LUDIC LOG

Until I finally run out of the goddamn things and am forced to come up with new material, Thursdays on the Ludic Log mean a glimpse at an issue of the 1980s comic book encyclopedia known as Who's Who: the Definitive Directory of the DC Universe. We're up to #17 now, and lucky us: it's stuffed to the gills with classic characters. Unfortunately, this being comics, 'classic' means 'familiar' more than it means 'good', and most of the classic characters in Volume XVII sort of suck. Even George Perez snoozed through this one, and couldn't even be bothered to draw backgrounds for the cover. The only really noteworthy thing about said cover is that Perez's drawing of Nimbus (from the Omega Men) makes him look a lot like Mortiis (from Emperor). HEY LOOK! I finally made a visual joke! Okay, it wasn't a good one, and it depends entirely on your knowing both comic books and black metal, but for Christ's sake, give me a little credit!

Anyway, let's get to the cape 'n' cowl crowd.

NIGHTSHADE. Hot, hot Cindy Martin drawing, which, having exhausted my graphics skills for one night, I cannot show you. Nightshade was a Charlton character (for non-comics fans, whenever I speak of "Charlton characters" or "Fawcett characters" or whatever, I'm referring to DC's pre-Marvel habit of simply buying any comics company that dared compete with them; they were the Microsoft of comics at one point), and she had a particularly convoluted origin. She was a princess from the Land of the Nightshades, whatever that is, and she, her mother, and her brother Larry escaped to Earth while fleeing from the evil Incubus, who was some sort of demon who dressed up in a skintight 3-D costume. So, naturally, she became a crack C.I.A. agent (this was back in the days when 'C.I.A' meant 'cool secret agent' instead of 'murderous drug-dealing shadow operative'). Her occupation is listed as "socialite and spy-smasher"; again, good work if you can get it.

NIGHT-SLAYER. One of the most seriously fucked-up Batman villains ever, Night-Slayer (also known, with a dazzling lack of cleverness, as "The Slayer of Night") was the spoiled son of a mobster. Using his millions to travel in Asia and become a martial arts expert, her returned home looking exactly like Charles Manson, and fell in love with his freaky albino adopted sister. Becoming a thief for no particular reason, this quasi-incestious nogoodnik came into conflict with Batman a number of times and eventually went to jail. Upon his release, he returned home to discover a two-bit crook putting the moves on his woman/sister, so he killed him. Unfortunately, this infuriated his demented, unstable, pale-skinned hippie sister, who said he had "slain the night's magic", whatever the fuck that means, and cut him off from access to her forbidden fruit. This, naturally, sent him off the deep end and he became a serial killer. A very, very, strange character.

NIGHTWING. The artist formerly known as Robin. Nightwing isn't very interesting, so I'll focus on what everyone always wants to talk about with Robin: his possibly unsavory relationship with his adopted father, Batman. (Yes, this is the all-adopted-incest edition of the Who's Who recap.) Now, it's bad enough, the whole Batman-Robin thing. It doesn't help that his ward was named 'Dick' and was referred to as the "Boy Wonder". It certainly doesn't help that Bruce Wayne was a dissipated, mentally unbalanced millionaire playboy who frequently pretended to cavort with supermodels to throw people off his habit of fighting crime while wearing a tight Lycra outfit. And the fact that his only serious heterosexual romantic entanglement over the years was with the frankly deranged Catwoman. But man, George Perez...in the Nightwing entry, did you have to draw Batman standing directly behind Robin like that? What a giveaway.

NIGHTWING & FLAMEBIRD. Once upon a time, Superman and that retard Jimmy Olsen were hanging around in the bottle city of Kandor. Since they didn't have any super-powers at the time (Superman because he loses his powers when he visits Kandor, and Jimmy Olsen because he is a retard), they decided, for reasons that are somewhat murky, to become non-powered costumed superhero detectives, a la Batman and Robin: Nightwing and Flamebird. (Little-known comic geek fact: Nightwing, the former Robin, is actually named after the Kryptonian Nightwing, who was actually Superman. WHY DO I KNOW ALL THIS.) Anyway, N & F always really offended me, and not for the reason you'd expect (that one of them was that retard Jimmy Olsen). It was because...well, look. It's a common cliche that you were either a Superman fan or a Batman fan, and I was always a Batman fan. Batman was darker, he had a more interesting origin and personality, and unlike Superman, he had no super-powers. He was just an ordinary man who had to rely on his physique, his skills and his intelligence to defeat his enemies. So the notion that Superman could just become Batman whenever he wanted really pissed me off. I'm glad Bats fried his brain with electricity at the end of Dark Knight.

