How can DC best thank its loyal readers for making Identity Crisis a smash hit? Why, they can re-release the first issue with an obscured version of the ugly cover! Read all about it at Newsarama.

I think Rags Morales is a very talented penciler, and all the luck in the world to him, glad he has a hit on his hands, etc., but he’s got to stop saying things like this:

“…the miniseries’ success shows how intelligent our audience and retailers are — literature really works in comics!”

It’s not an adaptation of Atonement or Proof or The Life of Pi. It’s not “the little indie book that could.” It’s DC’s summer blockbuster. Leave Literature out of it. You’re making it cry.

So, John Byrne… I wouldn’t know where to begin without rupturing something, but I will happily point you to this elegant summary at Postmodern Barney. Well said, Dorian.

One thing to add: I know it’s pretty much time for me to go home when someone accuses their critics of being politically correct. It’s not impossible for the term to be used as a legitimate criticism, but, in my on-line experience, that rarely happens. Usually, it translates to mean that, “Oh, damn, someone was actually paying attention to my bullshit, so I’d better try and deflect their attention from indications of racism/homophobia/sexism/etc., because I probably didn’t really mean it but fear I’d look stupider by just retracting it.” Or, worse still, “I totally did mean to come off as racist/homophobic/sexist/etc., but I think I can avoid copping to that by claiming that my critics are stifling my freedom of expression instead of just correctly identifying me as a total dick.”

Okay, moving on. Pardon my language.

At Highway 62, Matt offers a timely warning:

“Reading interviews with your favorite creators may indeed be hazardous to thin skins and the fan base’s sense of entitlement. Be cautious when consuming said interviews.”

At The Low Road, Ed Cunard looks at the other side of the equation, i.e. the gossamer epidermis of the creator:

“Any valid criticism leveled at [a creator] was waived away with two stock answers: ‘Keep buying it – it will all make sense after a few issues’ (translation: you aren’t smart enough to decipher my brilliance), and ‘You just aren’t giving it a chance because [insert excuse]’ (translation: you obviously don’t like this sort of thing, so why should I explain it to you?).”

One shares space with Dormammu. One shares a name with my favorite cruise line. Don’t make me choose!

I’m really not used to having an evening where I actually look forward to two television programs. Don’t get me wrong. Lightning would strike me if I tried to play the “I don’t watch much TV” card. I just don’t have much in the way of “destination television.” But last night was one of those cases.

Gilmore Girls: That’s a side of Rory I don’t need to see very often. While it’s probably past time that the Perfect Pretty Princess Crown got knocked off her head, she really is being startlingly unpleasant. On the other hand, I don’t think anyone writes for Lorelai as well as series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino. Lorelai gets to be charming and witty and mature. Dean was really creeping me out during the episode, and I think it’s repulsive of him to treat his wife like crap because he’s changed his mind. Luke is a treasure.

As a side note, now that those standbys from Sex and the City and Frasier are out of the Emmy running, maybe some of this show’s cast members will finally get the nominations they deserve. Lauren Graham, Kelly Bishop, Liza Weil, and Scott Patterson should surely have earned bids by now, and Bishop and Weil each should have one at least once.

The Amazing Race: That was a tremendously satisfying conclusion. While Chip and Kim may not be the best racers in the show’s history, they are one of the most functional teams I’ve ever seen. It’s very gratifying to see a mature, supportive, loving couple come out on top. An added bonus was the fact that Chip and Kim enjoyed the race throughout. Nothing bothers me more as a viewer than when a contestant on one of these shows, who actively applied to be there and was not kidnapped and tossed in the back of a van by television producers, grinds on about how hard it all is to see the world and possibly win a million dollars. None of that from this year’s winners. It almost makes up for Flo.

I have to concede the rightness of Colin and Christie making it as far as they did, even if I find them really unpleasant to watch. Their racing skills were top-notch, despite their horrible sense of entitlement. Listening to them carp about how they were Yielded was terribly annoying, because a) it was perfectly legitimate game play, b) nobody is obliged to let them win, c) it ultimately didn’t have any effect. Use of the Yield didn’t result in their elimination, and even if it had, the race designers created it to be used. Chip and Kim made good, strategic use of it, and they had every right to do so. Also, considering the points subsequent to that when the teams were bunched up and a level playing field was re-established, Colin and Christie lost because they didn’t get to the finish line first, not because Chip and Kim stalled them.

