Alan Kistler's MTV.com articles

Here is a quick and handy guide to the articles I've written as a freelance journalist for MTV.com. The MTV Movies Blog deals with the movie and TV world, focusing on subjects such as the Transformers films and Star Trek. MTV Splashpage is known for focusing on comic book oriented entertainment news, so that's where you'll find recommendation lists and articles concerning five great GBLT super-heroes or five patriotic heroes who fell in the line of duty, etc.

MTV MOVIES BLOG ARTICLES

STAR TREK: 5 Reasons Why We Love Kirk

STAR TREK: 5 Original Series Episode Recommendations

DOCTOR WHO: A fan gives himself a Time Lord-themed funeral

TRANSFORMERS (original cartoon): 5 Episode Recommendations

Top 5 Most Impractical TRANSFORMERS

Top 5 TRANSFORMERS Crossover Movies I Want To See!

MTV SPLASHPAGE BLOG ARTICLES

READING RECOMMENDATIONS:

PUNISHER: Five Story Recommendations

SUPERMAN AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES: Story Recommendations

WOLVERINE Reading Recommendations

DEADPOOL Reading Recommendations

TERMINATOR Reading Recommendations

STAR TREK Reading Recommendations

Best YEAR ONE comic stories

HERO/VILLAIN LISTS:

ST. PATRICK'S DAY: 7 Irish Super-Heroes

BATMAN Villains I Want To See in Movies

5 Best Alternates/Replacements for BATMAN

EARTH DAY: 6 Environmental Super-Heroes

WOLVERINE Villains I Want To See On-Screen

7 Robotic Characters I Want To See Fight The TERMINATOR!

Memorial Day: 5 Patriotic Heroes Who Fell In Battle

5 Great Openly Gay Super-Heroes Who'd Oppose Prop 8

5 Coolest Alternates/Replacements for BATMAN

BATMAN AND ROBIN: Which Robin was the best teenage hero?

HAPPY CANADA DAY: 5 Great Canadian Super-Heroes

4TH OF JULY: 5 Great Patriotic U.S. Super-Heroes

MISC.:

Real Life Spider-Man Saves Boy in Thailand

The original super-heroes that the WATCHMEN were based on

TRANSFORMERS: A brief guide to the many comic book continuities

Really Cool Links

Interested in what others have to say about comics and life in general? Here are some fun links for you to peruse. Many of these are friends of mine, so I assure you they know what they're talking about.

ComicsAlliance.com - A very professional blog detailing all things comic related and with a ton of great links, managed by my old drinking buddy Laura Hudson (Publisher's Weekly, Comic Foundry).

COMICMIX.com - A fun and user-friendly news site focusing on the worlds of comics, sci-fi and fantasy in all media.

MTV Splashpage - MTV's online site that focuses on comic book related news. Frequently updated, this is a great resource for the latest news and leaked clips of any comic-based movie coming out.

Bob Greenberger.com - The personal blog of Robert Greenberger, writer of the Essential Batman Encyclopedia and several Star Trek tie-in novels. He has worked for Marvel Comics as Director of Publishing Operations and for DC Comics as Manager-Editorial Operations and Senior Editor-Collected Editions. Along with Paul Kupperberg, he used to work at the Weekly World News and he is currently working on the Essential Superman Encyclopedia.

David Mack - InfinityDog.com - The personal web-site of screen-writer and novelist David Alan Mack. Dave has co-written a couple episodes of STAR TREK: Deep Space Nine and wrote the crossover TNG/DS9 mini-series STAR TREK: Divided We Fall. He's written several Star Trek novels, including the epic STAR TREK:Destiny trilogy featuring final battle with the Borg and he has an original novel The Calling coming out in July. His personal blog can be found on the site, so be sure to check it out and drop him a line.

Aaron Rosenberg - GryphonRose - The blog of Aaron Rosenberg who has written various RPG books, Transformers books and several Warcraft novels. He is the author of several Star Trek: S.C.E. stories such as The Riddled Post, Collective Hindsight and Creative Couplings. The "crown prince of quiet criticism", he tends to bring interesting insights to the table.

