Peter Roget demands DC retire the word Crisis

The creator of the world’s first thesaurus Peter Roget has made his first public appearance in over a century to demand that DC retire the word “crisis”.

Although he died in 1869, the 19^th century natural theologian recently emerged from his grave in West Malvern, Worcestershire after an inter-dimensional being pounded on the walls of reality.

Surprisingly, since his return Roget has failed to comment on the huge advancements in the fields of science and technology since his death or the widespread social change in his homeland of England.

Instead, Roget chose to spend his first press conference in 167 years criticizing DC comics, a small-scale publisher of juvenile literature called “comic books”, for their rampant overuse of the word “crisis”.

“I haven’t seen the overuse of a single word this bad since the 15^th century when people couldn’t get over the word ‘witch’,” Roget stated. “But at least those people had out-of-control religious zealotism to justify their lack of grammatical imagination. All DC do is print crap about superheroes.”

DC products with the word ‘Crisis’ in their title includes “Crisis on Multiple Earths”, “Crisis on Infinite Earths”, “Identity Crisis”, “Countdown to Infinite Crisis”, “Infinite Crisis”, “Final Crisis” and next summer’s “Indefinite Crisis of Infinite Crisis…Crisis”.

“At this point I’m just embarrassed for them. Seriously, when I first heard about ‘Infinite Crisis’ I rolled my eyes so hard they literally fell out of my decaying sockets,” Roget said.

“I strongly recommend that they pick up a copy of ‘Roget’s Thesaurus’ immediately. I still earn money off that thing don’t I?”

But Roget believes that the situation is salvageable, offering a number of new suggestions for DC’s next summer crossover in which worlds will probably die and most likely nothing will ever be the same again.

“Battle, big trouble, catastrophe, climacteric, climax, confrontation, contest, contingency, critical juncture, crunch, crux, culmination, deadlock, dilemma, dire straits, disaster, dispute, emergency, encounter, entanglement, exigency, extremity, fight, imbroglio, impasse, incident, juncture, mess, pickle, pinch, pivotal point, plight, predicament, pressure, problem, puzzle, quandary, showdown, situation, state, stew, strait, strife, trauma, trial, trouble and turning point: all of these actually mean almost the same thing as crisis,” Roget said. ”I’m quite partial to ‘Imbroglio on Infinite Earths’ myself.”

However, DC’s misuse of the word “crisis” wasn’t Roget’s only issue with the publishing company.

“I hate to go all grammar nazi on you people,” Roget said, illustrating his increasingly familiarity with 21^st century slang, “but the word ‘bat’ should only be used as a noun or a verb. It is not an adjective. I repeat: not an adjective!”

While DC haven’t directly responded to Roget’s comments, editor in chief Dan Didio expressed surprise that Roget hadn’t become a troubled anti-hero in the wake of his poorly explained, physics defying resurrection.

Reliance on old Jimmy Olsen Comics threatens Comic Blogosphere

The “Comic Blogosphere” is struggling to adjust after a blogger discovered the ‘inconvenient truth’ that nearly every Jimmy Olsen comic ever published has been effectively spoofed by someone with a Blogspot account.

A popular source of easy comedy, Comic Bloggers thought they had another few years left of relying on Jimmy Olsen’s crazy silver age hijinks. However, a recent study by blogger “Amazing Steve” has suggested that the supply of Olsen comics is swiftly drying up.

In his article “An Inconvenient Truth” posted last Monday on his Silver Age themed blog Amazing Steve’s World of Comix, he painted a bleak picture for the future of the Comic Blogosphere.

“If we maintain our heavy reliance on Jimmy Olsen themed content, Comic Blogging could become obsolete by the year 2012,” Amazing Steve posted. “In the short term, unless we act swiftly to curb excessive Jimmy Olsen postings we are going to have to start blogging about modern, contemporary comics. And has anyone read those things? They suck!”

Jimmy Olsen's wacky antics spell doom for comic bloggers

But Amazing Steve stresses that it isn’t too late to save the Comic Blogosphere. His proposal includes instigating a planned reduction of Olsen postings by 80% over the next eighteen months.

“This quota can be achieved if bloggers agree to start switching to alternate comedy sources like Golden Age Wonder Woman bondage covers and out of context panels of Green Lantern being misogynistic,” Steve claims. “Or how about comically bad anatomy in Rob Liefield comics? We’ll never run out of those.”

