A Series Of Weakly Related Thoughts

First order of business. No posts Friday through Sunday. I'm going out of town, visiting friends to engage in acts of debauchery. OK, truthfully, I'll probably be the one trying to rein in their debauching, as I am the "straight line", as they call me.

Where exactly this post was going to go has shifted several times over the last few days, but I suppose The Ray is the common equation. Originally it was going to be about DC's December solicitation for Teen Titans, which has Ray on the cover, hinting he might be joining their depleted ranks. Of course, the solicit promises to reveal who makes the team, who doesn't, and who didn't even get an invite, so there's no guarantee he'll even make the team. Still, it's the sort of thing that makes me consider picking up Teen Titans again.

That thought lead me to thinking about how I dropped the book because it seemed terribly joyless, and that based on the scans I've seen, and the times I've flipped through in the store, that really hasn't changed much (though the story where Kid Devil and Blue Beetle appeared to reach an understanding looked kind of pleasant). Given that, would I really enjoy the book, just because the Ray was in it (assuming obviously, that he actually made the team)? Even if he joins the cast, it seems unlikely that he would abruptly become the center of attention*. That was one of the reasons I could never get around to buying the two recent Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters mini-series, I had the impression Ray wasn't really a focal point of the series**. If it had been an ongoing, where you figure with multiple arcs, each character gets some spotlight, that's not such an issue, but mini-series are a different matter.

The thoughts about the tone of Teen Titans also veered into the whole "Wonderdog" thing, but my thoughts there were mostly that I was surprised because it wasn't what I was expecting. I was figuring on some cute story about one of the Titans finding this dog on the street, and bringing him back to the Tower, and maybe the dog does something brave or clever in a crucial moment during the Titans 7,567th battle against evil opposites of themselves, and so they name it Wonderdog, and it would be cute, and that would be that.

No, I don't know why I was thinking that. Maybe the cover tricked me. Yes, it played a mind trick on me! Once I actually got to the end of the issue, I think my reaction was "Um, really? OK, interesting choice there." *places book back on shelf* Back to the Ray.

Thinking about the recent Freedom Fighters minis reminded me that Ray's dad showed up, with weird new powers, trying to save his son from their whacked out Red Bee. This reminded me of how Happy Terril acted towards his son during Ray's ongoing series. There were times, I'd say Happy learned his interpersonal skills from Silver Age Superman. Case in point, somewhere around #6: Ray has just saved the world from the "Light Entity", but he's a little overloaded from the experience, so he's behaving erratically. Happy shows up, suspects Ray is - gasp! - drunk, and starts chastising him. Ray's too out of it to explain, so he continues acting silly. Then Happy makes a gun from nowhere and steals his son's powers. Then he transports him to various crappy places of the world, so Ray can be scared and depressed by the horror of it (this included the remains of Chernobyl). Later still, his dad fakes a robbery of the place Ray works, so he can threaten his now powerless son with a gun, just to scare him some more. Then we find out Happy just hypnotized Ray into thinking he had no powers. Jeez, I know he had to give up his son for Ray's own sake, but what the hell, man? What parenting manual tells you that's the way to go about teaching your kid to use his powers responsibly?

As to Ray on the Titans, I don't know. I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get there. In my totally sweet black Pontiac Trans Am***.

* And truthfully, that would probably be a jarring experience for the readers that were already reading the book, if it did happen.

** Which is not entirely surprising, since it was Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters, after all.

*** It is unlikely I will get to the bridge in a black Pontiac Trans Am, unless I take up carjacking.