DC Releases Underwhelming Rebirth Line-Up

You can read it in the link here

Very underwhelming. Other than Blue Beetle, almost everything announced is already on the stand, some with tweaked names like Green Lanterns, Hal Jordan & The Green Lantern Corps or Batgirl & The Birds of Prey while other revert to their old names like Nightwing or Red Hood & The Outlaws. Otherwise they removed any C-List title like Starfire for new variants of Batman or Superman concepts like The Super Man, Superwoman, or Super Sons, which I suspect is more fanwankery for a certain character I’d want nothing more than to go away forever.

All in all none of it is exciting. I held my breath for nothing. We're still stuck with the crap that is Earth-2 a garbage concept. No main earth Justice Society as hoped. No more Justice League 3001 or 3002.
The days of having that one ongoing title that isn't a digital compilation of short one shots is getting smaller. I don’t have faith that The New 52 Universe can suddenly flip a switch and exude quality. Especially when we have that Flash, Superman and Wonder Woman around. I've already boycotted Batman because of they won’t get rid of a stupid character. I’ve already boycotted Green Lantern when they wouldn't resolve Carol Ferris's murder of Katma Tui. I'm not saying Pre-Flashpoint has to be canon. I don't care that it is, I ask that they stop forcing terrible ideas previous management knew not to touch or reintroducing and botching what was once good ideas or ignoring problems.

As an exercise, I'm going to list three things from five franchises that I'd like to see, but won't. I'm not going to touch Batman (because I only have one wish), Teen Titans/Titans or Superman who's an untouchable toxic mess.

The Flash:

1. Fix the West family. That's right, racelift Iris already. Stop finding new ways to make sure white men protagonists can't have long committed relationships with non-white women. It's an insulting double standard. It's also an odd message that you can be raised by other races, your future in-law can marry outside their own race, but Oa forbid you Barry (or Reed Richards or Ollie) date long term or marry someone outside of your race. Screw you media. Look at it this way. If Iris is black, she can have an adopted white brother who marries a black woman or she can have bio brother that marries a white woman and has Wally. Everybody wins on all progressive fronts.

Speaking of Wally, he needs to age up a bit, hang out with Dick and Roy and have his old personality back. Yes I mean the former nerdy, young Republican small town kid, who outgrew being selfish and started caring about his community. That's the Wally I miss. He doesn't need to be white to have that background. He doesn't need to be pushing thirty and married with children. He can still have a recognizable personality, recognizable interests and friends.

2. Fix Eobard Thawne or lose him.

3. Bring Barry's mother back and get rid of this nonsense once and for all. Please!!!

Wonder Woman:

I could ask for a lot of things about Wonder Woman. I could ask for her immortality and historical status, JSA membership, Donna Troy as a mentored American teen, Steve Trevor, Etta Candy and The Holliday Girls, the campy villains reinvented. You know cool ideas nobody likes to explore, but I'm breaking it down to the bare-bones of what I require in any WW story. This is my litmus test for readable WW stories.

1. Zeus isn't Diana's father or Cassie's, but definitely not Diana's.

2. Diana doesn't date or sleep with Clark ever. Ewww. Enough with the Kevin Smith fanboy fantasies. They suck and don't make for actual compelling stories unto themselves. If we really cared what stupid crap comes out of the mouth a character played by Jason Lee, Jughead would be another gay character worrying about the dating life instead of one of the few ace icons right now.

3. Diana isn't raised by inhuman barbarians and a deceitful mother with a libido problem.

There. That simple. Of course, fanwanker writer's and their pet fetishes and status symbols will insure I'll never pick up a main universe Wonder Woman DC comic. Good luck Batman being the awkward third wheel in the Trinity book.

Green Lantern

1. Carol is punished for all her crimes, or Katma isn't dead. One or the other. If John has to continue being a grieving widow then let him have his confrontation with Carol. Stop acting like everyone's okay with each other and Carol's more moral and more pure than Hal ever was. I think GL: Rebirth should have been Carol's plot. Hal's fine being morally ambiguous with the ends justifying the means. Carol's just a spiteful, manipulative pawn. She fits the Parallax retcon better than Hal does. All Geoff Johns did was lower him to her level and then pretend she never did anything wrong at all. No wonder I can't stomach modern GL stories.

