You know, I think I've finally figured out why writing the Geek Index for these new OHOTMU books isn't as much fun as the old ones, or the Who's Who titles.  I've often complained about comics writers who are imported from other media, and have no particular affection, affinity or familiarty with the genre; they inevitably impose their own standards to the comics medium and it ends up coming across as forced, phony or awkward.  Well, that's the deal with me and the new Marvel Universe:  I haven't read most of these comics, having left Marvel behind in the early 1990s and reading precious few of their books today; and I don't have any particular affection for them, especially considering the editorial decision to populate the main-line OHOTMU with snoreworthy third-stringers and never-weres, keeping the big shots in separate books of their own.  This is why working through them is more of a slog than a spree.

Boy, that was a cheery intro, eh?  Let's get started!

COPPERHEAD.  Lawrence Chesney's father posed for the covers of a pulp magazine in the 1930s, then went insane and though he really was the imaginary superhero whose adventures were therein contained.  Later, Lawrence vowed revenge on the publishers for the alleged exploitation of his deranged dad.  Basically, this was Marvel's way of telling the Steve Ditko story.

COPYCAT.  Originally Domino, later Vanessa, then Copycat, this uninteresting mutant character is noteworthy only for the appalingly bad artwork that accompanies her entry, from the usually reliable Adam Kubert.

THE COSMIC CUBE.  Oh, Christ.  The history of this thing was already shamefully overcomplicated and, well, cosmic, and the last time I read about it was around 1991.  It's had fifteen more years to get more incomprehensible, and it's taken full advantage of every minute.  I guess there's actually dozens of these things now, but honestly, the entry is three pages long of 10-point type, almost completely uninterrupted except for a gorgeous piece of Kirby art featuring a mad-eyed Red Skull reaching out for one.  The only difference between this and the crazy X-continuity is that the Cosmic Cube stories were generally pretty interesting, but not so interesting that I'm going to read it all.  According to the last paragraphy, some organization named G.R.A.M.P.A. (no, really) is now in the business of building nonworking cubes to confuse people, thus lowering the market value of real Cosmic Cubes.  That's just what happened to the Rubik's Cube, too.

THE COUNCIL OF GODHEADS.  Marvel seems to be trying to pull a fast one on me here, cramming this issue with incredibly long, impossibly complex entries (this is another three-pager) that are about stuff I might actually be interested in.  This is your standard Dieties & Demigods rogue's gallery, all bound together in one, but it gets into some fun internecine warfare towards the end, with the Egyptian pantheon trying to wipe out Asgard, and then all the death gods band together to fuck up everyone's morning, and a whole bunch of other interesting-sounding details that seem like they'd make for good reading even if they do feature Adam Warlock.  There's great incidental art in the entry, too, by Jim Starlin, George Perez, and Keith Pollard. It ends on an amusing note:  apparently, they contemplated letting Thor in to replace his deceased father, but ultimately turned him down because he broke their vow of non-interference with humankind.  First of all, since when do gods have an oath of non-interference?  In classical mythology, that's pretty much all they do, fuck around with humans.  And second, why would they not know that Thor liked to interfere in the affairs of mankind?  That's all he's done for the last 40 years in comic books.  Pay attention, Tezcatlipoca. 

THE CRAZY EIGHT.  These guys, on the other hand, don't make me want to read about them at all.  They were a team of douchebags who first appeared in Wonder Man's comic in the early 1990s, and it was terrible, thus setting the tone for their entire existence.  One of them was an old woman who got time-travel powers, and she couldn't think of a name that had anything to do with time-travel, so she called herself "Glamour Girl".  Even though she was 70.  That's abut as funny as this group got.  Also noteworthy for the fact that one of them was named LaHoya Scripps, but strangely, she was a blonde Caucasian.

THE CRIMSON COWL.  See, this is exactly what I mean.  I don't know anything about this character.  She first appeared in Thunderbolts, which  I also don't know anything about.  I know she's the daughter of Justin Hammer, and he was pretty ridiculous, and I know that her main power is having a cybernetically controlled prehensile cape, and that's one of the stupidest powers I've ever heard, but am I really doing her justice?  No.  Even if I mention that she is drawn by someone named Jean Jacques Dzialowski, who has spend many late nights studying Bill Willingham.  If you know what I mean, and I don't know if I do.

