T-shirt #31: Happy Anniversary Superman

T-shirt #31: The Death of Superman: Bleeding Superman Logo

Superman turned 75 years old on Thursday April 18, the date of the 1938 publication of Action Comics #1. It has taken me a few days to commemorate this event with a T-shirt. I may be a few days late, but still, happy anniversary Superman (or would we consider this a "birthday"?).

The arrival of the 75th anniversary makes me feel old because not only do I remember the 50th anniversary vividly, but I own the commemorative book.

Once again, I am going to plug Charles Skaggs'  excellent blog-- Damn Good Coffee...and HOT!--and his post on The Man of Steel: 75 Years of Superman. Charles did a great job writing about the history and significance of Superman, including the Death and Return of Superman stories, various movies including the upcoming Man of Steel film due in June, and TV shows like Smallville and Superman: The Animated Series among others. You can read his blog if you're interested. It's worth your time because I am not going to repeat the same material here.

I don't own very many Superman shirts. In fact, digging through my closet, I first laid hands on just this one, the bleeding logo from Death of Superman story in 1992. I think I may own a traditional logo shirt (blue shirt with the red and yellow logo) somewhere, but it's not a shirt I wear often.

I am not a huge Superman fan unless I am talking to someone who is not a huge Superman fan. Faced with someone dumping on Superman, I become a huge Superman fan and his advocate.  Many comic book fans love to malign Superman: "he's a boy scout"; "he's boring"; "he's too powerful"; "all the stories have been told, and there's nothing new"; "He's the first that doesn't make him the best"; and so forth. I react strongly to these criticisms, even though I am not a huge Superman fan when left to my own devices.

It has been a long time since Superman comics graced the top of my stack of comics for the week. I feel this statement deserves explanation, so you know what I mean. Each week, when I bring the new comics home from the comic shop, I put the new comics into the stack of comics that I am currently reading. There are ALWAYS comics already in the stack. I have never cleared out the stack from the previous week, though I do make substantial progress on days when I take time off to relax and read a couple of dozen comics in one lounging. I prioritize comics I want to read IMMEDIATELY first, and these go to the top of the stack. Current faves that go straight to the top of the stack are (in no meaningful order) The Walking Dead, The All New X-Men, The Age of Ultron, Daredevil, Aquaman, Justice League, Fantastic Four, Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers, Uncanny Avengers, Uncanny X-Men, Hawkeye, and several more that probably do not leap to mind right now. See? No Superman.

1986 was different. John Byrne's issues graced the top of my stack every week. Not long ago, I enjoyed the run of All-Star Superman. I liked Jim Lee on Superman. I like JMS's run on Superman. And as I have already written in my FreakAngels post #22, I was a big fan of the Team Superman Group-think concept of interlocking issues creating one continuing story of weekly installments despite how many die hard comics fans detested those years (1991-2000ish). Though I do not count Superman even in my top ten of favorite all time heroes, unlike Bill Artis who sells me comics at Fanfare Sports and Entertainment (who is the single biggest Superman fan I know), I do have some Superman love in my deeper past.

My first issue of a Superman comic was the February 1967 issue of Superman #194: "The Death of Lois Lane." 

ASIDE: Damn, I love the DC comics Wikia.)

This excellent What If story was a great one to start my Superman reading as a child of five years of age. But most of my fond memories of childhood love of Superman are for Superboy and his adventures with the Legion of Superheroes, a future superhero club that I thought was a really cool concept. I also was very influenced by Alan Moore's Superman stories, especially the one from Superman Annual #11 featuring the classic "For the Man Who Has Everything" story.

This shirt in today's blog entry displays the main image from the Death of Superman storyline in 1992. This story seemed like more of a novelty at the time. These days it seems like crossovers and big events are continuous and overlapping with many running at the same time. Back in 1992, big events seemed less frequent, maybe just once a year, and did not seem redundant. I do not recall the comic companies trying a big death of a main hero event before the Death of Superman. Granted, DC Comics killed the Flash in 1985, but this was hardly a main event a huge crossover mini-series. Without doing any research, I do not recall any major superhero death event before the huge (and I do mean HUGE) Superman death event in 1992. The story was so pivotal it inspired me to buy the shirt featured here because to that point I did not own a Superman shirt, not even as a kid (unless my parents will tell me differenly).

