Author Archives: JR19759

There are some ideas in comics that are offensively bad. Storylines that make you say "why did they think that was ever a good idea" out of disgust and anger. But there are also other times where you say "why?" just out of pure confusion, because an idea that got to publication seems so pointless and so redundant that it should never have been given the go ahead in the first place. And it is the later we are dealing with one this weeks edition of What Were They Thinking? (the place where we look at the stupidest, most ill-advised things in all of comics history) as we are taking a look at The Spider-Mobile.

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Here on What Were They Thinking we like to look at the stupidest, most ill-advised things in all of comic book history. And, as you might expect, cross-overs are always a good place to look for this kind of behaviour. They are the home of such "classics" as the reality punch, two year long clone conspiracies and wars between superhero teams. But which cross-over is the worst of all time? That is a hard question to answer, but I think we can all agree that the title would have to go to Marvel. I mean, they are the people responsible for Civil War, Avengers vs. X-Men and the subject of todays missive, the story which may just take the title of worst cross-over. I am, of course, talking about this...

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Ok, to kick off this weeks What Were They Thinking? (the place where we look at all of the stupidest, most ill-advised things in all of comics history) I'd like to take some time out of the sarcasm and semi-mock-outrage to be a dictionary, and todays word of the day is Cheesecake. So what does the dictionary have to say about the word cheesecake? Well, cheesecake is a noun, the name of a type of cake that has a firm custardlike texture, that is made with cheese (usually cream or cottage cheese, sometimes both) and sometimes topped with a jamlike fruit mixture. I, personally, adore cheesecake, it's my favourite desert. However, there is a more pertinent definition of cheesecake, which is also in the dictionary. This definition is the informal definition, used to describe artwork (originally photographs but now also drawn artwork as well) featuring scantily clothed attractive women, also referred to as "leg art".

So, with the definitions part out of the way, lets move on to the main subject of todays missive shall we. Now, when talking about cheesecake in comics two things should come to mind immediately. Firstly, the 90's and secondly, Image Comics, because the 90's was an era famous for style over substance and Image was the most pervasive perveyor of such comics, so who else do you think we'd be talking about when we're talking about cheesecake (apart from Marvel, but we'll get to them at some other point). So, out of all of the cheesecake Image sold in the 90's, what to start with, oh what to start with? Well, let's start at the event (because it was the 90's, of course there had to be an event centred around cheesecake) known only as EXTREME BABEWATCH! And no, I am not joking. And it gets better...

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To kick off this weeks What Were They Thinking (the place where we look at all of the stupidest, most ill-advised things in all of comic book history) I've got a scenario for you guys. You are on the creative team for the X-Men at Marvel during the early 90's and you've been given a remit to rejig the series, freshen it up and get rid of some old characters to make way for new, more exciting and more modern ones (read guys with lots of guns and pouches and spikes). What do you do? If your answer is create a new team that goes around killing everyone for an unknown prize, then pat yourself on the back, because you think just like a Marvel employee. And if you also said that you'd just abandon the storyline half-way through without any proper plot resolution, then you obviously know that this week we're going to be talking about The Upstarts.

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So, last week on What Were They Thinking? (the place where we look at all of the stupidest, most ill-advised things in all of comic book history) we took a look at an example of DC's fascination with transformations. However, there was another storyline that I mentioned in the introduction to that edition that is also quite interesting, and segues quite nicely into this weeks topic. Back in 1970, DC thought it was a good idea to explore social issue such as racial inequality and racism by having one of their white characters (Lois Lane) black up and join an African-American community (read: Ghetto) called, and I'm not kidding, Little Africa. Of course, the storyline is only remembered today for the fact that you had Lois Lane using a machine to change her race and it would certainly not get published now. However, at the time, DC didn't have a major black character. It would take them 2 more years to debut John Stewart, with Marvel already having debuted Black Panther and Falcon at this point. So, DC took a white character and made them black, because why not. And that, rather neatly, leads on to the stubject of this weeks discussion, the newest member of the Arrowverse, Mr Jefferson Pierce aka Black Lightning

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