Crowning Deaths of Awesome and Sadness

Comic book deaths are a punchline these days. A few years ago when Captain America died, no one expected the death to last more than two years, even though Marvel swore up and down that it would stick (sort of like how Spider-Man unmasking during Civil War was supposed to stick and not get retconned away thanks to a deal with the Devil). Despite the fact that a comic book death currently translates into little more than a cheap sales gimmick, there have still been some really good ones over the years. Even if they didn’t stick, they were chilling, touching, or otherwise hugely influential. What follows is my totally biased opinion of the best deaths comics has had to offer.

Batman and Robin versus Captain America and Bucky

Batman and Robin have been here before, and are well-known across America. Slightly less well-known is Captain America and that boy he used to date, Bucky. Well, he didn’t actually date Bucky, per se. Instead, he dragged the kid around with him behind enemy lines in World War II to fight the Nazis. Thanks to his callous disregard for a child’s welfare, America was able to defeat Hitler. Now we’re in the modern day, and Batman and Captain America are planning to exploit their kid sidekicks once again in an attempt to show who is the most dynamic duo of all.

Justice League: What a Wonderful World

Unlike most music videos I do based on TV series, this video takes clips from only one episode of Justice League Unlimited: “For the Man Who Has Everything,” which is an adaptation of an Alan Moore comic. The song here is “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong, which adds a bit of painful irony to the situation, since the wonderful world the characters experience is really nothing but a dream.

You can also download the video as an AVI file right here.

Don’t Panic…It’s an Adaptation

I recently managed to convince my mother to check out the film adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Whether she likes it remains to be seen, but I know I enjoyed it, even though it wasn’t particularly faithful to the previous incarnations of Douglas Adams’ work. Of course, since I’m a fan of pretty much all things Hitchhiker-related, I didn’t expect it to be true to the other sources anyway. Following its release, a lot of fans complained about how the film strays from the book, but relatively few folks seem to realize that the book isn’t the one true source anyway.

Equal Opportunity Suffering, part two

This rant is going to need some explanation, lest I look like a hypocrite.

Previously, I asserted that certain people are too sensitive to the treatment of women in comic books. I still believe that women or men receive more or less equal treatment in most comic books. I do acknowledge that there are exceptions among certain creators, though.

In browsing the Internet, I found a pretty well-written discussion about writer and artist John Byrne’s treatment of women in mainstream comics over the years. As Mr. Byrne is a very well-traveled individual in the industry, I’ve read quite a few issues of his work myself, and I can honestly say that the site linked above goes pretty easy on him. Byrne’s comics tend to be filled with women who are demeaned, battered, killed, and tortured. He seems to have a particular thing for pregnant women; they often get some of the worst treatment.

Equal Opportunity Suffering, part one

Every once in a while I stretch my virtual legs and take a stroll down a random path in cyberspace, just browsing through various Internet sites and seeing where I end up. Most times, this results in me trying to gouge my eyes out with chopsticks because I’ve stumbled across some ungodly porn site. One day, I happened across a site called Women in Refrigerators. The site presents a list and reactions of the various women who have been killed, brutalized, or otherwise made to suffer in comic books. The title of the site comes from an issue of the Green Lantern comic in which Kyle Rayner comes home to find his girlfriend killed and stuffed into a refrigerator by a villain. Now the site itself doesn’t seem to have too much of a particular agenda, but it makes the same mistake that a lot of people do when they try to show discrimination against one particular group: they don’t compare and contrast to other groups.

Zechs Merquise versus Batman

Also known as the Thundercount or Milliardo “Let’s plunge the Earth into eternal winter” Peacecraft, Zechs is one of the many cool characters in Gundam Wing. He’s an expert pilot, a master swordsman, and a pretty good video game player to boot. The Dark Knight, also known as Bruce “I can beat Superman and the Hulk at the same time” Wayne, is a good superhero who is unfortunately often plagued by bad writing.

Batman and Robin versus the Ambiguously Gay Duo

Batman and Robin are the original ambiguously gay duo. Well, maybe it’s not really ambiguous. Batman is, after all, completely crazy. He has a thing for spandex, and has recruited many young “wards” that share Wayne Manor with him and, in some cases, even sleep in the same bed. So we’ve got a likely pedophile and the boy who appreciates the attention and doesn’t know any better. Fighting against them is the Ambiguously Gay Duo of Ace and Gary. Beginning on The Dana Carvey Show, their cartoon eventually moved to Saturday Night Live. They’re a direct parody of Batman and Robin, so we have a parody facing off against the real deal here. it’s also worth noting that Ace and Gary are voiced by Steve Colbert and Steve Carell, who are two very funny men.

The Dark Knight: Mack the Knife

Click here to download the video.

One of my favorite songs of all time is “Mack the Knife,” which Kevin Spacey was nice enough to sing when he was pretending to be Bobby Darin in Beyond the Sea. I originally tried putting that rendition of the song to the Batman Beyond movie Return of the Joker, but I couldn’t seem to get the music and animation to mesh. As it turns out, it works much better with the dirtier-looking and downright scary Joker portrayed by Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight. So viola: “Mack the Knife” joins The Dark Knight in a video that might not be everyone’s taste, but which I am overall quite proud of.

Okay, it’s not 100% from The Dark Knight; only about 99%. The very last laugh comes from Mark Hammill’s Joker from Batman: the Animated Series, because I love Mark Hamill’s Joker even more than Heath Ledger’s.

Fun fact: the guy that the Joker is threatening with a knife in the image above is Patrick Leahy, a big Batman fan who got The Dark Knight screened in Vermont before its premier. And while his Internet censorship bill he proposed recently has me wanting to imitate the Joker a bit, he seems like a pretty swell guy overall. Click on the Joker threatening to knife my favorite senator to download the video.

The Animated Superhero

Superhero movies are the big thing right now in Hollywood. Since X-Men came out in 2000 and made a boatload of cash, studios have been buying up comic books right and left. Some of these, such as Iron Man, Spider-Man, and the revamped Batman franchise, have been great. Many of them, such as Daredevil, Punisher: War Zone, and the third installments of both the X-Men and Spider-Man franchises, have been creative wastelands. No matter what, though, the films keep making money, so the trend marches on.