Someday, somebody's gonna ask you a question that you should say "yes" to...
- Rhett Miller, "Question"

"What's So Funny?"
Joe Kelly's final issue of Superboy was this great little story narrated by the Joker called "Die Hard Laughing." In it The Creeper -- whom some of you may remember from the rather lackluster Action Comics #809 -- get's infected with the same toxin that made the Joker the deranged comic hack we know and... know, but instead of making with the ha-ha, he becomes this deadly serious sociopath. In the end, Superboy discovers that the cure to the Creeper's condition is to make him laugh, which proves difficult for the usually quippy boy o' steel, because he just came back from this devastating war where he watched his friend die and he's having trouble seeing the humor in anything.

Actually, it's a lot like Paul Jenkin's first issue of Peter Parker: Spider-Man, "The Best Medicine," where Peter visits the grave of his dearly departed Uncle Ben to ask the old man that made him the lame-ass punster we know and love how he can find a way to laugh again now that his gorgeous supermodel wife got all blowed up. Of course, nine issues later, it turns out she's still alive. Just like how Superboy's buddy didn't really die. There's two things you can say about Death in comic books: It don't amount to much, but damn if she ain't a chick you'd like to spend an afternoon with...

Crap. This is another one of those situations where I've kind of lost track of my point somewhere. (Why do I relate to the world through story?)

I guess all I really wanted to say is that I love to laugh (but then again, who doesn't? How many people do you see chuckling out loud and then shrieking "Damn it! Make it stop!!!"?) I love a good joke, but I've been having the hardest time coming up with any today.

I also find myself wondering about the first joke in Judeo-Christian human history.

Imagine that you're Adam or Eve (or Lilith or Winifred for that matter) and you've been kicked out of Paradise. You had a cherry gig, but you've screwed it all up, and now it's going to be cold, it's going to be grey, and it's going to last you for the rest of eternity. My question is this: At which point did one of them turn to the other and ask "Why did the chicken cross the road?"

How long was it before it was okay to laugh again?

"What If the Amazing Spider-Man Was Black?"
So every year the English department has this short story contest, and every year I submit something. I never win, but that's not the point. The point is that I'm putting stuff out there for evaluation that's somewhere higher than blogging or being grading, but below actually trying to get published. I'm planning on submitting my short story about the black intern at Marvel Comics, but there's something that still bothers me about the story (other than the pedantic manner of Christopher Priest's little bit at the end, or the seeming uselessness of the Girl Who Works at the Coffee Shop to the story, not to mention most of Reggie's dialogue): the title.

Who can take a story seriously when it's actually entitled "What If the Amazing Spider-Man was Black?" As you will recall, I'd originally planned on calling it "The White Tiger and the Spectacular Sucka-Man Fistfight in Jersey," but first of all, that's too derivative, secondly, my research revealed that the Black Panther's original name was going to be "the Coal Tiger" not "the White Tiger" and "The Coal Tiger and the Spectacular Sucka-Man" doesn't evoke the same sense of my themes as I'd like, and finally, I think that title gives away the ending a bit, don't you?

I mean, "What If the Amazing Spider-Man was Black?" is a horrible title on its own, but I think when you read the section of the story in which that very question is asked, it almost makes it okay. Of course, if you're going to title your story after a line within it, when the reader reads that line, you want them to go Oh! That's why it's titled that! and not Well... I guess that almost makes the title okay... A little...

Anyone have any suggestions? Anything at all? Seriously, people, I'm starting to wonder why I bothered re-establishing a comment system here...

"What an English Ass!"
Seriously, Prewitt. Say "Rohjaz" out loud. is there anyway to pronounce it that doesn't sound just like some British guy saying "Rogers"? How pissed should we be?

Oh, and I checked an annotated bibliography of 1602 #1, and this geek punk's known from the beginning.

We're idiots.

"What About Betty?"
Jeph Loeb's got this crazy notion that nobody thinks about Gwen Stacy anymore. He obviously doesn't actually read any of the Spider-books, because Peter's whining about her all the freaking time.

You know which of Spidey's old flames no one ever talks about? Poor Betty Brant. Here's hoping Elizabeth Banks'll change that come July.

"What Are You? High?"
I have this awful feeling that I'm never going to see you again.

It's not a rational feeling, because come on, how crazy is that?! but it's there all the same, and to be honest, it's kind of nice to own up to one of these things once in a while.

Maybe I've found my smile after all.

What the hell ever happened to my Old 97's CD...?