"Honk honk here comes the decency bus!"

If you've been around comics long enough, it'll be no surprise to you that John Byrne is known for - among other things - peppering his origin stories with what you might gently call "May-September" romances, but might more fairly refer to as "March-October" romances and in the case of his Elseworlds trilogy, Generations, a "The Triassic Period - Heat Death of the Universe" romance or two (and Batman banging his adopted grand-daughter, but they're both like four hundred years old at that point so ... okay?).

It's something he's done in the pages of the aforementioned Generations, Doom Patrol, Alpha Flight - all with young women (and I'm saying this to be polite) "Falling in love with and winning the hearts of" older men - and that hot mess Marvel:The Lost Generation, where the genders were, for once, reversed.

Most famous of all of them, though, is from the pages of Byrne's run on The Fantastic Four. Reed is in college, Sue is twelve. 

Weirder than Byrne's repeated trips to this creepy-ass ol' well has been the general reaction of comic fandom, or the lack thereof. Byrne's ardent fans defend the creative choices, naturally, and those largely disinterested in the fella's work tend to stop just shy of calling in Detective Munch. I never thought, though, I'd find anyone who'd be angry if Byrne's tendency to craft relationships between older men and younger - often legally underage - women were removed from canon.

In the latest issue of Fantastic Four:

"...and the new one certainly isn't an improvement..." he says, meaning "The one without the implied statutory rape".

Tom Brevoort - whom I get to admire more every day for everything except his fashion sense (which Little Rascal did you mug for that hat, Tom?) - warmed my heart by happily, if carefully, throwing John Byrne under a bus.

"...that sequence struck the both of us, in 21st century terms, as being more than a little bit creepy."

*slow clap*

More like Before Be-SNORE-Watchmen Part ... two, I guess? I forget what I'm even doing here.

As part of the 30 Days project, I’ll be reviving Gone&Forgotten for a short article to coincide with every day throughout the month. Here's another hundred words or so about Before Watchmen ...

As I mentioned in the previous article, I believe that Darwyn Cooke's Before Watchmen:Minutemen invites greater-than-usual criticism if only because of the narrative Cooke created and fostered regarding his participation; he originally declined but his subsequent ideas were so good, he decided to do the book anyway.

More than that, Cooke's Minutemen in particular suffers no end of problems just in its portrayals of gender roles, ethnicity and culture, fetishization of violence, a general absence of irony, and so on. For me, however, the problems began on page one:

The introductory text to Before Watchmen:Minutemen - meant to be the first draft of the opening paragraph to Hollis Mason's autobiography - is a thoroughly atonal inversion of the opening as portrayed in Watchmen. Full of grand, sweeping, slightly disconnected generalizations and forced metaphors, Cooke has Mason acknowledge the stilted language as Mason vocalizes - to his dog, of course - about how he's a plain-speakin' ol' coot, never had much use for that fancy book-learnin'. It's certainly a mission statement by Cooke on his approach to the book, possibly a sneer and a swipe at Moore's dense writing. More than anything, it's Cooke hanging a lampshade on the distance between his and Moore's skills as a writer (defined here by "how you put words together" rather than exploring motifs, extrapolating or inverting paradigms, etc).

But the four panel sequence is troublesome even if it's not intentional. Each panel represents an age of comics - fans will recognize the farmhouse couple cooing over a new child which has just "come into this world" and the brooding, grim grey city where "if you're strong, you learn to survive it" as emblematic. The third panel depicts an undeniably Kirby-esque universe (and how off-putting is Kirby dots in a Watchmen story, anyway?) while the fourth obviously refers to Moore and Gibbons' Dr.Manhattan.

The overt message here is lateral: First came genre-defining Superman, then genre-expanding Batman, then genre-challenging Fourth World, then genre-redefining Watchmen. It's a straight line, according to this page, a universe of superheroes which goes from Genesis to Revelations to ... whatever Before Watchmen is supposed to be. Luke, maybe.

