Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!

. . . or: "When Fanboys Turn To Hate Speech. . . and Why."
(Part Two; Page One)

Straight up, I'll tell ya: I wouldn't be Mark Waid right now even if it meant long, sweaty weekends with an endearingly tipsy and... ummmm... restless Salma Hayek.

That may well strike the reader (both casual and interested alike) as a more-than-decidedly-odd declaration to publicly avow, given that the estimable author of such landmark four-color offerings as KINGDOM COME and "The Return of Barry Allen" (THE FLASH #74 - 79; 1993) is -- by any objective yardstick -- one of the most wildly popular and successful writers to lend his talents to the mainstream comics medium in the last decade or so (one whose tenures on various titles, it should be noted, are invariably among the vanishingly few which garner both profit and critical acclaim for their respective publishers); with editors snapping at one another like Japanese fighting fish in the attempt to secure his services attesting to the former, and several good-sized bookshelves full of industry awards serving as evidence ample of the latter.

Nonetheless: wouldn't swap shoes with the fellah on a bet. Not even if you threw in Catherine Zeta-Jones, for good measure. And Elizabeth Hurley.

As to just why, precisely, I feel that way...?

Short, simple answer: his bedroom window.

... or -- more accurately -- the embittered, spite-propelled and perpetually clueless gibbons and orangutans who've taken up a noisy, sodden sort of residence underneath his bedroom window, of late.

Oh, yeah.

We're talkin' "fanboys" and "hate speech" again, I'm afraid.

Also: the dreaded "C" word -- you all know the one I'm talking about -- will be poking its icky little snout out of the conversational soil, every now and again.

The more easily shocked amongst you may wish to click onto another one of this site's hyperlinks, at this point.

What follows is -- believe you me -- almost preternatural in its unrelenting ugliness.

The two-issue mini-series THE KINGDOM (February, 1999; Mark Waid, author; Ariel Olivetti and Mike Zeck, pencilers) was a sequel (of sorts) to the aforementioned KINGDOM COME (1996; Mark Waid and Alex Ross, co-creators).

Revolving around a nigh-apocalyptic confrontation between two warring bands of "super-heroes" in a not-too-distant future -- one of them younger and disdainful of the larger, non-powered populace amidst whom they stage their vicious, free-floating vendettas; the other, older and more genuine in their self- appointed roles as humanity's "shepherds" -- the four-issue KINGDOM COME is the mainstream super-hero comic force-fed a diet of meta-amphetamines, with a jacked-up punk rock soundtrack blaring away in the background. (Think of The Ramones' Rocket To Russia, here; or else either The Clash's London Calling, or -- even better, perhaps -- Sandinista. Something sweaty and swaggering and loud, at any rate.)

There are, within the larger storytelling latticework overall, smaller (if no less barbed and dangerous) emotional conflicts aplenty: between an aging, hag-ridden Superman and the brutal quasi-"hero" Magog; between Superman (again) and an increasingly fascistic Wonder Woman; between the uneasy Superman/ Wonder Woman-led alliance and a reclusive (and ruthlessly manipulative) Batman. (This last recurring "bit," incidentally, providing many of the story's most chillingly potent -- and convincing -- sequences; see page reproduction, accompanying.)

Even if I have the occasional "nit" to pick, here and there -- Waid's rationale for Wonder Woman's renunciation of her long- and dearly-held Amazonian principles, for instance, seems (to my mind, at any rate) motivated more by necessity of plot than it does extrapolation of character; Mileage, however, May Vary Legitimately on this point) -- the end storytelling result, overall, is nothing less than a sledgehammer to the solar plexus; a triumph comprised of equal parts craft and conscience.

With the sole exception of a languid, derisive snort of dismissal within the pages of THE COMICS JOURNAL -- which (for all its myriad virtues as the sole critical organ of note within the comics industry) displays a pronounced and unrelieved prejudice, re: virtually anydamnthing involving spandex utilized as a fashion accessory -- I have yet to unearth any reviews contemporaneous with the publication of KINGDOM COME that may be accurately described as anything less than fawning and a-gush, outright. Words such as "stunning"; "classic"; "masterpiece"; and (by the [comparatively] more able critics) "bravura" are lobbed about like so many pennies at a carnival "pitch-'em" tent. The series went on that year to win pretty much every industry award which wasn't nailed to the podium; and deservedly so.

At this point, the consensus on ALL of the major comics-oriented message boards was remarkable in its unamity: the mainstream comics industry was Mark Waid's oyster, plain and simple.

