LUDIC LOG

It's time to take a look at DC Who's Who Volume XI, the eleventh installment of our weekly look at this funnybook fiasco and the sixteenth issue overall in our series where I make snotty comments about comic book characters that made more money for their creators than I'll ever get for mocking them.

Issue #11...well, it's not great. The writers seem to be getting as tired of doing Who's Who as I am of reading Who's Who, and it shows. Just look at the cover (by the tired, tired team of Paris Cullens and Dick G. O'Dano): it's got three of the classic indicators of artistic flatulence -- a giant head (Infinity Man's), people made of electricity (the various Johnny Thunders), and lots and lots of purple costumes. Take my word for it, folks: purple costumes always mean someone's ready for a nap in the design department. The "Pronunciation Glossary" is even out to lunch, assuming DC's brain-dead readers need help pronouncing words like 'javelin' and 'icicle'. Even the letter column is snippy; when Len Wein responds to a reader who wasn't paying the proper amount of attention to pass remedial geek school, you can almost hear the "fuckin' asshole" clacking off his keyboard.

Not that you can really blame them; the very first entry in the lettercol is from Conrad P. Felber (that's right, the "5'2" and proud of it" Conrad P. Felber), who complains at great lenght that there are -- ready? -- not enough short superheroes. Yes, Conrad is all bent out of his tiny little shape that the shrimpo lobby has only losers like Anthro and Changeling to look up to. Hey, Felber, I feel your pain, okay? I'm half-Arab and all my people are colored gray-green in comic books, but you don't see me writing angry letters, do you? Mr. Felber is, of course, a Canadian.

On with the show.

ICICLE. That's pronounced "I-sik-el", in case you weren't sure. Icicle is one of DC's innumerable villains whose sole gimmick is a freon gun. I'm sure late at night he goes to the Bend Sinister with Captain Cold and Mr. Freeze and they cry into their pousse-caffes about how awful it is that they can only manage to defeat retirees in Boca Raton. As an aside, Icey (who sports a truly awesome bristle mustache and Coke-bottle specs, like all mad scientists should) is a real comer in the incomprehensible names sweepstakes; his moniker is "Joar Makent" and he's vaguely affiliated with a gangster named "Lanky Leeds".

INFERIOR FIVE. I have a soft spot for this '60s super-team, since they represented an early attempt at self-parody by the superhero writers. Unfortunately, they weren't all that good. Their gimmick was that they were the incompetent children of legendary Golden Age heroes, and they banded together to fight crime, only they sucked. There was Awkwardman (who was clumsy), the Blimp (who was fat! ho, the fat jokes, they slay me), White Feather (who was a coward), Dumb Bunny (she was a dumb blonde! how times have changed! sexist humor is a thing of the past I tell you!), and their leader, Merryman (who was retarded). They always managed to beat their opponents anyway, which just goes to show you, think twice before becoming a supervillain because you won't even be able to take out these cretins. This could be a pretty good concept in the hands of someone truly funny, but instead it was written by Julie Schwartz or someone who might as well have been Julie Schwartz. The police chief in their town is named Chief Geronimo, which is pretty funny.

INJUSTICE GANG OF THE WORLD. The worst name for a supervillain group ever should have belonged to the Injustice Society of the world (c.f.), but somehow these guys trumped them. They also had a logo that spelled out "IJ" in what appear to be dried-up turds. To top it all off, they may have had the worst collection of costumes of all time, with Poison Ivy's sexy outfit, Scarecrow's spooky rags and Shadow-Thief's ominous look being totally offset by the tedious costume of Mirror Master, the pointless body art of the Tattooed Man (which, for some reason, are all light blue, not usually a popular hue for tough-guy inkings), the incredibly garish Chronos, and their leader, Libra, who not only wore boots that would have looked more at home on a stripper, who not only chose for his outfit the grotesque color-combo of orange and blue, but who had a 'scales of justice' design on his facemask that made the support pillar of the scales cover his nose. Words cannot describe the awfulness of this team's appearance. Their arch-foe, I believe, was Mr. Blackwell.

INJUSTICE SOCIETY OF THE WORLD. These deadly enemies of the Justice Society of America didn't waste much time coming up with a name. While they're not quite as sartorially hideous as the IGW, and while they contain some legitimately cool supervillains like Per Degaton, Solomon Grundy and Vandal Savage, they can fairly be said to have the worst taste in hats of any aggregation of superhumans ever witnessed. Apparently planning on catching their foes off guard during a sniggering fit, their collection of shifty chapeaus included a peaked cap (Icicle), a dunce cap (Harlequin), a slouch hat (the Gambler), an accountant's eyeshade (Sportsmaster), and an amazing two top hats (the Wizard and Shade). They chose their leader by commiting a series of so-called "Patriotic Crimes", which, oddly enough, is how America chooses its leaders these days.

INSECT QUEEN. Back in the long, long hangover between the Golden Age and the Silver Age -- a period I like to call the Stunk-like-ass Age -- there were two rules for comic book women: first, if they were affiliated with Superman, they had to have the initials LL, and second, if they were at any point a superhero's girlfriend, they had to turn temporarily evil for some cheap heart-rending drama. Insect Queen (a.k.a. Superman's childhood sweetie, Lana Lang), fit both these rules. Earth-1's Insect Queen was basically a female version of Bee Boy; she could assume the form of any insect. Any insect, that is, that was 12 feet long and had the torso of Lana Lang in a stupid outfit. For some reason, she could also assume the form of giant crabs and lobsters. What's that you say? Crabs and lobsters aren't insects? Shut up and hand over your dime, fanboy. The Earth-2 Insect Queen tried to solve this problem; they even mention in her description that "she has no power over such noninsects as spiders, centipedes and scorpions". Nice try, Marv Wolfman, but all you've done is ensure that thousands of nerds will comb her every appearance with a magnifying glass, looking for a stray millipede.

INVISIBLE DESTROYER. How stupid are comic books? This stupid: the Invisible Destroyer, one of whose powers (as you may have guessed from his excellent name) is to turn invisible, wears a non-invisible costume, including a helmet, gloves, and tights, thus assuring that he is not invisible at all, with the worthless exception of his face and a small strip of the back of his head. Between this and Wonder Woman's invisible jet, you sort of have to wonder if the DC writers really understood that the benefit of invisibility is that no one would be able to see you.

INVISIBLE KID I. "It recently appeared that (Invisible Kid) had been trapped in another dimension and was not dead, but this was revealed as a hoax perpetrated by a demon seeking to lure Legionnaires to their doom". This sort of thing happen all the time in comic books. It must be really difficult to work through the process of grief when you're a superhero.

I...VAMPIRE. That was the title of his book, though no one ever called him that other than himself. They just called him "Vampire". It's too bad, really; this fairly dull character could have been livened up if people were always saying "Gasp! It's You...Vampire!", or if his Who's Who entry referred to him as "He...Vampire". Or imagine all the Abbott-and-Costello-worthy comedy that could have played out:

"My God! It's I...Vampire!"

"What? You're a vampire? I thought he was the vampire!"

"He is! He's I...Vampire!"

"But I thought..."

JAVELIN. This hulking Aryan was some sort of industrial spy who had jet-boots and a couple of tricked-out javelins and thought that would be enought to beat Green Lantern. It wasn't. In his description, it says he is "presumably a former Olympic participant". What, he had to have been an Olympic javelin thrower because he uses javelins to commit crimes? If a bank robber goes swimming, is he Greg Louganis? If I walk down the street holding a pair of skis, people don't assume I went to Lillehammer. Sheesh, DC Comics.

JERICHO. So, who else thinks that Jericho preferred the company of gents? Okay.

JESTER. Yet another manly, rugged dude (check out the chisel-chinned Ken Steacy drawing) with a manly, rugged name (Chuck Lane) and a manly, rugged occupation (cop) who appeared in a manly, rugged Golden Age comic (Smash Comics) and decided to become a manly, rugged superhero. The only difference is, he picked the least manly, rugged persona this side of a mime. Apparently he chose the jester gimmick because he is "the direct descendent of a medieval court jester". So this guy traces back his lineage 500 years, and the best thing he can find is a fucking court jester? Hell, I would have just called myself "Super-Cop" and worn my uniform with a ski mask. That's got more dignity than "The Jester".

JOHNNY QUICK. That's "Johnny Quick and his Magic Formula" to you, chumps. See, JQ had a pretty nifty superpower -- he was a speedster, and he could also fly, and he got to make it with Liberty Belle -- but he got it in a sort of, well, unconventional way. All he did was say a secret formula ("3X2[9YZ]4A"), and his powers turned on. Then he said another one ("Z25Y[2AB]6", for you math-gibberish completists) and they turned off. Leaving aside the question of why you would want to turn your super-powers off if you didn't have to, doesn't this strike anyone as slightly...insecure? What kind of an idiot creates a formula that can give people superpowers just by saying it? I mean, it just takes one nosy schmuck with a mimeo machine and we've got half the fucking country running around at Mach 8.

JONNY THUNDER I, JOHNNY THUNDER II, JOHNNY THUNDER III, JONNI THUNDER, AND JOHNNY THUNDERS. Frankly, I can't tell any of these people apart. One is a cowboy, one is a trenchcoated moron who turns into an electric pink genie, one is a Kinks song, one is a skinny-tie-wearing moron who turns into an electric yellow genie, and one is the guitarist for the New York Dolls. But I have no idea which is which.

JOKER. Just this one time, can we end on a high note? Can't we just pretend the plug-ugly western/sci-fi numbnuts Jonah Hex isn't the last entry in the book? Can't we ignore the purple suit, and think of the good times? You know, the times where we'd screech hysterically, reread The Killing Joke for the 37th time, gas a bunch of children to death, and forget Cesar Romero ever existed? Just this once?