Outstanding achievement in the field of excellence

 Woohoo! I admit I was worried about my chances of qualifying for the Microsoft Excel World Championship this year, with not having done all that great in the monthly competitions. That left me needing to get through the big qualification round to select the remaining 68 competitors to join the 60 who'd already qualified. And since it's divided into regions, I had to be in the top 22 Europeans (out of 194 entrants), excluding the lucky people who'd already secured their place and could just take part in this final challenge for the fun of it.

And maybe 'fun' isn't the word. After the hour's time limit was finished, I was a LOT more worried about my chances of qualifying! But I needn't have been - it turns out the tasks really were unspeakably difficult, and nobody (not even the REALLY great guy on the livestream who always shows us all how it's done) got close to the maximum 10,000 points. My measly 4,400 was enough to put me in European 6th place, provisionally.

It might still be corrected before the final results are announced, but that should be enough to guarantee me a third consecutive prestigious place in the grand final round of 128!

Now, can I get beyond that first round for the first time? I just have to hope for a lucky draw, avoiding the top seeds...

I also wish I could win a Nobel Prize

I'm sort of almost acquainted with Demis Hassabis, after all. I know who he is, and he might if prompted recollect meeting me and even having at least one conversation. So I'm kind of envious that he's going around winning Nobel Prizes and I haven't won anything for absolutely ages. Except an online chess match earlier this evening, but that's not quite the same.

Although to be fair, he only won a quarter of a Nobel Prize: "The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 was awarded with one half to David Baker “for computational protein design” and the other half jointly to Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper “for protein structure prediction”."

And what does predicting protein structure actually help with? My lack of understanding of the basic fundamentals of this area of knowledge is another thing that annoys me. Someone give me some kind of award, quickly, or I'm just going to feel terribly inferior!

I wish I was musical

 You know how Paul McCartney says he dreamed the tune to Yesterday? I mean, obviously he's just making that up so we'll think he's cool, and it's a pretty dull tune anyway, but the point is that I can dream cool music too, and sometimes wake up with a tune in my head that isn't totally stolen from whatever most recent song I've heard on the radio.

But not knowing anything about music, I can't exactly write it down or preserve it for posterity when I do dream something beautifully melodic. I suppose I could record myself, if I figured out a good way to do that on my phone, but I don't think it'd sound so good. I'd like to transcribe these things and give them to someone musically talented to reconstruct and tell me where I plagiarized it from.

This morning, for example, I tried to preserve the song in my head by writing down that it was basically the All Saints song Never Ever, but in a higher key, and had the really catchy line "You've been the beating of my heart for so long" or something similar. But after humming it all morning, I can't recapture what it sounded like now, so the world has been deprived of another masterpiece.

Further updates

 I haven't written enough in this blog recently, and can quantify how much I haven't written by following up the last-but-two post to say I've now watched the first 24 episodes of The Owl House (one a day), and it's even better than I thought after having watched the first nine! I really admire the clever writing that makes it feel like each episode is a one-off story disconnected from any other, but still never just resettles into the status quo, instead subtly changing and developing as the saga continues. I wish I could write like that. Or at all.

In other news, I seem to have become the head of a puppet theatre troupe, my qualifications being that I "seem to know what I'm doing". This is a bit worrying, really, because I genuinely don't. It's all going to be a horrible disaster, but never mind.

Secret Origins

 That comic disaster in the bath prompts me in multiple ways to talk about reason number five hundred and thirty-seven why I think "ALVINNN!!! and the Chipmunks" is the world's finest cartoon. So here we go...

See, Astro City issue #16, as I mentioned, tells us the origin story of the superhero El Hombre. Similarly, Electroboy issue #15 tells readers the true origin story of the great superhero Electroboy. The only difference being that the former comic really exists (and is impressively resistant to being submerged in a hot tub of water), while the latter only exists in the world of the Chipmunks.

This is the absolutely brilliant fourth-season episode "Dr. Zap vs Electroboy", in which Theodore is struck by lightning and believes this means he shares an origin story with his favourite hero! But only because he hasn't read the fateful fifteenth issue of his comic, which reveals that Electroboy was actually grown in a lab by his father, and the one who got superpowers from being struck by lightning was his evil arch-foe, Dr. Zap!

Theodore's reaction on finding this out is one of the greatest moments of the series. And incidentally, isn't that a great cover for a comic? I'd buy it!

So Theodore, believing himself fated to become an evil villain, dejectedly gets to work formulating his evil plans to conquer the world. In preparation for his criminal career, he follows the school bully, Derek around, making notes and signing up as Derek's sidekick. Luckily for the world, Miss Smith is eventually able to convince Theo that he has his own origin story and can still go out and spread joy and happiness and sweetness - it's a wonderful episode, it really is!

But it's that comic in the picture that I'm interested in talking about. Obviously the CGI prop was created specifically for that one episode, and we don't see it again until the fifth-season story "Bathroom Bully". In that one, Theodore is repeatedly seen reading Electroboy issue #15!

Which is very interesting. The plot doesn't require Theodore to be reading a comic at any point, and it's not mentioned in the dialogue. It seems to me that someone has put the comic there to specifically signal that this episode happens shortly after "Dr. Zap vs Electroboy", and this is absolute genius!

Maybe I'm wrong. The cartoon DOES sometimes reuse the CGI props to save money, and there's nothing wrong with that. It might just be accidental. But I'm fairly sure this is a deliberate piece of continuity to make the episode all that much better. This theory is supported by the fact that I don't think we ever see that comic again, except in these two episodes! I'm going to stick with my theory that someone involved in the creation of "Bathroom Bully" is a genius.

You see, that episode ends with Theodore confronting Derek (who's been bullying Simon) in a crowded hallway with the information that nobody really thinks Derek is cool; rather that people just think there's something the matter with him. Derek reacts with shock even before everyone else in the area agrees with Theo's assessment. I mean, it still works, even with the episode on its own merits - Theodore's charming, ingenuous simplicity does have that effect on people - but it's so much better if this comes straight after "Dr. Zap", and Derek knows that Theodore (for the usual unfathomable reasons of his own) has been researching bullies in great detail! It gives his little speech a lot more weight - obviously, he's genuinely well-informed about how everyone sees Derek!