(The present day? Represented by the presence of the iconic four-panel layout from All-Star Superman, although unfortunately lacking its brevity)

But whether it's intentional or not, here's what three of these at least and, by implication, all four have in common: DC owns them. 

There are other stages of superhero comics which not only would be mandatory in any sort of evolutionary diagram of the form, but would even be appropriate to what Cooke is cobbling together here - the adolescent search for identity of Stan Lee's Marvel Comics (he could have represented that as abstractly as he did Superman and Batman) not the least of which. But sticking to unqualifiably owned DC properties for the first three panels, Cooke ends up weighing in - intentionally or no - on the creator rights debate integral to Before Watchmen, and of course weighs in on the side of the money men.

More like BeSNORE Watchmen I guess maybe, whatever, what's this about again?

As part of the 30 Days project, I’ll be reviving Gone&Forgotten for a short article every day throughout the month, and maybe more as Your Humble Editor strives to catch up...

Self-portrait of Darwyn Cooke. Not shown: Oliver Sava throwing all those confetti and flowers...

William Leung at The Hooded Utilitarian has already performed two graceful and totally deserved eviscerations of Darwyn Cooke's contributions to Before Watchmen here and here. I'm terribly grateful for these articles because not only is it an exhaustive pillorying of a title produced for the most cynical reasons and unabashedly celebrated primarily by the worst reviewers in comics journalism and most slavering consumer-collaborators in the marketplace, but also because now I don't have to do it.

Minutemen in particular is a highly problematic story which deserves as dense a critique as anyone is willing to give it, if only because of the narrative which Cooke himself invested with such importance in the run-up to the series; allegedly, Cooke was approached by Didio to partake in Before Watchmen but turned the offer down, mentioning his unease at working without the original creators' consent. But then - oh, frabjuous day - SUCH a GOOD IDEA came to Cooke that he couldn't resist the project and he came back, apparent misgivings irrelevant.

The "great idea" Cooke had was apparently to tell all of the stories which were too dark to go into Hollis Mason's "warm and fuzzy" memoirs, an idea that had promise except that Mason's autobiography as it was excerpted in Watchmen was far from expurgated and bowdlerized. Still, in trying to create this new narrative, Cooke created an incriminating document diminishing the rape and character of Sally Jupiter, recast the Minutemen as traditional action hero adventurers, objectified its female characters and gloried in the exploitation of their bodily injury, and generally traded in slurs and stereotypes. As great ideas go, this was a corker. Again, I recommend the Hooded Utilitarian articles.

So anyway, still, some parts of Before Watchmen stand out, in no small part because I certainly don't think any of the writers brought their "A" Game to the show. Personally, I've always appreciated Cooke as a visual storyteller but never understood the appeal so many found in his writing, which struck me as plodding and generally derivative of a few infertile tropes gathered from the lowest brow comics and men's adventure novels. I mean, he's perfect for mainstream comics then, but still ...

As a for-instance, part of Cooke's amazing, wonderful, too-good-to-miss out idea for The Minutemen involved making them effectively indistinguishable from the superheroes of any other mainstream comic, including a "wacky superhero tryouts" scene which is tonally inappropriate even for this far-afield extrapolation of the concepts created in Watchmen. 

Good lord, that "Slut" joke ...

This is a concept so original, ground-breaking and all-around awesome that it almost validates the entire Before Watchmen project entirely also it's such a hackneyed old joke I found it replayed in an issue of Justice League Quarterly. Quarterly - that's not even the FUNNY Justice League book, much less the good one...

NEXT!

Superman: Star-Fucker

As part of the 30 Days project, I’ll be reviving Gone&Forgotten for a short article every day throughout the month. Today it’s…

With Superman’s 75^th Anniversary being celebrated this year and a new movie spurring on the sale of ever more deep merchandise cuts – from cufflinks to hardcover collections – Your Humble Editor has been asked what Superman stories he’d most like to see collected.

A lot of my favorites have already been given a great treatment – the chronological reprints of the first few years, Superman vs Muhammad Ali, even collections collecting the works of the great Jose Luis Garcia Lopez.

