X-ray vision. A rant.

Today being the 115th anniversary of the discovery of X-Rays, I thought I'd revive a classic post:




Since X-ray vision is one of Superman's most used powers in the Silver Age, and is therefore bound to come up time and time again in this blog, I just want to set a few things straight.

X-ray vision was created as a convenient way for Superman to locate people without tearing the roofs off of houses or crashing through walls a la Kool-Aid man. However, it soon grew in scope, becoming the source of Superman's later separately named Heat vision.

In countless issues, Superman uses his X-ray vision to fog film, irradiate things, weld things, and even recharge a dying star. I would like to say, right here and now, that X-ray vision (if it existed) DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY!!!

Look, I'm an artist not a physicist, but even I understand how X-rays work.

Superman was given X-ray vision, the power to see through solid objects (except lead). X-ray machines work by projecting low-level radioactivity or X-rays, through a solid object and onto a piece of photographic film. When the film is developed, the X-rays have created an image which shows more dense material like bone or metal (which are harder for the rays to penetrate) which may be encased in less dense material, such as flesh or wood. Since Superman is an extraterrestrial with a different physiology, it is conceivable that his vision would extend beyond the range of human sight and allow him to see other wavelengths of light or radiation (some animals can see heat, for instance) However, this would mean that Superman's eyes RECEIVE X-rays, not TRANSMIT them.

If this is the case, Superman cannot just go around fogging film and boiling water, and Heat vision is moot, or completely separate.

Now that I've got that settled, On with the blog.

Black Manta- a brief, off-topic rant

Gee, I dunno. Maybe because Manta rays are black? Oh! And you're a pirate. Pirates like being called "Black" something. Like "Black Bart" Roberts. Also, I can't help but notice that your costume and manta-shaped submarine are black. I'm sensing a design motif here. Aquaman fought a high-tech pirate named Harry Black in the 60's... he was a white dude. Heck, I always thought maybe HE was Black Manta.

I can't believe that in a market flooded with blaxploitation heroes and villains who had black in their names for no obvious reason -I'm looking at you Black Lightning and Black Goliath- someone decided Black Manta should be a black guy. I mean, I couldn't care less what BM's ethnicity is, but "Or have you never wondered why I'm called Black Manta?" . No, I never have. I just assumed it was because of the aforementioned penchant you have for your whole noir ensemble. I didn't realize that someone out there felt there weren't enough black criminals in popular fiction.

The Illegal Alien Problem. They're Taking Our Superhero Jobs!

Since Arizona's new Immigration Law has been in the news lately, ad nauseum, I thought I'd drag out another classic post. Also, I'm just too lazy to write anything new right now. I hope you enjoy it:


Seems like every day you read about another superhero job being filled by an illegal alien. I mean, first it was that guy from Krypton, going around acting like he was better than us. Next thing you know, he's bringing cousins and pets and a whole bottled city here, all taking our jobs and soaking up our yellow sunshine like there's no tomorrow.

Then, due to poor screening and security practices, the police department just hands out detective jobs to any old Martian who walks in off the street.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Next, a couple of winged weirdos from some place called Thanagar (try and find THAT on a map of the galaxy) come along and *poof!* they're in the Justice League of AMERICA. And I hear they got sweet jobs as museum curators or something. What? They too good to pick fruit or park cars?


And some Earthmen are even working for alien masters right under our noses. Did anybody ASK the Green Lantern Corps to send a guy to watch over Earth? I know I didn't. Who watches the watchmen? That's what I'd like to know!


And that Adam Strange guy! He should be here, using his skills to defend us, not some alien planet!


Even the Super-Friends internship went to a couple of aliens. Apparently, Wendy and Marvin (two decent, Earth teens) weren't good enough. The Super-Friends went and got a couple of aliens with "super powers" to take their slots. And they brought in a "space monkey". Did they even have to put that thing in quarantine??

No, it's gettin' so that a guy spends his whole life training and uses his millions of inherited dollars to become a crime fighter, only so he can see his job go to a bunch of "J'onny -come-lately's" from distant worlds. I, for one, find it sad.

Judo Master- What's Up With the Pony Tail?

I mean, seriously. Why the pony tail? Oh, sure, I know it's a tassel or a plume or something but being yellow, it just looks like you're wearing your flowing, blonde hair in a ponytail. Maybe you could trade in your pants and slippers for a poodle skirt and bobby-socks; listen to some Sinatra records after school and then head to the malt shop. I think you know where this is going.

