Redemption 5: Everybody on stage for the big Viking musical number

Part One • Part Two • Part Three • Part Four

(You also may wish to get out your copy of this, or this, and follow along.)

So. Do y'all still hate Clor now?

(rides off into the sunset)

Redemption 4: Double in the message centre

Danger! Mystery! Drama! Excitement! Clones of Norse Gods! All that and more in today's installment of The Mighty Clor, the comic book hero of which it has been said "Please cease and desist. Signed, the Norwegian Anti-Defamation League." For those of you with short-term memory loss, click here for Part One and here for Part Two and here for Part Three. Now read on, True Bullievers!

Next: everybody on stage for the big-ass Cecil B. Demille-style spectacle scene! To be continued!

Redemption 3: With a rebel yell, she cried Clor, Clor, Clor

So you say your local newsstand is sold out of the latest issue of The Mighty Clor? Well, effendi, if you subscribed to Marvel Comics using the handy cut-out coupon at the back of all our frankly fabulous mags, you'd not only be assured of a folded, rolled, creased copy shoved through your mailbox every four to six weeks, you'd also be increasing the collectible value of other copies of this ish after you clip that coupon! Sucker!

Or, you could just click here for Part One and here for Part Two.

All caught up? Don't worry if you aren't, front-facin' fearless freaks! Unca Stan'll fill you in as you go alone, because frankly we haven't the furschlugginist idea what's goin' on! And don't forget: click the images below to expand 'em to brain-searin' Mighty Marvel Mammoth size! 'Nuff said!

That deceptive dame decrees damage to our demigod duplicate! Dang! Tune in tomorrow, same Clor time, same Clor blog! To be continued!

Redemption: Highway to the Danger Clone

Previously, on The Mighty Clor...

And now...

Kirby sez: Don't ask! Just read it! (He also politely reminds you to kindly click on the images to increase them in size, won't you, please?)

Stan sez: if you miss tomorrow's brain-sizzling installment of The Mighty Clor, then you just deserve to get swirlies at school, bud! Excelsior! To be continued!

Redemption: Re-creating the Most Despised Character in Comics as a Fun Guy

And...awaaaaay we go!

(Unless you have the tiny, tiny eyes of Hank Pym, click all images to make them god-size...er, clone-size):

What? Will there be more? Ya, you betcha, true believer...to be continued!

The Redemption Project: Putting Right What Once Went Wrong

There's a lot of maxims surrounding the comic book hobby, aren't there? With great power comes great responsibility. Criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot. Any given issue is always somebody's first issue. Every character is somebody's favorite. And, a maxim I think it wouldn't hurt a lot of comic book publishers and creators to remember:

There's no such thing as a bad character, only a character written badly.

It's easy to kill off second-tier characters as cannon-fodder in crossovers and mega-events. They serve to emphasize that life ain't permanent no-how: tempus fugit, sic gloria tuesday, and all that. And maybe in some cases the casuality doesn't seem that grave because the character hasn't been that important in the past. He couldn't hold down his own book. She's not that popular a guest star. Sales go down when he's on the cover. It's a boring character to write. And suddenly they become our whipping boys, our sacrificial lambs, our hot dogs on the spit.

I challenge the writers and editors of comic books that it may be easier to kill off characters who seem to have a dead end career, but it is more creative and fulfilling to write them in an interesting and unusual new way. It may not work. But it might just. She-Hulk, despite being written by Stan Lee in her first outing, was (let's be honest) a rather drab and uninteresting adventure character that was so derivitive of the the Hulk that it doesn't surprise me there are tales told that she was created simply to hold onto a trademark. It woulda been simple to shrug and give up on She-Hulk, kill her off at the end of her series, or even just bury her in limbo until she needed to be dusted off for trademark renewal.

Instead Roger Stern wrote her while she was in the Avengers as a lively, vivacious, intelligent fighter. John Byrne continued her unique evolution in Fantastic Four and then in Shulkie's fourth-wall-shattering eponymous series. Dan Slott gave our Green Giantess even more unusual new twists and made her not a second-rate Hulk knock-off but a genuining entertaining and unique personality whose book is acclaimed and praised.

Think of all the characters who have been killed off (or worse yet, darkified) rather than brainstormed on. Speedball. Goliath. Pantha. Spoiler.

And I got to thinking...

What if there were a character so universally reviled, loathed, hated, despised, that the fans actually cheered for that character's death to happen? Is such a character redeemable? Can you make a fun comic out of that character, I wondered?

More to the point, could I make a fun comic out of that character?

Tomorrow my Redemption Project begins: one of the most hated characters in comics is coming back. Bully-style.

And although I do it mostly for the sake of a cheap giggle and guffaw and the chance to do a comic book Photoshop mashup, let's see if that character has got what it takes. It's gonna be wacky. It's gonna be silly. It's not gonna be serious. But just for fun, let's see if I can redeem the most despised character in comics.

See ya tomorrow, true believers. (And don't take the whole thing too serious. It's just an opportunity for some more jokes.)