You might say I'm overthinking it, but I think everyone needs to see this shining example of how they use the CGI animation to its maximum possible effect in this wonderful cartoon! Go and watch it, right now! (And don't worry, Theodore always comes out on top in the end)

Oh no!

 

If you heard a lot of loud swearing coming from my bathroom window this morning, that was me dropping Kurt Busiek's Astro City No. 16 in the bath. The one with El Hombre's origin story, part of the Steeljack epic. I'm sure I can dry it out without the pages sticking together, so it'll still be readable (it's not the first time I've done this in all my decades of reading comics in the bath), but it's still really annoying!

I bought this comic when it first came out, in early 1999. Probably from Page 45 in Nottingham, though I see now that I'd been keeping it in a bag with the cryptic price label "NX1408, NM, £1.65" rather than one of Page 45's usual ones. Maybe I bought this one without a bag, somewhere else on my travels, and subsequently put it in a bag I'd got with some other "near mint" but cheap comic. I definitely bought this one new, anyway - the comic was coming out once in a blue moon in those days because Kurt Busiek was ill and there were all kinds of delays, so a new Astro City was a rare and special treasure.

The point is, I'm very upset and aggravated about this disaster! This is something I've owned for a quarter of a century, in as near to mint condition as you would expect from something I've re-read whenever I was in the mood, and now it's always going to have wrinkled, water-damaged pages! Just think of all the things I've done in these 25 years, with this comic safely in my cupboard.

It's not even an appropriate comic to get wet. Steeljack spends a fair amount of time underwater in this storyline - not a naturally tenable position for a big heavy guy made of steel - but not in this particular issue. I'm REALLY annoyed by this. I've just drowned a piece of my history.

Hoot hoot!

 Among the things I've done in the fortnight since last writing anything here is discover "The Owl House" - a really great cartoon that I heartily recommend! I've watched the first nine episodes so far (so please, no spoilers) and really love it!

What impresses me the most, actually, is that although the central character is an eccentric teenage girl who doesn't fit in with the popular crowd (and, therefore, entirely identical to the protagonist of every single other cartoon made in the twenty-first century) and all the other characters she meets are all the usual archetypes, and this is played entirely straight without a hint of irony... it's actually still hilariously funny! Intentionally so! I didn't think that was possible, but perhaps there is something to be said for the lack of original characterisation in modern entertainment!

I should have watched this one before now. I'm not as up to date with modern cartoons as I should be. It's annoying having to do anything other than watch cartoons all day every day. Will someone pay me to do that, please?

AOO!

 Yes, it's the Asian-Oceanian Open on Memory League! For those who aren't keeping in touch with the world of Memory League, we have three big tournaments a year, each scheduled in a different time zone eight hours apart, so everyone around the world can join in from home and gets at least one in an optimal time of day, as well as one in the middle of the night.

For some reason, I only ever seem to qualify for the one in the middle of the night, British time. It's not a shortage of people choosing to take part in this one, it's just worked out that way. But for the second year in a row I had the honour of being up at 1:00 on Saturday morning to commence my match against top seed Vishvaa Rajakumar (in India, and only having to be up at half past five, because the "Asian" part of the tournament title is more thinking of east Asia and we got the earliest match).

And a great match it was, too! Vishvaa is a lot better than me, generally, and I didn't really have any hope of winning this match, but I did know that if I was at my best I could force him to be at his best to win it, and that's almost the way it turned out!

He chose international names for the first discipline, naturally - I'm famously bad at that and guaranteed to lose - but then I chose cards and managed to stop the clock a brilliant 0.09 seconds faster than he did!

Now THAT set down a marker in style! He has to go (very slightly) faster than his comfortable time if he wants to beat me! Not really an issue in his next choice, images, though - 'safe' for Vishvaa there is 'personal best' kind of time for me...

And then we're on to numbers, my other one of the five disciplines where I feel like I have any chance to do better than him. And again I set a faster time, and ooh, this was annoying!

See, I'd left that sixth three-digit block blank when filling in the recall, then went back and put in '081' (a building site). But I somehow didn't trust my memory there. I was imagining a sort of empty space, but was I extrapolating from the previous two images of a sit-down protest and a boot? Both of them come with vibes of desolation and emptiness, just like the 'site' does. Might it not have been some kind of building the boot was next to? Like 921, a betting shop? That carries a similar emotional context. I changed the 081 to 921 at the last minute, and I should have left it alone!

Maybe when I'm memorising in the middle of the night I'm more prone to thinking about the emotional context of my images than what they look like. Or maybe being sleepy just drives me slightly mad. Because I'd forgotten my golden rule - 'trust your memory!' It's never a good idea to discard your first slightly-uncertain idea to replace it with a second uncertain one! Like I mentioned in the comments there, that's advice I give to people! All the time!

Ah well. Vishvaa chose words next to wrap up the first set - he can safely do a score in the high 40s there, and I can only do that in a once-in-a-blue-moon miracle. Besides, this time I was still thinking about that numbers game and didn't come anywhere close getting it right.

And in the second set, by now way past my bedtime, I made mistakes in both cards and numbers, but was at least gratified to see Vishvaa had gone for super-safe full-one-minute memorisation times rather than trying to beat me. Sensible play when you're up against a capable opponent in two disciplines with a long tournament in front of you, and I'm pleased I achieved 'my opponent thinks I'm capable' even if I didn't come close to a victory!

After that I went to bed, leaving Vishvaa to get through the next round, six o'clock in the morning British time, against Naoki Miwa, which he did with some style. The second half of the draw is kicking off their second rounds as I write this, and you can tune in to Memorysports TV to watch it!

