Infinity Man and the Forever People #1

Dan Didio still thinks he's a writer, does he?

Earlier today when I was washing dishes, I was thinking about Grunion Guy's quote, "Writer's Block is just a sign that you're lazy." Grunion Guy, by the way, is an alternate version of me that thinks differently than I do so it's not really me but Grunion Guy. He's also sometimes Pickle Boy and sometimes Upright, so I have to speak about him in the 3rd person. Anyway, I was thinking of an addendum to that quote so that it should read, "Writer's Block is just a sign that you're lazy. Or that you experience shame." That thought came to my head because I obviously write a lot, about four hours per day. And I instantly put the majority of it out there for anybody to read because I apparently have no shame. And then just now, jenstansfield reblogged this quote by Bradbury: "Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all." That's probably a better way of saying the shame thing! And probably nice than calling people with Writer's Block lazy!

Okay. So now about this Infinity Man and his Forever People. From the cover, it looks like Infinity Man is the god that lost his time travel map and the Forever People are the bandits. Judging by the name and the fact that Keith Giffen was tagged to do the art, I'm going to go out on a great big very safe looking limb and say these characters were created by Jack Kirby. Looking up the characters in my 1985 Who's Who, I see both entries were drawn by Jack Kirby. Like I said, it was a really safe limb to go out on. Plus I'm pretty sure the information that Kirby wrote these characters was rattling around in my brain somewhere but wasn't exactly a fact I could have spit out while trying to score with some hot piece of hotness at a cocktail party. Attractive people love discussing comic book facts at parties, right? That's a rhetorical question because I'm an attractive person and I like discussing comic books at parties! So I already knew the answer. Which is kind of the definition of rhetorical question so I probably didn't need to say that. I sure wish I had some self-consciousness!

I think Dan Didio likes to write about characters that have mysterious origins and/or were created by Jack Kirby. So he's done OMAC and The Phantom Stranger and Challengers of the Unknown and now Infinity Man. The first line in Infinity Man's bio in the 1985 Who's Who is this: "Nothing is known about the origin of the mysterious being called Infinity Man." What is known about him is that he pals around with five kids who touch his box and shout, "Taaruu!" I think this guy might need to be investigated.

Looking up The Forever People, I see I recognize Beautiful Dreamer and Big Bear. It looks like Serifan the Cowboy has been replaced by another female in the new team. And Vykin the Black probably dropped the "the Black" from his name because most people nowadays don't go around saying things like "Barack Obama the Black" and "Samuel L. Jackson the Black." Unless he's known as "the Black" because of some other reason that isn't racist like I've made it out to be! Perhaps it's simply rare to have a dark skin tone on the planet of New Genesis. It's just that so many comic book creators of the past simply added "black" to the name of any character that was a black man. I'm not sure black women got the same treatment though. I could be wrong though since I'm a scholar of Ancient Egypt and not a scholar of comic books!

Looking at the covers of the Who's Who (the front and back portrayed every character listed in the issue) to see if the whole adding "black" to a black character's name has much truth to it, I see the first issue, which is obviously a control issue, has one black character: Amazing-Man. So right off we see how small representation was for African-Americans even in 1985. One out of thirty entries is a black hero. There are more locations listed in this issue than that.

Issue #2 begins the run of characters with "black" in their name yet features not a single black character on the front and back cover! We've got Black Bison, Blackbriar Thorn, Black Canary (I and II!), Black Condor, Blackfire, Black Hand, and three Blackhawk entries (incidentally, the Blackhawks were an apparently all-white division when they were created). So the word "black" gets used no matter what the skin tone of the character. Well, as long as that skin tone is white or orange so far.

Out of 31 entries on Issue #3, we have three black characters (all male) and they all have "black" in their name: Black Manta, Black Lightning, and Black Racer. So that's three times as many characters as issue #1 and, um, I don't know how many times more than Issue #2 because I keep coming up with the answer "zero" for that equation. Let's look at a few more control issues.

I know Captain Atom is white but his pose made me laugh and this commentary really needed a picture in it.

