X-Clue at Camp Frank A. Day

For better or worse, the X-Men animated series of the 90's played a large role in steering my younger days as a comic book fan. I remember well actually insisiting on coming home early from trick or treating on Halloween night in 1992 because Fox was debuting the series premiere, "Night of the Sentinels part one," in prime time. While I know the show didn't match the technical excellent of Batman: The Animated Series, which also debuted on Fox in the same season, there is plenty to be said of a show that can produce such inspired lunacy as this and this without anybody actually being allowed to punch anybody else and every gun down to what the beat cops were carrying subbed out for lasers.

Oh, also: best theme song ever.

But I digress.

A decade after that fateful Halloween night, I decided what was missing in my life as a 20-year old was X-Men: The Animated Series. Thus, I went online and scoured eBay until I found somebody unloading all 76 episodes on glorious VHS (the way they were meant to be watched). Over the course of that magical summer, I relived every incredible moment from Cable proclaiming himself "the wild man of Borneo" to that weird episode where Cyclops gets stranded in a desert town ruled by Solarr.

The next summer, I was spending my twelfth and final year at Camp Frank A. Day in East Brookfield, Massachusetts. One of the other counselors, Andy Sydney, and I were sitting around one day and somehow got to talking about our mutual love of the X-Men cartoon. When he heard I had the whole series on video, he started nearly salivating, so on my next day off, I grabbed the tapes, and during our free time, we would watch and relive the magic. Various other counselors who also had a nostalgic spot for the show and campers who had no idea what the fuck we were watching would join us off and on and like that X-Men became a Camp Day phenomenon.

At the same time, Andy and I were also working on converting the board game Clue into an evening activity that could be played, y'know, not on a board. This was something that was done every summer, usually by having a bunch of staff members dress up in goofy costumes stationed at various points around the camp and coming up with little challenges the kids needed to do in order to get them to pony up a false suspect, weapon, etc.; the campers ran around figuring out who didn't kill who where with what by process of elimination and then ran back to whoever was running the game to report their findings with the first team who got it right winning something.

I thought it was kinda lame.

However, Andy and my newly rekindled love for the X-Men cartoon and our desire to not plan the same shitty game of Clue we did every year mashed up into a glorious moment on zen in which we determined that it was our destiny and the answer to our problems to create...X-Men Clue (or X-Clue).

Honestly, the rules and basic structure of the game itself weren't all that much different from how we normally did Clue, but we were determined to crank it up to eleven by making everything surrounding the evening as balls crazy as possible and in the process create the greatest tribute to our own golden age of animation possible.

Step one was finding a kid who had one of those hardcover Ultimate Guide to the X-Men encyclopedia things and stealing/borrowing it. Step two was researching the shit out of every character until we could come up with a plausible way to work over two dozen heroes and villains into a murder mystery that pre-teens would understand (and that hopefully not get us fired, but that was a secondary priority). Step three was hitting up the awesome Salvation Army in the next town and grabbing all the funky outfits and materials we could get to create budget X-Men costumes in the middle of the woods. It helped significantly that pretty much every other counselor was as jazzed about this (or at least about doing something other than what we did every year for Clue) as we were and were willing to put the extra time into creating costumes both from the stuff we bought and from their own clothes (when you're a camp counselor, you own some wacky outfits--it's kind of a pre-requisite). They also were down with learning as much about whatever character we asked them to play as possible, and fortunately I was a big enough nerd to type out probably way-too-comprehensive bios to help with that (today I get paid for it!).

But the coup de grace was our plan to do something never attempted before in the annals of Camp Frank A. Day Clue: shoot a mini-movie prequel to set up an hour-long evening activity.

Fortunately, my friend Nelson DeWitt was something of a savant in the then-burgeoning field of digital video and computer editing, so despite being out in the middle of the fucking woods with a budget of $0, I say in all humility that we put together a pretty killer five-ten minute short setting up X-Clue: Who Killed Jean Grey (oh c'mon, you were really expecting somebody else to be the victim? Plus, that way we could explain to the kids that the girl we had playing her wasn't really dead, she just came back as Phoenix).

The gist was that Magneto was organizing his Brotherhood to do something nefarious, Professor X gets wind, contacts the X-Men telepathically, and they spring into action to stop the baddies as the animated theme song is dubbed into the background. Really, it was just an excuse to show all the various folks in their costumes and work in the mind-blowing special effects we conjured up with the aforementioned budget, leading to the climax where Jean Grey is wandering around looking for Cyclops then turns to the camera and goes, "You? What are you doing here?!" before we cut back to Xavier reading a newspaper and then looking up to go, "Jean! She's...gone" (dramatic acting at its finest courtesy of my buddy Josh Lieberman wearing a skullcap and sitting in a wheelchair we snatched from the infirmary). We played the mini-movie for the kids right before dinner (actually dragging a TV into the flagpole area and using a long-ass extension chord), then blasting the theme over the loudspeaker afterwards as we all ran out from various hiding places in costume and then...realized we had no fight scene or anything choreographed, so we just kinda shoved each other a lot.

