Slightly Misplaced Comic Book Heroes Case File #59: Slapstick

Not the guy to call if you are afraid of clowns.

The comedic superhero is a time-honored tradition.  Sometimes its just a hero like Spider-Man who cracks wise during any given fight.  Other times you get a hero like Plastic Man, who may or may not be the straight man in his own adventures but has goofy powers and kooky adventures to compensate.

Then there’s Slapstick.  He didn’t fight crime.  He played cruel jokes on it.

Slightly Misplaced Comic Book Hero Case Files #52: Stacy-X

Let me say this in advance…sorry, Jenny.

One of the purposes of the X-Men over the years has been to show they’re a diverse group.  Mutants can come from anywhere, and they don’t always have to be good or noble.  For every Russian farmboy, German circus performer, or African goddess, there was some mutant who came from the wrong side of the tracks and was trying to make the world a better place anyway, the only way the person knew how.

That brings us to Stacy-X.  She was a prostitute.

Slightly Misplaced Comic Book Heroes Case File #32: Rage

“I have complete confidence in my deodorant!”

I picked up my first comic books in 1990.  There was an Amazing Spider-Man drawn by future Savage Dragon creator Erik Larsen; an issue of Detective Comics written by one of my favorite comics writers, John Ostrander; and an issue of Avengers written by Larry Hama and drawn by Paul Ryan.  The story in question there would introduce such classic Avengers foes as the Tetrarchs of Entropy and a hallucinating Russian cosmonaut called Surge, but only on the cover of the next issue.

Never heard of them?  Never mind that.  We also got Rage.  He stuck around for a while.

The Problems With Marvel’s Civil War

Those guys in the back probably want to back away from this right now.

Fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe were fairly excited to learn the third Captain America movie would be an adaptation of Civil War, a mini-series where the various Marvel heroes lined up on two sides over a law that required superheroes to register with the American government or go to prison.  The series dealt with issues regarding national security and the American reaction to terrorist attacks on our soil.

It also had some huge problems that almost guarantee the movie version will be better, if only by default.