LUDIC LOG

And now, without further deal, the next installment of our weekly tour through DC Who's Who. Today: Volume IV. Let's get right to it.

CADRE. Aside from their dubious origin (they were created by a would-be alien conquerer who came to Earth and created an entire team of superhumans to fight the Justice League, which seams like a pretty roundabout way of doing things), there's nothing particularly noteworthy about this minor super-villain team. Oh, wait: except for the fact that there's a gravity-manipulating guy in it called Black Mass. Yes, he's black.

CALCULATOR. There are lots of characters in the DC universe who seem to have been inspired by the writers sitting around their offices picking stuff up. "Hey, how about this for a Batman villain -- the PEN!" "Sure," Julie Schwartz would reply. "We can put him in the next issue, after he fights the Stamp Moistener." The Calculator is one of thise characters; in what must have seemed like a really hi-tech idea when he was first created in the 1970s, he had a calculator on his chest that let him predict the actions of his enemies. Nowadays, of course, this seems as cutting-edge an idea for a supervillain as 'PongMaster'. In fact, even back then, they seemed to recognize that he was pretty weak, so they also gave him a helmet that could create solid objects out of dust particles in the air, a la Green Lantern. Frankly, I would have relied more heavily on that than the calculator gimmick, but I guess that's why I don't make the big bucks like, say, Jim Shooter.

CALENDAR MAN. Yet another entrant in the "villains named after stuff we found lying around our office" sweepstakes, Calendar Man pulls off the amazing trick of being even lamer than the Calculator, and what's more, he has one of the most horrific name-as-destiny secret identities ever: his name is Julian Day. I paid money for this crap, folks.

CAPTAIN BOOMERANG. I mentioned a while back that the Flash got the lamest super-villains of any of the major DC heroes, and Captain Boomerang is proof. How a guy in the gayest costume in the world (black tights, a fruity blue smock with a white boomerang print all over it, a long white scarf and a flight attendant's hat) who threw wooden boomerangs can possibly survived a single battle with a guy who can run at ten times the speed of sound, let alone become one of his most persistent foes, is beyond me, and yet, here we are. They tried to reinvent Digger Harkness (Captain Boomerang's flamboyantly Aussie real name) as a kind of likeable rogue when he joined the Suicide Squad. It didn't work.

CAPTAIN COLD. Exhibit #4,326 in my argument that guys named Leonard are always geeks: Captain Cold, a.k.a. Leonard Snart. Yet another extremely weenified member of Flash's Rogues Gallery. Still, I liked him better than Mr. Freeze.

CAPTAIN MARVEL. What can you say about the Big Red Cheese that hasn't already been said? Incredibly powerful yet intrinsically sappy and with a curious origin and character, Cap has always been a favorite target of sinister reinterpreters, from Alan Moore's Miracleman to the murderously deluded Captain Marvel of Kingdom Come to Alan Moore's unpublished Twilight of the Super-heroes, where Billy Batson is a homicidal sex pervert. I always thought it would be fun to have a Bizarro Captain Marvel, who got all the bad qualities of his nominal gods: the bad poetry-writing ability of Solomon, the stupidity of Hercules, the stubbornness of Atlas, the horniness of Zeus, the vulnerability of Achilles and the dumb-looking outfit of Mercury.

CAPTAIN NAZI Captain Nazi, a co-op employee gone horribly wrong, became a superhumanly powered anti-Semitic fascist after eating "Miracle Food" and inhaling "flying gas". I know how it is, brother.

CAPTAIN STORM. How did this guy ever manage to hang on to his commission? He had one eye, his leg was blown off at the knee, he had a heart condition, and for all I know he had half a lung and gout. And what kind of a sailor lets his ship get ambushed by a bright red submarine, anyway? I would think that would be kind of easy to spot. Maybe it's harder with only one eye.

CAT-MAN. Cat-Man: more interesting than Catwoman. Who's with me on this one?

CATWOMAN. That said, we're not even six issues into the series and we've already gotten Black Canary, Catwoman and the Cheetah. Say what you like about them, DC has really sunk its talons into 4 generations and counting of horny adolescents. Sexy Dave Stevens art on the Golden Age Catwoman, too.

CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN. Ace Morgan, Prof Healy, Red Ryan, Rocky Davis, June Robbins. Later they teamed up with Cave Carson, Bulldozer Smith, Christie Madison, and Johnny Blake. Holy shit, I gotta go lie down...I'm having a Kirby ruggedness overload.

CHANGELING. The Changeling, despite being a complete tool, was always popular with the geeky fans of the Teen Titans, probably because he was supposed to be a hapless, socially maladjusted nerd like them. He was even on a Star Trek-like TV show for a while. This entry has that rarest of things, bad George Perez art; I think he burned out on the great cover to this issue. Not ony is Gar wearing a shirt covered with little hearts in the incidental art, but he looks exactly like the guy who plays "Fez" on That '70s Show.

CHEETAH. Golden Age Cheetah or Silver Age Cheetah? Curvy, voluptuous '40s Cheetah or lithe, athletic '80s Cheetah? Trina Robbins Cheetah or Steve Leialoha Cheetah? Consumed-with-jealousy original Cheetah, or deranged environmentalist new Cheetah? I can't decide, but either way, it spells Wonder Woman catfight!

CHEMO. SSSSSSS! Gurgle.