Amused in Review

Which comics characters are in the habit of saying:  1. Woo-woo! (two answers) Etta Candy and Megaton Man 2. Jinkies! (two answers) Thelma (from Scooby-Doo) and Gina Diggers 3. Rowrbazzle! Albert Alligator 4. Cushlamochree! Mr. O'Malley 5. Merciful Minerva! Wonder Woman 6. Holey Moley! Billy Batson/Captain Marvel 7. By Belanos! Asterix, and the rest of the indomitable Gauls 8. Billions of blistering blue barnacles! Captain Haddock 9. Blow me down! Popeye the Sailor (note how I resist the cheap Bill Clinton joke) 10. Great Balls O'Fire! Snuffy Smith 11. Sink me, Suzie!  12. Poit! Pinky 13. Gag-ack-Barf! Bill the Cat 14. Gosh-a-rooty! Cutey Bunny 15. Gawrsh! Goofy 16. By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth! Doctor Strange 17. Suffering Succotash! Sylvester 18. Ay Caramba! Bart Simpson 19. Great Caesar's Ghost! Perry White 20. Leaping Lizards! Little Orphan Annie (or Little Annie Fanny, I suppose)   An Austrian army, awfully arrayed Boldly, by battery besieged Belgrade. Cossack commanders cannoning come, Dealing destruction's devastating doom. Every endeavor engineers essay, For fame, for fortune, fighting furious fray, Generals 'gainst generals grapple, Gracious God! How honors Heaven heroic hardihood. Infuriate, indiscriminate in ill, Kindred kill kinsmen, kinsmen kindred kill. Labours low levels, longest, loftiest lines, Men march 'mid moles, 'mid mounds, 'mid murderous mines. Now noisy, noxious, noticed not, Of outward obstacles opposing ought. Poor patriots, partly purchased, partly pressed, Quite quaking, quickly quarter, quarter quest, Reason returns, religious right redounds, Suwarow stops such sanguinary sounds. Truce to the Turkey! Triumph to thy train, Unjust, unwise, unmerciful Ukraine. Vanish vain victory, vanish victory vain! Why wish we warfare? Wherefor welcome were Xerxes', Ximines' Zoroaster's Zeal? And all arms attract, arms against acts appeal.  - The Siege of Belgrade (I don't know the author)

Amused in Paris: Day Two (Part Deux)

After a pleasant time admiring the Orsay, we decided to stop for some lunch on the way to Les Invalides. We found a little sandwich shop right near the museums (the Orsay is across the street from the Museum of the Legion of Honor, which neither of us was up for)--I had been thinking of something a little more French, but the sight of all the sandwiches in the window, neatly lined up baguette after baguette, plus my growing hunger, persuaded me. My sandwich was chicken with lettuce, tomato, and enough mayonnaise to ensure that it would never have a "healthy eating heart" at any California restaurant (and might even get the restaurant closed down); it was delicious. I never was in a position to verify the assertion of John Travolta's character in Pulp Fiction that the French call a Big Mac Le Big Mac, but I did find out that they call Diet Coke Coke Light, so that's something. Elizabeth had a three-cheese sandwich, and some rum-cake, which she couldn't finish. Then it was off to Les Invalides and the tomb of Napoleon.
     A short digression here. There is a party game called "True Colors", in which players are posed questions about the other players, such as "Which player is most likely to have a secret tattoo?", and then secretly vote. The object of the game is to guess whether you got none, some, or most of the votes for each question. As it happens, one of the questions is "Which player is most likely to have been Napoleon in a previous life?" Whenever this question comes up, and whoever is playing, much to her annoyance my sister always gets all the votes (except her own). This is more or less the reason that she wanted to see Napoleon's tomb; I'm not sure whether she was wondering if she could spot a resemblance, or what, but I thought it wisest not to inquire. I didn't mind; it's certainly impressive enough, or at least the surroundings are. The tomb itself reminds me of nothing quite so much as a gigantic stone foot-stool, but I don't suppose Napoleon's in any position to care.
     Elizabeth didn't want to see the museum as Les Invalides, and since I had seen them before I didn't press, although I thought that she would probably be interested in the medieval arms and armor (when we visited the Cluny later on in the week, I discovered that I was right). She wanted to spend some time in the gift shop, looking for souvenirs, particularly for her husband, who's something of a military history buff. I was foot-sore, so I waited in the lobby with the male Japanese tourists who were resting on the benches, bent over, with their faces on their palms (the female Japanese tourists were getting their pictures taken in one of those little photo-booths that can make a postcard with your face on a period costume or in an inset above some tourist site, or were consulting their maps).
     By now it was quite late in the afternoon, so we agreed that we'd head back to the hotel room, and rest up a little before going out to dinner to celebrate my birthday. On the way Elizabeth wanted to see if we could find a store that would sell CD's, since she had promised a friend to look for some particular French CD that wasn't available in the US. On the way back to the hotel, on the Rue de Rennes, we found a combination record store/book store/personal electronics store called FNAC. I never was able to figure out whether that stood for something, meant something, or just sounded cool to the French. Elizabeth went looking for the CD for her friend (while wincing at the prices), while I poked around the Bands Desinees (the folio-sized, usually hardback, books that are the most common form of comics in France). I was amused to see Dilbert displayed prominently, but not quite amused enough to buy it in French. I did some of my own wincing at the prices, since the modal price was 75 Francs, or about 13 dollars American--a little more than I was willing to pay for a Tin-tin book in a language that I couldn't really read.
     When it came time to decide where to go to eat, what I really wanted to celebrate my birthday was...hot sake, and a lot of it. Weird, eh? But that was what I craved, and since there was a Japanese restaurant right across the street from the hotel, and Elizabeth was willing to be accommodating (as long as she didn't have to eat any raw fish) we went to see what the Parisian version of Japanese food was like. Kind of odd, as it turns out. First off, the staff wasn't Japanese (which alarmed me a little, but when in Rome...) They did have sake, though, so we elected to stay. Elizabeth had the six piece yakitori special (called Manga 6), and I had the sushi and sashimi dinner for one. When it arrived, it was the usual kinds of rolls, sashimi, and sushi, except for one thing: it was all either tuna or salmon. I had before me about twenty pieces of fish, all tuna and salmon. It was good (fortunately), but I really could have done with some shrimp, or octopus, or roe, or eel, or...well, you get the idea. I don't know whether the selection was because those were the types of fish that were available fresh in Paris, or whether Parisians' tastes ran exclusively to those two kinds of fish, and away from the more "exotic" kinds. Elizabeth, who has a deeply routed suspicion of uncooked fish, predicted that I would get sick, but I ate heartily anyway. Elizabeth's yakitori was actually a little more adventurous, since besides the usual chicken they had duck and, this was the one I found odd, cheese. I actually like grilled cheese, but in a sandwich, not on a stick. At any rate, minor oddities of the food aside, I successfully slaked my thirst for sake, had a good time, and we headed back to bed.