OCEAN MASTER. This was Aquaman's brother. He was always portrayed as a villain who wreaked havoc out of bitterness and resentment until the noble Aquaman healed him with the power of fraternal love. Well, sucks to that. He had a damn good reason to be bitter: his parents hated each other, his dad didn't pay any attention to him, and he never got any credit from anyone, because his brother was goddamn Aquaman. Also, as if that all weren't enough, his name was Orm. Who names their kid Orm? What is that, Dutch?

OMAC. A.K.A. the "One Man Army Corps". Another brilliantly demented Jack Kirby creation, OMAC was (according to his truly surreal origin story) an "ordinary non-partisan stock boy named Buddy Blank". He got selected to be the guinea pig for a "computer hormone operation" by a bunch of crazy-ass aliens who thought the Earth was doomed and wanted to save it by, I dunno, sticking people with needles and fighting Dr. Skuba and, look, quit asking questions, okay? I get woozy enough just reading this stuff, let alone explaining it. Anyway, OMAC got his super-powers from a giant, powerful computer called Brother Eye. This is totally different from Mother Box. It just is, that's why.

ONYX. Yet another example of how white comic book writers are incapable of creating a black character whose name doesn't make explicit reference to the fact that they're black, Onyx was a fairly entertaining martial-arts based character who hung around with Batman and Green Arrow, and also recorded a number of minor rap hits, including "Throw Ya Guns" and "Shut 'Em Down". According to her bio, she lives in an apartment behind a record store with the seriously-lacking-in-confidence anme of "Sounds Okay".

ORION. I have no jokes here. Man, Orion was a great character, and the New Gods books just rocked, is all.

OUTSIDER. No, not the sucky 1980s superhero team, or the Angry Young Man book by Colin Wilson. This is the sucky supervillain the Outsider, who is proof of the comics maxim that eventually, everybody gets super-powers. The Outsider was actually none other than Batman's faithful butler Alfred. Critically injured and left in a coma after having saved Batman & Robin from death, Alfred was found by a scientist who exposed him to an experimental machine that turned him into a mutated maniac with incredible mental powers. Why? Because that's what happens in comic books. When you're lying on the roadside, horribly injured, you don't die, or get picked up by the paramedics. You get found by a crazy nut who shines a mutation beam on you and turns you into a malevolent version of the Scrubbing Bubbles. Given what I have told you about him, I bet you can guess the color of the Outsider's sole garment, a pair of snug-fitting swim trunks.

PENGUIN. Everybody knows this guy. Few people know his heartbreaking, grim origin, but since it's good instead of laughable, I won't recall it here. I will say that I've always found it odd that the Penguin was first portrayed by Burgess Meredith, and later by Danny DeVito, who is best described as the Italian Burgess Meredith. I can only assume that in the future, the Penguin will be played by members of other ethnic groups who are renowned for being short, excitable, vulgar and gruff. So, to Luis Guzman, Spike Lee, Gedde Watanabe and Ben Stein, I say: keep your schedules open.

PER DEGATON. I always liked Per Degaton. He had a great name, a great paramilitary uniform, and despite always losing, a great concept: he was, essentially, an attempt to turn Adolf Hitler into a supervillain. Not literally, though, the way that Marvel did so ham-fistedly with Hatemonger, but in a figurative way. Per Degaton had a lot in common with the former Herr Schickelgruber: they were both from humble origins, they both had a lot of crackpot ideas, they both wanted to conquer the world, they both sowed the seeds of their own destruction, they both eventually committed suicide, they were both short, they both had goofy haircuts, and they both walked around with cool-looking tunics with their initials on them (at least, I assume Hitler did this too). Unlike Per Degaton, though, Hitler did not have a ridiculously convoluted series of adventures in which he kept going back and forward in time to try and alter the course of history and install himself as an evil dictator. (Per Degaton was basically an excuse for DC writers to play around with alternate history scenarios, much as Kang the Conquerer was for Marvel writers; nerds are alike wherever you go.) Also, Hitler has never been depicted by Todd MacFarlane, although I understand that MacFarlane Toys' new Genocidal Dictators Action Poses series will soon correct that oversight.