Others aren’t on the horizon sadly, because a coffee table edition of Len Wein and Jim Starlin’s DC Comics Presents run – where Superman starts off fighting Mongul and ends up challenging God – would be amazing. Likewise, there’s no shortage of great themes – Imaginary stories, Bizarro tales, Krypto appearances, Superman Family arcs, and so on.

More than anything, though, I’d love to see Superman’s many celebrity crossovers – most of which can’t be done because of rights issues. It’s a shame – we've gotten Superman’s match with Muhammad Ali on the record, but how about:

Superman meets Orson Welles:

The Man of Tomorrow met the legendary auteur in his own title, Superman (vol.1) #62, during an era when Welles' "War of the Worlds" radio drama was still a thing in recent memory.

In this story, Orson Welles is transported to mars where meets an alien race of Nazi fetishists - Martler (That's Mars + Hitler for the slow kids in the back) and his Solazis (Which is stupid + unnecessary for everyone. Maybe it means "Solar Nationalists". I dunno, I'm new here)

Ironically, Welles broadcasts a warning to Earth via the Solazis' radio set, which everyone on Earth takes as a hoax - except Superman, because what else has he got to do except check in on stuff happening on other planets?

Welles holds his own against the ground troops while Superman stops the invasion fleet. Welles' secret weapon: stage magic, which apparently he's so into that he keeps a rabbit in his coat AT ALL TIMES.

The story ends with Welles admonishing the Solazi leader: "You're lucky not to be hanged like the Nazi leaders you admired and imitated". Damn, Orson ... Damn.

Superman meets Perry Como

Lois not only tosses both Clark and Superman over for Perry Como, but she quits her job at the Planet when a timely headcold gives her voice some weird perfect resonance which allows her to win a singing contest and subsequently becomes the number one female vocalist in the country. Helluva cold. Exact same way that Whitney Houston got her start.

Along the way, there's crooks kidnapping Como and Perry being such a nice guy that he tries to get Superman and Lois back together, once he realizes the former girl reporter has fallen for him instead. 

Luckily, such a clever plot has a built in ending, since Lois' success is based entirely on a headcold. Yep, she leaves it untreated and dies, the end!

Superman meets Antonino Rocca

Decades before he gets his ass handed to him by Muhammad Ali, Superman enters the squared circle with AWA/NWA/WWWF wrestler Antonino Rocca - well, no, he didn't, but Mxyzptlk arranged it so Rocca could fight Samson and Hercules in the ring, and he beat both of them. Well, wait, actually it was Krypto in a Mxyzptlk costume, and also the grown-up versions of Cosmic Boy and Lightning Lad were actually disguised as Hercules and Samson. Oh, and Superman was disguised as Rocca, but Rocca was disguised as Superman. PS, I'm really Perry Como (unzips lifelike rubber Perry Como costume)

It was a berserk little story that let the exceptionally popular sports figure make a friendly appearance with the Man of Steel without complicating it with things like a linear narrative and clear threat. Also, it appeared as the backup to a two-parter where Superman goes to another planet full of giant flowers and insects and is blinded under its green sun by an alien Hitler, but that doesn't earn the cover. I mean, Green Sun Space Hitler doesn't have an agent to deal with...

Superman meets Ann Blyth

You know, "famed Universal-International picture star Ann Blyth", kids today love Ann Blyth. 

Anyway, getting prevenge on Lois for her Perry Como dalliance, Superman lets himself be led around by mermaid Ann Blyth in an adventure involving pirate treasure and a robot octopus, so kind of like The Goonies except watchable (what you people see in that movie, I'll never know). 

Superman meets Ralph Edwards

The host of Truth or Consequences, which was apparently a show where Ralph Edwards was an intolerable jerk for no reason. Some of the consequences he made his non-super guests perform: lie in bed and count sheep jumping over him, hang upside down from the ceiling and play the piano, and check out a coin flip inside an aquarium tank - wait a minute, this is a radio show.

