, this time he had the backing of a most unusual crowd: a planet populated entirely by refugees from other worlds previously consumed by Galactus. They’re not just a bunch of survivors; they’re a population who know what it means to sacrifice. Their collective, defiant stand was a rare moment of super-heroic inspiration. I could totally imagine a triumphant Who orchestra power-chording in the background.

* Manifest Destiny: That other great comics moment fell on the other end of the ol’ morality scale. Lewis and Clark continue leading their men through the secretly creature-filled lands west of the Mississippi and find themselves teaming up with a race of cute, feathery, silly, bitey, angry predatory bird-dwarves against an even bigger, angrier, grosser threat. “The enemy of my enemy of is my friend” only takes their truce so far before the end of the arc starkly reminds us Lewis and Clark aren’t crusading paladins: they’re government men on a mission from the President himself, and all the priorities the title of this book entails. As created by Chris Dingess, one of the showrunners on Marvel’s Agent Carter, and as brought to life through the rustic, sometimes bloodied palettes of artists Matthew Roberts and Owen Gieni, the undiscovered country was a terrifying place where Man fought hard for his place at the table with all the other monsters, and then planted his flag in the table.

* The Vision: Marvel’s strangest Avengers-related series in years was nowhere near my radar till I picked up #1 on a lark at a rundown Colorado comics shop (sort of a pity-purchase, to be honest), and now I refuse to put it down. After enduring one mega-crossover event too many, not to mention his big movie debut, the Android Avenger decides he needs more in life and moves to suburbia into a nice home with a wife and two kids who are androids that look like him, but possess their own distinctive, dysfunctional personalities. Fitting in with new neighbors and friends is hard enough when a normal family moves, but when your clan can turn diamond-hard and still hasn’t worked out all the kinks in their emotional subroutines, you’ll need more than Leave It to Beaver lectures to navigate the life lessons, the petty bickering, the troubles at school, and the one troublesome murder Dad doesn’t know about yet. Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta are staging an all-robot production of Picket Fences and it’s all kinds of messed-up.

* We Can Never Go Home: Upstart publisher Black Mask Studios first got my attention when we met co-writer Matthew Rosenberg at last year’s C2E2, where I bought the first issue of this stunning surprise. Two mismatched teenagers find themselves on the run in the worst way. She’s a popular girl who’s just learned she has super-strength; he’s an angry loner who claims he can kill people just by thinking really hard. Maybe it’s a premise worthy of a direct-to-video drama, but the tension and bonding between the duo are equal parts reality-grounded and unpredictable. This received very little distribution and required me to go to weird lengths to track down all five issues (one was at an itsy-bitsy hideaway shop in Terre Haute), but it was worth the hunt.

* Doctor Who: The Four Doctors: Sure, “Day of the Doctor” was one of the best of the Doctor Who TV specials, but it only had two doctors. Writer/superfan Paul Cornell (whose “Father’s Day” remains my favorite episode) and artist Neil Edwards had the privilege of adding Peter Capaldi and John Hurt’s War Doctor to the mix, plus a pair of comics-exclusive companions who might mean more to me if I were reading any other Who titles. I’m finicky about my licensed non-canon reading, but “The Four Doctors” was my idea of the perfect comics crossover, in that I only had to buy five (5) issues to read an entire satisfying story from beginning to end.

* Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: I loved it so much, I already wrote about it at length. Not even a post-Secret Wars forced restart has slowed her down, as the time-travel machinations of some form of Doctor Doom have proven no match for her, her plucky pals, or those value-added gutter captions hiding at the bottom of most pages. I SEE YOU DOWN THERE.

* Wild’s End: The Enemy Within: The sequel to Dan Abnett and L.J.N. Culbard’s wonderful, frightful miniseries (one of 2014’s best) in which The Wind in the Willows meets The War of the Worlds adds an unhelpful British government and an even more unhelpful science fiction writer, none of whom get it and are making things worse for our ex-military dog hero, the strong cat character, the increasingly more courageous piglet, and the craftiest drunken Cockney fox in all of fiction. I was so invested in this, I actually gasped aloud at the end of the most recent issue. And grown men do not simply gasp at just anything.

2015 honorable mentions: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 10 (Christos Gage remains my fave Buffyverse comics writer); Daredevil (Mark Waid and Chris Samnee exiting their long run on a high note); Injection (Warren Ellis fantasy/sci-fi weirdness reuniting him with Declan Shalvey, fast becoming a must-buy artist); We Stand on Guard (what if future America invaded Canada to take over all its clean water? Answer: things get ugly).

Lewis and Clark meet new indigenous lifeforms in Manifest Destiny #15. Art by Matthew Roberts and Owen Gieni.

Special awards for books that nailed deadlines and held my interest all year long: The Virginia Romita Traffic Management Awards for books that saw twelve new issues in print and on my receipts in 2015:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 10
Angel & Faith
Star Wars
Star Wars: Darth Vader
Astro City
Batman ’66

Highly commended series that got my money for eleven issues in 2015, despite crossovers and unnecessary restarts:

Groo: Friends and Foes
Ms. Marvel
S.H.I.E.L.D.
Unbeatable Squirrel Girl

Series that were canceled or ended as planned:
Alex & Ada
Batman ’66
Moon Knight
SHIELD
The Unwritten Apocalypse

Titles I either dropped, or tried once but opted out:
All-New Hawkeye (really tired of dumped-upon loser Hawkeye)
All-Star Section Eight
Bizarro
Black Magick
Captain Marvel (her previous outer-space cast weren’t doing anything for me)
Deadpool
Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor
Drax
Hulk
Invincible Iron Man (liked it till they announced a second series to go with it, and probably crossovers)
Kaptara
Monstress
Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur
PastAways
Siege
Suiciders
Survivors Club
Totally Awesome Hulk
Twilight Children (might work better as a collected trade)
Where Monsters Dwell
The Wicked & the Divine (I stopped remembering characters’ names, always my first sign of growing disinterest)
Wytches

Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey cosmic-wozmic stuff from Silver Surfer #13. Art by Michael and Laura Allred.

And that’s kind of an overview of my 2015 comics highlights. For reference and maybe unconscious oblique insight, here’s what I’m currently buying every Wednesday at my local comic shop, budget permitting, broken down by publisher:

Marvel Comics:
Captain Marvel
Daredevil
Doctor Strange
Hercules
Howard the Duck
Karnak
Ms. Marvel
Silver Surfer
Star Wars
Star Wars: Darth Vader
Star Wars: Kanan
Star Wars: Obi-Wan & Anakin
Unbeatable Squirrel Girl
The Vision

DC Comics and DC/Vertigo:
Astro City
Batman ’66 Meets the Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Prez (assuming they deliver the other six issues we were promised)
The Sheriff of Babylon (another Tom King project, another unique winner)
Superman: American Alien (short stories by Chronicle‘s Max Landis, given a lot of leeway)

Dark Horse Comics:
Angel & Faith
Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 10
Fight Club 2 (hoping this begins to make unified sense any minute now)

Image Comics:
The Autumnlands
Copperhead (though it’s a bad sign that the artist has announced another gig…)
Descender
The Dying & the Dead
Injection
Invisible Republic
Lazarus
Manhattan Projects: The Sun Beyond the Stars
Manifest Destiny
No Mercy
Nonplayer (one issue published this year! Call it a comeback!)
Paper Girls
Plutona
Rumble
Starve (about a scary post-apocalyptic cooking show? yep, I’m in)

Other publishers:
Archie
Empire Uprising (…or is this dead?)
James Bond 007: Vargr (Warren Ellis bringing back the meaner Bond from the novels)
Jughead
Strange Fruit
Wild’s End: The Enemy Within (but with only one issue to go, here’s hoping more are in store…)

Captain Woodchuck, the official mascot of Mile High Comics, welcomes you to the wonderful world of graphic storytelling!

On our annual road trips I usually hold off on my weekly comics fix until after we return home. It’s a selfish impulse I’m fine with deferring for the sake of family quality time, because a few of my least favorite travel memories involve shops in other states. It doesn’t help that some cities we’ve visited simply had no decent comic shops near any of the points of interest on our to-do list. Between the late-’90s Heroes World debacle and the late-’00s recession, America has several thousand fewer comic shops than it used to when I was a kid. (Examples of both extremes: when we took Manhattan in 2011, you can bet I swung us by Midtown Comics’ two-story location in the city with the mostest. On the other hand, our 2015 journey to New Orleans found exactly zero shops in the French Quarter or in the CBD/downtown district to the south.)

But this wasn’t our usual trip. With Anne’s business matters keeping her preoccupied and frazzled, I was free to plan my one-man sightseeing as I saw fit, to drive wherever I wanted to drive, to indulge in whatever flights of fancy came to mind without any companions to bore. So when I woke up on Day Four, a Wednesday as it so happened, I had two major events coded as Priority One, and one of them was a very special out-of-town New Comic Day.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Each year my wife and I take a road trip to a different part of the United States and see what sorts of historical landmarks, natural wonders, man-made oddities, unexplored restaurants, and cautionary tales await us. From November 1-6, 2015, we racked up a number of personal firsts. My wife Anne was invited on her first business trip to Colorado Springs, all expenses paid from flight to food to lodging to rental car, to assist with cross-training at a distant affiliate. Her supervisor gave me permission to attend as her personal travel companion as long as I bought my own plane ticket and food. I posted one photo for each of the six days while we were on location. With this series, we delve into selections from the 500+ other photos we took along the way.

Half the day was devoted to yet another road-trip-within-a-trip, kicking off with a drive north from Colorado Springs to the much larger city of Denver, home to the largest comic shop in North America. Finding it was tricky because it’s not in a strip mall or a small-town storefront like a lot of other dealers. You have to navigate an older, clustered, cluttered, urban area and pay no attention when the road gives way to a wide open space of unmarked asphalt and hibernating semis.

I found myself checking my phone every thirty seconds to make sure I was on the right track. Google Maps has lied to me before and this didn’t look like the best place to ask for directions.

Lo and behold, there it was: famous Mile High Comics, one of the granddaddies of the comics scene. Founder Chuck Rozanski is a well-known name to older collectors who remember back in the day when he regularly bought advertising space inside various Marvel and DC comics to sell his prodigious back-issue inventory by mail order, or when he used to write a regular comics-business column for the late, lamented Comics Buyer’s Guide. I was familiar enough with Mile High that they were on my shortlist for our 2012 road trip, but didn’t make the final cut.

As of November 2015 they had three locations. The biggest and broadest is literally a warehouse.

Mile High: stories tall, acres wide, aisles deep.

I had to park a few garage doors down to the right, then took a couple of minutes to find their spartan front door at far left.

Abandon funds, ye who enter here.

Enter: wonderland. Millions of comics, graphic novels, books, magazines, toys, licensing tie-in products, and more more more.

This being November 4th, a few Halloween decorations were still hanging around. Note the table full of freebies front and center.

At left: manga! At right: Avengers standees! Far in the back: the cordoned, employees-only area where they store their older, rarer issues.

Quite a few areas and displays were welcoming to younger readers, not just us old guys. I’m not sure li’l Billy would enjoy the back-issue boxes.

That super-sized Lego Sentinel, though.

Little did I know the warehouse was packed more than it had been previously. The following week, Rozanski announced to the press he’d been moving stock there from his second-largest location with the intent to put the latter up for sale because, thanks to a combination of legalized marijuana use and firm laws against outdoor marijuana crops, vast warehouse spaces are doing booming business on the local real estate market as demand has surged from the burgeoning pot-farming industry. Rozanski’s plan to consolidate his operations should net him a pretty penny once the right buyer comes along. As of this writing that warehouse can be yours…for a price.

Major caveat for the unfamiliar: as with their mail-order business, Mile High is not a place for clearance sales or 3-for-$1 boxes. Anything more than a few months old is assiduously priced for collectors willing to pay above cover price to find those vintage rarities or just to fill gaps in a recent beloved series. I could’ve spent all day there browsing from shelf to shelf to shelf to shelf to shelf, but (a) I had other things I wanted to do with my day, and (b) the Great Hard Drive Crash of July 2015 wiped out my long-standing want list, so now I have virtually no idea what back issues I’m missing, and I’ve yet to get into the mood to redo a full inventory on those fifty-one longboxes sitting in our library.

So my primary objective was new comics only. This was the first week of the month, which means heavy shipments of new stuff from the major publishers. Of the hundreds of new issues out this week, my list had fourteen comics I was either reading regularly or considering trying out for the occasion. Mile High opens earlier in the morning than our shops do back home, so I’d hoped to get there early enough to beat our the other buyers for this week’s new issues.

Final haul: Angel & Faith #20, James Bond 007: Vargr #1, We Stand on Guard #5, Dr. Strange #2, Hercules #1, and Star Wars #11. I was surprised to find nearly half my list either sold out on Day 1, set aside behind the counter for regular customers, or simply not ordered in the first place. For a place touted as America’s Largest Comics Dealer, that’s, um, kind of disappointing.

* * * * *

After lunch I wandered in a direction recommended to me by a local friend who thought I might be interested. That led me to Shop #2: All in a Dream.

I’m guessing this location isn’t much younger than Mile High Comics.

Inside was a labyrinth of dozens of boxes and bookshelves full of graphic novels and old sci-fi paperbacks. Paths of threadbare-to-disintegrating carpets wind around the outer perimeter, with wire racks in the back for recent comics and that day’s new arrivals laid out across the back-issue bins in accordance with the traditions upheld by older retailers.