PaulKupperberg.com - A long time comic book writer, Paul has worked on Supergirl, Superboy, Arion, Doom Patrol, Checkmate and various other titles. He has published stories for Star Trek and Doctor Who, tie-in novels for Spider-Man and the Justice Society of America, as well as the humor book Jew Jitsu: The Hebrew Hands of Fury. Along with Bob Greenberger, he used to work at the Weekly World News. He's a funny and very wise man, so see what he has to say about writing and the industry in general.

PeterDavid.com - Peter David has written several dozen Star Trek tie-in stories and has been hailed for his runs as writer for Supergirl, Captain Marvel and X-Factor. His long runs on The Incredible Hulk and Aquaman are considered defining periods for the characters and have greatly influenced later writers of both titles. Most recently he has been writing the Dark Tower comic series, filling in the history of Stephen King's Dark Tower novels. He updates frequently and is a funny guy, so you should take a gander at his blog.

Infinite Crisis in a Nutshell

This is part of my Crisis Files. This is a nuts and bolts summary of the events of Countdown to Infinite Crisis and the main crossover Infinite Crisis itself.

COUNTDOWN TO INFINITE CRISIS

On the planet Rann, the Earth-born hero Adam Strange discovered a group of Thanagarians operating in secret. The Thanagarians were known for military dictatorship and conquest, so Adam immediately investigated the situation. During the fight that ensued, the leader of this group of Thanagarians actually managed to transport Rann into Thanagar's system. Minutes after Rann appeared, Thanagar's orbit shifted, causing much destruction to the planet.

Although Rann attempted to aid the Thanagarians, many of them believed the Rannians had deliberately attacked their world and others feared being "contaminated" by aid from another culture. A war began and, since they had connections to Thanagar, the Earth heroes Hawkman and Hawkgirl got involved. Kyle Rayner and Kilowog of the Green Lantern Corps came to investigate the situation, as did the mutant hero Captain Comet.

As war raged between Rann and Thanagar, other races joined in the battle due to alliances. Those who became involved included Prince Gavyn of Throneworld, Blackfire of Tamaran and the Thagarian warrior Shayera Thal, who had once operated on Earth as the hero "Hawkwoman." Wishing to seize power in the confusion and force a new Thanagar/Tamaran alliance, Blackfire turned on the heroes who were trying to stop the war and killed Shayera Thal.

The war between Rann and Thanagar came to an end and Kyle Rayner and Kilowog terraformed much of Thanagar in order that its people could return home and begin anew. But then a rift in space suddenly materialized between the two worlds and Blackfire convinced Thanagar that this was a new attack from Rann. The war reignited.

On Earth, Wonder Woman's younger sister Donna Troy gathered a group of heroes to investigate the energy fissure that had appeared between Thanagar and Rann. According to Donna, this fissure had formed because an unknown force had somehow "moved" where the center of the universe was supposed to be. It was no longer the planet Oa, home of the Guardians of the Universe and base of the Green Lantern Corps, but this strange rift that was emitting waves of destructive force.

Back on Earth, other dark things were brewing. Luthor, now on the run as a fugitive, joined forces with Brainiac and caused disruption for both the Teen Titans and the Outsiders. When he discovered that Luthor had programmed sleeper protocols into his brain, Superboy decided it was too dangerous for him to continue operating as a hero and retired, living in Kansas in his civilian identity of Connor Kent.

During the story "Identity Crisis", it was discovered that years before, a few members of the Justice League of America had altered the intellect and/or personality traits of certain villains. These "mind-wipes" had been accomplished by the sorceress Zatanna, who had also used her powers on Batman to block out his memory of discovering this conspiracy.

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Infinite Crisis Intro

This is part of my Crisis files and refers to the crossover Infinite Crisis (also known as the "Second Crisis").

