Sunday, August 24, 2008

Take That Hawkman Fans

Okay, so for fifteen years after the original Crisis, Hawkman was hard to figure out, there were often multiple copies of him running around at the same time, and there were some questions about when the Hawkman from space originally came to Earth, to the point where DC thought it would be wise just to merge both Hawkmen and Hawkgirl into one being, and that that would sort itself out:




Well, it didn't, but it did convince DC to park Hawkman in limbo for about five years until Geoff Johns had the good sense to simply pick one Hawkman and basically ignore any other versions as much as possible. So, Hawkman was established as Carter Hall, an archeologist who was really the reincarnation of an Egyptian Pharoh, and so on, not the best origin, but it worked...until DC decided to screw around with it...

Yep, it was all a lie...including those two stories where parts of the JSA go back in time to hang out with the past incarnation of Hawkman...and Dr. Fate and Black Adam's past relationship's with the man....which is why retconning is so dangerous, because it is almost never confined to the retconnee.

I mean, if they were saying that Hawkman was never an Egyptian Prince, that'd be fine, but they're saying that the Prince himself never existed when clearly he did, and DC has to retcon those stories away too because they no longer make sense....unless this is all one larger mind game, in which case it's a truly bizarre choice for the plot of a one-shot.

But how did this twist of fate happen? Well....
See, fake memories? Not very superheroic, but memories that have bled through from other timelines....now that's the mark of a true defender of the earth.

And why did this happen?
I don't think anyone can deny that the results have been confusing...and giving Hawkman the power to see through retcons...well, that's going to be great, because the only more damaging to continuity and telling a good a story than retcons is bringing direct attention to those inconsistencies.

So, Hawkman, once an Egyptian Prince, now a fourth-wall busting guy with muddled memories.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Bad Character Designs: JSA Edition

Here's the thing, sometimes Geoff Johns writes excellent comics, like the first volume of JSA or the first half of his Flash run and the like, but sometimes....not so much. I mean, here's some of the great characters introduced in the pages of JSA over the last year:


Amazing Man III:
Now, you may ask yourself, "Wait, who the hell is Amazing Man, and why are there three of them?" Well, the first one was created by Roy Thomas because otherwise his All-Star Squadron would have had a conspicuously all-white super-team fighting the Nazis, plus it was probably worth exploring how a African-American super-hero would deal with the racism of the 1940s.

The second Amazing Man was a mainstay of the Justice League in the painful period between Giffen/DeMatteis and Morrison....and that should tell you all you need to know about him.

But here we are again, with a new Amazing Man, who's a black guy...from New Orleans, and based on his costume, I'm going to go ahead and guess his portrayal will be downright Winickian in its subtlety.

Lance:
First of all, Lance is a pretty terrible name for a super-hero, by pretty much any measure.

Second, his hook is that he's the great-grandson of FDR which seems kind of stupid, if only because it makes the JSA out to be some sort of aristocratic coalition that determines membership based on bloodline, which doesn't quite seem right. I mean, is really only getting in because of who his ancestors were?

Finally, he is enlisted soldier, fighting in one of America's real-life wars who wears some mysterious device on his arm, and he's being brought into an organization concerned with educating young super-heroes in the proper use of their powers....and that's a problem because that happens to be the exact description of the Gauntlet from Avengers: The Initiative.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Terrifying Designs in Comic Book History

War Machine 1992:
About as good a look as you're going to find in the early-to-mid 90s

War Machine 1999:
You will believe a Buick can fly!

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Suggestions For Geoff Johns

Hey, good news, apparently Barry Allen is coming back. Now his comic didn't see particularly well when he was the Flash, and he primary characterization over the last twenty years was, "That guy who was really good at being the Flash and who's standard must be upheld."

You know, I can understand why you'd want to replace Wally West as the Flash, because you made the fundamental mistake of giving him a family, but two things:

A) To the extent the status quo of Wally's life is a problem, I don't know I'd hand the book back to the guy who screwed it up in the first place.

B) The last time that DC decided to replace Wally West with a guy whose name was B. Allen this happened:

Which, in short order, led to this:

Also, I can't imagine how this makes sense from the standpoint of marketing the Flash to new readers. Barry Allen died in 1985, there's no good reason to go back.

