Check out this crazy story:

The Republican Party of Maine has revealed that Democratic State Senate candidate Colleen Lachowicz has a secret life that she’s been hiding from voters. Drug use? A Swiss bank account? No, sadly, even worse: she has a scary-looking World of Warcraft character.

“Colleen Lachowicz spends hundreds of hours playing in her online world Azeroth, as an Orc Assassination Rogue named Santiaga,” reads a flyer sent to voters in the district. It’s identified as funded by the Maine Republican Party.

“I love poisoning and stabbing! It is fun,” the flyer quotes Lachowicz as saying. The candidate is apparently a regular commenter at DailyKos, a liberal blog. And the Maine GOP has mined the site looking for what it regards as damning comments. Most of Lachowicz’s remarks were posted in 2009 or 2010, most likely before she began her current campaign for office.

(snip)

Lachowicz uses salty language in some of the comments, but someone needs to sit the Maine GOP down and explain the difference between fantasy and reality. Every day, millions of people engage in simulated video game violence without committing any real-world violence. By suggesting a World of Warcraft hobby should disqualify someone for office—and implying that voters are too dumb to tell the difference between virtual and real violence—the party is only embarrassing itself.

I don’t even know where to start with that one.

Obviously, there’s the bizarre equating of playing a game with real life, as if the candidate’s fondness of playing an orc rogue means she really is both a rampaging assassin and an inhuman, green-skinned, fanged monster. That’s just crazy delusional to the point where I question whether they should be allowed to roam outside of the insane asylum, much less running state political parties.

There’s also the way the flyer seems to be trying to say that Lachowicz shouldn’t be in office because she’s — horror of horrors — a NERD. Which is the kind of thing most of us, gamers or not, have been suffering through since junior high. Doesn’t matter if you play video games, read comics, play D&D, or another stereotypically nerdy hobby, or if you’re just a normal person who isn’t a member of the in-crowd, there’s always someone who wants to declare you socially unacceptable and deem you a pariah.

But nerdiness isn’t the horrifying curse we used to think it was. Millions of people play World of Warcraft. Almost 200 million play other online video games. Trying to be the party of the Cool Kids vs. the uncool geeks is a little foolish when the uncool geeks outnumber you, are more mature than you are, and may even be more valuable as consumers.

At any rate, in this case, I’d much rather be the orc.

FOR THE HORDE!

Dangit, it’s been too long since I wrote something about comics, so we’re gonna remedy that RIGHT NOW.

Can we talk about the Power Pack? I know, the concept of a bunch of little kids with superpowers running around as superheroes in the Marvel Universe has long been something of a joke. They always seemed to be either lightened to the point where the kids were never in real danger from the supervillains, or grim-and-grittied up to try to make them more, well, grim and gritty.

But the various Power Pack miniseries that started in 2005 and ran to 2010 were really something else. They were definitely designed as all-ages comics, so the dark-and-dreary stuff got left out, thank goodness. They were made by various teams of creators, though they got their trademark clean-and-cartoony look from Gurihiru Studios, a couple of outstanding illustrators from Japan. They were great fun, teamed the Pack up with just about every major hero in the Marvel Universe, and embodied everything you’d want to introduce to younger readers about Marvel Comics. They had humor, action, great artwork, fun dialogue, characterization, and conflicts…

And nearly all of the miniseries are out of print right now. There are a few you can get for affordable prices on Amazon, but most of them can only be had by shelling out a lot of cash.

I think this is really unwise on Marvel’s part. They’re great stepping-on points for new readers, for one thing, and I really think they’re the kinds of books that could be, if not massive bestsellers, at least consistent movers in comic shops.

Let’s face it, kids who like comics want to read about Wolverine and Spider-Man and Iron Man and Thor and the Hulk and all their other favorite superheroes — and they were all guest stars in these wonderful, funny, endlessly enjoyable Power Pack comics.

So come on, Marvel, bring back the Power Pack, both for younger readers and for those of us old fogeys who enjoy these fun comics.

Sorry for the lack of content lately. It hasn’t helped that I haven’t had a lot of inspiration for comics blogging. And it really didn’t help that Charter Communications, my Internet provider, suffers from frequent slow connection problems. Usually just for an hour at a time, but yesterday, it was all evening long. Rebooting the modem multiple times didn’t do diddly. I wasn’t able to even check e-mail ’til this morning.

But that’s Charter for you. Probably not the worst company in the country, but that’s just because they don’t kill puppies, sell poisonous baby formula, or publish DC Comics (trying to figure the right profit margin, I reckon).

