MARTHA THOMASES: If I Could Talk to the Animals
Is there anything more wonderful than a super-pet? A companion who can do anything you can do, and more. When I was a kid, there was nothing I wanted more than a super-pet to call my own.
Actually, what I wanted was Krypto. I lived in a relatively small Ohio town, with a backyard, and I really wanted a dog. My parents decided I could have one for my tenth birthday, so throughout elementary school I daydreamed about what kind of dog I would get. If I had Krypto, we could go for romps in space (not that I would have named “romp” as one of my favorite activities at the time, since no one I knew ever had one. Still, they looked like fun in the comics). We could play the greatest games of fetch ever. Krypto could help me hide my toys from my sister. Krypto could help me in my never-ending efforts to dig a hole to China.
On the other hand, there were leash laws in my neighborhood, and I wasn’t sure that I was strong enough to take Krypto for a walk. And what did a Kryptonian dog eat? In the comics, sometimes we’d see him with a massive bone from a dinosaur. There weren’t a lot of those at Loblaws Supermarket.
Ace, the Bathound, was not as cool. I couldn’t understand why Batman needed an animal companion. I didn’t understand how Ace could communicate any information from clues he’d sniffed. And I didn’t understand how the mask was a fool-proof disguise.
When Supergirl got Streaky, the supercat, I wasn’t as interested. Streaky didn’t have much of a character. No one I knew had a cat. I didn’t understand what the big deal was about an animal that wouldn’t do tricks and wouldn’t play with you in the back yard. It was only when I moved to college and lived in a dorm room that I understood feline appeal. A cat may not fetch, but is a good study-mate, keeping to itself or purring in your lap while you got your work done.
Supergirl also had Comet, the super-horse. The intent, I think, was to appeal to girls who are said to be especially drawn to horses for all kinds of psychosexual reasons. I like horses okay, but not enough to clean out stalls or braid their tails. Later, when it was revealed that Comet was sometimes a centaur and sometimes an enchanted man, it got too icky for me. Still, a flying horse would be big fun.
The thing about superhero costumes is, you can get away with a lot of cheating. Costumes appear to stay attached by magic (particularly to areas featuring naughty bits), usually contain no wrinkles or folds, pretty much be painted on what would otherwise be nude bodies, because the characters wearing them aren’t real people who actually move and have bodies which feature internal organs and such.
I know, I know, no fanboy out there in the land of Heroes, Star Wars, Star Trek and the like even watches soaps on daytime television.
There is no better way to end a week than a little trip to the local bar – and in comics the bar "local" to EVERYwhere happens to be Munden‘s! For about 70 issues of GrimJack, Munden’s Bar was a fan favorite and now its coming back – and FREE – to ComicMix on Friday, October 5th. The Big ComicMix Broadcast sneaks you in the back door for a peek at the bar’s Grand Reopening as we talk with writer/co-creator John Ostrander and ComicMix rabble-rouser and editor-in-chief Mike Gold, plus offers a wake-up call for 24 Hour Comic Day, tells you how Nancy Drew (!) solves the DS (?), what Paul Dini’s up to, where Death Note is going, and how Daredevil sells out!
Yesterday, retailers received the following e-mail from Diamond, DC Comics’ exclusive distributors to comic shops:
A little mini-browsing around the internets the last few days has come up with the following:
Coming this October to ComicMix –The Adventures of Simone & Ajax! This is the story of Simone, a fun-loving 20-year-old girl, and Ajax, her friend who happens to be a small, green dinosaur. Together they find themselves in a series of strange and wacky adventures, taking them to many different lands, times, and places. Simone is not so much the leader of the duo, but more the instigator, looking to have fun and often acting before she thinks, getting herself and Ajax into trouble and so into their adventures. She’s not dumb, just over-zealous. Ajax, the dinosaur, is the more sensible of the two. While deep down he loves adventure, too, he’d rather ponder and worry before leaping into the fray.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not exactly what you would call an early adopter. I’ve tended to view many modern trappings more like modern traps. I readily admit to being one of those mean people who applauded when Apple lowered the price on its iPhone, a product I anticipate never needing nor owning, nodding at the observation that the $200 extra for the debut version (sold to people who actually queued up to buy an expensive status symbol readily available in plentiful quantity in stores and online) should be considered a sucker tax. I believe our affluent society is way too dependent on and obsessive over technological conveniences which will either soon achieve sentience at which point we’ll happily welcome our electronic overlords, or will utterly break down at the next super-solar flareup and leave us with the self-reliance level of children.