THE KINGDOM -- a mebbe-kinda-sorta sequel to the much-venerated KINGDOM COME; one of the most highly anticipated offerings of 1999 -- was (in certain respects) an even more intriguing effort on the part of the relentlessly ingenious Mr. Waid; seeking (as it did) to liberate the genre from the increasingly constricting chains of constipated fannish "continuity worship"; to counter the purblind and arrogant "all- history-is-bunk" mind- set of today's selfish, self-adoring readership, by (re-)legitimizing the contributions of such past DC Comics titans as Gardner Fox, Robert Kanigher and John Broome; and to restore a long-vanished "sense of wonder" to super- hero comics overall, in turn.

No small storytelling potatoes, these.

Mark Waid, you see, is a writer with one eye ever on the larger picture, re: our (currently) palsied industry; and a writer fully cognizant of the inherent difference between honest creation (on the one hand) and ceaselessly self-referential and inbred navel-gazing (on the other).

As we are soon to see, however: such careful appraisal is considerably more than one might offer, similarly, to a certain portion of the comics readership, nowadays.

The storytelling "linchpin," in this case, is the climactic revelation of a clever meta-fictive conceit known as "HyperTime": the (apparently) heretical notion, you see, that Story might actually be accorded the rightful status of King, rather than whether or not any given issue of any given comic might snap, neatly, into pre-arranged "place" within some continuously rebooted, wildly self-contradictory "continuity."

... or (as the actual story so neatly phrases it): "Now, more than ever, you know the magic of it all. Each and every one of us... we are all stories, simply waiting to be told.

"Just imagine."

Such artful and welcome sentiment -- the simple, straightforward declaration (in so may words) that: "I am a writer. I write. I don't 'do' jigsaw puzzles; I don't 'do' crossword puzzles. If you want grey cotton trousers, sewn to order: go see a frickin' tailor, already." -- is so clear-eyed and incontestable a one, for any man or woman whose genealogical chart doesn't turn inward on itself like a highway cloverleaf, that it all but bankrupts human comprehension that anyone claiming to genuinely love The Tale Well Told could even attempt to gainsay it... right?

Excerpts from various postings, re: two of the primary DC Comics-oriented message boards, in the immediate wake of Mark Waid's THE KINGDOM:

" [...] a built-in excuse for shoddy storywriting..." (3/29)

"The 'concept' is to give lazy hacks like Waid a built-in excuse for not

researchering [sic] their characters properly." (3/29)

"Hypertime makes continuity 'irrelevant' next to a 'kingdom of wonder,' a statement which en face [sic] is incoherent " (4/9/99)

[UNCA CHEEKS' ASIDE: you gotta love the irony inherent in some doughy fanboy's indignant splutterings, re: "incoherence," while simultaneously treating simple declarative sentences the way a Chicago hog-butcher treats a hog. You just gotta, is all.]

["... researchering"...?]

" [...] Waid is full of it. [HyperTime] was clearly designed with the writers in mind. I can't even see how you fail to miss it? If I use the 'tool,' it let's the writer off. See the point? I let the writer off." (4/18/99)

"The lazy bum GOT HIS CAREER thanks to the sake of continuity and knowing minuitiae [sic] as a proofreader! Just because he's older, lazy and influenced by a hack for a mate doesn't mean the readers should suffer!" (4/7/99)

" [Mark Waid] is trying to say that continuity isn't important! It's nothing less than a slap in the face of every comic reader [sic] who ever lived! [sic] Until DC fires him -- effective immediately, I will no longer read any DC comics!" (5/01/99)

"Maybe if he wasn't busy getting his fat ashes hauled by that porky [expletive deleted by Unca Cheeks], he'd actually write good stories again." (5/15/99)

"If hypertyme [sic] is real, then there's no way to punish the writer for getting things WRONG WRONG WRONG!" (5/16/99)

"And, FTR, the 'Your Old Comics Are Still There' argument is still reserved for the most ingrained [sic] of morons." (6/7/99)

"I'm serious! Turkish laws should apply to continuity errors!" (6/8/99)

Oh, please: do, do shut up.

Lookit, troopers and trooperettes: you're just plain ol', flat-out embarrassing yourselves, here.

Unclutch the Lady Death action figures from your ample, heaving bosoms; drop those Magic: the Gathering playing cards; and back away from that cot in your mother's basement. S-l-o-w-l-y.

On Page Thirty-Five of THE KINGDOM #2, one of the more omniscient characters offers the following observation, re: DC "continuity" (and the possibly... ummmm... unhealthy emphasis accorded same, by certain apoplectic mini-factions within the comics readership overall):

"They're [the Linear Men] vested in enforcing an inflexible view of reality [...] they think orderly, catalogued continuity is preferable to a kingdom of wonder."