Monday, July 21, 2008

July 2008 DC Comic Obituary

Checkmate (v2)
Length of Series: 31 Issues

Why it Failed: Well, I mean, I do recall putting it on my list of comics that should be cancelled, so if I delude myself enough, I can pretend I made a difference.

But seriously, Checkmate is a C-List DC title, and there was no way that it was going to last with anything less than a A-List writer, and once Rucka left...well, it was probably doomed no matter what.

Granted, Bruce Jones managed to take it down in incredible time, I mean, given the lag time between commissioning issues and receiving sales reports...well, it was pretty fast.

But hey, it lasted two and half years, which isn't bad at all.

Monday, July 14, 2008

Bad Characters: Danny Chase

Let's be honest, like many other DC properties, the Titans have spent most of the last twenty years coasting on one good run, in this case the seminal Wolfman/Perez issues. I mean, what do you have after that?

Anyway, at some point Wolfman and Perez decided to let the characters gradually age into their early twenties...which wasn't the greatest idea, as it has led to a bunch of other problems, not the least of which was the breakdown of exactly what made the Titans different from every other super-team.

Marv Wolfman's reponse to this problem was to introduce Danny Chase, in an attempt to put the "Teen" back in Teen Titans...it didn't go so well. Why, you ask? First, let's look at his origin story from New Titans Annual #3 (1987)




A thirteen year-old who's some sort of secret agent for the government? Are you fucking kidding me?

But wait, there's more, because Danny Chase also has super-secret powers:
And how did he get his super-powers? Radiation, World War II and genetics, why choose one when you can have them all:



And, for the hell of it, why not add some parental abandonment:



And since his parents apparently have to go somewhere for some...reason, the Titans decide to adopt Secret Agent Danny Chase, because...well, they do anyway. (And by the way, I'm pretty sure Danny Chase's parents hate him as much as I do)

Thus, Danny Chase joined the Titans, and was given the chance to show his charming personality on a monthly basis:




And that one page basically sums up the character; an asshole with superpowers, and not the lovable kind.

He's also afraid of blood:

So, there you go, Danny Chase, the lamest Titan of all of Wolfman's run.

Friday, July 11, 2008

Coming This Fall

Wondering how Bill Willingham is going to write his half of the soon-to-be catastrophically bad DCU: Decisions? Well, here's a hint, from Fable #74:

So remember, gun control is just the man's way of keeping you down. So, to keep our country safe from terrorists and evil magical empires, make sure to vote Republican.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Heroic Failures In Comics: Counter-X

The year was 2000, and the world was a much different place. Over-extension of the X-Men line had led to there existing several books of...dubious quality.

Actually, I guess it's not really that different from today.

But back then, Marvel had a solution, turn over three of its marginal X-titles to Warren Ellis and friends to see if he turn them around. Long story short: He couldn't. Although it's worth noting that one conceit of the Counter-X gimmick was that Warren Ellis would gradually turn over control of the books to his chosen successors.

Why did it fail...well, let's look at the three books...

Generation X
You see, the first X-Men spinoff was The New Mutants, and it was a tremendous success. Interestingly enough, it eventually evolved into X-Force, which I'll look at in a second...

Before Counter-X: Jay Faerber was the writer, and the Massachusetts Academy (home of Generation X) had been forced to take in normal students in order to pay the bills. The drama came from the mutants being forced to hide their powers. Your standard teen soap opera, basically.

After Counter-X: Brian Wood gets rid of the normal students and the least interesting member of the team via a series of events not worth getting into at the moment. Frankly, the retool only lasted about a year, and a large part of that was taken up by a series of spotlight issues, so it's kind of hard to say there were a lot of changes. Either way, the book ended by scattering the team and closing the school.

X-Force
In a shocking twist, the X-book most tied into the worst excesses of the '90s started to show its age after about a decade, hence it was also involved in the Counter-X initiative.

Before Counter-X: X-Force was a band of young mutants (but not as young as Generation X) who were "edgier" than the main X-Teams. At least I think that's what it was about, it's kind of hard to figure out exactly what makes the bunch of mutants different from every other bunch of mutants.

After Counter-X: X-Force is a "black-ops" team, operating extra-legally in order to stop evil-doers. I think the key difference is that they play up the "extra-legal" concept. There's probably supposed to be a sort of ambiguous morality or something inherent in this approach, but it doesn't really come through.

