LUDIC LOG

Today is the second anniversary of the terrible and horrific terror attacks on the United States of America. At first, I considered running a column like last year's -- a sober meditation on the deaths that occured and a cold look at what lies ahead for us as individuals and as a nation. But at the last minute, I decided, naaah, let's talk about comic books instead. After all, Thursday is traditionally the day the Ludic Log recaps an issue of Who's Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe, and hasn't the president urged us all to return to normalcy, to resist the terrorist by doing what we would normally do, to avoid shared sacrifice at any cost? Well, by God, I'm going to do as Mr. Bush suggests. For once.

After all, don't you think that this is what the victims of September 11th would have wanted? I feel certain that it would have been the final wish of each and every person who died on the fateful day, with the possible exception of the terrorists themselves, that I mark their passing by thinking up jokes about Sgt. Rock. Do you think I'm going to side with those murderous bastards by not doing so? Hell, no! I say this right now: if I am ever killed by some demented Islamist lunatic, I only pray that someone will take up my great work -- celebrating my life and commemorating my death by telling the six readers of this site how gay Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt's costume was.

So now, without further ado, and dedicated to the brave heroes and heroines of that grim day two years ago, let's go straight to Who's Who issue #20.

RUBBERDUCK. One of Captain Carrot's Amazing Zoo Crew, Rubberduck was a famous "Follywood" actor and duck who gained the incredible power to stretch and expand his anatomy into all manner of shapes. Do we all remember how Prez didn't get his own entry? Okay then. Rubberduck was pretty much a dick (yes I actually read this comic what of it), using his superhero identity to get exclusive book and movie deals and encouraging people to go see movies starring his civilian identity. When you look at his picture, you think, "man, that duck seems like a real asshole". Which I guess is an artistic triumph of sorts. Good job, there, Scott Shaw!.

SABBAC. This was another one of Captain Marvel's foes, a bald dimwit with a huge Simpsons-style overbite who said the magic word 'SABBAC' and got the powers of a bunch of demons who you've probably never heard of. In his bio, it says "Tim Karnes was a nobody who wanted to be somebody; therefore, he began to dabble in black magic". This probably explains a lot about Wicca and heavy metal enthusiasts, as well.

SANDMAN II. Not Morpheus, from Neil Gaiman's memorable Sandman title, nor yet the original Golden Age Sandman, this was the one who Gaiman ret-conned out of existence in a memorably brutal piece of deconstruction, leaving only his grody henchthings Brute and Glob still part of the DC continuity. Aside from his "Dream Monitor", "Dream Dome", "Dream Stream" and "hypnosonic whistle", the second Sandman was equipped with, ahem, a "Dream Ejector Tube". Hey, I've got one of those too, but it doesn't get its own comic book.

SANDY THE GOLDEN BOY. Sandy the Golden Gay, you mean! HA HA HA! Yes, indeed, let it never be said that we here at the Who's Who recap ever miss a chance to imply that all those Golden Age youthful boy sidekicks were being intercrurally penetrated by their flamboyant, tights-wearing mentors. This blond waif was the ward of the original Sandman, who, "hoping it would help them in fighting crime", invented something called a 'silicoid gun', which, when activated, blew up, "transforming Sandy into a gigantic, insane monster." Hey, THANKS SANDMAN! What a pal. Sandy had a "wirepoon", which probably would have matched up pretty well with the second Sandman's "dream ejector tube".

SARGE STEEL. This was a generic Nick Fury rip-off, notable only for the fact that the Commie saboteur who was responsible for blowing off his hand and leading him to get the steel fist prosthetic that was his trademark was named, for reals, Ivan Chong. This was the 1960s equivalent of naming a terrorist Kim Jong bin-Laden, but there has never been a notable level of political subtlety in the funnybook world.

SATURN GIRL. The snore-inducing co-founder of the Legion of Superheroes, along with her future husband Lightning Lad and professional tool Cosmic Boy. Although the Legion had tons of interesting female characters, SG was never one of them, and remained resolutely dull through at least three reboots of the LSH title. I mean, at one point, her infant son was kidnapped by Darkseid and turned into a giant monster, and even this didn't make her interesting. At least the evil future version of SG, the snazzily dressed Saturn Queen, had a cool retro-'50s uniform.

SCALPHUNTER. It's fitting, given that scalping was actually practiced almost exclusively by whites against Indians, that this borderline-offensive character was in reality not a Kiowa warrior, but a hapless paleface kidnapped by same and raised as one of their own. He first appeared in Weird Western Tales, which is an early example of the truth-in-advertising laws.

SCARECROW. One of my favorite Batman villains, Scarecrow was a brilliant but unstable psychologist who used the psychology of fear to cripple his opponents. I'd love to see a whole team of these guys -- sort of a Brotherhood of Evil Therapists -- using other things like self-doubt, insecurity, and depression to defeat the Justice League.

SCAVENGER. A pretty generic Aquaman villain (as if there was any other kind), he's notable for two reasons: first, his height and weight are listed as 5'9" and 176 pounds, when the Ron Frenz art clearly depicts a hulking, six-foot-plus, 300-pound monstrosity. Second, dig this claim: although Scavenger has no super-powers, "he is an adept underwater fighter, obviously having trained in order to be able to overcome the crushing pressures of the ocean floor." Got that? All you have to do to survive enough pressure to cause atomic submarines to crumple like an empty soda can is to train. That's all! Just practice hard enough, and you won't be blown into floating paper-thin pulp by the unimaginable pressures at the bottom of the sea.

