Manic Monday--Win Lots Of Prizes...What The F$%^?!?

Why, look, another one of the adorable ads getting children to sell something cheap and useless so they can "win" cheap and useless toys...

See, just like Grit or seeds or greeting cards....

Hey, wait a minute!!

Holy Jack Chick, Batman!! You mean God is gonna give me roller skates, or a ukulele, or a Gabby Hayes fishing kit, or guns & arrows, or...I mean, if I'd known that, I'd have turned out real different, let me tell you...

So what the Father Mulcahey is going on here?


Ahhh...still just selling stuff. "Religious Wall Motto Plaques" instead of seeds or Grit. But still getting children to move your crap for you. Because your "friends and neighbors" are obviously the sinners responsible for today's ills.

Bonus cheap irony--the ad is on the back cover of:

That's right...a 1950s horror mag. This Magazine Is Haunted #17 (1954), hosted by "Dr. Death." Perhaps the best place to find kids willing to sell Christian trinkets...let's see, the lead story is about an actor who makes a deal with the devil to get his bloody revenge on the studio executives who wronged him. And then there's story about the cuckolded husband who poisons his wife and her lover in the jungle, and sells their bodies to headhunters. Or the man captured by vampiric mannequins (really!), is turned into a mannequin himself, and melted in the furnace.

Ah, Steve Ditko, you magnificent bastard....

Extra bonus research!! The address on the coupon--The FUNman, 4545 N. Clark, Chicago--this is what's there today:


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So....good....indeed!!!

FINAL Final Crisis Preview--Another Tricky Day

Well, the time is almost upon us, when we get yet another DC crisis, this time THE FINAL CRISIS!!

This is no final crisis

This is DC having fun

Even though I've run many, many helpful previews of what I thought might be upcoming in the latest DC cash suck, I can with confidence say that we will not see the Gay Ghost, Jerry Lewis, Gabby Hayes, AAU Superstar, Prez, or Superbaby. Unless, of course, Grant Morrison secretly reads this blog and takes notes. Yeah, I know, bloody unlikely.

No crisis

Getting burned once again

So, what are we getting from the Final Crisis (aka the series that Paul Dini had no idea what it was going to be about so Countdown meandered like a drunken lemur for 52 (ahem 51) weeks)?

Sadly, a strong clue came from DC Universe #0 last week:

Oops. I did that on purpose. Really. Why?

The world seems in a spiral

Life seems such a worthless title

One of the problems with Infinite Crisis (aside from its title being one of the most blatant cases of false advertising since the Neverending Story) was that, to paraphrase my man Winston Churchill, the pudding had no theme.

That it, it was a disparate collection of story threads that really had not a thing to do with each other OR the central story line. Instead of being built from the top down, it felt as if it were built from the bottom up (hence my upside cover--dude, it's a metaphor!!). Let's not start with a the main story and pick out some subplots that tie in well. No, let's throw out all these plot lines--villains teaming up, the Spectre's war on magic, the Rann-Thanagar war, OMAC's--and try to connect them to the main story. Seriously, what the hell did the bloody magic war have to do with anything? NADA.

Just because there's space

In your life it's a waste

And that's what DCU #0 showed us. A bunch of stories that, even if you think they're interesting individually, seem to have no possible relationship to each other, let alone whatever the main thrust of Final Crisis may be. If there is one.

So our big FINAL Final Crisis Preview question: does this pudding have a theme?? or is it one big gloppy mess thrown at the wall to see what sticks? We'll find out soon...

This is no Final Crisis

Just another tricky day for DC

Lyrics adapted from Pete Townshend.

Best reason to bring back Superbaby?

Final Crisis Preview--Gabby Hayes

DC is like the Borg Collective.

Bear with me here.

Lots of what we currently think of as the DC Universe didn't start out that way. When DC comes across a comic universe they want, they just assimilate it into their own:

• Fawcett Comics, home of the Marvel Family, was litigiously bankrupted by DC; than they assimilated it, so now Black Adam and Evil Mary Marvel are an essential part of regular DC continuity.


• Charlton Comics, home of such luminaries as Blue Beetle and Captain Atom, was bought up by DC, and now these heroes are vital parts of DC continuity.


• Archie Comics' superhero line, featuring the Fly and Black Hood, had their rights bought up by DC, although they were published as a separate imprint and didn't last very long.


• Wildstorm. Not content with publishing and distributing Jim Lee's line, the DC Collective assimilated their entire universe, so it's now actually part of the DC Multiverse.

Why do I bring this up? Well, my point is that DC can and will absorb other comic entities into its universe. So when we consider what the DC Universe should look like after Final Crisis, we shouldn't necessarily feel limited to what's currently in the DC universe. DC used the original Crisis, after all, as the excuse to bring the Charlton heroes into their main continuity.

Which bring me to Gabby Hayes.


Gabby Hayes Western was published by Fawcett, but I'm thinking that since it was a licenced title, it didn't come with what DC bought. But, this is someone DC really, really should have starring in their comics in the 21st century.

Just close your eyes and picture these exciting story possibilities:

• Batman and Gabby Hayes working together to catch some codsarned claim-jumpers




• Superman and Gabby teaming up to flummox some dagnabbed space-rustlers




• The story DC has never previously told: how, for a very brief period in the 19th century, Gabby Hayes was the Green Lantern of Sector 2814


• The inevitable reunion of Fawcett heroes Gabby Hayes and Captain Marvel

So, DC, do what it takes. Spend some of those Timer-Warner-AOL bucks on assimilating Gabby and his cohorts into the DC universe. Resistance is futile!!

Gabby in all his ironic prosepector glory is from Gabby Hayes Western #23, 1950