The big game between the Red Raiders and the Aggies is coming up this weekend, so let’s continue our more-or-less humorous retrospective of the Aggies’ greatest hits, along with some classic old Dirk West cartoons about Texas A&M.

Hey, remember the big A&M-SMU game back in 1981? I expect not, but I’ll tell you anyway. Now you see, the members of A&M’s Corps of Cadets traditionally carry sabers. Strictly for ceremonial purposes — it’s part of the uniform. Well, in 1981, on Halloween night, the Aggies fell to the Mustangs 27-7. Words were exchanged, the cheerleaders got rambunctious, and one of the cadets actually threatened the cheerleaders with his saber!

You think I’m kidding, but here’s a photo:

 

Now I’m sure this was not a particularly serious threat. Oh, sure, the cadet was well-and-truly honked-off, but I’m assuming the sabers aren’t actually sharp. If they were sharp, and all these hormonal college kids had them lying around their dorm rooms, I think we’d hear a lot more stories about students killing their roommates in College Station. Besides, these are Aggies. If you gave them real swords, they’d use them to pick their noses, and they’d end up skewering their brains. So it’s safe to assume that this was a mostly-harmless saber.

So the Aggie, this quasi-military cadet, felt so threatened by a cheerleader — and an unarmed cheerleader at that — that he drew his sword to defend himself. Except it was a dull sword, so he wasn’t really going to manage to defend himself real well…

Yeah, the Aggies don’t really cover themselves with glory in this anecdote, do they?

And on that note, let’s check out another Dirk West cartoon about our Aggie friends!

 

Oh, mercy. I’ve done corrupted the youth with pictures of nekkid idjits.

(And again, if you like these old Dirk West cartoons, you’ll want to shell out the fifteen simoleons to get Dirk’s “SWC Cartoon Book.” We sell ’em here at the Avalanche-Journal. I wouldn’t recommend it so much if it wasn’t so durn awesome.)

UPDATE: Robin, in comments, has a more complete summary of the incident in question, which my online searching was unable to turn up before. And yeah, the Smew cheerleaders were acting like rampaging dillweeds. Discipline, either from SMU or from local authorities was certainly called for. But I still say that pulling a sword, even a fake, dull one, is pushing the discipline way too hard.

I’m going to step away from comic book matters for a bit — not too far away, since I’ve got some great Dirk West sports cartoons I can share with you, too. But let’s take a quick dip into sports-related matters. And by “quick,” I mean “from now ’til Saturday.”

Ahh, the Texas Tech-Aggie game. Is there a better time for us to reflect upon our esteemed cross-state rivals, upon the glories of enthusiastic fansmanship, upon the unbridled sense of glee one feels when listening to A&M complain about getting mistreated by everyone?

For the past several years, the Aggies have become loud advocates of good sportsmanship — in particular, they’ve decried Tech fans and their boorish tendencies to cheer loudly, ride a horse on the sidelines, tell jokes about the Aggies’ comedic stupidity, and drop end zone uprights from dizzying heights upon their fans. They will tell you of all the times they’ve visited Jones Stadium only to be greeted by diabolical ogres flipping the team bus over, by eldritch necromancers summoning armies of the undead to feast upon the souls of anyone wearing maroon, by little girls asking them if they have Prince Albert in a can, then laughing uproariously when they respond with their traditional “Duhhh…”

I sympathize. I really do. But whining about other teams’ sportsmanship doesn’t win you quite as many brownie points when you’ve got your own long history of really awful football misbehavior.

For instance: Texas Tech quarterback Rodney Allison. That won’t mean much to newcomers to Lubbock, but all the old-timers know who I’m talking about. Allison was an absolute phenom in ’77 — he was a favorite to win the Heisman, and thanks to him, Tech was picked as the #4 team in the nation, likely to win the SWC and a probable contender for the national title.

Now back in the ’70s, the Aggies didn’t really care that much about sportsmanship. They were much more into being the Southwest Conference’s dreaded thug squad. It was whispered that the alumni put bounties on certain players — if an Aggie player managed to take them out of the game, they’d get a nice, fat, under-the-table cash reward. True? Untrue? Heck if I know. People believed all kinds of crazy stuff in the ’70s — polyester as a fashion choice? Pet rocks? The Hustle?

