LUDIC LOG

On the eve of war, at this critical time in the destiny of our nation, with the lives of brave young men and women on the line, I know of no better way to commemorate their sacrifice and dedication than by getting high and thumbing through Issue #2 of The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. It's 2003, it's 1991, it's 1985 again: cue up "Two Tribes" on your boom box and jump in with me, my bold and fearless geek army.

A couple of technical asides: first of all, the coloring on OHOTMU was done by the workmanlike (you know, boring) Andy Yanchus. I have a feeling he had a particularly rough childhood, don't you?

Second, I've mentioned the competitor product to OHOTMU a number of times -- Who's Who in the DC Universe. Now, of course, I never got too much into the DC/Marvel wars; if it had a hypertrophied dufus in tights punching criminals in it, I'd read it. But in retrospect, DC's stuff, while it may not always have been as daring or as high-quality as some of Marvel's, seemed to get it right a little more often. This is no exception, and for once, you really can tell a book by its cover: DC Who's Who had the characters inside actually interacting on the cover -- talking to each other, showing off their powers, forming little cliques, and goofing off. It looked like the DC Universe Christmas party. OHOTMU just had them rushing forward, running, flying, jumping, whatever. Just going past. Like they didn't even see each other. The gimmick was that if you laid all the OHOTMU covers end to end, which everyone who had 20 feet of empty space in their nerd bedrooms did, they all made one big picture, but so what? It was still one big picture of a bunch of dipshits running in one direction towards nothing. The Marvel characters were just moving; the DC characters were hanging out. Once again, DC got it.

Anyway.

BEAST. In most of the OHOTMU entries, the incidental art was of the character using his or her powers in some flashy way -- blasting a bad guy, tearing an iron door off its hinge, something like that. Beast, in keeping with his I-get-no-respect condition, is shown playing ping-pong, by himself, with his feet. I guess if you hop around saying "Oh my stars and garters!" all the time, you get whatever's coming to you.

BEETLE. A lot of people were enamored with the Beetle, but I always thought he was a pretty lame villain. He gets two pages, which could have been one if they'd left off the ludicrous technical drawings ("pantograph return spring and brake"). Another comic-book-logic origin for him: "Abner Jenkins was a master mechanic at an aircraft parts factory who became dissatisfied with his boring, low-paying job." So here's a guy who can build -- by himself -- a heavily armored, flying body suit that gives its wearer super-strength and the ability to shoot electric bolts that can blast a hole in a 3-foot-thick brick wall, and he ends up as a mechanic at an aircraft parts factory instead of, say, a billionaire inventor or a defense contractor. What the Marvel universe needs is a good career guidance counsellor.

BELASCO. One thing I remember about Belasco, other than that he was boring and stupid, is that his henchman was this giant demon named S'ym who looked like a huge killer aardvark. The writers must have thought this was terribly clever. I wonder if S'ym is still around, and if he's turned into a batshit-crazy fagbashing woman-hater?

BETA RAY BILL. Aaaah, the Simonson era of Thor! Beta Ray Bill! Zombie french fries! Gratuitous Lorelei! Thor getting turned into a frog! Good times, good times. I sort of liked Beta Ray Bill, even though the whole idea was pretty ridiculous.

BLACK BOLT. I love how Black Bolt's real name is "Blackagar Boltagon". If only this naming convention was commonly followed throughout the Marvel Universe. We could follow the exploits of Spidergath Managron, Humanor Torchanel and Incrediblag Hulkagus. Lots of great Kirby Magic in the incidental art, though.

BLACK KING. Anyone still reading this entry is obviously a complete loser, because we're getting pretty obscure even by my tastes, so I feel no shame in asking this: didn't the Hellfire Club strike you are really, really gay? And I don't mean in the 6th-grade, lame sense of gay like, say, Doug Ramsey was gay. I mean in the homosexual way, like "I think everyone in the Hellfire Club is gay."

BLACKLASH. Bob Layton art. Man, did I love Bob Layton. Especially the Bob Layon-era Iron Man. Although I always wondered how a dope with an electric whip could give Iron Man any hassle. Just pulverize him with your repulsor rays, already. Two fun side notes: Blacklash was a member of the "Maggia", which is what the Marvel Universe had instead of the Mafia, possibly because someone from the New York mob threatened to break Stan Lee's thumbs. Also, it's mentioned prominently that Blacklash went to Rennselaer Poly-tech. I wonder if any frat boys ever read that and went "Dude! This guy went to my school!"