Some highlights of the movie and subsequent game:

-The movie started with my friend Adam Melnick as Magneto in a ridiculous looking tinfoil helmet with a purple towel as his "cape." We simulated his powers by having him wave at a sliding door and then kicking it shut from off camera (but you could still see my foot if you watched closely) and then having him gesture at a fork, shake it from off camera, then toss it to him (he almost missed catching it).

-Filming a lame fight with my junior conselour Andrew in a flannel and jeans with his hair gelled up and butter knives taped in between his fingers and somebody whose name escapes me wearing a goofy wig we found as Sabretooth that ended up being a zillion times cooler because it was in the rain and Nelson cut it in slow-mo and dubbed in the sound effect of Wolverine's claws popping from the movie.

-Simulating Nightcrawler teleporting by filming the guy dressed as him standing there, having him run off camera, Nelson running in and throwing up a cloud of GoldBond (TM) where he was standing, and then cutting it to look like he just disappeared.

-Andy doing the least inspired Gambit costume in the history of ever by just wearing a white dress shirt and khakis (also, he's got bleach blond hair). He tried to salvage it with a terrible accent and then fucked up throwing a card at the camera, but we left it all intact because we thought it was hilarious.

-Me dressing as Iceman by wearing a silver spraypainted headband and a grey sweatshirt with a silver X painted across the front. My only use of my "powers" was blowing on a soda and us editing in a "jingle" sound effect to indicate that I had frozen it.

-My friend E.J. Lawrence doing the entire awful Halle Berry "Do you know what happens to a Toad when it gets struck by lightning?" speech as Storm for no reason other than it made us laugh.

-This girl Phoebe who was also a fan of the cartoon producing an amazing (and kinda eerie) Jubilee costume like the day after we asked her to.

-My former camper, Aaron, creating an equally incredible Pyro costume. I forget how we did it, but through the magic of the movies, we made it look like he lit a table on fire.

-Nelson climbing a fucking tree so we could film him for three seconds as Beast and then dubbing himself in saying "Fascinating" ala the cartoon.

-My British chum Angela Ford not complaining too much when I gave out character assignments and she was Lilandra (her costume was a tinfoil nightmare).

-Me not getting fired (man I almost got fired a lot) for convincing two girls who couldn't have been more than 17 to dress up as the White and Black Queens (I was only 21 at the time, so I didn't feel nearly as creepy asking).

-Deciding to pony up and paint my face silver for the actual game and then being immediately outdone by my boy Jason Solomon, also a member of the Newton South wrestling team, painting his entire fucking body silver to be Colossus. He was not very happy the next morning.

And really I can't top that last one.

Strangle enough, that summer and that activity went a long way towards me figuring out that maybe I could make a living doing something comic book-related. So it's not only a fond memory, but actually a fairly momentous event in my life. Whodathunkit.

Thanks, X-Men: The Animated Series.

Oh, and the killer was Mystique. Note to aspiring writers: you can cover up just about any continuity hole by using a shapeshifter.

(Also, if you wanna check out a blog dealing with nothing but summer camp, give my boy Jim Gibbons' Nothing More American a look and tell him I sent you)

Rasslin' Ramblings: WWE WrestleMania XXV

So any wrestling fan worth his/her salt knows WrestleMania is supposed to be our Super Bowl/World Series/Christmas/Channukah/etc. all rolled into one, and no doubt it's always an exciting time to be a devotee of WWE. I've certainly got plenty of great Wrestlemania memories, from attending XIV live in Boston and seeing Steve Austin win his first World title, to freaking out with my high school buddies when Triple H won the main event of 2000, to watching Brock Lesnar land on his head in the main event of XIX. No doubt, it's a special time of year.

And credit where credit is due, WWE has become so good at making WrestleMania feel special particularly in the last decade or so to the point where it doesn't really matter who's on the card, you know it's still gonna seem epic in some way.

That said, as an armchair quarterback, I gotta say I see this year's show as more of a showcase of missed opportunities than a "Showcase of the Immortals" (and "The 25th Anniversary of WrestleMania," besides taking forever to type, also sounds ridiculous, so I'm sticking with WrestleMania XXV, with roman numerals as it should be).

Way back in September of 2008, as soon as Chris Jericho won the World title, I told anybody who would listen that there was money in him hanging onto the belt by hook or by crook for the next six months and then having a Title vs Career match against Shawn Michaels to headline 'Mania that would have been the perfect blowoff for both the hottest feud of the past 12 months and the monster storyline that began at last year's 'Mania when Michaels retired Ric Flair.

I also agreed with the throngs of folks who said if they would leave the WWE title on Edge and let Jeff Hardy chase him into Houston, they would have a shot at one of those true "WrestleMania" moments they're always going on about.

Instead, Jericho lost the title to Batista after two months, then got it back, then lost it to John Cena, who lost it to Edge last month. Jeff Hardy beat Edge at Armageddon in December, lost the belt back to him a month later, then he coughed it up to Triple H a month after that. Two perfectly good main events squandered because WWE doesn't have the patience to slowly build to WrestleMania like it did a decade ago.

That's to say nothing of guys like Evan Bourne and R-Truth being left out of what could have been the best Money in the Bank ever or the clusterfuck Jericho's war with the WWE Legends has become.

