Somebody knows me far too well . . .

I just received this as a holiday gift:

Thank you, J.

Let the SuperDickery commence.

Final Panel, New Gods #6, "The Glory Boat"

My piece on the Jack Kirby panel above is now up at Kirb Your Enthusiasm at HiLowBrow.com.

Let me know what you think.

. . . on hiatus for a little while . . .

. . . until I finish reading this 10 or 11 times . . .

I guess this means she's officially an orphan again

Why reading comic books will always be a sign of immaturity -- Part 2

From today's New York Daily News about the resurrection of Barry (Flash) Allen:

"That's the point of comics - they don't have to die, because they're fictional creations," said Grant Morrison, one of the writers behind the comeback. "We can do anything with them, and we can make them come back and make them defy death," Morrison said. "And that's why people read comics, to get away from the way life works, which is quite cruel and unheroic and ends in death."

Note to Grant Morrison: I define "unheroic" as any situation where death is meaningless. If so-called "characters" can be brought back from the dead, then they are risking nothing, and your so-called character-driven universe is populated by the superhero equivalent of sitcom regulars who never change. And I read comics for the same reason I read serious fiction: not to escape from the way life works but to experience the way life works from a different perspective.

Congratulations, Grant. In three sentences, you have confirmed that your chosen field of "creativity" is the equivalent of a computer game with an eternal reset button.

And with that thought in mind, which Wayne are you going to reveal as the villain behind Batman RIP: Thomas or Martha? And tell us again why we should care when J'onn J'onzz gets burned to a crisp in Final Crisis #1?

The Burden of Dreams, or, Some Thoughts on Ed Brubaker's Captain America Run

I’ve re-read the entire Brubaker run from 1 to 36, and it truly is a novel, folks. You can see the whole story spinning out from that first issue’s offhand remark from Cap to the effect that “I don’t even know if I CAN die.” Everything that comes after that is just one long Miled Davis riff on death and resurrection, first with Bucky Barnes/the Winter Soldier, and then Cap himself.

(Two high points in the run for me: the Christmas special, starring Bucky, and (oddly enough) the House of M crossover, which takes its cue from another of Cap’s throwaway lines about missing the Moon Landing: “It’s what I was created for.” There's no better evidence than this issue of how a smart writer can use an imprint-wide crossover to create something touching, resonant and true with an iconic character like Steve Rogers.)

I’ve already gone into what I think Brubaker is doing plotwise. As of issue 36, elements of my prediction are starting to take shape. And yes, I’m a little nervous because Brubaker has vowed that there are no clones involved, so I may be heading for another Oscar Prediction Hell. But I still like my odds, and judging from the cover of issue 39 above, I won’t have long to wait to see how wrong right I was.

So what is Brubaker doing thematically? He’s facing head-on the question that’s been dogging the character since Steranko did his post-Kirby reboot: who is Captain America? The question got a pass while Kirby was in the driver's seat because, well, it was Kirby on Captain America, and who questions a Formula One winner like that? But once other creators and artists came into the mix (and as World War II became four, then five, then six decades distant), the questions started getting bigger and the character, paradoxically, smaller: is he a symbol of the country or the country’s values? Is he the flag or what the flag stands for? Is he (gulp) Marvel’s answer to Superman?

I’d say yes to the last question if the version of Superman we’re talking about is Grant Morrison’s All-Star version, which is (in my Batman-fan-forever opinion) the gold standard for Kal-El. The problem is, so far? With one exception (see below), the various pre-Brubaker versions of Steve Rogers haven’t come anywhere near gold, and that includes Steranko’s run (way too short) and the Marvel Knights volume (which I loved but seemingly nobody else bought or -- more importantly -- bought into).

I think Brubaker is aware of this, and he’s doing two things in order to define the character for the 21st century. He’s removed Cap from the Marvel playing field, which like Jimmy Stewart's nightmare descent into Potterville has become a horrifying vision of what Cap's friends, his allies, and his country are now, without their shield-carrying George Bailey saving them from Nazis like the Red Skull. And he’s defining the character by showing what happens when somebody tries to fill Cap’s flag-covered tunic, and how much more than just fisticuffs is required to, in a sense, bear the burden of the dream. You can see it in the current issue where Bucky tries to quell a riot and nobody believes he’s Cap. By showing you the dimensions of the hole, Brubaker is defining the size and characteristics of the missing monument. He's not crowding the field with four replacement versions; he's showing you what happens when the kid sidekick tries to take on the mantle of his adult mentor, and how impossibly hard it is to do. If there's a better way of making the statement "There is only one Captain America," I can't think of one. And what makes it work is character, specifically the character of resurrected Bucky. It sure adds a lot when the guy playing Robin to Cap’s Batman is the single most intriguing reboot to come out of either major comic company since Moore's Swamp Thing, Morrison's Doom Patrol and, well, the Stern/Byrne re-imagining of Cap from 1980 (and how in the world could I have forgotten that one? Prior to Brubaker, the best post-Kirby Cap run ever).