Actually, X-Force survived the Counter-X implosion and was given over to Peter Milligan and Mike Allred and changed into an entirely different book about the convergence of celebrity and super-heroics.

X-Man
Behold the most superfluous X-Book that ever was!

Before Counter-X: Nate Grey was the super-powerful son who, through a complicated series of event was the biological child of Cyclops and Jean Grey and raised in a dystopia, and yes, that does sound a lot like Cable...except without guns...or a sense of purpose. It sounds as good as it was.

After Counter-X: The most successful Counter-X in terms of quality, it succeeded because it actually fixed one of the key flaws in the book by giving Nate Grey something to do. Unfortunately, it involved Nate Grey becoming some sort of shaman and involved bunches of alternate universes, but at least it tried.

Counter-X never really had a chance, the books Ellis was given to overhaul were marginal to begin with, and the industry wasn't in great shape at the moment. Still, the relaunches were mainly giving the existing bad concept a Ellisian gloss and sending them on their way, and that certainly wasn't going to work.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Great Comics of Our Times: Mutant X #31

Mutant X was a series that starred Havok, the younger, dumber, less interesting brother of Cyclops being trapped in an alternate universe where everyone's basically the same except for some perfunctory twist. Given that in the history of the X-Franchise there has been exactly one good run involving the character, (Peter David's first X-Factor run) it isn't surprising that the series didn't go too well.

But Mutant X #31 is a surreally bad issue that involves an American-Canadian war, Captain America blowing up the moon and a cliffhanger that comes out of nowhere.



The issue begins with the revelation of a terrifying, world-shattering evil...yeah, it's an alternate version of the Beyonder, because nothing says ominous like a guy with a White man's Afro
.

Meanwhile, in the main plot, Havok's team is in a tense standoff with...Canadian supersoldiers. For some reason, this encounter drives Captain America completely insane.

Really insane. And how the hell did the good Captain suddenly gain the ability to shoot undefined energy beams at people.



And it just goes on like this for a while, Captain America killing off minor characters for no real good reason until Havok shows up, and that's when it really goes off the rails.

Bad comic or Dragon Ball Z homage, you decide!



Now, I understand that alternate universes allow for all sorts of crazy ideas, but Canada as the world's "most militarily aggressive nation?" Really? I mean, looks like the most dangerous thing in this story is Captain America and his tendency to destroy everyone because they're not American...or American enough...or something.

...And that's when Havok destroyed the moon...somehow. It looks likes Havok's waves are destroying the moon, but that doesn't make a lot of sense.

Anyway, with Captain America defeated, the team decides to retire back to its headquarters, where Havok promptly gets ambushed. By whom you ask? Is it the mysterious entity alluding to throughout the story? A disgruntled Canadian? The owner of a tidal power plant? No, it's a villain perfectly suited to a guy who can level small planets...

Friday, June 27, 2008

Bad Characters: Superboy-Prime

Later this summer, DC is going to release a mini-series called "Legion of Three Worlds" which will have the key task of killing the Waid/Kitson version of the Legion, and double-killing the DnA version, because DC is determined to turn the clock back to 1983 whenever possible.

But wait, not only is the Legion of my youth going to be annihilated, it's going to be done by Super(Lawsuit-pending)-Prime, a terrible character.

You see, Superboy-Prime wasn't meant to be a villain, near as I can tell, he was put in the original Crisis because Superboy was about to be Byrned right out of canon, and Marv Wolfman figured, "Well, might as well give the character, or a close facsimile of him, one last spin."
Of course, then Geoff Johns said to himself, "Man, the best villain I can think of for my crisis is a whiny teenager, because everybody loves what Lucas is doing with Darth Vader in the new Star Wars movies!"

I mean, Superboy-Prime doesn't come off as menacing so much as kind of stupid:


For that matter, Superboy-Prime has managed to kill exactly one character that anyone cares about, and that was the Golden Age Superman, who had been effectively dead for twenty years anyway.

