LUDIC LOG

Is it Thursday again? Maybe. Does that mean another recap of dopey 1980s comic book enyclopedias like The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe issue #7? Maybe. Do I actually have the goddamn comic books, finally? MAYBE. Could it be that I am actually going to post graphics in this installment, so you can actually see what the fuck I'm talking about? Maaaaaaaaaaaaybe!

The great thing, or to put it another way, the idiotic thing, about OHOTMU -- as opposed to DC Who's Who -- is that there's nothing there besides the character entries. You can't talk about the cover art; they're all by John Byrne, with the dumb 'racing towards nothing' wraparound concept. You can't talk about the changes to the writing staff; they were all written by the combo of Gruenwald, Sanderson, and, with an assist in the pulled-out-of-the-ass technical drawing department, Eliot R. Brown. You can't talk about the letters page; there isn't one. You can't even talk about the goofy writing style of the entries, because Marvel, apparently laboring under the misapprehension that we nerds wanted our comics to read like textbooks, removed all the storytelling charm and replaced it with a faux-instructional pedagogic tone that sounds like a paraphysics lecture written by a guy who normally does TV repair manuals. All that's left in the end is how much you like or don't like the character being discussed. So, lacking anything better to do, let's get to it!

KLAW. That's Ulysses Klaw. Now, Marvel never really went for the name-as-destiny conceit like DC did, so while you might expect this villainous dufus made of solid sound to have a claw, he doesn't. He has, instead, a satellite dish at the end of one arm, and unless "Klaw" is Dutch for "has DirectTV receiver grafted to wrist", he escapes the name-as-destiny gimmick. What he doesn't escape is being lame. He was actually a pretty frequently recurring villain, despite having no nose, being incapable of beating Black Panther, and wearing a costume with elements of purple in it. He was eventually defeated by the Dazzler, which should give you some clue.

KNIGHT, MISTY. Yes, yes, she's superfly! Essentially Cleopatra Jones crossed with the Bionic Woman, this blaxploitative babe was the sort of heroine only the 1970s could have produced. She was part of the equally '70s-soaked Power Man mythos -- she was, in fact, Iron Fist's girlfriend. It sort of makes you wonder about ol' Danny Rand, doesn't it? Black girlfriend, ponytail, Asian fetishist, best friend is a black guy, talks in street slang, practices Oriental martial arts, runs a business with a lot of 'cred'...what do we normally call a guy like this? That's right. An asshole.

KRANG. What the fuck is going on with this guy's costume? Krang was an Atlantean warlord and would-be usurper of the Sub-Mariner's throne, and he palled around with genuine badasses like Attuma, but holy shit. He looks like the Sea World touring company's version of Ming the Merciless, and he has an inverted goldfish bowl on his head. He once allied himself with Dr. Dorcas (that's right, Dr. Lemuel Dorcas), but I think we know who the real dorkus is around here.

KRAVEN THE HUNTER. The kind of insanely demented character who could only have sprung from the fevered Objectivist imagination of Steve Ditko, Kraven is one of those rare characters that grows on you despite being completely misguided and wrong. He got off on the wrong foot, villain-wise, by shortening his real name (Kravinov) to a word that is synonymous with "cowardly" and "snivelling", and made things worse -- much worse -- by donning a costume that clearly belongs on a really cheap 4th Avenue prostitute, right down to the fake fur and the cheetah-skin hot pants. Kraven ended up killing himself, probably because he thought he was all out of career options; little did he know that a tragic tiger attack in 2003 would leave Siegfried in desperate need of a partner.

KURSE. Originally a Dark Elf named Algrim the Strong, Kurse -- who was enthralled to Malekith the Accursed -- battled Thor, the God of Thunder, who only defeated him by employing his Belt of Strength. No, this wasn't an even-nerdier-than-usual evening of AD&D at my house in 1983; it was, rather, a surpisingly good comic by Walt Simonson in 1985. Kurse, who was already about three times stronger than the Hulk, eventually fell prey to Jim Shooter's mistaken notion that involving the Beyonder in everyone's story arc would improve things, and became approximately forty times stronger than three Hulks plus five Things. Luckily, by that point, I had stopped caring.

THE LEADER. The Leader was a perennial Hulk villain, a former janitor who, when exposed to gamma radiation, gained the power to clean toilets at twice the normal speed. Ha ha! No, no. What it did was to make him as smart as it had made the Hulk strong. Really, the most entertaining thing about the Leader is that the Hulk, employing the faux-retard argot that endeared him to millions, called him "Big Head". "Big Head"! Which, I mean, you have to admit. The guy has a big head.

LEAPFROG. Frog-themed villain. Yes sah! He dressed up like a giant frog, with springs in his big web-footed shoes, and actually tried to beat Daredevil and Spider-Man, who were too nice to drop him down an elevator shaft. And what did they get for their kindness? His son became the profoundly annoying Frogman.