Part and parcel of all this: the debate about Bucky carrying a gun as Cap.2, which is really a debate about whether Captain America The Icon should be carrying and using a gun. The writer in me wants to think that Brubaker planned for this –- that he anticipated the terms of the debate and how the back and forth would in essence ask the question he’s been asking since issue #1: who is this guy? And even if it wasn't deliberate, it's evidence that Brubaker is asking the right things subconsciously, because the situations he's setting up have the deep resonance of the best drama, which is always more concerned with hard questions instead of easy answers.

If I had to guess (and you know I’m going to), the question at the heart of Cap’s identity as a man and as a symbol is going to get answered only (a) when Bucky tries to be Cap and fails, possibly at the expense of someone’s life (in a sense, we're going to watch this Cap suffer the loss of his own personal Bucky) and (b) when Cap comes back from being offstage for so long, and like a Shakespearean tragic hero shows us how his absence has changed him for the better. (Think Hamlet disappearing for all of Act IV, or post-storm Lear awakening to see his daughter. Bucky as Cordelia, anyone?)

I still think that Cap is going to come back under the direct mind control of the Red Skull. And Bucky is going to be the only one who sees it. Everyone else is going to see the monument, but Bucky will see the man. And there will definitely be a battle between them -- an all-or-nothing showdown which will mirror Cap’s fight with the Winter Soldier in issue #14, except that the roles will be reversed: Bucky will help Cap defeat the Skull's mind control and return to reality by echoing the words Cap used to him in that issue: "Remember who you are." Call that one my latest prediction.

One last question: will Bucky help Cap remember who he is by dying again, at the hands of the Red Skull? Or sacrificing himself and killing the Skull at the same time? That would make dramatic sense, wouldn’t it? (Bucky as Cordelia, anyone?) Because isn’t that who Cap is -- the one who survived when Bucky didn’t?

It's Valentine's Day, Charlie Brown!!!!!

Ain't love grand?

Hi! I'm Sarah Michelle Gellar! I'm here in my pretty little Valentine's Day number to guide you through the 11 Commandments of Love and Romance. Do you want to know how to win a man like a sideshow prize? Do you want to become fulfilled, desired, and happier than a heroin addict? Do you want to be so deliriously happy that you throw up in your own mouth whenever "he" touches you?


Then just follow these 11 easy rules!



1. Listen to what men are really saying. When a guy says "Do this, or it's over," what he's really saying is, "The only way I'll ever go out with you is if you do exactly what I say."

The price of love is total obedience.

2. When men get caught cheating, it's always the woman's fault. You just know that ten seconds before Marion turned around, Jack was telling the cab driver to head for the Empire Hotel.

It's all that slut Connie's fault--honest!!

3. Every heart needs a second home.

Because the home it has in my chest

is emptier than my brain.

4. The day youth becomes an obstacle to love is the day alcohol becomes an obstacle to inebriation.

Tell it to Woody Allen.

5. An office romance is its own punishment.

From the memoirs of Condoleeza Rice.

6. Men who say they don't want your pity will still settle for your body.

Men who say they don't want your body? Gay.

7. Every skirt-chasing flirt needs an anchor. Do yourself a favor and tie him to one, okay?

"I love the guy . . . the way

the turkey loves the axe."

8. Save the L Word for the right moment. Nothing ruins an affair more than dropping the word "love" into a romantic evening that reminds your honey of the time her father took her to that lighthouse when she was 12.

Hey look--it's Stephanie Powers!

9. In any group of three people, there is at least one whore. The operative words here being "at least".

Pick out the whore in this picture.

Hint: it's the one with the pallette.

10. Don't become a slave to unreasonable expectations.

Tough luck honey -- that's all that's out there.

11. And whatever you do, never -- NEVER -- go out with Batman. You'll always come in second.

Still the single best comic book panel in history.