I’m not even sure there’d be any point in trying to contact ’em, ’cause this is how it’d go:

Charter: “Did you reboot the modem?”
Me: “Yes, rebooted the modem and the router. Even rebooted the computer, even though there’s no reason rebooting the computer would have the slightest effect, but I knew you douchemooks would want me to do that.”
Charter: “Can you reboot all those things right now?”
Me: “No, I can’t. I’m at work.”
Charter: “Can you go home and reboot all those things?”
Me: “No, I can’t. I’m at work. I have a job, and they’d rather me not spend half the day jumping through hoops for you. Have you checked for any outages? Maybe you need to boost the signal at the line nearest my apartment? That’s what you had to do last time there was a problem like this.”
Charter: “We never have outages. We never admit fault. The problem is obviously on your end, because shut up, that’s why. Bye, remember to pay your bill on time!”

Maybe this’ll be a continuing problem in the evenings from now on, but I hope not.

In happier news, though still non-comics-related, I’ve been losing a good deal of weight. Not sure about the actual poundage, but I’ve had to tighten my belt two notches, which is certainly a good sign.

And the seemingly-abandoned cat from next door, which I was considering adopting despite serious cat dander allergies and an un-catproofable house, just to keep it from starving to death or freezing in the winter, has already been adopted by one of my neighbors. I gave the guy the cat food I’d bought this weekend to encourage him to treat Kitty nicely.

Okay, here’s some comics-related stuff. You guys like horror comics, right? Nod your head, of course you do. Well, Amazon is currently selling giant collections of the horror art of Richard Corben and Bernie Wrightson for relatively cheap. Frankly, they were pretty cheap already, but the current discounts make ’em a lot more affordable. So check ’em out if you love beautiful horror art and if you can spare the scratch.

See y’all later, when I’ve got bloggable stuff to write about… and if my ‘net connection holds up.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, if you’re in the mood to get the last weekend in September started off right, then it’s definitely time for… FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

SpaceBooger gave us an assignment this time — he wants our fights to have a bit more back-and-forth than usual, with no character completely dominant. So I’m pulling this one from July 1990’s Avengers West Coast #60 by Roy and Dann Thomas, Paul Ryan (No, probably not that Paul Ryan), and Danny Bulanadi. Magneto has shown to cause some trouble for the West Coast Avengers, and the winsome Wasp scores the first blow by flying under his helmet and zapping his ear.

And that leads to this:

Stop hitting yourself, Magneto! Stop hitting yourself!

Ah, but it’s all part of his strategy, it seems.

Because that’s what a master villain does. He hits himself in the head to knock out his enemies.

Don’t forget to visit SpaceBooger’s site to vote for your favorite battles, okay?

The Goon #42

Holy cheezwiz, look at that cover. Is that cover not just absolutely beautiful? Yes, it is, kid, don’t contradict me.

The story inside ain’t quite as good as the cover, but it’s still pretty good. Someone’s sending supernatural warnings to the Goon — and the warnings then try to kill him, too. This leads to several pretty funny situations, particularly Goon having to wear Franky’s clothes. So who’s behind the warnings/threats? You can bet it’s a familiar player.

Like I said, not as good as the cover — but that’s probably one of the best covers of the month. It’d be hard for anything to live up to that.

Happy! #1

New miniseries by Grant Morrison and Darick Robertson. We follow a scumbag ex-cop-turned-hitman as he kills off a serial killer and then a bunch of other hitmen who were out to kill him. Unfortunately, he gets injured and sent to a mob-run hospital, where they plan to torture him for information. Luckily, he’s got a very unexpected friend who’s going to try to help him.

Yeah, I’m not even going to try to spoil that one, ’cause it’s such a nice twist to the story. And yeah, I liked it enough to plan on getting the rest of the series.

Finding Gossamyr #1

The folks running the local shop asked me to give this one a try. It spotlights Denny, an autistic kid who’s a math whiz — more like someone who never answers anything wrong — and Jenna, his sister, his sole guardian. He has a chance to enter a prestigious academy for math geniuses, but he has to try to solve an impossible math problem first, one that’s stumped other mathematicians for centuries. And Denny refuses to solve the problem when he sees it — but he’d done enough work on it to intrigue the teacher, who can tell he’d be able to solve it. Can Denny be forced to solve it? And what are the possible consequences if he does?

This one? Loved it. Obviously, a fantasy story, with our two heroes traveling to a world dominated by what seem to be evil elves and good orcs. The writing and characterization are excellent, and the art is just plain gorgeous. Go pick it up, if you can — it looks like it’ll be a very fun all-ages series.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Wonder Woman is appearing on the cover of “Ms.” magazine again, this time courtesy of Mike Allred.
• Yeah, this thing with DC’s new Oracle is just a liiiiiittle bit insulting to the fans, innit?
• The Daily Show’s John Oliver is a lot more interesting when he’s played by Patrick Stewart.
• Cookie Monster and Grover sing about movies and TV. You’ll probably want to watch it.

