SuperFerret's Shoebox of Solitude

Cats: Pissed off and Glowing

2011-09-13T21:05:00.002-04:00

So, today, we're talking about cats. I've had more cats over the course of my life than I can count, so I know quite a bit about them, and how to read their moods (which are sometimes hard to decipher even for me). As a vet tech, this affinity I have with them comes in handy, especially when I have to handle cats that are more than a little miffed at me. I don't blame them, I mean, I am the one holding them down and poking them with all sorts of needles. Trust me, a pissed off cat is not something you want to go near, though I do get paid to do it, and it can break up the monotony of a tedious day.

Anyway, on to the first in a series of profiles on animal superheroes and villains featured in comic books. (I figure this will be a good way to keep me writing when I don't have a specific topic in mind.) And naturally, this first guy is a cat (and from Brooklyn, NY).

Ain't he a cutie?

Okay... not so much.

This is Dex-Starr, Red Lantern of Earth.

This warrants an explanation, obviously, so long story short: The Green Lanterns are an intergalactic police force that wield power rings that use green energy that they control via willpower. Recently a whole spectrum of color-emotion combinations have been discovered and each has a whole Corps dedicated to them. Blue is powered by hope, Yellow is fueled by fear, Orange by greed, and so on.

Red is fueled by the ring wearer's anger, and Dex-Starr is one angry kitty. Those pictures above are his first appearance, and the first contact with the Red Lanterns. Originally included as a joke character, he's since become a very popular character among people who, like me, love the wackier side of comics. The fan nicknames of "RageKitty" and "Ruffles" followed him for a while before his name (after artist Shane Davis's own cat) was revealed.

As a character in the DC comics universe, Dex-Starr started out as Dexter, one of an abandoned litter of kittens, a common occurrence in New York City (both in fiction and in reality). Luckily for little Dexter, he was adopted, and was given a home.

It would be a happy story if it ended here. But nobody gets superpowers in comic books without a decent amount of trauma before hand, and Dexter is no exception. His owner is killed in a break in, and soon Dexter is out on the streets again, but the hits keep coming. A very real downside of being a stray cat is that certain members of the human species (usually young men and children) can be unduly cruel to you, and Dexter soon runs afoul of two such men.

Dexter is grabbed, stuffed in a bag, and tossed off of the Brooklyn Bridge, with one of the guys wondering if "it'll die when it hits the water or when it drowns?" Now here's something I should mention regarding the power rings, they sense and locate individuals that exemplify the emotion they represent, recruiting that individual into the Corps. So, as Dexter is thrown off the bridge, a red light is seen in the distance, and it speeds towards the falling cat.

Now part of the Red Lantern Corps, Dexter becomes Dex-Starr (I assume "Dex-Starr" is what he understood his name to be) and presumably kills the men who were abusing him. The origin story could've ended there, but Geoff Johns, the writer, decided to wrench people's heartstrings just a little bit more, and added the next scene.

Who says cats aren't loyal pets?

Dex-Starr's one of those characters that I like to call "Distilled Comics". Most of the animal superheroes and villains are. "Distilled Comics" is basically something that I see as the best, wackiest, most fun things about superhero comic books purified and made into a character. A napalm-vomiting, space-faring rage cat is a great example of this. Yes, Dex is supposed to be a bad guy, and yes, being a Red Lantern means that he'll never have a normal life again (the ring's energy replaces their cardiovascular system and can't be removed without killing the wearer, it's also why they all spout napalm-like blood from their mouths). Hopefully, Dex is present in this weeks Red Lantern Corps #1, because I'd love to see more of this little guy.

Here's something to distract from the sadness, which hits much harder when reading Dex-Star's full story, SCIENCE! (which denotes the field of mad science if you didn't already know) has developed glow in the dark cats.

Here's the full story: http://gawker.com/5839142/scientists-produce-glow+in+the+dark-cats

Okay, so the whole "GLOW IN THE DARK!" claim is false. The cats fluoresce under certain lights, which is pretty crazy on its own, but it doesn't have quite the same "oomph" that the "OMG! Glowing Cats!" claim has. Also, these cats are resistant to FIV, or feline immunodeficiency virus, or feline AIDS. So this study had a purpose other than designer pets, which makes it acceptable (my original reaction was a mix of eye-rolling and annoyance from the animal cruelty I had expected this to be). Hopefully this helps stem the tide of FIV and eventually HIV, among other uses for this new development.

I, for one, can't wait to be disappointed at my teenage children when they come home glowing.

(Re)Introduction, a new direction, and I review 1 out of 52.

2011-09-08T11:14:00.003-04:00

Welcome to the new and improved (hopefully) Shoebox of Solitude. I'll be your host, SuperFerret (though some of you might know me as "Stephen"), and I hope that this direction I want to go in is one that'll stick. Previously this blog was nothing more than stream of consciousness garbage with no focus. I credit that with why I never kept up with it, so I've chosen a focus (well, two actually), and these topics are two that are near and dear to my heart.