Final haul: Unfollow #1, Paper Girls #2, this year’s second Howard the Duck #1, and an Optic Nerve #11 plucked from a stack of multiple copies still on the new-release rack years after the fact. I can’t recall if the shopkeeper said hi when I first entered. When he rung me up, we spoke briefly only to agree neither of us remembered any papergirls in our respective neighborhoods way back when. Truth be known, I wouldn’t say I wasn’t the most in-touch kid on my block, so for all I know we could’ve had dozens. Not really a hill for me to die on.

Apparently I got off light compared to the Yelp reviewers who’ve amassed quite a collection of cautionary tales about the place. I’ll leave you to explore those reports at your discretion, though it seems the store is so frequently opened or locked up on random whims that as of tonight Google+ thinks it’s permanently closed despite one review from a month ago insisting otherwise.

* * * * *

Later in the day I returned to Colorado Springs and spent some time traipsing around their downtown, angling my way toward stop #3: Escape Velocity Comics.

Pretty sure it was the youngest and smallest of the three stores. Didn’t matter.

I chose it for two reasons: it was near other things I wanted to see; and, of all the shops in Colorado Springs, theirs had the nicest website, complete with pics of what appears to be a younger, fun-loving staff.

BUY COMICS OR HULK SMASH!

Their selection was above-adequate, and the general ambiance read “actual customer service” to me. Other than a stubborn, not-quite-state-of-the-art credit-card machine that slowed me up at the register, Escape Velocity felt like the kind of place I’d be happy to shop regularly if I were a local, or if we had the chance for more discounted Colorado trips in the future. If only.

Final haul: Survivors Club #2, Invincible Iron Man #3, and Atomic Robo and the Ring of Fire #3. I’d’ve bought more if I hadn’t stopped at two other stores first.

To be continued!

[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for previous and future chapters, and for our complete road trip history to date. Follow us on Facebook or via email signup for new-entry alerts, or over on Twitter if you want to track my TV live-tweeting and other signs of life between entries. Thanks for reading!]

1959 PSA commissioned by DC Comics editor Jack Schiff. Artist not credited.

Last month a dead holiday went and passed us by for thirtieth time in a row, and we all missed it. Shame on us. SHAME.

But are we worthy enough to celebrate it? Take the vintage quiz and check your own tolerance levels. Well, not you cabbage lovers. You people are monsters.

I’m currently reading through an oversize tome called The DC Vault, a hardcover history of DC Comics that comes with a variety of tangible extras. Pictured above is one of several public service announcements published during those troubled decades when Americans didn’t get along well with each other and needed opportunities to figure out how this “getting along” concept worked. DC decided some people needed practical advice and tackled the matter head-on. This sudden attempt at cutting-edge relevance came several years before Green Lantern/Green Arrow tackled racism and drug abuse, before Wonder Woman found “Women’s Lib”, and before Brother Power the Geek taught comic readers that a rag-doll hippie could be their savior if they could imagine there’s no dignity.

National Brotherhood Week wasn’t DC’s idea. During the third week of every February from 1934 till sometime during the 1980s, people of all imaginable subdivisions were supposed to try to find ways to mend fences, cross bridges, and think of America as one big team rather than one unruly sport comprising dozens of teams of hypercompetitive hooligans. NBW was the product of the “National Conference of Christians and Jews”, which began in 1927 as a sort of interdenominational coalition combating the burgeoning peril that was anti-Catholic prejudice. Over time the conference expanded to cover multiple demographics with ideas for harmonic coexistence in a melting-pot country. To reflect that broader reach they later rechristened themselves the National Conference for Community and Justice, focusing on basic shareable concepts rather than spotlight two groups among the myriad.

I wasn’t around in those early days, and have no memories of local celebrations during my childhood. Perhaps there was a National Brotherhood Week parade on Times Square the week after Valentine’s Day. Maybe Hallmark sold “Happy National Brotherhood Week!” cards with children in all the colors of the rainbow and all the hats of the haberdashery. Maybe furniture stores held National Brotherhood Week mattress sales with free sheet sets in the multicolored pattern of your choice. Maybe there was a Peanuts special called It’s National Brotherhood Week, So Get Over Yourself, Charlie Brown starring Franklin, Frieda, Snoopy’s brother Spike, and special guests Ben Vereen and Charo.

Despite whatever parties went on before my time, all the hoopla eventually faded away. Maybe they thought they’d cured all the bigotries ever. Maybe bad winter weather kept ruining everyone’s plans and spoiled the holiday mood. Maybe the inventors of Presidents’ Day annexed it and forgot to mention it. Or maybe we got bored trying to smile at each other for a whole week and decided it was more fun to factionalize, form isolationist cliques, view all others as The Enemy, and forget the point of the whole “more perfect union” concept. Like maybe the Civil War deserved a reboot and the key to getting us-vs.-us warfare right this time was to divide everyone into smaller, more manageable franchises.

Whatever the cause, National Brotherhood Week evaporated, only to be revisited from time to time by lone news sources accidentally stumbling across it (Exhibit A, Exhibit B), chuckling about it, appreciating the only National Brotherhood Week carol ever written by Tom Lehrer, and then dropping it and moving on to cover whatever next major turmoil was dividing and conquering Americans that week. If past Presidents or charity organizations had tried to keep its spirit alive against the odds, who knows if it would’ve helped, if it would’ve been renamed National Siblinghood Week to stave off microaggression accusations, or if observing it would’ve become such a rote chore that The Purge would’ve had to be invented to bring balance to the national mood.

Regardless, I like to imagine National Brotherhood Week was nice while it lasted. Good luck trying to jump-start anything like it today. But hey, points to Silver Age DC Comics for doing their part, in their own quasi-contemporary way, to set up a teachable moment about non-hate in their time. If just one young boy or girl at home took that quiz, rethought their entire life, and vowed ever after to be kinder to alligators, it was all worth it.

Longtime MCC readers may or may not remember last year’s C2E2 experience, in which Anne and I met Gene Ha, a fine comics artist who’s worked on past books I’ve collected such as Alan Moore’s Top 10, Fables, Starman, Global Frequency, and guest spots on assorted DC super-hero projects. In 2015 he was at C2E2 to promote his Kickstarter project for the hardcover graphic novel Mae. My Kickstarter moratorium was still in effect, but I bought another item from him instead and wished him well.

Thankfully the Kickstarter was a rousing success and Ha had copies of Mae for sale today at C2E2. Buyers at the show (e.g., me ) were also entitled to a “small doodle” inside the front cover. The above photo is his idea of a “small doodle” — a drawing of my very own wife as Supergirl. Her one-time art-modeling role was his idea. When he suggested turning her into a super-hero, Supergirl’s was the first name that popped into my head. Anne is a lifelong Superman fan, and we’ve both been watching and enjoying the show. No-brainer.

This is many, many light-years above and beyond my expectations and may literally be the greatest purchase I’ve ever made at a con. I spent the next ten minutes just walking around with the book still open to sketch of the woman I love by the Gene Ha.

So our 2016 convention season is off to a stellar start. I’m betting that sketch will be the pinnacle, but the next-best is yet to come!

We’ve been busy planning for these moments all this week, and right now are recuperating from the activities we’ve managed so far. Our to-do list still contains many options to consider and attempt before we surrender and return to the rat race. In the meantime, plans are already tentatively afoot for other geek convention options within a certain radius of home. The coming months will see MCC covering our impressions and successes at several of the following shows and events:

March 18-20: C2E2 – Now playing. With special guests Cliff Clavin, TV’s Supergirl, and her hero sister Alex. Updates over the next several days after we get home.

April 8-10: Wizard World Madison is father than we’d usually travel for a con, but somehow Wizard World snagged the David Tennant to appear at three shows over three weekends. This show’s the least improbable of the trilogy, but a long shot nonetheless.

April 29 – May 1: Indiana Comic Con, featuring special guests Ray Park and Emperor Palpatine. Hopefully the out-of-town showrunners are continuing to take notes and keep learning from the mistakes of their first two years in the Circle City.

June 9-12: We always keep a berth open for the Superman Celebration in Metropolis, Illinois, in case their guests are cool and our schedule works out. It’s been a while since our last visit because it’s a five-hour drive at top speed, and their autograph ticketing system requires a major time investment. But it’s a fun place and a required bullet point for every DC fan’s bucket list.

June 17-19: Indy Pop Con is bringing in Mike Baron and Steve Rude, creators of the ’80s sci-fi super-hero series Nexus. I’m therefore up in that shindig because that book was absolutely All That. So far the rest of the guest list is a healthy mix of YouTube all-stars, cartoon/video game voice actors, and monetized cosplayers. It’s possible this may be another one-hour “speed-conventioning” experience for us, but I’d love to find reasons to hang around longer.

Aug. 4-7: Gen Con continues on, probably without us again, but who knows. For a long time Gen Con was the only convention option in Indianapolis. For that they’ll always have my respect.

Aug. 18-21: Wizard World Chicago is our other big annual Chicago trip, but we always wait for their guest announcements before we commit.

Oct. 13-16: Cartoon Crossroads Columbus last year was an intellectually fascinating indie-comics experience like nothing else we’ve ever done. The show was so tightly concentrated and community-based that I kind of felt like a gawky intruder at times, but if you’re an Ohio comics fan who yearns to experience the medium’s horizons beyond Marvel, DC, and super-heroes, you need to go immerse yourself in CXC’s cavalcade of complexities.

November ??: That’s when we’d expect to spend a few hours at Starbase Indy, our local longtime fan-run Star Trek/TV-sci-fi con, but they’ve kept oddly quiet about their 2016 dates. I’m assuming and hoping they’ll have some.

And who knows what other events will pop up as the year rolls along. If this is all the geek world sends in our direction for 2016, we’ll also have Indiana’s bicentennial coming up, hopefully with differently interesting opportunities to get out of the house and explore the worlds around us.

Updates and photo galleries as they occur! Other entries in the series so far:

* Part 2: Dance of the Mad Deadpools
* Part 3: We Are Here For Supergirl!

Toting around a boom-box blaring mad beatz, roaming the show and rapping all Friday long, that’s Deadpool on the left with his funky pal Spidey, whose costume is red enough that he basically counts as an honorary Deadpool.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife and I spent two days at the seventh annual Chicago Comics and Entertainment Exposition — or “C2E2” to Ichabod Crane and other acronym haters out there — where Midwest comics fans in particular and geeks in general gather together in the name of imaginary worlds from print and screen to revel in fiction and touch bases on what’s hot or cool at this moment in pop culture. Larger shows like San Diego have garnered the nickname “nerd prom”, which I don’t care for because I have issues with the word “nerd”, but I’ll agree the always fascinating cosplayers make every con quite the extraordinary masquerade ball.

Longtime MCC readers know Deadpool cosplayers have been a rapidly growing demographic in previous cons. C2E2 is the first con we’ve attended since the Merc with a Mouth got his own movie in theaters that’s raked in a ridiculous $340 million at the American box office with no signs of stopping anytime soon. So naturally his variants once again ruled the dance floor and were the belles of the ball.

Kidpool kind of does a jig around the super-sized BB-8 at the Funco booth.

Movie Deadpool, now in theaters, is now filthy rich and no longer has to street-dance for quarters.

Santapool brings toys and goodies to all the naughty children of the world. In March, because Santapool has no use for The MAN’s oppressive holiday schedule.

Assassin’s Creedpool is looking for his old partner Cable, who hasn’t hit the big screen because he has a terrible agent.

Captain Ameripool: the Winner Soldier.

Wanna buy your own costume? Can we interest you in a My Little Ponypool ensemble?

Or you could settle for our extensive line of Deadpool-wear, such as this sweater, which looks cool unless you look too closely and notice it’s covered in tacos instead of chimichangas. This is clearly FAKE GEEKWEAR.

The 11th Doctorpool, the last guy you want tap-dancing all over your timeline. And for those who don’t watch the show, the hat is canon. Or was for about two minutes. Good enough!

Ashpool already caught ’em all, but only Pikapool survives because he locked the other Pokepools in their Pokepoolballs and suffocated them. Whoops!

Finnpool headlines an all-new, all-different, extra-bloody Adventure Time dance party.

Roaring Twenties Lady Deadpool is obviously the most fabulous and worthy of your Queen of the Dance votes and is SHOCKED at all these crimes against Deadpool fashion.

…

More C2E2 pics to come. Stay tuned! Other entries in the series so far:

* Part 1: C2E2 Kicks Off Our 2016 Convention Season in Style
* Part 3: We Are Here For Supergirl!

Finally, two guests who showed US how jazz hands are done.

Defying all expectations, Supergirl has become must-see TV in our house. I’ve yet to write about it here, but Twitter followers are (hopefully) used to me live-tweeting it on Mondays for fun and more fun. (I think most of the I’ll-follow-you-if-you-follow-me-and-also-please-buy-all-my-ebooks crowd already Muted me seconds after I followed them back anyway, so I may not be bothering as many people as I think.) The show has its occasional silly moments and head-scratching choices (many of them Maxwell Lord’s fault), but Kara, Alex, James, Hank/J’onn, MVP Cat Grant, and, yes, even Winn are a welcome sight to us.

Las year Anne and I discussed the notion of no longer considering any conventions an automatic buy-in until and unless the guest list gave us a solid reason to commit. C2E2’s early guest announcements for 2016 were okay, one of them pretty great. (We’ll get to him in a later entry.) Then they added special guests Melissa Benoist, the greatest Supergirl of all time, and former Grey’s Anatomy costar Chyler Leigh, who plays her adopted sister Alex. They sealed the deal for us.

