#local man beefs with a state the saga

[ratatatastic]

if you could choose 1 team for the panthers to win against forever, which one would it be and why

this is such a hard question for me because i am so evil its like oh which teams media do i hate the most which team can i not fucking stand when they win like theres so many options here and all of them are massive blood feuds... like who do i need to destroy emotionally here? options, options...

like i dont think its fun to always win against the team-in-laws like we have to be split here like the bestie needs enrichment and a chance to be smug sometimes too because thats what makes it fun when we chirp each other on call

boston would be pretty funny because theyre so terribly insufferable, so is toronto tampa and new york but i cant say i feel particularly inclined to answer them because rivalries exist on the basis that one team doesnt just always win so like thatd get boring so quick

i think i have to go the hater answer here being dallas (but damn if colorado and seattle arent close too) and thats because i think every texas team in every sport ever should be erradicated and are personally out to get me yes specifically me but especially that team <3 to name all the trangressions theyve made against me would be to take out a toilet roll of grievances

[sebeth]

Who's Who In The DC Universe #1: Intro, Abel, Abnegazar, Rath, & Ghast, and Abra Kadabra

When I was young, there was no internet. If you lived in small towns, there was no comic book store. You had to settle for the comic books that could be found in the spinner racks found in drug stores, grocery stores, etc.  You may not get every issue of the series. The internet didn’t exist so you couldn’t jump online to ask questions. You had the actual issues, the letter pages in the issues, and your own imagination to fill in the gaps. There were also a handful of series that I bought religiously (and were always available at my local spinner rack) that were essential in building my knowledge of the DC and Marvel Universes. The series were:

Who’s Who In The DC Universe

Secret Origins

The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe

Marvel Saga: The Official History of the DC Universe

Seriously, the number of characters I decided were my favorites after a one/two-page entry! I’m on a nostalgia kick for my childhood comics and the vastness of the DC Universe before the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Don’t get me wrong, I love characters from the various reboots – Tim, Conner, Kyle, Bart, Helena B, the various post-crisis JSA legacy characters. I simply don’t think DC needs to “Crisis-reboot” every few years, make a new continuity “to make things easier for new readers” only to re-insert old characters and storytelling elements into the new continuity thus complicating the new continuity and causing another “Crisis-reboot). But I’m beginning to veer off into a lengthy rant about what I don’t like about modern DC/Marvel comics and this post is about nostalgia.

Let’s crack open the first issue of Who’s Who in the Dc Universe, published in 1985. In retrospect, its hilarious that DC was putting out these 24 issues in the midst of the Crisis of Infinite Earths series, considering the Crisis would retcon most of these entries. Maybe should have started a few years earlier. Oh well.

The inside cover features a brief history of the beginning of DC Comics. The highlights:

February 1935: New Fun Comics is introduced to the world. Six months later, Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster would create (no, not Superman) Doctor Occult.

December 1935: New Comics was published. Twelve issues later it became New Adventure Comics and later simply Adventure Comics. The series featured characters like Sagebrush ‘n’ Cactus, Jibbly Jones, Sir Loin of Beef, the Federal Men and others. I consider myself to be very well-informed of the comics from the Golden Age to the Final Crisis era but if you are familiar with those characters of New Comics, I salute you as a comic book expert.

March 1937: Detective Comics, the first all-new comic based on a single theme is published. Simon & Schuster again created the debut characters of Slam Bradley and Spy. Simon & Schuster are most well-known for their creation of Superman but they deserve credit for their non-Kryptonian DC creations. Slam Bradley, original star of the Detective Comics title would later be integrated into the Gotham titles, most notably in the Catwoman series written by Ed Brubaker.

April 1938: Action Comics #1 was published and featured Simon & Schuster’s most famous creation: Superman

Marv Wolfman than states that Superman was quickly followed by Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, etc.

Not mentioned is DC buying out various companies in the 1970s/1980s: Charlton, Fawcett, Quality, etc that led to the acquisition of characters like the Shazam Family, the Blackhawks, Plastic Man, Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, Peacemaker, Judomaster, Nightshade, the Question, etc.

The inside cover also contains a pronunciation guide for the characters with entires.

