"Variant Fever." Or, "Strange Austerity."

Wife lost her job a few days ago; or, as they put it, "the position has been eliminated." We have returned to the old routine of intense anxiety in an uncertain future. "Time to tighten the belt." From Flush Times of Alabama to Hard Times Come Agin in a matter of days.

I was naturally leery of spending any money unduly or frivolously. Still, we driving in Burbank, going as it happens to the recycling centre down there (to avoid the international homelessness conference that is our local recycling centre) and the car, following an absurdly tortuous route, emerged suddenly as if by magic on Olive, next to Tally Rand. We were so near to my regular comic shop that I said, in the voice of a wheedling five year old (that is, my customary voice), "Can we go to the komeeks shop please?"

Wife said I could spend whatever we got from the recycling centre on comic books. We had a couple of sacks full of a) Calpico bottles and b) Original New York Seltzer vanilla cream soda bottles.

We got two dollars exactly for them. 

Chastened, in the comics shop I went straight to the dollar bins at the front of the shop to see what was new. A kind of autistic single-mindedness to my actions. There were some nice old (i.e. 80s) Green Lanterns, one with art by Alex Toth, one drawn by Gil Kane, the rest Joe Staton era stuff. I like Joe Staton –– he's underrated. Picked em up. 

While I was going through the bins, the excellent shopman Eric called across the counter, "Oh, hey, Fabian, you know that Adam Hughes Doctor Strange variant you wanted on Wednesday? Well a copy became available. The customer we saved it for passed on it." 

I came over eagerly, saying, "But how much is it I wonder?'

"I think that was why he passed on it," said Eric. 

Price was $24.99.

I recoiled from the book, albeit with some reluctance.

(How does one recoil with reluctance, sage Kung?)

I made the universal sign of "burnt fingers". 

"Too much for my poor purse I fear" I said with a queasy smile. "My wife just lost her job and we're having to prioritize. Gotta change my whole philosophy." As the shop folk made kind commiserations I went back to the dollar bin. "Austerity."

Anyway I spent about ten dollars there and left. In the car back I recounted what had passed to wife, like it was a tale of great temptation and heroic restraint.  "They had a rare variant of Doctor Strange but I said I couldn't pay for it. I wouldn't do it! Time to rethink things. Austerity measures." 

I sat in silence all the way home, grinding my back teeth to a fine dust.  

When we got in the house, my wife was concerned with something at one end of the apartment and I seized the opportunity. I leapt across the room, grabbed the phone and called the comics shop. Said in a hushed voice, "Eric? You still got that Hughes Doctor Strange variant? Yes? Well set it aside for me  then man could you? Austerity be damned!"  

"Ultron Is Short For Ultra-Boredom."

I've been reading Kurt Busiek's third volume of Avengers. I grew up with the first iteration (#s 1–402) which ended, rather bathetically, in the "Onslaught" campaign (September 1996). How symbolic –– thirty-three years of Avengers (and Fantastic Four) continuity wiped in a mediocre , nebulous X-Men super-saga. Nobody cared. I feel like absolutely everybody started dating beautiful women around that time and lost all interest in comics for the next ten or so years. I know I did.

Volume Three came hot on the heels of that glorious reboot implosion, the silly shit fest that was Volume Two, which lasted a full year and twelve issues only and ended in grievous mortal riotous shame for all concerned.

Volume Three resumed the continuity pretty much as it had been before wunderkind blunderer Rob Liefeld  Franklin Richards had fudged the brand with childish bravado. It had writing by journeyman extraordinary Kurt Busiek that was pretty okay –– at least it was respectful of continuity. You got George Perez drawing it and then Alan Davis. Busiek was if anything a bit of a continuity nerd–Nazi amalgam. Which is a good thing in principle, vide Gruenwald, if not always practice (I tried rereading Avengers Forever recently, which I remembered enjoying, and found it passing boring for the same reasons as I lay out below).

Quite dull going though, partially because of Busiek's wearisome interest in that tortuous and interminable triangle Vision–Scarlet Witch–Wonder Man. The poor android VISION –– how he bleats like a human male. The Young Werther seems like Frank Castle in comparison. Throw in Hank Pym and Ultron and their [JOHNNY ROTTEN voice here] endlessly rewarding father-son relationship and you have an awful vortex of Roy Thomas–inspired dulness.