Behold above the newest addition to our ongoing jazz-hands photo-op collection. Even after posing for pics with the hundreds of fans in front of us, their unstoppable enthusiasm bowled us over and won the con and the photo.

If you asked me to summarize our Saturday experience at C2E2, the answer is Supergirl. The dual photo op came later in the afternoon, but when security opened the floodgates and let all several thousand fans inside the show floor promptly at 10 a.m., we made a beeline for Benoist’s autograph line. She was supposed to arrive and begin signing at 10:30, but circumstances (Chicago road construction, probably) delayed her arrival till closer to 11:30. We were in the front half of the line and took about an hour to wind through, say hi, and be all dazzled at how she looked exactly like she does on TV, except no cape or glasses. From there we skipped immediately to the next line for an additional 15-minute wait for Chyler Leigh’s autograph as well. Also awesome in every respect.

The photo-op came later in the afternoon. In between the two came the Q&A on the C2E2 Main Stage. Our special host for the hour: Clare Kramer, best known as the evil goddess Glory from Buffy season 5.

We met Clare Kramer at Wizard World Chicago 2011, but failed to get a photo of her at the time. That oversight is now technically rectified.

Fun trivia and moments from throughout the talk:

* They’re pronounced Melissa Ben-OYST and KYler Leigh.

* Supergirl’s costume was designed by three-time Academy Award Winner Colleen Atwood (Chicago, Memoirs of a Geisha, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland). It was the only super-design Benoist ever had to try on.

* Neither had read the comics prior to winning their parts. Benoist immersed herself in the comics afterward, starting with the New 52 and then working backward.

* Each episode takes eleven days to make, plus another three for visual effects and post-production.

* The hardest parts are when their characters have to be mean to each other, such as when Alex had to rescue Kara from her dream Krypton in “For the Girl Who Has Everything”, or in last Monday’s Red-K episode “Falling”. They get along great, which made Bad Kara scenes all the more challenging.

* The March 20th crossover guest-starring The Flash was, naturally, fun to film. Regarding Grant Gustin, Benoist confirms, “He was pretty jealous of my cape.”

* Benoist is a fan of Star Wars and Kingdom Hearts, and believes the Sorting Hat would put her in Ravenclaw. Leigh confirms Benoist is good at “math stuff.”

* Benoist’s stunt double Shauna Duggins has a lengthy resumé including Kill Bill and pinch-hitting for Sydney Bristow in JJ Abrams’ Alias.

* Leigh really, really, really, really wishes the showrunners would let Alex turn into an all-new Batgirl. REALLY wishes.

* When time began to run short for the Q&A, they asked all the young girls in line to step to the front to make sure they’d have the chance to ask their questions to their heroes.

* The final question of the hour came from a fan asking about their opinions of the sexualization of female super-heroes. The fan was a 12-year-old girl. Everyone was so impressed by the maturity level of the question that answering it kind of became beside the point.

…and that’s how 85% of our Saturday went. Friday was a fabulous day in itself, but Saturday was all we’d hoped and more. Much like the TV show itself.

More C2E2 pics to come. To be continued! Other entries in the series so far:

* Part 1: C2E2 Kicks Off Our 2016 Convention Season in Style
* Part 2: Dance of the Mad Deadpools

New Marvel meets modern manga: Silk and One Piece star Monkey D. Luffy.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife and I spent two days at the seventh annual Chicago Comics and Entertainment Exposition, where Midwest comics fans in particular and geeks in general gather together in the name of imaginary worlds from print and screen to revel in fiction and touch bases on what’s hot or cool at this moment in pop culture.

In tonight’s photo gallery: costumes from your favorite comic books! Or someone else’s favorite comics, whichever. You’d think these would out number the other categories, but C2E2 attracts a diverse following of myriad tastes in reading material. Regrettably, it wasn’t till after we got home and I took inventory, when I realized Marvel and DC Comics were very nearly the only publishers represented in the “comics-based costumes” section. I have no idea how that happened, but it’s too late for retakes.

Regardless: onward!

Spider-Family deluxe: another Silk teamed up with Spider-Gwen, Iron Spider, Pokemon trainer Misty, and the only Harley Quinn you’ll see in this week-long MCC miniseries, though there were several hundred patrolling the show.

Spider-Man India, one of the undervalued members of the extended Spider-Family. (For those new to the idea: yes, Spider-Man India is a thing.)

War Machine and Black Widow, charter members of the No White Chrises Squad.

Erstwhile HYDRA leader Baron Strucker, armed with his deadly Satan Claw. You may remember him as one of the 461 characters vacuum-packed inside Avengers: Age of Ultron. He was played by Thomas Kretschmann, but sadly de-Satan-Clawed.

DOOM is less than pleased with his movie-universe surrogates and thinks Baron Strucker should count his blessings.

The Reverse-Flash, complete with his own Flash costume-ring.

Arrow and Speedy from TV’s Arrow. I want to say their companion is…a Joker/Harley mash-up? variant Sailor Mercury? an anime superstar popular with everyone younger than me?

The real Lex Luthor, who’d love to have a few words with Jesse Eisenberg about some…creative differences.

Bane hanging out with off-topic guest Gandalf the Grey. As allies with powerful facial hair go, he’s less of a backstabber than that Ra’s al Ghul.

Once upon a time, Donna Troy was Wonder Girl, charter member of the original Teen Titans. Then she was just Donna Troy. Then she was Troia, pictured above. Everything after that is a convoluted blur, but suffice it to say hanging with Jareth the Goblin King is a far better fate than being torn apart every six months by DC reboots.

Static Shock! Or just Static, if you’re an old Milestone Media fan like me. Either way, I’d pay good money to have the complete animated series on DVD, and even better money for a regular comic series that reverses everything I loathed about his New 52 reboot.

Ms. Marvel, another rising star in the Marvel universe, who recently made her video game debut in LEGO Marvel’s Avengers.

The Taskmaster, a classic villain who copied all the weapons and physical talents of all the Avengers. If he appears in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he’ll just be a guy who has the proportionate strength and speed of five guys named Chris.

Jessica Jones costar Luke Cage, soon to headline his own Netflix series.

Another Luke Cage, this one in his classic ’70s super-costume as part of the mismatched buddy-hero duo we called Power Man and Iron Fist. Soon to be Netflix acquaintances.

That time Marvel and DC used to do crossovers, but the comics executives decided Iron Fist just wasn’t white enough and replaced him with Captain Cold.

To be continued! Other entries in the series so far:

* Part 1: C2E2 Kicks Off Our 2016 Convention Season in Style
* Part 2: Dance of the Mad Deadpools
* Part 3: We Are Here For Supergirl!
* Part 4: Star Wars: The New Cosplay Order
* Part 5: Gaming and Animation Costumes

“Did you know the Visigoths actually invented comic book conventions back in the fourth century as an excuse to get together with family and draw unflattering caricatures of the Romans? True story…”

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife and I spent two days at the seventh annual Chicago Comics and Entertainment Exposition, where Midwest comics fans in particular and geeks in general gather together in the name of imaginary worlds from print and screen to revel in fiction and touch bases on what’s hot or cool at this moment in pop culture.

Last year Anne and I discussed the notion of no longer considering any conventions an automatic buy-in until and unless the guest list gave us a solid reason to commit. They’re expensive and the guest lists aren’t always tailored to our specific areas of fandom or nostalgia. When C2E2 added TV’s John Ratzenberger to their 2016 roster, he was the first sign that I knew we’d be there. From TV’s Cheers to every Pixar movie ever, ol’ Cliff Clavin has been a part of our lives from childhood to adulthood. We met him twice at C2E2 — once at his autograph booth, where he confirmed he’ll indeed return for Finding Dory, and once at his photo op, where we sensed he was not a jazz-hands kind of guy. ‘sokay, no harm done.

We spent most of our C2E2 time wandering the show floor, perusing the wares and works, buying stuff from writers and artists, and noticing there were dealers but not really doing much for them. The usual boxes and shelves full of $5 trade paperbacks were in shorter supply than usual. With the destruction of my old comics want list in the Great Hard Drive Crash of July 2015, my interest in ’80s back issues has taken a nosedive now that I no longer know or remember what specific singles I’m missing. We stocked up on T-shirts from StylinOnline, SuperHeroStuff, and even the official C2E2 merchandise store, because I’ve never owned a piece of their con merchandise and they finally came up with a shirt design that caught my eye.

Fun true story after our shopping experience: when a charge showed up on my wife’s account under the thoroughly generic name “Super Hero Stuff” outside our home state, her credit card company pegged it as possible fraudulent activity and immediately froze her card. This well-intentioned yet uninformed monitoring made for a moment of awkwardness when she tried and failed to buy us lunch Saturday, and had to call them Sunday morning to clear up the matter.

We appreciated seeing big-name companies like Marvel, Valiant, and WETA Workshop among the other booths. DC Comics sent creators to represent for them in spirit but once again had no booth. Dark Horse Comics sadly skipped this year, a shame considering they’ve released two books in the last few months that I’d very much love to buy in person from someone someday. Robert Kirkman’s Skybound imprint was in the house, but the rest of Image Comics bowed out after last year’s debut.

On a smaller scale, we were happy to reunite with a few folks we’d met at previous cons. Matthew Rosenberg, whose super-teen fugitives miniseries We Can Never Go Home was one of my favorite comics of 2015, is currently working his way into DC’s graces and was on hand to promote his next Black Mask Comics project, 4 Kids Walk into a Bank. Writer Russell Lissau had more indie projects on hand, including a young-readers’ sci-fi comic called Stranger that looks promising. We stopped by the booth of sci-fi author (and fellow WordPress user!) Luther M. Siler, trying out C2E2 for his first time. He’s posted dozens of cosplay pics on his own site along with a candid write-up of his three-day bookselling experience.

I’ve already posted about our second time meeting the great Gene Ha and the wondrous sketch he did for us. Here’s him in action sketching my wife inside the copy of Mae I’d just bought…

I’m my head I’m making happy dancing Homer Simpson noises and trying not to geek out too visibly.

…and here’s Anne in her first non-paying gig as a geek model, holding very still for several minutes while Mr. Ha captured her likeness.

In her head is some line of thought not unlike, “YOU OWE ME BIG FOR THIS.”

Other upstanding folks we met in that large, jam-packed Artists Alley:

Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez is a huge name to collectors my age, a longtime dependable DC artist with strong, bold linework who’s never been “hot” but always been awesome. I brought my copy of Deadman #1 (early-’80s miniseries) for him to sign.

I liked Ming Doyle’s art on the future-soccer superpower miniseries Mara. Currently she’s co-writing Constantine the Hellblazer for DC and just finished a Vertigo project about Mob wives called The Kitchen that was among many comics that went largely unordered by our local comic shops last year.

David F. Walker, now writing Cyborg for DC and Power Man & Iron Fist for Marvel. Pictured at left: some really white guy.

Illustrator Gary Gianni has done a variety of projects for Dark Horse and other publishers over the years. I’ve always been fond of his adaptation of A Christmas Carol he painted long ago for First Comics’ short-lived Classics Illustrated line.

Colorist Nick Filardi, whose past credits include Powers, Batman ’66, and Atomic Robo, among dozens of others. His table caught my eye when I noticed he was selling an awesome print of that fiendish halfwit Dr. Dinosaur.

Among the creators we didn’t meet: the legendary Chris Claremont, whose decades at the helm of Uncanny X-Men sparked many a reader’s imagination and provided a solid foundation for today’s steadily improving movie franchise.

Met but not pictured:

* Lee Cherolis and Ed Cho, local creators of the webcomic Little Guardians (appreciated the sketch!)
* Kel McDonald, creator of the webcomic Misfits of Avalon (currently being collected in trades by Dark Horse), who’s working on a Buffy young-adult graphic novel
* Artist Mark Dos Santos, whose resumé includes the Image title Superior (with Steven T. Seagle)

I wish I could follow up with a long list of panels we attended, but the truth is, of the five Friday comics-related panels I was interested in checking out, four of them conflicted with our two timed-ticket photo-op appointments. I’ll admit I was bummed, but this is what happens when one set of schedules is released farther in advance than the others, and it’s what happens when a con dumps all the most interesting programming into a single, narrow, compacted afternoon. After all appointments were met and I’d finished my first Artists Alley run-through, I insisted on attending one panel late in the day: the annual Silver Age Trivia Challenge!

Pictured left to right: moderator Craig Shutt, Mike Chary, Jason Fliegel, Tom Brevoort, Todd Allen, and Mark Waid.

I’ve been reading about this event for literally decades, on the rec.arts.comics.* Usenet groups and in Comics Buyer’s Guide back when it was held at the erstwhile “Chicago Comic Con” (now Wizard World Chicago), but never saw one in person till now. Once upon a time, fans and pros formed two teams and faced off in a trivia contest made entirely of questions about Silver Age comics, spanning from the mid-’50s to the early ’70s. After a while it was noticed that comics writer Mark Waid was basically carrying his team, so the event was restructured and now every year it’s a group of longtime fans vs. just Mark Waid.

Half the fun was in watching Waid’s incredulous scoffing whenever the other team got an easy question, and the anguish whenever he missed a question he knew he should know.

Our moderator, Craig Shutt, a.k.a. Mr. Silver Age, was once a columnist for CBG and currently has his own forum over at Captain Comics. As he used to do in CBG, he’s posted a thorough rundown of the entire event, including all the questions he posed to each team if you want to test your own knowledge of obscure comics or just get a better idea of how truly goofy comics used to be.

Mr. Silver Age knows way more about Jimmy Olsen than is healthy for any normal human. Same goes double for Mark Waid, for that matter.