Issue #4 has three black males on the cover (I don't think I should count Captain Carrot) yet none of the entries are individual entries for the characters. Two of the characters (Crowbar (oh yeah! He made an appearance in Vibe!) and Black Mass) were part of the team known as Cadre and one was Sir Gawain from Camelot 3000. This is an interesting cover in that one of the three characters has "black" in his name yet there are no individual entries. Figuring out percentages has now moved into word problems that I can't solve! I'll check a few more covers briefly for this super important research project that totally proves something or other.

Issue #5 has Cyborg. Issue #6 has none. Issue #7 has none. Even Easy Company didn't have any black members. Issue #8 has none. And finally Issue #9 has three black men (still no black women. It can't take until "V" to get an appearance of a black female hero (or villain), can it?): John Stewart, Gravedigger (whose real name is "Ulysses Hazard" which makes him completely awesome), and Impala of the Global Guardians (Dr. Mist and several others were left off the cover. Probably to make room for all of the Green Lanterns).

To finish, a very quick and cursory glance of the covers reveals the first black female to make an appearance is Onyx. And there isn't another until Vixen. So forget about how this began looking for black characters with or without "black" in their character name. It was hard enough just finding any! It's insane that in that white a pool of characters, people complain when any diversity is added to the mix. These covers were from 1985 detailing characters created many years ago. Has the diversity gotten better? I don't know! I'm not a comic book scientist! Although just look at the cover to Infinity Man and the Forever People #1! New Genesis has gotten a bit more diverse!

I should probably get to reading this fucking comic book already.

So far in The New 52, we've had just a small hint of New Genesis and Apokolips. Darkseid #1 covered a bit of the relationship between The New Gods and Darkseid (although I think much of it was a lie). In Wonder Woman, we've gotten a glimpse of the world shown in the panel above when Wonder Woman visited New Genesis floating above the ruined planet of, I suspect, Old Genesis. And now we've finally gotten a comic book dedicated to the world of The New Gods! And one where we don't have to endure the insufferable Jimmy Olsen!

There's a big trip to Earth planned for the newest graduating class on New Genesis but Mark Moonrider can't get the Mother Box to work correctly. Probably because everybody needs to be touching it and yelling, "Taaruu!"

Everybody but Big Bear has gathered together and most of them are arguing. Unless the female that arrived with Vykin is Big Bear and she'll have some transformation into the Big Bear on the cover later. That's probably not the case though since this comic just started. I should just finish reading the pages where they finally become a group since those are the pages of group stories that I find the most monotonous.

That's the way I feel all of the time, Beautiful Dreamer.

Vykin touches Mother Box and she loves his gentle touch so she opens wide for him. Now he's stuck going on the trip to Earth even though he wasn't meant to go along. Everybody hops in even though they're still missing Big Bear. Also, the comic is still missing a reason to exist. Right now, it's just the Europe trip taken by a bunch of students the summer after graduation. I bet there will be a lot of sexually hilarious antics!

Big Bear is waiting for the kids on the other end. He's got an apartment in Venice Beach set up for them and some kind of artificial intelligence named Kirby that does magic scientific wonders.

Meanwhile, a facility in the Sudan turning desert into fertile ground to grow crops is having a bit of an Apokolyptian bug problem.

It's Preying Mantis! With an "e"!

Infinity Man and the Forever People #1 Rating: I don't know! It's yet another Giffen doing Kirby book! As I mentioned previously, these team books where the team has to get to know each other tend to bore me. I suppose if they're written well, they wouldn't bore me! But this one was mediocre at best. I sort of know a few one dimensional things about the Forever People and a little bit about a few of their relationships with each other. Other than that, they're on vacation where Mantis is also spending time. Unless this isn't a vacation at all! Maybe it's like going into military service for a year or two after graduating. It's hard to say since none of that has really been explained yet.

Wonder Woman #16

This is pretty disgusting. Although not quite as disgusting as when Superman was defeated by rotting teeth in Justice League Dark.