What Marriage? - Part 2

Best. Mashup. Ever.

What marriage?

From Diesel Sweeties:

Why reading comic books will always be a sign of immaturity

Those of you with real lives may not have heard that Peter (Spider-Man) Parker's 20-year-old marriage to Mary Jane Watson has been retroactively erased from current Marvel continuity. Why? Because stories about married guys are not as dramatic as stories about single guys who could be sleeping around.

You think I'm kidding? Check out this interview with Marvel Editor-In-Chief Joe Quesada, and try to think of all the unspoken things which the phrase "soap opera" is code for:

The golden era of Spider-Man gave us things we had never seen in a comic before. We had a lovable loser as the hero, a character with some incredible failings, but an amazing amount of heart. “With great power there must also come great responsibility” was his motto, but at the very core of what made Spider-Man stories great and, more importantly, different, was the fantastic soap opera and the cast of characters and villains in Peter Parker’s life. Spider-Man stories revolutionized the comic book super hero because the stories were about Peter Parker; Spider-Man was secondary. This was a big shift from a world in which Superman and Batman were what was important. Clark and Bruce were just facades. And let me add, sometimes Spider-Man would lose against the bad guy and sometimes Spider-Man wouldn’t make the right decision. These were revolutionary ideas for a super hero comic at the time.

What really made Spidey unique wasn’t so much his powers or his costume, sure those were cool things, but what really made him unique was that it was about the guy inside the costume and the soap opera that was his life. Peter could have had a whole different set of powers and it still would have been a ground breaking comic because in the end, that’s not what made Spider-Man stories different. So, with every little bit of the trappings of his life that got chipped away, more and more of the soap opera dwindled.

When Peter Parker got married, it caused the character to be cut off from many of the social situations and settings that put him at conflict with his family, friends, and especially the girl he was dating. Suddenly, something as simple as the tension he had with Felicia Hardy was completely defused; if Peter ever gave in to temptation or even considered it, he would be, in the eyes of the fans, the lousiest guy in the world. It became harder to place Peter in situations where he could hang out with other single characters, without him seeming like the oldest person in the room, even if he wasn’t. And whatever nerdish sex appeal he possessed, we had to tread very carefully. He became the perpetual “designated driver.” Sure, Peter could hang around with other married folk -- I bet that would be exciting!

Let me try to put this as plainly as I can, and let’s be really honest here, let’s really look at marriage for a second. I'll get personal, for a moment. I have an incredible marriage and a fantastic kid, but there is no question that my life was much more story-worthy when I was single. Was I happier? Absolutely not. Was my life a better story from a drama sense? Ummmm, yeah. It had many more twists and turns and theater and was a bit of a mess. Now let me say, not everyone, but for most: When people get married, they tend to settle down -- life slows down and you gain different responsibilities, grown-up responsibilities, boring responsibilities. You go out to dinner less, see fewer movies, your social life is curtailed and revolves, as it should, around your significant other. In short, life hands you a mini van. While marriage makes for an okay story, there is less drama in a (healthy) marriage than in a single relationship. That’s one of the many reason we get married -- we want stability, we want comfort, we want kids, etc., etc. No one gets married because they want more drama in their life. What’s good for one’s life doesn’t always make for great stories when the heart of your character’s universe is drama. From a writer and artist’s point of view, the people who are creating the stories, it’s like giving Daredevil his eyesight back. It works for a short time and eventually erodes at the foundation of the character and what makes them unique. We all want Peter to catch a break and to settle down and have happiness in his life, but that isn’t really what we want. If that actually happened, people would stop caring about Spider-Man.

Bottom line, there are so many things that twentysomethings are doing with their lives that a married Peter can’t. He needs to be a single guy. Sure, he can have a girlfriend -- that adds something to his story -- but a married Peter just cuts off too many avenues for good soap opera. Could you have soap opera within a marriage? Sure. But after a while, there’s only so much tension you can bring into Peter and MJ’s marriage before you make him seem like a louse of a husband, or her, like a bickering wife. In contrast, you can only play them as a happy-go-lucky couple for so long -- that adds up to zero tension within the relationship and takes away a crucial element of Spider-Man stories: the soap opera.