As for Wonder Man, conceived solely as an inversion of Wonder Woman –– a buh-rilliant legal coup, snatching the copyright on the name before before DC thought of it –– even as a fierce defender of the Englehart/Milgrom run on West Coast Avengers I am hard pushed to explain him. Wonder Man, so named because you wonder why he's here.

Several good writers have come a cropper on the pons asinorum that is the Vision. You ever read that Jonathan Lethem short story about the Vision? Ha. My mother-in-law gave me a Vision bobble-head one Christmas –– that and the Lethem story are the best two things ever to happen involving the Vision. Sad indictment when Jonathan Lethem and my mother-in-law come up with your best moments.

Roy Thomas, that dreadful awful poor bad writer, that rascal, created Vision out of the patent hard-on he had for Golden Age comics.

"Take me back to those dreamy days before Mort Weisinger bullied me in the DC offices."

Ooh, is the Vision the original Human Torch?
Can it be possible?!
Set a spell and let RASCALLY ROY inflict some more gone-but-not-forgotten (by me!) shit upon you, like... the Liberty Legion! Or is Vision driven by the brainwaves of Wonder Man? Is the Grim Reaper his brother? They are always fighting. Is the Whizzer the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver's real father? DULL STUFF IN EACH CASE but begad successive writers on the tile love to return to it.

These exhausted questions still hang around like a pungent corpse at the banquet. Dick Remender, when he was burnt out and spazzing urgently and writing badly for a living, revisited the Scarlet Witch / Quicksilver family tree project and rather pointlessly retconned it so that Magneto was now not their father –– again. Although in fairness, perhaps he was robustly compelled to write that by the Disney lawyers for reasons pertaining to the film rights to Pietro & Wanda. I think Mark Waid, who should know better, is wading through this dull matter even as we speak.  Reinvigorating the moribund. The Disney lawyers must have their way.

I say, "Even as we speak," but we're not speaking. I'm writing, and you are –– you are not reading this. Nobody is.

Who cares! I'll continue. Steve Englehart did a stand-up Christlike good job on two limited series of Vision & Scarlet Witch, and then for a while he wrought lilies from the acorn. On West Coast Avengers he had that inspired twist with the twin baby sons of Vision and Scarlet Witch being revealed to be demonic shells, evil illusions of life sucked up to become the hands of Mister Pandemonium.

But even the great STEVE fell too far in sentimental love with the minutiae of the Wanda/Vizh myth –– just like he did with his achilles heel, Mantis. Steve had a Pynchonesque crush on Mantis, like Claremont did with Kitty and Storm (––and Rogue ––and Psylocke), and so kept force-feeding us Mantis well past her expiry date. Like Dan Slott does with the sexy Allred girl in the new run of Silver Surfer. Can Slott be taken off Silver Surfer so that the cute girl ("Dawn Greenwood") can be retconned and we can move on?  Slott is a bad one for nursing awful crushes on his characters.

In my revisiting of the third volume of Avengers, I hit a wall of dulness with a supremely unnecessary one-shot about Ultron written variously by Roger Stern, Steve Englehart, Busiek and (who else) Rascally Roy. Divers hands make a poor fist! This one-shot (ironically called The Ultron Imperative –– since nothing about it is "imperative") is  a hopeless affair but a crystal-clear indictment of what is wrong with Ultron.

Robots, like demons, are nebulous.
"Oh we have to fight hundreds of robot versions of ourselves."
"Oh they have made robot amalgams of us."
(SEE: another boring trend, the amalgam: The Super-Adaptoid, The Super Skrull, DC's Amazo and the so-called Composite Superman.)

Good issues with Ultron:

Secret Wars, when Galactus snuffs him out like a candle.

Daredevil by Ann Nocenti and JR Jr, an Acts of Vengeance tie-in that revolved around the incongruity of Daredevil fighting Ultron. I believe the Inhumans wandered in and managed not to plumb Roy Thomas–level dullness as well. This is because Ann Nocenti is a good writer and JR Jr. was drawing well at the time, not yet high on the fumes of his own raging ego.

West Coast Avengers by Englehart, Milgrom & Sinnott. The "dream team" mentioned in a previous post. I can't remember what exactly they did with boring Ultron but I feel like it was quite good.