I must admit that I am one of the few people on the planet who actually liked the 2006 Bryan Singer film, Superman Returns, with the exception of yet what I consider another failed depiction of Lex Luthor despite the acting talents of Kevin Spacey. I am looking forward to the new film by Zack Snyder. I have liked the way DC has tried to make Superman more gritty, though the stories have failed to intrigue me enough to reach the top of the weekly stack; though do not get me wrong, I am reading both Action Comics and Superman each month or eventually when several issues clog up my stack. Maybe, if DC really wants to re-vitalize the character, the company should consider killing him and leaving him dead for 24 years. It worked for the Flash.

- chris tower - 1304.21 - 11:21

T-shirt #30: Kid Flash: Where's Wally?

T-shirt #30: KID FLASH - The meaning of yellow - is it spring yet?

I had intended for today's blog to be dedicated to Superman in commemoration of his 75th birthday.

And then I woke up to snow on the ground.

Let me repeat that statement with emphasis in case you missed it: SNOW ON THE GROUND.

It's April 20th, by the way. Ten years ago, I was in East Lansing on April 20th playing Ultimate, and it was 90 Degrees. Not this year.

So, I have this funny thing with yellow.

For me, yellow means spring.

Maybe it's an Easter thing. Maybe it looks like sunshine. I don't know which is the core reason.

For some time, I only owned one yellow shirt (this one) as I tend to gravitate more to darker colors.

And in the spring, I wear the yellow shirt.

This one's for Kid Flash, though more in line with the cartoon animation versions of Kid Flash than the original comic book versions as seen in the images at the bottom of the entry. Kid Flash started out as Wally West, who took over as the Flash when Barry Allen died in 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths. West started as Kid Flash in 1959 as the nephew of Barry Allen's wife Iris West. The same freak accident that gave Barry his powers happened a second time granting powers to Wally West. After all, each hero needed a sidekick to fill out the roster of the original Teen Titans (along with Aqualad, Speedy, Wonder Girl, and Robin).

Though the death of Barry Allen as the Flash was a major comic event, the "death" of Wally West is a non-event. When DC rebooted its characters and their origins for the New 52, Barry Allen was no longer married to Iris West, and thus, Wally West did not existence (apparently). Currently,  Bart Allen -- Barry Allen's grandson from the future -- serves on the Teen Titans as Kid Flash.

Where's Wally? The fan community has managed to extract some answers about Wally West. Though the official DC line is that West is "benched," current Flash creators Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato claim to have submitted a proposal to deal with the character of Wally West. This is good news to a huge Kid Flash and Teen Titans fan like me.

I may have mentioned my love for the Teen Titans, and if I have not done so yet, I just did.
More Titans shirts to come.

And more of the yellow shirts here in the spring. I own more than one now.

- chris tower, hoping for a real spring and some sunshine, 1304.20





PS: Today's blog is dedicated to my sister and her husband and their 11th wedding anniversary. My sister always liked the Teen Titans. And she's more of a fan of yellow.

T-shirt #29: Detroit Pistons - the red logo shirt

T-shirt #29: Detroit Pistons - Here's some basketball love

The NBA regular season ended on Wednesday (April 17), and my beloved Pistons did not advance to the post-season, a fate decided months ago, even before the team's abysmal ten game losing streak in March. The Pistons posted one of the franchise's worst records for a month with one lone win in March (against the NBA's worst team, the Charlotte Bobcats), going 1-13.

Though the Pistons showed some spark in April, posting a record of 5-3 with a four game win streak and an impressive victory against playoff-bound Chicago, a 29-53 record on the season left the team in 11th place (out of 15 teams) in the Eastern Conference, 37 games out of first place in the conference, 20.5 games behind Indiana in the Central Division, and nine games behind the eighth playoff spot that went to the Milwaukee Bucks, who managed to secure it with a losing record.

Did this stop my fan love?

Are you kidding?

Given that I work at home, and am no longer a night owl, I record a lot of sporting events to watch while I am working. Though I did delete a lot of the losses, I did not delete all of them. I cannot claim to have watched even half of the 82 regular season games, but I did watch many, enjoying wins against Miami and San Antonio as well as some of the losses because of the play of  the new, exciting, young Pistons, the core of the future team. Though Brandon Knight, Andre Drummond, and Greg Monroe are not winning like the championship teams of the past, I am a Pistons fan, so I tune in, I watch, I wear my T-shirts, and from November through April 17th, I record the wins and losses on my score sheet, read the recaps, studied the box scores, and cheer for just one more bucket, one more rebound, one more win.