LILANDRA. Lilandra was the queen of an entire extra-terrestrial race of bird-people called the Shi'ar, who showed up all the hell over the X-continuity and who I profoundly hope will be left out of X-Men 3, because with the exception of Gladiator, they suck. For a while, I wondered why someone as high-profile as Lilandra would waste her time working it with a tool like Charles Xavier, but then I realized what they have in common: they are both very boring.

THE LIVING MONOLITH. The Living Monolith is also known as the Living Pharoah, but is not the same character as the Living Colossus (a.k.a. It, the Living Colossus), who is himself (or itself) not the same as Colossus, even though Colossus was living. Got that, jarheads? Okay. The Living Pharoah Monolith is an Egyptian, which means he gets the same freaky-looking gray-green skin that was inexplicably used by Marvel colorists to depict Arabs.

THE LIZARD. The Lizard, who was actually a pretty cool Spider-Man villain, raises a disturbing question. No, not "why did he always keep his lab coat on?". You see, the Lizard shared a number of common factors with the Hulk: their real names were similar (Dr. Curt Connors vs. Dr. Bruce Banner); they were both brilliant scientists (a chemist vs. a physicist); they were both transformed into monstrous, raging beasts who could not be controlled. But most importantly, they both wore garish purple slacks after their transformation -- which implies, of course, that they were both wearing garish purple slacks before their transformation. What is this all about? Have you ever seen a scientist wearing purple pants? Was this de riguer for Poly grads in the 1980s? Have you ever seen anyone outside a disco or a golf course wearing purple pants? This demands further investigation.

LOKJAW. When I see a giant mutated bulldog with a huge head who lives on the Blue Area of the moon and who has the power to teleport people all over the place, I think of only one thing: Jack Kirby's drinking problem. NO SERIOUSLY! Jack, man, I kid because I love. I'm just saying, I had a lot of seriously messed-up childhood nightmares behind motherfuckin' Lokjaw, is all.

LONGSHOT. I just want to know this: when Chris Claremont announced that he had this great idea for something called the "Mojoverse", didn't anyone tell him it was stupid?

MACHINE MAN. I never could get too interested in MM, despite his impeccable pedigree (created by Kirby, drawn by Ditko, inspired by 2001: a Space Odyssey). It took Universe X to make me finally give a shit about him, and that's really because you don't have much of a choice. In a bit of in-joke hilarity, the secret agent assigned to investigate Machine Man back when he was just X-15 was named "Jack Kubrick".

MADAME MASQUE. Lame but sexy hottie-pants affiliated with the Maggia (which see), Madame Masque (alias Whitney Frost, which is a much better name than 'Madame Masque') has a terribly complicated backstory for someone who is not all that interesting or important. Her father was a particularly egregious example of the name-as-destiny concept: he was named Count Luchino Nefaria. You're just not going to grow up to be a dentist or a grade school teacher with a name like Count Nefaria.

THE MAD THINKER. A generally entertaining evil-genius character in a non-descript ill-fitting jumpsuit, the Thinker clashed with the Fantastic Four a bunch of times back in the day. The most amazing thing about him is his name. The Mad Thinker! And best of all, that's not even what he called himself -- that at least would be excusable, since he is, well, insane. It's the name the newspapers came up with for him! The Mad Thinker? What, was J. Jonah Jameson's autistic nephew writing the headlines that day? The Mad Thinker?!? That's like calling the Abomination "The Green Puncher" or Galactus "The Giant Planet-Eater". 'Well, Tom, he's mad....and he thinks. How about the Mad Thinker?' 'Great, Ted. Run with it.'

THE MAGGIA. This was utterly and transparently the Mafia. So why did Marvel choose to name them something that on the one hand made it totally clear who they were but on the other hand affiliated them with a well-known European brand of boullion cubes? I can't really figure it out. Were they afraid that John Gotti would read a copy of Marvel Two-in-One and send a guy out to whack them if they used 'Mafia'? It can't have been the threat of legal action, can it? I mean, not only is 'Mafia' not a copyrighted or trademarked word, but even if it was, who would bring the suit? Sammy Gravano?

MAGNETO. Of course, Magneto was one of the greatest of all Marvel villains, so I can't bust on him. I will say that while I am irritated with the X-Men movies cavalierly dumping the generally nifty outfits worn by the heroes, the decision to put the dignified and sinister Magneto in basic black was a good one. It's not only an improvement on his original outfit, which contained altogether too much purple for a good villain, but it was much, much better than the Liberace-inspired 'European Royalty-style lounging pyjamas' ensemble he sported for about five seconds when OHOTMU was first published.

Thanks for reading, gang, and do not miss the next installment. You know why? You know why?!? That's right. MODOK, motherfuckers. M to the O to the D-O-K.