The entries:

Abel by Joe Orlando

Caretaker of the House of Secrets, somewhere in the Kentucky Hills

The House was built by the mysterious Senator Sandsfield who swore that no one but a pure-bred Kentuckian would ever live there

Sansfield’s wife went insane within months of living there, he sold the house

The next four owners, “none of whom were of pure Kentucky stock” fled the house within three months’ time

The house’s next owner attempted to move the house across the state line, the house itself rebelled (!): “tearing itself free of the trailer and forcing itself over a cliff, before finally coming to rest beside a cemetery less than 200 yards from the state line

The only other house in the area is the House of Mystery, standing just across the cemetery

Little is known of Abel’s life before he became the caretaker for the House of Secrets except that he was a solitary, lonesome man, with an imaginary companion named Goldie

Abel was recommended for the job by his brother Cain, the caretaker of the House of Mystery

This is what modern comics is missing – sentient houses that rids itself of unwanted owners via insanity or old-fashioned murder! I never read much of the House of Secrets/Mystery titles so I don’t know if the series played up Abel and Cain’s biblical connections. I do remember the duo making an appearance in a Secret Origins issue and the fratricide was jokingly mentioned. Late 80s/early 90s readers will recognize the duo from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series. Gaiman did have Cain murder Abel (don’t worry, he gets better). Modern viewers will know the duo from their appearance in the Netflix Sandman show.

Abnegazar, Rath, & Ghast by Craig Hamilton & Dick Giordano

The trio inhabited Earth a billion years ago, “using their magical powers to spread evil over the planet’s prehuman population.

The trio was banished to internal imprisonment beneath the earth by the Timeless Ones.

The trio had created talismans – the Silver Wheel of Wyorlath, the Green Bell of Uthool, the Red Jar of Calythos – and had hidden them beneath the earth’s surface

Felix Faust conjured the spirits of the trio in the 20th century in an effort to gain more power. The trio informed Faust of the talismans but warned they were guarded by magical creatures.

Faust decided force the Justice League to unearth the talismans, setting events in motion that would free the trio in the past

The Justice League, already on a mission in time, defeated the freed trio

The JLA would battle the trio on three other occasions.

The trio is goofy looking, Each one wears nothing but purple briefs and pixie boots. All three are pink-skinned. One looks human except his skin is covered in circles. Two are bald but the third has a mohawk, One has huge pointed ears and another has oversized eyes. I was always “meh” on the trio. They are also known as the Demons Three.

Abra Kadabra by Carmine Infantino & Frank McLaughlin

A stage magician from the 64th Century, frustrated by the lack of audience acceptance as the super-science of the time made his tricks seem commonplace.

Kadabra stole a time machine and journeyed to the 20th Century where he still failed as a stage magician.

He decided to use his futuristic scientific knowledge to commit a series of robberies, forcing his victims to applaud his actions.

His crimes led to repeated confrontations with the Flash (Barry Allen).

Abra needs to accept that he sucks as a magician. He had all the future knowledge and tech and he still couldn’t succeed? He should have been blowing Penn & Teller, David Copperfield, etc, out of the water! The various Flashes have such an extensive Rogues gallery and Abra Kadabra is important part of it but I’d put him at the “C” level.

[eyesonworldcultures]

Review by Mónica Flores Correa

One may say that Buenos Aires is a secondary character in “Operation Finale.” The film about Adolph Eichmann’s capture by Mossad agents in 1960, shows the city and its suburbs in a minimalist way. The local color appears in the occasional porteño (Buenos Aires resident) voices with the Italian cadence of their Spanish. It appears at the ‘café’ where the agents surreptitiously exchange information, in a glance at tango dancers, and in the well chosen “El Choclo,” a very agile, intense tango as the scene’s background music. The longing of the Israelis for a meal with fish while they are eating the Argentine diet of beef and more beef, gives the audience a recognizable link with the place as well.

Revealing Buenos Aires atmosphere more than its sightseeing, was a clever decision by director Chris Weitz. The audience is not watching this movie for touristic reasons. They are there to see reenacted one of the most crucial moments in the pursuit of justice after the Holocaust genocide. A superb Ben Kingsley as Eichmann, playing the Nazi’s slippery personality with glimpses of his cruelty and, yes, of his eventual humanity, and Oscar Isaac as agent Peter Malkin, are the stars of the also well selected cast.

Eichmann’s capture saga is not in the recollections of my childhood in the 60s.  I only remember two international breaking news stories that took place around a couple of years later: the deaths of Marilyn Monroe and of President John F. Kennedy. It was in my adulthood when I came to learn about the case that transfixed the world.  I did it mainly through the unquestionably brilliant, though controversial, Hannah Arendt’s reporting on Eichmann’s trial in Israel.

I do remember, however, the adults I my family speaking with disgust of “Tacuara,” a group of nationalist, anti-Semitic youth who were carrying out brutal attacks against the Jewish community. My mother and aunts were Christians in the good sense of the word. They taught me to reject any expression of racial or ethnic hate. The ultra right nationalist “Tacuara” was one of the extreme right/extreme left violent offsprings of the proscribed Justicialist party, a.k.a. Peronist party, one of the two major political organizations in the country.