Or, if you're a night owl or living in foreign parts, the semi-finals start at 2:00am British time tomorrow! I might join Hannes in the commentary booth on Memorysports TV if I can disrupt my sleep patterns enough to cope with it.

You ARE the weakest link. Goodbye!

 It was twenty years ago today, or something close to it. I know it was very shortly after I won the World Memory Championship for the first time, but whether it was literally the next day or with a slightly longer gap between, I'm not sure. It might even have been the next weekend.

I had to look up on the internet the dates of the world championship (which was part of the Mind Sports Olympiad, in Manchester, that year), and it says it was August 28-30, the bank holiday weekend. But I'm not writing about the twentieth anniversary of that great triumph - I'd forgotten all about it, if I'm honest with you - but the twentieth anniversary of the time I came 4th in a TV quiz show that people only watched to see the host insulting the contestants.

It's a memory competition that reminded me about it, though - I've just played in the last round of qualifiers for the Asian-Oceanian Open Memory League championship next weekend, and won my match despite making mistakes in every single game. I was just lucky that my opponent was having an even worse day, but it doesn't really bode well for my first-round match next Saturday against Vishvaa Rajakumar. Not that anything would bode well for a match against someone who's a million times better than I ever was at the whole memory thing. It's not 2004 any more. I'm going to be remorselessly slaughtered, but it's fun to qualify for the tournament anyway!

But the point is, when in this qualifying match I messed up cards recall twice in a row - and cards is the one thing I ALWAYS get right, even when I'm playing badly - I shouted "Damn it!" in my annoyance. And twenty years ago (or something close to it) I was doing the same thing, albeit under my breath on account of how I was on BBC TV instead of sitting in my living room and only being watched on camera by the anti-cheating arbiter.

And so it was, on August 31st 2004, or maybe the following weekend, I went down to what was almost certainly London and a TV studio somewhere (a World Memory Champion might be expected to remember these things, but he doesn't) to appear on actual telly on the nation's favourite quiz show, The Weakest Link! I'd been to the audition some time previously in Derby (where I was living back then), and been accepted on the show not so much for being brilliant as because I wore my hat and everybody thought it made me look distinctive. People didn't wear hats in 2004. I was unique. So with the hat (but not expecting to be allowed to wear it, what with the shadows from TV lighting) I made my way to London (probably) for what was (maybe) my first time doing Real TV Things.

All the contestants had been asked to bring multiple changes of clothes, preferably bright and colourful, so the people in charge could make everyone coordinate nicely, but I arrived wearing my bright green, collarless, button-up shirt that I really loved and all my friends thought was hideous. The TV people loved it, though, and said I had to wear it! I wish I still had that shirt - I still wear plenty of shirts I owned in 2004, but I think I burned a big hole in that one with an iron a couple of years later and threw it out. I should get another one like it.

It was the low-budget version of The Weakest Link, rather than the big-money one - writing names on cards and turning them around, rather than them appearing on the screens on the podiums. I can't remember most of the contestants - the guy who won was called Peter, I think, and was obviously going to win, right from the start. The rest have disappeared from my memory almost entirely, except the unfortunate woman I voted off in the first two rounds. Possibly called Natalie. She looked a lot like someone else I know whose name I don't remember; the ex-girlfriend of someone I could still ask what her name was, I suppose, but I don't really want to dredge up memories of their 22-year-old breakup.

Anyway, Anne Robinson was sucking throat sweets at every opportunity and trying her best not to lose her voice. She had details of everybody on her cards, of course, but my World Memory Championship win was so recent I hadn't updated anyone on the show about it. When I told Anne during the game that I was the World Memory Champion (rather than 'a top memory competitor' or whatever my previous status had been) it would actually have been a surprise to her, but she rolled with it very professionally. And anyway, she had more fun with something I hadn't expected at all...

When she asked me what I do for a living, I told her my current unimpressive job title and told her I was "a credit control administrator". "Wouldn't you rather be a chef, or a dentist?" Anne asked, and I was bemused. "Or anything without an R in it?" she added, and I laughed out loud! Yes, I'd said I was a cwedit contwol adminstwator, and I do know I sometimes struggle with that letter, but I hadn't realised I was doing it. It was brilliant, and gave Anne a lot of opportunities to make jokes all through the show - between that and the 'memowy man' thing, it was classic, and all ad-libbed. They don't make TV like that any more!

I got my question right in the first round - two people didn't, so it was a choice which one to vote off, and I went for possibly-called-Natalie. More people went for the other one (probably a man, but I remember nothing else about him). I might even have banked some money and been the strongest link; I remember I was at one point.

In the second round I voted Natalie again, and so did everyone else. Anne rounded on me and asked why, and I said "I have a feeling she got all her questions wrong," with an apologetic glance over to her. Natalie nodded rueful agreement, and took the walk of shame.

After that I generally got questions right. There was a pause in filming at one point. Anne had just turned to me and said "Ben - In cartoons..." and I thought "ooh, my specialist subject!" but someone interrupted to query whether they'd done something wrong a minute earlier. Something to do with banking, and the timing of it, maybe. Anne was annoyed at having to stop. And I think it was decided in the end that everything was all right after all, so they reset the timer and carried on with the question. It was about The Far Side, and of course I knew it - all the other contestants reacted with surprise, because it clearly would have stumped them. I was starting to think I might win, even despite Peter knowing everything about everything. "Is Mister Memory fading?" Anne asked at one point in an end-of-round summary, and I didn't so much fade as crash out.

We're down to the final four, and Anne, gleefully noting the answer and probably re-phrasing the question on the fly, asked "Ben - What R is an item used in cleaning and a student charity week?" I was flummoxed. "Pass," I said, and a second later it came to me. "Rag!" I corrected myself, but of course Anne said "No, you said pass," and that was that. "Damn it!" I quietly said to myself - you can clearly see it on camera as it pans away from me. It was the last or penultimate question of the round, and of course the other three contestants didn't have to think hard about who to vote off.