THE CRIMSON DYNAMO.  It's so tempting to just make this entry a riff on the Paul McCartney song, you know?  Anyway, apparently sometime between now and when I last checked up on this armored Stalinist, he was replaced by a teenage kid who found the original Dynamo's control helmet and automatically activated the suit, causing it to rampage across Russia.  There also seems like there's a Civil War clue in this entry, but no way would Marvel be that clever.

JAINE CUTTER.  Boy, there's no end to the things I find out in these new OHOTMUs.  For example:  did you know that Patsy Walker is dead?  Did you know that Damien Hellstrom is now called Daimon Hellstrom, and goes by the name of "Hellstorm", but it's the same guy?  Did you know that he hooked up with this freaky-looking Goth backwash, and that he himself now resembles Rob Zombie after being left in the dryer for too long?  Did you know that he's basically a complete ripoff of Hellblazer now?  It's all true!  She has a pretty ludicrous backstory even by Satanic funnybook standards:  in order to ensure that neither Heaven or Hell would take over the Earth, she sacrificed seven cops to one of Satan's flunkies.  I am assuming that what happened next is that the devil fired that guy's ass, because he had sold out any chance that Hell would reign on Earth for a pathetic seven cops, which he could get for nothing over a typical August in Texas.

CYCLONE.  The main thing I got from this boring entry about a boring reboot of a boring Spider-Man villain is that S.H.I.E.L.D. no longer stands for "Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage, Law-enforcement Division".  It stands for "Strategic Hazard Intervention and Espionage Logistics Directorate", which makes just as much sense.  Also, the new Cyclone "fancies himself more a lover than a fighter", which makes his career choice (international mercenary) hard to fathom.

THE DARK GODS.  Yet another quite interesting group of alien dieties, from the late-'90s edition of Thor, with snazzy art by John Romita Jr.  Goddamn it, Marvel!  Quit making me want to read your books, it's not going to end well.

THE DARK RIDERS.  "Over the ages, the eternal mutant Apocalypse [which should not be confused with the Mutant Apocalpyse] has often banded together the best human warriors from around the world", because, sure, why not.  No one ever noticed him doing this, I guess, but I suspect these guys padded their resumes a bit, because if you were to gather all the greatest warriors in the world, I kinda doubt any of them would be called Dirt Nap or Foxbat.

DARKDEVIL.  More like DORKdevil!  Ha ha ha, oh, I should have my own comics blog, with laff lines like that one.  This is the Daredevil of the Earth-982 ("Spider-Girl") continuity, and he's the sone of Spider-Man's clone and then I woke up.  He has the power to create physical objects made of mystic flame, such as...a billy club.  Sure!  That's what we'd all make if we had the power to create objects out of fire, right?

THE DARKHOLD REDEEMERS.  Okay, so, the Vatican, right?  They found out that one of their priests had the power to resist the effects of a magical book called the Darkhold.  So they gave him permission to marry and have children, so as to extend the bloodline that allowed this resistance to the magic book.  So that's all it takes for priests to get permission to marry!  Genetic immunity to sorcerous tomes!  Curiously, the Darkhold was in possession of the church; it seems to me that a more efficient approach would just be to destroy the book.  But what do I know?  I'm not Catholic.

DARKSTAR.  Since we last left this member of the Soviet Super-Soldiers and the Champions of Los Angeles (who were to the Defenders what the Defenders were to the Avengers), she got herself involved in the impenetrable X-continuity.  Which, come to think of it, would be a good name for a new Marvel title:  "Hey, do you have issue #234 of The Impenetrable X-Continuity?"  Anyway, she was hanging around with the X-Corporation, who were trying to shut down Weapon X, and in the process of fighting Weapon XII, she got killed by a guy named Fantomex, who was actually Weapon XIII.  I read all that for you.  She is buried in Paris even though she is a Russian who lived in America.