I probably would have preferred to see Linda and Karen in the final three over Brandon and Nicole, just because Linda and Karen raced harder. Brandon and Nicole seemed to drift from mishap to mishap, surviving to race again despite their hopeless lack of skill. Linda and Karen, after a shaky start, developed appreciably better racing technique. Brandon and Nicole pretty much finished where they started.

As a side note, I’m no theologian, but I’m guessing that no self-respecting supreme being cares who wins a contest on a reality show. They also probably don’t care who wins a Grammy, an Emmy, a Video Music Award, etc. Actually, the Greek Pantheon probably would have cared a great deal, but look where that attitude got them. They’ve been reduced to guest spots in Wonder Woman and Teen Titans.

As for future viewing, I hope tonight’s Lost lives up to its hype. I also hope that Sunday’s Desperate Housewives is smart, trashy fun.

Having granted DC column inches to pimp its summer blockbuster, the New York Times goes all fair and balanced. Brian Michael Bendis has a cartoon in the Small Business special section. I’m not sure what the point is, and I don’t know if that’s an accepted spelling of “sweetie”, but there you go.

Newsarama has previews pages from Novembers Avengers Finale, and Bendis gamely puts on his “sad” face:

“This is the emotional ending to a very tragic story. This is the very special last episode.”

Rumors indicate that the issue will conclude with the surviving heroes in a group hug, singing “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary,” as they stumble through the rubble of the mansion.

Actually, I’m feeling a lot better about this whole affair. If Bendis is allowed to blithely resurrect a character who’s been “dead” since 1967, without explanation and in a relatively underdramatized manner, what are the chances of anything in Disassembled sticking? Ah, Marvel… where the graves all have trampolines at the bottom.

With that out of the way, on to this week’s comics:

Wow! That was quick turn-around on the collection of the Avengers-Thunderbolts mini-series. Mystique starts a new story arc with #19. Runaways ends its first volume with #18. A six-issue Black Widow mini-series kicks off with art by Bill Sienkiewicz. And Astonishing X-Men #5 is one of many, many mutant titles pelted at innocent consumers. (It’s a good one, at least.)

I wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about the first issue of Noble Causes, but I’ll pick up the second because I’m a sucker for super-hero soap opera. I liked the first issue of DC’s new Manhunter, so I’ll be giving that title another try. And, because it’s comic blog law, I’m duty bound to remind you that Ex Machina #4 and Sleeper Season Two #4 come out tomorrow and both stand every chance of being very entertaining, based on past experience. (Even if I weren’t duty bound, I would probably have reminded you anyways.)

I know, I know, nobody’s ever going to confuse Dan Brown’s body of work (Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code) with great literature. But I read them and thought they were entertaining enough for the cost of a paperback. So, when I heard that there was another art-history puzzle book out, The Rule of Four, I thought, “That might be fun.”

How terribly, terribly wrong I was.

Here are a dozen things that I learned from The Rule of Four:

1. People are trustworthy in inverse proportion to their financial means. Poor people are saints. Rich people range from disaffected to dishonest to just plain evil.
2. Old people are untrustworthy altogether. Either they Just Don’t Understand, or they’re desperately jealous of the rich promise of youth, or they’re bitter, craven failures.
3. Scholarly rigor is entirely the province of undergraduates.
4. Scholarly rigor dramatically limits one’s chances at a happy personal life.
5. Women instinctively perceive scholarly rigor as “the other woman” and become unreasonably jealous. (Whether the inverse of this is true remains unclear, as none of the women portrayed seem concerned with their own scholarly pursuits.)
6. Princeton doesn’t take enough reasonable steps to keep its students out of life-threatening situations.
7. The reasonable steps Princeton does take to ensure the safety and security of its student body are best viewed as inconveniences to be sidestepped.
8. Undergraduate senior projects are sufficient motives for theft and murder, not just binge drinking, poor personal hygiene, and procrastination.
9. Just because a big word is available doesn’t mean its use is desirable or particularly effective.
10. There is no plot twist so novel that it can’t have the crap kicked out of it by pretentious writing.
11. I hate first-person present-tense narration.

But the most important thing I’ve learned from The Rule of Four?

12. Future books by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason are to be avoided at all costs.

(On the subject of decoding ancient works, my partner was telling me about something he saw on PBS about a series of unusual circumstances that led a Russian to decipher the Mayan alphabet. Does anyone know of any good accounts of this story? I’d love to read about it.)

So another issue of Uncanny X-Men is coming out this week (#449).