There is something to be said for the fact that I truly don't know who will win either main event (it's especially hard to predict because logic dictates there should be a split in winners between Raw and Smackdown as well as between faces and heels and new champs and retainees, but no combo presented makes too much sense), but there's also something to be said for the days when we would wait half a year for Shawn Michaels or Steve Austin to win the title and then they would do it at WrestleMania. A large part of me misses those days.

Anyhow, on with my picks for the big one...


25-Diva Battle Royal
The hook for me with this one was seeing which Divas from the past showed up to participate, but I guess they've gone ahead and revealed all the "surprise" entrants already, and it's Sunny, Torrie Wilson, Molly Holly, Victoria, Miss Jackie and Nidia, which I believe leaves one spot open. Logic would seem to dictate that #25 would be one of three people: Trish Stratus (the most popular Diva of all-time), Mae Young (the usual go-to punchline for these situations) or Santino Marella (because that's how the storyline has been building). Of course in a perfect world, the answer and winner would be Trish, because honestly, that's what the fans want to see. More likely, it's going to be choice B or choice C, or even choice B with choice C somehow entering as #26. If Trish isn't going to be there, it would be neat to see somebody like Victoria, who recently retired after an unfairly undistinguished seven-year tenure with the company, get the win, but I gotta be cynical here.
Winner: Mae Young


John Bradshaw Layfield (c) vs Rey Mysterio for the Intercontinental Championship
For weeks, JBL has been proclaiming that he'd do "something historic" at WrestleMania, and most of us have taken that to mean he'll be retiring as a result of his ongoing back issues. The only real question was whether or not he'd "make history" by being the first man to end his career as reigning IC champ or if he'd try to do that and be thwarted by Mysterio. I'd say Mysterio's non-title win on Raw this past week kinda telegraphed that it's gonna be the former. I feel bad for Rey, as he's making his return to 'Mania after two years on the shelf and has really been delivering over the last few months, but once again, as with Kane and as with Mike Knox, gets saddled with an opponent whose style does not mesh with his in the least and who won't make him look good. These two know each other well in there, but JBL is so deteriorated at this point that the chances for a good match is slim. Rey really belonged in Money in the Bank, but maybe WWE is hedging their bets on keeping him uninjured, and I can't really blame them for that. Hopefully they put this match first and then JBL can retire only to take Tazz' spot on the Smackdown announce team, as he and Jim Ross calling the action the rest of the night would be gold. I'll also be looking forward to seeing what super hero Rey will be dressed as.
Winner: John Bradshaw Layfield


John Morrison & The Miz (c) vs The Colons (c) in a Lumberjack Match to unify the World Tag Team Championship and WWE Tag Team Championship
This has been the sleeper storyline of the last few months on WWE programming, as Miz & Morrison are able to make anything entertaining with thier mic skills, all four guys can go in the ring and even the involvement of the Bella Twins has been done perfectly. This should be another great match between two teams very familiar with one another, and while the Lumberjack stip is a bit useless and distracting, as I've read elsewhere, at least it assures that there will be a title unification. For those who say getting rid of one set of tag belts is a death knell for tag team wrestling, I'd disagree, as this is the first meaningful tag team title matc at WrestleMania in years and there aren't exactly a wealth of teams rushing to challenge for either set of belts; combine it all into one division and you've got a shot. Miz & Morrison are on a ridiculous hot streak and should be anointed the best team in WWE.
Winners: John Morrison & The Miz


Money in the Bank Ladder Match
Yeah, like I said, I'm a bit bummed we're not seeing R-Truth, The Brian Kendrick, Rey Mysterio, Chavo Guerrero or particularly Evan Bourne in this match. And yeah, having Mark Henry in there seems like a waste (Kane I'll buy because he did a great job in the original MitB and Finlay has two of these matches under his belt). However, I gotta say, a column I read John Meehan on 411 earlier this week made a really smart point about how having a couple bigger guys in there to provide "safety nets" is actually a pretty smart move to protect the high flyers. I still think it will be a good match, even if it's not the best MitB ever. You've got Christian making his 'Mania return in a match he's a pro at, you've got Shelton Benjamin in the match he's best at, you've got CM Punk and MVP both in there to add some experience, and you've got Kofi Kingston no doubt itching to make an impression. For the winner, most people have been split between Shelton and MVP, but I've gotta go with Christian. With the Jack Swagger feud having fizzled, I think Christian's days on ECW are (rightly) numbered and he'll likely be moved to Raw or Smackdown in the upcoming draft. He's the perfect guy to have the briefcase as it fits his gimmick and both his in-ring work and crowd reception since returning have shown he's ready for the top of the card.
Winner: Christian