BLACK MAMBA. Black Mamba was a hooker turned deadly snake-themed assassin. I love it when they turn hookers into supervillians. I guess I like hookers generally.

BLACKOUT. You suck, Al Milgrom.

BLACK PANTHER. Black Cat, a shitty Catwoman knockoff, gets two pages. Black Knight, who not only sucks but is a complete fringe character in the Marvel Universe, gets three. And what does T'Challa, a major character, who had his own title, who is a fucking Avenger, and who is one of the most bad-ass black characters in comics history, get? One lousy page. Pathetic. Also, there's no shot of him without his mask on, so you don't really even know he's black.

BLACK QUEEN. Another Hellfire Club member. She's tarted up in a combination French maid/dominatrix uniform. See? I'm telling you . Gay.

BLACK WIDOW. Okay, I know, predictable, but I had a big hard-on for the Black Widow. Red hair, former ballerina/superspy, swanky silky costumes, kicked everyone's ass. How could you not love that? She had lousy taste in men, though, falling first for the commie tool Red Guardian, then for certifiable lummox Hawkeye, and later for unstable lunatic Daredevil. Frank Miller gave her a haircut and an attitude and she was even hotter than ever. I'm convinced she put the spider logo right on her left tit just so guys would stare at it and she'd have an excuse to punch them in the face.

BLASTAAR. BLASTAAR RULES O.K.!!! "He remains a deadly threat to Earth as well." YOU DAMN SKIPPY!

BLOB. Blob's powers stem from being a big fat guy. You have to like that. Plus, his name is Fred J. Dukes, and he can shoot bullets at you by sucking them into his flab and flexing them back out. The text says "the Blob does not truly possess superhuman strength", right over a bit of Byrne incidental art of him knocking Colossus on his ass by tearing a concrete floor to bits with his bare hands. Nice continuity, fellas.

BUSHMASTER. Aside from the pornographic name, there's not much to say about this quadriplegic loser who hung around with the Serpent Society, aside from the fact that he gets a MODOK Bonus: "While in battle with Modok, Bushmaster had his artificial arms severed." Do not fuck with MODOK, dude. There's even a little half-shot of the big man in the incidental art.

CALIBAN. Caliban's first appearance (issue #148 of the X-Men) marks the exact moment when Chris Claremont started to totally lose it. Next thing you know we had Callisto and the Morlocks and the Mutant Wars and there were 18 new characters in every issue and they were all mutants and then Doug fucking Ramsey showed up and it's all just too painful to talk about.

CANNONBALL. Boring character (although probably the least detestable of the original New Mutants), but a notable entry if for no other reason than it's obviously from the very last moments of when the brilliant Bill Sienkiewicz still pretended to care about traditional comic art style.

CAPTAIN AMERICA. Considering he was the franchise for many years and even after Spidey and the Hulk and them showed up he was still pretty huge, Cap doesn't get much of an entry. Four pages, but two of them are his van, his motorbike, his shield and his retarded hotline. Still, this was in the days before Liefeld got ahold of him, so it could be worse.

CAPTAIN UNIVERSE. They got Ditko back for this?

CELESTIALS. Call me a cosmic-power tool, call me a slave to Kirby, call me a sucker for arbitrary spooky-ookiness, but I always thought the idea of the celestials was a terrific one which nobody really exploited to its full potential until as recently as Earth X. Nezarr the Calculator probably didn't have too much to do, but I bet Oneg the Prober really loved his work.

CLEA. Boy, I liked Paul Smith. Is he still around? What's he up to? He came and went pretty quickly, didn't he? Too bad. From the text: "As the daughter of Umar, a member of the extradimensional Faltine race," who no doubt went down nicely with a nice topping of the Fardine race, "Clea has a body whose density is somewhat greater than that of an Earth human. As a result, she weighs more than an Earth woman of the same height and build would." This is no doubt included to explain her absolutely elaphantine 5'8"/190 pounds tale of the tape. Even in another dimension, you can't get away from Hollywood ugly.