Possibly Superman's most clever foe, Edwards gets Superman on the show to make him fetch a shit-ton of water, then proclaim his love for Lois Lane (Superman yells his true feelings so loud that no one can understand it, which isn't that just the way for a man?) and then has to write his secret identity on a blackboard! 

Well done Mister Edwards, your chair at the Legion of Doom is waiting for you.

But the best of them all is undoubtedly:

Casefile of the Clockwork Fuckup Part 2: More like Red Tor-NERD-O, am I right?

As part of the 30 Days project, I’ll be reviving Gone&Forgotten for a short article every day throughout the month. Part 1 of the Red Tornado article is here, and Part 2 begins ....NOW 

I bet half those letters were written in blood and other bodily fluids.

Red Tornado’s first appearance ended with an in-caption call for fans to write in if they wanted to see more. One has to assume that the easy availability of crayons and toilet paper in our nation’s many fine asylums accounts for the sufficient response, because here comes that ol’ fan favorite, back again for more!

He's gonna end up in one of those specialty videos.

Whatever the scenario that allowed for it, Red Tornado did indeed return to the pages of Justice League, for instance one time he showed up to alert them of terrible danger and they made him stand in a dark corner for two months until they were ready to deal with his bullshit. I kid you not, this is legitimately what happened.

It takes another couple of years and some more fumbling, pointless, plot-complicating appearances by Red Tornado as a team-member of/unreasonable burden upon the Justice Society – during one of which he gets the Spectre killed, which is amazing, he’s such a fuckup he can get a ghost snuffed!  - before they finally realize what he’s best for: Blowing up!  The heroes of two worlds “neglect to notice” Tornado stealing a giant bomb which he uses to blow up a cosmic maniac, destroying himself in the process. Hooray that bomb, our hero!

Still, Tornado comes back again and again, moping about the place. Eventually, like former Justice Society teammate Black Canary, he moves to Earth-1 permanently, which the JLA uses as an opportunity to make him stay on the satellite most of the time so he can’t fuck anything up too bad. Again, I'm not kidding about that, this is legit a thing that happened.

YAY!

Canary also stitches up a new costume for Red Tornado, replacing his “Swirling turgid member” get-up with one that looks like a bloodstain being attacked by road signs.  The whole thing is an eyesore, covered with crisscrossing lines and arrows as if recalling an “I’m With Stupid” t-shirt where the pointer is always indicating Red Tornado’s dumb face. Clothes make the man, you know?

In the midst of all of this, Red Tornado also cribs liberally from Marvel's The Vision's "Do Androids Cry Of Electronic Sheep" and manages to pick up for himself not only a passable human disguise - a hairless rubber mask, gloves and a trenchcoat, so he basically looked like Vin Diesel continually preparing to expose himself in public - but a girlfriend and an adopted daughter. Those poor girls, I bet they're complete emotional shambles at this point.

To be continued!

He's just now realizing what he looks like.

How Many Hawkmans?

As part of the 30 Days project, I’ll be reviving Gone&Forgotten for a short article every day throughout the month. As Your Humble Editor plays Catch-Up, let's also play another game called How Many Hawkmans...

Despite being one of the less luminous stars in the constellations of DC Comics' expansive galaxy (still, nonetheless, having persisted in the cultural zeitgeist to a sufficient degree that he's scored both a candy bar commercial and a legit parody porno), Hawkman - whom you'd imagine would slip by relatively unnoticed by the gatekeepers of canon, owing to his low profile - ends up having a remarkably convoluted backstory. Throughout his nearly-three-quarters of a century in print, he's been pulp adventurer, space cop, political mouthpiece and cultural allegory, right-wing contrarian - sometimes all at once.

But more confusingly, sometimes you don't even know how many Hawkman there are, so let's play HOW MANY HAWKMANS:

1940-1961 One Hawkman



Debuting in Flash Comics #1 (which really came out in 1939, but let's not argue with the cover dates) Hawkman was wealthy dilettante archaeologist Carter Hall who one day realized that he was the reincarnation of a murdered Egyptian prince and started dressing like a bird and stabbing people with a magic knife. Everyone took it pretty well, but you know if Kanye started doing it, they'd never stop giving him shit.