So I took the Walk of Shame and watched the rest of the game (because they'd had hold-ups doing the interviews of losing contestants and didn't get round to mine until after the whole game had finished) before celebrating in the green room afterwards. It was a wonderful experience all round!

The show wasn't on TV until early 2005, I think - at work they brought a TV into the meeting room and we all watched it on video the next day. I looked great, as far as I can remember. I haven't seen it since, and I'd really like to now, but nobody's ever put it on YouTube or anything. Maybe one day I'll find it.

And I'm glad to know I still shout "Damn it!" when I get something wrong, even all these years later. Some people never change.

But how strange the change from major to miner

 I don't think this has ever happened to me before.

The last two images in this pack of cards are "Major" (from Fawlty Towers) and "miner" (just a man with a lamp on his hat). And the real miracle is that I still remembered the other 24 images, despite spending the whole recall time thinking "major minor, that's funny", recalling Major Mynah from an old adventure of DC's superhero the Atom, wondering why I've never understood the difference between major and minor chords in the first place and thinking I should look it up, and all kinds of other mental wanderings.

The whole card-memorisation thing just works on autopilot for me these days.

The DC Universe

 

In the golden age of superhero comics, you can't beat the "Superman DC Comic Group" for sheer volume of superheroes, or for innovation in the field. Yes, they could be more on the conservative side when it came to new ideas, having launched Superman and started the whole superhero boom and not wanting to do anything that might risk making him less popular - but they also introduced the idea of superheroes from different series hanging out together and sharing a world!

This ad from 1944 shows almost the entire range at that point. For some reason they forgot Leading Comics (and Picture Stories from the Bible, which might have been more of a deliberate omission), but otherwise these are all the titles that people see as comprising the DC Universe at that time. They were still actually published by two closely linked but separate companies then, but the lines between them were very blurry.

But the idea of a "DC Universe" in which all the stories in these anthology comics took place was entirely unheard-of then. Each superhero or non-superhero supporting-feature clearly existed in its own fictional reality. Superman didn't exist in the world where Zatara the Master Magician had his adventures in the back pages of Action Comics, let alone the other comics with a "Superman DC" logo on the cover but no sign of Superman inside.

It took the brand new idea of All-Star Comics #3 to really introduce the idea of a shared universe. It's just a framing sequence for nine individual superhero stories (including the two-page text story required by postal regulations), but eight heroes from four different comics have dinner together one night at a hotel. Two other characters from different strips crash the party too. Superman, Batman and Robin are mentioned as being too busy doing actual hero stuff to attend. Twelve different superhero-related series are officially linked in the same reality!

But does that mean ALL the superheroes under the DC banner are part of that reality? It's sort of implied, and modern-day comic creators and fans have always taken the view that any comic character published by DC (or the other companies they've purchased over the years) is fair game to include in a "DC Universe" story set in the 1940s or later, but I think we need to be a bit more strict than that.

Let's establish once and for all which heroes can be shown to exist in the shared DC Universe of the Golden Age! We'll just need to set up a few simple ground rules...

1) The Golden Age doesn't really have a defined end point, but there's a pretty clear cut-off in the early fifties when all the superheroes had been cancelled and forgotten due to lack of interest, except the select few (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and don't forget Superboy, Aquaman and Green Arrow in Adventure Comics). We only care about comics published during the time before that cut-off.

2) If two superheroes are seen to exist in the same universe in one comic story, then that means ALL the appearances of either character must exist in the one universe! Even when there's another story where Superhero A says that Superhero B is a fictional character! This is a standard rule of comic logic, believe me.

3) Covers don't count. It was normal in the golden age for the cover of an anthology comic to show multiple superheroes hanging out together, even though the stories inside were completely separate and unconnected. Actually, DC rarely did this except on the covers of World's Finest (Superman and Batman) and Comic Cavalcade (Wonder Woman, Flash and Green Lantern), but there were occasional exceptions. The gathering to the left on the cover of Action Comics No. 52 is a great image, but it doesn't mean Congo Bill shares a world with Superman.

4) The characters have to at least appear in the same story - in various stories people will mention Superman, but it's usually in an ambiguous kind of way. They might be talking about the fictional character in Action Comics. Actually, sometimes superheroes talk about themselves as being fictional characters in DC Comics, but if they're seen to physically interact with each other, they're in the same universe!

So where do we start building the universe? There's only one place - the Justice Society of America!

From All-Star Comics No. 3 to No. 57, heroes from 18 different series meet and interact in many combinations. That means our shared universe includes every adventure for the Flash, Green Lantern, Spectre, Hawkman, Dr. Fate, Hour-Man, Sandman, Atom, Johnny Thunder, Scribbly (and the Red Tornado), Superman, Batman, Dr. Mid-Nite, Starman, Wonder Woman, Wildcat, Mr. Terrific and the Black Canary.

Quite a big universe already; bigger than any other comics publisher of the 1940s can claim! But can we add more?

Oh yes, quite easily! See, there was another superhero group in DC comics - Leading Comics No. 1 to No. 14 chronicled the adventures of the Seven Soldiers of Victory! All eight of them. It was five heroes and three sidekicks, but one of the sidekicks (the comedy Chinese one) doesn't count as a member.

And in World's Finest Comics No. 9, in the Star-Spangled Kid story, the Kid meets Batman! They just pass like ships in the night - while the Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy are pursuing their own bad guys, they see the Joker, with Batman and Robin hot on his tail. They stop to say a quick hello, and go their separate ways again. It's a strange and completely irrelevant scene, but it means the Star-Spangled Kid joins our universe, and since he's one of the Seven Soldiers, we also get Green Arrow, Vigilante, Shining Knight and Crimson Avenger! We're up to 23!

Superhero interactions like that were really, really rare outside the two super-team comics at DC. Why that one exists is a real mystery, but there are a tiny handful of others that are useful to us too...