And it's not like he's become a better character in the interim:


Based on what the character has done so far, I can guess Legion of Three World will progress thusly:

Superboy-Prime: I want to go back to my home universe!
Cosmic Boy: Okay, but....
Superboy-Prime: You're ruining it! I'm going to Mega-Murder your universe into super-death!
(Superboy-Prime somehow removes the Threeboot and DnA Legions from continuity)
Geoff Johns: Take that anyone not alive in the Carter administration!*

*The restoration of the original continuity should in no way be construed to represent an acceptance of any Legion story written after 1987. Five Years Later, my ass.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Punching a Gift-horse in the Mouth

Boy, Tom Defalco, you wrote one of the Spider-man books during the Clone Saga, so, I must ask, is this really a road you want to go down, even in jest?


Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Top Ten Disatrous Debacles Done During Dan DiDio's....Leadership

There's been a lot of criticism leveled at Dan DiDio recently, what with Chuck Dixon getting fired, Grant Morrison's complaints about DC editors, and the fact that Final Crisis got thumped by Secret Invasion in terms of sales.

But, in fairness, it's not like these are the first problems that have come up since he's been in charge. Let's look back.

10. The Life and Death of Spoiler

He approved Spoiler getting tortured to death, and then allowed that to be retconned into her dying because long-time Batman ally Dr. Tompkins letting her die to prove a point. There's really no way where that isn't awful, and making all of it some sort of complicated deception which Batman appeared to be complicit (explained by his refusal to erect any sort of memorial in the Bat-Cave) doesn't exactly improve matters, though I guess it's nice she's alive.

9. Super-Delays

First of all, I really don't think there needs to be another Zod, because it's not like there's anything good or interesting about the character beyond his proclivity to demand opponents kneel before him. Second, if you're going to introduce a character that's only going to be around for one arc, you'd best make sure everyone else working on Superman books know that fact too.

8. Bad Cancellations

Any book that dies so Judd Winick's Titans may live is a martyr of the highest caliber.

7. Justice League of America

Emo-Tornado! The mind-shatteringly unintersting of Vixen's powers! The big three sitting around in a clubhouse deciding who's good enough to hang with them! And crossover after crossover after crossover! Probably not the best way to run your flagship team, but what do I know?

6. Wonder Woman Relaunch

Well, first they put Allan Heinberg on the book but he took over a year to produce five issues of decent, but hardly groundbreaking stories, well, story. Then Jodi Picoult came in, but was saddled with the ungodly (get it? GET IT?) mess that was Amazons Attack!. Not a good relaunch for a marquee character, but it could have been worse...

5. Flash: The Fastest Man Alive

In making Bart Allen the Flash, DC showed just how quickly a franchise can be practically wiped out by bad decisions. In a shocking twist of fate, stripping Bart Allen of all recognizable features and putting him the care of the writers from not-terribly successful Flash TV series of fifteen year prior didn't work too well. So, the decision was made to kill him, and bring back Wally West, and given the lead time involved in creating comics, this happened within a few months.

4. Superboy Prime

He's a shitty character, but I suppose he's good at gruesomely annihilating bad characters from the '90s.

3. Death! Death! Death!

Life insurance premiums for members of the JLI or Titans have never been higher.

2. DC Countdown

It's probably a good idea to, you know, actually be consistent with the series you're counting down to.

Also, if I were a Monitor, I don't think I'd be particularly scared that Kyle Rayner was watching me. What's he going to do? Angst me to death?

1. One Year Later

Well, let's see, it fucked up Aquaman, put the final nail in the coffin for Hawkman, and generally did more harm than good to pretty much every book in the line. But other than that it worked out great.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Neverending Crisis

There's a chance that Final Crisis is going to be really good, and there's a chance that it could help cause the entire market to come crasing down.

Also, to all fans of the current Legion of Superheroes....well, I suggest really enjoying these next few issues.

Monday, June 9, 2008

Wonder Woman Sucks, Part Two

Anyway, to finish up my examination of Wonder Woman in the Post-Crisis era, I now come to a long period of half-finished ideas.



The Eric Luke Run
Issues: #139-153, 157-160

In this run, Luke introduces the Wonderdome (a new base that eventually becomes sentient and falls in love with Wonder Woman) and a villain called Dr. Poison. Yeah, it's not-so-good.

The Phil Jimenez Run
Issues: #164-188

I guess this isn't that bad a run, but it's not really that good. Although this run does include the coming of democracy to Paradise Island, which seems like it kind of misses the point, in the sense that if there's one place where you shouldn't even try to worry about underlying origins of political power, it's a secluded island populated solely by a race of magical women.