Amused in Paris: Day Three

Well, Elizabeth's prediction didn't quite come true: she was the one who got sick that night, and all through the next day. Since she wanted to sleep (as much as her illness permitted, that is), I went out wandering the city alone.
     I didn't particularly want to visit any museums by myself, so I decided that this was a good day to go looking for the comic shop that had been recommended to me, by the name of Album on Rue Dante. Not only would Elizabeth not feel left out, she would probably be thankful that I had spared her. It took me some time to find Rue Dante on the map, but eventually I did, and I plotted a course for it that took me through the Jardin du Luxembourg. I have an irrational fondness for the Jardin du Luxembourg, based primarily on the fact that it's the subject of one of my favorite paintings: John Singer Sargent's In the Luxembourg Gardens, which is part of the Philadelphia Museum of Art's permanent collection. I've only ever seen the garden in the winter, when the trees are bare, but it gives me a thrill anyway.
     Passing out of the garden by the gate near the fountain of the Medicis, I followed the road to the Sorbonne, which if I was reading the map correctly ought to be pretty close to my destination. I was getting hungry, so I stopped to get my favorite Parisian indulgence from one of the ubiquitous stands: a cr麪e with banana and nutella (a hazelnut spread that tastes a whole lot like chocolate, with about the consistency of marshmallow fluff). Mmmm-mmmm. The only problem with it, well, aside from the calories and sugar content, is that it's pretty messy--at least it is if they pile on the banana the way this place did. In fact, I had come to the corner that Album was on just as I finished the cr麪e, and I spent a bit of time standing outside the shop trying to scrub my fingers clean on the little scrap of napkin.
     Album turned out not to be a single store-front, but a set of them, with differing emphasis. Apparently (according to a map in the window) there were four in all, but I only looked at two that were right there, diagonally across the street from eachother. One was new release comics and toys, the other was bands desinees, trade paperbacks, and toys. The comics shop was mostly current American imports (that looked to have shipped as recently as that week), as well as some imported trade paperbacks (the new soft-cover Marvel Masterworks, The Essential X-Men, The New Adventures of Abraham Lincoln, Sin City: That Yellow Bastard, and so on). It wasn't very large, and I didn't spend much time in it.
     The store on the opposite side was much more interesting. It was two floors, stuffed to the brim with comics and animation related tchachkas: Simpson's glasses, Wallace and Gromit T-shirts, PVC figurines of just about every Disney character imaginable, the whole cast of Tin-tin, an amazing amount of Tex Avery stuff, mostly Droopy, Red-Hot Riding Hood, and The Wolf (the three of whom are actually used in France to sell cars, I kid you not. I think the car is called the Opal, and I have no idea what connection, if any, the advertisers see between those characters and their product--but then I don't really understand what Snoopy is doing selling life insurance, so I may not be the best person to ask about this sort of thing).

to be continued....

I've just learned, on Compuserve, that Archie Goodwin died. I didn't know him personally, but I certainly knew of him, as a writer and as a beloved editor. Believe me, beloved is not the adjective usually associated with editors, particularly by the writers who worked for them. Every person I've ever met who had any contact with him at all said essentially the same thing: "He's the nicest guy in comics." There are certainly worse ways to be remembered.
     Here's to the nicest guy in comics, may he rest in peace.




Amused in Paris will resume tomorrow.

Amused in Paris: Day Three (Part Deux)

So there I was, lions to the left of me, tigers to the right....slowly I turned....into the jaws of debt...Well, actually on closer inspection, it turned out to be Marsupilamis to the right. And Schtrumpfs (Smurfs to you--now there's an oath: Smurfs to you, buddy!) to the left. If it had tied in to comics characters and was conceivable to the mind of man (and didn't require electricity), it was crammed into Album's Librarie des Images. The comics themselves, or the bands desinees rather, were pretty much what was available at FNAC, or at Gibert Joseph, a book store that I went to on the way back to the hotel. Besides the Marsupilami and Schtrumpfs, and the usual Tintin and Asterix, it seems that BDs are big into adventure strips featuring square-jawed heroes like Rick Hoshay flying Spitfires and engaging in fisticuffs. There's also a pretty big contingent of straight-out humor, including off-color material, as well as a certain amount of the explicitly erotic (the kind of thing that Gary Groth sells to finance his saving the world from the menace of super-hero comics, but I digress). Most BD's, event the adventure ones, are done in a cartoonier style than is typical of American comics--or at least the main characters are; the backgrounds are often realistic, almost to the point of photorealism in some cases. I don't know whether this is the influence of Hergé, whose Tintin was done in a similar style, and who seems to have attracted almost as many pages of commentary and ancillary material (including a book that seems to be nothing more than an illustrated dictionary of Captain Haddock's oaths. Mille milliards de mille sabords, indeed.) as there are Tintin books themselves, as Dr. Tezuka's work is sometimes said to have influenced Japanese comics towards the big-eyed "Speed Racer" look, or is just a European thing.
     Downstairs were more BDs, plus the manga, which is a particular fancy of mine, as most of you who follow this column have realized by now. There seem to be about twice as many titles in translation in France as there are in America, all sold in small digest-sized trade paperbacks the same exact size as the Japanese trade paperbacks (a bit smaller in both dimensions than the Viz paperbacks of Ranma and Maison Ikkoku if you've seen those), and also printed right to left. One thing that struck me is that even in a comics specialty store, there were no imports, that is to say no Japanese language editions that I could see, at all. It would seem that unless those were tucked away in one of the store-fronts that I didn't visit, the French just aren't interested in untranslated manga--and don't have a sufficient population of Japanese immigrants to support carrying Japanese language editions. This is a strong contrast to the comics stores in America that I frequent, which usually carry several of the more popular titles that have yet to be translated into English. Of course, several of these, such as Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon, have been translated into French, so overall there's no doubt that the average French reader is better served, but I personally might find it a little frustrating.
     Since I'm almost constitutionally incapable of entering a comics or book store without buying something, I ended up getting the first volume of a manga called Dr. Slump as a souvenir. I was surprised to find, when I got back to the hotel, that I could actually read the thing--not perfectly, but well enough to get a lot of the jokes. Well enough, in fact, that I was utterly charmed by it.

Dr. Slump, Volume 1
by Akira Toriyama
French Editon published by Glénat, b&w, 40F
Rating: Gosh-a-rooty-toot-tooty!

This is the first book of the wildly popular Dr. Slump series, by the creator who went on to make the even more wildly popular Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, and it's easy for me to see just why this was a phenomenon in Japan. It's utterly fantastic, that's why. This is the story of mad scientist--or at least wacky scientist--Senbei Norimaki, a.k.a. Doctor Slump, who creates his greatest invention: a robot in the form of a little girl, whom he names Aralé. She is to demonstrate his genius by being utterly indistinguishable from a real girl. Obviously he hasn't really thought this thing through, but I told you he was wacky. As it turns out, she's utterly indistinguishable from a real girl, except for the fact that she's unbelievably strong and indestructible (basically there are no limits to her strength, except how far Toriyama will go for a gag). The humor is often crude, but I found myself laughing and laughing. And Aralé has firmly entrenched herself in my Pantheon of all-time favorite characters. The basic joke of the series, much like the basic joke of Groo, is that there are all these villainous sorts who pit themselves against Aralé, who manages to utterly confound, defeat, and humiliate them without even really noticing. If she does notice their efforts, she interprets it as a game--she's always in search of someone strong enough to play with her without her holding back. The other basic joke of the series is that Senbei Norimaki really is a genius, and is capable of inventing such diverse and fantastic machines as a device that can project you into the setting of a book, or a growth/shrinking ray, a transformation ray, or what-have-you, but the devices always get used for the most prosaic purposes, or as toys for Aralé and her friends. Another notable thing about the humor in Dr. Slump is that it's strongly self-referential: Akira Toriyama makes regular appearances as a character, as eventually do his editor (who also becomes the model for the arch-villain of the series), and his assistant. An example joke: The villainous space pirate and self-proclamed King of Space orders his assistant to capture a pair of Earthlings for examination, prior to the conquest of Earth. In the next panel, the assistant has Aralé and Gatchan (one of her pals) "Th-that was quick!" "Well, there aren't very many pages left." It's a pity that as far as I know, there are no plans to translate this into English, but if you can get ahold of them in a language that you can read, I heartily recommend them. As it turned out, FNAC carried all of them (two Francs cheaper than Album, too), and I ended up buying all fourteen available volumes before we came back.