The Mirage by Matt Ruff

This is really not the typical book I’d be reviewing here. Primarily, it’s a pretty high class novel, and as you know, we ‘uns down heah lahk to spit on th’ floor frum tahm to tahm, and even read them funnybooks what they got down at the drugstore.

Anyway, believe it or not, this novel has a few very important elements we’d recognize as comic readers. It’s essentially a story about a parallel universe, and it closely matches up with the concept of the mirror universe, where good and evil are switched around, like on “Star Trek” or DC’s Earth-3. But in “The Mirage,” it’s not good and evil that are switched — it’s East and West, and Christianity and Islam.

Here, the Muslim world is wealthy and powerful, the world leader in almost all areas. America and Europe are mostly uneducated backwaters, poor, fractured into many smaller nations, and dominated by fundamentalist Christians, including a faction of extremists who crashed jetliners into the Tigris and Euphrates World Trade Towers in Baghdad back on 11/9/2001, kicking off a war in which the United Arab States launched a War on Terror by invading America in an attempt to bring democracy to its shores.

I know what you’re thinking. I thought the same thing when I read the description the first time. But the interesting thing here is that it’s just the religions and hemispheres that get switched in prominence — good doesn’t replace evil or vice versa. The villains we’ve come to know remain villains in this other world, too. Saddam Hussein and his sons are turned into crime bosses; Osama bin Laden is a corrupt, insane, and genocidal senator; even as far back as World War II, Hitler remains the mad dictator, just with his aggression directed toward Africa and the Middle East rather than to Europe and America.

Our lead characters in this story are a group of Arab Homeland Security agents — Mustafa al Baghdadi, Amal bint Shamal, and Samir Nadim — who stumble onto the discovery that many terrorists — and many civilians as well — believe in something they call the Mirage — that the world as everyone else knows it is a lie, a reversal of the way things are supposed to be, with America on top and the Muslim world on the bottom. It sounds like some mad theory cooked up by a bunch of cranks — but sometimes they have evidence with them — newspapers, clippings, videos, and more that seem to be from this mirror universe. And many people — both American and European terrorists as well as powerful UAS conspirators — are dedicated to destroying the Mirage and getting the world back to the way it was. Can the Homeland Security agents stop them? Should they stop them at all?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s a fantastic piece of high concept, isn’t it? Takes a little bit to get the idea of it across, but once it does, you just wanna track it down to see how it all goes down. I loved our main characters, I loved the wonderful tics and twists in their personalities, and how they got mired in all these bizarre adventures while trying to track down the mystery of the Mirage.

I loved the concept of including passages from The Library of Alexandria, the alternate-dimension version of Wikipedia, to tell a lot of the backstory of the world’s prominent people, history, and culture. And the culture is definitely different — what we’re looking at isn’t just “America with an Arabian flavor.” The UAS is a vastly more conservative place than the USA is — alcohol is mostly illegal, it’s still highly controversial that there are female politicians, and a search on The Library of Alexandria for “gay rights movement” pulls up nothing at all. The UAS is a place that’s a lot more liberal-minded than real-world nations like Iran, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia, but it’s still being run on the very conservative principles of Islam, which means it looks like a vastly different place than we’re used to as more secular Westerners.

If the book has a failing, it’s that it probably overdoes the alternate-universe cameos by famous (and infamous) people. Our heroes meet up with bin Laden, Saddam, George Bush, Dick Cheney, and many, many more. We even discover that in the altered history of this world, LBJ was somehow the president clear up to the end of the 20th century. While you do get a thrill of discovery when you meet many of these alternate-universe versions of these folks, after a while, it starts to become a bit too familiar. This is a trick that should be used sparingly, but it’s really used far, far too often. Excusable, I think, when we’re talking about the UAS version of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” starring Omar Sharif, but a bit tedious when we meet up with a few too many mirror-universe celebrities.

Still, for all that, it’s a hugely interesting and entertaining book. Challenging in a lot of ways, probably infuriating for some folks, but still definitely worth reading. Go pick it up.

Hey, I got a lotta comics last week, and they were all pretty good. I don’t think I got time to review all of ’em, but here’s some of the stuff I thought was cool.

