I Read the News Today, Oh Boy
(I write for Comix Experience’s Onomatoepeia newsletter each month; I preview the new books in the back, and in the front, I do this short piece about… well, whatever comes to mind when I have a deadline, really. It’s one of the few things that I write that doesn’t show up online… so, of course, I thought that I’d change that. Here’s the first one I did – I think? – from June of last year.)
So, picture the scene.
There I was, post-dental surgery and in a crazed state because of the medication the doctor had given me. At least, I had been told that the doctor had given it to me; to be honest, everything from being clamped into the chair and having the nasal oxygen thing fitted until maybe two days later was kind of blurry. I mean, sure, I have vague recollections of having to sit somewhere afterwards while someone explained to me what I was and wasn’t allowed to do (Eating, for example, was a no-no. As was sucking anything through a straw. Who knew?), but everything beyond that is more than a little hazy. Kate promises me that I didn’t do anything too terrible in those missing hours and that, when she came to pick me up, I was quiet but not obviously in some kind of Manchurian Candidate-esque post-hypnotic programming state. But maybe she’s the Meryl Streep to my Liev Schrieber and is just lulling me into a false sense of security until it’s time for me to kill Hillary Clinton.
Anyway. Like I said, there I was, sitting in my bed, surrounded by no food whatsoever and all manner of comic books, trying to kill time and stay awake by coming to terms with everything that’s happening in two of the superheroic fictional universes that I occasionally visit. I realize that that doesn’t sound too exciting to all of you out there, but you have to realize that I was in the frame of mind where I didn’t want anything more challenging than a Brad Meltzer comic, and the only alternative at the time seemed to be watching reruns of Star Trek: Voyager on Spike TV.
To be fair, though, it was actually surprisingly enjoyable: DC’s superhero books, for example, make a lot more entertaining when you’re on prescribed mind-altering substances; you begin to imagine connections and motivations and plots, everything that books like The Flash: Fastest Man Alive lack when you’re entirely sober. That said, nothing can make Countdown make sense beyond being the product of a mixture of Dan Didio’s twin fetishes for Jim Shooter and making every single book in the DC Universe meaningless unless you’re reading every single other book in the DC Universe, although the colors are pretty when Lightray explodes.
After having fun trying to work out just why Kyle Rayner’s been on the cover of Countdown twice despite never having actually been in the book yet, I found myself turning to the other Big Two company’s works. And that’s where it all started.
Reading through both World War Hulk and the latest issue of New Avengers, I started putting two and two together to myself through the haze. The less astute reader, I thought, may look at recent events in the Marvel Universe – Invasions from aliens who have watched “Gladiator” a few too many times, for example, or the revelation that apparently shape-shifting space aliens have been here for a long time, posing as humans while pursuing a secret agenda known only to themselves – as turning the line of books away from the ground level political and social commentary of series like Civil War and Chris Claremont’s Four Color Election Day Funnies (“Welcome to the White House, Alberto Gonzales- – Hope you survive the experience!”). Such a reader may be surprised at this apparent change in direction for the publisher; surely appearing on The Colbert Report a couple of times to memorialize the symbolic murdering of Captain America shows that clumsily trying to make political lemonade from superhero lemons has been working out for Dan Buckley and his band of merry men, after all, so why turn away from that and towards a more fantastic, less realistic style of story?
And then, with a chilling chill that went all the way up and back down at least a small portion of my spine, the truth came to me:
“What if,” I asked myself well aware of the Marvel-ous meaning of those two words, “What if the people at the House of Ideas know more about what’s going on the world these days than the rest of us? After all, it’s not called the House of Frickin’ Dummies Who Don’t Pay Attention To The World Around Them, is it…? It’s not that unusual a concept, I thought to myself – Think back to those issues of Amazing Spider-Man where Stan Lee singlehandedly told the world about the dangers of drugs, singlehandedly stopping the 1960s in their tracks and ushering in the highly conservative 1970s and ending the drug trade in one single blow. Or Steve Englehart’s ‘Secret Empire’ issues of Captain America where Richard Nixon was revealed to be a meglomaniacal dictator out to take over the world, which caused the entire Watergate scandal? Even in the 1980s, it took Marvel Comics to solve the mystery of who was stealing entire cities from the planet by ripping out massive chunks of land and lifting them into space, with its groundbreaking and Dan Rather-approved Secret Wars series. Marvel Comics kind of has a history when it comes to breaking the really big news stories before the mainstream media can get off their overfed, ‘respectable’ asses.”
I continued along my fevered train of thought: “This can mean only one thing. The world is under lowkey invasion from alien forces who really, really like Ridley Scott movies and Marvel are trying to get the word out on the downlow so that we can congregate and fight back like we’re all in a Michael Bay movie.”
It was the only thing that made sense.
Suddenly, I could see all of the signs that they’ve been sending us. It’s not just that Elektra turned out to be a Skrull, showing us that even our closest ninja adversaries can be affected by this Invasion Of The Body Snatchers-esque turn of events, but even the very titles of their books have been hinting at something for quite some time. Why, years ago, Bendis told us that we were part of a “Secret War”, and just a few months back, David Hine repeated that by reminding us of our “Silent War”. I had just assumed that Marvel was planning to trademark the word “war” in the near future (That, or it was a running joke; World War Hulk Prologue coming out exactly a year after Civil War #1, and both of them appearing in the first week of May, lead me to expect next year’s massive crossover to have a Spanish theme and be called Cinco De Waro), but no! They were trying to warn us!
But the messages didn’t stop there! I looked at what their books are called, and it all became very clear what Marvel is trying to tell us: We all need to take “The Initiative” and fight back by becoming our own personal “Iron Man” or taking advantage of “Heroes For Hire”, in order to stop ourselves from mourning “Fallen Son”s while facing the aliens’ “Extinction Agenda”. Otherwise, we face “Annihilation”. Or, even worse, “Annihilation: Conquest.”
Holy crap, I thought to myself.
There was only one thing for it. I dragged myself up off my bed and staggered to the phone, dialing Joe Quesada’s phone number with a shaking, sweaty, finger. “Joe! Joe!” I yelled, once I’d gotten past the hold music and explained patiently to his personal assistant that I didn’t have any Hollywood connections. “I get it! I get what you’re trying to tell me! They’re here.”
“What?” he said. “Who’s here? Who is this?”
“Joe… You don’t have to pretend anymore. I’m with you. I understand. ‘One More Day’, Joe! You’re giving us the countdown to when we’ve got to rise up! It’s not just about Aunt May almost dying again!”
With that, the line went dead.
But I know that Joe was just trying to pretend that he didn’t know what I was talking about so that the aliens in the Marvel offices wouldn’t figure out his cunning plan. That’s okay. He knows that I know now. And he’s taking advantage of that with each and every solicitation that he sends out. Look! This month alone, they’re releasing comics with “Uprising,” “Survival Of The Fittest” and, most tellingly, “Last of The Mohicans” in the title. I know what you’re telling me, Joe. And it’s okay. I understand.
Stay strong.
These pain drugs, by the way? Totally awesome.
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