I'm running way behind here today--it's 9:30 at night, I've just got home from work, and I have to get up at 5:00 AM to go back to work, and I still haven't prepared today's column. So what am I going to do? Easy, drop back and punt.

What would you like to see more of in this column? Do you like the travelogue, or is it boring you stiff? Do you want more reviews of movies? Books? Comics? Opinion pieces? Do you like the trivia quizzes? (I know that I don't get any response from them, but that doesn't necessarily mean that people don't find them amusing....does it?) Do you want me to inflict more poetry on you? That's not an idle threat, you know.

Just to tide you over:

In which monster movies are the menaces:

• A giant preying mantis?
• A giant tarantula?
• Giant ants?
• Giant rabbits?
• Giant leeches?
• The offspring of an ordinary house-spider and some kind of super-poisonous South American tarantula, plus the tarantula itself?
• Flesh-eating worms, ordinary sized?
• Gigantic, vibration-sensitive worms with tentacle-like tongues?

Well, to quote Bart Simpson, "the mob has spoken", so it's back to comics reviews starting tomorrow. Today, however, rather than reviewing what I'm reading, I'm going to talk about what I've stopped reading, and why. I call this feature:

Morituri Te

JLA: I don't know how or why, but somehow a writer whose stock-in-trade has always been holding genre conventions and clich駸 up to ridicule has managed, within his first year on the title, to get stuck in the rut of his very own clich駸. I know that there are stories to tell about the JLA that don't go "Menace attacks the JLA and defeats them all, but then the overlooked, non-super-powered hero turns the tables" because I've read them before Grant Morrison took over the reins--but not since. It's a good enough story the first time; it may even be good enough to bear repeating every year or so, but every story arc? Forget it. I'm outta here.

The Flash: It's just not Mr. Morrison's (or Mr. Millar's) month with me. I knew going in that I was liable to be disappointed compared to Waid's run on the book, but I tried to give it the benefit of the doubt. After all, how hard would it be to hold on for a year? Too hard, it turns out. Morrison's & Millar's Flash has its moments, but there's too much that I'm either utterly indifferent to (the suit that's a super-villain), or actively irritated by (the whole trial thing last issue). Reading The Life Story of the Flash just cemented my opinion: I'll be back when Waid and Augustyn are.

Pinky & The Brain: I just can't stand that stupid Snowball character. The point of Pinky & The Brain, to me, is how circumstances, combined with Pinky, manage to screw up the plan every time. It's just not funny with an antagonist. Seeing Snowball on the cover was the last straw.

Ninja High School: Now that Ben Dunn's too busy doing Ninja Nuns with Nipples, or whatever, NHS lives or dies by the quality of the fill-in writers and artists. When Fred Perry was doing NHS as an extended cross-over with Gold Digger, that was acceptable (actually, that was pretty much Gold Digger--the NHS cast was more or less swamped by the GD regulars). The current team, whoever they are, is not.

Superboy & The Ravers: Back when Steve Mattsson was explaining the premise of the book to me, I thought it sounded fun and funny; I still do. Unfortunately, editorial interference (both of S&TR's editors, who wanted it to be more dramatic, and the editorial teams of the other DC books, who kept forcing last minute changes on S&TR when it was set in their turf) kept it from being what it could have been. It had its moments, but it never completely worked, and the more "dramatic" they made it, the worse it became. I'm not sure whether it's slated for cancellation, but I cancelled it an issue or two ago.

Eat-Man: There's not enough there there. Cute character designs and a cool attitude aren't quite enough to make an action series work.

Answers to yesterday's quiz:

• A giant preying mantis? The Deadly Mantis
• A giant tarantula? Tarantula
• Giant ants? Them
• Giant rabbits? Night of the Lepus
• Giant leeches? Attack of the Giant Leeches
• The offspring of an ordinary house-spider and some kind of super-poisonous South American tarantula, plus the tarantula itself? Arachnophobia
• Flesh-eating worms, ordinary sized? Squirm
• Gigantic, vibration-sensitive worms with tentacle-like tongues? Tremors

Akiko #23
by Mark Crilley
published by Sirius, b&w, $2.50
rating: Neat-O.

Another almost perfect Akiko story, this time narrated by Gax, telling of his adventures before he fell in with Spuckler (I think fell in is the mot juste here). Except for the framing story, with 'kiko and crew in the meadow swapping yarns, it's an all robot tale of courage, duty, and cruelty--a kind of robotic Mutiny on the Bounty as it were, with poor Gax thrust into the role of Fletcher Christian. The only problem I have with it is (mild spoiler warning) that two of the characters die--and it's only the first part of the story. I don't know, but I can't remember anyone dying in an Akiko story before this, not even the villainouos Loza Throck, and it kind of threw me for a loop. I'm not sure whether we're supposed to think it's less serious because the victims are robots, or whether Mr. Crilley intends this to be a much grimmer story than any previous one, but I'm not entirely comfortable with either answer.
     I don't want to over-analyze this, though. It's still an Akiko story, and it's still wonderful, so what more could you ask? Well, I'm working my way through Akiko's List of Things to Do, for one...lucky for me that I just went to France, so I can check that one off, eh?

The interesting thing about my personal Avengers line-up, Kurt Busiek once pointed out to me, is that they never actually existed. This was several years ago, before the thought of Kurt actually writing the Avengers was even a gleam in Marvel's corporate eye; a group of us on CompuServe were discussing the Avengers, and what our favorite run on the Avengers had been, and who should the Avengers be, really. I volunteered that when I pictured the team, this were the characters who leapt to mind:

• Iron Man
• Captain America
• Thor
• Wasp
• Ant-Man
• Scarlet Witch
• Vision
• Beast
• Hawkeye

Kurt was (of course), entirely correct: although they all were Avengers individually, that had never actually been the line-up of the team. Nevertheless, if I envision them all standing there for a team-photo, these are the people I see.
     Now, I could rationalize the list--offer arguments as to why each of those characters really belongs on the team, describe what it is that they bring to the mix, but that's not really the point: that's not how I arrived at the line-up. It just bubbles up out of my sub-conscious based on all the Avengers stories I've read over the years; I can't avoid thinking of this team as the Avengers any more than I can avoid thinking of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, Aquaman, and the Flash as the JLA (okay, you can throw in Green Arrow, but to be honest, he's always an afterthought to me). They just are; the fan-boy in me has spoken.
     Which brings us to today's review, the final issue of the set-up story arc where Kurt and George P駻ez cram everyone who was ever an Avenger into the hopper, before trimming it down next issue to their version of the Avengers.

