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Now the second JLA/JSA crossover: Crisis on Earth-3 is actually good. This team-up which introduces the evil-universe version of Justice League (The Crime Syndicate) is a major improvement over the 1st team-up.

This team-up focuses on a smaller group of characters with each team having 5 members on it. It is very fun watching the main 5 Leaguers (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, and Green Lantern) face off against their evil mirrors, who invade the main DC universe out of boredom. We get great fights between the Syndicate and the League showing how each member of the League can defeat another member by using their abilities.

However, once the League is subdued by the Syndicate's trickery, the comic shows (a very different) Justice Society take on evil crooks, when they wish to use Earth-2 as a battleground for a final fight against the JL. And we get to see that the Society being competent by defending their Earth. (Starman, in particular, gets an excellent fight winning against Ultraman aka Evil Superman.) But it comes down to a mirror fight between the Justice League and the Crime Syndicate, where the League wins by overloading their foes power against themselves.

A fun Silver Age story of the Justice League that expands on the DC Multiverse. I recommend that people read Justice League #29-30 for this fun 2-parter.

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One criticism I do have of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is that Alan Moore kinda portrays the foreign / non-English characters as even more backward than the Victorian era white people.

And it's just kinda weird to have that attitude when writing a Sikh character specifically, considering the history of Sikhism and sexism in India, is the thing. I'm not saying a sexist Sikh isn't a thing that exists. I'm also not saying that Nemo should be a flawless theologically pure late 1800s Sikh, especially considering Nemo has been isolated and is possibly oblivious to cultural reformations like the Singh Sabha Movement, but like

like it's just weird to put a Sikh on the page as a more sexist sexist than a white English sexist in the late 1800s, right?

Especially in a work that thoroughly otherizes Asian characters already via its choice of villains, in a way that you kinda have to suck your teeth and insist is somehow a satire of Sinophobic attitudes in the Victorian era.

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I think what strikes me most about The Shadow radio shows staring Orson Welles (aside from the perpetual 1930s racism/orientalism, which is more or less prominent depending on the episode) is how the concessions to the medium create such interesting story-telling potential.

The radio!Shadow is not walking around with twin hand-guns. He doesn't carry a weapon at all and doesn't relying on being a master of disguise; rather his main power is the ability to 'cloud men's minds' and thus pass invisibly through any scene he's in. Which means he's solving situations primarily by being a massive troll and tricking criminals into shooting in the wrong direction or turning on each other, and suchlike. This isn't *nicer*, per se. He absolutely gets a lot of people killed (including by, at one point, substituting an evil lady's cobra for an untrained one).

But it means he's pretty vulnerable to people who have the wherewithal to lock the door, or use anaesthetic gas, or simply team up with a buddy to feel their way across the room searching for him. He succeeds when he can be unnerving and manipulative. He gets in trouble when people aren't put off by the cackling laughter out of nowhere.

It also means that, usefully for radio, you get a lot of places where people - including the Shadow - have to narrate their actions to each other. My favourite so far is when he's chasing a mad scientist up a water tower and the villain is shouting out descriptions specifically to let the Shadow know he's too late, because of threats the Shadow had issued earlier in order to drive this guy off balance.

I know this is a 'softer' iteration of the character, compared to other versions. They updated the tag lines as the show progressed to include the idea his powers will "soon be available" to the proper authorities (since they are framed as secrets/science that modern society at large hasn't yet rediscovered). It reminds me very strongly of Batman being a 'duly deputised law enforcer' in terms of meeting broadcasting standards.

At the same time, the no-direct-killing rule and leaning on the invisibility (plus limited mind-reading) work really well, arguably making him more sinister than your standard avenging vigilante since he relies on trickery so much. And I just I think it's an idea with a lot of potential in its own right. It actually put me back in mind of a concept I had for a 'superhero' that was in fact a whole bunch of people sharing a common mask, who worked together to make it seem like 'he' could be everywhere at once/teleport. I very much enjoy things that take a single ability - especially something that can be implemented as a theatrical stage trick - and find multiple ways to use it/negate it in the course of generating plots.