2. Jessica Cruz is forgotten. Sorry as champion of Earth female Green Lanterns, I'm sick of our only viable options being a spoiled bloodline mutant whose uncreative and uses her green skin sex appeal instead of cool constructs or a random girl with fear problems, whose corrupted by trans-dimensional ring. I suppose there's no such thing as a woman candidate with you know actual bravey, willpower and creativity. Then again of course the Power Ring plot is written by the same guy who decided only predatory stalkers or vindictive, scorned women can feel "love".

3. Dump the Emotional Spectrum. 1. Most the emotions listed aren't emotions, they're virtues and sins. 2. Emotions should not be dictated by base human experiences in a franchise of various sentient species. 3. Colors that the human eye can see should not be the ruling dictate of the inner workings of universe full of sentient lifeforms all guided by this principal. There are colors humans can't perceive just as there are ones other lifeforms can't. A franchise dictated by the emotions of ROYGBIV has no room for a character like Rot Lop Fan (a blind lifeform who relies on sound), nor any possible complex alien that can feel things a human can't.

Justice League

1. Have a bigger rotating line up. Instead of the big seven and some occasional pet plot character, use characters that we want to see adventures for, but can't keep a monthly tile, like Martian Manhunter, Starfire, Black Canary, etc.

2. Put Superman and Batman on honorary status so the other four can shine with other fan favorites without a book.

3. Don't go back to the era of strict continuity and embargo restrictions.

Justice Society

1. Don't ghetto them to another Earth on another Universe.

2. Have the original members be contemporary to Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Green Arrow, which means those characters should be slightly older (5 years) than the Silver Age generation and 10 years older than the first Teen Titans and 15 years older than Young Justice. Ideally with that in mind, I want Wonder Woman to be a seminal member, but she's too tied up as the token female on the League (or wasted dead on a parallel Earth) for that to happen.

3. No children legacies. You can reinvent both Hourman's as brothers, Rex being older, Rick being younger. Silver Scarab as Hawkman's jealous cousin, Fury as another Amazon, Jade and Obsidian aren't adopted, but separated by divorce and their powers come from exposure to The Green (or starheart or whatever they want to tie Alan's powers in with) and Ian Karkull's shadow radiation.

I think only one thing on the Justice League list will become reality. Either the edict will be Big Seven all the time or all the characters will be divvied up by editorial. So if we lose Batman we're not guaranteed The Flash and c-listers. As for the rest on my list, none will ultimately happen and I'll continue to boycott those titles and they'll continue to service the few who clamor for that crap.

Joe Beck, And Other Tangents Vaguely Relating To Him

As I mentioned last post, I found an Esther Phillips (yes a grown up Little Esther of Johnny Otis Show fame) album in the Jazz dollar bin at the Record Show and saw the name Joe Beck on guitar. Who is this Joe Beck and is he comparable to Jeff? Went through my head. Having picked out many albums with my limit of fifteen dollars, I opted not to take a chance, nor could I also fill in my Jeff collection at higher ($5 prices) either so there's that. I went home and didn't think much of it with what was going on in my personal life. I decided to go to Youtube with whatever discography info I could dig up. Having been more obscure than Jeff, Joe has some interesting credits, but he's usually lost in the shuffle of other credited musicians on any given album he appears on. A small taste of his credits, often times on just a few select tracks, listing only artists I've heard of include, Miles Davis, Gil Evans, the last studio album of Duke Ellington with Teresa Brewer (which I can't find anywhere), Paul Simon's Still Crazy After All These Years album, James Brown and Al Kooper. According to other sources he also worked with Louis Armstrong, Buddy Rich and Woody Herman, but I can't find what tracks. Another named I noticed was Tony Scott who I know because he does a beautiful rendition of Jefferson Airplane's Today. Hopefully if I track their collaboration down it will prove a better saxophone compliment then what Dave Sanborn provides further down.

As it is, unfortunately, Beck's music is harder to track down because post-Bop and Jazz-Fusion is a niche interest among connoisseurs. Neither genres are the type of Jazz I would want to subject myself to unless it's played by Jeff Beck because I'm a jerk. With that in mind, I still decided to listen to two tracks off Joe Beck's second solo album Beck, 1975.