Avengers #3
by Kurt Busiek & George P駻ez
published by Marvel, color, $1.99
rating: Keen.

This almost worked for me, but not quite. Once in a while (actually it happens quite frequently with some authors, but hardly ever with others such as Kurt Busiek or Mark Waid) I read a comic and think, "I wish they had talked to me before committing this to paper--I could have told them how to fix what's wrong with it." This is one of those comics. If you haven't read this yet, there's a spoiler ahead, so be warned.
      That the Avengers all banded their energy and convictions together to give power to the Scarlet Witch in her magical duel against Morgan le Fay was mildly inspiring; that the newly reconstituted Simon Williams was willing to give up his brief return to life was even better, but...the problem, as I see it, is that the fact that this energy was enough--just barely enough, but enough--to defeat Morgan was a coincidence. There was no particular reason that it should be so, except that this would be a damned short relaunch if it failed. No matter how many panels they stretch the struggle over it has the emotional impact of a flip of a coin.
      How could it have been different? I say that it would have a much greater resonance, with me at least, but I don't think I'm atypical, if the resolution seemed inevitable from the set-up. In fact, that's been offered as one of the hallmarks of good plotting--that the resolution seem inevitable (at least in hindsight) given the set-up. If Morgan had failed because, say, she was unwilling to make the ultimate sacrifice, while all the Avengers were willing, then that would have made her downfall flow inevitably out of who she was, while making the Avengers' victory the sweeter for vindicating their moral position, their commitment to their cause and to eachother, and not just because they happened to be able to muster more power than she could. Obviously this would have to be carefully established, rather than just sprung on the readers in a lump of exposition at the end, but one way that occurs to me to have done that would have been to go a little into the nature of the Twilight Sword. (This is ranging a little far afield here, but bear with me. I want to show that this may be arm-chair quarterbacking, but at least it's arm-chair quarterbacking that's rooted in the specifics of the story.)
      In Marvel's version of Norse mythology, the Twilight Sword was forged by the fire-giant Surtur (way back in Walt Simonson's run) to destroy all of creation during the battle of Ragnarok. Obviously, Thor and the other Asgardians managed to stop Surtur from employing it, but....implicit within the idea of destroying all of creation is that the sword will ultimately destroy the wielder. That didn't bother Surtur; that was his bag. On the other hand, that's not what Morgan le Fay is about. She may be a megalomaniac, but she's not suicidal. It would make sense then, I think, in a fairy-tale kind of way, if in a struggle to control the sword the side that's willing to put everything on the line--that is in fact willing to let the sword destroy it if that's what it takes--wins out. The side that wants to use the sword but escape unscathed is fighting not only the other side, but the sword's nature as well. If that was the set-up, then Simon Williams' heroic self-sacrifice would seal the victory in the inevitable-once-you-see-it way for which this story should have been shooting. It would have been a very small change, I think, to the narration, but in terms of oomph it would have changed everything.
      The reason I go into this at such length is not that I think Kurt should hire me as a story consultant, but that in the past it's been so rare that Kurt's written a story that I thought I could improve upon; when it comes to pushing my buttons, there's not a writer alive who does it better than Kurt Busiek. He can hit me where I live without half-trying. Yet in the past couple of months, I've thought his stories were just a little...off. They're still entertaining, and they still have great bits of characterization, but somehow they just don't seem quite as dead-on-target with me as they used to. Well, except Astro City; with that he still wallops it out of the park every at-bat. I'm wondering if it's because he's getting a little stretched thin with his current writing schedule, or whether he just hasn't quite found his feet with the new Marvel titles, or what. What do you think?

It's Takahashi day at Maison Macy, and so we review for your amusement:

Ranma 1/2 Part Seven #1
by Rumiko Takahashi
english adaptation by Gerard Jones
published in English by Viz, b&w, $2.95
rating: Neat-O.

What could be worse for Ranma than a cat? How about a giant cat? A giant ghost cat, at that. This arc introduces a new antagonist for Ranma (like he doesn't have enough of them?), and a darned silly one it is, too. As always, I marvel at Rumiko Takahashi's inventiveness.

Maison Ikkoku Part Seven #8
by Rumiko Takahashi
english adaptation by Gerard Jones
published in English by Viz, b&w, $2.95
rating: Neat-O.

Of course, it's easier to marvel at a writer's inventiveness when they aren't using it to stick a knife in your heart and slowly twist it. I honestly thought that the series would be wrapped up by now, one way or another--I mean Kyoko was this close (holds up fore-finger and thumb pressed tightly together) to announcing her decision to Coach Mitaka, and now....it's back to things as unusual at Maison Ikkoku.

Batman Adventures: The Lost Years Book 4
by Bader and Hampton
published by DC, color, $1.95
rating: Keen.

So, tell me, why is it that almost all of the Batman Adventures writers can nail Batman and his supporting cast nearly every time out of the gate, while the regular Batman writers seem to flounder helplessly in a morass of half-baked interpretations and overblown events (I've promised myself that I'd steer clear of referring to the current goings-on in the Bat-titles as "Crapaclysm"--and I've succeeded until just now).
     At any rate, Hilary Bader has succeeded where every Bat-writer so far has failed: in making me care about Tim Drake as Robin. Next issue we get to see almost the full Bat-family (still missing: Ace, the Bat-hound; Bat-mite; and, of course, Bat-woman, but I confess I've never actually read a story in which she appeared, unless there was one in that huge black-and-white Encyclopedia I read when I was a tot). I'm looking forward to it.

Brought to you by the letter "G":

GD -18 #1
by Fred Perry
published Antarctic, b&w, $2.95
rating: Neat-O.

This is mostly a reprint of the Gold Digger -18 stories(GD stories set 18 years ago when Gina and Brittany were kids) that have appeared in the Gold Digger Year Books. They were funny then, and they're funny now. As an added bonus, if you buy them in this form, you don't have to read all the fan submissions that make up the bulk of the year-books.

Gremlin Trouble #11
by E.T. Bryan and Elizabeth Bryan
published by Anti-Ballistic Pixelations, b&w, $2.95
rating: Neat-O.

I bet you didn't realize that nuclear explosions are funny, but that's just 'cause you haven't read this issue of Gremlin Trouble yet. Fortunately for you there's an easy fix for that. Learn to stop worrying and love the bomb!

Groo #2
by Aragon駸 and Evanier
published by Dark Horse, color, $2.95
rating: Gosh-a-rooty!

Ha-ha! Imagine a kingdom where the people are so stupid that they'll pay highly on the black-market for substances that will make them even stupider! What will those wacky guys, Aragon駸 and Evanier, think of next?

As of yesterday, this page has had 1000 hits since I put it up in late December of last year. My thanks to all of you loyal readers.

Just to show that not everything I read rates a Keen or higher (or, more accurately, to show that even I sometimes buy clunkers) herewith a couple of review of comics by which I was not amused:

Lemon Custard #1
by Mark Badger, Gerard Jones, Steven DeStephano, and Randy Hoppel
published by Caliber Comics, b&w, $2.95
rating: Feh.

