Every Day Is Like Wednesday

I got a lot of interesting feedback from Friday's post about Mister Miracle's seeming inability to carry an ongoing monthly for very long, despite the fact that he's both a superhero and an escape artist, the former vocation being shared with the stars of a lot of successful book, the latter being shared with the stars of a lot of awesome comic books.

A lot of attention seemed to foucs on the nature of Mister Miracle's escapes, which often depended on his high-tech doodad-ery rather than the sorts of physical prowess and skill shown in, say, Houdini: The Handcuff King.

Given the tricky nature of so many of the traps he escapes from, I think downplaying Mother Box's role is probably the best way to depict them. For a good example of how to handle the escapes, I'm hard-pressed to find a better one than Mike Allred's story from Solo #7.

I certainly can't think of a more succint example. Here's an entire Mister Miracle story revolving around his miraculous escape artistry, told in just two pages. (As always, click to enlarge).





Man, it must be hard being friends with Orion. He seems just a little too quick to bash Scott over the head with a large rock, and a little too slow to have second thoughts about throwing him into a volcano.

I especially like that Allred drew him scratching his hemlet in the last panel...

doesn't eat ice cream.

So, did you read this week's issue of Countdown yet? If so, you've probably heard:



Lightray's dead!

Don't take my word for it; just listen to Jimmy Olsen and Superman:



And Superman's pretty upset about it. In fact, he's so upset that, as Rachelle pointed out at EDILW favorite LBW, he's speaking in fonts.

Man, Lighray—dead. Can you believe it? What's that? Who's Lightray, you ask?

Let's ask Jack Kirby:



(And if that's not enough info to acquaint you with the happy-go-lucky New God, I go on about him at length here).

While I kinda liked Lightray, and certainly thought he had more story potential alive than dead, I'm not exactly broken up about his death. I mean, he was pronounced dead in a comic book co-starring Jason Todd. And really, once you bring Jason Todd back from the dead, death in your little fictional universe is essentially meaningless.

But at the same time, if he really is dead (Problem #29 With Countdown: How are you gonna kill a New God and not have the Black Racer show up? That's his whole deal!) I suppose we should at least go through the motions of mourning for the poor guy's death.

So let's take off our hats, lower our heads and spend a few moments thinking about poor Solis of New Genesis' many virtues.

He was fun-loving



he was polite and well-mannered



he was respectful of others' property



and he was so comfortable with himself and his own appearance that he wasn't afraid to have the second-worst hair in the entire history of the DC Universe, while standing next to the guy with the worst hair in the entire history of the DC Universe




But what I liked most about Lightray? Not only were his powers pretty awesome, but he knew they were awesome, and he told people they were awesome—using the word "awesome."



And that is awesome.

Vaya con los dios nuevos, Lightray.