Where to begin? No one gets married because they want more drama in their life. Okay, but that doesn't mean there is no drama or no soap opera in a marriage. For instance: guy with secret identity marries actress model and watches her career take off while his alter ego still gets slagged in the Daily Bugle. You don't think there's drama in that? Or how about this: guy with radioactive blood gets wife pregnant and there's a chance the kid will (fill in horrible blank here). That's not dramatic? Of course it's dramatic. It's just not adolescent drama. It's adult drama. Hence the title of this post.

Someone please tell me how "with great power comes great responsibility" is not dramatically enhanced by taking on the responsibility of a marriage. And the responsibility of fatherhood. If the soap opera is Peter Parker as a single guy, and marriage has been totally ruled out by editorial fiat, then your so-called "drama" is a succession of affairs that will never lead anywhere because Ye Editor has decreed that Spider-Man is not Spider-Man unless he's 20 and single. Which says to me The Powers That Be who are currently in charge of Marvel stopped relating to the real world when they were 20 and single. Hence the title of this post.

Look--I understand that these characters are marketable properties, I understand that you have to make them (how I hate this word) relatable to new audiences. And having six or seven decades of continuity means you have to figure out an accommodation between real-world time and comic book time. DC has chosen multiple universes and multiple reboots (the latest of which is next year with the laughable word "Final" in the title). Based on what's happening at Marvel, they're going with reboot (Spidey) as well as Next Generation (Bucky becoming Captain America. Maybe). There is of course a third choice neither of the Big Two has considered: anchoring certain characters in a strict real-world timeline, so that the JSA and Captain America would always be in the 40's and 50's, Dr Strange would be (so totally) Sixties, and Dazzler stuck in the 80's (duh). Do you want to see The Shadow anywhere but in the 30's? Not me. Certain characters only work as reflections of certain time periods; I say you should take that into consideration when creating/rebooting/adapting some of those properties.

But what about the tentpoles like Superman or Batman? Will we ever see Dick Grayson wear the cowl? Hell no-- and given Dan Didio's dislike of the character, we're lucky to be still seeing him alive. The bottom line here is that, in certain cases, what you think is going to be a symphony with movements will always end up being a broken record, and the words "an event which will change everything" will continue to be as accurate as "I did not sleep with that woman" or "I am not a crook."

What does this mean for the future of comics? Stagnation and irrelevance. (And let's not talk about what it means for all the female supporting characters in the upcoming Spider-Man soap opera, who have now been relegated to the status of those who sleep with Peter, those who don't sleep with Peter, and those who want to marry Peter but it'll never happen. Yeah, like that's gonna attract female readers.)

What does this mean for me? I'll be reading more novels, thank you. Novels about married people.

And what does this say about the current editorial direction of both Marvel and DC? It says they both have the ongoing opportunity to make their characters grow and change like real people and they consistently and constantly refuse to do it. Such a great opportunity, too--a chance to do something dramatically that no one has ever tried to do before. And it will never happen. Hence the title of this post.

Face it, tiger--you just lost your fan base.

Captain America prediction

The Red Skull is currently inhabiting the body of Aleksandr Lukin.

Arnin Zola is working with the Red Skull.

Zola's specialty is cloning.

There's a blacked out text area in the published script for Captain America #25 when he's shot by Sharon Carter.

Here's what I think happened in that blacked-out portion: Sharon extracted Cap's DNA. Which is why the dead body of Steve Rogers ended up looking like his 98-pound-weakling pre-Super-Soldier self.

The DNA is being used by Zola to make a new Cap body.

That Cap body is going to house the mind of the Red Skull AND Steve Rogers, with the Skull in total control (for now).

Because the whole point of the Red Skull is to make Cap watch helplessly as all hell breaks loose. Whatever the Skull's plans have been, they ALWAYS involved Cap being a helpless witness to tragedy.

Which also means that at some point, this Cap clone is going to eventually face off against Bucky as the new Captain America. At the pace Brubaker is writing this? We're looking at a climactic battle in issue #50.

There. I've said it.

Someone who does what he can

Why do I like the two-issue JLA/Hitman special?

Because it stars a dead DC character who has stayed dead, and it makes you feel like his death is a loss.

Because the JLA members are five different characters, and not the author's voice lettered into five different speech balloons.

And because it's one of the best things you'll ever read about Superman (It's also the best Wonder Woman currently on the stands. The three page dialogue with her and Superman nails them both. Compare it to Judd Winick's Superman/Wonder Woman scene in the Black Canary/Green Arrow Wedding Special, and try not to weep for what passes as "writing" in the current DCVerse. Go ahead, try. I dare you. )

Like any other talented mortal, Garth Ennis fluctuates between writing and typing. (Preacher? Writing. Wormwood? Typing. The Boys? A little of both.) Put this one firmly in the Writing pile. Put it right up there with Hitman #34.

