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This week's image is Eric Bischoff, who at one time occupied a familar similar role to McMahon in WWE's ousted rival WCW, and like McMahon, he once put his hair on the line for a match. As it is, he got his head shaved, too. The lesson, which Bischoff got to enjoy permanently a few years later when he was finally retired from an active role on WWE's Monday Night Raw, was that you're never too big or too important to experience a slice humble pie. There are many ways to express what's worth following about wrestling, but one of the easiest and most simple is that, beyond the superb athleticism (in scripted form, if that even matters) constantly on display, is the continuing lesson in basic morality. To create conflict for a match, someone's gotta do something evil.

You may have noticed, between two columns recently here at PBR, that there has been some sort of disagreement. Someone did something evil, something naughty. The suspects are none other than Dan Head and the Quarter Bin's own Tony Laplume. QB and Stray Voltage have been trading back and forth reactions. Last week I unleashed, as Dan termed it, a tirade, in what I was calling my final word on the feud, based on the words "is a mystery to me," which Dan later explained as something other than it appeared. I took them as fighting words, so I gave a fight, which to Dan's mind was completely uncalled for. The fight all along has been raging from differing positions on the comics landscape, and those differences could not be more plain from the approaches of the two columns in question. Dan reads solicited books, and he was once a publisher himself. His approach comes from a guy who has entered the creating realm, has a family, has seen success, and has recently seen a lot of failure, and then success again. He's been on a rollercoaster. I write about comics that I buy. I'm an aspiring creator. Heck, I first met Dan at Digital Webbing, a site dedicated to creators trying to break through, when he was working on Bronx Angel, which was in many ways the magnum opus of his early efforts. He's seen a lot of my development, and knows exactly how far I've gotten, which is not very. My column never really gets into the kind of comics talk his does, even though I talk a lot about comics, a lot of comics he never reads, comics that in many ways he's reading the next generation of creators from. Then again, that's my mindset. I still consider DC, Marvel, even Image, to be the big leagues, the destinations every comics creator secretly wishes they will some day end up in. Then again, in many ways, Dan expresses each and every week that the true destination isn't DC or Marvel, but comics themselves. In many ways, Dan recently has been arguing that if anything, we have to forget about DC and Marvel to keep comics alive for tomorrow.

Now, come Dan's next column, he could very easily say what an idiot I am for making that claim. This is the guy who, even though he doesn't actually read Marvel anymore, has in the past kept a market watch for the company as a regular feature on his column. For all I know, even though he doesn't include it these days, he still monitors those fortunes. (In many ways, the feud between Dan and me could be boiled down to the classic comics argument of Marvel vs. DC.) I make a statement, he disagrees. He makes a statement, I disagree. For weeks now, that's been happening, and that's exactly what arguments are. He's said that what I wrote last week made him look really bad, and implied that it made me look bad, too, and even told his readers to send me hate mail. And he's told me that much of what's happened is, at least on his part, the bluster of a columnist. On my part, I fully admit that week in and week out, I set out to make my own argument, whether it's based on the thoughts of someone else or not, for the continued vitality of comics. I've said that I'm done, at least for now, writing about this feud, but I'm not done writing about comics, about superheroes, and no matter if i'm the most popoluar guy or not, I will continue, I will persist. This is, however, the last column that will dedicate any meanignful amount of time to the Dan Head Debate. Dan mentioned it as a footnote last time. Well, it was a pretty significant note for this column, that note and every note that has come in recent weeks.

Just be glad Vince McMahon didn't have his hands in it...

Quarter Bin 13

I asked my mom yesterday about these babies, the Quarter Bin 13. She was wondering how important it was for me to get them. My mom doesn't read this column.

The Borders Bin

Much as Young Dog Guy and myself, Dan and I also don't work, exactly, the same kind of job (much less each have a family, which Dan does, even if they are sometimes postdeluvial). My primary job is at Borders. Yes, we were open yesterday. We closed at 7. Thanks for calling.

~JLA Classified #36 (DC) The conclusion of the Red King saga, read a couple of weeks ago (this feature was skipped last week, though it's set to take over two future editions of QB), saw King defeated, naturally. In the end, he makes a considerable new villain, if anyone wants to use him again. I wouldn't want to see him used quite this way again, which was a sort of retro-90s comic, generic and not up to the stuff Dan Jurgens did in his JLA run prior to Doomsday, but as a concept, he's certainly interesting. But upgraded to the kind of storytelling Geoff Johns and Brad Meltzer regularly display in the new Justice Society and League books, he would be a compelling read indeed.

~Fantastic Four #544 (Marvel) So, yeah, this book's right back where it started. I'm sorry, but Marvle's attempt at diversity is still one of the worst kinds around. Black Panther, "ruler of the African nation of Wakanda," and his bride, fellow black hero Storm, are temporarily replacing Reed and Susan Richards. Have I mentioned how much I hate Marvel's pseudo African names of "Wakanda" and "T'Challa," how condescending they sound, how phoney? I like the notion of Black Panther, and seriously considered taking on his series when it premiered, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it, to ignore how blatantly backward the whole affair really is. Back to Africa! Power to the black man! As long as he's tied to Africa! I can't read "Wakanda" or "T'Challa" without cringing, knowing that Marvel's best efforts are poor efforts, and the company seems to think they're still perfectly acceptable, even though they've gone and vastly improved their other token black hero, Luke Cage, without bothering to give him his own brand-new series. Because Black Panther, as a ruler in an African nation, represents "power," the kind of power, the only kind, a black man can truly have. You'd think after all the P.C. upgrades of Civil War, Marvel might have corrected this mistake once and for all. Instead, Black Panther and his beautiful black bride come to the Fantastic Four. Temporarily. And the comic's just not any good anymore, not like it just recently was. Sorry, Dwayne McDuffie. Even you can't make this work.