Carter Hall remained pretty high-profile until super-hero comics began to dip in popularity, after which point a revival was staged and his name, mantle and giant ridiculous mask ended up in the hands of alien space cop Katar Hol. Surreptitiously observing Terran crimefighting techniques, Katar - whose home planet was full of dudes who dressed like birds and birds who dressed like dudes (long story) - Katar and his wife Shayera were stationed in a spaceship and beat criminals up with clubs. Space policing is confusing.

1961-1975 Two Hawkmans



With the latter-day reinventions of Golden Age superheroes achieving exceptional popularity, the old ones were brought back as residents of a parallel earth, allowing the two Hawkmen to coexist, if only on different worlds. Reincarnated Egyptian Prince Hawkman and Hit-Em-With-A-Mace Space Cop Hawkman never had the close relationship their fellow heroes Green Lantern or Flash had with their counterparts, possibly because what would they even talk about? It starts fine talking about their mutual love of birds and wooden bludgeons and then hits a lull when the topic turns to always coming back to life after being murdered or isn't it funny how the birds here on Earth don't wear people masks?

1975-1985 Two And A Half Hawkmans



Writer Cary Bates introduced youthful Californian Charley Parker who idolized Hawkman and ran around in a home-made Hawkman costume, calling himself "Golden Eagle". He was never a proper sidekick, and mostly I think they invented him just to have a bird-themed superhero named after Charlie Parker because, bless their hearts, comic book writers are only ever "clever" in their own special way ...

1986 - 1994 Three Hawkmans (maybe)? 



After the Crisis on Infinite Earths, a lot of characters were reset to "zero" and started anew, while others went on about their business without getting a revamp. And then there's Hawkman, who got a revamp but late out of the gate so had, in fact, already been flying around the new condensed universe for a while, so had to have his disparity relieved by - adding an interim Hawkman! Actually an alien spy from Katar Hol's home planet, he briefly served as a traitorous Hawkman, which imagine if someone said the same about you. You'd be devastated.

1994-2011ish Everybody's a Hawkman!



Zero Hour, the followup to Crisis, revealed that the murdered Egyptian prince had not only been reincarnated as the first Hawkman, but as the second Hawkman, and also a bunch of other heroes from history like Nighthawk and The SIlent Knight and probably I'd make up some more if I were them, like the prehistoric CaveHawk and his companion Dinohawk. Also maybe there's something called the Hawkgod and Golden Eagle might still be dicking around. Anyway, lots of Hawkmans, that's what I'm trying to say, you might even be one.

2011-on The NU DC 52 EXxxXTrEME BOLDBERRY FLAVOR Hawkman
I hell of do not know or care.

And that brings us up to date, how many Hawkmans did you count? Write the number down on the inside of a Dixie cup and ask your parents to mail it to the G&F offices for you, and if your parents are dead then I'm really sorry, that must be awful.

"What my story presupposes is what if he WASN'T super...?"

As part of the 30 Days project, I’ll be reviving Gone&Forgotten for a short article every day throughout the month. It’s June 9 and I'm still playing catch-up, so lemme tell you about Geoff Johns ...

If you'd pressed me a couple of years ago about motifs inherent in the work of DC's omnipresent in-house fan-scribe Geoff Johns, I'd feel pretty comfortable in skipping "bomber jackets" and going right to "ripped off arms being shoved through people's chests." Commonly mistaking violence for conflict and increasing gore for narrative, Johns' achievements in comics writing can almost literally be ranked by bodycount - up to a point.

When he was called upon - a few years ago, now - to be part of the canonical fanfiction being produced by editorial fiat in the DC test kitchen, Johns had to undertake the role of a man charged with reconceptualizing characters from the ground up. This was not his strong point - much the opposite, in fact, Johns was happiest when he was recreating the comics of his childhood, except peppered with an excess of violence and a thin ground-cover of absurdly chaste romantic relationships, hallmarks of the mildly-bright arrested adolescent.

