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Archive | January, 2008

Army of One

By on January 18, 2008 0

As a fan of Jack Kirby’s original OMAC character (as opposed to the recent reboot that turns Brother Eye evil, connects it with Batman, multiplies the OMACs [doesn’t it defeat the point of a “one man army” to have a whole army of them?], and makes them mindless pawns of Brother Eye), I’m glad to see that a couple of pre-reboot OMAC collections are on the way.

OMAC - One Man Army Corps The original OMAC (“One Man Army Corps”) was Buddy Blank, a hapless corporate cipher in a quasi-Orwellian future who is given superpowered enhancements and personality alteration in order to become the Global Peace Agency’s chief enforcer; he draws his power from Brother Eye, an intelligent and apparently benign satellite. After the series ended (along with Kirby’s involvement), OMAC’s universe was moved into continuity with that of another Kirby creation, Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth, as it was retroactively decided to make a de-powered Blank turn out to be Kamandi’s grandfather.

This collection looks like it’ll be collecting Kirby’s original 8-issue run, while this one will be collecting a grab bag of various Kirby and post-Kirby OMAC stories. (But why not collect all the post-Kirby/pre-reboot OMAC stories in a single volume as a companion to the Kirby volume?) Also, some of the events in the old Hercules Unbound series intended to bridge the gap between OMAC and Kamandi will presumably show up in the upcoming Great Disaster anthology whose release date keeps getting pushed farther and farther back.

Sexcrime!

By on January 17, 2008 15

Bestiality is often defined as sexual intercourse between a human being and an animal.

Superman and Lois Lane But humans are animals, and sex among humans isn’t bestiality; so, strictly speaking, bestiality is intercourse between a human being and a nonhuman animal.

Now Superman isn’t human; yet if humans count as animals, he surely counts as an animal too.

So Superman is a nonhuman animal.

Lois Lane, you are so busted.

Caprica Rising

By on January 17, 2008 2

Replaced by CGI - Please help So, we know there are reasons that the current labour impasse in Hollywood might be bad for Galactica (though I’m not too worried, since the first half of the final season is written, and rumor has it that SFC was already planning to postpone the second half to 2009 anyway).

But apparently there’s a way in which it might be good for Galactica too. It had looked as though plans for Caprica, a prequel pilot dealing with Adama’s father and the origin (in some sense of “origin”) of the Cylons, had been pretty much shelved. But now the network is taking a second look at it because of those magic words, “script already written.” (Conical hat tip to AICN.)

Why They Fight

By on January 17, 2008 2

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

Great quote from Tom Woods today:

In the 1980s, the Ayatollah Khomeini called for a jihad against America, on the grounds that we were degenerate, had filthy movies, our women didn’t know their place – all the reasons that we’ve been told are the causes of the current attacks. The result was absolutely nothing. No one blew himself up. No one did anything. Khomeini issued the call and there was no interest. It was a total flop – no one wanted to sacrifice himself on those grounds.

Khomeini and bin Laden Then the 1990s come along, and we have Osama bin Laden. He does not make that fundamental cultural critique – obviously, he doesn’t like those aspects of American culture, but that wasn’t his main critique.

His criticism is actually very specific. He says the U.S. is responsible for propping up police states around the Arab world; exercising undue influence over oil markets; showing undue favoritism toward Israel; supporting countries that oppress their Muslim minorities; basing American troops on the Arabian peninsula, and on and on.

This is the sort of thing he offers as a rationale. So while there may certainly be the potential for Islam to be violent, what sparks that fire? It’s the combination of practical grievances and the Islamist ideology. Some people will do battle on behalf of an abstract philosophy, but most people will only fight and die for a specific grievance. For example, when you look at the Al Qaida recruitment tapes, they don’t simply quote from the Koran. They actually show images of people killed by U.S. weapons.

Why are they making those tapes if there’s no connection between U.S. foreign policy and what the terrorists are doing? It just doesn’t make sense.

Read the rest.

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