Have you ever been channel surfing and you pause on PBS because there’s a concert on? And you think, “That sure is a honking bad (fill in the blank) tribute band.” And you watch for a few more minutes until you realize, “Oh, man, that’s not a tribute band. That’s (fill in the blank). Damn.”

That’s pretty much how I feel when I read Uncanny X-Men. If I weren’t biologically compelled to buy anything drawn by Alan Davis, I probably wouldn’t bother. As for the fill-in artist for the current arc, it’s nice to see the continued improvement of Olivier Coipel’s pencils. (I thought his work on Legion was grotesque and impossible to follow but found he’d improved a lot by the time he took over Avengers. The ridiculous Viper costume aside, his pencils on Uncanny show continued growth.)

But, seriously, as Paul O’Brien noted, Chris Claremont set up a perfectly interesting scenario for Uncanny. Why has he set it aside in favor of a tinny greatest-hits collection?

“The Widow” concludes in Daredevil #64, and it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if one of the closing sequences left readers scratching their heads.

To summarize the arc, the Black Widow is in trouble. The Bulgarian government wants to trade her for Madame Hydra, who has been captured by the Avengers and taken into Bulgarian custody. The Widow’s SHIELD supervisor Nick Fury tipped her off, and she opted to hide in plain sight with former lover Matt Murdock, Daredevil. A former SHIELD operative is sent to kill her, but he’s apprehended, neutralizing American bureaucrats’ attempts to turn her over to Bulgaria.

In a brief epilogue, Natasha is shown apprehending the architect behind the proposed trade. It’s her husband, Alexi, formerly the Soviet super-soldier known as the Red Guardian. Alexi, who was presumed dead (for the second time) has apparently been building a power base in Bulgaria and used his newfound influence to punish his former wife. He tips his hand when he orders the release of Madame Hydra, allowing Natasha, SHIELD, and the Avengers to track him.

Quick Black Widow back story: Back in the days of the USSR, Natasha Romanov was informed that her husband, Alexi, had died. She had believed him to be a cosmonaut, but the KGB informed her that her “late” husband had actually been the Soviet equivalent of Captain America, a super-soldier government agent. Natasha vowed to pick up where he left off and joined her homeland’s espionage effort as the Black Widow.

This brought her into conflict with American heroes such as Iron Man and his industrialist alter-ego Tony Stark. She acquired a henchman, Hawkeye, who abandoned crime to become an Avenger. Inspired by his example, she reformed as well. Unfortunately, she was brainwashed and kidnapped by her former superiors. During this incident, she learned that her husband, the Red Guardian, wasn’t dead after all. He would be soon, sacrificing his life to save the Black Widow from her Soviet captors.

After recovering from injuries sustained in that incident, Natasha made some failed bids for Avengers membership, then retired, then threw in her lot with SHIELD, using her skills in the service of the American government. She eventually joined the Avengers, even serving a fairly lengthy term as that group’s leader. Her service to SHIELD has been ongoing, either as an active agent or as an ally.

Very little of this is referenced in “The Widow,” at least until the epilogue with Alexi. In fact, Natasha’s history as a Soviet agent only briefly mentioned in a throwaway line buried in her monologue to Matt in #63. In lengthy discussions with Matt about his crumbling marriage, Natasha never brings up her own history with the institution. In dense narration, Matt describes her heartbeat and her hair dye but says nothing detailed about her history. There’s even less on Alexi, aside from the fact that everyone believed him to be dead and he was once called the Red Guardian, mentioned after the character appears on-panel.

And this is too bad, because the outline of this arc is perfectly sound. (It’s perfectly sound without the Alexi reveal, too, actually.) This is the kind of story that works very well for someone with Natasha’s background, but I think it could have worked better with some additional detail. (It’s odd that Brian Michael Bendis, who never skimps on narration or dialogue, would omit such potentially useful factoids.)

My best guess is that the Alexi bit was included to try and create some thematic resonance. As Matt’s marriage crumbles, Natasha faces the ghost of her own failed relationship, built as it was on false pretenses and damaged by circumstances. But since that relationship crops up virtually out of nowhere, without any context or clarity, it just seems like an artificial twist.

It didn’t really need to be. There were ample opportunities in the four-issue arc to introduce these events to give them narrative power later. (Each issue has a page-long summary of what’s gone before, beyond the story itself.) I don’t think such references would have sacrificed any of the surprise of the ending, either. (Alexi’s been fairly unequivocally dead since somewhere around Avengers Vol. 1 #33.)