Even with the addition to the fans’ team of the skillful Tom Brevoort, Senior VP of Publishing at Marvel Comics, Waid still won for, like, the eighty-seventh consecutive year. The other team tried. They really did. And everyone contributed, not just Brevoort, though Waid had to confess that a few of his zillions of comic-book memories are slowly beginning to fade. It’s conceivable there may come a day when Waid loses the Silver Age Trivia Challenge without dying first. I wouldn’t call it probable, though.

Tom Brevoort knows far more about old DC Comics than you’d expect a Marvel editor to know.

Likewise, I wish I could say our Saturday was made of comics panels, but the Supergirl experience took up over half our day, and the remaining options for which we did have plenty of time were a lot of not-my-thing, mostly divided as they were into three popular categories: How to Make Some Comics; Hurray for Event Comics I Won’t Be Buying; and Diverse Diversity in Diverse Comics Diversities. It’s extremely cool and encouraging that those platforms and networking opportunities are in there and in greater force than ever before, but I’m not sure the presence of a superfluous straight white prudish Christian guy would add much to the ambiance. I have this mental image of entering a room only to have one or more fans turn with a burning gaze to yell at me, “YOUR KIND HAS MUCH TO ANSWER FOR!” so I tend to buy their comics but sidestep their panels.

Otherwise, a lot of our weekend was browsing, shopping, hanging out, and crowd-watching among those with whom we share a lot of touchpoints. Fun times, all told.

The view on the escalator ride from the fourth floor to the third. Such loud, very crowd, much color.

Oh, and about the other photo op we did on Friday: movie star John Cusack, another name dating back to childhood, from the constant cable reruns of One Crazy Summer to the many romantic comedies to the latter-day explosions of Con Air and 2012, with a heartfelt stop in between for High Fidelity, one of the few movies from the last twenty years that I personally, genuinely consider influential.

As I understand it, he’s a big fan of Chicago sports teams. Any excuse to travel and come see them in person, I imagine.

When we ran into the photo-op booth and asked if we could do jazz hands, he quickly replied, “Uh, you guys can!” And so it goes.

To be concluded! Other entries in this 9-part series:

* Part 1: C2E2 Kicks Off Our 2016 Convention Season in Style
* Part 2: Dance of the Mad Deadpools
* Part 3: We Are Here For Supergirl!
* Part 4: Star Wars: The New Cosplay Order
* Part 5: Gaming and Animation Costumes!
* Part 6: Comics Costumes!
* Part 7: Last Call for Costumes!
* Part 9: The Things They Carried

Which grim-‘n’-gritty breakfast mascot’s product do you think should win: Batman Chocolate Strawberry cereal or Superman Caramel Crunch cereal? Both are real things now in stores, and they’re banking on this movie to sell them somehow.

Look, everyone else online had a turn venting about Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice the past few days, so I want my turn now. The TL;DR version:

* Not the worst Zack Snyder film ever
* Definitely not the worst super-hero film ever
* It had good things in it
* The good things were outnumbered
* I don’t actively root against DC’s films to fail, but I’m not gonna mollycoddle them with blind adulation, because superheroes are not my religion
* Filmmakers still don’t get Superman
* This movie is more about superpowers than about superheroes
* I’ve been collecting comics for 37 years and I’m 98% certain I’m not this film’s target audience
* If Monday night’s Supergirl/The Flash crossover was an Earth-1 team-up, BvS is its Earth-3 doppelgänger

Short version for the unfamiliar: In a distant alternate present, Ben Affleck’s Batman has been on the job for 20+ years, still hasn’t turned Gotham City into paradise, still prone to PTSD flashbacks of his parents’ deaths (even in middle age he’s as broken as the Punisher and no more recovered from his grief than the kid from Gotham), and dealing with new psychological scarring after the events of Man of Steel that were like 9/11 expanded into a ten-square-mile mega-catastrophe. He’s more vengeful than ever and fixated on ensuring such metahuman decimation never happens again. So the flying laser-eye alien neck-snapper must PAY.

Henry Cavill’s Superman, raised by the most selfish and discouraging Ma and Pa Kent in DC Comics history, is sad. Saving people helps pass the time and put his abilities to good use, but he’s happiest when he’s saving Amy Adams’ Lois from danger, which he does at least four times, sometimes pulling the movie’s emergency brake so he can stop and chat with her in peace for a minute, leaving the bad guys on standby till he’s good and ready to continue filming. I didn’t see him smile once.

Jesse Eisenberg’s competently smart/creepy Lex Luthor has a scheme in mind that seems convoluted because the first two hours were julienne-sliced and patched together by someone who thought The Wire was cool but didn’t quite get it. The streamlined version: Luthor’s abusive upbringing left him with an amoral desire to avoid powerlessness by always being the most powerful man around. When Superman’s existence threatens his status and manhood, he quests for green kryptonite to defend his self-appointed ranking. When that falls through, Plan B is using one of the hoariest tricks in the Silver Age playbook to get him and Batman to fight and fight and fight, but then their death match ends in stalemate (major spoiler for anyone new to fiction who honestly thought one of them would murder the other). Plan C is Lex makes a great big monster whose super-powers are punching, evolving, and literally EXPLOSIONS.

Hey, look, it’s that one actor!: Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman wins all her seven minutes of screen time and instills great hopes in her forthcoming, very first solo movie. Our new Princess Diana smiles more times during the movie than Supes, Lois, and me combined. Any viewers unhappy that this non-American character has a non-American accent should leave the house more often.

Jeremy Irons’ grumpy, frazzled tech-genius Alfred is stuck in a poisonous long-term relationship, sick and tired of his partner never listening to him, and yet he can’t bear to break it off because he knows he’s needed and leaving will only send his partner over the edge. But that doesn’t make their incessant bickering any more endearing.

Laurence Fishburne returns as Perry White but plays him like J. Jonah Jameson and drags newspaper editors two steps back from all the progress Spotlight made on their behalf. Amy Adams also returns, mostly as a damsel in distress plus one gratuitous nude scene. Technically she helps in the final battle but would’ve been pretty easy to write out. Also returning is Harry J. Lennix from The Matrix‘s sequels, still an Army general who’s more helpful this time and rewarded with more screen time.

Diane Lane and dead Kevin Costner remain the Kents, prime scapegoats for everything wrong about Superman. Also from the Department of Lamented Parents, The Walking Dead‘s Lauren Cohan and her upcoming costar Jeffrey Dean Morgan tag in as Thomas and Martha Wayne for the mandatory “MY PARENTS ARE DEEEAAAD!” flashbacks. The one that opens the movie is actually rather stylish and deploys the same old imagery in stunning new ways. (Fun movie-math trivia: a particular item in their big scene sets it circa 1981.)

New players this time: Academy Award Winner Holly Hunter is the politician representing mankind’s anti-death interests. Argo‘s Scoot McNairy is a furious paraplegic whose life was ruined by Man of Steel. Mariko from The Wolverine is Lex’s assistant Mercy Graves. Michael Shannon’s Zod is around in flesh if not in spirit.

BvS screeches to a halt twice for gratuitous teasers for the next five DC films, replete with cameos by their respective stars and a few recognizable comics henchmonsters. A particular photo of Wonder Woman includes a glimpse of her film’s well-known costar.

Lots of cable-TV newspeople and personalities pop in as themselves for verisimilitude. Points to Nancy Grace for being the least fawning among them.

Meaning or EXPLOSIONS? In the wake of all those debates about Man of Steel‘s controversial ending, the first few dozen acts are spent contemplating the question, “Is it stupid to have gods or idols?” Lex in particular pushes this agenda with his bitter assertion that either an all-powerful God can’t be good (or else he’d just save the day for all seven billion humans every day, every minute, and we’d all be perpetually unblemished and cozy), or that if God is good, then He must not be all-powerful (like, He loves us and would really love to keep bailing us out but he totally can’t reach). His ultimate conclusion, then, is that true Power is always guilty of something and therefore innately evil. His lines don’t always make sense and his flawed theology shows he hasn’t done much related reading or introspection, but that’s where his false dichotomy lands him.

If we want to give extra credit where none was asked for, Lex’s one-line description of his abusive upbringing is a sad reminder of what happens when a child affected by domestic violence receives zero positive influence to show them better ways of living.

Superman could respond to any or all of this with some kind words or an uplifting speech about great power and great responsibility, about putting your talents to use for a greater purpose, about the importance of those dutiful citizens and role models who insist on trying to do the right thing even in the worst of times. Grant Gustin’s Flash is a young master of this discipline, once a mandatory quality in all of comics’ greatest super-heroes, but Cavill’s Man of Tomorrow receives no support from two screenwriters who must be too cool to write inspirational speeches for today’s audiences, many of whom could really use some. Instead he’s a brooding cypher, a logical extension of Tom Welling’s perpetually pouty Red-Blue Blur. If he happens to notice you about to die on live TV, or if you’re Lois, count on him to be there, but don’t expect any kind or useful words.

So after raising such complex topics, the movie answers none of them and in the end its only rejoinders are EXPLOSIONS. The final boss battle is against Doomsday, an all-CG Abomination with no credited actor inside, who continually explodes and explodes in between blows, generating his own obscured backdrop of smoke, dust, light shows, and still more EXPLOSIONS. It’s a fitting visual gimmick for the climactic showdown, set in a flattened and indistinct terrain as far away from civilization and Man of Steel atrocity complaints as possible, short of relocating to Mars. The repetitive EXPLOSIONS feign the appearance of Doomsday doing anything when in fact he’s mostly just standing there and growling a lot while everything around him turns into the formless wasteland from the end of X-Men: The Last Stand. Thus dissipates all that archly worded morality-tale setup.

Nitpicking? If the idea of Batman killing or using guns is a deal-breaker, cross this one off your list for all time for your own good. Mack Bolan Batman is not my favorite version, but I’ve seen so many minor infringements and major deviations in so many past renditions that I got tired of playing Jonni DC, Continuity Cop, and shouting “THAT’S NOT BATMAN!” years ago. Not my exhausting fight anymore.

Women and anyone else who consider Wonder Woman the primary reason to see BvS should maybe just wait for her inevitable 7-minute YouTube supercut. Her shining seconds aside, this extended wrestling tournament is by dudes for dudes about dudes plus dudes dudes dudes.

As for that much-touted title match between the Bat of Steel and the Dark Son of Krypton: if you’re looking for a live-action staging of Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns #4, Snyder nails its dynamics and machismo with visual flair, but the contrivance that finally gets Bats and Supes in the ring is straight out of the Silver Age, and could’ve been solved with forms of communication. ANY of them. Bats is blinded by great vengeance and furious anger, while Supes is dumbstruck and can’t help spouting the same old series of clichés always guaranteed to get good guys slapping each other. If you’re ever this close to throwing down with someone but could clear everything up with a single sentence, by all that is holy, pretty please avoid all of the following:

* “You don’t understand!”
* “We need to talk!”
* “There’s no time!”
* “You have to listen to me!”
* “Calm down for a minute!”
* “Look, if you’ll just give me a chance…”
* “There’s a perfectly good explanation for all of this!”

Seconds before the walloping commences, Superman says three of these empty time-wasters in a row. WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG. Skip all preambles and say the single sentence that could clear everything up. Don’t be a lunkhead straight outta 1960s comics.

Minutes later, the exact plot point that ends the battle was, to me, one of the funniest parts of the entire movie. It hinges on one of the largest, oldest coincidences I’ve ever failed to notice; if I had been aware of it sooner, I wouldn’t have been able to contain my laughter. My wife and son have already explained and agreed with the intent of the scene, but that’s not how it played to me. Snyder chooses that ostensibly emotional breakthrough moment to whip out one of the most played-out running gags in the 75-year-old Batman toolbox, and it was the wrong tool for the job. In my head I can imagine a rewrite that would make the scene work with more dignity and without undercutting the Caped Crusader’s crucial epiphany.

While we’re script-doctoring, I’d also toss out the multiple dream sequences because those are lazy on principle, and — in a fit of post-geek anti-consumerism — I’d ditch all those teasers for the next five movies. Two of them are so bewildering that I can’t imagine anyone who’s unfamiliar with the comics getting much out of them unless they brought along an annoying friend who likes listing every Easter egg he spots while you’re trying to watch the movie in peace. Not only do they hobble the movie’s already slack, disjointed pacing, but they’re all gussied-up signifiers that the DC Comics movie series will be far more about commerce than about art. Granted, all for-profit art forms are inherently objects of commerce, but I get fussy when marketing department objectives are boldly and greedily moved to the forefront at the expense of storytelling aesthetics.

Related note: I’m told the occasionally inspired desert dream sequence was a direct tie-in to DC’s Injustice video game, which I have no plans to play. Cool for those fans, I’m sure, though now all it evokes for me is transmedia marketing synergy in action.

Differently related note: the hollow “ending” is a cliffhanger that offers no real conclusion, merely a cutoff point for this epic-length chapter 1 of what DC hopes will be a saga of infinite chapters and super-infinite cash flows. We can pretend that all the philosophical conflicts will be resolved in our next exciting installment, and that the obvious denouement will make everything retroactively cohesive and meaningful in a positive manner, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Lighter, minor, eye-rolling note: axiomatic of all Bat-works across all media, whenever there’s a flying Bat-vehicle, there shall be a flying Bat-vehicle crash. Always. Another oldie from that darn Batman toolbox.