... and: "Their sense of control would be splintered by the truth that the universe they 'oversee' is actually part of an unpredictable multiverse... "

... and (most sagacious -- if, sadly, unheeded -- counsel of all): "Don't be frightened by that. Don't feel threatened."

Notice (if you please) that nowhere in the actual, printed definition of "HyperTime" --

(Full and Complete Definition: "Off the central timeline [...] events of importance often cause divergent 'tributaries' to branch off the main timestream. [...] On occasion, those tributaries return... sometimes feeding back into the central timeline, other times overlapping it briefly before charting an entirely new course. An old friend is suddenly recalled, after years of being forgotten. A scrap of history becomes misremembered, even reinvented in the common wisdom." End of Full and Complete Quote; with said conceptualization, by the by, being a co-creation of both the aforementioned Mr. Waid and Gloriously Mad Comics Genius Grant Morrison)

-- nowhere does it say that your pwecious widdle Baby Continuity is going to topple, headlong, into the storytelling "well."

Nowhere in the actual, printed definition of "HyperTime" does iteven so much as hint at the prospect (and the following is a particularly lunk-headed rhetorical shibboleth ponied about by many of the more bug-eyed, online) of, say, Wonder Woman inexplicably flitting about with the head of an overlarge hamster in place of her own, next month; nor of Elongated Man suddenly being "retconned" as originally hailing from the doomed planet Krypton; nor even of Sugar and Spike retroactively being granted twin thrones of power, on Apokolips. (Although I'd sure as heck cough up double cover price to read that last one, by golly -- !)

Most importantly, however: nowhere in the actual, printed definition of "HyperTime" is it even so much as pantomined -- and please, oh please DO pay attention, won't you?-- that those amongst you who really and truly do garner some bizarre sort of life-affirmation from niggling over decades-old nits and scowling peevishly at those "careless" enough not to dot their i's and cross their t's zealously enough to suit your small, sour purposes need ever, ever STOP doing so, for just as long as it pleases you to freakin' do so.

All the actual, printed definition of "HyperTime" bloody says here, chill'uns --

(Again: "Off the central timeline [...] events of importance often cause divergent 'tributaries' to branch off the main timestream. [...] On occasion, those tributaries return... sometimes feeding back into the central timeline, other times overlapping it briefly before charting an entirely new course. An old friend is suddenly recalled, after years of being forgotten. A scrap of history becomes misremembered, even reinvented in the common wisdom." Period. End of sentence. End of paragraph.)

-- what it says, is: Writers... Write.

You wanna give point-by-point dictation to some servile drone...? That's why God created court stenographers.

Don't even bother e-mailing your bone-weary Unca Cheeks with any of the standard counter-arguments, any/all of you Big "C" fanciers out there. I've already heard 'em, one and all. To wit:

1.) "GOOD writers can work whilst shackled to the 'continuity' millstone":

Correction, please: "good" writers actually prefer NOT to have their sincere best efforts at creating and/or entertaining artificially circumscribed by noisy, self-important yip-yops and yahoos in the audience, actually. And "good" editors actually prefer to allow "good" writers to do what they're being paid to do, to the very utmost of their respective abilities. And "good" readers actually prefer s-t-o-r-y to mindless obsession over inconsequential minutia. Next...?

2.) "We don't need 'HyperTime.' We already have 'Elseworlds' stories":

[Pick One]

a.) You still have "Elseworld" stories, you silly bastards.

b.) You don't "need" comics, either. What you actually need (in no particular order): 1.) Food. 2.) Water. 3.) Shelter. 4.) Clothing. 5.) To Stop Taking Yourselves So Bloody Seriously.

c.) They're comic books, people. They're ALL "Elseworld" stories.

3.) "HyperTime will just screw up DC's carefully constructed continuity":

Dit-dit-dit... dit-dit-dit... News Flash from the WCHKS Newsroom! DC Comics, Inc. hasn't had a "carefully constructed continuity." EVER.

In the 1960s, DC had two entirely separate cities going by the name of "Atlantis": one in AQUAMAN (two-legged humanoid water-breathers), and the other in SUPERMAN (fish-tailed mer-people).... and no one really CARED!

In the 1970s, writer Bob Haney treated THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD like his own personal, private "continuity" game preserve... and, guess what? No one really CARED!

In the 1980s, the Hawk and the Dove became middle-aged men, while their TEEN TITANS contemporaries stayed exactly the same age... and (sing it with me, now): NO. ONE. FRIGGIN'. CARED.