THE DAUGHTERS OF THE DRAGON.  This, of course, is Misty Knight (a.k.a. the Cleopatra Jones of Marvel Comics) and Colleen Wing (a.k.a. the poor schlep who got stuck dating Iron Fist for a bunch of years).  These guys were always more interesting to me than their Heroes For Hire counterparts, partly because they were a slightly less familiar type of stereotype when I started reading their stuff in the late '70s.  I'm not sure what they're up to these days (the entry says they're bail bondswomen, which seems like a pretty low-rent gig considering that Iron Fist is now Daredevil's understudy and Power Man has been in both the Avengers and the Fantastic Four), but they get a really snazzy piece of art by someone named Khari Evans.

DAZZLER.  Yes, before there was Disco Dazzler, there was just plain old regular Dazzler!  Not the roller-boogie mutant who Marvel kept trying to foist on us in the 1980s, but a surprisingly non-mutant older brother of Warren "The Angel" Worthington, who tried to take over the world because Warren got all of his inheritance.  Whether or not Burt Worthington was more or less dull than the subsequent Dazzler is a question for the ages.

THE D'BARI.  This was the alien race that got wiped out by Dark Phoenix when she was going apeshit all over the universe.  Curiously, they'd been around for quite a while, first appearing as a minor menace to the Avengers back in the Stan and Jack era, and are still occasionally used as an extraterrestrial menace when the writers get bored with the Kree and Skrulls.

DEAD GIRL.  I'm gonna have to take the word of people who assure me that the X-Statix books were worth reading, because seriously, ukky.

DEATH.  Death as a personified force was around in Marvel Comics way sooner than in DC titles, but the Bullpen made the twin mistakes of (a) sticking it in a purple costume and (b) not making it a hot teenaged goth chick.  Live and learn, I guess, which they did, because there's several pieces of incidental art portraying it as, hey, guess what?  A hot teenaged goth chick.  It worked once!  Another triumph from the House of Ideas!

DEATHCRY.  Do you know the one thing that makes my eyes glaze over even faster than reading that they're a mutant?  That's right:  reading that they're one of the Shi'ar.  You try and cut them some slack, and then along come the Imperial Guard, and that can only mean that the Starjammers are close behind, and the next thing you know I'm reading the new John Banville novel.  Pass.

DEATHLOK.  Not the original Deathlok, but a different one who showed up around the time I stopped reading comics, this one appears to be a wholesale ripoff of much of the Terminator mythos combined with the whole crazy-ass Roxxon Oil alternate-world dystopia Marvel bong-dreamed in the 1970s.  His history is two pages long and largely incomprehensible even without all the technical drawings, and the one really intriguing line in his stats -- that one of his aliases is "Doctor Donut" -- goes sadly unaddressed therein.

DEATHLOK.  This is another Deathlok.  Not the original, or the Doctor Donut version.  I tried to read his history, but he has two different identities, five different aliases, and four different first appearances (you would think there could only be one first appearance of anything, but that ain't the way Marvel works these days), so I just skipped it.  Sorry.

DEATH'S HEAD.  One of about fifty Marvel characters called Death's Head.  His entry is actually titled "Death's Head (FPA)", and  suppose it will be no surprise whatsoever to learn that it takes until the fifth paragraph of his history (on page two of a two-page entry) to learn what FPA stands for.  What is the payoff supposed to be for all this convoluted bullshit?  It's no wonder Marvel fans have the reputation as geeks-qua-geeks.

DEATH'S HEAD.   A different Death's Head!  But otherwise almost identical:  his History section is two incredibly tedious pages long, despite the fact that he only appeared in 1992, and it ecmopasses at least three alternate Earths.  No, wait, four.  No, five.  Note:  I am not kidding.

DEATHWEB.  Apparently, the government wanted to create its own superheroes, so it hired a Japanese grad student and a Peruvian Indian to jab people full of spider venom extracts.  This affirmative action thing is way out of control.

DEBRII.  The comic book equivalent of Omarosa, Debrii was a black chick with a shitty attitude brought in to the New Warriors' reality show to spice things up.  "She joined the team in NuPonder, Minnesota, just as they attempted to ambush Terrax".  Right!  Because that's where the most bad-ass herald of Galactus is going to strike, at a made-up suburb in Minnesota.  Debrii's entry is drawn by some unbelievably shitty artist by the name of Skottie Young.