This is a strange case to me, where continuity plays a role in a story and isn’t actually detrimental, but it isn’t adequately integrated to the story to make it really effective. And, talky as Daredevil can be, it isn’t as though the information couldn’t have been organically introduced.

With Marvel mobilizing an army of new mutant titles into the market, it’s fair to ask whether anyone was really begging for a mini-series about a D-list supporting character. Putting aside the argument that every character is someone’s favorite, you can practically hear consumer demand groaning under the weight of all of this material.

That said, I think Madrox avoids the brand of “yet another X-book” in a number of ways.

Jamie Madrox, the central character, is one of the few remaining players in the mutant canon without the kind of convoluted back story that can repel new or casual readers. With only a handful of scattered appearances in the X-Men titles and a short but significant run in X-Factor to his credit, there’s plenty of fresh ground to explore with the character.

He’s also been placed in one of the more promising corners of the Marvel Universe, the Mutant Town neighborhood of New York City. It’s essentially a mutant ghetto, used to striking effect in the ongoing District X.

Lastly, Madrox is being written by Peter David, who was responsible for Jamie’s run in X-Factor. David’s fondness for the character is obvious, and he makes innovative use of Jamie’s fairly straightforward abilities.

Jaime is a mutant who was raised in isolation. When he’s hit or falls, he creates physical duplicates of himself. Participation in the government-sponsored mutant strike force X-Factor and a brief affiliation with Charles Xavier’s X-Corps aside, he’s stayed on the sidelines of the mutant fray. Now he’s set up shop in Mutant Town as a private investigator. Lacking any training in that field, he’s sent duplicates out into the world to acquire skills and knowledge; when they return, he re-absorbs them, gaining their experience.

Someone has tried to murder one of the duplicates. As the badly wounded copy makes his way back to the original, Jaime reunites with two of his X-Factor associates, smarter-than-he-looks bruiser Guido Carosella (“Strong Guy”) and conflicted lycanthropic ingénue Rahne Sinclair (“Wolfsbane”).

This issue is devoted to establishing the scenario, the setting, and the character dynamics, and it does so very effectively. David has a way of explaining given circumstances without resorting to info-dump, and he gives his cast distinct voices. David’s trademark humor is in evidence, but it’s rooted in character and modulated to suit the noir-detective story mechanics. (Even David can’t seem to resist the siren call of the France Joke, though. Can we issue a moratorium on those?)

Art by Pablo Raimondi and Drew Hennessy nicely support David’s work. It’s a fairly talky issue, but they make the most of the visual opportunities. The urban setting and the oddities of Mutant Town are nicely showcased, and the visual representation of Jaime absorbing a duplicate’s memories is particularly impressive. Special credit should go to colorist Brian Reber, who avoids the default noir color palette. He resists the overly shadowy, washed-out quality that can serve as visual shorthand for detective stories. I particularly like the faint red haze in a sequence in a Mutant Town bar.

Madrox #1 is a very solid first chapter for a five-part mini-series. David has created a promising scenario highlighting interesting, underused characters. While it may be another mutant book, it has a solid reason for being, and it’s definitely worth a look. (Added points for quote-checking Sondheim. How cool is that?)

Okay, I don’t talk about them often, and I don’t plan to, because their lawyers go over this stuff with a fine-toothed comb, but I had a weird pet moment at lunch.

Anyway, a few years ago today, our cat passed away. We loved her like crazy, and it was horrible when we finally had to let her go.

So, today, one of our current cats (it took a squadron of four-legged animals to replace the aforementioned feline), the incredibly sweet but really stupid one, got into a cabinet she never gives a second thought to. In this cabinet are some cat toys that belonged to the dear departed. So, the current cat pulls out the departed cat’s toys (little stuffed fish) and puts them on the dining room table on the anniversary of departed cat’s death.

What is it about cats that they can be spooky and comforting at the same time?

Okay, enough of that. Thanks for your indulgence.

Well, I am, thanks to the Comic Queen. She has waved her sceptre and called for a day when Marvel might go a week without dumping a new mutant book on the market.

If you think she’s exaggerating, stop by the Marvel First Looks over at Comic Continuum. Next week brings mother, son, and daughter, all at the same time (not to mention astonishing and uncanny offerings). In a move that seems specifically designed to give Paul O’Brien a nervous disorder, they heaved this onto the stack, too.

(In all fairness, there is some good among the glut of X-titles. I like Mystique, District X, Madrox, and Astonishing a lot.)