Chris Jericho vs Roddy Piper, Ricky Steamboat & Jimmy Snuka in a Handicap Elimination Match
Yeah, this one went wrong in so many ways. Obviously it was originally supposed to be Jericho against Mickey Rourke, but Rourke spouting off too early ruined the chances of that and possibly of him winning the Oscar (which I doubt, but I'm still pissed about). WWE went pretty nuts going into crisis control and here's what we ended up with. It's too bad, because it could have been salvaged a few times along the way. I don't know what Piper's physical condition is like, but his verbal showdown with Jericho was money and had me sold that they could do a one-on-one feud with Ric Flair in Piper's corner and have been fine. Likewise, the in-ring return of one of the best ever in Steamboat with his greatest rival, Flair, in his corner against a dude who idolized him in Jericho would have made for a great story, and I have no doubt Steamboat wouldn't be risking his legacy with this match if he weren't ready to go, so it likely would have been solid. However, mash it all together, throw in Jimmy Snuka who looks and moves terrible at his age, toss Flair and ringside and Rourke in the front row, and you've got way too much going on for this to be anything more than a messy spectacle. It's a shame because there's at least three components of this match (Jericho-Rourke, Jericho-Piper and Jericho-Steamboat) that would have been great on their own, but WWE's need to hedge its bets seems like it will result in disaster. Presumably Jericho will take out Snuka and either Piper or Steamboat and then the last man standing will win with help from Flair and Rourke.
Winners: Roddy Piper, Ricky Steamboat & Jimmy Snuka


Jeff Hardy vs Matt Hardy in an Extreme Rules Match
I give the Hardys a lot of credit for not getting frustrated by the last few months and working their asses off to make this match feel like it really matters. Jeff could have thrown in the towel after his lame one-month WWE title reign and being booted from a main event spot the fans clearly want him to have, but he didn't, and he's been keeping his work in the ring and behavior outside it top notch. As for Matt, he has improved his talking skills by leaps and bounds and proven one of the best heels in the business right now, carrying much of the load of building the emotion here; considering he was a mid-card face at best only a few months ago, that's impressive. These two have had clunkers in their one-on-one matches in the past, but they're both established singles guys now and I don't think there's much doubt they've dreamed of squaring off at WrestleMania since they were kids. The Hardys are going to leave it all in the ring on Sunday and hopefully neither will get hurt. I do believe Jeff goes over here as my gut sees this being one of those feuds that gets prolonged by the heel's frustration in his inability to score a win, but I would not be shocked to see it go the other way either.
Winner: Jeff Hardy


Shawn Michaels vs The Undertaker
As I may or may not have mentioned here before, Shawn Michaels is my favorite wrestler of all-time, and I had high hopes that he might end up in a situation challenging for the World title at this show, either via his feud with Jericho or in a triple threat with JBL and John Cena, but I'm ok with where he ended up. The Michaels-Undertaker segments on WWE television over the last month have been phenomenal and 'Taker has never looked so vulnerable going into 'Mania. Both guys have performed admirably thus far and there's a good chance this will be the match of the night. And yes, of course Undertaker is going to win. 'Nuff Said.
Winner: The Undertaker


Edge (c) vs John Cena vs The Big Show for the World Championship in a Triple Threat Match
Yeah, this doesn't feel like a WrestleMania main event, let alone a main event at the vaunted 25th Anniversary. I think there could have been something mined out of a straight Edge-Cena one-on-one match even though we've seen it a million times both because there is history there and because both guys are dynamite storytellers. But the minute they involved Vickie Guerrero and the soap opera crap, I tuned out. Once Big Show got involved, it was too late. And once the focus shifted from the title to Edge vs Big Show for the love of Vickie and Cena just happens to be there, I gave up. Seriously, the title is an afterthough in this match, a supposed co-main event of WrestleMania. At this point, I think it's possible the year-and-a-half-plus Edge/Vickie storyline has done more harm than good to Edge as a character. He's quite possibly the best pure heel in WWE, but he's essentially a comedy character. Most of us figured he'd be with Vickie for a few months and then drop her to garner even more heel heat, but then something weird happened: Vickie got really really good at drawing that same heat. There's no way you could turn Edge against Vickie now without him being the one who gets cheered, and we've seen in the past that he's just not as good when he's a face. I thought they had the perfect solution last summer when they split them with the Alicia Fox storyline, but that was all overturned without any seeming logic. Anyways, tangent aside, I don't see this being a good match. Triple Threat matches historically aren't that good unless you've got the perfect combo, and these guys ain't it. Big Show is a triple threat formula killer because he's too huge to be realistically taken out for too long, and Cena has never been good in this format. I would predict Edge finds a way to retain as the stips cater to his character and I feel like there's a good shot Cena will be shipped to Smackdown in the draft to continue his pursuit of the gold, but I also think this title needs to change hands, so...
Winner (and new champion): The Big Show


Triple H (c) vs Randy Orton
The main event that actually feels like a main event. Demonstrating what I said in the last paragraph, HHH and Orton have feuded and wrestled time and time again, but they're good enough and have enough history that this feud has still felt top notch and among the most emotionally intense in recent memory in its best moments. The not-so-good moments have been when Triple H has come off looking like too much of a badass, which, unfortunately, have been a bit too numerous. This feud really could have been taken to even the next level with more stuff like Orton DDTing Stephanie while HHH is handcuffed and helpless and less HHH destroying Orton's house without consequence. More than probably any other main event in the past few years, this one has felt like an old school WrestleMania feud where the bad guy has the upper hand for months and we can't wait to see the good guy get his revenge. Unfortunately, the good guy has already gotten his revenge on numerous occasions, so it's a bit anticlimatic. HHH has already gotten the best of Orton plus he already has the belt, so where's the suspense? This is where there not being a dominant heel champion going into 'Mania (Edge has only had the belt a month) hurts things because you can't get that big payoff. To boot, Orton has been made to look weak too many times. That promo Orton gave on Monday summing up the total history between him and HHH and then ending with the attack on Steph was dynamite, because it set up him being one step ahead, but then HHH coming out with Vince & Shane to beat down Legacy put things back a step. From a storyline standpoint, it would certainly be more interesting to see Orton get the belt here and HHH get drafted to Raw to try and get it back (I think he's headed back there regardless), but I doubt we'll get that.
Winner: Triple H