Seriously. I mean it. Unca Cheeks was bloody there, throughout all of the aforementioned (as well as a whole ungainly horde of other "continuity snafus," I might add. (Such as, say, the introduction of "Wonder Girl"; whose very existence came about due to [then-] WONDER WOMAN writer Robert Kanigher not giving two wet Hershey squirts for "continuity" in the first place. I'm just sayin', is all.).

No. One. CARED. Not so long as the actual, printed story did what it was supposed to do: Entertain the Reader.

Which they (obviously; demonstrably) did, back in those (comparatively) carefree days. Seeing as how the books actually sold worth a damn, back then.

Which segues us nicely into --

4.) "Continuity actually helps comics sell better":

Please.

There is no -- and I'll repeat this one, because I'm just as ruddy sick of hearing it being bruited and bellowed as fannish Holy Writ as one possibly could be, short of stationing myself outside the local comics shop with a boning knife and an ill temper -- NO evidence anywhere in support of this knock-kneed little bit of historical revisionism.

Fact: the absolute peak period for comics sales in this country was during the "Golden Age" of comics, back in the '30s and '40s. Amount of "continuity," back then: zero. Zilch. Nada.

Fact: the next best sales period for comics sales in this country was during the "Silver Age" of comics, back in the '60s and early '70s. Amount of "continuity," back then: see Item #3, above.

Fact: comics sales nowadays -- with King Kontinuity riding poor, dear, put-upon Story hard, and putting her away wet: In. The. Toilet.

Do I think continuity is the sole determining factor in my quickie comics chronology, as detailed above...? No. Of course not. (I'll admit to being a geezer, certainly; doesn't mean I have Alzheimer's, f'chrissakes.)

Nonetheless: the "continuity-equals-sales" bugbear is nothing more than a fannish article of faith, as the preceding clearly illustrates; the fanboy's four-color version of the Loch Ness Monster, or Bigfoot.

(It doesn't even make sense on its very face, for goodness sakes! I mean: find me one ten-year-old who's ever, ever sighed: "... jeepers... if only I might one day stumble across some storytelling sub-genre predicated upon my being forced to immerse myself in the meta-fictive equivalemt of several years of high school Latin; and is [simultaneously] as readily accessible to the tyro or newbie as an untranslated Dead Sea Scroll! Then, oh, then how happy I might be!" Just one, for the luvva pete!)

Those arguments are well and truly played.

Don't send 'em to me no mo', no mo'.

Thennnnnnnnnnkew.

As detailed by the representative sampling of message board postings, above: the mouth-breather contingent of the larger fanboy body politic has pretty much declared Articles of Warfare against Mark Waid, Esq.

(e.g.: "...lazy hacks like Waid..."; "Just because he's older, lazy and influenced by a hack for a mate..."; etc., etc.)

Indeed: they've pretty much scuffed their silly, pusillanimous line in the sand versus any comics writer (by logical extension) who refuses, for one instant longer, to pledge allegiance undying to those imbecilic fannish siblings: "Kontinuity Is Krist," and "We're the Ones In Charge Here, 'Writer Boy'; Not You."

(e.g.: "If hypertyme is real, then there's no way to punish the writer for getting things WRONG WRONG WRONG!"; ""I'm serious! Turkish laws should apply to continuity errors!"; etc., etc.)

Personally: I find that level of vitriol and vituperation -- high, quivering dudgeon, I remind you, in the (supposed) "service" of super-hero comic books, f'chrissakes -- nothing short of horrifying.

I mean: we've long since known -- all of us, who've been reading and enjoying these dopey things for a good-ish while -- that Our Little Hobby has always harbored more than its fair share, certainly, of Grade "A," Number One feebs and flakes; the misanthrope and the socially maladjusted, alike. (We're just more open and aboveboard about it than the science fiction fans are, is all.)

Even so: there simply isn't any excuse at. ALL. for the rancid, redolent sort of conversational butter being smeared against the communal cyber-wall, of late...

... and: if any of the individuals posting such shameful and scurrilous blatherings (or anything along similar lines, in fact) happens to be reading these words; right here, right now --

... for God's sake, people. Get a grip on yourselves.

"There is a right and a wrong in the universe; and that distinction is not hard to make."

You might well recall having read that sentiment, ladies and gents.

It appeared in the pages of a comic book, after all.

More on the current fannish anti-Waid fatwa, on the following page of When Fanboys Turn To Hate Speech... and Why.

Be here.

It'll be amusing, I promise you.

In a bleak, despairing sort of way, I mean.

"WHAT'S MORE PATHETIC THAN A SACKFUL OF FANBOYS...?": When Fanboys Turn To Hate Speech (PAGE TWO)

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