Do text stories count? I don't see why not. They're inside the comic, they're not 'symbolic scenes' like the covers, they're a complete story. So when the text story in All-Star Comics No. 8 has Hop Harrigan meet the Justice Society, that brings him into our shared universe too!

Hop wasn't just featured in text stories. His comic series was a mainstay of All-American Comics, and he had his own long-running radio show and a movie serial too! And yes, radio shows would count in this exercise, and so would the movie serials and newspaper strips and anything else  - as it happens, there was almost no superhero interaction in them, except Batman showing up in Superman's radio show, but ask any comic reader of the time if those things "exist in a different fictional universe" and they'd look at you like you were some kind of loony.

But if we're counting text stories, do we also have to count editorial pages that seem to imply that superheroes exist in the same universe? It's a bit awkward, but I'm thinking no, we don't.

Does this poll in All-Star Comics No. 6 mean that Sargon the Sorcerer, the Whip and the King exist in the DC Universe too? Does this count as a 'text story' of sorts?

I'm going to say no. It has to be a proper story, or it just gets silly. And we wouldn't want this whole exercise to be silly, now would we? If we count this kind of thing, we'd need to count the similar poll in the early issues of Sensation Comics, implying that the Black Pirate would like to join the Justice Society too. And he lives in the 16th century. What, are we supposed to believe in some kind of magic time travel? You have to draw the line somewhere.

Let's get back to comics. And there are just two more slightly dubious cases of DC characters co-existing that we need to bring in. First, we have Boy Commandos No. 1. It has one story in which the titular heroes are reported dead, and the writer-artist team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby wonder how they can fill the pages. They consult Sandman (member of the Justice Society) and also interact with the Newsboy Legion (stars of Star-Spangled Comics). Nobody actually meets, as such, but it's a shared universe that brings in the Boy Commandos and the Newsboy Legion and Guardian! Our total is now at 26 series you need to read to experience the full wonders of the DC Universe! And there's still more!

In Flash Comics No. 77, Johnny Thunder wants to make money by hiring out the services of his magic Thunderbolt, but other heroes from the comic keep coming along and solving crimes for free! Johnny complains to the editor and insists the other heroes stay out of his strip, but not before he's met Flash, Hawkman and also the Ghost Patrol, who join the shared universe here.

And that's basically it for crossovers. The ones documented here are the only occasions in golden age DC where the inhabitants of our shared universe bump into each other. But if you're planning to read every in-universe story in the comics, don't forget the spin-offs!

Sometimes a supporting character would be promoted into their own stories. It's probably not worth mentioning that stories in the Superman comic with "Lois Lane" in the title panel still count as part of the shared universe. But it's perhaps less obvious when the Star-Spangled Kid (yes, him again) acquired a new co-star and then just disappeared forever. The last four installments of what used to be his series are simply titled Merry, Girl of 1000 Gimmicks. 

And then there are three occasions when co-stars are given their own series in a different anthology comic to where they started out. So it can be easy to miss Robin (Batman's chum, with solo adventures in Star-Spangled Comics), or even Winky, Blinky and Noddy (comical associates of the Flash, who for some reason got their own strip in All-American Comics, where the Green Lantern is the main star). And speaking of GL, he was outlasted in comics by his pet pooch, Streak the Wonder Dog, who got his own adventures in Sensation Comics!

Those are all unquestionably part of our integrated Superman DC Comics Golden Age Reality. So if you're wanting to read the entirety of the DC Universe up to, say, the end of 1950, and want to make sure you ignore anything that wasn't definitely part of it as established by comics published before that date, just read anything with one of the 33 titles in bold red font above!

(I mean, you should probably read the other stuff too. It's not Aquaman's fault no other superhero wanted to talk to him in the 1940s. And the funny-animal comics are often better than the superheroes anyway!)

I've got some really great friends

 I should say that more often. I mean, it's not like I devote my blog to denouncing my friends as terrible people whom I despise, but I don't shout out to the world enough that I know some really nice people. So after a fun weekend I feel like filling this somewhat neglected blog with a little bit of positive energy before I get round to writing the next weird comic-related thing I've got in mind...

We're gonna teach those boys to laugh too soon

 I had a dream that I was recording some kind of promotional video segment involving singing the verse from "Blinded by the Light" that starts with and now in Zanzibar a shooting star was riding in a side car, and for the next line the director had me kneel down and point at the camera in a way that seemed very cool at the time. You probably had to be there.

But that's a lot more awesome than anything I've previously done on camera, and I'm going to suggest it next time someone wants to film me. Although in the waking world my singing ability, and for that matter ability to kneel down, might not be quite as impressive. It could work in some kind of horror movie, maybe...

Everything is connected

Sorry I haven't blogged anything for a while - I know I have maybe as many as three dedicated followers who anxiously await the latest irrelevant drivel from me on this site, so I'll make up for my silence with a lengthy and incoherent ramble about some good books and some terrible comics, and how despite all appearances all the dots are joined together!

I like to have a good book or two pulled from the bookshelves and a pile of comics pulled out of the cupboard lying around the place to read through when I have a spare moment. Today I've been reading, not for the first time in my life, "Beyond the Burning Lands" by John Christopher. I really love that trilogy. It took me ages to find the third and final part, back in the olden days when I was relying on books being in the school library or the public libraries of Horncastle or Boston. One way or another, they had the first two books, in big glorious hardback editions wrapped in library plastic - the best way to read a fantasy kind of novel! - but not the third. I forget exactly how long I was deprived of the Sword of the Spirits, but it probably wasn't as long as it felt. These paperbacks I've got now have "Kitwood Boys' School" stamps, the school in Boston where my mother was a teacher, so they must have come from there, probably around the time it merged with the girls' school and got rid of all the duplicate stuff. I don't remember getting them, but I'm glad I did.