Red Eye:

Cactus:

I honestly couldn't stand the pure moods seventies styled saxophone played by Dave Sanborn. I apologize to any Dave Sanborn fans who read this, but it's what I hear. I would say I'm a music barbarian, but this is one of those times I'm with everybody else. I think most people hate Jazz Fusion unless it's Miles Davis. He can get away with everything for some reason. My irrelevant observations about this album is that it came out the same year Jeff Beck did Blow By Blow and of course Cactus reminded me of Beck, Bogert & Appice. Tim and Carmine formed the band Cactus prior to power trio. Annoying fact Cactus played a gig in the living room of my dad's in the early 70's. Good times were had by all.

Speaking of Jeff, he's not the only Beck who like's to pun his name or use it as a trademark. Quick let's list albums from both artists in one column by year and cut any band titled ones and obscure first names elsewhere and see which ones you can guess are by who:

Truth 1968
Beckola 1969
Nature Boy 1969
Rough And Ready 1971
Beck 1975
Blow By Blow 1975
Wired 1976
Watch The Time 1977
There & Back 1980
Flash 1985
Back to Beck 1988
J* Beck's Guitar Shop 1989
The Journey 1991
Crazy Legs 1993
Who Else! 1999
You Had It Coming 2001
J* 2003
Emotion & Commotion 2010
Get Me J* Beck 2014

Other than a couple glaring ones like Nature Boy or Crazy Legs, one has penchant for one word summations except when the other one does, the other has a penchant for short phrases except when the other does too. Both love their names, puns, common confrontational phrases, traveling & time and pairs. Maybe I'm making too big of a deal out of nothing, but there is a reason I tend to name my theoretical, homoerotica-romance novels after Jeff albums and now Joe can help a bit too, but not in an as obvious way as Jeff so there's that.

I find it interesting that in the days before the 90's either musician could simply go by Beck and it could be understood in their separate fields who it referred to. Not anymore, the days of single last names ended on these guys when I'm a Loser debuted and changed my life as far as assumed naming goes. Now Beck can be a first name too and not just a last name and nickname.

Besides the obvious similarities to both Beck's, it is interesting to point out that they're like mirrors as far as musical explorations goes. Jeff Beck as everyone who knows anything about him knows, is a Rock guitarist of psychedelic background specifically, playing Jazz Fusion. Joe Beck is a Jazz guitarist who often enough flirted with Rock of the Jazz Fusion variant, but did you know he had a psychedelic rock album?

Yes, around the same time Jeff was going solo and was shedding the psychedelic trappings of The Yardbirds with Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood, Joe did a psychedelic album with some appearances from Danny Whitten of Crazy Horse on 1969's Nature Boy. Prior to that he had appeared on an album with John Berberian & Rock East Ensemble with the aptly titled Middle Eastern Rock, 1968. Here's an example:

Sounds nice right? Well his psychedelic solo album Nature Boy, isn't too shabby from the little I've heard. Unfortunately there's only two tracks uploaded on Youtube. The album has never made it on to cd and it's original issue on vinyl costs about $30 and shipping on Amazon. Someday... If you disliked the previous uploads these are worth it and will change your opinion if you prefer 60's production and the genre stylings. While they're Jazz musicians, none of that background should be distracting to the interest of the music. Here are the title track and the second song, Spoon's Caress.

Not bad at all. I could listen to more.

The story of this album is cute. Basically having impressed the label as a Musician's Musician, Beck was given an $100,000 advance to record an album, but he squandered it all on partying during the month he was to complete it. He ended up doing all the of guitar, bass, and piano parts and even sang the vocals as you can hear above. The only other full-time musician was drummer Donald McDonald. Guest appearances were by trumpeter Randy Brecker, bassist Don Payne and guitarist Danny Whitten as mentioned earlier.

As a bonus I'm going to post a collaboration with Sabicas off the 1970 album Rock Encounter. Also listenable and nice blend of two genres.

I have wishlisted Middle Eastern Rock, Nature Boy and Rock Encounter. I can skip Beck. Shame too. I don't have hopes for later albums either, but I might dig for more if I can only stand 70's trends.