Hey you know who was pretty good? That Richard Thompson fellow (this post really is about comics, I assure you)

-Via Newsarama Blog, evidence that Denny O'Neill may have lost his mind. Or at least he's getting a bit prickly. A fellow by the name of Matthew Yglesias made a slightly cute, exceedingly nerdy comparison between the foreign policy of the Bush administration and Green Lantern's willpower. Or something. It's not the most elegant of metaphors, but I guess it's as good as you'll get if you really want to compare current events to the ouevre of John Broome (though I have to admit I've been working up a treatise comparing the end of the Tony Blair era to the Gorilla Grodd's assault on Ape City). Anyway, Yglesias' piece prompts O'Neill to react thusly:

When the Bushies [Bushies? Aren't you a little old for that sort of name-calling, Denny?] deploy troops, the ensuing horror is genuine. Sorry if I just disillusioned anyone.

Dude, you just BLEW MY MIND. Green Lantern is fake and Bush is real? Ohhhh maaaan. That's some heavy stuff. O'Neill continues:

But I'm not ranting against it. I suspect our admiration for what's euphemistically called "action" is buried inside our genome, the remnants of a survival trait. It's City Hall, folks, and we can't fight it.

I have to disagree--it's not City Hall so much as Chinatown.

Anyway, at the end of his article O'Neill promises to discuss the dialectics of a police state hero in the era of a non-violent counterculture, which I'm sure was of great concern to the children reading Green Lantern in the 60s. (Seriously, though, I'm interested in what O'Neill has to say about this, although I'm pretty sure the answer will feature repeated references to a certain goatee-sporting fat-cat-hating hipster doofus hero.)

-I guess the proverbial Countdown cat is out of the metaphorical Countdown bag. Rich Johnston had reported that DC was planning on announcing it at this weekend's NYC convention, but then he went and released an image related to it, not to be confused with this allegedly Countdown-related image. I halfway suspect some of this is intended to steal some of Marvel's Civil-War-is-finally-finished thunder, but such speculation might betray my ignorance of how the direct market works. Also: I'm finding it hard to care about this, especially since the title implies (or is that EX-plies?) that it's all a prelude to some even more hyper-monumental EVENT TO END ALL EVENTS. That lineup of creative teams isn't exactly setting anyone's hearts aflutter, is it?

-The night before last I had a dream involving Omega Flight. Omega Flight, dudes. A comic which has not even been published yet, and which I have no intentions of buying. I can't remember all the details, aside from something along the lines of Omega Flight forming because The Man wouldn't let them call themselves the Avengers. I'd rate this dream at about 4.3 out of 10. A dream from the night before, in which Bengals coach Marvin Lewis was having his players train by fighting real Bengal tigers, is closer to average for me, a solid 6.0 (loses points because I can't remember anything else about it).

-The Geoff Johns backlash continues! (Though, to be fair, this is more than "he's too violent;" it's also "continuity porn is not good comics," a criticism nearer and dearer to my heart. Also worth noting: the incensed reader coments and Reed taking for granted that everyone knows Justice League sucks.)