If I claimed that I had any idea what this was about, I'd be lying. I could probably relate the events, if I could be bothered, but the point, if any, eludes me. Some of it is well-illustrated (if a little dark and murky), some of it is slap-dash, and none of it is worth the time it takes to read.

Valiant Varmints #1
Shanda Fantasy Arts Spotlight presents...The first Anthropomorphic Superhero team-up
by various,
published by Shanda Fantasy Arts, b&w, $4.50
rating: Yeesh.

This is a loose team-up book of the anthropomorphic characters Fission Chicken, Beatrix Farmer, Superswine, Savage Squirrel, Moon Mouse, Billet Crow, Phantom Bunny, and Snowbuni, with the various segments done by the respective creators of those characters. The Beatrix Farmer segment was cute and amusing; the Savage Squirrel segment was mildly funny; none of the other segments was of the slightest interest, and the inclusion of Bullet Crow and Phantom bunny segment, with its emphasis on titillation and partial-nudity robs the overall book of its one virtue: that it might be acceptable kiddie-fare (the funny-animal aspect of the book might amuse them, while the lack of coherence might not bother them). On the other hand, since any issue of Sonic would be better, it's probably no big loss. I'd pay for a regular Beatrix Farmer book, though.

Comics and cartoons have taught me the following Ten Rules to Live By:

1. Never eat anything bigger than your head.
2. Always stick up for the underbird.
3. Always avoid meetings with time-wasting morons.
4. It never hurts to help.
5. With great power comes great responsibility.
6. Monopoly is more fun if you make your own Chance cards.
7. Even revolutionaries like chocolate chip cookies.
8. When the employee is a fool, so is the employer.
9. Sometimes being positive is only being wrong at the top of your lungs.
10. There's always hope. Well, there is.

Attributions tomorrow.

1. Never eat anything bigger than your head. -Kliban
2. Always stick up for the underbird. -Peanuts, by Schulz
3. Always avoid meetings with time-wasting morons. -Dilbert, by Adams
4. It never hurts to help. -Eek the Cat, by Hollander
5. With great power comes great responsibility. -Spider-man, by Lee
6. Monopoly is more fun if you make your own Chance cards. -Calvin & Hobbes, by Watterson
7. Even revolutionaries like chocolate chip cookies.Doonesbury, by Trudeau
8. When the employee is a fool, so is the employer. -Dilbert, by Adams
9. Sometimes being positive is only being wrong at the top of your lungs.-Batman & Robin Adventures, by Templeton
10. There's always hope. Well, there is. -Astro City, by Busiek

A while back on Compuserve I made up what I thought was an amusing little game. I must have been right, because I got more responses from this than for any other single thing I posted. I'm told that a version of it even made its way around USENET. The object is to come up with theme songs for characters; I began with the Legion of Superheroes. Herewith, the Songs of the Legion:

• Cosmic Boy You Gotta Have Heart
• Saturn Girl I Can't Get You Out of My Mind
• Live-Wire Electric Avenue
• Spark I Sing the Body Electric
• Leviathan Giant Steps
• Invisible Kid If You Could See Me Now
• Brainiac 5 The Demi Song ("The twelfth time I made it up the demi said to me: Go take up physics.")
• Matter-Eater Lad Eat It
• Triad Three Times a Lady (Thanks to Mike Skidmore)
• XS Life in the Fast Lane
• Kinetix Shake, Rattle, and Roll
• Chameleon Changes
• Ultra Boy Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, Mo. ("He came a long, long way, to be with us today...With arms of steel like Hercules, feet as fleet as Mercury's. He'll fight for us, do right for us, he'll be a beacon light for us....go, go, Go, GO, GO! JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOE!")
• Shrinking Violet Everything About Her's Little and Cute
• Gates Boris the Spider
• Andromeda Brick House
• Valor You're Just Too Good To Be True
• Element Lad The Elements
• Star Boy Boy, You're Gonna Carry That Weight
• Sun Boy Here Comes the Sun
• Bouncing Boy Balloon Man
• Dream Girl Any Dream Will Do
• Sensor Girl I Can See For Miles
• Karate Kid Streetfighting Man
• Duplicate Boy Substitute
• Beast Boy The Shapes Between Us Turn Into Animals
• Gas Girl Love is Like Oxygen
• Life Lass To Life (L'Chaim)
• Evolvo Lad Ape-Man
• Stone Boy Turning To Stone
• Polar Boy Frosty the Snowman
• Night Girl The Night Time is the Right Time
• Fire Lad Burning Down the House
• Infectious Lass Infect Me With Your Love
• Porcupine Pete I've Got You Under My Skin
• R.J. Brande Hail to the Chief
• Rond Vidar I'm a Time Study Man
• Brainiac 4 Just a Mean Green Mother From Outer Space

There will be a prize for whoever can identify the artists associated with the greatest number of the above songs. You don't have to get the actual composer and lyricist--the group or show that it's associated with will do. In case of a tie, the earlier response will win. In other words, "Whoever gets there fustest with the mostest." Good luck!

What's wrong with current DC continuity?

1. Superman was killed, then brought back with long hair, then turned into Freakazoid, then split into twins...the current creative teams seem determined to revive all of the Silver Age Superman stories, but turned into massive "events" and without any sense of fun.
2. Hal Jordan was turned into a psychotic mass-murderer, then killed, the Green Lantern Corps wiped out, etc., etc., you've heard the rant ad nauseam.
3. Oliver Queen was killed (in a fairly straightforward, if unbelievable, fashion) and his place taken by his illegitimate son who was raised in some remote monastery where developing a personality was apparently forbidden.
4. Batman's back was broken, then made better; Barbara Gordon's back was broken (in a really rotten story, to boot), but not made better. Now the writers seem intent on visiting each of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse on Gotham City in turn.
5. Batman never did find his parent's killer. Nor did he attend college. The current version of Batman is a vengeance-driven monomaniac, more the Count of Monte Cristo than Sherlock Holmes.
6. Hawkman was retconned out of existence (sort-of) and replaced with some homicidal avatar of the Hawk God or some such nonsense, so now no decent writer will touch the character with a ten-foot pole.
7. Aquaman's hand was cut off, replaced with a harpoon, and now he's not a super-hero and never was a super-hero.
8. Superboy is a wise-ass teenage clone of Superman. Supergirl is a shape-shifting former devil-worshipper. Krypto never existed.
9. The Atom was youthened (and stupified) into a know-nothing teen-ager.
10. Flash--actually there's nothing particularly wrong with Flash that having Waid and Augustyn back wouldn't cure.
11. Wonder Woman's dead, or turned to clay, or something, and the role is now being filled by Hippolyta, or something. If I have the details wrong, I'm relieved, because I think the less I know of this the better.
12. Adam Strange is not the hero of Rann, but the sperm-donor of Rann, and Alanna is dead (last I heard--I'm praying Mark fixes this up in the upcoming JLA arc).
13. Metamorpho was given a really ugly and pointless redesign and then killed--excuse me, rendered inert, like it makes a difference, since they buried him--through what was basically authorial fiat (or at least I don't see any reason why those events should have killed him--or even injured him).
14. Lobo exists.

