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It may have been brand blindness, but Warren Ellis’ WildStorm series completely escaped my attention at the turn of the century. Then again, I collected The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and 1963, too, didn’t I? Could be I lumped them all in with the whole beautiful mutant nonsense. Case in point: in the DC crossover, the Planetary guys go through the trouble of dissecting Superman’s powers, but they never did adequately explain how Jakita Wagner is nigh invulnerable. Still, my recent forays on the high seas of the Internet yielded some plunder—must I say “aye, matey”—and I found myself staying up past 3am with Planetary. The Authority, not so much: I liked it better when Grant Morrison’s Green Arrow and Atom beat Darkseid the same way as they killed their God.

…He lives. (I should try speaking in aphorisms.) The recurring motif to my self-defeatism lately has been futile searches for exits from buildings, often through vast service infrastructures. The elevators never work right, so I’ve been taking to the back stairwells, which can’t possibly go well. Beats me why I even bother with these Escheresque obstacle courses, repeating, recursive floors, steps that end abruptly and continue on platforms off to the side, and when I do find an accessible door, they lead to others that aren’t or empty levels like the ones in an enclosed videogame. I ought to just pack it in, reset the whole thing, but the nagging drive to make the most of it always presses me on. A PC Card-like key offered entrance into a laboratory facility, but the lock wouldn’t respond to it. I wasn’t gonna meet up with the gang for sushi on the 14th floor, was I.

As much as I enjoyed the HBO series, the books (I’ve Kindled the fifth, no less) have been a disappointment. I read them as spoilers more than anything, but if the following seasons are paced like this, author George R.R. Martin might have to take back what he said about Lost. Using the word “fuck” as an adverb is inexcusable for a Tolkien—and seeing Monty Python in so-called high fantasy is like Wayne’s World in myth—and only adds to my growing realization that the best of all things is behind us.

By then I’ll be old as dirt (or buried beneath it), but the idea of a super man still makes me giddy. There’s just so little evidence in the world that one could possibly ever exist, and more than enough that we really, really need him.