Also, Jimenez brings back some supporting characters from other writers' stories in an attempt to make a supporting cast that isn't wholly transitory. He doesn't succeed.

The Greg Rucka Run
Issues: #195-226

I probably didn't like Rucka's Wonder Woman as much as everyone else, but I did think it was pretty good....right up until it got fatally derailed by the build-up to Final Crisis, and that was that.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

I Can Prove Wonder Woman Sucks Part 1

Wonder Woman has been considered one of DC's "Big Three" for a long time. I always thought that putting her up on a pedastal with Superman and Batman was kind of ridiculous, and the result of historical accident more than anything else (because Wonder Woman survived the fifties intact).

The main problem is that she's a pretty hopeless character. Basically, the farther we've gone from the '40s, the worse her origin has become. Ultimately, she's a paradox from the Megaman school of "Fight, Megaman, for everlasting peace." She's supposed to be an incredible warrior sent to "Man's World" (Another aspect that isn't aging particularly well) in order to preach the value of peace. Of course, she spends most of her time engaging in fisticuffs with criminals, so...uh...maybe not the best ambassador for peace.

But, more to the point, look at the quality of the comic book itself, from the beginning of v2 to the present day:

The George Perez years:
Issues (v2) #1-#62
After the first Crisis, DC decided to revamp several of their books, including Wonder Woman, like Superman, it was determined that the character was best served by starting over, and the revamp worked well, at least in the sense that Wonder Woman became a marginally usuable character that some people actually cared about, as opposed to a title that was hanging on primarily because of inertia.

Ironically, I imagine that a lot of this run has been retconned out of continuity because the stories involved Wonder Woman coming to Man's World for the first time, and thus removing her status as a founder of the JLA, which has since been explicitly restored by Meltzer, so he could bring us issue after pulse-pounding issue of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman sitting around a table and acting like jerks.

Still, 'twas a fine run, and it seemed like maybe Wonder Woman didn't have to be awful...of course, that led to...

The Bill Messner Loebs Run:
Issues #63-100


...And that's when the train started going off the rails. Now, Bill Loebs has done some good work, like his version of the Flash, which was the crucial transition from the Baron uber-jerk Wally West to the Mark Waid run.

The most memorable thing about this run was that Wonder Woman was stripped of her uniform in a convolutated scheme involvong prophecies, rigged contests, and terrible, terrible costumes. It wasn't good, and it certainly wasn't helped by the art which, in fairness, was typical for that time.

But things got worse...

The John Byrne Run
Issues #101-136
It's a John Byrne book make after 1988, that's really all you need to know.

But, in a more specific sense, Byrne kills Wonder Woman, creates a new Wonder Girl, muddies the origin of the old Wonder Girl, tries to retcon Wonder Woman back into the Golden Age, and makes my head hurt.

I guess most of these initiatives were done with the best of intentions, but none of them came off particularly well. As in, I'm not actually sure which, if any, of these comics are still in continuity.

Join me next as I review the many, many aborted runs that followed Byrne.

Monday, June 2, 2008

Bad Characters: Northwind

This is the amazing origin of Northwind from Infinity Inc. v1 #1 (March 1984), he was created by Roy Thomas and Jerry Ordway, which goes to show that terrible characters can be made by anyone:

Depending on your view of the world, Northwind is either the product of a truly disturbing union of man and bird-woman or....

Well, that or Roy Thomas was twenty years ahead of his time.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Updates...From The Future!!!!

DCU: Decisions is going to be a monumentally ill-conceived series. The concept of assigning political parties to heroes can only lead to trouble, and it's being written by Winick and Willingham.

Now, Winick is bad enough as is, but give him a soapbox for his politics and we'll end up with the pain of the "Speedy has H.I.V" times twenty.

For that matter, Willingham doesn't seem to share his political views much in his work, and boy I wish that would continue:


So, to review, DCU: Decisions has as bad a premise as Countdown: Arena, with the added benefit of being able to piss off comics fans in exciting new ways.

Civil War - A Retrospective

Okay, it's been a couple of years, and there are two critical flaws in Civil War that ought to be discussed.