Choose any ten of the above.

An Amused in Review reader writes in:

Loud cheers on today's article ("What's wrong with Current DC continuity"). I guess it's a sign of our rapidly-accelerating times that we can't have decent, solid stories and characters anymore, but instead have everything revolve around the latest-in-the-last-six-months "event". Even going so far as "sacrificing" much of the "backbone" of DC (for the older readers, anyway) as firewood for these brief shows.
     For me, my interest in DC has declined over the past few years as more and more of a solid 30-50 year history has been eroded, destroyed or mocked by these ephemeral displays.
     Brad

Actually, I think it's a sign of the creative bankruptcy of the current DC editorial and writing staff, not a sign of the times. Surely writers like Kurt Busiek and Mark Waid are as much products of our times as the writers who produced the stories that led to my lament yesterday, but their work is as different from those stories as day is from night. I honestly don't think that there's anything wrong with DC that making Tony Isabella Editor-in-Chief, and giving Mark Waid free rein to devise a reboot wouldn't cure. (If you haven't read Tony's How I Would Save the DC Universe, you really should surf there now. I'll wait until you're back.)
     In the mean-time, here are another seven things wrong with current DC continuity.

15. Clark Kent wasn't a nerd and a wimp, he was BMOC and a football star.
16. Krypton was an ice-planet populated by Yul Brynner lookalikes.
17. Superman wasn't the first super-hero. Heck, I think that according to the Zero-Hour timeline, Nightwing has been in the business longer than he has.
18. The Unknown Soldier was a psychotic CIA agent.
19. The Greek Gods are an epiphenomenon of the power that created Jack Kirby's New Gods. Or something.
20. Thaddeus Bodog Sivana is an industrialist, not a mad scientist. For that matter, so is Lex Luthor. Mr. Mind is a race of intelligent telepathic worms. Or something.
21. Doctor Fate's helmet was melted down to make a knife for a soldier of fortune. In the Silver Age you could have heroes who were museum curators, test pilots, police scientists, librarians, reporters, scientists, engineers; in the 90's protagonists (I hesitate to call them heroes) have to be mercenaries, assassins, or rogue CIA operatives.

    Need I go on?

To coincide with the release of Kingdom Come as a hardcover novel written by Elliot S Maggin, I figured that I'd reprint my answer to someone who complained about the original Kingdom Come being "plotless." I told him that I thought that was unfair, as Kingdom Come certainly had a plot. His reply was "Ok, so it had a plot: out of control superheroes in a dark future. Ok, but so what?" I admit that I'm rather proud of my response; sometime comics journalist Jack Curtin called it the best analysis of Kingdom Come he'd seen, and Mark Waid offered to buy me a drink. Pretty heady stuff for a fanboy from Brookline (some day I'll tell you about the other great compliment that Mark Waid once paid me). Here is what I wrote:

Ok, so Hamlet had a plot: a prince can't decide what to do about the murder of his father. OK, but so what?
     Can you tell that I think your summary is a gross oversimplification? The plot of Kingdom Come wasn't simply "Out-of-control super-heroes in a dark future"--in fact we hardly even saw the out-of-control superheroes; what we mostly saw were the attempts to bring them under control, and the consequences of that.
     Here's the plot in a nutshell: The pattern is called "the man who learned better." After a personal and professional tragedy, Superman wrestles with the question "Who watches the watchmen?" His first attempt at an answer is, "Nobody. It's none of my business." The consequences of this are even more horrific than the original tragedy, and he realizes his answer was wrong (this is where the narrative begins). His second answer is, "I will, personally (along with a few hand-picked subordinates)." At first this seems to work, but eventually it also proves to be wrong, with consequences comparable (and on the verge of being worse) than the first answer. Just before he makes his third and worst mistake, he learns that the answer is "All of us, together."
     Essentially Kingdom Come is a recapitulation of the evolution of the Rule of Law in Western civilization, and I found it both moving and fascinating--and not because of the "Easter eggs" or the "who's who" guessing games.

You can order Kingdom Come from Amazon.com, at the great price of $14.00 (cover price is $20.00).

I just fixed a bunch of the links on the Bookstore page that were broken, so if you had tried to use them before and gotten frustrated, you can give them another go.

Meanwhile, I'm way behind in my chores, so I'll leave you with a quick review:

Maskerade: yet another novel of Discworld
by Terry Pratchett
published by Harper Prism, hardcover, $22.00
rating: Gosh-a-rooty!

"To Whom It May Concern:

Ahahahahaha! Ahahahahaha!

Yrs Sincerely,

The Opera Ghost"

That about sums it up right there. You're about to read Terry Pratchett's take on The Phantom of the Opera, and if your tastes are anything like mine you had best make sure that your sides are reinforced and you have a clean floor to roll on before you begin. The one thing about Terry Pratchett's writing that most amazes me is not that he's so darn funny--lots of writers are funny--but that he keeps on getting better; not just better at the ha-ha, but better overall, deeper, stronger, more insightful...better.
     My only complaint about reading a Discworld novel is that when it's done I want to read another one. Fortunately frequent re-reading of older ones keeps that under control, or I don't know what I'd do. I've gone from buying the paperbacks, to buying the hardbacks as soon as they come out, and just a few days ago I caught myself contemplating trying to buy the original (UK) hardbacks as imports....If you can't wait either, you can order Maskerade from Amazon.com.

Here's one of my favorite brain-teasers:

In the game show The Price Is Right, there always comes a moment when a contestant is offered a choice of three doors, behind one of which is a fabulous prize (a new car, a yacht, an all expenses paid vacation for two in Tahiti), while behind the other two is some booby-prize such as a year's supply of Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco Treat.
     The play goes as follows (abstracted for the purposes of the puzzle):

• Contestant picks one of the doors
• The MC, Bob Barker (I think), says, "All right, but before we show you what you've won, let's open one of the other doors."
• The lovely assistant opens a door, behind which is...a year's supply of Rice-A-Roni.
• Bob turns to the contestant. "Now, you can have the prize behind the door that you chose, or you can switch to the other door and have the prize behind that one. Which do you want?"
• The audience goes nuts yelling advice: "Switch!" "Stay!" "Switch!" "Stay!"

According to probability theory (and assuming you don't have a Rice-A-Roni fetish) if you were the contestant, which is correct:

1. You should stay with the door you originally picked.
2. You should switch to the other unopened door.
3. It doesn't matter.

This isn't a trick question, but it is hard to see the answer until it's explained to you, and many people have trouble seeing it even after it's explained. Marilyn vos Savant, who bills herself as the smartest woman in the world, was one of the latter.

Answer, with proof, tomorrow.

Here's the solution to yesterday's Price is Right brain-teaser:

The proper course of action is to switch. Most people, including Marilyn vos Savant, think that the answer is that it doesn't make a difference: after you take one choice away it's fifty-fifty which door the grand prize is behind. As it happens, that's not the case, because of the ground rules under which the game is played--specifically the fact that Bob will never choose to reveal what's behind the door you've picked before showing one of the other doors, and will never show the grand prize (creating an anti-climax) before offering you a chance to switch. If you switch you'll win two-thirds of the time; contrariwise if you stay, you'll only win one-third of the time.