My love for basketball goes back far into my childhood but the love for the Pistons was more abstract since most the games were not televised locally. We would talk about the Pistons, but it's not the same if one can't watch it. My dad loves basketball, so we watched a lot of it as I was growing up, but he tuned in to Michigan Wolverines basketball more often, especially since the Pistons games were not carried as much outside of Detroit stations.

I discovered my basketball love in college, watching the Celtics and Knicks square off, watching Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Patrick Ewing, and Kareem Abdul Jabar go head to head. Though I could catch more Pistons games at college because I had access to cable TV, my fandom really rocketed into orbit during the Bad Boy era. I graduated from college right about the same time as the Detroit Pistons selected my favorite all time basketball player as the 18th pick in the 1985 draft: Joe Dumars. Paired with the hot, new point guard, Isiah Thomas, the Bad Boys team began to take shape. I was hooked. There were heart breaking losses, especially the 1988 finals in which the Pistons blew a 3-2 series lead to lose to the Lakers in Game Seven. I kept watching, and I was rewarded (as all of us fans were rewarded).

Then came 1989 and 1990. Back-to-back championships. THE BAD BOYS. It all looked great until Michael Jordan learned to play team basketball. Despite drafting NBA poster boy Grant Hill, the Pistons did not win anymore championships for FOURTEEN years. With Joe Dumars now at the helm of team operations, the Pistons made smart trades (Rip Hamilton), free agent signings (Chauncey Billups), and draft picks (Tayshaun Prince), and the new era Pistons won the NBA championship in 2004 against the Lakers. If not for Larry Brown (whom I blame for sitting starters in the fourth quarter), the Pistons would have won again in 2005 against the San Antonio Spurs in a decisive game seven.

The Pistons have not been back to the NBA Finals since 2005.

But I watch. I cheer. I bleed the Pistons blue.

-chris tower 1304.19 - 11:55

T-shirt #28: Batgirl (spoiler alerts)

T-shirt #28: Batgirl: Television, paralysis, and transgender

I dedicate today's entry to Batgirl, even though I am told that today is Superman's 75th birthday. But The Man of Steel will have to wait until I can find my Superman shirt. The T-shirt blog is starting to have a back-logged schedule.

This blog (the entire blog, not just today's entry) traces my life in popular culture: my life in geek. No such tracing could be complete without properly canonizing in a central position the influence of the Batman television show that ran on ABC from 1966 to 1968. And no discussion of how the Batman show influenced me could be complete without acknowledging Catwoman (we will deal with her a different day) and BATGIRL. (Also, always consult the super awesome DC Wiki.)

Batgirl serves as an example of how television produced media influence the comic books and how comic books depictions of heroes or the nature of the actual heroes (identity, personality, character) themselves will be altered to match (at least somewhat) television or film interpretations. Barbara Gordon as Batgirl was the brainchild of comics genius Julius Schwartz (previously mentioned in T-shirt #20, the Flash Logo) and the producers of the TV series in an attempt to boost ratings. By introducing Batgirl to the current comic books, the TV producers hoped to boost ratings by then introducing her to the TV show. PURIST ALERT!

Betty Kane? Yeah, okay, okay, I know. Comic book purists will cite that there was already a Batgirl character, Betty Kane, introduced by Bill Finger and Sheldon Moldoff in 1961 (before I was born), not counting Bob Kane's pesky girl version of Robin in the 1950s. But that was a one shot, and the real, true creation of the beloved Batgirl character came with this plan to boost ratings for the TV show, and the amazing Barbara Gordon.

In 1967, Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino (also mentioned in the previous T-shirt #20, the Flash Logo entry) featured the new Batgirl in Detective Comics #359. In the story, Barbara Gordon, the daughter of police commissioner Jim Gordon, dresses as a female version of Batman for a costume ball. Inevitably, Batgirl comes to the aid of Bruce Wayne, saving him from being kidnapped by Killer Moth. The TV show producers made a short featuring the same basic story and ABC renewed the TV show for a third season, its last. Yvonne Craig played Batgirl in the TV show. Though Craig showed up in many TV shows throughout the 1960s and 1970s, such as Star Trek , she is best known for this role (with a dear place in my heart and the hearts of many Batman TV show fans). The TV show informed my ideas about justice, fair play, and heroism (though also a campy sense of fun) as a very young boy (ages 4-6) and the reruns that followed for a few years. With only two female roles on the show (not counting Aunt Harriet), both Batgirl and Catwoman influenced my ideas about women. Don't worry. I am not going to engage in any deep psycho-analysis here today. I will leave off with that last statement.

