Who'd Like A Cocktail? #256

Batman's a chamomile tea fan. Who knew?

Mixed Signals?

Okay, this may have been more timely if I'd posted it last weekend but hey, I only found it yesterday.

So, it's Halloween at the offices of the Daily Planet and the whole regular crowd have dressed up:

Jimmy Olsen's dressed as Superman (oh, the irony); Cat Grant as Power Girl; Ron Troupe as Mr Terrific; someone as Zauriel and possibly Blaze (more irony!) and the ever irascible Perry White who hasn't bothered.

But who's that, over on the right of the picture?

It's Clark Kent - too busy with a story to dress up - and his wife Lois Lane.

Dressed as Wonder Woman?!

Am I the only one who finds that weird? This is a recent story and Lois knows all too well that Clark is Superman and yet she dresses up like his Amazonian fellow Justice Leaguer?! And in case you think her costume's just for the "Mayor's soiree", she still wearing it later at home:

I really don't want to even hint at the world of fan-fiction here but they're a married couple, he's going to find her attractive and she's dressed like his friend Wonder Woman . . .

Just saying, that's all . . .

A Strange Definition Of Normal

Reading through the report on DC's Event Horizon panel at Comic-Con the other day, I was frankly amazed at this line from Nick Spencer who's taking on the writing duties of the Jimmy Olsen co-feature in Action Comics:

"Jimmy Olsen’s always been one of my favorite characters… It’s about what it’s like to be a normal guy in the DC universe. He really is a normal man."

Normal? Really?!

I'm only the most casual of Superman readers but even I know there's nothing normal about this guy. He's the sort of guy who happily leaves his butt at the other end of a pipe laying in the middle of nowhere:

He's not averse to a bit of cross-dressing (and being confident enough to pull it off . . . at least in his mind):

We all know he used to be Turtle Boy, but who remembers GIANT Turtle Boy from the otherwise forgettable Countdown - he wrestled Darkseid himself:

Did I mention the cross-dressing?

He's been through so many changes, there's even a trade paperback collecting them!

But seriously, how could anyone describe a guy as "normal" when he looks like this:

Nick Spencer - you may wish to re-evaluate your thoughts on Jimmy.

Who'd Like A Cocktail? #11

"Well, cut my calories and call me skinny!" as Animal Man said back in Crisis On Infinite Earths #11. To my surprise, as well as Animal Man's, Countdown To Final Crisis gets its second Cocktail and in consecutive weeks to boot.

Teen Titans #53 was just too much - everything was crammed in with not enough room to breathe; while the series is normally excellent, Blue Beetle #21 was simply okay, possibly due to the fill-in writer; Garth Ennis's Dan Dare #1, while promising much, was simply a scene setter; amongst the other titles I picked up, the only other near contender was Uncle Sam And The Freedom Fighters #3 but, as you can see, it was Countdown that I went for.

At the risk of repeating much of what I said last week, Countdown's come in for some flak over the last six months but it appears to be shaking that off and moving the stories along, though some fare better than others - there's been no sight of Holly Robinson and the Amazons for some time now.

Mary Marvel and Eclipso managed to survive the attack by Lord Havok's ships in last issue and, it appears, Mary has finally realised Eclipso's no good for her.

Stuck on Apokolips, Jimmy Olsen's fortunes seem to swing from bad to good and right back to worse; rescued by Mr Miracle, the New God then forces Jimmy to play at one of those trust exercises that were so big in 1990's training seminars. Usually, one person gets another to fall backwards, trusting that the first will catch them, thus teaching them to be more trusting of others.

Mr Miracle's version, as shown on the right, is a lot more extreme risking the Fire Pits of Apokolips instead of the risk of falling flat on your backside. As one of the early Countdown posters said, Jimmy Olsen must die. The chances of it being at the hands of Mr Miracle, however, are fairly remote.

After the torture and beating he endured in last week's issue, Mr Mxyzptlk returns to the Fifth Dimension where he's met and consoled by his wife. Beaten to within an inch of his life, he decides to seal the entire dimension off from the Third and proclaims that he can never go back.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that at some point, Mr Mxyzptlk will actually get back to the Third Dimension. Saying something will never happen in comics is a bit . . . well, silly really. It wouldn't surprise me if a few years down the line, the wholesale slaughter of The Death Of The New Gods not withstanding, we'll see the return of a hale and hearty Big Barda, Metron, Lightray and all the others that are currently being picked off.

But I digress.

The big reason Countdown got the Cocktail this week was the apparent culmination of Trickster and Pied Piper's story. While it's been a little hit and miss and some of Trickster's jibes about Piper's sexuality have seemed more bigoted than the sort of thing long-time friends can get away with, the shocking end to their story came as a hell of a surprise. Whether this, too, is something that can be undone - like Mxyzptlk's statement of not returning will be at some point - only time will tell. Either way, it's a hell of a cliff hanger and, once again, next week's issue can't come soon enough.