But the point is, it took a while to know how everything was resolved, and I had plenty of time to linger on the ending of book 2. Luke has finally become the Prince of Winchester, and isn't at all sure if that's a good thing. "I sat on as dusk drew down over the city, thinking of the unalterable past; and all my dead." There's no particular cliffhanger, but plenty of dangling threads, and we're left to ponder just what might happen in the next book. And think about all the mysteries and fascinating questions raised by this second volume, like... how exactly is King Cymru's name pronounced?

See, beyond the Burning Lands in this post-apocalyptic (well, post-natural-disaster-kind-of-apocalypse, as the books make clear) world is the Land of the Wilsh. The city of Klan Gothlen, people called Yews and Kluellan; you get the idea. Corrupted versions of Welsh names, to nicely indicate the diversification of two different strands of the English language over generations of separation. But the King takes the name "Cymru", and are we supposed to pronounce it the standard Welsh way? It doesn't feel right when everyone else has names written in a sort of phonetic English. The books give us no clue, and that irks me a little. But seriously, if you've never read the "Prince" trilogy, you have to go and read it. It's the best thing John Christopher wrote, in my humble opinion, and he wrote no end of wonders!

Anyway, it struck me this morning that there's an interesting connection between this book and the comics I've got out to read through just at the moment. They're the Alpha Flight comics written by James D. Hudnall and mostly drawn by John Calimee, and they're the kind of thing you have to be in the right mood for. Let's be honest here, I'm an Alpha Flight completist, I love the series, but I'm not going to say you have to go out and read these particular ones. In fact, they're awful. Hudnall wasn't a great writer, Calimee wasn't a great artist, and they certainly didn't bring out the best in each other. But sometimes I like to take a look through the comics anyway, and recall the horrors of the Sorcerer Saga.

This endless series of adventures for the Canadian super-team pitted them against the machinations of Llan the Sorcerer. Why an ancient sorcerer who returns to our dimension every ten thousand years and confines his operations to the Northwest Territories of Canada has a Welsh place-name for his nom-de-sorcerie is never discussed ["Hudnall' backwards is Llan, duh]. But I thought it was fun to be reading of Llan and Klan Gothlen at the same time, and it inspired me to write about how things that seem to have no connection at all do in fact all come together, somehow, in the end! Join Zoomy's Holistic Detective Agency and let me teach you all about the Spirit of the Times!

Alpha Flight #78 has a theme of prophecies of the future, hints of what's to come. It's James D. Hudnall's chance to give tantalising glimpses of the storylines he's planning. Which is a good enough idea, and it's clearly not his fault his plans had to change. The cover suggests Doctor Strange will play a prominent part in the story, but actually he's just the framing sequence...

Sensing something terrible happening up in Canada, the Sorcerer Supreme (Doc Strange, not Llan, who's just "the Sorcerer") gets cryptic symbolic visions to tell him what it's all about, starting with one of South America...

In Brazil, so the narrative caption appropriately tells us everyone's speaking Portuguese. Captain Forsa (presumably meant to be Força; 'strength') is a very stereotypical Latin ladies' man, full of heroic bravado. He's never been seen before, but the first page of his debut appearance here is enough to tell us what he's all about.

And the third page of his heroic career chronicles his grisly demise at the hands of the mysterious Zeitgeist! This mysterious figure with time/space/form-bending powers won't be satisfied until he/she (it's a bit hard to tell from Calimee's art, but it looks like his 'real' form is male) has killed all the heroes and villains in the world! And taken photos of them!

What is the connection with Canada, Dr Strange wonders. Good question. And not one that has ever been answered. Nothing remotely related to this scene ever has anything to do with any future adventure of Alpha Flight, or anything to do with Canada. Except one little line from Llan at the end of the final omen in this issue...

Having restored Alpha Flight's foe the Master of the World to health, Llan tells him he'll get involved with Marrina's offspring (he never does) and says that Llan meanwhile is going to introduce Alpha Flight to someone from South America (he never does).

Again, it's clearly not Hudnall's fault. He doubtless had a story already written where Zeitgeist would clash with the Canadian heroes. But the next two issues of Alpha Flight were forced to tie into "Acts of Vengeance", the Marvel Comics 'epic' in which all their superheroes fought some different superhero's villains. Alpha Flight, instead of Zeitgeist, tangled with North American villains the Scorpion, Nekra, the Asp and the Owl for a while. The mysterious Zeitgeist disappeared into unpublished limbo and Alpha Flight never had anything to do with him. They eventually beat Llan, although the hasty and incomprehensible conclusion was again clearly not what Hudnall would have had in mind if he'd been given more time and freedom to bring his stories to a conclusion.

Actually, it would probably still be dragging on today if he'd been left to it. They really are terrible, interminably dull and badly-written comics. Sorry. That's just mean. I do kind of like them, really!

Anyway, does Zeitgeist move on to the rest of the Marvel Universe on his way up from Brazil to Canada? Well, a Zeitgeist shows up in Germany, two years later, in 1991, in the pages of Captain America. But there's no connection, right?

Here's a connection! Marvel's comics of 1989, like that Alpha Flight, had interesting cover dates to them. Four consecutive monthly issues were dated "Nov", "Mid Nov", "Dec", and "Mid Dec". Marvel were reducing the gap between publication date and cover date, which had reached a plainly silly four months and now was brought down to two. They weren't publishing two issues of Alpha Flight a month, despite what the cover dates might suggest.

But in the summer of 1991, Captain America actually was being published twice a month! And so we got the 390th issue of his comic, dated "Late Aug 1991"!

Oh god, the Femizons. Actually, we can ignore the main story, in which Captain America fights an army composed of Marvel Comics' entire cast of female supervillains if we want to - Zeitgeist only appears in the backup strip at the end of the comic. But let's take a look and see if there's a Canadian connection...

Yes, there is! Look there - it's Alpha Flight's fat female foe Pink Pearl! She only appeared in one Alpha Flight comic, years and years earlier, but will come back to their pages just a couple of months later in 1991, when it will turn out that after her release from jail she became a legitimate businesswoman. Hmm, I guess she took a few days' vacation to join the Femizons and then went back to running her strip club.