Still, the Aggies wracked up a long string of prominent injuries of rival players over the space of a few years. And when it got to be time for the Tech game… well, the Red Raiders were 6-0 and strongly favored over the Aggies. Who’d be the obvious target if there was a bounty on a Tech player? Guess who got his leg broke early in the first quarter? And how did the Aggie fans react? It was a bit less on the “respectful concern for a fallen player” and more on the “delighted, taunting glee.”

As Dirk West’s Boo Bird said at the time: “I don’t think the Aggies tried to hurt Rodney… But then I also believe in the Easter bunny.”

Now I’m entirely in favor of good sportsmanship. I think teams and fans should respect each other, play and enjoy a good game, and go home with positive memories of their opponents, win or lose. But I don’t feel that bad about questioning a team’s commitment to sportsmanship when their past behavior demonstrates the opposite.

Hey, that was unexpectedly serious! None of that! Let’s have another cartoon!

Yay! Cartoons are fun!

(By the way, if you enjoy these old Dirk West cartoons, you can see them in their full glory in the “SWC Cartoon Book,” which was put together by Dirk himself. We’ve got ’em for sale here at the A-J — fifteen bucks’ll get you a thick book with at least a couple hundred of Dirk’s cartoons.)

This is going to be a weird week, thanks to a series I plan to start on Wednesday. The series should run through Saturday, and I think I may have a lot less time to review comics this week, so I’m gonna get a passel of reviews done now while I still can.

Tales of the Sinestro Corps: Cyborg Superman

Most of this is retelling the origin of Hank Henshaw, the Cyborg Superman. It’s a very nice origin, but it takes up about two-thirds of the story. After that, Henshaw, the Manhunter robots, and the Sinestro Corps lay the smackdown on the Justice League, clean Superman’s clock, and knock down the Statue of Liberty.

Verdict: Thumbs up, but just barely. It’s entertaining enough, but there’s very little real story in there…

Justice League of America #13

The new Injustice League includes just about every supervillain in the world, and they give the Justice League a pretty thorough beat-down. And as nice as new writer Dwayne McDuffie’s plotting and dialogue are, they do not stand a chance against the utterly pukeworthy “art” provided by Joe Benitez.

Verdict: Thumbs down. Good grief, Benitez is just awful.

Supergirl #22

Supergirl is still hanging out with Karate Kid and Una from the (ugh) “Countdown” series, and they beat up a big government-owned super-monster. The fight is okay, but the story never manages to get away from the fact that it’s a tie-in with the much-despised “Countdown.”

Verdict: Thumbs down. Somebody get DC to quit inflicting “Countdown” on us!

The Search for Ray Palmer: Crime Society

Oh, okay, not all “Countdown” tie-ins are complete garbage. In this story, Donna Troy, Jason Todd, Kyle Rayner and one of the Monitors visit the alternate earth where the good guys are the bad guys, and vice versa. We focus almost entirely on the Jokester, a former comedian turned insane crimefighter, along with the mirror-universe versions of the Riddler, Two-Face, Robin, and the Joker’s Daughter.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Mirror universe stories are always fun, and I’m glad to see DC is expanding their Earth-3 to include more than just Ultraman, Owlman, Superwoman, Power Ring, and Johnny Quick.

 

Lone Star #1

Hey, instead of mini-reviews of comics, let’s have a review of a mini-comic.

“Lone Star” is produced here in Lubbock. It’s written by Linda Shuferty, drawn by Charlie Tucker, and lettered by Mike Panzer. It’s less than 20 pages long, and it measures about 4″x7″. Pretty standard for a mini-comic.

Most minis you see out there are going to be personal and autobiographical. Not this time — it’s about a guy named Lone Star, part superhero, part time-traveller, who fights against a fella who keeps sending jet fighters back to the Civil War to help the South defeat the North. There’s not a whole lot of story beyond that, mainly because there’s not really enough room in less than 20 pages to flesh that out. I assume future issues will detail more of the plot, characterization, etc. — this is really more of an introduction to the comic and its concepts.