Many comic bloggers have embraced the bleak news and have begun to do their bit to forestall the impending catastrophe.

“I was going to do a hilarious post on an issue of Jimmy Olsen where he is forced into marriage with a gorilla by a feme-nazi alien whose affections he spurned,” said Gregory Dekraker of the blog The Phantom Zone. “But blogosphere conservation must come first.”

However, Amazing Steve has been labeled an alarmist by some members of the comic blogging community.

“There’s no valid, scientific proof that our supply of crazy Jimmy Olsen comics will ever run out,” posted Mack Grady on his blog The Quinjet. “This is all just a liberal conspiracy probably perpetrated by comic reading Zionists. Probably.”

Amazing Steve writes such as attitudes off as “right wing rhetoric”.

“We can’t afford to ignore this issue any longer. It’s not too late to save the Comic Blogosphere!” he says.

"Brad Meltzer" an Elaborate DC Hoax

DC has sent shock waves through the industry after revealing that their high profile writer “Brad Meltzer” is actually a sophisticated computer program.

Affectionately named after a trashy novelist Judd Winick happened to be reading at the time, the computer program was constructed after Dan Didio discovered that there was a formula to producing a successful comic book.

“Basically we put together a focus group and discovered that what readers want from their comics are superheroes standing around their headquarters referring to each other by their first names, endless confusing flashbacks to stories printed in the eighties and ham-fisted attempts to appear more adult by ramping up the sex and violence,” Dan Didio reveals. “When I saw the results I was like, we shouldn’t have to pay someone to write that crap.”

The Real Brad Meltzer

In the wake of this revelation, Dan Didio set about finding a cost effective way of producing these comics.

“Originally I was just going to pay a few Illegal immigrants to read some old eighties comics then re-write them with more references to rape and stuff,” Didio explains. “But then Greg Rucka reminded me that computers were officially the new illegal immigrants because I didn’t have to pay them fifty cents an hour.”

In the wake of a sellout run on JLA, Dan Didio acknowledges that the experiment has worked out better than he could have dreamed.

“At times I was a bit apprehensive…when I saw that its line up of the Justice League included Vixen, Speedy and goddamn Geo Force I wondered if we were pushing it a bit. I mean, who’s going to read that crap! One hundred thousand people a month apparently.”

But Dan Didio stresses that the computer program isn’t infallible.

“Just the other day, ‘Brad Meltzer’ spat out an issue of JLA that I could understand without the aid of Wikipedia,” Didio said. “I made it re-write it and it printed out a new script with 47% more references to some obscure 1980s issue of Batman and the Outsiders.”

While Dan Didio appreciates the success of the “Brad Meltzer” computer experiment, he is relieved that the cat is finally out of the bag.

“I was having a hard time keeping it all secret. For example, at a comic convention just a few weeks ago, some guy came up to me and told me that Brad Meltzer’s JLA was the best comic he’d ever read. I almost fucking lost it!” Dan Didio said, chuckling.

Marvel Fanboy Starts “War” on IMDB

A Marvel Fanboy's vendetta against the film "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" has spilled into the IMDB message boards in what has been described by some parties as "World War III".

According to onlooker “garden-state_chick” the event, comparable to two horrendous global wars with a combined death toll of 100 million, began when a user called “Magneto_2000” started a thread called “Fantastic Four 2 sucks!”

“I see these sort of negative losers on IMDB all the time and I’m like, what sort of obnoxious asshole would express a negative opinion on what is clearly an excellent movie? It’s like, get a life, you know,” Garden-State_Chick says, as she replies to an IMDB thread called “101 reasons why I love Zach Braff’s dimples”.

“But this Fantastic Four thing was something else. No matter how much I pointed out how great the special effects were or how good the acting was or how hot Chris Evans looked in a spandex jumpsuit, this guy just wouldn’t back down. I felt like I was in Iraq or something.”

Ground Zero: The IMDB page for Fantastic Four 2

By all reports, the situation continued to escalate. In a counter-strike that brought back memories of the tragic Black September massacre of 1972, Magneto_2000 took his vendetta onto the “goofs” section of the IMDB page.

Witnessed by IMDB veteran “boba_fett666”, Magento_2000’s tactics were “underhanded” and “morally corrupt”.

