My controversial opinion on why rebooting comic book characters isn't controversial

Beta Ray Bill (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sci-fi fandom's biggest mensch, Paul "Prince Jvstin" Weimer, allowed me to ruin an otherwise perfectly wonderful SF Signal Mind Meld discussing the fallout from Marvel's recent recasting of Thor as a woman and Captain America as a black man, and to follow up with a proposed reboot of a comic book icon.

Basically, I jump right on the landmine of why comics fans who hate change are idiots, and explain why the "still pure" Batman isn't just boring, but nigh-offensive.

Thankfully, authors and experts like Seanan "Mira Grant" McGuire, Sigrid Ellis, Sara Kuhn, Erika Ensign, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Cheryl Morgan, Shira Lipkin, Michael Lee, Cassandra Rose Clarke, Andrew Wheeler, Fabio Fernandes, Erica McGillivray, Abhinav Jain, Lynn M. & Michael Damian Thomas, and my occasional podcast sparring partner Jeff Patterson are there to add a few thousand cogent words to overwhelm my fanboyish pedantry and trolling of narrow-minded Batman traditionalists.

The unabridged (and voluminous) article is available here. Don't judge my peers by their company.

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Nerd Word of the Week: Astrochicken

Image via Wikipedia

Astrochicken (n.) - A hypothetical biomechanical space probe that is both self-maintaining and self-propagating. More specifically, a thought experiment from Freeman Dyson, a physicist perhaps best known for conjuring up the insane sun-swallowing megastructures known as Dyson Spheres. Basically, an astrochicken is a cyborg Von Neumann probe, a mashup of genetically engineered biological parts melded with mechanical components that can create an exact copy of itself mutltiple times after launch. The biological component is what separates the astrochicken from other self-replicating probe concepts, as it would be self-nourishing and self-healing, much like most living creatures, and it would create offspring space probes during its lifetime. If fully functional, the population of astrochickens would increase exponentially, returning to Earth an ever-increasing volume of data about the universe. As is true of most of Dyson's theoretical concepts, teh astrochicken bridges multiple concepts is intended to be subversive, challenging entrenched notions of how to conduct space exploration and scientific progress.

I bring it up because: Tomorrow is the start of the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con, which is perhaps the best example of a self-replicating techno-organic mashup that pushes the limits of known physics. Trust me, there are living things that appear at SDCC that no scientist is equipped to classify, and you'll usually find them ogling booth babes or audibly debating whether or not Batman should be a member of the Black Lantern Corps. And I say that is both a devout comics fanboy and former SDCC attendee. I'd gladly attend SDCC if I could, but I'd also keep a taser handy to ward off the husky mouthbreather in the Captain America t-shirt and sweatpants who won't stop humming the Dr. Horrible theme and stalking Felicia Day. Nothing we find on an extrasolar planet could be scarier than that.

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