Snarked #12

The final issue of this series?! What the heck, no one had any clue this one was ending. But it’s a good ending. Our cast of heroes has to do battle with the Snark — who is also a Boojum. That means he can make you disappear, throwing you forward in time 20 years, if you look at him without wearing special goggles. And a very important cast member loses his goggles…

What we’re left with is a bittersweet ending, but still a very sweet tale. Y’all go get it if you’ve been reading it, or pick up the eventual trade paperback. It’s a good one.

Sword of Sorcery #0

I liked it. A fairly familiar story — young outsider discovers she’s actually a princess in another world — but it’s well-told and entertaining. The backup feature, featuring a far-future sci-fi variation on the “Beowulf” story.

The sticking point for a lot of people is the attempted rape in the “Amethyst” story. It’s not a good thing, and it’s entirely unnecessary for the story. It reads like someone decided to prove it’s “not a little girl’s story” which happens just too damn often.

Perhaps more depressing, however, are the comments at the end of Chris Sims’ very nice article about it — most of the commenters seem to have an attitude of “Hey, we want comics with more rape!” Maybe we get the crappy comics we deserve.

Oh, also? The Who’s Who page in the back says Amethyst was first introduced in this very issue. It’s not so. Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld made her first appearance in April 1983, in Legion of Super-Heroes #298. She was created by Dan Mishkin, Gary Cohn, and Ernie Colón.

Avengers Academy #37

It’s the students’ final stand against Jeremy Briggs’ villainy. A few surprising choices are made. And it’s a very good issue — great action and dialogue and a moral core to the tale that carries it over the top.

Only one more issue of this, and that’s a huge disappointment.

Wonder Woman #0

A wonderful little story about Princess Diana’s teen years, stealing a harpy’s egg to commemorate her birthday, getting her teen angst on when people make fun of her (supposed) origin as a clay statue, being trained by Ares, and battling the minotaur. It’s a very, very nice story, and I had a blast reading it.

And again, the Who’s Who page gets things irritatingly and insultingly wrong. It says Wonder Woman’s first appearance was in 2011. But she had her debut in All Star Comics #8 in December 1941. She was created by William Moulton Marston and Harry G. Peter. You’d think they’d get this right because Marston’s name is on Page 1 as the character’s creator, and he sure as heck wasn’t around in 2011.

Womanthology: Space #1

A new anthology focused on spotlighting the work of women creators gets started, this time with the focus on science fiction. We get stories by Bonnie Burton, Jessica Hickman, Sandy King Carpenter, Tanja Wooten, Allison Ross, Stephanie Hans, Ming Doyle, Jordie Bellaire, Stacie Ponder, and Rachel Deering, and they’re all pretty good…

And since this is a new miniseries, we can look forward to a few more months of cool comics created by women. Too bad DC and Marvel aren’t so good about working on that…

Batwoman #0

We get a short look back at Kate Kane’s younger years, from her childhood, through mourning the death of her mother and the supposed death of her twin sister, being accepted to West Point, then being drummed out of the military, trying to find a purpose to her life, and the long, hard years of training that her father put her through to make sure she was really ready to become a crimefighter.

It’s a great story. It’s got great action, the plot zips along like lightning, and there are tearjerker moments you won’t believe. It’s an astoundingly good comic book.

And again, because it’s important not to let DC tell stupid lies about this stuff, but Batwoman wasn’t created in 2011, no matter what the Who’s Who page says. The modern Kate Kane debuted in 52 #7 in 2006.

Today’s Cool Links:

• An excellent reflection on the seemingly inevitable end of “City of Heroes.”
• But luckily, lots of people are not ready to let the best superhero MMORPG die.
• The paradox of a feminist who likes superhero comics.
• Greg Rucka is really, really not happy with the current state of the Big Two.
• If you’ve got any interest in turn-of-the-century British supernatural fiction, you may enjoy reading this.
• And this tribute by the artist behind The Oatmeal to his beloved dog is just all kinds of adorable. I mean, a bit rude and crude, but still adorable.

It’s been way, way too long since we took a look at the world’s many awesome things, so let’s remedy that very quickly and ponder the awesomeness of the coolest astrophysicist in the world, Neil deGrasse Tyson!

The very bare bones facts about Neil deGrasse Tyson? He was born in Manhattan, raised in the Bronx, an astronomy fanatic in his teens, actually gave astronomy lectures at the age of 15, and attended Harvard, UT-Austin, and Columbia. He was also, apparently, hotter’n a three-dollar pistol. I’m a straight man, and I don’t mind saying that at all.

Tyson is currently the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space and a research associate in the department of astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History.

