A week of lists: 101 great things in comics

It's been another rough week, so it's a bunch of reprinted lists to get through the next seven days, starting with 101 great things in comics..

1. Greenberg the Vampire's moustache

2. Thor's hammer

3. Luba's hammer

4. Hammerstein's hammer

5. Otis the Penguin's umbrella hat

6. The wanker from Dicks and his incredible right arm

7. Cyclop's visor

8. Havok's headband

 
9. The Grendel eyes

10. Night Thrasher's skateboard with the blade inside it

11. The Joker's fake flower with the acid inside it

12. Jesse Custer's white pants

13. Zenith's Phase 2 jacket

14. Starman's rod

15. Daredevil's horns
 
16. Jack Staff's staff

17. The original Captain Britain's mace

18. The batmobile

 
19. Horse the cat's jaw

20. Doyle's missing tooth

21. Superman's bottled city

22. Shade The Changing Man's M-Vest

23. Nick Fury's eyepatch

24. Nick Fury's eyepatch (ultimate version)

25. Captain America's shield

26. The little wings on the side of The Flash's head

27. The little wings on the side of Namor's feet

28. The giant wings on the side of the Warlord's head

29. Catwoman's ears

30. The little fluffy bits at the end of the gloves and boots on the Black Cat's original costume

31. The big fluffy bits around the Creeper's head

32. Guy Gardner's turtleneck

33. Tintin's quiff

34. The Infinity Gauntlet

35. Tetsuo and Kaneda's bitchin' motocycles

36. Lobo's badass space hog

37. Terry Downe's cigarettes

38. The broken bottles that are frequently employed by Milk and Cheese

39. Dan Dare's eyebrow

40. Concrete's cement armchair

41. The Question's blank facemask

42. The Marvel Universe's Dracula and his awesome supernatural dress socks

43. Bat Lash's pansy

44. Rogue Trooper's bio-chipped buddies

45. Obelix's menhirs

46. The Wasp's endless election of wonderful costumes

47. Cowboy Wally's Foreign Legion film

48. Megaton Man's biceps

49. Bizarro Superman's skin

50. The batarang

51. The Nth Man's snow-white mullet

52. Omac's mohawk

53. Maggie Chascarillo's hair when she puts soap in it

54. Betty's ponytail

55. Mr Natural's beard

56. Adam Strange's jetpack

57. The body language the Scarlet Witch uses when she throws out some hexbolts

58. Ambush Bug's antenna

59. Robyn Slinger's wonderful collection of toys

60. That weird fucking flying thing that Orion of the New Gods is always bombing about in

61. Doctor Fate's fullface helmet

62. Magneto's helmet

63. Scrooge McDuck's spats

64. Judge Dredd's helmet

65. Judge Dredd's lawgiver

66. Judge Dredd's Lawmaster

67. Judge Dredd's kneepads

68. Judge Dredd

69. The Unknown Soldier's bandages

70. Smiley Bone's cow costume

71. The Goon's flatcap

72. Hellboy's massive red hand of doom

73. Lois Lane's accusing finger when she confronts ill doers

74. Hans Von Hammer's flying goggles

75. Martha Washington's earrings

76. J'Onn J'Onzz's brow

77. Mean Machine's dial

78. The Phantom Stranger's medallion

79. The Phantom's skull-ring

80. The bat-signal

81. Billy's boots

82. Itto Ogami's babycart

83. Longshot's little knives

84. Green Arrow's boxing-glove arrow

85. Nikolai Dante's inner computer

86. Deathlok's inner computer

88. John Constantine's old punk band

88. Luther Arkwright's scarf and flying jacket combo

89. Madame Xanadu's tarot cards

90. Motormouth's sneakers

91. Nemesis The Warlock's Blitzspear (or is it the Blitzspear's Nemesis?)

92. Merv Pumpkinhead's mop

93. Jonah Hex's scar

 94. Quimper's mask

95. Wolverine's sideburns

96. Batman's hatflaps in Red Son

97. Batman's bootlaces in Year 100

98. Groo's cheese dip

99. Forbrush Man's pot

100. Spider-Man's webshooters

101. Crazy Jane's hopeless smiles

* First published in the Tearoom in July 2013. There are a lot of great things about comics, but there's also great things in them too.

Podcasts need their own language

There must be a special word for that feeling when you're listening to a podcast and you absolutely know the answer to something that is eluding the hosts, (or they're getting it completely wrong), and you just want to blurt it out loud, but you're in a public place and would look like an absolute headcase if you did, so you sit there and silently fume as the podcast hosts spend 10 minutes getting shit wrong because they're too proud to look it up on Google while recording, and you just end up yelling the answer in your skull, over and over and over again.

There must be a word for that feeling, because it seems to happen on every single podcast I listen to...

We draw your attention... to the regrettable bullet

If there is a single episode of a TV show that I can quote the most lines from, it's undoubtedly the final episode of The Prisoner.

Partly it's because it's full of dialogue that is both totally nonsensical and utterly profound, with a delivery that ramps up the pomp and theatricality to absurd degrees.

But it's mainly because that episode was my go-to thing to watch when I got back from parties or the pub, and needed something to come down to while completely shitfaced on cider and vodka. I thought I would feel happier as myself, but I was always happier repeating Number Six.