The art looks pretty good, if a bit quirky at times. Lots of really beautiful detail work here, and some of the backgrounds and long-shots are really striking — stuff like the sky filled with jet fighters, a view of a distant battleground as viewed from the cockpit of a plane, the shot of Pickett’s Charge.

Yeah, there are some things I could criticize and nitpick over. But I prefer not to talk smack about most comics creators unless they’re pros. You don’t talk smack about people who are making comics for no reward other than the joy of making comics.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s just a buck, so go pick it up.

Well, it’s Friday night, and you know what that means — Friday Night Fights!

I looked long and hard for the proper butt-whuppin’ to kick off the weekend, and I finally decided that what we all really need is a Viking decapitating an evil lizard alien. Am I right? Of course I’m right!

 

From Greg Hyland’s “Lethargic Lad”: Lethargic Lad, dressed as a Viking, chops off an evil lizard alien’s head with a battleaxe!

Bahlactus would approve!

In American comics, you might see a Muslim character once, maybe twice a year. They’ll usually be a villain, though one of the X-Men books has a main character who is Muslim. Heck, that’s better than you can say for the French. All they’ve got is Batroc the Leaper.

But that’s fixin’ to change, thanks to a company called Teshkeel Media, which is putting together a new series called “The 99,” in which all of the superheroes are named after the 99 names of Allah.

Although the book begins in 13th century Baghdad, its Kuwaiti-born creator Naif Mutawa says the comic is a metaphor for what is happening in the Islamic world.

The 99 features superheroes such as Jabbar ‘the powerful’ and Fatah ‘the opener’ who come to the rescue in modern disasters.

The comic is currently available in eight Middle Eastern countries, and will soon be launched in the United States and Malaysia.

Yudha Kartohadiprodjo from Femina Group, the Indonesian company publishing The 99, says every single hero in the book is named after one of Allah’s 99 monikers.

The superheroes come from 99 different countries with Muslim populations, with Fatah hailing from Indonesia.

“(Fatah’s) power is to be able to teleport himself from one dimension to another or from one place to another,” Mr Kartohadiprodjo said.

Honestly, I’m wildly in favor, and I wish more comics companies would follow Teshkeel’s lead. There’s nothing more terrifically dull than picking up your weekly stack of comics and realizing that they all star a bunch of generic white guys. Yawwwwn. Sure, some comics are improving their diversity — I think the current Justice League has the most black characters the series has ever had. But characters from Islamic cultures are still very, very scarce.

And don’t hand me any bullpucky about “We cain’t never have none o’ them Ay-rabs in our comics ’cause, uhh, 9-11! AMURRICAAAA!” No, I’m sorry, but that clanging sound you hear is me hitting you in the skull with this 1975 Cadillac Seville. I don’t subscribe to the “Insulting National Stereotype” theory of global relations, and you shouldn’t either.

Anyway, if I see a copy of “The 99” here in Lubbock one of these days, I’ll pick it up and give you a review.

Death has gotten to be an outright common occurence in comic books, but it’s been a lot more rare in newspaper comic strips. Comic strip characters who have died include Farley the sheepdog in “For Better or For Worse,” Dick and Lacey Davenport in “Doonesbury,” most of the crooks in “Dick Tracy,” Bill the Cat in “Bloom County,” and not too many others. The newest comic-strip death happens today, as Lisa Moore, one of the main characters in “Funky Winkerbean,” dies of breast cancer.

The storyline has been getting a lot of positive reviews. Folks say Lisa’s death has been handled very realistically, dramatically, and sensitively — this storyline has been running, off and on, from the time Lisa was first diagnosed with cancer back in 1999. A lot of the recent strips I’ve seen in archives are about the support she gets from her friends. And part of the reason for the storyline, and the way it’s ending, is to draw attention to the fight against breast cancer. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, ya know.