So what’s to like? Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice suffers from a severe disconnect between its Nolan-esque opening hours and its eager who’s-stronger-Batman-or-Superman schoolyard dust-up, which come off like two movies stitched together by company orders and lack of a third writer who could’ve done a much better patchwork job of syncing them up. If Snyder had kept the first two hours simplistic (and shorter) instead of attempting to get high-minded and deep, the critics’ bar would’ve remained at the intellectual bumper-bowling level of a Michael Bay carnival ride. Everyone could’ve been all like “Oh, hey, popcorn film!” and be done with it, like we all usually agree to do for Pirates of the Caribbean sequels or Dwayne Johnson vehicles. But by raising the narrative stakes and trying to play a different game, the risks are greater and the bluffing is easier to call out.

I genuinely like Affleck as Frank Miller’s aging, resentful Batman galvanized by senseless widescale destruction, and hope he plans to stick around for future Bat-projects in a more supervisory capacity. His Batmobile chase, the multi-thug fight sequence from the final trailer, and that undeniably powerful Metropolis prologue are among the movie’s best rewind/rewatch bits for action lovers. Beyond Affleck’s control, though, it bugs me that, in appointing Miller’s alt-timeline Dark Knight as their main-timeline present, and in announcing future Bat-movies continuing in that same vein, DC has decided this single-use Elseworlds offshoot shall now be the default Batman. Too bad he’s a lousy entry point for potential new Batman fans. If you’re old and you’ve seen plenty of Batmen in your time, it’s no big deal, but in a future where fans who don’t read comics want to get to know Batman and have BvS as their first attempt, they’ll meet a raging sourpuss that doesn’t match the face they’ve been seeing on cereal boxes or on the ice-cream cases at Cold Stone Creamery. I don’t envy the kids in that future.

And then there’s Superman. Heavy sigh. Cavill as a performer does exemplary work with the disappointing material and marching orders. His reluctant soldier of few words is, y’know, a viable interpretation of the forefather of all superheroes, I suppose, but I’m not really vesting too much of myself in this alt-Superman take because DC/Warner Bros.’ chosen filmmakers haven’t even proven they can get THE Superman right. All those endless, choppy scene fragments are spent tearing him down and staring inside the pieces and trying to build a case for “Why Superman?” — more for themselves than for their viewers — but then end the project without putting him back together. This is ultimately why they have yet to top the original Superman: the Movie — that one was a film made not with a cynic’s craving for analytical deconstruction, but with a believer’s heart.

And Christopher Reeve’s classic of the genre wasn’t just a movie about superpowers. It was a movie about a super-hero. Saving lives is an awesome thing that heroes do, but the world’s greatest super-heroes take it to the next level and do even more. The fine minds behind The CW’s The Flash and Supergirl get it. Here’s hoping one of the directors on those next fifty-two merchandising campaigns doubling as movie projects will figure it out, too.

How about those end credits? No, there’s no scene after the Dawn of Justice end credits, though there’s a nice “Special Thanks” section for several comics creators, including the writers and pencillers who collaborated on Doomsday’s first story arc, not too many of whom are still working regularly in the medium today.

Chadwick Boseman leads an all-star cast in Black Panther: Civil War, quite to my delight.

The worldwide phenomenon about two unique individuals from very different worlds — one with his armor and his billions, the other with his enviable muscles and his onetime fervor for The American Way — will rank high among other films in the $300-million U.S. box office club at year’s end. Once again the major studios prove they’re still capable of putting out product that can contemplate serious topics even while reveling in visual dynamics and not shying away from moments of emotional intensity.

No, not the one with the Marthas’ boys in it.

Short version for the unfamiliar: Directors Joe and Anthony Russo (The Winter Soldier, TV’s Community) return to wrap up the Steve Rogers Trilogy with Captain America: Civil War. When one hero’s well-intentioned rookie mistake ends a superhuman showdown with inadvertent civilian casualties, Big Government decides all those vigilantes from the last several Marvel Cinematic Universe films either need to submit to law enforcement oversight, accountability, and obedience, or else be thrown in the clink for excessive vigilantism. Tony Stark, the once-self-assured Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr., angrier than usual for reasons), has seen too many disasters and thinks it’s time for everyone to join Team Bureaucracy. Steve Rogers, the soldier’s soldier Captain America (Chris Evans, still everyone’s stoic best friend), has been tricked by too many false leaders and leads the movement for Team Doowutchyalike.

A second disaster bollixes the negotiations, ends with more innocent casualties, and spurs an international manhunt for the prime suspect: Cap’s ex-sidekick “Bucky” Barnes (Sebastian Stan as one big ball of frustration), still succumbing occasionally to his Winter Soldier reprogramming so even he doesn’t know if he’s the perpetrator or just a scapegoat. Iron Man believes the thin evidence against Bucky without any need for probing investigation. Cap believes his old best friend with zero tolerance for doubt.

The mule-headed debate between the Star-Spangled Avenger and the Armored Avenger tears a schism across the MCU that forces the rest of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes to choose a side — well, those who were asked to show up, plus a few new faces who’ll someday hopefully headline their own super awesome solo movies. Fingers crossed.

Hey, look, it’s that one actor!: With an all-star cast that’s like the second coming of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, our twelve main players are divided into two teams of six:

Team Cap: Bucky, the Falcon (Anthony Mackie), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen, still working on that accent), and Ant-Man (Paul Rudd channeling a lot more Bobby Newport this time).

Team Iron Man: Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), War Machine (Don Cheadle), the Vision (Paul Bettany), and two world premiere MVPs: li’l Tom Holland as the first time a Marvel movie has ever cast an actual teenager as a teenage Spider-Man — no more 90210 thirtysomethings taking a millennial’s job; and Chadwick Boseman as the regal Black Panther, young royalty from the nation of Wakanda bringing his own stately manner, augmented reflexes, and vibranium weaponry to the party.

Team Villains: Frank Grillo, the Winter Soldier henchman who had the most lines, returns scarred and costumed as Cap’s nemesis Crossbones in the thrilling opening chase/fight sequences in Nigeria. Setting aside Iron Man as the lead antagonist, the real Big Bad is Daniel Brühl (the charming Nazi actor from Inglorious Basterds) as master schemer Helmut Zemo, whose resemblance to the comics’ neo-Nazi version is virtually nil, instead taking his origin cues from previous MCU stories.

Team New Players: Hope Davis as the late Maria Stark, Iron Man’s mom, frequently mentioned but never before played in person till now; Academy Award Winner Marisa Tomei as Aunt May, accompanied by ham-handed lines slapping viewers repeatedly until everyone agrees there’s no reason a teenager has to have an doting eightysomething crone for an aunt; and geek icon Martin Freeman as American attaché Everett K. Ross, who in late-’90s comics was an ally at, and a thorn in, the Panther’s side.

Team Returning Guests: William Hurt from The Incredible Hulk as grumpy Thunderbolt Ross (no relation to Everett); Revenge‘s Emily VanCamp as Cap’s neighbor Sharon Carter, a.k.a. Agent 13; Mad Men‘s John Slattery as old Howard Stark; and Better Call Saul‘s Kerry Condon as F.R.I.D.A.Y, the replacement A.I. uploaded to Iron Man’s helmet after J.A.R.V.I.S. was upgraded into the Vision in Age of Ultron.

Team Cameo: Community‘s Jim Rash as a happy dean who loves a good fundraiser (two more minutes of him and we’d be right back at Greendale); Alfre Woodard as a grieving mom who teaches Tony an important lesson about how all lives matter; and, of course, Stan “The Man” Lee as a product-placement prop delivering an important package.

Team Not Appearing in This Picture: the Hulk, Thor, Thor’s wacky friends and stodgy relatives, especially not Loki, any and all agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, Pepper Potts, Ant-Man’s daughter, Hawkeye’s family, the late Garry Shandling, and Marvel’s Agent Carter. (Not even in flashback, just one nice vintage photo.)

Meaning or EXPLOSIONS? Civil War is entirely about collateral damage. Given the desensitizing trend in big-budget blockbuster films (not just comic book movies) to waste entire blocks and cities full of millions of imaginary living beings, this time the focus is squarely on the damage done in the wake of so many cataclysmic fight scenes. Heroes routinely save the world, but rarely stop to count the bodies in the wreckage. The assumption is millions of very nice funeral services were held and the richest heroes funneled some of their petty cash toward widespread infrastructure repair. Or the assumption is the little people don’t matter. It’s because the humans of Civil War disagree and take a stand against their disposable nature that the movie finds its unique dilemma: how much trust should we really be placing in the judgment of unsupervised, untrained superhumans? Should we really be letting them play honorary world police without any real governance or any consequences for their harmful failures?

On the other hand, how much good does it do to make ordinary humans the bosses of those gifted or cursed with such extraordinary abilities? How well can the muggles truly train the trainees? How many super-strong bank robbers and otherdimensional conquerors can we afford to let get away while Our Heroes are going through the proper channels, filling out the requisite forms, obtaining their warrants, requesting mission approval from human military officials who can’t possibly know what it’s like to be in their shoes?

Fans who just want dudes in tights punching each other a lot may come away disappointed to have what was once an all-ages genre taken to its logical, disturbing, eminently political conclusions. Strip away the masks and it’s a fascinating debate over what’s better: more government or less government. And everyone’s positions vary depending on what’s driving their emotional state at any given moment.

For our two main players, Civil War is the culmination of the character arcs that began in their first films but have been evolving throughout the series. In The First Avenger, Captain America obeyed commands and served his country’s leaders during the world’s time of tremendous need. In The Winter Soldier, Hydra’s infiltration of all supervisory levels soured Cap’s unconditional trust in authority figures. He’s a warrior disillusioned, trusting his own gut instincts and moral code above all others, even if it makes him a renegade until he finds the truth.

We first got to know Iron Man as the cocky weaponsmith with an ego larger than any warhead he ever designed. The first film grew him a conscience and turned him away from some of his baser instincts. The second one was lousy, but we saw his rebellion continue against the authority figures who would use him. With the introduction of aliens in The Avengers, Tony’s mind was blown both by the confirmation of life on other planets and by his off-Earth near-death experience. Shane Black’s Iron Man Christmas Special gave us a Tony hobbled by panic attacks and struggling to accept his new reality. But Age of Ultron was his worst nightmare in the metallic flesh: innumerable fatalities from the greatest weapon of mass destruction ever shaped by his own hands. By the time Civil War‘s opening Pyrrhic victory adds to the body count, Tony’s lost all faith in his own judgment and virtually, subconsciously wishing anyone else would take charge and tell him what to do. On some level, Tony now craves the authority and oversight that he once fervently fought to disregard.

Cap’s and Tony’s respective arcs are like ships passing in the night, each becoming more like how the other used to be. As friends they began as opposites, met in the middle, then diverged once more. Whether or not they’ll ever see eye-to-eye again, and which of them is more right than the other, are questions left hanging at Civil War‘s bleak ending, presumably To Be Continued in future films, A-list paychecks pending.

Late in the film, all other themes make way for a special secret bonus theme that lurked in the background all along: revenge. At least three characters find reasons for wanting other characters dead, all involving past wrongs not yet righted. The character who finds paths to both forgiveness and justice wins the film.

Cap threatens to go take over Black Panther’s film, maybe even get an Oscar nomination just for showing up in it, and see how T’Challa likes them apples.

Nitpicking? Most of the film is cross-country pursuit in the scenic James Bond tradition, but at times it seems the police forces of various nations are showing up inside each other’s borders like swapping jurisdictions is just that easy in the European Union. If it really is like that, cool, but my wife wondered why German police were showing up at a doorstep in Bucharest.

And don’t even get her started on the Peggy Carter/Sharon Carter timeline. The aunt/niece relationship between a young 21st-century lady and a WWII hero who only had one sibling, a brother who died during the war…suffice it to say some pieces are missing.

Also bordering on nonsense: Zemo’s evil plan hinges on him knowing that something horrible happened on a specific day in history, but knowing nothing about the Something Horrible itself, only that Something Horrible happened and it would be really useful intel to him for purposes that require a ridiculous number of ducks lined up in a row. This important mystery event is only the beginning of a mad scheme that’s befuddling for most of the film, and yet by the end somehow it ends up too simplistic. Brühl’s layered performance, seemingly one-note until more of his story comes to light, carries him a good, long way.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Captain America: Civil War, there’s Captain America trying really hard not to be overshadowed by the three hundred other speaking characters vying to share screen time with him. So many people are given so many cool moments that it’s tough for Cap’s own to stand out. Thankfully the cast is pared down for the endgame, leaving Cap to stand tall among a smaller, strong group of finalists.

So what’s to like? So much complication and sifting through shifting philosophies. So many winning performances that there aren’t too many actors I’d give a thumbs-down here. There’s that great opening battle with Crossbones and his henchmen. And there’re the dueling feels of Evans vs. Downey, driven not by dumb miscommunications but by the heat of the moments, both the most furious we’ve ever seen them by the time they stagger through each other’s final blows. The film’s extended centerpiece, the twelve-hero demolition derby at a German airport (curiously deserted in broad daylight), is an exhilarating montage of one-on-one martial-arts showdowns, flying-guy dogfights, over-the-top visual-effects surprises, and the welcome reintroduction of our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, who brings a number of key components to the table: youthful exuberance, wit under fire, advanced science know-how, simple joy in superhuman feats, and — as a sort of wake-up call for Tony — innocent naiveté about how he’s doing the right thing even while guys twice his age are bruising him up something fierce.

At nearly 2½ hours, Civil War is longer, more complex, and more ambitious than the average crowd-pleaser, though crowds will keep finding plenty pleasing about it as they continue flooding into theaters over the next several weeks. A few flaws in its convoluted execution are too nagging for me to anoint this the Greatest Marvel Film of All Time, but taken together with Cap’s first two films, it’s a masterful climax to the greatest super-hero film trilogy of all time.

