SKJAM! News and Reviews

For comparison purpose, here's some competition for Atlas war comics. This page is from the lead story in the first issue of G. I. COMBAT, published with an October 1952 cover date. While that makes this title a latecomer, it proved one of the most successful war comics. It was published by Quality, the company that gave us Plastic Man and the Blackhawks during the Golden Age of Comics. When Quality sold out to DC in 1956, G. I. COMBAT was one of the two titles (BLACKHAWK was the other) that DC continued publishing. The title lasted into the 1980s, long after Marvel had given up on the genre. So G. I. COMBAT must have been doing something right -- but by what standard?

The art here is credited to Reed Crandall, Quality's ace who also did some EC stories in this era. It exemplifies Quality's house style: clean, well rendered, often bland. A difference I notice is that Crandall's art here is less expressive than the Atlas stuff. I identify Atlas art with strong facial expressions, especially in the horror books. Crandall's work is laconic, perhaps deliberately so -- but to what end?

Been doing long overdue rewatch of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and I am struck by the bodycount in a way I think might be unique to someone who grew up when the series first aired.

I'd forgotten just how many people, particularly young high school students, die in the early episodes. Season 1 ends with a bloody massacre of the AV club and the school dance still happens in that episode, canonically a day or two later.

I kept watching and thought how every other episode of the show would be a grisly, national tragedy in the real world. The kindly science teacher's headless corpse found in the cafeteria fridge. A ballet student's heart ripped out, the apparent suicide of a computer science prodigy. The principal is eaten alive by school bullies. A young foreign exchange student is mummified and stuffed in his own luggage. Parent-Teacher night is attacked by a gang of vampires and leave a half-devoured body on the school lawn.

A demon openly vaporizes several shoppers at the local mall - ended by a Buffy returning the favor with a stolen rocket launcher. Indoors. At the mall.

And the authorities, it seems, are at least somewhat aware of what's going on. Disaffected invisible girls swooped up by federal agents. Vampire attacks explained away as PCP-fueled gang violence by the cops and school officials. As if that is all the response that is needed.

Famously, the airing of a third season Buffy episode was postponed because it involved an apparent school shooter...around the same time the Columbine Massacre happened.

I remember back when Columbine was shocking. A watershed. Now the mass slaughter of schoolkids at every level is horrific business-as-usual. Politicians will say with a shrug, "I guess it was our turn" or blame it on minorities...anything but the real monsters.

In the time since I last saw Buffy, the monsters of Sunnydale High no longer unnerve me. What scares me is how the school, the whole damn town feels too familiar, now. A town that stubbornly carries on, frantically ignoring the horrors and the bodies piling up all around them.

Eddie you pushed a guy onto the fucking train tracks!

That is like, silent movie villain level evil.

New on CVG-TV:

“Yokai Monsters: Karakasa-obake” © Richard Svensson, accessed at his dA gallery here

[The kasa-obake is perhaps one of the most recognizable yokai, and one with a surfeit of names. They’re also known as kasabake, karakasa-obake and karakasa kozo. Regardless of the name, they’re delightful little guys, and the inspiration for the Pokemon move Lick. ]

Kasa-obake CR 2 CN Construct (tsukumogami) Hopping forth from the darkness is a comical, yet unnerving, creature—an umbrella given somewhat humanoid form. It lopes along on only a single leg and gazes with only a single eye. Its long tongue hangs from its mouth and probes ahead of it like an obscene feeler.

Kasa-obake are one of the more common and beloved forms of tsukumogami, the creatures spontaneously created from antique objects. Despite their grotesque appearance, kasa-obake are friendly and playful creatures. They love to play pranks, moving small belongings, rearranging furniture and, their favorite, sneaking up behind an unsuspecting victim and planting an oily lick on the back of their neck. The paralytic ooze that drips from their tongue wears off quickly.

Many urban monsters, both good and evil, delight in the appearance of a kasa-obake and will adopt them as a mascot. Kasa-obake are naïve creatures and can take after their monstrous cohorts as a child raised badly may turn to wicked deeds themselves.

Peter, lots of people do it! Just punch him in the faaacceee!

So...I mean SOMEONE was responsible for Kraven's death

And Peter was definately...there...

But that's not...what happened...as such...