“He started posting all these silly goofs, sometimes up to ten a day. It was all stupid stuff like “in the original comic book Galactus wasn’t a giant space cloud” and “Invisible Girl isn’t supposed to be a Latin American”…just crap that clearly didn’t belong in the goofs section. And he kept re-posting them faster than we could delete them,” Boba_fett666 states, his hands shaking as his relives the anxiety of living through a period of nightmarish upheaval. “For a few days there, it was like 9/11 all over again.”

However, in a move not dissimilar to the 1945 nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, IMDB administrators intervened by deleting all of Magneto_2000’s messages and blocking his IMDB user account.

But IMDB users remain fearful that this incident could merely be an “Afghanistan” to a bigger Iraq-esque main event.

“How do we know he won’t be back with a new user name or something and start everything all over again?” asks civilian bystander “robin_williams_fan1”.

“I’ve half a mind to get myself checked out for post-traumatic stress disorder,” he jokes.

Frank Miller to Direct John F. Kennedy BioPic

Acclaimed comic book veteran Frank Miller has worked on some of the biggest characters in comics like Batman, Daredevil and Superman. Now it looks like Miller will be working on one of the biggest characters in history: after several industry rumours and one leaked draft of a script, Warner Brothers have now officially greenlit Frank Miller’s John F. Kennedy project.

Tentatively titled “Lee Harvey’s Big Hit”, Frank Miller is enthusiastic about this opportunity to tackle one of the biggest legends of the 20^th century.

“I’ve always been intrigued by the story of Jack Kennedy,” Miller says. “In fact, if you look through some of my old works I’ve consciously homaged it several times. For example, that bit in Sin City where Marv cuts off the limbs of a serial killer then feeds him to a pack of ravenous dogs was inspired by footage of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald.”

This announcement is good news for Miller's fans, but it is safe to say that people who are only familiar with the John F. Kennedy legend through such films as Oliver Stone’s JFK will probably be startled by the classic tale as seen through Frank Miller’s unique storytelling sensibilities.

With one scene from the leaked script featuring Bobby Kennedy shouting “For the USA!” as he eviscerates a horde of Al Qaeda terrorists with a katana blade, this is clearly not your father’s version of the JFK legend.

“Yeah I’ve taken a few creative liberties,” Miller admits. “But as Napoleon once said, “History is written by the winners”. Well, all those other versions of the JFK story were made by losers.”

However, Frank Miller argues that many of the changes he has made serve the purpose of strengthening the narrative.

“I’ve always felt that the original story really lacked a strong female character,” Miller explains. “So I’ve decided to strengthen the role of Jacqueline Kennedy. In other versions of the story, she was just a vapid socialite so I’ve re-imagined her as a Taiwanese ninja assassin prostitute. Nothing establishes a strong, indepent, female character like lingerie worn in public and kick-ass samurai blades!”

A Production Sketch of Jackie O

The film will also address the other woman in JFK's life, his alleged mistress Marilyn Monroe.

“Yeah, Marilyn's in it. She’ll be a prostitute too. As will Lyndon Johnson.”

The changes don’t end there. Allegedly, Lee Harvey Oswald will be undergo a heavy revision, the character wearing women's lingerie and large gold hoop earings in early production sketches for the film. Frank Miller confirms this and hints that Lee Harvey might not even be American.

“Yeah, Lee Harvey will be a Russian. The thing is I see the assassination of the President as an attack on the American way of life. And nothing suggests a threat to good old fashioned American values like a big ol’ girly foreigner in a dress,” he explains.

Miller has also taken this opportunity to add new elements to the JFK legend.

“Originally, JFK never really had any last words before his brains got splattered all over the car and stuff. So I wrote him some. As of the current script, the last thing Jack Kennedy says before he dies is ‘Now who’s laughing. The sweat and the grime and prostitute’s tears linger in the dust as I taste the acrid air of Dallas, Texas. I see the crowds cheer. They cheer. They cheer. But they’re all faceless corpses applauding a bloated emperor with no clothes. A disease tearing at the flesh of the innocent. Now who’s laughing. Now who’s laughing.’ Then Lee Harvey shoots him with a Korean assassin ninja shotgun or something.”

Lee Harvey’s Big Hit will hit cinemas November, 2008.

"I'm gay!" declares Marvel's Dr. Strange

In a press release issued today, Marvel Entertainment publicly revealed that their popular comic book character Dr. Steven Strange is a homosexual. This move comes after months of media speculation into the private life of the silver age Steve Ditko and Stan Lee creation.