(To learn more about Chadwick Boseman, if you loved his Black Panther one-tenth as much as I did, be sure to visit your local streaming store and check out his star turn in the Jackie Robinson biopic 42, or add Christopher McQuarrie’s spooky one-season wonder Persons Unknown to your Netflix queue and watch him as a military man trapped in a mysterious small town with Alan Ruck and a bunch of annoying strangers. My son and I were among the show’s six fans, so hardcore that we watched the series in its initial run, including the final episodes that NBC never aired on TV and showed online only. We both still feel we’re owed five more seasons and a movie.)

How about those end credits? Yes, there is indeed a scene after the Captain America: Civil War end credits, not to mention an important epilogue early into the end credits. For those who fled the theater prematurely and really want to know without seeing it a second time…

…

[insert space for courtesy spoiler alert in case anyone needs to abandon ship]

…during the credits is the film’s actual ending: Bucky’s final fate — shipped off to Wakanda and voluntarily placed back in suspended animation until T’Challa’s top scientists can figure out how to disable or delete his Winter Soldier brainwashing permanently. Cap worries the Avengers will invade Wakanda to get him back. T’Challa welcomes the challenge. Outside the mists swirl and surround the nearby buildings and giant panther statues, all standing by and waiting for future Black Panther director Ryan Coogler to make them even cooler someday.

And then there’s after the end credits, which explains a question that occurred to me earlier: considering how much Spidey gets knocked around in the airport battle, how will he explain his injuries to Aunt May? Easy answer: he’s honest with her — he confesses he was in a fight with a guy from Brooklyn named Steve, who had this huge friend with him, but Peter promises he gave as good as he got.

Aunt May, proud of her plucky nephew for standing up for himself, gives him an ice pack and leaves his bedroom. He goes back to playing with one of the new toys Tony gave him — a gadget from the comics that we old Spider-fans know as the Spider-Signal.

And Civil War fades to black with one final message:

“SPIDER-MAN WILL RETURN”

Our annual Free Comic Book Day tradition saw us once again at Indianapolis’ own Downtown Comics North, where cosplayers are always on hand to greet kids, accompanying adults, and regulars alike. Naturally for pop culture’s Year of Deadpool there was Deadpool, so please enjoy Deadpool because Deadpool.

On May 7th my wife and I had the pleasure of once again observing Free Comic Book Day, the least fake holiday of them all. Readers of multiple demographics, thankfully including lots of youngsters, flocked to our local stores and had the opportunity to enjoy samplers from all the major comic companies and dozens of indie publishers. This year’s assortment saw more all-ages comics than ever, so this wasn’t just an outreach to longtime fortysomething collectors who need no further enticement.

I never grab copies of everything, but this year I got a little more grabby than I thought. This entry was procrastinated days past its relevance expiration date because it took me that much longer to find the free time to read them all, even those I could speed through in three minutes flat. In my mind, regardless of total consumption minutes, each issue ought to be a satisfying experience for any new reader who opens the cover without any foreknowledge. Historically, each publisher’s offerings tend to fall into one of six story levels, ranked here in order from “Best Possible Display of Generosity and Salesmanship” to “Had to Slap SOMETHING Together, So Whatever”:

1. New, complete, done-in-one story
2. Complete story reprinted from existing material
3. A complete chapter of a new story with a proper chapter ending
4. Partial excerpt from an upcoming issue that will also contain all these same pages
5. No story, just random pinups or art samples
6. Disposable ad flyer shaped like a comic

Surprisingly, none of this year’s samples settled for option 5 or 6. Good show, publishers.

The comics in my FCBD 2016 reading pile came out as follows, from least favorite to definite favorite:

19. Spectrum #0 (Automatic Publishing) — I usually avoid comics co-created by actors as illustrated TV/movie pitches, but the name of Firefly‘s Alan Tudyk on the cover caught my eye. After a sluggish, uninviting, 370-word all-text prologue (for a Star Wars film it’d make a ten-minute opening crawl), the comic proper is divided in two halves, one about Our Hero and his current role in an anti-alien rebellion, the other about an ethereal lady taking over a spaceship from her alien captors through indecipherable powers, decorated throughout with still more sci-fi names that the overlong intro didn’t mention, all accompanied by frequently inscrutable illustrations failing to convey what’s actually happening. I should’ve stuck to my guidelines.

18. Avatarex: Destroyer of Darkness (Graphic India) — Inimitable comics legend Grant Morrison and a not-bad artist introduce a new Indian superhero who awakens aboard a spaceship, acquires his weapons, and goes on and on and on about how awesome he is. That’s twelve pages spent on the print equivalent of an I-am-the-greatest old-school rap single. Also included is an excerpt from Morrison’s ongoing 18 Days, in which other Indian superhumans or possibly deities are at war with each other and prepare for the oncoming battles by debating their conflicting philosophies. The Hindu discussions are weighty but the excerpt ends before they take on enough context. I’m taking it on faith that’s Morrison literati superfans have already annotated every sentence of this at extreme length.

17. Mixtape 2016 (Devil’s Due/1First Comics) — Three excerpts: li’l Mercy Sparx, one of the few Devil’s Due characters still around in any fashion, which means more to her current readers (not my thing); Squarriors, which are like Mouse Guard with angry squirrels and unhelpful flashbacks; and an excerpt from Badger #4, the recent revival of the classic Mike Baron/Jeff Butler character that was one of my early faves when my teen self first discovered comic shops. Val Mayerik’s art captures all of Badger’s strengths — martial arts and unfettered loopiness — but anyone who doesn’t recognize him, or his old pals Yak and Yeti, will probably be lost and wondering why he’s facing Vladimir Putin in an MMA match. That’s, uh, typically how things go for him.

Downtown Comics North opened at 11 a.m. This was the line when we arrived around 9:30…

16. Civil War II (Marvel Comics) — Story #1 is an excerpt from the upcoming annual very special Marvel company-wide summer blockbuster mega-crossover event spectacular that will shake up the Marvel Universe irrevocably forever or whatever. It’s just the heroes gathering so Thanos can appear from nowhere and beat on them for a while, two of them not looking so good by the end. Jim Cheung’s art looks pretty as always, but so far I don’t care. Story #2 introduces the all-new Wasp, Henry Pym’s #1 fan who hopes the late doctor doesn’t mind her stealing his shtick. I’d forgotten the pleasures inherent in the art of Alan Davis, but I tend to avoid superteam books noawadays and will therefore be disconnected from whatever happens to her next in All-New All-Different Avengers.

15. DC SuperHero Girls (DC Comics) — It’s DC’s all-women answer to Muppet Babies but instead of a nursery they’re in high school. Intended for younger audience who like short, sparse sentences but are prepared for new vocab words like “wormhole”, “evaluation”, “carelessness”, “trendsetter”, and “cliffhanger”, a word here which means “an unsatisfying ending like this comic’s that means you’ll have to beg your parents to buy you more comics if you want to find out what happens to Supergirl next”. To be fair, this non-canon side trip treats some of the characters with more respect than their New 52 counterparts have received. And girls will love the all-new all-dreamy Comet the Super-Horse!

14. We Can Never Go Home/Young Terrorists (Black Mask) — Story #1 is an interlude that takes place amidst one of my favorite comics of 2015, bridging the gap toward the second WCNGH arc coming later this year. It fits well within the first arc and is every bit as shocking, though I’m too biased to tell if it does much for newcomers. Story #2 is my first glimpse of Young Terrorists, a less subtle and much more sadistic, nihilistic tribulation of the sort that stopped entertaining me years ago. For those who like this sort of thing professionally crafted, here some is.

13. Camp Midnight Free Comic Book Day Special (Image Comics) — Excerpt from the upcoming graphic novel written by Steven T. Seagle (House of Secrets, Ben 10), about a weird girl sent to a spooky summer camp for monster kids. I think the excerpt lopped off a few too many pages at the start, but the whole promises to be better than just the one part.

…and this was the line behind us a few minutes before 11. It wasn’t any shorter by the time we left at 11:15.

12. Bongo Free-for-All! 2016 (Bongo Comics) — The annual batch of Simpsons Comics reprints contains a few painful clunkers, including a two-pager that felt like 30-year-old MAD Magazine leftovers, but two stories both written by Ian Boothby — one a Homer/Pieman story, the other some hijinks in which Bart convinces everyone Principal Skinner is a vampire — got a few chuckles out of me, which is more than I can say for the average new Simpsons episode these days.

11. Lady Mechanika FCBD (Benitez Productions) — Joe Benitez is a fully accredited, upper-tier member of the Marc Silvestri/Top Cow comics design school, which can be a nifty art style to behold if you can overlook the heroine’s curiously modest boob window. I’m not familiar with Lady Mechanika beyond the one time I saw a Lady Mechanika cosplayer win a Gen Con costume contest, but the done-in-one new tale moves briskly, introduces other cyborgs like her as well as a set of nemeses, and threw in a few surprises I didn’t see coming. Two excerpts from other LM works show off even better art by Benitez and other collaborators. It’s not for kids, but this was a more interesting read than I expected.

10. Oddly Normal #1 (Image Comics) — Reprint of the first issue of the creator-owned all-ages series by Otis Frampton, one of the artists behind the YouTube series How It Should Have Ended (one among my very few YouTube subscriptions). The titular young girl is a green-haired, pointy-eared, half-witch outcast mocked at school, saddled with parents who don’t get her, and confused by powers that may have just kicked in. A fast read aimed squarely at all the other young oddballs out there. I can relate.

9. Steve Rogers: Captain America (Marvel Comics) — Story #1: after being dead for a few years, then resurrected and elderly for several more, Steve Rogers was recently rejuvenated and returned to his Star-Spangled Avenger role thanks to some contrivances set up in the recent Avengers Standoff: Welcome to Pleasant Hill very special Marvel mini-crossover event, of which I read exactly one issue. Cap’s comeback looks great thanks to artist/colorist Jesus Saiz, and ends with a declaration of an official War on Hydra, which is tempting to follow but probably leads into twelve more crossovers, so I’m reluctant to commit. Story #2 stars the amazing Spider-Man, whose version of Peter Parker is barely recognizable to me. He’s undergone so many changes ever since “One Moment in Time” severed my last remaining childhood emotional ties to him years ago. Dan Slott’s writing style never disappoints me, and “One Moment in Time” wasn’t his fault, so I can acknowledge this as a pretty fun prologue to yet another upcoming very special Spider-Man major crossover event that will pass me right by.

The all-ages books had one table; this was the other. Plenty of supplies on hand for would-be readers.

8. Rom #0 (IDW Publishing) — ROM, Spaceknight, one of my beloved childhood toys, is back from a long, long stint in licensing limbo! And now IDW’s got him instead of Marvel! But for some reason at the end of this intro, probably for legal reasons, he calls himself “Rom the Space Knight”, which is wrong wrong WRONG. And the revamped Dire Wraiths are pale anime impersonations of Sal Buscema’s classic creepy designs. But Rom still has his trusty Analyzer and Neutralizer, and his silver armor with just some corners rounded, and his starchy Bill Mantlo speech pattern. It’s a promising start, as nostalgia reboots go. Story #2 is a revival of Britain’s own “Action Man”, about whom I know zilch beyond what writer John Barber’s afterword tells me, but his passing-of-the-mantle does a nice job of connecting the old GI Joe precursor to a young, befuddled successor left to figure out how Action Man things work. It’s got a breezy Young James Bond vibe and deserves a second look.

7. Serenity/Hellboy/Aliens (Dark Horse Comics) — Story #1: River Tam turns the Firefly cast into a really precious bedtime story that’ll warm the hearts of fans like me who still miss Wash. Story #2: Richard Corben draws Hellboy and mostly leaves me cold. Story #3 is connected to Brian Wood’s Aliens: Defiance, which I’ve been on the fence about trying or skipping, so I’m at a disadvantage. The art of Tristan Jones and colorist Dan Jackson is a strong selling point, I’ll give it that.

6. The Tick Free Comic Book Day 2016 (New England Press) — Our annual Free Comic Book Day reminder that New England Comics is still in business even though Tick creator Ben Edlund hasn’t been an active contributor in a long, long time. The lead story, in which the Tick meets dozens of other alt-universe Ticks, reminds me of Alan Moore’s run on Supreme, except this was funnier — the funniest Tick story I’ve read in a long time, truth be known. If regular Tick comics ever appeared at my local shop in any of the other 51 weeks every year, I might have to revisit these old, silly friends more often.

5. Doctor Who: Four Doctors (Titan Comics) — Four new shorts with each of the modern-era Doctors! The Tenth is bogged in the current comics’ status quo, Eleven and Twelve face revamps of classic-Who adversaries I don’t know, but the Ninth — my “first Doctor”, for the record — wins with Rose Tyler and Captain Jack at his side against a “geohacker” who reshapes planetary surfaces like a bored intergalactic Banksy. All four stories get each Doctor right and are worthy additions to any Whovian’s comics library. A trade collecting Titan’s first Twelve arc was one of my non-free FCBD purchases to support our local shops, so hopefully it’s more of the same niftiness.

Harley Quinn and the Red Power Ranger doing their exercises before assuming crowd-control and party-hearty duties.

4. Mooncop: A Tom Gauld Sampler (Drawn & Quarterly) — Reprints of the British cartoonist’s single-panel gags from The Guardian are great on their own, but the lead story, taken from the forthcoming graphic novel, is good quirky sci-fi about life on the still-desolate Moon in a time when the novelty of living on the Moon never quite took off. Gauld’s website contains more samples and pointers in case this wasn’t nearly enough, which it wasn’t. More, please.

