Sam Register, one of the minds behind the animated Teen Titans series (not a bad show, but miles below Bruce Timm’s groundbreaking Batman/Superman/League animated series), when asked whether the Robin in Titans is Dick Grayson or Tim Drake (aside: incidentally, Grayson is the only answer that makes sense), answers: “I am so completely bored with the DC universe and continuity and all that crap. To me, he’s just Robin. I know all the fans give a crap, but I don’t.” In other words: turn off your brain and just swallow any shit we decide to feed you. What a contrast with Bruce Timm and his crew.
Archive | February 25, 2009
I’ll Take Manhattan
I’m watching Maddow interviewing Pelosi on security briefings that Pelosi received but was not allowed to reveal.
Pelosi says that thanks to security requirements, she could not speak out against policies she disapproved of. Duh, of course she could. Has she never heard of civil disobedience?
Maddow compares Pelosi to Spider-man and Dr. Manhattan, both lonely because they cannot reveal their secret identities to anyone. Okay, Maddow wins a point for the Watchmen reference (though she would have earned more points if she’d made it a year ago) – but loses two points because, um, Dr. Manhattan’s identity is never secret.
Brainiac versus the Toyman
Here’s a piece of both comic-book trivia and IP trivia that I didn’t previously know: the DC character Brainiac – humanoid computer and frequent Superman antagonist – originally was just some green alien guy 
and (despite his computer-sounding name) not a computer at all. But when the prior inventor of a toy computer likewise named Brainiac raised legal objections to the use of the name, DC and the inventor reached an imaginative win-win compromise: DC made their Brainiac more (rather than less) like the original they were accused of infringing – i.e., made him a computer – thus turning the character into an ad for the toy and so obviating the toymaker’s objections. The issue of Superman that inaugurated this compromise even parodied the rights dispute on its cover by having Brainiac and Lex Luthor debating which of them has a better right to kill Superman. Details here.