Proof:

Let's call the doors A, B, and C. Without loss of generality, let's assume that the grand prize is behind door C, and you pick the first door randomly. Watch what happens in each case:

If you end up on C, you win the grand prize.

It's important to note that in the first two cases (2/3 chance total) where you picked a door behind which there was Rice-A-Roni, Bob has no choice--he can't reveal the grand prize, so he must reveal whichever Rice-A-Roni door you didn't pick. Switching will then guarantee that you end up on the door with the grand prize. It's only if you happened to pick the grand-prize door at the start that you will end up switching off of it and onto a Rice-A-Roni door, but a priori there's only 1/3 chance of that. Ergo, the strategy of switching results in a 2/3 chance of ending up with the grand prize.

Reviewed for your amusement:

Thunderbolts #14
by Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley
Marvel, color, $1.99
rating: Keen

Thunderbolts still hasn't recaptured the momentum that it had going into the final confrontation between the now-unmasked Thunderbolts and the rest of the world, but it's still managing to hold my interest, and the trend is in the right direction.

Astro City #13
by Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson, and Alex Ross
Image (Homage), color, $2.50
rating: Neat-O.

This was a rather down-beat shaggy dog story (or should that be shaggy lion story?) about Loony Leo, a cartoon character who was brought to life as a side effect of a fight between a mad scientist and The Gentleman in the 1940's, and has since found that life in the real world isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Perhaps the most interesting thing about it is the careful way that the structure of Loony Leo's rise to super-stardom and subsequent fall from grace parallels not just the stereotypical Hollywood career, but the nature of celebrity in the various decades.

I'm extremely pleased to announce that for today's column (and another later on in the week, as his time permits), Mark Crilley, creator of the wonderful Akiko, has consented to an interview. To commemorate this occasion, and to make any Akiko fans who are new to this site right at home, I've created a new page, dedicated to Akiko, that will display this interview, and gathers together links to all the review of Akiko so far (as new Akiko reviews are added, it will automatically update).
     Here then, interviewed for your amusement, is Mark Crilley:

AiR: One of the great things about Akiko is that it really is an all-ages comic book. What were some of your favorite comics as a kid?

Mark: My older brothers and I were "DC" kids, with Batman, Superman and the Flash figuring very high on our list of important heroes. I remember Richie Rich, Archie and Li'l Lotta, but don't recall being particularly blown away by these comics, or by comics in general. They were more a springboard for acting out our own adventures in the backyard!
     In fact, I didn't get serious about comics until just a few years ago, after I got the deal with Sirius. Since then it's been a crash course on how comics work, what comics readers want in a comic, etc. I'm still figuring things out, one issue at a time!

AiR: Are there particular comics creators by whom you were influenced?

Mark: I think I was in college when I first began to examine the drawing styles of comic artists. A friend of mine worked for Fantagraphics at the time and sent me copies of Love & Rockets, and the Complete Crumb. When I came across Little Nemo in Slumberland, I was very impressed, and have doubtlessly received quite a bit of influence from Winsor McCay.

AiR: You mention on your web-page that you were in Japan recently. How is your work received in Japan (aside from the flight attendants)?

Mark: I've only received one letter from a reader in Japan, who found Akiko in a shop somewhere in Yokohama. Akiko is not imported into Japan in any great number, and I doubt that anymore than a handful of people in Japan have even heard of it. (My visits to Japan have nothing to do with Akiko. I just go there to have fun!)

AiR: Finally, the catch-all question. Is there anything in particular about Akiko that you'd like to share with us?

Mark: I hope that Akiko readers can spread the word that this comic can be enjoyed by more than just children. Akiko got pegged as a kids comic early on, and I think the label scares a lot of people off. I wish people could think of Akiko the same way they think of Calvin & Hobbes. People don't label Calvin & Hobbes as "a great strip for children," they just recognize it as a great strip, period. I think the comic industry's thirst for an alternative to grim and gritty comics leads some people to sanctify certain books as "good for kids," when what they really are is "good for everybody."

Reviewed for your amusement:

Wolff & Byrd: Counselors of the Macabre #18
by Batton Lash
Exhibit A Press, b&w, $2.50
rating: Neat-O.

Not reading Wolff & Byrd is a crime, or at least it should be. The punishment should be something lingering, with boiling oil in it, I fancy, or perhaps having to read every last X-Men comic being published.
     Be that as it may, Batton Lash has produced another fine comic here, the start of a multi-part story about a client of W&B who's being sued for sexual harrasment: specifically, casting a love spell on a female employee. As it turns out, she's had a spell cast on her, all right, but by the client's mother, an old-fashioned witch who doesn't seem to quite grasp the new-fangled notions of courtship....
    This issue wasn't quite as punny as some of them (or if it was, I missed 'em), but there are some fine moments of physical comedy, plus a hilarious in-joke in the form of the meeting of The Associates of Portia. (If you don't get it, follow the link to "The Giant Egress", and look for the link to The Friends of Lulu home page.)
    This issue also has some interesting (and heartening) news on the inside cover, namely that Universal Studios has announced in Daily Variety that it is developing Wolff & Byrd for a big-budget live action film, to be produced by Nancy Roberts, and written by Roberts, S.S. Wilson (Tremors and Short Circuits) and Steve Mazer (Liar, Liar). It's not a good idea to hold your breath waiting for the premier, but this is still a whole lot farther than most options ever get. Good luck, Batton!

Interviewed for your amusement:

Part Two of our Amused in Review interview with Mark Crilley.

AiR: Do you find that Akiko fans have strong favorites among the characters? (Personally, mine is Akiko, followed by Spuckler, but I know my friend Johanna is crazy about Poog.)

Mark: They certainly do. Poog and Spuckler regularly show up as favorites. Gax and Akiko probably come in second, and Mr. Beeba is definitely last, sometimes being beat out by Bip and Bop!

AiR: Do you have long-range (or short-range, I suppose) plans for projects besides Akiko?

Mark: I'd love to take on a different project someday, but I think Akiko deserves at least several more years of work. I think a creator has to establish something very solidly before moving onto something else. It would be interesting to illustrate someone else's story, though, if the opportunity ever came up.

Air: It's my pet theory that authors who actually have something to say in comics invariably have read stuff other than comics. Do you have any favorite non-comic books or authors?

Mark: I generally read biographies and non-fiction. I've read biographies of everyone from Charles Schultz and Walt Disney to Ella Fitzgerald and John Lennon. Oddly enough, I don't follow the writing of any particular author, but tend to choose books according to their topic. In my case, I really should be reading more comics, actually, because I hardly read any comics at all! Sadly, meeting the deadlines of Akiko greatly cuts down on my reading time.

AiR: How long does it usually take you to do an issue of Akiko, start to finish, back-up stories, letters column, covers and all?

Mark: Around 30 days, start to finish, with about 4 - 6 days off to "recharge." I try to complete at least one page per day.

Thanks to Mark for agreeing to do this. Be sure to visit him at his Akiko web page, and keep on reading Akiko! (You are reading, Akiko, aren't you?)