AFTER THE CRISIS

Following the events of the First Crisis, the DC Universe had become a darker place in many ways. Since the Infinite Crisis was very focused on the Big Three of the DCU (Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman), this intro focuses on what happened to them following the Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Barbara Gordon AKA Batgirl was crippled by the Joker. Weeks later, the villain then murdered Jason Todd, the second teenager to be named Robin. Following this, Batman began to seriously question his methods in how he performed his war on crime and was a much harsher taskmaster to Tim Drake, the third Robin. To make up for failing to save Barbara, he arranged for her to be trained in how to fight despite her disability and helped fund her new career as Oracle, the ultimate hacker and information broker.

Months after Tim joined the war on crime, Batman encountered Azrael, a young man who had been hypnotically trained since birth to act as an assassin for a religious cult. Believing that Azrael was a good person at heart, the Batman took him in as a new apprentice. Months later, the Dark Knight was defeated in battle against the villain Bane, who broke his back. Since Tim was too young, and since Dick Grayson had grown beyond the shadow of the bat, Azrael was chosen to become the new Batman.

When Bruce later had his back restored by a mutant who had the power to heal, he was ready to retire and pursue a normal life. But he learned that Azrael had become a much more brutal and bloodthirsty Batman and had even left a criminal to die. Unwilling to let his legacy be tarnished by a mentally unstable man, Bruce retrained himself and forcibly took back the mantle of the bat.

After his failure to protect Jason and Barbara, and disgusted with himself for his poor choice in trusting Azrael, Bruce Wayne returned to his role of Batman as a harsher, more obsessive crusader, unwilling to forgive himself for any further error in judgment, insisting he had no friends nor family, only colleagues and agents.

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Pre-Crisis Memories

This is part of my Crisis Files and, in particular, references the story Crisis on Infinite Earths (nowadays also known as the "First Crisis").

 

By the end of the Crisis, the multiverse had been destroyed and then rebooted as a single universe with a new unified timeline. Memories of how things had been before the Crisis were altered since, naturally, history itself had been altered all across the board.

But some people did seem to remember what reality had been like Pre-Crisis. Harbinger and Pariah remembered, of course. So did the Psycho-Pirate, who even during the special Joker: Last Laugh - Secret Files was babbling about the formerly existing Earths S and X. But they weren't the only ones. Others wout in the DC Universe would occasionally refer to the Pre-Crisis state of affairs. Who were these folks?

SHAZAM

The mini-series Shazam! The New Beginning, written by Roy Thomas, was the first attempt to give Captain Marvel a post-Crisis origin and bring him into the mainstream DC Universe, At one point, in issue #3 the wizard Shazam was considering his plans for Billy Batson, the boy he had chosen to become Captain Marvel. The wizard pondered how on the Pre-Crisis reality known as Earth-S there had been many people with Captain Marvel's abilities, such as Mary Marvel, CM Jr., Hoppy the Marvel Bunny and the three Lt. Marvels (Tall Marvel, Fat Marvel and Hillbilly Marvel). He then decided against recreatign these heroes, remarking that such a path led only to "madness."

A few years later, this mini-series was dropped from continuity and a new series began called The Power of Shazam. Sure enough, Billy was soon joined by Mary Marvel and CM Jr. (though, thankfully, the Lt. Marvels have never shown up).

THE SPECTRE

In the Spectre's new series by Doug Moench, the vengeful spirit found his powers greatly reduced. He was informed by the bodiless Voice that commanded him that this was due to his failure to prevent the destruction of the multiverse. A rather strange decision, considering that a major theme of the Crisis was that the multiverse wasn't supposed to exist in the first place and was always supposed to have been a single, unified reality. In any event, there it seemed clear that the Spectre knew the full scope of what had happened during the Crisis.

Later on, in Secret Origins vol. 2. #50, the Spectre mentioned to the Black Canary that she would meet people she had met before but had forgotten due to "time and tide." Another reference that time/space had been rebooted.

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