So what do you do when you're a writer of Johns' caliber and you're told to really shake things up? Why, you become a contrarian, of course!

You know how Aquaman  talks to fish, right?

You remember how Billy Batson is a super-nice kid?

Well you remember that Dr.Sivana is a twisted, ugly little man, right?

Well anyway, you recall how Mogo Doesn't Socialize...

Etcetera. It is literally all he's got*, so in the spirit of helping him keep going, here are some other contrarian poses he might consider striking in upcoming series:

• Batman decides that criminals are a courageous and skeptical lot, so he adopts the disguise of a harmless small mammal hoping that they will merely underestimate him.
• Wonder Woman's home of Paradise Island actually isn't all that great - has crabgrass, loud neighbors, just forty yards from the overpass (also not an island). Amazons just really sarcastic.
• Most of the Teen Titans are indeed teenagers, but very slightly-built. Not titanic at all.
• Flash so slow it merely LOOKS fast.
• Justice "League" more of a squad.
• What if instead of shrinking real small, the Atom grew real big. Wait, Robinson did that one, okay - what if Superman wore his underwear under his... - that too? Shit.
• Bottle city of Kandor actually an exurban development, and it's a jug.
• Instead of arms getting ripped off, what if it's legs?

*I kid, he's still got gore and dumb violence.

AND YER OUT!

As part of the 30 Days project, I’ll be reviving Gone&Forgotten for a short article every day throughout the month. It’s June 9, and it wouldn't be Gone&Forgotten if it didn't fall drastically behind schedule right out of the gate. 

Still, Your Humble Editor has a pretty good excuse; a bad case of sun poisoning courtesy of a day spent watching the most ineptly played baseball game in recent history (For God's sake, let's intentionally walk Adam Dunn a couple more times, he's got a deadly .154 average and a face like a fat stubbly walnut waiting for the laugh to a joke he forgot to deliver the punchline for...)

Anyway, in desperate attempt to catch up - and in honor of the sport that almost killed me by merely occuring while I sat nearby -  I got to ruminating on the occasional intersections of baseball and super-hero comics. 

You can trace an interesting and decaying pulse in cover subject matter across the history of comics; it starts in the thirties with straight forward action and conflict, and then promptly begins trying everything - sports, animals, comedy, romance, superheroes hanging around the radio, playing on carousels, operating printing presses, etc and etc. Within the decade the cover topics grab Westerns, science fiction and horror but drop pretty much everything else except a few common topics - sports and Christmas for instance - and once the Silver Age hits you're on a decline; by the Bronze Age and DEFINITELY into the current marketplace, superhero comic covers are EXPRESSLY about conflict and action. 

Personally, I think that's a shame; the stories and art of the past may not have been better, but it seemed like more was possible. Remember when superhero teams used to play baseball or basketball in their down time? Remember how often Superman hung out with Santa? When BATMAN did? I have a hard time imagining that happening in the Nu52, or any iteration of the fifty Very Serious™ Avengers titles out there...

 Anyway, in honor of the covers that promised you the world, and possibly also as a curse upon the houses of the Mariners and the White Sox whose recent Keystone Kops routine has probably given me all the cancer, here's a showcase of some of my favorite comic book cover collisions between superheroes, sci-fi and the national pastime...

Note the use of the plural.

"Batshit concept called off on account of rain."

The people of Metropolis turn on Superman on a dime.

One of the Gorilla Wonders of the Diamond

I see his dilemma; Superman's clearly safe but he's gotta ride home with Batman.

The Only Avengers Left...