I do wish sidekick Margo Lane was a more distinctive character. The actors only occasionally mark themselves out alongside Welles and she's just . . . there, most of the time. It's not even reaching the level of Paul Temple and Steve in terms of a dynamic, much less my high bar for early superhero nonsense, Jay and Joan from the Flash.

(If you've never read the original Flash comics, Jay Garrick and his girlfriend Joan share the exact same sense of humour and are constantly winding each other up. They very much match each other's freak in that regard and it's great.)

Margo does get to be pretty awesome once in a while, though, such as driving a car through a shop-front to save the Shadow from a fire or stowing away aboard a ship to let him out of a locked room, then diving overboard to swim to shore. So there's that.

(Lest it need saying, I do love a good dynamic duo, even if I do think The Shadow as a concept works better if he has a network behind him, not just one friend.)

Anyway, it's passing the workday listening to these shows on YouTube and I'll let you know if I have any more thoughts on the subject.

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The Chronological Superman 1958: Bizarro – Superman’s imperfect duplicate and tragic, twisted monster – debuts in Superboy vol.1 No.68. I’ve always been entertained by the (probably unintentional) synchronicity of the above image. It’s the splash panel which introduces the character in his 3-chapter tragicomedy, and features Bizarro smashing a green sedan – just as Superman did on the debut cover of Action Comics.

Bizarro is all but unique among comics’ overwhelming numbers of Evil Duplicates, in that he doesn’t act in a fashion which is wholly contrary to his opposite number’s own ethic. Reverse-Flash is the evil Flash, Sinestro is the evil Green Lantern, Abomination is the evil Hulk … but Bizarro is not the evil Superman.

At worst, he’s confused, childlike, and unpredictable. Primarily, he’s misunderstood – whether intentionally for comic effect (as in the Bizarro World stories) or performative for tragedy (as in his debut, and in some recent revivals).

Bizarro may represent, if not the opposite of Superman’s morality, the opposite of Superman’s core symbolism. An interpretation of Superman’s appeal which has always pleased me is that the transition of Clark Kent into Superman is a symbolic act of escapist fantasy. The idea is that it offers a psychological prosthetic to shy, intimidated, and awkward personalities, promising that – beneath the exterior which they believe everyone loathes and mocks – there is a better, secret self which is proud, noble, and which everyone loves.

Bizarro, filtered through the anxiety of the Weisinger years, is that promise betrayed. Bizarro’s secret self is worse than Clark Kent’s public self. Clark is merely meek and unathletic, but Bizarro is clumsy and stupid and ugly, and can do nothing right, despite having the enviable powers of Superboy. Bizarro is a melange of everything despicable about Clark Kent, magnified a thousandfold, unmitigated by a better, secret self … which makes him not Superman’s evil opposite, but his sad and tragic opposite…

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“What did you expect?”

Inferno - season 07 - 1970

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I am given to understand some people find bastards (that is, people who behave badly, not innocent people who are not responsible for their birth status) sexy for some reason.

wild to see someone with ACAB in the bio jerking off to Tom King lol

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Hey Sid, what can you tell me about the "Queen of Speed"? Johnny Quick's brief partner in heroics?

I had to do some digging to find out who you were referring to and kept getting tugged down rabbit holes related to an Apokoliptan Fury by the name of Speed Queen who has been glimpsed earth side in battles against the armies of Darkseid here and there but eventually I DID find one of the post war memoirs made by Johnny Quick ("ghost written" by his teammate the Tarantula and one of many such memoirs he helped his teammates to write so they could tell their own stories on their own terms). Ladies, gentlemen and others I introduce you to Joanie Swift!