As suggested by the name of the blog, these topics are Superheroes and Animals, particularly where the two intersect (which I'll get to in a minute). Why these two different topics? Well, for starters, I'm a vet tech by profession (that's an animal nurse to you laypeople), and I've been a comic book fan since childhood. Not that I like to pigeonhole myself, but it doesn't take a ton of thought to link my interests and hobbies to either of those.

Anyway, on with the show.

Starting this month, DC Comics (the guys behind Batman, Superman, etc.) have relaunched their entire line, starting with 52 new series each starting at issue #1 (where else?). Now, if you don't know what a relaunch is, it's essentially a continuity reboot, like what happened to the Batman movies in Batman Begins. Basically, it's a fresh start. (Kinda, certain characters have kept a very streamlined version of their past history.)

One of these "New 52" caught my eye as soon as it was announced. Those of you in the know are probably already guessing which comic I'll be talking about. That's right: Animal Man #1.

Long story short, Animal Man is a former Hollywood stuntman who is able to connect to and utilize the abilities of any animal that has ever lived. He can fly like an eagle, run like a cheetah, be as strong as a gorilla, etc. (Certain writers tend to be fond of using stranger animal abilities, like the regenerative abilities of earthworms.) As cool as this might be on the surface, Animal Man is not really about being a superhero (though it does come up often). Animal Man, Buddy Baker, is a family man. He has a wife and two children, and they are just as compelling as he is. What's more is that Buddy's connection to animals (through what he calls a "morphogenic field") has given him better insight into how the world works. This has led him to be less of a superhero, and more of an animal activist. He's also a vegetarian.

This whole activism angle for the character started out in the late 1980's when Scottish writer Grant Morrison took over Animal Man. Morrison was himself an activist and a vegetarian, and he used Animal Man as a way to voice his views to an audience that might not have been aware of them. (He also toyed with existentialism in the book.) While I don't fully agree with the politics of Animal Man, the story and characters have definitely become a favorite of mine, and they do speak to me on many levels. I'd definitely recommend picking up the collected volumes of Morrison's run on Animal Man to anyone interested in comic books, animal rights/welfare, a good story, or any combination of the three.

In this relaunch, we return to Buddy via a Time Magazine-esque interview discussing his life, his role as both a superhero and an activist, and his renewed movie career. Reading it seems to indicate that while other characters in the DC Universe (notably Superman) have had most of their past wiped clean in this relaunch, Animal Man is more of a continuation of what's already come before, albeit with some minor changes. Definitely a bonus to those, like me, who enjoyed the earlier stories.

I'm going to make a quick note here. Animal Man is definitely a more mature book than what most think of when it comes to comic book superheroes (both the new series, and the older stuff from the 80's). It pretty much has to be with the issues it brings up, and all of them are handled very well. There's also no shying away from gore and death, which might disturb younger readers.

Back to the story: As I said, Buddy's a man with a family. His wife Ellen seems to be at first the standard stay-at-home mom, but she's shown in the older comics to be as strong-willed and capable as her husband, and she doesn't normally hesitate to give her husband some snark. His son Cliff is basically Bart Simpson as a good kid, and has flip-flopped over time between being rebellious and being in awe of his superhero dad. The youngest child, Maxine, has occasionally shown a similar aptitude with animals, like her father, and the first issue of the relaunch mostly deals with the Daddy-Daughter dynamic, starting with little Maxine asking her parents for a pet dog (something I'm sure any real parent has had to deal with at one time or another).

After going into superhero mode again, Animal Man stops a distraught and desperate man from hurting terminally ill children in a hospital. Don't be too quick to condemn the man though, he's snapped because his daughter just died from cancer. Buddy tries to reason with him first due to this, but is forced to use violence to subdue the man. This is done all while realizing that if anything bad happened to his daughter, he might be in that very place himself. (Anyone know what "foreshadowing" is?)

Things get weird from here. Buddy's eyes, nose and ears bleed after using his powers, but no wounds are apparent. For readers familiar with the older work, this might not be unusual, Animal Man's "morphogenic field" has been referred to before as "the Red" (counterpart to Swamp Thing's plant-based "the Green"), and blood imagery has followed the character for years. Then after he gets home, we're taken into Buddy's dream, a nightmare actually, filled with more blood imagery (at one point Buddy turns into a walking cardiovascular system) and the foreboding presence of his daughter Maxine, and "bad things that dress as men" or "the Hunters".

The book ends with Buddy waking and being called outside by Ellen. I don't want to ruin it, but Maxine is involved, and things really start to get weird.

Overall, I enjoyed this book, and I'm looking forward to the continuation of Animal Man's story. This first issue doesn't deal too much with animal activism, it's mentioned only in passing, but if history's any indication, that will be part of the story sooner or later. I recommend that if you're into any sort of weird sci-fi stories, you should pick up Animal Man #1.