DELUGE.  On the other hand, they somehow lured John Byrne away from Funky Winkerbean and his online comic about a hot female Frankenstein's monster to draw this generic X-villain, who has only a half-page entry despite having fought the X-men and being six whole years old.  Surely they could have gotten three pages out of him! 

DEMOGOBLIN.  Marvel liked Venom, who was a big gross slobbering monster version of Spider-Man, so much that they apparently created this guy to go with him:  a big gross slobbering monster version of the Hobgoblin, who was himself something of a big gross slobbering monster version of the Green Goblin.  He was actually the Hobgoblin who sold his soul to a demon for ramped-up superpowers; this was all the rage in the 1990s (DC did the same thing, giving a bunch of second-string villains 'roided-out versions of their old powers in exchange for selling their souls to the demon Neron).  It's not necessary, comic book editors!  Plain old supervillains are not boring!  A dozen normal supervillains with a dozen different powers, motivations and identities is far more interesting than a dozen identical slavering murderous demons, believe it or not.

DEMOLITION MAN.  Boy, remember this guy?  The Vagrant Vigilante?  The homeless vet who ended up with super-powers, made himself a costume that looked like Daredevil and Wolverine had an ugly baby, and went into pro superhero wrestling for a while?  He was extremely dumb, but he had a certain naive charm, which is probably why Marvel decided to make him all grim.  I hate to agree with the Silver Age purists, but come on, folks.  Some stuff doesn't need darkening.

DESAK.  As far as I can tell, this is some sort of vague rip-off of Darkseid, but his backstory involves one of Marvel's roughly eighty five thousand alternate Earths, so I lost interest before I could find out.

DESERT SWORD.  Man, oh, man.  If there's one medium that blows the rest away when it comes to sterotyping Arabs -- and, what's more, stereotyping them incorrectly -- it's comics.  These guys were an allegedly pan-Arab superteam formed to defend Iraq during the first Gulf War.  Why other Arab countries would volunteer their people for such a project is a mystery, since the majority of Arab countries opposed Iraq during the Gulf War.  In fact, one of them -- a guy with the distinctly non-Arab name of "Black Raazer" -- was Persian.  In other words, he was from Iran, the sworn enemy of Iraq.   There was also Arabian Knight, the Egyptian Bedouin (which makes as much sense as saying "the French Navajo"), Sirocco, who inexplicably looks Chinese, Aminedi, and best of all, a woman named Veil, who, sure enough, follows strict Muslim law by wearing a veil and hijab, and also a belly shirt and super-tight pants and a top that shows off her cleavage.  WAY TO GO MARVEL.

DEVIANTS.  The yucky gross versions of the Eternals, you could tell they were evil because they were ugly and had bad skin.  There was a guy named Tode and a guy named Phraug!  So clever.  They get five goddamn pages, and if you think I'm gonna read all that, you're nuts.

DEVIL-SLAYER.  Boy, say what you like about Eric Simon Payne, he sure liked slaying devils!

DEVLOR.  Devlor is one of the Inhumans, distinguishable from the Deviants by virtue of being slightly less dirty, gross and ugly.  This one was a sort of man-ape freak who could transform into a really annoying teenager, who teamed up with Franklin Richards, Huntara, Devlor and Vibraxis as the Fantastic Force, who were greeted by the stifled yawns of millions of comics fans.

DIAMOND LIL.  A former member of Gamma Flight, the third-string version of Alpha Flight (which makes them about the eighth-string verision of a real superhero team), I last saw Diamond Lil getting shrunk and tossed into Shaman's patchouli-funkin' medicine bag.  I guess she got out, because she apparently ended up marrying Madison Jeffries, the lunkhead who hung around in the Box robot armor.  Then she got involved in the Weapon X thing, and holy shit, it's one o'clock in the morning again.

DIAMONDBACK.  The former huge-breasted, pink-haired plush toy who bedeviled Captain America.  I guess it's the bedeviling that the "former" should be applied to, since she clearly still has pink hair and huge breasts, but she's gone straight and now hangs around with the B.A.D. Girls.  She's a graduate of Taskmaster's Technical School for wannabe henchpersons; I wonder if it's accredited.