Judge Hershey isn't dead

A good plot twist can sometimes be incredibly satisfying, especially when you absolutely don't see it coming. It might make you feel stupid, but you can also marvel at the unexpected. I figured out the Sixth Sense when I wondered why Bruce Willis was taking the bus everywhere (movie stars don't take buses), but I thought The Crying Game was all going to be about the IRA until it turned out to be about something else entirely.

But there's a certain kind of twist that can undercut the emotion of an earlier story, and while I don't see those coming either, they can feel a bit more sour, because you feel like a fool for actually feeling something in the first place.

Sure, it was clever when Xorn turned out to be Magneto all along, and it sit well with the overall themes of Morrison's X-Men run, but it still meant an earlier story - a genuinely moving solo issue that turned into a meditation on time and humanity - was a load of shit that manipulated you into a false sense of characterisation.

And it happened again recently, when the stunning exit of Judge Hershey from the Judge Dredd saga turned out to be a total fake-out. The new story by Rob Williams and Simon Fraser is absolutely bloody excellent, and Hershey does deserve a fittingly heroic send-off, but I found her death had the sort of hard-edged practicality that creator John Wagner does better than anybody alive, and that kind of no-nonsense approach can be incredibly moving.

Even with her demise, there was still some hope for the future, with the introduction of the daughters of Hershey, which seemed like the ultimate signal that the character's story had come to an end. But even that is tainted by the idea that she is still out there, doing the usual judging with extreme prejudice.

Stories like Judge Dredd should absolutely throw you curve balls, and take you places you didn't expect, but that can have the unfortunate side effect of making you feel like a bit of a muppet for getting a bit emotional about something that was designed to fake you out. No matter how good the new Hershey comics get, that sour feeling is always going to linger.

Sudoku forces me to slow down

Even though I genuinely don't believe they're as bad for you as everybody told me they were when I was growing up, I still have to lay off the video games. I just get sucked in and they use up so much time, time that I could spend doing more important stuff, like raising the kid, or reading comic books.

These days, I play an old Grand Theft Auto every couple of weeks, but most of the time it's something on the phone. I'm either idly racking up the points on 2048, or rocking through a Sudoku, because I'm all about the numbers.

I've played hundreds of Sudoku games on the app in the last few months, all on the hard setting - anything easier is boring, and I haven't been able to get the grasp of expert, because I can't spread the intellect that far enough. It's just challenging enough.

The main appeal of the Sudoku - especially compared to the fast flickering of 2048 - is that I do have to concentrate, and it does force me to slow down. I have to actually think about the placement of numbers, it's not all about the hand-eye coordination and reaction time, it just sits there and waits for you to figure out the pattern, and why that 9 has to go there, rather than there.

Life comes at you so fast, especially in this unholy year of 2020, and it can be so easy to just let it slide by. But sometimes the best way to relax is to actually concentrate on something - especially when it's as unimportant as a numbers game on your phone - and slow the fuck down.

Dark Phoenix, over and over again

I can't wait for the Marvel movies to feature the next cinematic iteration of the X-Men, so we can have yet another retelling of the Dark Phoenix story.

Because there's absolutely nothing else you can do with Jean Grey. Even though the last two times they tried to do it were unquestionably the worst X-Men films of the past 20 years, (and there has been a lot of competition), the filmmakers are all trapped in this endless cycle of trying to capture the echo of a taste of a comic book story from 40 years ago.

Maybe they could retell a different X-Men story. Or maybe they could just evolve a bit and move on.

Tape life: These things might last forever

Like every sane person in the Western world, I've ditched the video tapes. I used to have hundreds, now I've got less than a dozen. All I've got less is a few blank tapes that still have home movies and other weird shit that I desperately need to digitise; and two proper tapes - one is the Jean Rollin film Fascination that was the last gift I got from my first girlfriend, and the other is the copy of Dawn of the Dead I bought with my 16th birthday money. I'm never giving those up because I'm a sentimental old shit.

But I've still got loads and loads of cassette tapes, full of music that was laid down years and years ago. There are mix tapes of Beatles tunes my mate Chris made for me in the nineties, and the copy of The Cure's Mixed Up album that my mum got me for some good exam results, and more Queen and Iron Maiden albums than anybody would ever really need.

I got rid of a few of them over the years, and some of the tapes self-destructed or were left out in the sun, but I've still got a heap of them, and they still all work, when CDs and records have been scratched to hell. And I gleefully get them out whenever get the chance, although I'm now actively looking for a cheap cassette player that I can blast some of this shit on. The quality doesn't matter, if you crank it loud enough.

It's easier to hold onto the cassettes than the videos, they a lot smaller and pack a lot of punch on their thin strips. And I just need to find that goddamn player so I can crank up those old mix tapes. It's great music from great times, and it's still there, waiting to be played.

There's only one rule that I know of, babies...

If you'd asked me, back when I was a kid, what the year 2020 would look like, it would definitely have included flying cars and day trips to the moon.

It would be both disappointing and depressing if somebody had told me that it would take that long for the general public (and some specific shitheads) to awake to the radical idea that you shouldn't treat women like shit.

Although I have extremely limited faith in the actual power of name and shame, there is definite value in exposing the biggest fuckheads in all the entertainment industries. We all win.

Long live the 5YL Legion #7

It's a final cruel touch to end this era of the Legion - Earth is liberated from the alien occupiers after so much sacrifice, but the world can't take it, and it's finally time to pay the bill for centuries of ecological damage and the impact of all that war and destruction, and millions and millions of people are left behind. There's still some hope for the future, but there's no future left for our planet.

If only...