SEA DEVILS. The rule for any group of generic adventurers, going all the way back to the earliest days of comics, is this: one lantern-jawed, heroic white guy with a tough-sounding manly name to be the leader; one big, tough, slightly stupid muscleman with a slightly dopier name to be the muscle; one hot babe, preferably blonde; and one goofy sidekick type. If you have more than four members, add a flamboyant, stereotypical foreigner and a non-white, in roughly that order. The Sea Devils, a profoundly uninteresting quartet of undersea explorers, nailed it just right: the rugged, macho, WASPy leader is "Dane Dorrance"; the lunkheaded brute is "Biff Bailey"; the bit of tail is flaxen-haired "Judy Walton", and the dippy tagalong is Judy's spiky-headed, freckly, bratty little brother "Nicky". Well done!

SECRET SIX. Another group of generic adventurers, albeit with a pretty good hook (they were being blackmailed to fight crime by a mysterious leader, who was secretly one of the actual group), this sextet of blue-clad commie-bashers also nailed the formula precisely: "King Savage" is the rock-jawed whitebread leader with the tough-guy name! "Mike Tempest" is the brawny dimwit! "Crimson Dawn" is the extremely pornographic-sounding tasty babe! "Carlo di Rienzi" is the annoying stage magician who hands around with them! And, rounding out the group in the grand fashion, "Lili de Neuve" is the walking stereotype of the vain, snooty French broad, and "Dr. August Durant" is the black guy!

SENSOR GIRL. Sensor Girl is actually Princess Projectra. There! I just spoiled the greatest secret from the most hotly debated storyline of any DC comic in the 1980s. You're welcome.

SGT. ROCK. Star of the most popular war comic of all time, epitome of the all-American fighting man, the vessel by which comics fans were introduced to the brilliant Joe Kubert, and the inspiration for an XTC song, Sgt. Frank Rock was the leader of the disturbingly named "Combat Happy Joes of Easy Company". Oddly, they don't use Rock's classic logo in his entry, but they do take care to imply that in school, he was an insufferable jock: "Frank was a poor student througout his scholastic career, though he proved himself a very capable athlete".

SEVEN SOLDIERS OF VICTORY. Also known as the Seven Lamest Characters We Could Dig Up, the SSV were an extremely limp super-team from the Golden Age who first appeared in Leading Comics, which tactfully omitted the "Right Down the Crapper" part of the title. They consisted of the Golden Age Vigilante, a cowboy gunslinger; the Shining Knight (q.v.); and three ludicrous hero/boy-sidekick combos: the first Green Arrow and Speedy, the Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy; and the Crimson Avenger and Wing. Now, I know what you're thinking: that's Eight Soldiers of Victory. Luckily, there's a simple explanation: Wing wasn't an official member of the group, because he was a dirty filthy Chinaman.

SHADE. One of the most, well, er...effete of all Silver Age villains, the Shade had a magic cane. And a big top hat. And pointy elf shoes. And was drawn by Carmine Infantino. That's right: he's a Flash villain! And you know what that means...he sucks! In fact, he sucks so bad, he actually teamed up with the bottom-feeding Rainbow Raider at one point. I'm glad I'm not you, Shade.

SHADE THE CHANGING MAN. Now, I know at least four of the six of you who read these recaps are not big comics readers, and so you may not know what I'm saying when I note that this is a quintessential Ditko character. Here's what I mean: if you read a character's description and run across words like "Meta", "Rac Shade", "Mellu", "Miraco-vest", "Sude", "Olon", "Dr. Z.Z.", "the Zero-Zone", and "the Supreme Decider", then you know he was created by either Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko. And if the character is all gangly and freaky-looking, and at some point sounds like he's reading a particularly painful stretch of an Ayn Rand novel, then you'll know it's Ditko.

SHAGGY MAN. This insane character (drawn, surprisingly, by ElfQuest creator Wendy Pini) easily wins the 'What The Fuck' award for Who's Who Volume XX. Made out of an regenerative metal/plastic alloy, the Shaggy Man (who is described as "ape-like", even though he obviously resembles a dog) was a scientific experiment gone awry. He attacked the Justice League, because that's the kind of thing you do if you're a scientific experiment gone awry. At the same time, and bear in mind I am not making any of this up, the JLA was also fighting a monster that was originally a chunk of sentient meteor which had fallen to earth in northern Chile and was draining natural resources, like an interstellar Pinochet. They had the bright idea of creating a second Shaggy Man, and then throwing both the schmucks into a big pit with the meteor monster and letting them slug it out for the rest of forever. Great fucking plan, am I right? Naturally, the Flash came up with it. Anyway, Hector Hammond got hold of one of the Shaggy Men and teleported it onto the JLA satellite, where it wrecked up the place until Green Lantern stuck it inside a Tylenol caplet. Then the other Shaggy Man got loose and went buckwhylin' all over Russia, when out of nowhere comes Batman (because all the Russian superheroes were out of town, I guess) and convinces the thing, which is obviously not that bright, to climb on board a rocket ship that then was launched into outer space. If you say so, DC!

SHINING KNIGHT. Back in WWII, the comics writers loved to bring people from the past -- knights, cavemen, Vikings, cowboys, whatever -- into the modern world, where they would naturally decide to fight the Nazis. The Shining Knight was a good example of this: he was originally one of the Knights of the Round Table, who, while fighting a giant ogre named Blunderbore, got trapped in an an avalanche and frozen solid. Waking up in the 20th century, he naturally decided to start fighting gangsters and Germans and assorted roughnecks. Sure! Makes sense right? I mean, if you were revived after 1,500 years of being frozen in ice, the first thing you'd want to do woudn't be mourn the fact that everyone you knew was dead, or figure out what the fuck all those metal birds in the sky were, or even learn the goddamn language and catch up on what's been happening in the world for the last millennium and a half. No, you'd want to suit right up and smash some Ratzis and bootleggers! You bet.