From those early days of the TV show, Batgirl became one of my favorite comic book characters along with her main ally: the original Robin (Dick Grayson). My life as a huge Teen Titans fan (even though Batgirl was never one of the Teen Tiatns) and fan of Robin and Batgirl will wait for another day as well. Suffice to say that I read apearances of Batgirl avidly until 1988 and Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's The Killing Joke. My world as a comic book reader and Batgirl fan was rocked when the Joker shot Barbara Gordon, quite unaware that he was also shooting Batgirl. The bullet to her spinal cord paralyzed her. (SIDENOTE: Criticism of this story and others in comics became known as "Women in Refrigerators," for which there many great web sources, though I cannot find my favorite from the iconic BITCH MAGAZINE.) Though other characters assumed the mantle of Batgirl in the intervening years, I remained a staunchly loyal fan of Barbara Gordon, who became Oracle and leader of the Birds of Prey from her wheelchair.

For many years, this new role of Barbara Gordon's seemed permanent, much like the death of Barry Allen as the Flash. But the comic book companies will do most anything to increase sales, and I can appreciate that fact of the industry. Though purists might cry foul at Barbara Gordon's miraculous recovery and resuming of the Batgirl mantle for DC's latest reboot 52, I was rather excited to have Barbara Gordon back in the cowl and new stories about one of my favorite comic book characters.

SPOILER ALERT FOR THE CURRENT BATGIRL COMIC (Batgirl #19).


















Though I had not read the issue yet, my wife told me the other day that Batgirl's roommate was going to come out as the first transgender woman in the history of comic books. DC is definitely breaking more ground in regards to LGBTQ issues with new gay characters, such as the original Green Lantern, Alan Scott, in Earth Two; various characters in Legion of Superheroes, whom fans have always argued were gay, such as Lightning Lass, Shrinking Violet, and Element Lad; and Batwoman. Now, Batgirl's roommate Alysia Yeoh reveals that she is trans. Writer Gail Simons handles the scene deftly as Barbara Gordon tells her roommate to call her "Babs" because "people I love call me 'Babs.'" Good articles about it have appeared on Art Threat and The Hufflington Post.



The new issues of Batgirl (through #19 as of last week) have been worth the twenty-four year wait to have Barbara Gordon back in the cowl.

GO BATGIRL!

- chris tower - 1304.18 - 9:54
Photo courtesy of Liesel MK Tower

T-shirt #27: The Iron Fist: would you like to live in a hidden city?

T-shirt #27: The Iron Fist: would you like to live in a hidden city?

The Iron Fist debuted in Marvel Premiere in 1974 as the creation of two of my favorite comic creators: Roy Thomas (Avengers, Conan as already mentioned in T-shirt # 21) and Gil Kane, one of my top five all-time favorite comic artists, a list including George Perez, Alex Ross, Jack Kirby, and John Romita. Cashing in on a martial arts craze sweeping the nation in the Seventies, Marvel introduced Kung Fu heroes, including Iron Fist and Shang-Chi. Though Shang-Chi is also one of my favorite characters, the Iron Fist was infinitely cooler with a dragon tattoo on his chest, a bright costume with the flared collar, and his namesake, the power to generate the first of iron, which smoldered like molten metal.

From the age of nine, the Iron Fist, Daniel Rand, grew up in a hidden city in the mountains of Tibet known as K'un-L'un. The city only appears on earth every ten years. Daniel learns martial arts there after both of his parents were killed during a journey to the mystical city.

The idea of a hidden city is one of the great archetypes in mythology. It was a very attractive idea to a young boy who was bullied every day in school. Not only was it a great escape from the abuse of bullies, but it was a place to learn to defend one's self against the bullies.

Apparently, I am not the only one who sought refuge from bullies in comics. In the latest issue of Wolverine (it's latest incarnation issue #2, writer Paul Cornell states that "the Claremont/Smith run of X-MEN was all that made me able to face school the next day [as a severely bullied child]." Though Wolverine and the X-Men are not the same as the Iron Fist (and those issues Cornell cites were published in the early 1980s ten years after the Iron Fist issues), the concept is the same: comics provide a means to escape the bullies.