Paragraph Movie Reviews: Rachel Getting Married

This is a very uneven movie. There are some extremely intense, powerful scenes and wonderful character dynamics built, but there are also such long stretches where nothing really happens and I found myself very bored. Honestly, the last half hour or so felt like I was just watching somebody's wedding video and I'd only get yanked out of it when they showed Anne Hathaway because I wondered when she was going to snap. Speaking of Anne Hathaway, she's absolutely brilliant and I don't think I would have checked in with the rest of what was going on around her if not for her performance. She completely inhabits her characters and does a great job of making you feel uncomfortable with every facial tick or body movement because you're nervous she's going to do something terrible and awkward. When she's at the center of things, the movie takes on a tremendous sense of both urgency and realism. But then during the scenes she's not in, I was just kinda counting the seconds until it was over. Don't get me wrong, there's nobody in the cast who was bad; Rosemarie DeWitt is solid throughout as the titular Rachel, Bill Irwin is borderline disturbing as the shellshocked father and Deborah Winger brings a lot to her smaller role as the deatched mother, but when held up against Hathaway's performance, they all seem just ok. All the best scenes are the ones where Hathaway is interacting with her family, in particular the explosive confrontation between mother and daughter at the film's most pivotal moment; but any time it's combinations of cast members other than Hathaway, it falls flat. Hence, uneven. Also, no amount of makeup was able to make Anne Hathaway really look like a strung out junkie as opposed to a gorgeous movie star, but I guess that's nature's fault. Thumbs up for Anne Hathaway's performance, thumbs in the middle for this flick as a whole.

Linko!

It's Friday, which means if you're anything like me you're sitting around, listening to Live at Budokan and waiting for something interesting to happen until the weekend starts. If you're jonesing for something fun to read while you kill the rest of your 9 to 5, well...scroll down and read Ben's better post on Deadpool. But if you've already read that, here are some links I found on Twitter this morning worth a clicky.

* Via Scott Pilgrim creator and known Canadian Bryan Lee O'Malley comes a story on how the Girl Scouts now have a comics merit badge. Actually, I'm not 100% that the Girl Scouts call them merit badges, but as someone who was a Boy Scout for near 15 years I'm not looking up their terminology out of sheer jealousy.

* Everyone knows Marvel's Agent M is king nerd of Twitter, but what that means for us is that sometimes he posts interesting links from other folks who aren't super obsessed with zombies and tacos. Today, he brought word of a corporate change in the owners of the classic Harvey Comics characters library, which will now be owned under the Boomerang Media banner. From the looks of it, this is just two guys who used to own the characters buying them back, so I doubt we'll see any new Hot Stuff comics in 2009. Crummy.

* If you're looking for another massive time suck try this Wiki for public domain superheroes, the linking of which reminds me that you can also lose valuable hours reading public domain Golden Age comics for free.

* Finally, the Agent of the M brings a video of a dude playing the '90s X-Men cartoon theme over on his Tumblr blog.

Essentials Extra: Deadpool by Joe Kelly Must Reads

Honestly, there's not one of Joe Kelly's 33 issues of Deadpool--plus the various annuals and specials--I wouldn't heartily recommend, but if you're looking for the creme de la creme and don't have hundreds of dollars to shell out to some dude over eBay like my buddy Jordan, here are the ones you really need to check out...

DEADPOOL #3 - "Stumped! Or...This Little Piggy Went...Hey! Where's The Piggy?!" I'm a sucker for any time 'Pool pines after Siryn, the fiery redhead then of X-Force (currently of X-Factor) whom he considered his one true love. Mark Waid first hooked them up in the second Deadpool mini, "The Circle Chase," then Kelly took the ball and ran with it. Deadpool spends so much time posturing and putting on his facade of ego and wisecracks, that it's always nice to see a different side of him, i.e. the one that turns into a nervous schoolboy whenever Siryn shows up. The nice thing is, while she doesn't totally reciprocate his feelings, Siryn does believe in Wade in a way nobody else does and there is something there. She wants him to be a better man, and at the end of the day, she's probably the only person he truly wants to be better for. Kelly understood how to play their interactions for laughs, but also how to really tug at the heartstrings, and this was his first shot to do so. The next two issues are also required reading, I guess, since they continue the story (and Deadpool fights the Hulk!).