3. Legend of Korra/How to Train Your Dragon/Plants vs. Zombies (Dark Horse Comics) — The Airbender/Korra universe always wins at FCBD, and the streak continues here with the origin of how Korra met her dog. I think. I’ve never seen an episode of either show, but in print they always impress me. Likewise the Dragon short gives cast members a chance to tell their favorite dragon tales with varying degrees of unaware humor, but all tie together at the end with a heartfelt nod to Hiccup’s dearly departed father, of which I approve. I’ve still never played Plants vs. Zombies, but this year’s story (versus a mad scientist zombie) is more coherent and funnier than last year’s. Well met.

2. Science Comics (First Second) — The title says it all: comics about science, and not necessarily just for the kiddos. In story #2, Jon Chad delivers a handy precis on the wide world of volcanology and answers the important issue of “why volcanoes”, but I’m even more enamored of story #1, in which Maris Wicks tells the inspiring true story of how her double-proficiency in comics and oceanography led her to taking scuba lessons for art’s sake. Many folks are lucky if they can do one thing they really love; Wicks is the rare victor to realize you don’t have to settle for just one.

1. Spongebob Freestyle Funnies (United Plankton Pictures) — Maris Wicks completists can then move on to this one, in which she has a two-pager about underwater mountains. There’s also a mostly okay opener by Israel Sanchez (I haven’t watched enough Spongebob to know that his arms can regenerate, but okay, sure) and a one-pager by James Kochalka called “Patrick’s Guide to Getting Stuff for Free” that had me in stitches (“#4: draw a picture of it and pretend that it’s real”), but the winner and champion of Free Comic Book Day 2016 stars Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy, in a super-hero throwback tale written by old favorite Evan Dorkin (Beasts of Burden, Eltingville) and illustrated by Ramona Fradon, a longtime DC Comics artist who graced the ’60s through the early ’80s with work on the original Aquaman and the long-running Super-Friends comic based on ye olde cartoon. To have her drawing a spiffy Aquaman parody in the classic action-adventure mold after so many years in retirement is one of the most brilliant ideas any publisher will have this year.

And that’s the free reading pile that was, which has given me quite a few spending ideas. See you next year!

Our Free Comic Book Day 2016 Cosplayer of the Year: the unbeatable Squirrel Girl! Buy her amazing comic now or you hate reading, fun, literacy, women, and cute furry animals.

Gathered together from the cosmic reaches of the universe, here in this great Hall of Heroes, are the most powerful forces of good ever assembled: Captain America! Deadpool! Bucky! Cartoon Hulk! The Lizard!

My wife and I have a twice-yearly tradition of spending our respective birthdays together traveling to some new place or attraction as a one-day road trip — partly as an excuse to spend time together on those most wondrous days, partly to explore areas of Indiana we’ve never experienced before. My 2016 birthday destination of choice: the northern Indiana city of Elkhart, with a bonus stopover in South Bend, both some 100+ miles north of here. Elkhart was regrettably cut a little short because the weather was miserable and tried to freeze us in our tracks, but we had enough fun to fill out another four-part miniseries starring a candy factory tour, a super-hero roadside attraction, and a selection of the “art” in Elkhart. Also, food.

Part Two of Four: a birthday celebration for a venerated super-hero at a museum made by a fan for fans.

This way to JUSTICE.

Deep in the heart of Elkhart, the Hall of Heroes Museum is easy to miss because it’s in the middle of a wooded residential neighborhood. The museum’s owner and founder, Allen Stewart, is a real estate agent with a longtime passion for comics, super-heroes, and Captain America who has turned his collections into one large exhibition piece. He had the Museum built in his backyard, with plans to upgrade to a larger commercial space someday. Frankly, I felt weird parking in his lawn.

A fraction of the wall displays on hand, to say nothing of the longboxes containing 60,000+ comics spanning all the medium’s decades. I’ll admit it: his collection is bigger than mine.

We first hear about the Hall of Heroes from booths they set up at a few of our past cons. In previous entries we’ve shown readers pics of their Captain America actual-movie-prop shield signed on the inside by several cast members from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as well as the Shelby Cobra that Tony Stark crash-landed on during suit-testing in the original Iron Man. When Anne and I were still gathering birthday ideas the week before, we just happened to catch a segment about the Hall of Heroes on one of our local morning shows and remembered this was a place we might want to check out. Nice timing, that.

One of their most treasured periodicals: a restored copy of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s Captain America Comics #1.

As luck would have it, we’d chosen to visit the day they’d planned a mini-fest in honor of Captain America’s birthday. Now 75 years old, the Star-Spangled Avenger is healthier than ever, ruling the American box office and sporting not one but two noble guys with the name and costume in Marvel’s current comics continuity. The bottom floor and a few outdoor party tents were set up for expanded collection viewing, a sort-of dealers’ room for a few other fans with comics to sell, that damaged Shelby Cobra, face-painting for the kiddos, special guest Allen Bellman (a Timely Comics artist as a teenager while Simon and Kirby were serving overseas in WWII), and two local artists selling their own self-published wares.

And, of course, the one thing every successful comic book party needs: cosplayers!

Spider-Man’s old foe the Lizard sets aside his differences for good ol’ Steve Rogers’ sake.

Hulk take time out from Super Hero Squad to say hi to Flag Man. Hulk also want cake.

Even in a small-town costume gathering dozens of miles from the nearest major convention center, there’s no escaping Mandatory Deadpool, seen here with A-list film star Bucky the Winter Soldier.

Part of the first floor and all of the second are devoted to the bulk of Stewart’s impressive trove of comics, books, toys, high-end statues, and other nifty hobby collectibles. Guys like me have seen our share of action figures at cons, but they’re always boxed, stacked, hanging, or otherwise unnaturally shackled. Most of the heroes in this Hall are unboxed, posed, free-standing display items grouped with their friends, enemies, and other corporate cohorts out in the open. Touching isn’t invited, but with some pieces, I couldn’t help stopping and staring.

A selection of Super-Friends, including those brave DC heroes who entertained us on Saturday mornings but were forbidden inside the DC Comics universe.

The Justice League of America faces off against Starro the Conqueror in this statue reprising the cover of their first appearance in Brave & the Bold #28.

I like to call this section “HULK STASH!”

This is the moment, more than any other, that I knew Stewart was One Of Us. What ordinary mortal museum devotes an entire section to Alpha Flight?

The Spectre looms large and metes spiritual vengeance over in the Heroclix section.

Animation character reference sheets are among the wall decorations in between all those comics.

“Spider-Man! You’ve just appeared in your best movie in years! What are you doing next?” “I’m going to Disney World!”

A true treasure: Ralph Hinkley’s actual suit from The Greatest American Hero, autographed by William Katt. (Anyone calling him “Ralph Hanley” is banned.)

One corner of the first floor is a virtual Batman shrine. One of the most beloved, most heavily merchandised super-heroes in the medium’s history deserves no less.

Back in the day it was every parent’s job to teach their kids the two words in the Batman theme song.

If it doesn’t have a genuine Batcostume, it’s not an authentic Batshrine.

Batman naturally needs his Batprops, including this spare Batmask and the Batphone.

I didn’t ask if this was a real TV prop or just an amazing simulation, but its brilliance bowled me over either way: the Hall of Heroes has its own Batpole.

To be honest, the Hall of Heroes wasn’t exactly what I imagined we’d find after a nearly three-hour drive, but it’s a fun place to be. For a modest yet fair entry free, local fans and newcomers to super-heroing get to see a scintillating panoply of faces and universes, giving them a better appreciation and a deeper dive into the vast imaginary worlds of Marvel, DC, and more. Only a fraction of a fraction of those characters have ever made the transition to summer action blockbuster event movies and are likely strangers to the general public. Stewart’s Hall of Heroes is a neat diversion, a potential educational tool, and maybe even a handy gateway to new reading possibilities for kids and adults alike.

It might even spur new collectors into the hobby, though some rookies might do well to keep their expectations realistic and their hopes grounded. We chatted briefly with one young starry-eyed lady who asked if I have any comics (I casually mentioned “some longboxes”) and bragged that her boyfriend owns “a dozen boxes worth a million dollars!” I thought about my thirty-seven years of comics fandom, my 50+ longboxes, many years spent skimming Overstreet price guides, and that one short time I tried eBay on for size, and I had to fight the urge to reach over and pat her on the head.

To be fair, though, based on what we saw of Stewart’s own accumulations, he would’ve had full bragging rights to come up and pat me on the head.

Arch-rivals Sinestro and Green Lantern in a rare team-up moment. Some of you may recognize the distinguished gentleman in the middle.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: June 10th and 11th, my wife Anne and I attended the 38th annual Superman Celebration in the city of Metropolis, Illinois. In Part One you met two of the headliners, Mehcad Brooks and Twilight’s Peter Facinelli from TV’s Supergirl. In Part Two you met the other guests, including two more famous Jimmy Olsens — Marc McClure from the four Superman films and Michael Landes from TV’s Lois & Clark.

As with any other comics-themed event, there shall always be cosplay. Rather than stagger our super-hero costume photo gallery across a few themed entry, right here is all the costumes fit to print. Most were from DC, but a few other superhumans infiltrated the proceedings from neighboring universes. Fortunately for them the citizens of Metropolis are welcoming to any and all — especially in times like these, when we need heroes now more than ever. All heroes.

(For value-added puzzle fun, see how many Supergirls you can count. If you can spot five or more, consider yourself an honorary CatCo Correspondent!)

SECTION ONE: THE WORLD OF SUPERMAN!

Obviously we ought to have at least one Superman in the lineup, right? This one’s joined by old foe Solomon Grundy, Bane, Bizarro Supergirl, and Ant-Man, sneaking in from another universe, which is just the kind of thing Paul Rudd would do.

Just as we had more than one actor who’s played, so did we have more than one cosplayer with us in Marc McClure’s line as Jimmy Olsen, this one armed with camera and trademark bow tie.

In civilian life, the other Jimmy Olsen is local man Mike Meyer, who made headlines five years ago when some heartless bounder stole a chunk of his large collection of Superman comics and memorabilia. The perp was caught and, in an outpouring of love, fans nationwide sent him Super-donations to replenish his collection. The response was so overwhelming that he ended up donating a lot of it to others in turn. ‘Twas an honor to meet him in person.

Mr. Mxyzptlk sneaking away from the Fifth Dimension for a bit of mischief. Bonus points if you can correctly pronounce all four syllables.

Silver Banshee, a post-Crisis Superman villain who turned up this season on Supergirl.

Much as we’d like to forget Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, we must never forget the Nuclear Man. EVER.

What if baby Kal-El’s rocket landed in the USSR instead of in Kansas? You’d have the star of Mark Millar and Dave Johnson’s Elseworlds saga Superman: Red Son.

SECTION TWO: GOTHAM BY SUNLIGHT!

Batman and Robin emerge from the shadows because no one can resist posing in front of the Superman statue. Flaunting the emergency kryptonite he keeps in his utility belt seems kind of gauche, though.

Friday’s Jimmy Olsen, ace photographer, transformed Saturday into Oswald Cobblepot, the best thing about TV’s Gotham.

Jack Nicholson’s Joker. We’ve got a live one here!

Nearly every cosplay gallery we share has at least one costume we don’t recognize, and would love any labeling assistance we can get from You, The Viewers at Home. “Riddle me this!” says the Riddler, introducing today’s guest strangers. Little help? [UPDATED 6/14/2016, 10:45 p.m. EDT: super-special thanks to Holly at Bloggity Ramblings for recognizing Slenderman when memory failed me. The jury’s still out on Pajama Cowboy.]

SECTION THREE: HEROES OF THE DC MULTIVERSE!

The Flash and Green Lantern John Stewart, your core Justice League members in the house.

From the awesomeness that is The Flash, our man’s flanked by his season-1 Big Bad, the Reverse-Flash, and season 2’s sinister Zoom. Run, Barry, RUN!

Mr. Miracle and Green Arrow, fully accredited JLA members who occasionally suffer the indignity of being mistaken for Hawkeye or Iron Man. Kids clearly learn nothing in school these days.

Also on the old JLA roster: Zatanna! (“Stekcit hpargotua otni nrut, ynnuB!”)

Hawkman on loan from TV’s Legends of Tomorrow, making himself more useful here.

And the animated version of his beloved Hawkgirl.

Fire and Ice from the ’80s Justice League hang out with Stargirl from the Justice Society of America. Fans will notice she’s wielding the Cosmic Staff given to her by Jack Knight, the early-retired Starman.

SHAZAM! is what we have no choice but to call him, because his ex-sobriquet Captain Marvel has been taken by some big movie company or whatever.

Dr. Fate, DC’s own master of the mystic arts. Eagle-eyed viewers of NBC’s Constantine spotted his fabled Helmet of Nabu on a dusty shelf in at least one episode.

Red X, undercover hero from Teen Titans — the original series my son and I really liked, not the current one that’s totally not aimed at either of us.

From the deepest depths of DC’s Who’s Who, it’s the animal-powered hero that men were asked to call…B’wana Beast! My wife thought he was just some dude who had the right idea about how to cope with the 90-degree heat. For once in his career, B’Wana Beast may have been the smartest of us all.

Friday at 5 p.m.: all-ages costume parade! Bonus points to Miss Martian there for thinking outside the box.

SECTION FOUR: HISTORY OF THE DC UNIVERSE!