(The cover of the memoir's most recent release by artist Alex Garcia)

Joanie Swift (as far as I can tell this woman's real, legal name) was working as a teacher's assistant for a professor at a large public university near Johnny Quick's hometown of Philly. The professor she was working for, one Dr Halsey was known as something of a scatterbrain who wrote his notes in such haphazard chicken scratch that he basically needed a full time, trained secretary to make any sense in it so Swift was making some extra money while going to school for that very skill set. While typing up his handwritten notes she accidentally misread part of one of the equations written and evidently discovered the mathematical formula that Johnny Quick himself used to gain superspeed (the actual nature, function and use of the 'Speed Formula' is a nearly 70 year long mystery taken up by people MUCH smarter than me. If you want to know I'd need time to research another ask).

Without even realizing it Ms Swift began to manifest superhuman speed, accidentally releasing a menagerie of exotic animals from the lab next door and being rescued by Johnny Quick who attempted to dissuade the young and someone clumsy girl from a life of costumed crime fighting. Though she quickly made a haphazard costume for herself and spent the rest of the day helping Johnny to track down the animals where she showed some quick wit and empathetic thinking in relation to the animals as they were gathered back up in the university's testing labs. She began to ponder the idea of making herself a permanent partner of Quick before she was startled by a mouse, bumped her head and was momentarily unconscious, awakening without remembering the Speed Formula.

Johnny muses in the memoir about how this was probably for the best. While he could sense Swift was neither a bad nor stupid woman she was also of a rather "middle class" kind (his words not mine) and Quick was becoming increasingly concerned that she was being introduced to superhero work as glamorous and entertaining (because she was rescuing escaped lab animals on a quiet university campus) rather than being given an honest and frank understanding of the risks that would be involved if she took it up full time.

Swift eventually completed her degree in Secretarial Science with a well known specialty in typing up scientific notation just about as fast as even the most accomplished scientists in the field could speak it aloud. She and Johnny remained in contact as friends for the rest of the woman's life, though without wishing to undermine her privacy he only shared with us that even after marriage and 3 children she became a well known and respected secretary at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, one of the most respected scientific institutions...period, to my understanding.

Call it a downgrade if you must but the only thing that tells ME is that you've never taken the time to appreciate the typists in whatever work you're currently in.

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General Ross, most of Canada is empty space anyway. What exactly do we have to GAIN from antagonizing this creature? Amazing Spiderman 119

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It's kind of incredible just how much the Country House Murder Mystery genre is, at its roots, a reaction to WWI and the social change that sprang from it.

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Happy Kanako's Killer Life has animals on almost every page as our heroine loves making horrible animal-based puns and the creator draws them in.

Weekly Bookish Question #454 (August 17th - August 23rd, 2025)

Optional bonus for replies: Do you like when book feature animals?

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made a list of books i associate with tumblr (which admittedly was sourced from 1) my brain 2) my blog and 3) walking around the bookstore where i work and looking at the shelves so i may have left some out)

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I get that it's funnier if the Ninja Turtles live in the icky icky poo sewer

but like

also there are storm drainage systems that do not have poo in them

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People handing out free technology on the street is always a danger sign.

I'm... good. Thanks.

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I am minded of my Grandpa's bait shop, though it did not have one of these.

In 1957, the worm vending machine emerged as a novel solution for anglers needing live bait. These machines, often placed near fishing spots, allowed fishermen to conveniently purchase worms at any hour, eliminating the need to visit a bait shop. This invention reflected the post-war trend towards automation and the growing popularity of fishing as a leisure activity.

The worm vending machine was a quirky yet practical innovation of its time. It provided a 24/7 solution for a specific niche market, demonstrating the era’s fascination with convenience and automation. By simply inserting coins, anglers could retrieve a container of live worms, ready for use. Beyond its functional aspect, the worm vending machine also symbolized the cultural trends of the 1950s.

The machine’s appearance and purpose tapped into the desire for efficiency and accessibility in leisure activities, making it a memorable piece of mid-century American ingenuity.

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[new history of the DC universe #1]

This is a really weird decision, I mean the justice experience ALREADY exists and fills out that role so idk why they would want to make another team.