Well the real take away here is that they're not your PARENTS, Peter but...I feel like you might be having a moment right now.

He has just been extremely surprised and upset.

For the last few hours he has been very busy. He may be deaf and a little hard of thinking, but elderly wizards have very well-trained survival instincts, and they know that when a tall figure in a black robe and the latest in agricultural handtools starts looking thoughtfully at you it is time to act fast. The servants have been dismissed. The doorways have been sealed with a paste made from powdered mayflies, and protective octograms have been drawn on the windows. Rare and rather smelly oils have been poured in complex patterns on the floor, in designs which hurt the eyes and suggest the designer was drunk or from some other dimension or, possibly, both; in the very centre of the room is the eightfold octogram of Witholding, surrounded by red and green candles. And in the centre of that is a box made from wood of the curly-fern pine, which grows to a great age, and it is lined with red silk and yet more protective amulets. Because Greyhald Spold knows that Death is looking for him, and has spent many years designing an impregnable hiding place.

He has just set the complicated clockwork of the lock and shut the lid, lying back in the knowledge that here at last is the perfect defence against the most ultimate of all his enemies, although as yet he has not considered the important part that airholes must play in an enterprise of this kind.

He knew.

The bastard KNEW.

At least three inhabited planets reduced to rubble, a dozen galaxies placed under threat of annihilation, the Earth caught in the center of a battle that would be waged for the fate of all existence against a mad tyrant seeking to remake all of creation in his own vile image.

And President Lex Luthor knew about it. MONTHS in advance. And he kept it to himself to make himself look good. And then he lied about it. And he used a convicted fugitive TO lie about it. And then he tried to kill us all so he could reign over the ashes.

(A "war poster" created during Luthor's administration and the Imperiex War)

The Imperiex War as it has come to be known was an assault on the Earth that caused devastating damage to Topkea, Kansas, the island of Themyscira and half a dozen other locations and was instigated by the mad alien Imperiex. Seeking to undo the "imperfection" he sensed in the universe by destroying all of creation as we know it and resetting things with a new big bang. Which would, of course, kill all beings in THIS universe not counting all the sentient beings he killed in his regular military actions against planets that happened to be in his way. The death toll on Earth was upwards of 7 million, the death toll in the wider universe is beyond our ability to count.

And Lex Luthor knew about it nearly a year in advance.

Superman had gone off to fight one of Imperiex's probes during their FIRST planetary assault. Bringing back information about Imperiex's plans, his army, his tactics, everything we could possibly have needed to begin assembling defensive plans and marshalling resources for the arrival of the enemy's first wave.

Save that most of that defensive posture would probably have including a combined plan, using the Earth's superhuman defenders as the vanguard and spear point in any counterattack. And they'd get most of the credit, because they'd do most of the fighting and bleeding for Earth's future. As they most often do.

Instead he waiting until the attack arrived, catching world governments AND the superhero community flat footed so that he could make the "hard choices" of basing most of his defensive strategy around allying himself with Pokolistani dictator General Zod and literal space god of tyranny Darkseid. Also giving him the leeway in the midst of a global panic to "draft" superheroes outside the confines of the law (even Article X, which he never invoked despite this being the kind of situation it was made for), toss them out on hastily planned suicide missions so that eventually he would be the one making grand speeches and standing for the flag in the aftermath.

And we won. Barely. Because our heroes are the kind of people who can find the light in a situation like that and pull our fat out of the fire. After 7. Million. Deaths. And the devastation of a major American city that in many ways still hasn't recovered.

Lois Lane and Clark Kent of the Daily Planet, because they are VERY good at their jobs, uncovered a trail stating that President Luthor did intentionally sabotage Earth's defense for the sake of his own popularity. Using this information they got him to commit to testify about it under oath, using the psychic powers of the Martian Manhunter as an actually effective lie detector test. Backed into this legal corner Luthor then pardoned and began working with internationally convicted terrorist Manchester Black, using Black's mental abilities to shield and misdirect the Manhunter's scans. A bit of legal chicanery that temporary cost both Lane and Kent their jobs and their reputations.