So he’s a distinguished scientist — big deal, there are lots of distinguished scientists. Well, not many distinguished scientists were personally recruited by Carl Sagan at Cornell, had college hobbies that included competing on the wrestling team, crew, and competitive ballroom dancing (or won a gold medal at an International Latin Ballroom dancing tournament), or is the host of “NOVA ScienceNOW “on PBS, much less a regular guest on all the better news shows, like “The Daily Show,” “The Colbert Report,” and “Real Time with Bill Maher.” Yes, those are the better news shows, and you know it.

Tyson was among the leaders of the movement to have Pluto demoted to a dwarf planet — which I originally wasn’t real happy about, but once I read his book “The Pluto Files,” the reasoning made a lot of sense. Pluto had no real similarities with the terrestrial planets, like Earth and Mars, or the gas giants, like Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune — and it had a lot more similarities with Kuiper belt objects, of which there are thousands. If astronomers had known how many objects there were that were similar to Pluto back when it was originally discovered, I don’t think they would’ve ever considered Pluto a planet at all.

He’s a huge “Star Trek” fan, he collects comics, he’s appeared on “Stargate: Atlantis” and “The Big Bang Theory,” he’s been spotlighted in “Symphony of Science” videos, and he’s written tons of science books that are non-scientist friendly.

A fourth grader once asked him what would happen if two black holes collided with each other. Tyson liked the question so much, he got the kid a full scholarship to any university he wants to attend someday.

Basically, the guy loves science, and he loves talking to people about how awesome science is. That’s pretty danged awesome!

No time or interest in doing any reviews this week (suffice it to say that Batgirl #0, American Vampire: Lord of Nightmares #4, and Punk Rock Jesus #3 are all solid winners), but I do think it’s probably important to, once again, point out that DC is listing their first appearances wrong again.

Of course, Barbara Gordon made her first appearance as Batgirl in Detective Comics #359, way back in January of 1967.

None of these zero issues have mentioned who actually created these characters, but I’d like to mention that Batgirl was created by Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino. That’s an awfully nice pedigree — two of DC’s most important creators got together to create this character, and it seems a bit like a slap in the face for the company to pretend that Batgirl wasn’t created until 2011. I do think that DC should show a bit more respect for their past than they do.

And on a related note, DC is now retconning their histories from the very beginning of the Reboot! They’ve now edited the trade paperback of the new “Teen Titans” to say that Tim Drake was never one of the Robins, and that there have never been any previous incarnations of the Titans — again, despite the first issue of the comic saying the exact opposite.

As we talked about previously, it’s just really weird how focused Diane Nelson, Dan DiDio, Geoff Johns, Jim Lee, and Bob Harras are on declaring that past continuity is no longer in effect. It’s irritating when it comes to rewriting characters’ personalities (Starfire), appearances (Amanda Waller), or relationships (Clark Kent and Lois Lane) or just erasing some characters completely from the company’s history (Wally West, Cassandra Cain, Stephanie Brown, Donna Troy, and who knows how many others). But when they start doing that for things that really just don’t matter, like whether or not a kid calling himself Red Robin was ever one of Batman’s Robins (instead of his “Boy Wonder,” whatever that creepy little turn of phrase is supposed to mean), that it just gets… well, weird.

I don’t know if it’s some “It’s my sandbox now” fan fiction thing, if it’s a badly thought-out marketing ploy, or if it’s just the company’s new enthusiasm for trolling their own readers (and creators, I guess). Maybe they’re delusional enough to think that they’re the only people in the history of comics who really know what’s best.

Maybe they’re just idiots. Depressing to think that so many idiots could take over all the top rungs of the company’s ladder, but it’s not like it’s never happened in the past.

The thing is, it’s making me less and less angry every time they pull something like this. They’re rewriting things almost at random now, seemingly desperate to manufacture some fan outrage and/or mainstream media coverage, and it’s looking more to me that they’ve completely lost control of things. They’re fairly lucky that the real bigwigs at Warner Brothers don’t care much what happens in the not-exactly-profitable comics division… but at some point, they’re probably going to do something that the bigwigs will care about, and then there’s going to be some serious trouble.

And hey, DC freelancers, writers, and artists — I do hope you’re taking notes. The tell-all memoir about this amazingly messed-up period of the company’s history is probably going to be a best-seller…

Citizens, gather ye ’round. It’s Friday night, we’re ready for the weekend, and we always like to kick things off with a little dose of… FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Tonight’s battle comes to us from August 1999’s Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. #1 by Geoff Johns, Lee Moder, Dan Davis, and Tom McCraw, in which the Star-Spangled Kid punts a whole dadgummed water fountain at a mind-controlled classmate.

And that should do it for me. See youse mugs on Monday.