And before anyone tries to tell me it's a Japanese thing, don't bother. I'm not buying it. Just because the Sumo Wrestler in the background has a ponytail instead of the proper Sumo bun hairdo doesn't let you off the hook, Judo Master.

Maybe that's why you became a master of the martial arts, to fend off all the beatings you got for that sissy-ass pony tail?

Get a haircut, you hippie.

The Legion of Doom. Off-Topic Rant

My son was watching "The Challenge of the Superfriends" yesterday and, once again, I shook my head in disbelief at the Legion of Doom.

Oh sure, the Superfriends comes under a lot of fire as a sad, watered-down version of the Justice League of America but personally, I think it (within the strict requirements of 1970's children's programming regulations) does a fair job of capturing the spirit of Silver-Age JLA comics. The "Cahllenge of the Superfirneds" season, in particular tends to do stories in a three-act format that reminds me very much of early Fox/Sekowski stories.

But that's not why I'm writing today.

The Legion of Doom is a great idea, executed poorly. "Thirteen of the most sinister villains of all time!" - That's some hook. So who do we have? Lex Luthor, Brainiac, Gorilla Grodd, Sinestro.. wow, we're off to a great start. Black Manta, Captain Cold, The Riddler, The Cheetah...well, they're all good, solid villains. Scarecrow, Toy Man ( a weird version dressed as a jester?) Giganta?? Really? BIZARRO and SOLOMON GRUNDY???- A backwards, omnipotent moron and a zombie?!?!

Okay, so the line-up is a little uneven. I mean, sure, every team has it's strengths and weeknesses and there need to be leaders and soldiers but Bizarro? Don't get me wrong, I love Bizarro, but he's NOT a team player. And why the Scarecrow (who never uses his fear gas, ever!) and the Riddler? Where's the Joker?? Or at LEAST the Penguin?

In their first caper, the L of D let Captain Cold do the planning. CC has been in touch with alien conquerors from Venus who want the Legion to change the Earth's climate to that of Venus, so they can invade. In exchange the Legion will rule the Earth. Okay, you guys know you live here too, right?

In the next one, Bizarro (yep, Bizarro) comes up with a plan involving made-up elements like "robalt"... and everyone goes right along. Clearly Luthor needs to be a little more involved in the planning stages!

In at least two episodes, the L of D have access to a TIME MACHINE. And when they make a mistake, they DON'T GO BACK AND TRY AGAIN!!!

Perhaps before they call the Superfriends "Superfools" once more, they should look at who has to live in a swamp.

Editor's Note: The Editors of The Flash Knew $#@! About Science!

Flash comics have a lot of "Editor's Note" captions in them. These captions are usually accompanied by a "scientific fact", the most common one being " Editor's Note: The Flash's costume expands on contact with the air, just as a life raft expands upon contact with water". Wrong! A life raft is not like one of those cheesy business cards that's really a compressed sponge. A life raft expands when you activate the compressed air cylinder attached to it. Next!

"Editor's Note: Just as the intense heat of the desert causes mirages, so Captain Cold's cold ray, by lowering the temperature to absolute zero, causes cold mirages." Extremely wrong! Mirages are not hallucinations. Mirages are optical illusions, refracted light which is bent by heat to reflect an unstable image of the sky above. Basically, wavy air reflecting a picture of the sky on the ground, which looks like water.

That's right. Water. NOT big, scary dragons.

Other Un-scientific Stuff:

And speaking of Captain Cold... In his first appearance, Cpt. Cold, aka Len Snart builds a ray gun and then breaks into a laboratory to use their cyclotron. He places his homemade ray gun into the cyclotron and bombards it, then takes it out to see what it will do? Now I'm neither a scientist nor an engineer, but shouldn't you have had to have had a PURPOSE in mind for the ray gun BEFORE you built it? I mean, how would you design a gun to do something without having any idea what you wanted it to do?? Luckily it makes things cold. It could have turned out to be a ray that waxes cars or something.

Also, Captain Cold's costume is very centered on his cold theme. Which is visually, very appealing but how practical is it? I mean, until he fires off that cold gun, he's just a dude walking around in a parka, right? How uncomfortable would that be, say nine months out of the year?


