Go. Read.

More news soon.

And then the Funvee gets blown up.

The economy may be collapsing, climate change accelerating, and Cthulhu may be turning up soon to eat everyone’s heads, but none of that matters because, with a big old load of cockrock, the Journal lurches back into existence. I’ll skip the deadly sin of blogging-about-blogging; needless to say, I haven’t been around for a bit, but now I am. Probably weekly from now on.

A couple of things of note:

Council leaders have compiled a banned list of the 200 worst uses of jargon, proving once again that people have too much time on their hands, despite the best efforts of Twitter, Facebook, and people who play with their toys on the internet. While there’s a lot of management bollocks on there, I’m not sure we should start banning various terms because people are too fick to know what words mean. Councils in Scotland are going to have a bastard of a time instructing lawyers if they can’t use “Advocate”, for a start.

Also, by implication the following unlisted phrases must be perfectly acceptable for everyday use in Local Government: “Willy-wobbling”. “Turdfaced fuckwit”. “Felch”.

2009 film previews: Only one thing could top not only a new Trek film, but also the Transformers sequel. And that’s THIS:

SO RIGHTEOUS.

Sorry for the sudden disappearance again. A few issues between my current hosting company and the old one. Things may get a little rocky with the site this week, but hopefully just for a short while.

More on this over at the Toybox.

On a similar note, via Aint It Cool (I know, I know), the CBC are planning a reality show where former Prime Ministers judge individuals on whether they’d make good PMs. While I was hoping to rib chum Plok about this, it turns out the Beeb has already bought the remake rights off of them. Oh dear. I am half hoping S4C will nick the idea for the Assembly, but we’re not that far away from Rhodri’s retirement; it’s quite possible someone will take this seriously and the next First Minister will get in on a phone vote.

I assume this is one of those let’s-get-The-Kids-into-politics things, ignoring the fact that The Kids are busy wearing hoodies and knifing grannies for their iPhones. Or something. I lose track.

Click here for the Alhazred Heights archive page. Fonts from Blambot.

More strips over at the Toybox, which will start back on its Tuesday/Thursday schedule tomorrow.

Core Genre: Wolverine is the super-hero version of the Man With No Name, an outlaw with a violent, uncertain past in line with the darker, more ambiguous post-Leone kind of cowboy. So I’m enclined to place him under Western, although considering his nationality that’s more of a North Western. The Frontier Fiction of Jack London, maybe.

Before the Jemas/Quesada/Jenkins/Kubert Origin, it was accepted that to give Wolverine a definitive backstory would kill the mystery of the character, and take the character with it. I’ve seen the series criticised by some for doing exactly that. I disagree.

First of all, the idea that Wolverine’s backstory is in anyway mysterious is wrong. From the very beginning his creator Len Wein intended for him to be a mutated wolverine, though thank fuck they didn’t follow through on that. Claremont and Byrne, the creators most responsible for shaping the character’s early days, also intended for the character to be old enough to have fought in the Second World War.

Of course, the readers didn’t know all this yet, but it wasn’t long before the gaps started to get filled in. Alpha Flight, Weapon X, a long history with Sabretooth, fighting alongside Captain America in the ’40s; not a definitive timeline, perhaps, but plenty of things to delineate his history. Heavy hints of wetwork for intelligence agencies. And as soon as we get into his solo series we have the Japan stuff, a bizarre story about a boy raised by actual wolverines, life with Silver Fox and her subsequent murder, and so on. Although how much of this come under the ‘implanted memory’ get-out clause is anyone’s guess.

Regardless of how much of this is later retconned or proven false, it shows how his writers have been playing around with his origins for a long time. Considering how much fans and creators protest that his backstory should be hidden, they’ve certainly engaged with a lot of books over time that deal with possible origins. Ditto for the ‘angry loner who hunts alone’ thing. Guy’s supporting cast is bigger than the Batman Family.

A) Healing factor
B) Animal senses
C) Claws
D) Adamantium-laced skeleton
E) Berserker rage
F) Is (sigh) the best there is at what he does, and what he does isn’t pretty.

If nothing else, Wolverine is a survivor. His healing factor is the centre of his character, survival as mutant power. I like the idea that the reason for his memory issues is the healing factor crudely patching up a damaged psychology.

Who are Wolverine’s villains? Every damn thing. Everyone he’s ever met, every situation he’s ever been in. He’s his own worst enemy, and that doesn’t just mean the character as he’s defined in his present, but also the person he used to be. Every different aspect of his past, whether nobleman, frontiersman, assassin or samurai, becomes a different enemy, and creates a new conflict that Wolverine has to survive. Wolverine never triumphs. The best he can hope for is that he sees another day.

Actually, considering everything he’s been through, maybe that’s wrong. He can’t really be killed, not considering his core power, so he can’t escape any of his actions. He won’t even get the peace of the grave. Even survival itself becomes his enemy, because the best he can hope for is achieving a measure of peace.

There’s some depressing stuff behind that yellow spandex.

But it’s not really the nihilism people come for. Everyone likes a rogue, and if we think of the action movie culture that brought characters like Wolverine and the Punisher to prominence in the 80s we can see that the attraction was mostly a surface one. Blood, rage and Rambo. Luckily for Logan, there was still enough to him that he stayed popular after circumstances changed.