Captain America Does Green Lantern/Green Arrow

So is Cap really dead? Probably not.

Buried inside Mark Millar’s original proposal for Civil War is the following on the fate of Captain America. Millar proposes something called Doom tech which would

eliminate every superpower in the world . . . It’s right here we have Cap dropped into the situation as he heroically defends his fellow heroes, climbing inside and closing the whole thing down. Huge explosion and smoke everywhere followed by the awe on the faces of the heroes he saved as we see skinny Steve Rogers lying here stripped of his powers . . .

Cut to the epilogues and we basically set up the new Marvel Universe here with Bucky taking over as the new Cap . . . [and then] before we close the whole thing with Nick Fury talking to the 97lb Steve Rogers in the closing pages . . . as he admits that, despite everything, he’s kind of excited to get his life back again. He’s heading out to discover America and rediscover himself and Nick smiles. Steve hopes he isn’t being selfish and Nick says no way. “One Hell of a tour of duty you just had, soldier”, he tells Steve and Steve just smiles. They salute and Steve Rogers, skinny as a rake, walks off into the sunset like all the best heroes should.

THE UPSHOT: Winter Soldier as Cap for a year before Steve gets the call and gets revitalized for the movie.

Revitalized for the movie. DisgustedSigh.wav.

Meanwhile, Cap crisscrosses America driving a beat-up truck in a Neal Adams-drawn 12-issue-miniseries, battling thinly disguised caricatures of the current Vice President. Y'know, like this:

The first comic book I remember reading

Cover date October 1957, which means it probably came out in the summer sometime. Don't remember where it was purchased, but if it was summer, then I was in Ocean Bluff, Massachusetts, which means it was bought either at Bessie's General Store or Winship's (both of which, like my innocence, disappeared ages ago).

I still have a vivid memory of the 8-page cover story, in which Batman and Robin hopped from country to country chasing a villain who disguised himself by wearing the head of an alligator. I read it over and over again till the staples came out of the spine. At some point I let my 4-year-old brother Kevin borrow it and then yelled at him for bending the cover back, thus passing the one infallible test which separates the collector from the dilettante.

The Funeral of Captain America

So Cap gets his Arlington funeral this week, as the Associated Press reported, complete with stunning John Cassaday art:

It's not the first time Cap has died (Steranko killed him off in a memorable arc in which it was revealed that the God of Thunder is susceptible to knockout gas), and it may not be the last, but give Marvel (and Cap writer Ed Brubaker) credit for giving this death the kind of weight and significance that makes it feel like it could be the real thing.

Will Marvel bring him back? Well, they brought back Bucky. And you can make a case that Steve Rogers has done nothing but come back from the dead since he was reintroduced to the MarvelVerse in Avengers #4. When I bought that issue, I didn't know who the hell he was. But my Dad did. "Captain America? Christ Almighty!" he said, "I used to have all those comic books when I was a kid, until your grandmother threw them out." (This was about two years before my mother threw out all my comics. Some experiences truly are cross-generational.)



At the time, there was a 20-year gap between Cap's last official appearance at the end of World War II and his revival as an Avenger, which is next to nothing in comic book years, and that's probably why the man-out-of-time facet of Cap's character took another 20 years to be played with by writers like Frank Miller, who refers to Cap as "the soldier" in his Daredevil run and portrays him as a man for whom the sound of helicopters is a constant reminder of how out of place he feels in these days of modern times. He is, after all (as my father would be the first to remind me), a man who made his entry into the world by punching Adolf Hitler in the face:




Talk about your wish-fulfilment fantasies, huh? I guess something analogous would be like, oh, I don't know--maybe seeing Batman hunt down Osama Bin Laden. (Like that's ever gonna happen. Oh wait.)