It was only after Black turned on Luthor, shortly before Black's suicide that the truth began to come to light. A desperate Luthor once AGAIN keeping the existence of a massive Kryptonite meteor a secret for weeks in an attempt to either solve it himself OR shift blame to Superman and then finally settling on a Vault Tec style plan to ride out the crashing of the asteroid and reign over the Earth's ashes. He failed, again. And this time when he was caught on national television ranting like a madman in a public brawl with Superman wearing Apokoliptan war armor there was no pretense left to be had.

I’ve been catching up on a lot of books on DC Universe Infinite, and I noticed that Mark Waid’s Justice League Unlimited has Billy Batson going back to being called Captain Marvel. It’s the first time in nearly two decades Billy has officially used the name again.

Back in Judd Winick and Howard Porter’s The Trials of Shazam!, Billy took the place of the Wizard Shazam and passed the role of Captain Marvel on to Freddy Freeman.

Then Flashpoint and the New 52 completely reshaped the Shazam Family. Billy’s superhero name became Shazam, and he shared his powers with his foster siblings Mary Bromfield, Freddy Freeman, Pedro Peña, Eugene Choi, and Darla Dudley.

Honestly, I may have been in the minority, but the name change worked for me. DC couldn’t legally publish a book called Captain Marvel anymore, so all modern Billy Batson books were titled Shazam. Plus, growing up, most kids I knew called him Shazam anyway.

The real issue wasn’t the name change. It was the logistics of it. If Billy says “Shazam,” he transforms. So how does he introduce himself without revealing his identity? Thankfully, there was a clever in-story explanation that the magic words only work when spoken with conviction. It reminded me of Harry Potter, where the spells weren’t just about saying the words correctly. The intent and focus mattered too. So many scenes were focus on the characters saying the words correctly in classes.

Still, Billy had another problem: nobody else in the family really had proper superhero identities. Mary was briefly called Lady Shazam, Freddy became King Shazam for a while as a nod to his Elvis-inspired Captain Marvel Jr. roots, but none of it stuck. Pedro, Eugene, and Darla had unique personalities but just went by their regular names.

That’s where the Shazam naming convention started to fall apart. The problem wasn’t removing “Marvel” from Billy’s name. The problem was that there never seemed to be much effort to give the rest of the family distinct identities, power sets, or superhero roles.

Interestingly, recent stories seemed to be fixing that.

After the family lost their powers during Teen Titans Academy and Shazam! (2021), Mary regained hers in The New Champion of Shazam!, initially taking the name Shazam herself.

During Lazarus Planet: Revenge of the Gods, Billy returned as Shazam while Mary reclaimed the name Mary Marvel. More importantly, their powers became differentiated. Billy’s abilities still came from Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury, while Mary’s powers came from a completely different pantheon tied to goddesses like Selene, Hippolyta, Artemis, Zephyrus, Aurora, and Minerva.

Then Mark Waid and Dan Mora’s Shazam! (2023) pushed the concept even further. Billy started going simply by “The Captain,” and while Pedro, Eugene, and Darla remained powerless, the series heavily foreshadowed their return. The Rock of Eternity scenes involving magical artifacts connected them to identities like Mr. Atom, Eugene the Invincible, and Bulletgirl.

Freddy also gained an entirely new set of powers through Hephaestus’s Amber Lightning and became The Commander gaining powers from Samson, Hephaestus, All-Father, Zagreus, Airgetlam, and Midas.

That was an exciting direction the Shazam Family was taking. Distinct names, unique magical sources, and individualized powers made each character feel like their own hero instead of alternate versions of Billy.

So for me, the issue post-Flashpoint was never whether Billy should be called Captain Marvel or Shazam. It was that the superhero family lacked identity beyond Billy himself.

And while I’m happy Billy, Mary, and Freddy have their powers back, I’d still like to see Pedro, Eugene, and Darla fully restored as heroes too. Whether intentional or coincidental, it doesn’t look great that the only members of the family left powerless are the characters of color.

There is...no ethical outcome from that description of this machine.

I AM A WOMAN OF SCIENCE, NOT OF WAR!

I BUILT THE DEATH RAY TO HELP MANKIND!

Nerd…

There is...no ethical outcome from that description of this machine.

I AM A WOMAN OF SCIENCE, NOT OF WAR!

I BUILT THE DEATH RAY TO HELP MANKIND!

