Get Ta Know Me! Part IV

My pal Travis over at Tilting at Pinwheels answered my questions, then asked me five of his own. As usual, I had a ball answering them.

1. Which comic book character would you most like to have a beer with?

Reverend Jesse Custer. The man can drink, argue, and fight, and knows the proper time for each.

2. Name one character that you wish had stayed dead.

I feel like I oughta say Jason Todd. So far, there hasn’t been a decent story told with him since his reintroduction (which was pretty good). I think Batman’s guilt over Jason’s death is undermined by his coming back to life (obviously), and his tactics and moral code are so blurry right now I don’t know whether he’s really a bloodthirsty vigilante or merely just a “talk tough” vigilante. He’s the obvious choice to me. More than anything else, the focus on him is why I’m dropping Countdown. (Well, that and the glacial pacing.)

But instead, I’m going to choose Professor X. he’s died a few times, I think, only to be revealed as “not really dead” every time. But frankly, I think the X-Men are much more interesting when they don’t have a clear leader. Cyclops can never shine when Professor X is around – he can only be the good, dutiful son. I haven’t read the X-Men regularly for a long while, and I doubt much would bring me on board, simply because of the sheer expense and weight of the series and its spin-offs. But for my money, intra-mutant power struggles is where it’s at – and they can’t happen while Professor X is still on his feet. So to speak.

3. Assuming it was done right, what would be your dream comic-to-movie project?

I’d love to see a film of Ostrander’s Suicide Squad. Deadshot, Boomerang, Nemesis, Duchess, Rick Flag, Bronze Tiger, Nightshade and the Wall. With some other assorted scoundrels thrown in. It could be the Magnificent Seven of superhero movies.

4. Which childhood to do you wish you still had?

Tough one. I’m not sure where my Dapper Dan doll is, although I’m guessing my Mom has it. But ol’ Dan is certainly still around. So I’llsay my Evel Knievel motorcycle toy. I’d take a cerrated lastic strip and pull it out the back of the launcher, and E.K. would shoot over toward a ramp, where he’d almost always wipe out in some neck-breaking fashion. But he was always ready to go again. No teaching that guy. He had more guts than sense, but that’s why we loved him.

5. What is you favorite documentary?

That’s a tough one. I’ve really just started paying attention to documentaries; I guess we have Michael Moore to thank for making them popular again. There are some classics I’ve never seen, like Hoop Dreams or the 7-Up series. I’ve seen a few political docs – although I liked Bowling for Columbine, my favorite of these was Outfoxed which made a really compelling (if somewhat repetitive) case for how Fox News slants the events it presents as news. I’m only one part into Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke, about Katrina and its aftermath, and I’m planning to see the big Bob Dylan retrospective that Martin Scorcese was involved with last year. I really liked what I saw of Ken Burns’s Baseball, and hope to see his Jazz one day.

But at the moment, my favorite may be the one I saw only a few weeks ago: Eroll Morris’s Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control. It really is amazing, and I’d recommend it to anybody.

As always, if you want to be asked five interview questions (comic or otherwise), put a note in the comments. It’s a lot of fun.

Rob