The recent film was an all round bad fudge sundae. Red Reddington = Ultron? This was about as riveting as an episode of The Blacklist can be. Also, the damp flatus  that was the "Age of Ultron" round robin circle jerk. Wolverine and Sue Storm stumbling through realities. More mismanagement of time and future outcomes. The only characters who should mess with the weave of the time-space continuum are:

Kang/Immortus
Zaarko (see –– possibly exclusively –– Dan Jurgen's superb run on Thor [Volume Three] where maybe five real-time years of the comic took place in a future that was eventually cancelled)
The Time Variance Authority (led by Mark Gruenwald)
The Time Keepers / Time Twisters

In DC there are more legitimate time travelers; it can be

Brainiac 5 & the orange alien with a beak and big eyes  in the original Legion continuity
Time Trapper
Glorith
Per Degaton
Chronos
Hourman
Rip Hunter (not the shitty TV version NB)
Booster Gold
Black Beetle

All these characters have been involved in interesting time travel stories. Per Degaton is particularly interesting, since DC had a running joke that he would always try to divert from the same moment, and always return to that moment, with the same lines of dialogue &c. The Time Trapper/Superboy/
pocket universe  storyline and then the Glorith/Time Trapper universes in Legion are also exemplary cases of how willfully complex comics can get and still be good.

"Celebrity in My Regular Comics Shop."

It was a Wednesday morning just past eleven and I was in my regular comics shop, Burbank. I was at the back racks, sort of hovering, when I saw to my left, speaking in a hushed mutter to Paul (the excellent comicshopman), the guy who is in everything. I thought like a shot: "Seth Rogen."

Followed another thought that limped along five seconds after the first, less dynamic than a shot but closer to reality in its conclusion, I amended that: "It isn't Seth Rogen."

"It isn't even remotely Seth Rogen."

The excellent comicshopman ushered the guy to the rear of the shop, and I was thinking, "He gets his comics at the book door to avoid the recognition of the clammy greasy hoi palloi. He probably pays by monthly invoices. He has the invoice brought to him by his butler on a silver tray. Then his butler goes off with his credit card and pays the bills. The butler is shamelessly skimming money off the top. He lets this awful fraud happen because he's too Twenty-First Century to admit it bothers him." I was also thinking "What's the summitch's name."

I was excited. "He was in Justified, he was in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., in both shows he plays a sort of lovable doofus, he does standup comedy that is acclaimed that is beloved of the hipsters, and he writes fucking introductions to comics collections I actually fucking own, he did an episode of Seinfeld in cars with comedians getting coffee and they went out in downtown LA, he was going on about how it's turning into Brooklyn. He did a couple of good Mark Maron podcasts. All this, and I can't remember the fucker's name."

I rather ruefully thought, "He cornered the market with comedy about comics and geek culture. Not that I consider myself a geek. Quite the contrary." I shiver at the people who leap in with both feet going, "Wheeee, I'm a proud geek and the Twenty-First Century is our revenge! Hooray for Harry Potter and computer programming!" I was an athlete –– a cross–country runner –– a lover of tall, frightening, beautiful women –– I wrote bad, difficult verse and I crushed my enemies ruthlessly under my training shoe with the bubbles in the heel (because I come down hard).  I despise the ring–tailed pencil–necked geek––

I just happen to have a tedious and bottomless interest in superhero comics and in the Star Wars cantina scene –– and the Jabba palace and sail barge scenes.

His name, it's like Osbert... like Osbert Sitwell.
His name is Sacheverell Sitwell.
No his name is not Sacheverell Sitwell.

One time I saw a book on the Holds shelf at Los Feliz Library for somebody with his same last name and first initial, and I wondered if it was him.

All the way home I tried to remember his name, in vain. I stopped in Toluca Lake to fix my sedge hat that kept slipping either down the front of my face or behind it. "It's a sort of heavy metal first name, I'm sure of it."

You think this is going to end with me revealing his name, but it isn't. I still don't know it and I refuse to look it up. I once met a girl in Brooklyn when I was very drunk and woke up the next day with her and I didn't remember her name. I asked her not to tell me, and I would try and guess it. We dated for over a month. I used to call her Delilah. This went on for days and everybody in our social circle thought I was a disgusting sexist for continuing this ruse. I still don't know why.

I got home and had a shower. I got out and some veggie buffalo chicken nuggets out of the freezer and put them in the oven, at which point I had the silliest thought of all. It went, "Poor guy, he's afraid of being recognized in the comics shop. It means he can't just sift through the dollar bins at the back of the shop at his leisure like I can."


[POST-SCRIPTUM:  It came to me when I was walking to the library that afternoon: Patton Oswalt.]