DIAMONDHEAD.  Two things I love about this entry:  first, he is a man made of living diamond crystal.  He literally has a diamond head.  And yet, his costume has a big picture of a diamond on the front, just in case you don't get it.  Also, one of his aliases is listed as "The Red Skull", because when he was a little kid, he used to play make-believe and pretend he was the Red Skull!  So I ask you, why don't they do that for everybody?  Why doesn't Iceman get "the Lone Ranger" as an alias?  Why doesn't Spider-Woman have "pretty unicorn princess" listed?

THE DIMENSION OF MANIFESTATIONS.  This is, uh, I guess, like some kind of abstract art dimension?  Ruled by a thing called Anthropomorpho, who looks like a big chunk of a Roy Liechtenstein paining, and who helps people employ an M-Body so they can interact with living fractals.  Why am I reading this?  For corn's sake a-jumpin' mighty.

DOCTOR DOOM'S GENERALS.  Okay, this was from some book that involved Counter-Earth and I dont know what else, the whole thing is very confusing.  But I know this:  the Victor von Doom I know has no room in his organization for someone named "Technarx". 

DOCTOR NEMESIS.  I'm just going to guess from his idiotic costume, his green wig, and his tendency to fight people named Tim Boo Ba and Goom that Dr. Nemisis is supposed to be a joke, and move along.  Otherwise, it's just too terrible to contemplate.

DOMINIC FORTUNE.  They got two pages off of this guy!  It's pretty astonishing he's still alive, considering he was never much more than an excuse for Howard Chaykin to draw another wide-chinned Jew with a broomhandle Mauser and a hot dish of a dame draped off his nech.  Judging from his history, once Howard was out of the picture, the other Marvel editors proceeded to suck the charm right out of him, getting him involved with Iron Man and the Silver Sable.  He's also notable for bringing about the debut of Turner D. Century, one of the lamest characters in the history of lame.

DOOMSDAY MAN.  Yet another megalomaniacal scientist who stuck himself inside an indestructable robot, Doomsday Man first appeared in Ms. Marvel, perhaps explaining why I've never heard of him before.  His last name is Korman, but sadly, his first name is not Harvey.

DOOP.  Okay, X-Statix, what the fuck, seriously.  His history begins "The product of a Cold War era U.S. military eperiment, Doop was instrumental in the fall of the Soviet Union."  And THAT'S IT!  Not a single detail is forthcoming!  Next thing you know, this floating snotball is a a cameraman for X-Force, and then he sends his teammates to another dimension by popping a zit, and can we talk about the Dread Dormammu now?

DORMAMMU.  Whew! 

DRAX.  I'd like to refrain from discussing the history of Drax the Destroyer (who is actually a pretty nifty character, despite a convoluted backstory) and instead discuss his entry's art, which you can't see.  The main drawing of him, by someone with the beery name of Mitch Breitweiser, is actually pretty good, but it has him wearing the most curious uniform:  rather than his usual space-lord togs, he's shirtless (also much younger than he usually looks, and rather than hyper-muscular as he is in most pictures -- see later this entry -- he's drawn slender and 'realistic' a la Steve Rude) and wearing, of all things, a pair of blue jeans with a design on the side that matches his shoulder tattoo.  Uh, okay!  The inset art is by a guy who's obviously a Rob Liefeld protege:  he's shown eating a turkey leg approximately the size of a Volkswagen, and his forearms are about six times as big as his head.  The hack who drew this is named, ahem, ChrisCross.  Puh-leeeeease.

ETHAN EDWARDS.  Okay, I'm not sure if Marvel Knights is part of the regular Marvel continuity or not, but this guy!  This guy is, essentially, Superman if he'd become a Jesus freak.  Rocketed to Earth from a dying (Skrull) planet, he arrived in a small farm town (Hicksville!), gained incredible super-powers, and went to the big city, where he got a job as an ace reporter for a major metropolitan newspaper.  He was nebbishy and wore glasses he didn't need to conceal his identity, and he used his powers to help fight for truth, justice and the American way.  Except he wore a black leather costume, and he called himself "Virtue the Moral Man".  WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON IN MARVEL KNIGHTS:  SPIDER-MAN.

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"Between religion's 'this is' and poetry's 'but suppose this is', there must always be some kind of tension, until the possible and the actual meet at infinity." (Northrop Frye)