Oh, but I haven't forgotten you, Captain Boomerang (who promoted these guys to Captain, anyway?). Let me just say, that strapping the Flash to a giant boomerang has one obvious result: rendering the boomerang aerodynamically unsound. Also, if it did work, wouldn't the boomerang just bring him back to kick your ass anyway? You have to think these things through.


And, while I'm bashing the Flash's baddies, I don't care HOW slow Turtle Man is. The Flash is capable of not going fast. He's always late as Barry Allen. I think he could manage not to run past this schmuck.

You Named Her. Now Deal With It. a rant

I've noticed a sad trend in the last several years. I think I first noticed it when Fox Kids was airing that sub-par X-Men cartoon from Saban. And then, when the better-than-I-ever-dreamed feature film came out, it happened again. There were the X-Men, a jumble of old and new. The stalwart Cyclops, the tempestuous Storm, the ubiquitous Wolverine. And Jean Grey.

Wait a second. Jean Grey? So, everybody from Night Crawler to Professor X has a cool, superhero handle and this chick's name is Jean Grey? Kinda sticks out, right? Well, there's a reason for that. She used to have a superhero name. It was Marvel Girl. Now, I don't know if somewhere along the way the folks at Marvel thought that the name was too goofy, or that it was too childlike for their ultimate taking-itself-too-seriously mutant soap opera, but simply calling her by her civilian name got MY attention.

Marvel Girl, you have a great superhero name in a fine tradition of silver age naming conventions. Be proud, be loud, OWN that name!! You go, Marvel Girl!

Jimmy Olsen- What's Your Deal? a rant

"Superman's Pal" Jimmy Olsen you will- simply put- touch, handle, wear, taste, sniff, lick, eat, or drink ANYTHING.

I mean seriously, Jimmy, didn't your mom ever tell you not to put stuff in your mouth? Do you chew gum you find under tables in restaurants? It's like every issue you're becoming an alien or a monster or fat or giant, all because you can't keep your hands and mouth to yourself.

When Superman tells you not to touch something, DON'T TOUCH IT! It's like dealing with my 4-year-old!

No wonder you can't make time with Lois Lane's sister Lucy. Who knows where your hands, mouth, tongue have been?

I've lost count of the number of times you have undergone a crazy transformation and then, too embarrassed to go back to your job at the Daily Planet, joined a freak show. You're probably the only reporter with a circus union card.

Oh, Jimmy! Through your ceaseless, impulsive touching, how you've touched me!

An Open Letter to Comics Publishers. A Rant

Modern comic books are 24 pages long. Some of that space goes to advertisements- everyone needs to make ends meet. What's left is usually only part of one story that may take 4 to 6 months of issues to complete.

What's the deal?

Forty years ago, a comic book was 48 pages long (and that was reduced from the previous standard of 64 pages. Still plenty of ads, but so what?). Each 48 page comic book sold for 12 cents and contained one or two lead features (usually 12 to 15 pages) and a few back-up features (6 or 7 pages each), a text story (one to two pages) and maybe a pin-up or a one-page humor strip. But wait! Each of those lead and back-up features was a COMPLETE STORY. I mean, in some cases we are talking about a three-act play in 6 pages! But now, a comics writer can't tell a story unless it takes 80+ pages ??

Part of the problem, as I see it, is that the comics publishers want stories of a certain length that they can repackage a few months later and re-sell as a trade paperback. All you have to do is add a new cover, a few sketch pages, a forward by a comics or media personality, and BAM! you have a whole book that you can publish and you've already bought and used the text and art once and gotten money back by selling that in serial form.

Another part of the problem is that comics stories are intentionally spread out over months to keep readers coming back. Thing is, I'd just as soon have a complete story I can read now and another I can read in 30 days, as opposed to waiting 30 days and losing interest in the outcome of a cliff -hanger.

Now look, I have no problem with comics publishers making money, this is a business. But surely, there are other marketing strategies to use here.

I hear stuff all the time that comics aren't being bought by kids like they used to. No wonder. Somewhere along the way, the big two publishers (DC and Marvel) decided that the best way to sell their comics was to pitch to the collector's market. Comics stopped being distributed to grocery and drug stores and were sold through the direct market system of comic book stores. And since the people who shopped at comic book stores were grown-ups who bought more mature titles, but still loved their childhood heroes, the baby was thrown out with the bathwater and superhero comics were aimed at a more "mature" audience. And they are now printed on bright, archival (read as expensive) paper that drives the price up to $3.00 a pop.

