Loved the Mallah and the Brain romance. Loved it. What don't you like about it, just out of curiousity, Chad?

Is this a trick question, DKK? For one thing, before I realized the unearthly cool of Gorilla Man (Marvel), the only M-60 toting talking gorilla around was Mallah, and he was a badass (first intro for me, the NEW TEEN TITANS three-part hunting of the murderers of the Doom Patrol by Wolfman and Perez).

Also, the Brain, though not as cool as TOMB OF DRACULA's Doctor Sun, was at least a brain in a jar super-evil-genius.

Now, to my mind, Mallah and the Brain were two severely wicked villains with a high moral code...in fact, they'd have been perfect as "professional rivals" of the Suicide Squad, with their Brotherhood of Evil.

What I dug about them was their purely criminal/mercenary mentality, their willingness to lay it all on the line. Shrewd instead of intelligent, vicious instead of artful, living in an amoral villain universe.

Now, Morrison's "joke" has become rule, a point picked up by the comic culture and made concrete, like the Rhino is always a clod, like the Hulk suffers from MPD, like Cyclops is an asshole, like Superman is a dimwit and a government tool, like Black Adam is not a ripped-off Namor (but at least Namor as he should be), like Barry Allen is "dead", and so on.

So no one can use Mallah or the Brain without this being an issue. I think Gorilla Grodd just solved this problem by beating the two of them to death in SALVATION RUN (rumor?). Probably just as well. Thanks Grant Morrison.

You know, if we had a thread called "Writers who totally rule!" I'd name Geoff Johns.

And I'd have to come right over here and put his name as well.

As excellent as he can be, his puerile sensibilities are sometimes displayed as destructive...kind of like when I was a kid, my grandmother told me not to hit the old rotting wood fence at the edge of the yard, using my "sword" (a stick), breaking the little slats. But see, I was Flash Gordon fighting a robot army, so I had to hit the fence and break it, because it COULD be broken by my little punk ass. And Johns has that kind of hard-headedness...he knows the condition of some of these characters is tentative, but if he gets wind they are free to be broken, he breaks them in the most gore-laden, insensitive manner available.

And I'd like him to be the one to say, "No. I may not care about Earth 2 Superman enough NOT to have him beaten to death by Superboy, but I'm going to spare comics another horrible decision and allow that Kal-L might still be alive, somewhere, because this is comics and no matter how Superman's death goes down, somebody can easily bring him back, and knowing that defuses the poignancy of the death. So why do it? Why not make the fans wonder IF he's dead or not? Doesn't that carry more weight? He's SUPERMAN...after all."

No, I like JMS too.

Good to know !  I thought I was the only one !

In my opinion - I don't think it's "suitable", ever to have the violence turned up to 11. A "long view" of a person getting shot - or some off-panel violence is plenty.

Well said !