As part of the 30 Days project, I’ll be reviving Gone&Forgotten for a short article every day throughout the month. It’s June 4, and today Your Humble Editor puts together a dream team roster for Marvel's highly successful The Avengers (out of anyone who's left)…

In the still-profitably-churning wake of the success of Marvel's cinematic Summer Crossover blockbuster, the publishing arm of the company (remember that?) has been taking full advantage of the name recognition lent their newly-restored flagship squadron of do-gooders, The Avengers, by producing a record-breaking number of monthly titles coming out under some version of the brand or another (Specifically, the record they're breaking is recorded in The Guinness Book of Who Gives A Shit?, 32nd edition) 

With New Avengers, Mighty Avengers, Secret Avengers, Uncanny Avengers, Hot Shit Avengers, Batshit Crazy As A Baboon's Belly Button Avengers, Young Avengers, Old Avengers, Baby Avengers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Avengers, 30 Shades of Avengers, Harry Avengers and the Chamber of Secrets and an estimated five bazillionk thousand more titles, is there anyone left to man a new Avengers book? Maybe we could shanghai Heathcliff and a half dozen other Star characters, or we can plumb the licensed characters which surely would be eager to re-up their contract so as to gain a little love from that flaming hot franchise cash ...

The Licensed Avengers!

Name: NFL SuperPro
First Appearance: NFL SuperPro #1
Who is he?: A once-promising football star, the man who was to become NFL SuperPro suffered a career-ending injury when saving an orphan from a burning nun or something. Then a super-genius football fan slash brilliant scientist (out of the millions of people who fit that description) gifted a super-football uniform to the kneeless sap, giving him some sort of super-football prowess. He later teamed up with a guy who shot pennies out of his hands.
What does he bring to the team?: In lieu of a "star-spangled Avenger", NFL Superpro can represent the best of America in a gaudy costume stuffed with padding. Watch him spike Ultron's head!

Name: Pope John Paul II
First Appearance: The Life of Pope John Paul II
Who is he?: The Pope.
What does he bring to the team?: Lacking a Thunder God, here comes the next best thing: God's right hand man! It's the Pope of Thunder! He can also create valuable tension between characters when he argues with NFL SuperPro about how European football is real football...

Name: Night Cat
First Appearance: Night Cat #1
Who is she?: Marvel's second attempt to create a superhero out of a real-life musical performer, because Dazzler turned out to be such a breakthrough character.
What does she bring to the team?: The team's Femme Fatale, also the mandatory female member named after an animal. Marvunapp.com informs me that she has "super-leaping" powers, so watch out! Here comes the Ni-ight Cat! Boing!

Name: ROM Spaceknight
First appearance: ROM Spaceknight #1
Who is he?: Galadorian Space Knight and champion of good against the menace of the Dire Wraiths. Also if you press one of the buttons on his back it apparently makes it really hard for him to breathe because he suddenly starts wheezing like an iron lung in a trash compactor. 
What does he bring to the team?: Of all of Marvel's formerly licensed characters, ROM is the closest to achieving the kind of rabid fanbase that Iron Man inexplicably now has. Also, space stuff I guess.

Name: The Human Fly
First appearance: The Human Fly #1
Who is he?: A stuntman with an all-metal skeleton and polio I think. Does big ol' stunts, lives in a van. A real role model.
What does he bring to the team?: I honestly don't know, I just had to find someone whose costume was nearly as ugly as Hawkeye's.

Name: Godzilla
First appearance: Godzilla, King of Monsters #1
Who is he?: An enormous fire-breathing lizard monster popularly known from a series of eponymous films. Probably some soneofabitchin' nerd is on his way to correct three or four things I said in that sentence there.
What does he bring to the team?: Large, green, destructive and angry, we can get Mark Ruffalo to do the voice (squee, feels, Tumblr).

Name: Kid. No, Play. No, wait, it's Kid, I'm sure of it.
First appearance: Kid 'N Play #1
Who is he/they?: One-half a briefly popular hip-hop duo, and I can't think of a way to say that where it doesn't sound mean.
What does he bring to the team?: Play, I guess. Also The Funky Charleston. 








And lastly, who do The Licensed Avengers fight?

Why, Loki Cooper of course.