So, having recently rewatched the Disney Robin Hood movie (the one where everyone is anthropomorphic animals) I am thinking about Robin Hood as a crossover character. He's had a lot of changes over the centuries; tying him specifically to the reign of Prince John didn't happen until about four hundred years after that event, for example. So, what are some of the core aspects of the character that make him Robin Hood?

He's English. While Robin's exact nationality is perhaps flexible, he exists within the conversation of what rights and duties Englishmen have. The further we get from England, the more you will need to adjust the political settings of the background and story.

He's a criminal. Robin Hood works outside the law, and often against it. He might reluctantly work with a law enforcement officer against a worse criminal, but he's suspicious at best of the system, and often considers it outright corrupt.

Despite being a criminal, Robin has a very strong set of ethical principles. He does not steal from people who can't afford it, does not accumulate wealth for himself but distributes it to those who need it, avoids needless killing (but won't hesitate to kill if he has to) and is courteous to women even beyond what is normal for his society.

Robin Hood is a trickster with a sense of humor. He enjoys playing pranks, but also laughs when the joke's on him. Some of his best friends are people who bested him once.

Robin's on the side of the little people. Even when the story for some reason makes him not a yeoman but a fallen noble, Robin Hood always stands for the poor and oppressed.

He's a good leader. Robin is charismatic, and quickly gathers a group of loyal and competent followers. While he's capable of doing missions on his own, he is also excellent at group tactics, logistics and strategy.

Robin Hood is a champion archer at a time when use of the bow was especially tied to the yeoman class. He can use sword and knife, but archery is where he truly shines, which is often a weakness as well, since he cannot resist an archery competition.

Robin is a skilled woodsman, living in the forest, poaching the King's deer, knowing all the paths and how to move without them. Once he's back in Sherwood Forest, you can't catch him.

Any other core traits you can think of? Other thoughts?

Robin is a good sport. When he clashes with Little John and loses in a fair fight, he is annoyed with himself, but not resentful towards Little John, and immediately acknowledges him as victor and the better with the quarterstaff, before inviting him to join him. (Apparently earlier versions of the story had Little John being much cannier, and a good leader in his own right, rather than the "not a deep thinker, but incredibly brave and super-loyal" archetype he'd later fill)

Robin Hood is not a womaniser. He is courteous to all women, but romantically, he remains loyal to his one true love, Marian.

In some versions Robin has the private endorsement of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard and John's mother. She shares his opinion of John's stewardship, but cannot act directly, so she aids Robin discreetly.

He respects religion, if not many aspects of the Church. He is devout in his own Christian beliefs, and some legends have him being a devotee of the Virgin Mary. However he despises the hypocrisy from religious powers as much as for the gentry, and will rob a corrupt bishop as easily as a Lord. Friar Tuck is a mendicant monk, who lives simply and humbly, which Robin respects, even if he teases Tuck about his constant appetite. (Being a mendicant monk does not tie into the usual Crusades era setting, as they weren't a thing at that point, but hermitic monks were, and the "jovial monk" archetype was already part of folklore so...)

For a fairly obvious crossover, Brother Cadfael. The Anarchy works as a time of turmoil when local lords can be awful people and corruption is everywhere in the land. It's fairly easy to come up with a reason for Robin to come to Shrewsbury or Cadfael to come to Nottingham. And we can contrast the corrupt Sheriff of Nottingham with the upright Hugh Beringar.

Arthurian legend is a bit more of a stretch, but we could set the story early in King Arthur's reign, when he is still trying to bring the other petty kingdoms under the sway of Camelot. Nottinghamshire has a bad king, and Robin Hood defends the poor and peasants under his corrupt reign, though by banditry. This allows Arthur to be the Good King who convinces Robin to at least temporarily retire and be pardoned.

Vinland Saga may be doable, as a tale of Askeladd in his younger days visiting England and meeting Robin Hood--perhaps learning something from him in the process.

We can probably also put Robin Hood in fantasy worlds that are basically Middle Ages England, like Westeros or Redwall (though we might not want to make him a fox in the latter.)

Robin Hood or a near-duplicate will also work in any other area where the central government is disorganized, the local government is oppressive to the poor and downtrodden, and law enforcement is corrupt. He might, for example, be willing to help them Duke boys against Boss Hogg.