~X-Factor #17 (Marvel) Jamie Madrox continues the painful process of reintegrating duplicates he's sent out to acquire all the knowledge there's to have in this world, a process he began a few years ago in a limited series and continues now as part of the latest incarnation of a spin-off X-team. I fully agree with Peter David that Madrox is one of the most fascinating and underrated characters in comics, filled with an abundance of storytelling potential...And maybe he's building toward something, but lately, David has been repeating the same notes over and over again, as if he wants to make a point really badly, just not right now. It ends up seeming as if he doesn't really have a point, just an observation. Madrox ends up being the personification of the biggest comics complaint, that characters should stagnate as long as their tried-and-true stories can continue to be exploited to no cumulative benefit. This is a whole book where characters mostly talk and very little happens, and one way of interpreting it is that this makes comics more approachable, because they don't adhere so closely to the stereotype, that they're more literate because of it. Yet in this case, it's mostly a case of someone appropriating a property, as David has done in the past (he long ago lost his Star Trek value, at least in my eyes), not to add to it, but to add to his credit line.

~Futurama Comics #30 (Bongo) In my Free Comics Day report from a month ago, I mentioned that Bongo actually can do some good stories from its licensed Matt Groening characters. This issue isn't one of them.

Last Week's Comics

Last week was going to be a rare slow week (at least, slow compared with the recent past; I can still remember a time when *gasp!* I had the prospect of one or two comics on a Wednesday), but I somehow managed to pad the numbers out and clock in at the typical run of seven or eight books. Sometimes it can really feel like a chore, actually reading these things, the shear bulk of them, later that day, but this was a real winner, this batch, all around, which ended up reminding me all over again why I spend so much time, much less money, on these things in the first place...

~52 Week Forty-Eight (DC) It suddenly seemed like ages since I read Renee Montoya's thoughts, but there they were, dominating this week. Theoretically, once the QB 13 arrive, I'll do a run-up of the last five issues before the conclusion, the year ends, to finish out the complete reviews.

~Nightwing #131 (DC) Another strong month from Wolfman and Igle. I recently found out that in coming issues, Marv is going to flashback into Dick's past, as Chuck Dixon did thirty issues ago, which will mark another excellent chapter in this run. There may be no Blockbusters, Torques, Deathstrokes, or Tarantulas running about (though Bride may end up rivaling Tarantino's), but it feels, once again, that we're reading Nightwing as his potential always promised.

~New Excalibur #18 (Marvel) Feeling some of that itch I spoke of, and nostalgia for my own version of the Chris Claremont glory days (Sovereign Seven, thank you very much), I decided to give this comic a shot right out of the blue. And turns out, it was one of the books that made last Wednesday such a pleasant surprise. Albion, a sort of counterpart to Captain Britain, may or may not be the recent British character Marvel was resurrecting, but he's certainly a heck of a dramatic story, a whole new mythology that has nothing to do with mutants, Norse gods, or Avengers, and along with Captain Britain himself, serves as an excellent starting point for readers such as myself who may be entirely new to the series. Unlike my Borders Bin forays with the Uncanny X-Men, New X-Men, and even X-Factor, this is an immediate return, and I suspect I may be reading it for some time from this point...

~Justice League of America #7 (DC) There were two covers for this one, taken as a whole representing the entire roster of the new League. Not since Infinite Crisis have I done this, but I bought both covers. Not having read the previous issue (being a member of the "elite" QB 13), I don't know how the team's first adventure actually concluded, but here, we're right back to the sort of team-building character moments that have been the highlight of the new series, especially the focus on some of the less famous heroes such as Roy "Red Arrow" Harper, Vixen, and Black Lightning. (Red Tornado, on whom the opening arc hinged, he has less to do here than previously, but I assume reading #6 will speak to this.)

~The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born #3 (of 7) (Marvel) Being another QB 13 alum, I don't know what happened last issue, but I do know that Stephen King's speech patterns as preserved here are some of the most addictive I've come across. (Do you kennit?) Most surprising was the prose tale from Robin Furth, which I was sort of dreading having to read. Instead, it was the most engaging feature of the issue, delving still further into King's own mythology, and the unexpected origin of the gunslingers themselves. Also included is a transcript of a team convention appearance from New York, where Joe Q made the rather bold, yet very welcome, statement that King's work here benefits not only Marvel, but comics as a whole. I would tend to agree.

~Books with Pictures #2 (VD Comics) A neat little indy book about the inner workings, the drama, of a comic book store. You don't even need to work at a comic book store to relate to Sina Grace's work here, any retail experience will do, but it certainly doesn't hurt. Fun, easygoing stuff.

~G.I. Joe #22 (DDP) I may have mentioned a few months back how I was surprised that, having returned to comics, I'd never actually picked up a G.I. Joe comic. My childhood was riddled with those guys, whether it was the action figures, the cartoons (Cobra Commander's transformation in the movie seriously freaked me out, but I liked his journey back home in the TV special very much, thankee), the cards, and the Action Force version comics someone once anonymously gave me for Christmas. Given the nature of last week, when I saw this comic available, I couldn't pass the opportunity up. And I was definitely not disappointed. I found a story involving the Baroness in a way I would never have expected, a story that was about as far from the kind of paint-by-numbers notion I might have previously suspected of the comics, a completely modern, literate take that treats the characters straight, refusing to condescend to a history best known for kung-fu grips and a once-seemingly endless line of Hasbro releases. And this, too, might have made a new believer of me. Oh mercy!