Author: Glenn Hauman

All right, I’m sick of all you people coming into the city dressed in radioactive green, with whistles and leftover Mardi Gras beads– you all remind me of people who suddenly claim they’re Mets fans as soon as they make it into the playoffs.

Now, from a tip from Ariel David, comes a little video proving, once and for all, the dangers of being an amateur Irishman one day a year…

For a limited time (till the end of this week) Benbella Books has posted Adam-Troy Castro’s essay “Dear Magneto” from the book The Unauthorized X-Men:

Let’s imagine a future where you’ve taken over. Baseline human beings
are not an issue, for whatever reason. Either they’ve been
exterminated, or the mutant gene has become so dominant that everybody
possesses a superpower of some kind, or they’re just living underground,
working crap jobs like processing sewage, or sweeping the streets, or
telemarketing. Whatever. They’re irrelevant.

Everybody worth talking about has superpowers.

Further, let’s posit a fellow whose superpowers are minimal. He can
jump fifteen feet straight up, bench-press about a thousand pounds and,
while not quite bulletproof, will not be harmed by most knives. You know
the type I’m talking about. In the world you’re living in, he wouldn’t
last thirty seconds against the likes of Spider-Man, but he might be
able to give Daredevil or the Punisher a few anxious moments, on a good
day. He’s clearly a mutant, clearly a guy whose chromosomes buy him a
place in this mutant paradise of yours, but not a person who poses any
serious threat to the entrenched power structure.

Do you know what the citizens of your mutant paradise would call this
man? I mean, aside from his given name?

Human, that’s what they’d call him.

Your citizens would inevitably develop a value system similar to that
demonstrated by comic book readers, who are known for deriding mutants
with less-than-impressive powers as lame. They’d look upon a guy like
our bulletproof high-jumper and say, well, he’s not really all that.
He’s practically normal. He’s almost (shudder) Batman.

Read the essay, and buy the book.

It’s disturbing how well the two of these stories can be combined.

So let’s see– that means Nervous Rex is Killer Croc in the sequel, and Kelsey Grammer does the voice of the Penguin… but where do we put John Ratzenberger? The Riddler?

What do you say, Christopher Nolan? Are you up for rebooting one more franchise?

People Magazine reports that Peter Graves, who starred in TV’s Mission Impossible, and later spoofed his persona in the Airplane comedies, died in Los Angeles on Sunday at the age of 83.

In honor of his memory, I’m going to go watch some gladiator films which will self-destruct in five seconds.

Or we can just sit back and watch his role in It Conquered The World:

And along the way, he goes into the cost of doing business in Hollywood, the importance of writers being paid, and how to deal with producer Richard Saperstein. Take a look.

UPDATE: The article is now on ComicMix after it was taken down from the original site. Further details to come.