“There’s always been a certain unspoken something about Steven,” Marvel editor in Chief Joe Quesada said, from his New York office. “Let’s just say, since his conception the doctor has always been a neat, thin, flamboyantly dressed man in his mid thirties who lives in a nice studio apartment in Greenwich Village that he shares with two male roommates and heavily furnishes in antiques. And he has a mustache.”

Aspects of Dr. Strange’s character may have remained unspoken over the last couple of decades but it appears that they are about to get a voice.

Dr Strange: gay

“When Dr. Strange was created in the sixties there were lots of things you just couldn’t do,” Joe explained. “Even today, some subjects are still taboo. I mean, we’ve been trying for years to finally out Captain America as a big old communist.”

“Fortunately, thanks to the ground work laid out by such media figures as George Micheal, Elton John and Balki from Perfect Strangers we are finally able to address Steven’s sexuality. I am quite proud to say that Dr. Steven Strange is a very content gay man, living his life to the fullest and grateful for all the love and support from his friends and family.

“Except for Clea who is quite bitter about being used as a beard for so many years,” he added.

While Dr. Strange has been informally “outed” by the Marvel editorial staff, the character will officially come out of the closet in an upcoming mini.

“Out greatest priority right now is to ensure that we treat Dr. Strange’s coming out with the utmost respect, dignity and good taste,” Joes Quesada said. “So in July we’ll be releasing “Dr Strange goes to town in brown” a six issue mini-series written by Brian Micheal Bendis. And besides Dr. Strange's coming to terms with his sexuality, the series will feature high octane magical action, the return of a deadly foe and more rent boys than you can shake a stick at! Let’s just say there’s a reason why Dr. Strange has been performing magic for so many years without a magic wand!

“And you’ll never guess who he’ll be romantically linked with in the coming months!” Joe Quesada added cryptically. “Oh alright…it’s Northstar.”

Cat Hater finds Catwoman "unsexy"

Slinking around countless DC comic books in innumerable sexy skintight costumes and played on screen by such stars as Haley Berry, Michelle Pfeiffer, Julie Newmar and Eartha Kitt, Batman antagonist Catwoman can be regarded as one of comics’ true sex symbols.

But not according to self-confessed cat hater Darren Gleeson, who stunned fans of aesthetically appealing comic book women recently by admitting that he didn’t find Catwoman sexy at all.

“Let’s quickly get this out of the way: cats aren’t sexy,” said the 37 year old chemist from his home in Crotchrot, Ohio. “When I think of cats I think of hairballs, kitty litter and my crazy aunt Clarabelle’s house that smells like piss.

“What I’m trying to say is I would rather have sex with any animal, an aardvark or a squirrel for example, than a goddamn cat. If I was into that sort of thing that is, which I’m not,” he stated emphatically.

“I just don’t understand how any red blooded male can find a comic book super villainess with a cat motif sexy,” he continued. “I know everyone has a right to an opinion but it is an objective fact that there’s nothing sexy about having tuna breath and destroying the fragile eco-balance by feasting on native fauna.”

Pictured: Catwoman. Inset: A Cat.

For Darren, who admits that he would rather date a hobo than marry a woman with a pet cat, it was the movie Batman Returns that confirmed his aversion to the character.

“I didn’t think it was possible to make Michelle Pfeiffer unsexy but somehow they did it. I mean, in that movie she was always going around licking herself and stuff. Who the hell finds a girl covered in saliva sexy? Perverts, that’s who.”

“Even worse was that scene where she pulls a bird out of its cage then eats it…what the hell was that all about? Last time I checked, there were no ‘Chicks who shove live birds down their gullets’ movies on pay-per-view.”

However, Darren says he felt compelled to speak up about this widespread public misconception after reading Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One trade paperback.

“I was flicking through the second chapter and there’s this picture of Selina lying in bed surrounded by maybe twenty cats, which is disgusting. Someone sharing a small apartment with twenty mangy, tuna eating, fur licking cats is about the least sexy thing I can think of. Okay, maybe that fat ginger idiot from Aint it Cool News but that’s about it.”

“Oh, and in that comic she is apparently a prostitute which isn’t that hot, I guess,” he added as an afterthought.

Ultimately, Darren hopes DC will rectify this situation.

“You know what I do find sexy?” he asks. “A candlelit dinner on Valentines Day with my wife…why doesn’t DC work a super villainess concept around that?"