The Iron Fist has seen many incarnations since his origins in the early 1970s. Iron Fist teamed with Power Man (Luke Cage) for many years as Heroes for Hire. But some of the best work has been done recently in Iron Fist vol. 4 in 2004 by Jim Mullaney (famous action writer on the DESTROYER series) and drawn by Kevin Lau. Though that series was good, the real definitive recent work was done by Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, and David Aja on The Immortal Iron Fist starting in 2007. This series was superb.

More 1970s nostalgia to come, because that's obviously a seminal period for me, but for now, I am thinking of that hidden city, nestled in the mountains of Tibet that only appears on earth once every ten years. At times like this with bombings and wars and militarism and poor economies, it sounds like a great place to go.

-chris tower 1304.17
Photo courtesy of Liesel MK Tower

PS: This T-shirt was a gift from my parents for my birthday in 2012.

T-shirt #26: Science is the new rock 'n roll

T-shirt #26: Science is the new rock 'n roll

Did anyone else go through a period of insanity during adolescence or was it just me?

Puberty seemed to obliterate parts of my personality like a disintegrating ray. I forgot about so many things I loved during my adolescence, like Baseball, Mad magazine, the piano, comic books (really! to some extent), and SCIENCE.

I love science. I really do.

I wish I had studied science in college. Right now, I would love to be a doctor of cognitive science or theoretical physics. But for some reason I chose English (creative writing) and Theatre.

I know I fancied becoming a filmmaker, and since my school did not offer film studies, I studied theatre with an emphasis in film.

Had someone clocked me hard upside the head to get my attention and rattle my brains, urging me
to choose something more practical and more fitting with my interests before puberty blasted a cloud of nonsense into my mind, I might now be working on intersections of artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, robotics, and nanotechnology at Google Labs.

So there's some regret. But not too much. Because what's the point of regret. Too much regret and one wallows in the past, stuck in the tar pit of the paleolithic. This is not for me.

I saw an interview once with Bruce Springsteen in which he said something that had a profound impact on me. I do not remember the exact quote, but in essence, he said: "I spent my whole life waiting to become the man I wanted to be, to live the life I wanted to have, until I realized that I needed to live the life I had, be the man I was."

Simple idea, and yet, I had not really considered it in those terms.

So, I am living the dream. I love my life. I feel like I have won the lottery. I am lucky. I am blessed. And though I may not become a futurist prognosticator with PhDs in cognitive perspective and molecular biology, I am in school studying computer science and using this blog as a daily warm-up exercise to writing a novel (actually, several novel projects).

And, in the words of the great David Bowie, "I could make it all worthwhile as a rock & roll star."

Science.

Science is the new rock 'n roll.

-chris tower 1304.16 12:19

PS: This is also probably a good time to plug my tumblr. Mostly I post science articles that may help me in my writing.

The gmrstudios repository of doubt

PPS: Updated 1306.08 - I should have mentioned when I wrote this entry that the shirt promotes a comic from Image Comics called Nowhere Men. But since I am not reading the comic, I did not think to mention it. You can read the five things Craveonline loves about the comic here.

T-shirt #25: "Yes, We Cannibal"

T-shirt #25: "Yes, We Cannibal"

In my continuing series encouraging everyone to have a sense of humor, I present a clever take on Obama's "Yes, We Can" slogan from his 2008 presidential campaign.

Like many of my shirts, I buy them via the monthly Previews catalogue that I use to order my comic books from Kalamazoo's nirvana of comics: Fanfare Sports and Entertainment. Much like T-shirt #14: Occupy Sesame Street, when I spotted this shirt, I had to have it. It furthers my call to the world at large to "Lighten Up," which is advice that I try to take to heart all the time.

I hope you find it amusing, especially on this wonderful day: TAX DAY.

The analogy created by the shirt's slogan and choosing it for TAX DAY should not be lost on anyone.

To close (because this is another short entry), I want to use a quote from one of my favorite poets, Herb Scott, former professor at WMU (Herb died a few years ago, and he is missed). This quote comes from "Butcher's Dream," one of the poems in his book "Groceries."

"I always wondered, "what is the tenderest part of the human carcass?"
Then I seen some cannibal say "the palm of the hand."
A delicacy you can't find in another game.
He'd kill for the human hand.
How do you figure?
Not even a meal.
But it makes you wonder.
It makes you stare at your own hand, like a strange animal."

Okay, did I just diffuse the whole "lighten up" and "sense of humor" thing?

Off to finish my taxes...

- chris tower 1304.15 6:53
Photo courtesy of Liesel MK Tower