DEADPOOL #11 - "With Great Power Comes Great Coincidence"
Not only my favorite issue of Deadpool, but probably the funniest single comic I have ever read. Kelly (with much assistance from editor Matt Idelson I have been told) came up with the brilliant idea to take an old Amazing Spider-Man comic and "Forrest Gump" Deadpool into the role of Peter Parker and Blind Al into Aunt May. Kelly doesn't just make up some generic Spidey story either, he uses an actual issue and changes nothing except the dialogue of "Peter" and "May" and their reactions to the ridiculously 70's shit going on around them. Al thinking Mary Jane is having a seizure when she starts go go dancing in the middle of a living room and Wade being terrified by the Osborns' brillo hair are just two of the great gags that make up this issue. Kraven is the villain du jour and is a perfect pick because there's plenty about Kraven in the abstract that is ridiculous. But really it's Deadpool's bizarre interactions with the likes of Gwen Stacy and Flash Thompson that steal the show. Before anybody with a scanner and Photoshop could "remix" comics, we had this: 64 pages of sheer hilarity that I'll hold up against anything even remotely similar that has come since. And I didn't even mention the secret origin of Weasel!

DEADPOOL #14 - "In Absentia"
In the aftermath of some truly heinous events, Deadpool snaps and takes it out on Al and Weasel, throwing the blind old lady into a room filled with broken glass, needles and worse--and not for the first time. This issue is all about Al and why living with Deadpool is not funny in the least. It's a total break in style from the comedy of previous issues and truth be told it's issues like this that give the series its depth. We laugh with Deadpool and forget that he is a very disturbed man with an incredibly twisted sense of ethics. Every hero's journey has some sort of "rock bottom" chapter before the climb back to the top begins, but this is different, and it sets Deadpool apart from most characters in comics. Like Al, you can believe in Wade and you can root for Wade, but you can never truly trust Wade. After this story, you will never look at Deadpool the same way again. And poor Weasel...

DEADPOOL #25 - "What The World Needs Now"
On the other end of the spectrum, here is Deadpool in his finest hour. It's the culmination of everything Kelly spent over two years building, and it does not disappoint. Wade gets his chance to prove he's a hero, but it turns out the choices he needs to make aren't easy ones and he ain't getting a tickertape parade at the end of this one: they needed him because they need something killed. He needs to go through no less than Captain America, in a great fight because it swings from the inherent humor of two such polar opposite characters interacting to the very serious burden Deadpool feels when doing the right thing means going against the guy the Marvel Universe considers its patron saint. If "In Absentia" shows why the things that make Deadpool not your traditional knight in shining armor also make him kinda terrifying, "What The World Needs Now" demonstrates why sometimes you need a monster to do the things that the bright shiny heroes can't. Lots of resolution for lots of characters here and plenty of payoff for various Easter eggs, but nothing bigger than Deadpool's big moment and his realization that destiny doesn't intend for him to have a happy ending.

DEADPOOL #27 - "Look! It's Wolverine!"
As the cover says, "...in his most gratuitous guest appearance ever!" Gotta love that this book put stuff like that on the cover. This wasn't the deepest issue, as Kelly was really kinda winding things down at this point, but hey, it's an awesome fight between Deadpool and Wolverine that 'Pool instigates after Logan initially refuses by knocking Kitty Pryde into the air with a move from Street Fighter II. Oh, and Howard the Duck's archenemy Doctor Bong is acting as Deadpool's therapist. Do you really need more sell than that? Well then I can't help you, because you obviously hate joy.

DEADPOOL #33 - "The End of the End or Happy Entrails To You"
Joe Kelly's final issue of Deadpool has Wade in mortal combat with his bitter rival, T-Ray, as they try and untangle their convoluted shared origin in one of the most confusing comics ever. The glorious thing is that I'm pretty sure Kelly meant for it to be that confusing, because about three quarters of the way through, Deadpool just basically says, "Fuck it--I don't understand any of this, but I'm Deadpool, a snarky dude with guns and knives who likes to make wiseass comments and kick people and you really don't need to know much more than that to enjoy what I do!" It's a perfect conclusion to Kelly's run and a brilliant bit of meta commentary in a series that had more of that than you'd expect.

SUPERMAN/BATMAN ANNUAL #1 - "Stop Me If You've Heard This"
Y'know what, I'm not gonna give this one away other than to say that seven years later, Joe Kelly still had one great Deadpool story left to tell, and he told it in the most unlikely of places. Enjoy.

"Gambit and the WHAT?!"

I told this story two or three times to buds last week, so I figure maybe it's worth throwing out there for mass consumption.

Rickey and I were riding the train home, talking comics as we often do ("One works for Marvel, one works for DC--and they ride the train together talking loudly about comics while people around them stare and make faces!" Please call us, VH1 reality TV producers), and came to the topic of how terrifying and yet great it is when comics actually make you feel like the characters and worlds you dig are in legitimate danger. Today as jaded industry professionals who have access to the Internet, we don't find ourselves in that position so often, but we reminisced about the good ol' days and how crazy it must have been to have been reading Crisis On Infinite Earths as it came out and not know what the fuck was gonna happen next.