One review of the movie stated that when the spy operation took place, Argentina was ruled by a Nazi sympathizer government. It was not so. President Arturo Frondizi was far from being pro-Nazi. Still, conditioned by the military and by the fact that the Peronist party had been proscribed, his administration was deplorably weak. It is said that Frondizi learned about Eichmann’s capture through the newspapers. That may not be totally far fetched. A military coup ousted Frondizi in 1963.

For the plot’s sake, the film indulges in some poetic licenses, fictionalization that is recognized in the credits. There is a romantic relationship between two agents that never happened, a female doctor in charge of drugging Eichman to keep him quiet was, in the real case a male doctor. The ultra right wingers’ hunt for Eichmann and his captors’ whereabouts has been somewhat over dramatized. An example: an Argentine Nazi leader, policemen, and young Nazis in motorbikes, arrive at the airport just as the El Al plane with its Nazi charge takes off. The scene is very good, yet it’s possible to suspect that it hasn’t been completely faithful to the facts.      

Like many societies in the Western Christian world, Argentina nursed a veiled anti- Semitism which, depending on the political climate, could surface and be fairly obvious. Moreover, Argentina and other South American countries protected Eichmann, Mengele, and less prominent Nazis. They were allowed to settle with new identities in those countries. Also well known are the fascist sympathies of Juan Perón, a general, founder of the “Justicialismo.” Three times president, two of them as dictator, he acquiescently opened the door to the hush-hush settlement of the war criminals.

Perón had the cooperation of people like Carlos Fuldner (played by Portuguese actor Pepe Rapazote).  We see Fuldner in the movie leading  Klaus, Eichmann’s son, in the frantic search to free the architect of the Final Solution.  Fuldner had a double political affiliation: he was member of the Nazi party in Germany and of the Justicialist party in Argentina. This German-Argentine business and military man fought with the pro- Germanic “División Azul” in Spain. Years later he received a military rank with the Schustztaffel (the SS). This man was highly instrumental in the relocation of several mass murderers, as Klaus Eichmann points out in the movie. “He helped my family to establish in this country,” he says to his love interest.

I felt very disturbed by a scene in which the Argentine-Nazi group tortures a young Argentine Jewish woman. They were trying to extract information about the Mossad’s safe house where Eichmann was held. Her tormentors carve a swastika on her chest with a knife and  burn her skin with cigarette butts. Historically, there was a case as this one depicted  but it happened two years later, not during the Eichmann saga. In any event, the scene reminded me that twenty five years later, during the “dirty war” that began in the 70s with the last and bloodiest dictatorship, the military torturers tormented Jewish activists with particular viciousness at the detention camps where the “disappeared” were confined.

Auspiciously, much water has gone under the bridge since then. Despite highs and lows, despite its ever recurrent economic, and eventually political, crisis, Argentina has been a democracy for thirty five years.

Learning its lesson the hard way, the Argentine society has stopped knocking at the military barracks demanding a coup d’état when times are difficult.

Although it’s hard to know for certain if anti-Semitism is a thing of the past, the younger generations, more open and also freer from biased educational baggage, don’t adhere to the prejudices that decades ago were so entrenched in the culture. It is possible to perceive a widespread disposition to condemn any racial or ethnic bigotry, especially among the young.

A turning point in the long road to overcome these prejudices occurred, I think, in the 90s. The Jewish community was the target of two international terrorist attacks in Buenos Aires. Both were allegedly masterminded by Iran, the second one with the help of Hezbollah. A suicide bombing attack on the building of the Israeli embassy left 30 people dead in 1992. Another suicide attack in 1994 against Amia, a Jewish cultural center, killed 85 people and hundreds were wounded. After the latter, a huge demonstration in solidarity with the victims was immediately organized. It was estimated that around 200.000 Argentines marched three days later to convey their condemnation. People from all walks of life, young and old, walked the streets of Buenos Aires, most carrying posters conveying a simple, moving message: “Today I am also a Jew.”  

Mónica Flores Correa

Is a writer living in New York. She was a correspondent for Página 12 a newspaper in Buenos Aires, her city of origin.

For her work as a journalist, she was awarded the Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. Monica has published two short story collections and she is currently working on a novel. This year, she has published a new translation into Spanish of “The Dead”, a short story by James Joyce. This work has been done in collaboration with Cristóbal Williams, her husband.