Other people aren’t happy with the strip, or creator Tom Batiuk. Some say they don’t want their funnypages to deal with serious issues, as they’d rather they be a break from the bad news filling up the rest of the paper. Of course, lots of comic strips nowadays are transitioning to something midway between a gag strip and a soap opera serial. “For Better or For Worse” leads the pack, of course, but other gag strips are slowly trending toward more dramatic storylines, like “Luann” and “9 Chickweed Lane.” And it’s hard to find a webcomic that doesn’t mix the pathos in with the comedy. And with so many strips that have characters who age in real time, it’s inevitable that some would die.

If you’d like to check out today’s “Funky Winkerbean” strip, just click here. And they’ve got a few weeks of archives, so you can read some of the previous strips.

Astro City: The Dark Age, Book Two #4

Okay, the main problem with this series is that it doesn’t come out often enough, so it’s hard to keep remember what the heck was going on the last time I read it. Basically, we’re following two estranged brothers, Charles Williams, a cop, and Royal Williams, a crook. It’s 1977, and thanks to a battle between two supervillains, half of Astro City has been infected with negative emotions and are either trying to kill each other or themselves. The Silver Agent shows up to help out — but isn’t he dead? And Royal finds his brother Charles, shot in the back by crooked cops, and with all the chaos in the city, he has no way to summon help for his brother.

Verdict: Thumbs up. As always, you wish that Busiek had time to tell more of the stories of some of these minor characters, like Jitterjack, Black Velvet, and Street Angel. At any rate, it’s well worth getting, but if I were you, I’d wait for the trade paperback. You may have trouble finding the earlier issues of this series, and if you miss those, you miss too much.

Batman #669

It’s the final chapter of the “Club of Heroes” saga, with assassins trying to off Batman, Robin, and the rest of the “Batmen of All Nations.” The Squire has a bomb in his stomach, the sidekicks have been kidnapped, and several different people are masquerading as someone else. Can I say more without spoiling the surprises? No, I can’t. Sorry, but it’s too good to spoil. Go buy it, or wait for the trade paperback.

Verdict: Thumbs up, obviously.

To Baaaaaatle!

There are some days when the sun shines just a little brighter, when the birds sing a little sweeter, when you discover that there’s actually an organization called the Goat Justice League.

Thanks to the work of the Goat Justice League, ruminants now have the right to life and limited liberty in Seattle.

On Monday, the City Council acknowledged the miniature goat’s attributes as human companion, weed whacker and milk maker, and unanimously voted that the goats could be kept as pets.

“One small step for man, one giant step for goatkind,” said Councilmember Richard Conlin, who sponsored the legislation.

Of course, any real Goat Justice League wouldn’t waste its time with legislation. They’d just eat ungodly amounts of tin cans. At super-speed. While wearing power rings.

 

The Spirit #10

And there is another beautiful cover. The guy’s name is Darwyn Cooke, ladies and gentlemen. You should go hunt down everything he’s done, ’cause it’s all that good looking.

This is a bit of an odd issue. It’s basically a combination of murder mystery and media parody. Someone is killing off the political punditocracy, and instead of sitting back, cracking open a cherry coke, and enjoying the culling, the Spirit decides to track down the killer. If you’re idea of a good time is watching a crazed killer hunt down barely-disguised versions of Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, Stephen Colbert, Lou Dobbs, Anderson Cooper, Hannity and Colmes, and more, then you’re gonna have a plenty good time with the fictional schadenfreude.

And yes, it is making a fairly serious, though screamingly unsubtle, point about the rotten state of our TV news media. And though some parts of it are a bit preachy, I particularly liked some bits — there’s a page where a bunch of news anchors blather about their colleagues getting wiped out, and the crawls at the bottom of the screens are about horrible disasters and tragedies — real news shoved aside for the sake of ego-inflated pundits talking about themselves.

But it’s still fun. The mystery was actually excellent — the solution is wildly improbable, but it’s still got the oomph that a good mystery needs.

And the entire comic is jam-packed with Darwyn Cooke’s gorgeous, gorgeous artwork. Why ain’tcha run out to the store to buy it yet?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Didn’t you hear me tell you to go get it?