And she shares the action in this scene with Screaming Mimi, who'll later go on to become Songbird of the Thunderbolts. That's not an Alpha Flight connection, I just happen to like Thunderbolts. But everything is connected, so let me make an observation about this scene. See, this comic is written by Mark Gruenwald, a truly GREAT writer whose work I mostly love. This one doesn't show him at his best. He was a really gloriously nerdy continuity-lover, and he's deliberately put Titania in this scene just to titillate the kind of nerdy fan like me who appreciates the juxtaposition. See, this is the Skeeter McFerran Titania, no relation to the Titania who used to hang out with Screaming Mimi and Poundcakes, but who was dead by the time of this comic. Just remember that bit of trivia, because everything here is connected, I promise.

Now let's turn to the brief backup strip, and see this Zeitgeist. While Captain America himself was fighting the women, his arch-foe the Red Skull was in prison in Germany, and a gang of baddies led by Crossbones are planning to break him out. But they're stopped by German heroes Hauptmann Deutschland (newly-introduced German counterpart of Captain America), Blitzkrieger (one of the 'international' heroes created for "Contest of Champions" a few years earlier, although back then he was called Blitzkrieg) and their mysterious teammate who becomes visible for the first time on the final page of this comic - Zeitgeist!

Nice costume, Zeitgeist. I mean, he's just stealing the look from the Clock King, who had been appearing in DC Comics since 1960, but it's still pretty striking (if you'll pardon the clock pun). But this heroic German Zeitgeist is no relation to the killer of Captain Forsa, obviously. He's just a German word being applied to a German hero being written by an American who (despite his German surname) doesn't seem to know all that much about Germany.

Any superhero stories involving heroes from a different country to the one they're published in are almost invariably dreadful. Alpha Flight are a rare exception. These guys aren't. I mean, when the "Schutz Heiliggruppe" story appeared in German translation, they changed the names (you can't call a hero "Blitzkrieg" in Germany!) and basically rewrote the whole thing to remove the idea that they're dedicated to defeating war criminals.

But is there a connection between this Zeitgeist and Canada? Sort of! See, Blitzkrieg's one previous appearance, as I said, was in Contest of Champions. In that, the heroes of the world were arbitrarily sorted into teams, and Blitzkrieg ended up in a trio with Captain America and Sasquatch, the Canadian from Alpha Flight! Everything is connected!

The Schutz Heiliggruppe appear in the remainder of this backup storyline over the next few issues of Captain America - Zeitgeist does practically nothing - and then are gone and forgotten. Until 1995, anyway!

1995 comics were terrible. Okay, I'm possibly going a bit too far with the abuse, but here I'm just quoting a popular opinion about the Avengers family of comics at the time. They were about to be radically relaunched under the direction of Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee. And the relaunches were terrible too. But then, after a year of that, they were relaunched again, and this time they were really awesome! See, that's a positive! But we're here in 1995 at the tail-end of Mark Gruenwald's time in charge of Captain America, and he's resolving a whole lot of plotlines. Starting, weirdly enough, with Zeitgeist!

The Schutz Heiliggruppe have for some reason gone to South America to investigate a series of murders of superhumans in South America, all of them found with a polaroid photo of their deaths! Yes, that never-resolved storyline from an obscure and forgotten issue of Alpha Flight six years previously has been brought back into the light! And it IS the same Zeitgeist after all!

Note that list of dead superhumans - "Captain Forza" has had the spelling of his name corrected, and it's STILL wrong. Força with a ç. If he ever gets mentioned again in a Marvel comic, I hope they get it right. The next on the list, Defensor, will be familiar to Blitzkrieger - he's another one who was created for Contest of Champions. Everything is connected, and perhaps the two of them became friends during the contest (they were on the same side), explaining why the Germans have come to investigate poor Defensor's death! But it's the end of Blitzkrieger too, when Zeitgeist finally shows his true colours.

Meanwhile, Hauptmann Deutschland has changed his name since we last saw him, and is now going by "Vormund". Apparently they were going for the German word for Guardian, which - everything is connected! - is the name of the leader of Alpha Flight and conveys a sense of protecting the country or ideals of the heroes. But it doesn't work, because Vormund only means guardian in the sense of a child's legal guardian. It's like a superhero calling himself "Parent". But let's not laugh at him; he's very upset by the death of Blitzkrieger.

Meanwhile, Zeitgeist, in a completely different costume, has gone to New York to kill an old man and help Mark Gruenwald resolve another dangling plotline...

The 1940s hero The Angel had been brought back in two mutually contradictory ways in previous comics. This clears up the confusion to everyone's satisfaction, except those who are wondering what the deal is with Zeitgeist's costume and priorities. So what, he starts by killing all the superhumans of South America, then moves on to the North American heroes starting with the oldest? It probably makes sense to him, at least.

There are a lot of other plotlines crammed into this issue of Captain America. It's not until quite a bit later that we catch up with Vormund and Zeitgeist, and confirm that he constantly changes his appearance and disappears mysteriously.

While Vormund wonders exactly why this time-shifting, clothes-shifting lunatic is his only surviving teammate in the first place, the reader knows that he's set up an invitation for Captain America to attend an elderly-superhero party at The Angel's place. And he mentions that the Angel had previously financed assassins who killed minor villains, including the Titania I mentioned earlier. Everything is connected!!!

And then there's a confusing fight scene at the party, in which Vormund and Captain America both seem to be assassinated by Zeitgeist, but aren't. And it all comes to this hasty conclusion.

And the comic has run out of pages, so Captain America has to blurt out in the last couple of panels that Zeitgeist was really Everyman all along. What, you don't remember Everyman? He was in one Captain America story in 1981 and a Marvel Team-Up in 1983. Apart from having a sword, he had absolutely nothing in common with Zeitgeist in any of his incarnations. Why connect them posthumously now? Only Mark Gruenwald knows. Everything, absolutely everything, is connected! But since there wasn't room to explain anything in the comic itself, he commandeers half the letters page, of all places, to describe at length what we've just been reading!