Here's the problem. Kids don't have cars. They also have an irregular disposable income. That means that kids have to depend on someone to drive them to the Comic Book store, rather than bike over to the corner store for a few comics. And, they never know when they will get back to said comics store. All this means: The comics cost too much for kids, aren't aimed at kids and aren't accessible to kids. End result. Kids don't buy comics.

So now you're saying "okay, smart guy, how would YOU fix it?'

Well, first of all, I would publish comics for adults and comics for kids. This is already being done to some degree. I have seen that many titles have an age rating, I do not live in a cave. But, remember, the comics that got all those grown-ups hooked as kids were written for an average age of 13. Tone down the sex and violence a little. I'm no prude and nobody wants a return to the dark ages of the Comics Code, just use a little sense.

Second, print the friggin' things on newsprint and cut the price down. Stop hiring hollywood writers and cut the price down. Don't worry about the collector market. One of the reasons old comics are rare and valuable is that they decompose because they were printed on crappy paper. Heck, you're just going to reprint it in a collected volume anyway.

Third, get your product back into markets that are accessible to children.

There, I'm done.

Anyone who has any questions or comments please feel free to leave a comment or e-mail me through this blog.

Sinestro. Why the #$@! Is He Right-Handed? a rant

Okay. This is nit-picky. Even for me. But come ON folks, the guy's name is Sinestro. Clearly derived from sinister. And if you didn't know the origins of sinsister, here's Meriam Webster's take on it:

Main Entry: sin·is·ter

Pronunciation: \ˈsi-nəs-tər, archaic sə-ˈnis-\

Function: adjective

Etymology: Middle English sinistre, from Anglo-French senestre on the left, from Latin sinistr-, sinister on the left side, unlucky, inauspicious

Yep, that's right, sinister means "on the left side". I mean, you go to all the trouble to name a guy whose super powers come from his power ring Sinestro, you think you would've thought to add a little pinch of extra flavor and have him wear his power ring on his left.


I dunno, maybe John Broom intended Sinestro to be a south paw and Gil Kane didn't catch it. I really have no idea. Also, no matter how many Green Lantern comics I read, I still don't get how GL can beat Sinestro in a straight-forward ring fight. Green Lantern's ring (as mentioned in a previous, time-wasting rant) is powerless against anything yellow. Sinestro's ring and the constructs it makes are yellow. I don't care how cool Hal Jordan is, that's like having a superpower where you're magnetic, and your bad guy wears plastic armor.

Anyway, Sinestro should be a lefty.

'Nuff Said.

Green Lantern's weakness: a rant

Green Lantern may be one of DC most iconic superheroes, but that won't stop me from airing my bemusement at what may be the lamest superhero weakness of all. See, in order for a superhero to be interesting and allow room for some dramatic tension, the hero has to have SOME vulnerability. Superman is vulnerable to the effects of Kryptonite and also to magic. Wonder Woman becomes powerless if you tie her hands together. Aquaman can only breathe out of water for an hour. Martian Manhunter becomes weak in the presence of fire. You get the idea.

Green Lantern, one of the most powerful heroes in the DC canon, has what may be the lamest vulnerability ever. GL can't use his virtually omnipotent power ring on anything yellow. I'll say that again. Green Lantern can't use his virtually omnipotent power ring on anything yellow.

Now, at first thought, that may seem perfectly reasonable. Everyone has something they can't do. But consider this: How subjective is the concept of "yellow". Never mind that the power ring and it's energy are green and that green is made by combining blue and yellow. Never mind that it might have made more sense if the ring wouldn't work on things that were red (the opposite of green on the color wheel). What is yellow?? Does the ring work on yellow green? How about yellow orange? How much blue or red have to be involved before something isn't strictly yellow?

Now, obviously, this weakness wouldn't be too big a deal. I mean, Green Lantern can still manipulate everyday non-yellow objects to, say, block a blow from a yellow folding chair or something. What's funny is how often important things in GL stories seem to just happen to be yellow. I mean, is he going around telling everyone that he's vulnerable to yellow? His lame vulnerability inevitably leads to situations like this:


Also, on the Super-Friends cartoons from the 70's and 80's, about 90% of the stuff Green Lantern picks up with his ring or even the stuff he makes with his ring seems to BE yellow. It's like the ink and paint department misunderstood the memo. "OH everything BUT yellow!! Boy do I feel silly!"