Last issue, Wesley Willis became an important member of Wonder Woman's cast. The character Milan, Wonder Woman's half-brother, is based on the too soon gone schizophrenic singer. Milan has the power of sight which he doesn't like to use because the power of sight is actually schizophrenia. But Orion and Wonder Woman both need him to use this power. Wonder Woman needs to find another half-sibling and Orion probably needs to find Darkseid's daughter (or somebody else that threatens to end the universe in some way that had to do with Mother Box or the Anti-life equation or some other piece of New Gods Mythos that I forgot).

But that's just the current shit going on. Also currently happening: Zeus has disappeared; Zola's child by Zeus (which may or may not be Zeus himself!) has been kidnapped by Hermes and Demeter; The First Born has dug his way out of his prison in Antarctica to kill Zeus and take the throne of Olympus; Apollo has just taken the throne so he's fucked; Hades has learned to love himself thanks to Eros's bullets and a mirror; and Hera has become Mortal and is sharing an apartment in New York with Zola and Wonder Woman. I think that about does it for the recap.

The action continues in the subway tunnels of New York as Lennox, Orion, Milan, and Wonder Woman try to straighten out some family business. Things were beginning to look like a gigantic brawl until Milan vomited flies onto everybody. That stopped them in their tracks on the tracks. Meanwhile above ground, Hera and Zola were getting to know each other over drinks.

They're joined by Ares. Who let him in the bar with bloody bare feet? Fucking Gods think they own the place.

I was never a fan of gin simply because it tasted strange. While a lot of hard liquor simply tastes like liquor (or gasoline), Gin actually tastes medicinal to me. Perhaps it's the Juniper Berry flavor. Or simply that it reminds me how I can never breathe in hot weather if I'm anywhere near a Juniper. Or maybe it stems from a long-forgotten past life where I was an apothecary concocting panaceas for the nobles and accidentally ended a notable family line by giving them alcohol poisoning with one of my triple gin and hard grain alcohol recipes. That last one seems the most probable.

Down in the subway, Milan sucks back down his flies once everyone promises to stop fighting. Now maybe Orion will explain why he's causing trouble.

Orion fighting a baby might be the only thing that could top Midnighter battling Dex-Starr.

That was easy enough! Tied those two plot lines together nice and painlessly, he did! I don't think Wonder Woman knows anything about Orion. But Milan obviously knows him. What would Wonder Woman think if she knew this was the son of Darkseid? I don't believe she'd think anything. I bet she'd just start swinging her swords again.

Once things calm down, Wonder Woman is able to use her greatest power on Milan: her compassion. She convinces him that his power is needed to keep Zola's baby from being taught to be bad. She's kind to him and understanding. So he uses his power to see everything to help her out. That's a nice description of shizophrenia. The ability to see everything all at once.

Milan sees the baby with the Bird Man and the Tree Lady. Wonder Woman realizes Hermes has taken the baby to Demeter but she doesn't know where to find Demeter. But Lennox reminds her they have Hera who can help with that. Milan mentions one more thing.

Who cares? Who's he going to tell?

Back at the bar while Ares and Hera discuss which of Hera's children she unloves the most, Zola wanders off to the bathroom to meet yet another God or Demi-God. He's got red hair and red eyes and sharp teeth and I don't know if he's appeared before or not because my memory isn't photogenic. Or photographic either. She then enters the bathroom to vomit after this new God explains the atrocities that Ares is capable of. It's in the bathroom that Strife reappears to cause more trouble. Because there isn't enough shit going down already.

Wonder Woman #16 Rating: No change. For people that don't care for reading comic books in monthly installments, I highly recommend picking up Wonder Woman in trade paperback form. Everything about it is fun but the dialogue makes the book. And it probably reads really well in one extended sitting. At least you'll have no problem recognizing all of the different characters when they reappear. This is one of those comic books that if you aren't reading, you shouldn't be reading my spoilery commentary. You should actually be reading the comic book! Besides, I end up doing a lot more reading and gazing at Cliff Chiang's fantastic art than I do writing jokes about the book. It's just too interesting to keep interrupting myself.