Credit also goes to Peter Sanderson, an even more gloriously nerdy continuity expert! And the final line is a nod to Bill Mantlo, who of course wrote Alpha Flight before James D. Hudnall. Everything is connected, from first to last.

Personally, I think Zeitgeist was the Clock King. There's a whole DC/Marvel crossover going on that nobody knows about yet, but it'll find its way into the comics some day.

Make your summer special

 They don't make summer specials like they used to. Back in the good old days of the mid-1980s, there would be a whole lot of new and exciting comic specials on the shelves at this time of year, reprinting old comics you might not have seen the first time around. A good thing to get your parents to buy for you on a trip to the seaside if they hadn't already been bankrupted by the cost of buckets and spades, sticks of rock and so forth.

If you picked up the latest Transformers comic in summer 1986, looking forward to the time when this year's summer specials would be advertised, you might have been a little confused at first. In Transformers no. 66, dated June 21st 1986, they possibly accidentally printed the advert for the spring specials which had come out in March...

 What's interesting about this selection is the price - Transformers is 65p, Secret Wars 60p, Get Along Gang and Zoids 55p, Fraggle Rock and the A-Team a mere 45p. Possibly there were different numbers of pages to them (Transformers is the only one I've read), possibly there were additional costs involved in some (paying a colourist, for example, as I'll explain below), or possibly it's just maximising the profits a little bit - Transformers must have sold the best, despite the price tag, I would have thought (based on primary school memories of what was the coolest comic).

In the following week's Transformers comic, they printed the ad for the comics that were now coming out for the summer...

Now Transformers has gone up to 70p! Secret Wars still 60p, but Zoids has inched up to that price point too. Spider-Man and the (spider-like) Sectaurs just 45p, and if you had plenty of money to spare and wanted something other than reprints of mostly American comics, you could fork out a whole £1.10 for a Doctor Who special!

And if you or your parents had LOTS of money and very little sense, you could spend an outrageous £2.50 on these special "books" from Marvel. They look impressive in this ad, but the content of them actually didn't give you much more than the summer specials did. The Transformers "Complete Works" contained just the first two issues of the American comics. About 48 pages' worth of Transformers, that had originally appeared across four 25p comics in 1984. That's inflation for you.

But to be fair, when these Transformers comics originally appeared, there was a significant difference. Half the pages of UK Marvel comics in those days were uncoloured. Summer specials added colour to the lineart of pages that didn't originally have it, and gave us a glorious technicolour special! Each of the specials in the ads above were 48 pages, including the covers, of which 44 were reprints of the comics. The first two "collected comics" had contained the four-issue original American series; these ones reprinted the first UK-original material that they had to produce while waiting for the Americans to come up with more of the stuff!

This cover, by John Ridgway, was originally drawn for the second issue of the UK Transformers comic (reprinting the second half of the first American issue). The scene actually fits much better with the story contained in this special, "Man of Iron", in which the Autobots pay a visit to England and interact with a local boy.

And the inside front cover advertises these must-have Ladybird book-and-tape adventures! You could also buy the books on their own, but the cassette tapes were really quite awesome too, with music and (as advertised) sound effects, as well as an enthusiastic narrator reading the book. And just look at that "special gift box" you could buy, for only £5.95! That's a whole two pence cheaper than buying the three of them separately!

I do like the way the contents page describes it as a story "from yesteryear". That means "literally last year", since it had originally appeared in January and February 1985. But it's right to say that the original comics were almost impossible to find by the spring of 1986 - there was really no way to acquire back issues in those days except finding someone who'd bought it at the time and didn't want it any more.

Bluestreak only appears in a couple of panels of this story - I get the feeling they've used this picture of him thinking it was Jazz (who's played up as the main star in the paragraph to the left), and not bothered to fix it when someone noticed. This is his box-art picture, showing him in the blue colour scheme that wasn't used on the toy, which was silver. The original art of his couple of panels was uncoloured; this collected comics reprint makes him a silver-grey to match the toy.

And after those 44 full-colour pages of excitement, we get a rather old ad for the Dinobots, which by spring 1986 had been in the shops for a full year and weren't new at all! American readers might need to be told that no, we didn't get the toy of Swoop in this country. If you want to apologise for being so mean to us, I'll graciously forgive you. If you want to tell me we should have made our own toys rather than just importing yours, I'll concede that you've got a point there too. Let's move on into the summer!

This one gets a brand-new, specially-drawn cover by Will Simpson! The original covers of the comics this story first appeared in were ugly collages of panels cut-and-pasted from the story within, so probably weren't considered suitable for a summer special. For one thing, this new cover is drawn using the American character models, which weren't available to the British artists at the time these stories were drawn! The stories reprinted here had to use the toys as models, and although they do a good job, they would probably have been better with the simplified designs the Americans had come up with.

The advert on the inside front cover gives us some genuinely new and thrilling toys! The Special Teams! Combining Transformers! (We also didn't get the Constructicons in this country, so this was a brand new innovation for us). Giant robots made up of five smaller robots! Just look how cool they are! Even though they've forgotten to attach Bruticus's head!

This one has five chapters. It was written as four 11-page stories as before, but the last one was chopped in half and spread over two issues of the British comic. The American material still wasn't available, and they needed to stall for time! And as I've said before, we loved Transformers so much, we honestly didn't mind when there were only five pages of Transformers in our fortnightly Transformers comic! We'd take anything we could get, and be delighted with it!

And on the back cover, the all-new Ladybird book-and-tape! This is a really good one, too. I don't know why they originally released three of them at once, and then the fourth a little bit later on its own, but maybe there were production delays. Or maybe they just wanted a summer release to keep the excitement going. "Take the Transformers with you" was a great idea! You could force your parents to play it in the car's tape player on your way to Skegness!

I tell you, those were the days.