As mentioned briefly in Part Two, Saturday morning we attended a special presentation in which writer Brian K. Morris taught visitors about the rich, varied, occasionally outlandish history of the DC Comics universe with a little help from some special friends, most of whom are presented below. (Solomon Grundy, seen above, was also among their number.)

“I get to go first…BECAUSE I’M BATMAN!”

Composite Joker features pieces from the character’s multiple multimedia personae.

Wonder Woman! Soon to star in a major motion picture!

Long before Yvonne Craig represented for women’s lib, there was the original Golden Age Bat-Girl! Not making this up!

Supergirl, now at the absolute height of her popularity, partly thanks to those quitters at CBS.

Post-Crisis Lex Luthor, complete with glove to cover the hand afflicted with kryptonite poisoning. That was a thing in my day, y’see.

Super-Harley! Or rather, Harley Quinn trying to disguise herself as Supergirl and hopefully start scoring paychecks from The CW.

SECTION FIVE: NOT NECESSARILY THE DC UNIVERSE!

Another Harley Quinn with her new partner Joy from Pixar’s Inside Out.

Cyclops from the X-Men movies, which begs an interesting question: what would happen if he aimed his ruby quartz rays through a piece of red kryptonite? Your move, fanfic writers.

Gambit, for you ’90s X-fans out there.

Even in a small-town costume gathering hundreds of miles from the nearest major convention center, there’s no escaping Mandatory Deadpool.

French-MaidPool, the Ruffian with Ruffles.

Look out, Supergirl! Jason Voorhees already got to Superman and YOU’RE NEXT!

To be continued!

Not the Bad News Bears reboot we want, but maybe the Police Academy reboot we need.

Midlife Crisis Crossover calls David Ayer’s Suicide Squad the best DC Comics film since The Dark Knight!

To be candid, that’s not too much of a compliment if you reconsider the competition. I suppose it’s a close race with The Losers, but I think of that more as a DC/Vertigo movie even though the original Losers were an old-time DC property. Suicide Squad has quite a few flaws in need of fixing — or, quite possibly, unfixing if you believe the press — but the overall studio-approved package contains a lot of well-crafted elements, some inspired performances, and a pretty faithful approximation of the 1980s Squad of my teenage years.

Short version for the unfamiliar: Academy Award Winner Viola Davis IS Amanda Waller, a tough-as-sledgehammers black-ops coordinator just barely operating under the auspices of the American government, as previously seen on Arrow and Justice League Unlimited. In a world where citizens are depressed and hate life because Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice just happened, Waller proposes the creation of Task Force X, a super-team that takes direct orders from her, as opposed to relying on the superheroes we know and love who’ve never cared much for military chain of command or bureaucracy in general. Waller reasons if the heroes won’t toe the line, then the answer is to coerce super-villains to work for them instead. Call it a military super-draft. If the inmates succeed at their assignments, they receive sentence reductions and/or bonus prison amenities; if they fail, instant execution. Waller’s not one for mannerly diplomatic negotiations or demerit slips.

Hey, look, it’s that one actor!: Waller’s super-villain team-up includes:

* Will Smith as Deadshot, the Fresh Prince of Ballistics. An uncanny marksman who treats human life like safari quarry, with one exception: the 11-year-old daughter who knows Dad’s a bad man but loves him anyway. In the comics, this occasional Batman villain was a charter member of the ’80s Suicide Squad and one of the best things about the series, though Smith’s version is a lot more talkative.

* Margot Robbie (Wolf of Wall Street) as Harley Quinn, DC’s answer to Deadpool. She’s pretty much what you remember from Batman: the Animated Series except with a skimpy costume retooled for a mostly male audience, and a surprising amount of team spirit when the chips are down. She breathes more life into the movie than any of her teammates or even her beloved Puddin’.

* Jai Courtney, who usually ruins everything with his musclebound leading-mannequin act, is weaselly Australian bank robber Captain Boomerang, who had a long history of antagonizing the Flash before he and Deadshot became permanent Squad fixtures. This version carries more knives than boomerangs for some reason, but his wide-eyed antics are the most fun Courtney has ever been allowed in front of a camera. Either Ayer coached him really hard, or this is the real Courtney when studio execs aren’t trying to mold him into America’s Next Top Dolph Lundgren. But I’m disappointed that not once does Waller ever call him “Boomerbutt” like in the comics.

* Joel Kinnaman (the one good reason ever to watch AMC’s The Killing) is Rick Flag, the non-super no-nonsense team leader in charge of this motley crew, much like the comics, except here he’s saddled with an additional relationship because someone decided he needed feelings. That’s not the Rick Flag I know.

* Jay Hernandez (Syfy’s The Expanse) as the pyrokinetic El Diablo, which here is Spanish for “the Hispanic one”. He’s the most tragic and remorseful member of the team, whose dark past makes him a conscientious objector until circumstances force his hand and everyone has to remind him he’s in a super-hero film and is therefore subject to certain baseline expectations such as clobbering and invoking special effects. I wanted to see more of him because I brake for storylines about sinners seeking redemption.

* Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (slightly less malevolent in Oz) (and no, I don’t know how it’s pronounced) is buried under ninety pounds of fancy shoe leather as classic Batman villain Killer Croc, and crammed into maybe six minutes of screen time and given twenty-five words of dialogue, tops. He’s the mandatory Strong Guy and he’s slightly more intelligible than Bane was in The Dark Knight Rises.

* First-time movie actress Karen Fukuhara is Katana, who’s a hero and not a villain. In comics she was a member of Batman’s misfit super-team the Outsiders; here she’s Rick Flag’s executive assistant and has fewer lines and scenes than Killer Croc. Honestly, she could’ve been easily replaced with another armed, nameless soldier and the plot would’ve gone on as is. Her soul-catcher sword plays a part in the final battle, but could’ve been replaced easily with Boomerbutt’s knives. This is wrong.

* Adam Beach (Windtalkers), possibly the first Native American actor to have a speaking role in a major-company super-hero film, is a forgettable loser villain named Slipknot who fought Firestorm once or twice. His power is ropes. Here he’s mostly Super Zip-Line Man. Continuity buffs may recall he tagged along on the original Squad’s first mission, for all the good it did anyone.

Elsewhere in the film, there’s that darn Academy Award Winner Jared Leto as Extreme Method Joker. He looks funky and achieves creepiness once or twice, but he’s neither a Squad member nor the film’s Big Bad. Forty hours of makeup, months of driving his castmates up a wall, weeks of filming, and his part was trimmed back in the final cut to a handful of scenes and reduced from Overwhelming Madman to Doting White-Knight Boyfriend, which seems the opposite of every other Joker ever.

David Harbour (the Stranger Things police chief) is the government official who has to talk to Waller the most. Academy Award Winner Common pops in as the Tattooed Man for all of a single scene. Famous son Scott Eastwood is a military minion with more lines than Katana. News reports and IMDb confirm the tie-in cameo from a Justice League cast member who needs to rethink their impractical costume.

As for Paper Towns‘ Cara Delevingne…we’ll come back to her.

Meaning or EXPLOSIONS? Much of Suicide Squad is a murky yet frenetic style exercise starring bullets and bats and blades and Bats. In its better moments, this battle of Bad Guys vs. Worse Guys poses intriguing questions about reform, recidivism, and what happens when bad people try to do good, with varying levels of “bad” at play. Deadshot has a soft spot for fatherhood, but keeps on killing anyway because it’s what he does and it pays the bills. Harley is a good-girl-gone-bad, manipulated by male mind games into an anarchic, immoral free spirit. Boomerang is just a thug, lacking Deadshot’s soft spot and finesse, only lifting a finger when it saves his own life. El Diablo is the only member truly sorry for his crimes, now trying to exercise self-control to the point of shamed repression.

Waller forces them all into doing her bidding for humanity’s sake (and a selfish objective here and there) under threat of remote-detonating explosives planted inside them, but past a certain point Our Villains find a chance to escape, abandon the mission, and potentially let millions suffer…but then hold a group discussion about whether or not they should. A moody pep talk in an abandoned bar is a weird place for soul-searching, but the answers are revealing.

Nitpicking? That same bar scene happens only because the characters mutually agree to pull the movie’s emergency brake and grind everything to a halt for ten minutes of chitchat, despite everything going on outside. Out of context it’s a well-played emotional showcase for the principals involved; in context, the entire city should’ve exploded while they were talking.

Other scenes show evidence of ADR to dub in lines as added jokes, exposition, hole-patching, or general elimination of any quiet spaces. More irritating on a sound level: that tired K-Tel soundtrack has GOT to go. The first hour is saturated with your parents’ favorite FM-radio songs and all but begs for an eventual Suicide Squad Midnight Sing-Along re-release for the over-40 set. Any movie that uses “Bohemian Rhapsody” invokes Wayne’s World memories and jolts me right out, and I’d be grateful if the copyright holders of “Spirit in the Sky” and “Sympathy for the Devil” would consider saying “no” to the next sixty Hollywood productions that ask to license them. Next time, Hollywood, might I suggest John Wesley Harding’s “The Devil in Me”? Maybe some Social Distortion, or some previously unused Leonard Cohen? Lotta songs out there about bad people rethinking their actions if you actually look around.

Suicide Squad hums along like a well-oiled engine when it keeps the action street-level and the focus on the team chemistry, but eventually the money-men dictated that it switch gears into family-friendly summer-action-blockbuster mode and show Our Villains staving off the End of the World even though they’re better equipped to take on militias and terrorists than to take down eldritch demon mages from beyond. Enter the film’s true Big Bad — Cara Delevingne as basically Zuul. She and her brother, an extra-tall fire sorcerer mummy, are sporting frequently fake-looking Power Rangers villain armor, downconverting entire neighborhoods into X-Men: Apocalypse debris, replicating hundreds of magic demon soldiers so that Our Villains can use their mad murdering skills on monsters instead of on fellow humans because PG-13, and generating the kind of space-laser light-show finale that’s probably mandatory for 3-D showings. At one point she performs a sort of mid-battle jump to avoid taking damage, and I thought to myself in Venkman’s voice. “Nimble little minx, isn’t she?” And the movie lost my attention for another minute or two.

There’s also one or two bits of the ending that ring as too happy and contrived and contrary to the overall tone, like bones tossed to focus groups who insisted they get something heartwarming in exchange for their two hours spent.

So what’s to like? As conceived by co-creators John Ostrander and Luke McDonnell, the ’80s Suicide Squad series was The Dirty Dozen for comics in an era before antiheroes became commonplace and overdone. The give-and-take between well-known rogues, the grim-‘n’-gritty showdowns in which both sides were likely to have permanent casualties, the surprise characters added to the mix from time to time, the frequent angst over the heavy costs of doing good — it was a daring, unpredictable departure from standard super-heroics.

When David Ayer and gang are allowed that same latitude — to do their own thing, to shatter the corporate tentpole mold in a hail of gunfire and collateral damage — this rendition hits the same targets with a subversive verve. The big batch of character intros weighs down the first hour and seems a bit out-of-order and repetitive, but adds to the overall Big Picture if you step back and let it sink in while the team speeds ahead and leaves you contemplating their dust.

Smith, Robbie, and Hernandez are the Serious Drama VIPs, with Robbie double-majoring in buoyant comic relief as counterbalance to this occasionally too-macho boys’ club. But everyone takes a back seat to Viola Davis, who isn’t remotely repeating the same taskmaster she plays on How to Get Away With Murder. Her version of Amanda Waller lives out that TV title for real, ruling over this literally killer ensemble with a strict hand, sometimes shocking them and the audience in demonstrating how far she’ll go to protect her country and save her own neck, and not always in that order.

If you buy into the extensive setup and find it in you to root for these evil characters before they get down to business, it’s easier later to forgive the second hour’s major-studio clichés of video-game monster shootout leading to big flashy finale made of explosions. If this were the year’s only super-hero film and we weren’t seeing so many Armageddons in a row, theirs might feel more serviceable and less repetitive. The climax is its weakest link, but the actors do everything they can to compensate with the talents and tools at hand. After the letdowns of the last several DC films, Suicide Squad‘s overall average is closer to an A-game performance than they’ve come in a long time.

If it helps, I would also tentatively dub this the Greatest Jai Courtney Film of All Time.

How about those end credits? To answer the burning question that MCC is always happy to verify: yes, there is indeed a scene during the Suicide Squad end credits — after the main-cast highlights but before the fine print, which also includes a lengthy shout-out to the various comics creators whose ideas fed into this film, with the afore-mentioned Ostrander and McDonnell receiving top billing of that section. (Ostrander also receives a shout-out within the movie; if McDonnell received a similar nod, I missed it.)

About that end-credits scene: for those who fled the theater prematurely and really want to know without seeing it a second time…

…

[insert space for courtesy spoiler alert in case anyone needs to abandon ship]

…

…Amanda Waller meets Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne for dinner and thanks him for pulling some strings that will prevent her from being called out and prosecuted for her various losses and lapses over the preceding two hours. In exchange she gives him a binder that’s like the first edition of Who’s Who in the DC Universe, containing dossiers on the characters we’ve just met as well as the heroes from other DC films past and future.

They’re nonetheless testy with each other. Waller hints that she’s aware of his nighttime activities and mocks his comparatively goody-goody crimefighting methods. (“You value friends. I value leverage.”) Wayne responds in kind that he knows what she did last summer and leaves her with a word of advice about her precious, extralegal Task Force X: “Shut it down or we’ll take it down.”

So if the DC Cinematic Universe doesn’t crash and burn under the artless demands of tone-deaf WB figureheads, someday we might be in for a wild, crowded crossover event. Fingers crossed.