So I shared the comics experience I had as a kid that scared the piss out of me because I legitimately feared my favorite comics were in dire straits: the Age of Apocalypse

I remember well cracking open an issue of Wizard in early 1995-ish and my jaw dropping when the headline above an Adam Kubert-drawn picture of Jubilee in a cowboy hat waving goodbye on the last page of Wolverine #75 read: "X-Men Titles Cancelled?" (or something to that effect).

What?!

How could they cancel X-Men? It was the best-selling, coolest, most popular comic in the universe! And besides that, there were like 27 X-Men books! What the heck would Marvel replace them with? Besides, Generation X was only on like issue #3? Why bother launching a title if you were going to cancel it?!?!

I actually wasn't reading Generation X (or X-Factor or Excalibur or Wolverine or Cable), but I was still picking up Uncanny X-Men and X-Men and X-Force was easily one of my top five perennial favorites--so what the hell, man?!

The Wizard article was short on details. It basically said, "We've heard rumors that X-Men books are being cancelled. We don't know anything else," and there were no quotes. Knowing now how the biz works, I'm sure that Marvel had disclosed at least a large chunk of the gameplan to and instructed how much to tease, but as a 13-year old, I really thought Wizard had come across the Marvel equivalent of the Watergate tapes.

There was no Internet back then (or I didn't have it), so I had no way of figuring out what this junk was all about, save for one avenue: the Mighty Marvel Hotline.

Yes, back then Marvel had a toll free number you could call once a week and a dude who sounded like Mr. Moviefone would throw a bunch of hypey newsbits at you. If there was any way I was going to learn more details on this impending X-Men catastrophe, the MMH held the answers.

For the first two weeks or so, I got nada (probably just stuff about the Clone Saga or the Crossing). Then, on week three, I hit the jackpot.

MMH Guy had all the details on the "wild rumors swirling around the X-Men" and explained that as of the summer, all the X-Men books would be undergoing "radical changes." While the exact nature of how and why was not up for discussion at the time, the MMH did have the inside track on the new titles each book would be taking on...

Uncanny X-Men would become Astonishing X-Men! X-Men would become Amazing X-Men! X-Factor would become Factor X! Excalibur would become X-Calibre (not sure how they conveyed that was a different title over the phone, but they did somehow)! Wolverine would become Weapon X! Cable would become X-Man! Generation X would become Generation Next!

And X-Force would become...Gambit & the X-Ternals?

Gambit and the WHAT?!

So while every other X-title stayed at least semi-consistent when the big shift to the AoA happened as far as tone and feature characters, instead of following the adventures of Cannonball and friends in Apocalypse's world, I got an interstellar jewel heist with Gambit, Lila Cheney, Strong Guy, Jubilee and Sunspot.

It wasn't a bad story and the creative team of Fabian Nicieza and Tony Daniel remained intact (for the first two issues, then Tony got subbed out for a young Salvador Larocca), but it was probably a bit more jarring change for us X-Force fans than readers of X-Factor or Wolverine got.

Then when AoA ended, Fabian didn't come back, and X-Force as I knew it was done.

So I guess I was right to be nervous. Stupid Mighty Marvel Hotline...

I'll Buy That For a Dollar?: Biff Bam Pow! #1

Biff Bam Pow! #1 (Amaze Ink/SLG Publishing)
October, 2007
Evan Dorkin (w/Sarah Dyer) (W/A)

There was a brief period a few years back where I could get almost any comic covered in Wizard if I put enough thought into it. See, with issue #179, the mag upped it's size from the standard comic book dimensions to what they call "B-Size" or in layman's terms "normal magazine size." The switch called for a few cosmetic changes to Wizard – design tweaks, a staple binding as opposed to glue, less pages but more words on them. Some fans were upset that they couldn't store new issues in their comic boxes. Tim Leong made a video about it. It was kind of a thing.

ANYWAY, the big difference for those of us who worked on staff was that the change in size brought with it a semi-perceptible change in editorial focus. At the time, Wizard was also firing full guns on its web coverage, so all kinds of breaking news stories were handed off to the online staff. And in a further move to make the magazine competitive our E-i-C Pat McCallum put out the call that as far as content was concerned, the more we could squeeze in the better. Issues of Wizard in those days were jam-packed with massive list features that culled entries from across the pop culture spectrum rather than just comics, scads of short interviews with everyone from comic creators who didn't rank in the magazine's fabled "Top Ten" lists and to semi-famous Hollywood types and a wild mix of suddenly workable one-page features on somewhat trivial superhero ephemera. And that was in addition to the regular marquee comics new features most people associate the magazine with. It was a really fun time to be working at Wizard as the staff was still large enough (editorial was around 13 people with another 6 or so in-house contributors) to juggle the higher ratio of story ideas, and in general we all went kind of bonkers pushing our own particular comic passions into Wizard's pages wherever we could.