What's interesting to me is that, since Cap is a child of the 40's, his death implies a critique on a set of values from that era in a way that his resurrection and survival never did. Created during a time of war, Steve (Captain America) Rogers wasn't a symbol of anything more than the national desire to kick Nazi ass. It's only after the war is over that his symbolic nature becomes confusing or questionable. So perhaps it's fitting that the week of Cap's funeral (which also occurs during a time of war) sees the reissue of one of the best, if briefest, re-envisionings of Steve Rogers, the Roger Stern/John Byrne run:

Why did I like this run so much? Because it not only dealt with Cap's history and continuity, it dealt with the idea-of-America part of his character that, to me, is what makes him interesting, inspirational, and potentially tragic. It opens up all kinds of stories revolving around the nature of patriotism, nationalism, and obedience to authority; and whatever your opinion of Civil War, putting Cap on the anti-government side feels exactly right. (My opinion of Civil War? Great concept; lousy execution. For something that was supposed to be politically relevant, it's totally ironic and fitting that it's the epilogue--Cap's death--which is resonating more with the public-at-large than the actual issues leading up to that death. Although, can I just say? Tony Stark is a dick.)



To my mind, the flag and the shield make Cap's death more (shall we say) thought-provoking and socially relevant than the death of Superman. Is it a symbol of the death of the New Deal? The death of conscience? The end of nationalism? --patriotism? --jingoism? The death of the dream? (What dream?) Or is it, like an amendment to the Constitution, part of an ongoing, on-growing experiment in government?

In the end, it's like any other life--now that it's over, we try to figure out what it all means.


So where do I stand on the "Will they bring Cap back?" question. I'd like to think that Cap will stay dead because freedom demands sacrifice--because soldiers give their lives in every age for the values of this country. But mostly, I'd like him to stay dead because that's what happens to real people. And to me, Captain America was real.

It's About Fecking Time

Now if only this could have happened about a week before Civil War started . . .

Euripides' First Law

There's a review of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer which describes the film this way: "It's miscast, underwritten, muddily shot, and slackly paced, but there's something captivating about its unabashed shittiness." I don't know about you, but when I want to be captivated by unabashed shittiness, the last thing in the world I think of doing is revisiting one of the pleasures of my youth after it's been manhandled by the writer of My Super Ex-Girlfriend, the producer of Elektra, and the director of Taxi with Queen Latifah and Jimmy Fallon. I didn't see the first FF movie, and I have no intention of seeing this one. So instead of running out to the half-price 11 AM show at the AMC in on 42nd Street, I lugged my archive edition of the Fantastic Four to Ozzie's on 5th Ave and read these issues over morning coffee and a blueberry muffin:



























Initial reaction: there's a complete disconnect in my head between the epic nature of this storyline and the fact that it's confined to two issues. And that includes one of those iconic Kirby Photoshop-before-there-was-Photoshop splash pages. Two issues that contain enough material for a miniseries -- it's like the equivalent of one of those not-a-word-wasted Cornell Woolrich short stories that get Hitchcocked into a two-hour movie. Two issues. In today's comic marketplace, a storyline like this would either be paced for the 6-issue trade or stretched out for the 12-issue hardcover. And it would have four artists. And the last issue would ship a year after the second-to-last issue. (Talk about your unabashed shittiness.)

The other thing that struck me was how (blanket generality alert) the direction of storytelling in all media everywhere seems to progress as a rule from larger-than-life to smaller-than-life, as if there's a trade-off to be had when realism enters the picture. Call this Euripides' First Law: when myth is treated realistically, not only does it lose its mythic stature, but it threatens to become a sour and bitter undermining of everything that the original myth stood for. Which is not to say that realism is a bad thing: about the best example of the Euripides approach to comic myth is Watchmen, and it don't get much better than that, folks. But just like not every artist is a Kirby, not every writer is an Alan Moore, although you wouldn't know it to look at all the Moorish (and Millerish) memes that have infected comics over the last 20 years under the guise of "exploring" this or that character or event.

Remember the lesson of Star Trek. If Realism is the termite in the church of myth, then looking at what's happened to the Fantastic Four since the days of Lee and Kirby is like looking at what happened to Star Trek since the days of Roddenberry. The original series (talk about mythic) has melodramatic music accenting every moment of tension and excitement; technobabble is at a minimum; there's an undercurrent of primitive energy that can only be described as sexy. And every series from Next Generation on took the myth further and further from that energy source -- trading the melodramatic horns for hushed violins, upping the technobabble to the level of a separate character, and shrouding everything in reverence. But since by then the termites had eaten away every trace of divinity from the Gods, the church of Kirk, Bones and Spock was empty of all but worshippers.

Which is to say that the blessing and the curse of exploring is that you end up with maps that say "Here is a crack house" instead of "Here there be dragons." Personally, if I have a choice? I'll take the dragons: