LUDIC LOG

Today is my birthday, and what better way to celebrate a lifetime of wasted hours reading crappy comic books than our weekly look at Who's Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe? This week, Volume XV.

This one starts off on a good foot -- it's got one of George Perez's best covers, a busy, clever masterpiece. However, it all gets shot to shit as soon as you get to the letters page, for right there at the end is a missive from none other than the creator of Ironjaw, the notoriously litigious Michael L. Fleischer. This misogynist hack, recently shitcanned by DC following the cancellation of his ridiculous title Hexx, wrote in with a whole bunch of corrections about the entry for that character in the mistaken belief that anyone cared. Instead of replying to his letter, the editors simply left a big black space where the phrase "please don't sue us" should be.

Then you look at the table of contents, and you notice that...well, let's just come right out and admit it: there's a lot of Fawcett Comics characters in this issue. And you know what that means. Or, if you don't, you're about to find out. Let's get right to it.

MATTER-EATER LAD. Man, do I love Matter-Eater Lad. Gifted with the stupidest name ever (thanks, teenage Jim Shooter!), carrying with him a lame joke (he came from the planet Bismoll, get it? HAW HAW), Tenzil Kem was a respected member of the Legion of Super-Heroes despite having basically the same power as that fat kid in 3rd grade who would eat anything for a dollar. But the best thing about him is that he quit the LSH to return to Bismoll and enter a career in politics. And do you know where he eventually ended up? That's right: PRESIDENT Matter-Eater Lad.

'MAZING MAN. This was supposed to be one of DC's "whimsical" titles. They were really pushing it at the time, as evidenced by the fact that he gets equal face time on the cover with Mr. Miracle. Basically, 'Mazing Man was a deranged midget who hung out with a dog-faced boy. They fought crime in Queens. He wore boxer shorts outside his costume and was named Sigfried Horatio Hunch III. I'm sure this is all very fondly recalled by Dave Eggers and the rest of the 'new sincerity' crowd, because it was very sincere and gentle and also sucked. Arist Stephen DeStephano committed an act of cultural suicide by agreeing to participate in a comic that featured a mulleted, hairy, mustachioed, wifebeater-wearing Italian character named Guido.

MERRY, THE GIRL OF A THOUSAND GIMMICKS. Another great example of the kind of demented shit they came up with in the '40s, Merry was the daughter of a circus acrobat and part-time criminal named, ahem, "Fly-Foot" Creamer. Other people in her cosmology were Stripesy, Klinker, Buggsy, and Presto the Magician, and she went on to have a son named Brain Wave Jr. In her description, it says she relied on "her athletic and gymnastic abilities (undoubtedly inherited from her father)". That's some fine understanding of genetics, there, DC Comics. Are there a lot of accountants who inherited their father's accountancy abilities?

METALLO. Metallo is another character that embodies the two extremes of my relationship with comics. On the hate side, he was a pretty stupid character, who was, for some reason, a criminal who was crushed in an accident. Scientists replaced his entire body, except his head, with an indestructible robot. On the love side, he was called "Metallo, the Man with the Kryptonite Heart". And you gotta admit, that's pretty cool. Come on!

METAL MEN. Jesus, I could write a whole book about how completely fucked the Metal Men are. First of all, they're the creation of Dr. Magnus (no, not Magnus, Robot Fighter -- though I have a theory that was his ingrate grandson), who created the sexy, flirtatious Platinum first. That's right: he created a hot female robot who fell in love with him. The whole Metal Men enterprise starts to seem a lot more unsavory when you realize it started out with a guy trying to build a better sex toy. Second, they fought the most insane villains of all time, including the Missile Men, the Gas Gang, the Plastic Perils, B.O.L.T.S., and of course, Chemo, the most completely nuts super-foe ever created. Third: Nameless. Tin, the wimpiest, most pathetic of all the Metal Men, was desperately pathetic and lonely, so he created a robot girlfriend for himself. Later, she died, and all the Metal Men pretended to be sad about it, which didn't fool anyone, because they never bothered to give her a name. The Metal Men may be more responsible for my traumatic childhood than any other comic.

METAMORPHO. Metamorpho and Ultraa the Multi-Alien needed to have a big fight to determined who was the most ridiculous-looking character, but they never did. Come on, Keith Giffen! You're napping on the job, punk.

MIDNIGHT. Yet another yawn-inducing Golden Age hero, Midnight was a generic big-chinned schlub named Dave Clark (he later started a famous rock 'n' roll combo) who lived in 'Big City', starred in 'Smash Comics', and 'bored everyone silly'. Check out this great info in his description: "Originally, Midnight wore a blue hat, black mask and black suit, but eventually he wore a blue mask and blue suit instead." Fascinating.

MINDBOGGLER. Whenever comic books tried to portray punks, they always fell right on their ass. She was a supercriminal created by the Assassination Bureau with incredible powers to creat illusions, and yet her costume consisted of a raggedy-ass half-shirt with "MB" written on it in Sharpie. Christ, use your expense account already, Mindboggler. We have certain professional standards here at the Assassination Bureau.

MISS LIBERTY. For a woman who did her super-heroing in the sexually restrictive days of the Revolutionary War, Miss Liberty is rocking an evil case of cameltoe.

MIST. Mist invented an "inviso-solution" that could turn people, well, inviso-ble. He tried to sell it to the US Army in order to win the First World War, but they laughed at him, so he became a supervillain and plagued various heroes for decades. So much tragedy could have been avoided...I mean seriously, if you live in the DC universe, and someone tells you they can turn invisible, why wouldn't you believe them?

MR. AMERICA. You know, just when you think comic characters can't get any gayer, another guy comes along and raises the bar. Name: Tex Thompson. Occupation: playboy, millionaire oilman, detective. Appearance: teased hair, penci-thin mustache, very thin, neat. Costume: blue sabots, white sanitary socks, blue tights, blousy white dress shirt, blue tuxedo cloves, red velvet cape. Weapon of choice: bulllwhip. What a giveaway! "He was also a skilled actor", we're told, "enabling him to pose as Nazi officers". Yeah, I bet he and his friends spent a lot of time 'posing' as Nazi officers, usually in his rumpus room at 2AM with a handful of poppers.

MR. MIND. Okay, now we start to get in the crazy-ass Fawcett characters. Mr. Mind was one of Captain Marvel's most persistent enemies; he was eventually convicted of a horrific 186,744 murders, only to escape execution to plague humanity again and again. Truly one of the most monstrous supervillains of all time, it's no wonder he was one of the Marvel Family's deadliest nemeses -- until you remember that he was a three-inch long silkworm. Captain Marvel, the most powerful hero in the DC universe other than Superman, was constantly being stymied by a midget with an overbite and a tiny little worm. I guess he must have forgotten that even a toddler could squash a worm. I guess he must have forgotten that about a hundred times.

MR. MIND'S MONSTER SOCIETY OF EVIL. Ho, boy. Where to start with this one? I guess we should stick to the roll call. Aside from the World's Wickedest Worm, the MSE included...sigh. Well, okay. Aside from loser villains covered elsewhere in this series, including Captain Nazi, Dr. Sivana, and the Dummy, there was Goat-Man, who was, er, a goat-man; Evil-Eye, a "hypnotic monster"; King Kull, a big hairy freak; Jeepers, an intelligent bat-monster; IBAC, who was a nerd named Stinky Printwhistle who sold his soul to the devil; Mr. Banjo, a fat oaf in a boater who communicated secrets to the Nazis by playing hick tunes; "the Crocodile-Man of the planetoid Punkus", whose names were Herkimer and Sylvester; and...drumroll please...a Japanese super-agent named Nippo. Like I said: sigh.

MR. MXYZTPLK & MR. MXYZPTLK. Okay, the funniest thing in this whole book is that Mr. Mxyzptlk is from the "fifth-dimensional land of Zrfff", but it's not the same Zrfff as the Zrfff that Mr. Mxyztplk is from. People actually worry about these things.

MR. TAWKY TAWNY. Sure, it would be easy to make fun of the fact that Captain Marvel's best friend was a giant talking tiger in an ugly green suit who got his first name in a contest. But I'd like to talk about something more serious, more important, more...ugly: RACISM. You see, according to the entry for Mr. Tawky Tawny, he, like many other successful minorities, faced bigotry. "When he moved into a house, Tawny came up against prejudice, as many people didn't like the idea of a tiger living in their neighborhood." My friends, this is a black mark on the character of America that has been too long ignored. How often have you seen the "No Dogs, No Jews, No Tigers" sign on the front of a business, and yet you've kept silent? How often will we tolerate restricted clubs and restaurants that will refuse service to six-foot-tall tigers with rattan canes and glen plaid suits? How many times can you say to yourself, "Oh, it'll never happen to me; I'm not a talking cat who works part-time as a museum guard"? We can remain quiet no longer. No more can the American Dream tolerate the existence of the hateful signs in so many southern towns that read "TIGGER DON'T LET THE SUN SET ON YOU IN THIS TOWN".

Thanks, everyone! I'll be here all week.