Today I went to "the happiest place on Earth". No, not Tijuana (sorry, Krusty fans): Disneyland. I'd never been before, despite my having lived over two years now about ten minutes down I5 from the place, although I had been to the Orlando counterpart once when I was about nine years old. My (step) brother, sister-in-law, and their two children were in LA visiting another relative in the company of his grandmother, but they had a day free, so we thought that taking the kids to Disneyland would be fun.
     We were right. Going to Disneyland with a three-year old and a six-year old was a blast. I'm actually rather a fan of theme-parks, and while my personal favorite is probably still Busch Gardens: The Old Country in Williamsburg, I don't think that I've ever been to a theme park as well-suited to small children as Disneyland.
     First of all, the park itself is more-or-less properly scaled to little legs. Even Bethany, the three-year-old was able to walk back and forth across the park to the various attractions pretty much all day without needing a stroller, or demanding to be carried. (She likes to dangle with her feet off the ground between her dad and me and swing herself back and forth, but that's a different story.)
     Then there are the rides. While there are quite a few that a three-year old isn't tall enough to ride, there weren't any that I saw that a six-year old can't go on. Even the roller-coaster is fairly tame--no drops, just a lot of round-and-round; well, the one we went on, Thunder Mountain, was. The lines at the Matterhorn were too long, so I don't know what that one was like. Still, Disneyland is not the kind of place where you'll find "the fastest steel 'coaster in the world" (The Loch Ness Monster at Busch Gardens the first time I went, since surpassed), or "the world's tallest stand-up 'coaster, with six loops, and speeds of up to sixty-five miles-an-hour" (the new Riddler's Revenge at Six Flags). Disneyland is more about The Mad Tea Party, the Casey Jr. Circus Train, the Jungle Boat Ride, and so on.
     My personal favorite was the Haunted Mansion--that was the one that I remembered most vividly from when I went to Disneyworld when I was nine, with the room that stretches, the waltzing spectres, and the ghost that rides right in your car with you (at least it does in the mirror). Bethany's was "It's a Small World", although just by a nose. The Mad Tea Party, the Storybook Land Boat Ride, and Minnie's House were all big hits with her. Interestingly enough, out of about ten people on our boat in the Storybook Land Boat Ride, Bethany and Max were the only kids. My brother, Alex, remarked that it was a perfect ride for a three year old--so he didn't understand what the adults without kids were doing on it at all. Max thought that Thunder Mountain was pretty cool, as was the Star Tours ride (one of those shake-your-seat-around-while-showing-a-movie rides, with a Star Wars theme). The Indiana Jones Adventure was a little too scary for him. I don't know what my sister-in-law's favorite ride was, but it definitely wasn't the Mad Tea Party; too much spinning for her.
     Finally, there there was the cast, what Disney calls its staff, who were wonderfully friendly. Up until now I had thought the staff at other theme parks attentive enough, but compared to the folks at Disneyland, they're positively surly. It's not just the cast members dressed as Disney characters (although getting her photo taken with Mickey was the thrill of a lifetime for Bethany), it was everyone that we had any dealings with in the whole park. Every vendor or park attendant that we met asked us if we were having a nice time, and each of them took the time to say hello to the kids. Sure, it's in Disney's economic self-interest to encourage the employees to be sweet to the customers, but it's remarkable how little ice that line of reasoning seems to cut with the management (or the employees) of, to pick a random example, Wannamaker's Department Store in Philadelphia, despite the fact that anyone going clothes shopping there (particularly with kids in tow) is looking to lay out considerably more money than a day at Disneyland would run, even with the over-priced food.
     All-in-all I had a wonderful time, although I got too much sun. I wouldn't do it again all that soon in the company of adults--there weren't quite enough attractions that thrilled me for that--but I'd go again tomorrow if the kids wanted to.
     See you tomorrow!

This just in from Amused in Review correspondent Tony Isabella:

"Nothing to say today?"

Actually, what it is is that I'm amazingly behind in my columns, and since my mother is in town for the week-end, I haven't had time to do today's column yet. Now, though, I've dropped her off at her hotel to take a nap before dinner, so I can turn my attentions once more towards my clamoring fans.

Dragonball Z #1
by Akira Toriyama
Viz Comics, b&w, $2.95
rating: Keen

This is the first issue in the second Dragonball series, the insanely popular martial-arts melodrama by Akira Toriyama, of Dr. Slump fame. The Dragon Balls are magic artifacts that, when gathered together in one place, allow the possessor to summon an ancient dragon that will grant one wish, after which the balls scatter themselves once more to the four corners of the earth. The second series starts five years after the first, and the protagonist of the first series, Son Goku, is now married and has a son named Gohan. This first issue is mostly set-up, as a "mysterious warior from space" arrives on Earth, and starts searching for Goku, whom he refers to as "Kakarrot." After a couple of encounters which show how tough this new martial artist is (plenty tough, as he catches a bullet out of mid-air and flicks it back lethally with his thumb, and withstands the best shot of Son Goku's chief rival from the original series without blinking), he finds Son Goku, and demands to know why he hasn't completed his original mission--the destruction of the inhabitants of Earth.
     There wasn't a lot to this issue, but so far the premise seems at least mildly interesting. I definitely prefer the yocks of Dr. Slump, but I'll be giving this a try.

Maison Ikkoku Part Seven #9
by Rumiko Takahashi
Viz, b&w, $3.25
rating: Gosh-a-rooty!

Just when I was starting to wonder if the story was losing focus with the reintroduction of Ibuki, Rumiko Takahashi takes Ibuki's rivalry with Kyoko to a whole new level. I don't really know whether Takahashi has a grand plan for all the twists and turns of this title, or whether it's pure sadism, but whatever it is, it works for me.

Inu-Yasha: A Feudal Fairy Tale #12
by Rumiko Takahashi
Viz, b&w, $3.25
rating: Neat-O.

Inu-Yasha and Kagome, with the...well, "help" is too strong a word...the presence of Nobunaga confront the frog demon Tsukumo No Gama, in order to rescue the Princess Tsuyo and recover another shard of the Shikon Jewel (you remember the Shikon Jewel, right? The McGuffin that drives this tale?). Kagome is rapidly becoming one of my favorite Takahashi heroines; she's got a lot of spunk, and unlike Lou Grant, I like it.

Gold Digger Beta #1
by Fred Perry
Antarctic Press, color, $2.95
rating: Neat-O.

Hey, now that there's finally a Gold Digger series in color, maybe I can get my pal Lucio to scope it out. I think it has the right blend of humor and action for him, but I could never get him past the fact that it was in black and white. There are a lot of folks out there in comic-book reader-land who won't read black and white books. (Well, "a lot" may be an exaggeration. There aren't a lot of comic-book readers, period. Let's just say a significant proportion of those who do read comics.) That's a shame, because some of the best work in comics today is done in black and white, either for aesthetic or economic reasons, but those books are cut off from potential readers because of it. We'll have to see whether sales on the color version justify the cost of doing it in color. Meanwhile, if you're one of those people who just won't read a black and white book, check out GD: Beta; you just might find something you like.
     In this issue, Gina and Cheetah discover yet another lost civilization (yeesh, how do you suppose people managed to lose that many? Smacks of carelessness, if you ask me), and are menaced by a shiny silvery morphing device (kind of a T2000 thing going here, if you know what I mean) that appears to have somehow engulphed Gina's semi-friendly rival Penny. For non-stop action in the Indiana Jones mode, it doesn't get much better than this.