For me, that meant pitching as much indie comics coverage as I could get away with while still typing up my features on Civil War. Indie coverage in the magazine most often was relegated to the "Secret Stash" section slotted back between the review pages and the price guide. And while all the indie/alt comics-minded staffers loved to deliver some cool feature content in the Stash, I always wanted to cover the books I loved frequently and out front. With so many mid-level superhero pitches graduating to the higher word counts of the one-page feature, the formerly spandex heavy news section at the very front of the mag became my best bet for indie real estate. So long as I could come up with a broad enough hook (the idea being that "this comic is awesome" wouldn't always sell an indie article to X-Men fans), News Editor Andy Serwin would give me some column space out front to plug whatever black and white title I saw fit. And really, digging for those hooks taught me a lot and made for some fun stories. I remember running a news piece on Rick Spears and Chuck BB's favorite Norwegian metal records for the release of their Oni Press OGN Black Metal that turned out great as well as a "true life comic tales" item that placed Jason Lutes, Nick Bertozzi and R. Crumb mere pages away from Aquaman fart jokes (or, you know, something like that).

And at one point, I interviewed Evan Dorkin about Biff Bam Pow! #1 for the News section. (Yes, the above really was all preamble to a review) Interviewing the cartoonist is a lot like reading Dorkin's comics – a few minutes in and his obvious love of the comics medium and its greatest artists smashes right up against his deep-seeded disdain for all the crazy, borderline criminal fucking bullshit pulled off by the industry, and somewhere in between the two you laugh your ass off. Seeing as Biff Bam Pow! was billed in Previews as a compilation of fight comics, my Wizard pitch involved Dorkin picking out his all-time favorite comic book fight scenes, almost all of which came straight out of Jack Kirby's Marvel heyday. It was really a fucking blast, let me tell you. There are so many worse things to do at your job than talk to Evan Dorkin on the phone for an hour as he flips through his Marvel Essentials volumes and explains what really turns him on about Kirby's wild, muscle-bound grappling matches while simultaneously lamenting how most of the Marvel talent to follow him totally missed the boat on what made the original comics assault reader's eyes with awesomeness.

Unfortunately, two real bummers came upon me after I hung up the phone that day. First, the story never ran in Wizard. We were on a tight deadline by the time I'd gotten Dorkin on the phone, and as I scrambled to work up a draft the section had already been laid out, and we just never found the time to slot it in somewhere else. It happens. Second, I never found a copy of Biff Bam Pow! #1. Even though I lived in New York City at the time and was surrounded by countless indie-friendly comic shops, i never found a copy when it shipped (a fact that Dorkin predicted during our call). So it came as a surprise to me when I happened upon a copy of the one-shot in the Dollar Bin of Dreamland Comics the local, superhero-heavy shop I frequent since moving to the Chicago suburbs. And after finally sitting down and reading the book, I'm relating this whole ridiculous story to the three of you still reading because I felt a little let down by the comic, but I also think that feeling is far more my own fault than Dorkin's.

After that phone call two years ago, Dorkin's extolling the virtues of classic Kirby had me aching for some real action comics. One of the biggest gaps in modern superhero tales in the wake of the '90s "splash pages are our god now" Image artist boom and the subsequent new millennial "the writer and his noir dialogue ticks reign supreme" wave of decompression is that no one – and I mean, fucking NO ONE – seems to draw big bombastic fight choreography for its own sake any more. And never once in our conversation did Dorkin promise me that his fight comic would shake with a storm of jagged fists and whirlwind motion lines and collapsing buildings brought on by angsty fisticuffs...but I'll be damned if I didn't really want it to.

Still, stepping outside my own completely unfair expectations, it's clear that Biff Bam Pow! is one hell of a fun comic book. Containing four stories (some reprints from older magazine gigs but anchored by two feature strips set in the world of Dorkin and wife Sarah Dyer's Kid Blastoff) centering around physical conflicts of one stripe or another, the comic is ostensibly an all-ages humor book. But considering the fact that most youngsters will never, ever come across its contents, Biff Bam Pow! holds plenty to keep the attention of us comics-obsessed adult misanthropes. For starters, the stories are really funny, but they're not funny in the angry, depraved manner of Milk and Cheese. As a kids comic, the one-shot makes great use of visual gag work with Dorkin packing in layer upon layer of detail into each panel so that on a third reading, I'm still noticing things like the fact that the boxing referee in the opening story isn't just blind – he also has a 5-cent pencil cup. The humor gets a great boost from Dorkin's cartooning as every character not only looks distinctive but even alien weirdos composed of a dozen eyeballs are wildly expressive.

And while Dorkin's adherence to the storytelling style he perfected on his more adult humor books means that the fight scenes here don't exactly grab me by the throat, I did really enjoy the moments when giant space monsters would crash into the proceedings. There's a lot of comedy to be mined from those simple setups, and I doubt anyone can really do it better. Plus, the variety in line work across the stories matches each tale's fight spectacularly well with the a two page Nutsy Monkey riff relying on a looser, animated kind of style where the adventurous Kid Blastoff feature strings in a textured creature that wouldn't look out of place in a classic Basil Wolverton strip. And while after reading this comic (and JK Parkin's recent reminder of the creative death of fun action tale Aqua Leung) I still want to watch the world collapse in a hail of headbutts drawn in thick India ink, I'm more than happy to spend the meantime with some comics displaying such solid craft.

So Biff Bam Pow!...worth a dollar? Damn skippy it was, and I'd pay a lot more if it meant we'd get more regular output from Dorkin. Even though his stuff here wasn't what I was expecting, it was way more than I deserved.