1. When you mix real-world issues such as security vs. freedom, you're bound to screw it up.

Super-heroes don't make a tremendous amount of sense in the real world. I mean, how exicited would you really be to see some anonymous guy dressed up as a spider taking the law into his own hands? People wouldn't stand for it, I mean, there's already a big problem with the blue wall of silence, imagine how people would feel about the spandex wall of silence. For that matter, pretty much every super-hero would have hundreds of civil suits against them at all times.

But none of that matters, because there are certain conventions that are unrealistic but accepted in this particular format.

Once these rules are questioned, which was essentially the point of Civil War, things start to break down. Millar was right when he had the people of New York side with Iron Man, because that's what real people would have done. Or at least, that's what I think real people would have done. Which leads me to the bigger problem.

2. The politics of Civil War were so bad as to render the entire story meaningless.

First off, there is a controversy in American society that mirrors the dilemma in Civil War, but it's about gun control, not civil liberties.

In the story people aren't giving up their freedoms, because the law does not apply to the vast majority of them. The Super-Hero Registration Act compels only people with superpowers to register with the government. To put the comparison more bluntly, people with abilities that could potentially allow them to harm others must register those abilities with the government. Replace "abilities" with "gun" and there we go. Now, it's not a perfect analogy, because superpowers are not often gained voluntarily, but forcing people to register does not impair any civil liberty that the vast majority of people enjoy. So, no, people are not choosing between liberty and security, because people can have both.

Second, in order to make the anti-registration forces seem at least somewhat reasonable, Mark Millar decided to make Iron Man and his cronies out to be fascists, building Guantanamo-like prisons in the Negative Zone and creating evil clones of Thor. Now, what this defamation served to do was to ensure that Captain America was the hero of this story. At this point, no other writer was too keen to support the pro-Registration side in their own titles, and so the vast majority of Civil War tie-ins dealt with the protagonist fighting against the evils of registration, even in books where the main character was on Iron Man's side (i.e. Ms. Marvel).

So, Civil War, though it did sell well, was not a good story.

Oh, yeah, after coming up with a list of DC titles that deserve to be cancelled, I would also add that the new version of New Warriors is a pretty bad book too, because the main antagonist appears to be the Initiative, which is headed up by Iron Man, and I don't think it's sustainable to have a character with two on-going titles to be one of the main villains in another book.

Sunday, May 25, 2008

When Elseworlds Go Bad

Back in the '90s, when the first Crisis had wiped out all those parallel worlds, DC felt the need to create a new format that would allow creators to make non-canonical works featuring DC characters. Thus, Elseworlds was born.

And while it led to a lot of pretty good books like Batman: Red Rain, or Superman: Red Son and the like, it didn't also work out to well.

To support that statement, I give you Elliot S! Maggin's Batman, The Blue, The Grey, and the Bat from 1993.
You see, Elseworlds is really about asking questions like, "What if there was no Superman?" or "What if Batman were also Green Lantern?" In this case, the question is "What if Batman was a personal agent of Abraham Lincoln sent to protect the Comstock Lode during the Civil War?"



Not really the sort of thing that Batman typically does...but compared to what comes after, it makes perfect sense.

So , anyway, Batman accepts this mission, because, after all, who can say no to the man with the stovepipe hat? But since this is a Batman story, clearly he will need an era-appropriate Robin:


Excellent, and now we'll need an era=appropriate Batman villain:



Huh...just some typical Confederate general...well, that's...ah...

Anyway, Batman arrives at Nevada and meets...and there's no easy way of saying this...Batman has an expository chat with Mark Twain of all people:


And this is where the book really starts going off the rails. Now, including Mark Twain as a supporting character in your book is fine, I guess, because it firmly establishes the time period, and if he were the only historical figure to be used in this way...

Okay, okay, but as long as we stop the madness there, the book can still be saved...

Well, fuck....

Okay, okay, so in this universe, several historical figures have all decided to team up with Batman in order to stop the Confederate army. It's a pretty weird set up, but I can't imagine things getting any more bizarre:

First of all, that's a pretty lame use of "Dark Knight." Second of all, everything else in that panel.

And it goes on like that, including the part where Mark Twain and Wild Bill Hickok must team up in order to save the Union:


And that's when the French invaded:


But then Kit Carson rides in to save the day, the war, and the Union. Nevada is admitted as a state and everyone lives happily ever after.

Except for Abraham Lincoln...

...and Bill Hickok.