Comic Captions: My Favorite Martian

This is in conjunction with the My Favorite Martian blogfest thingy being run by the Geek Twins and some other people.  I realized I had the perfect Comic Captions panel for it.  Though that will only be half the post.

Here's today's panel from Brightest Day #12 featuring the Martian Manhunter...get it?

And here's my attempted caption:

You brought protection, didn't you?

OK, you do better.

Now to change gears you're supposed to talk about your favorite alien character.  I could have gone with someone from Star Trek or Star Wars.  I mean there are plenty to choose from.  But really my favorite alien character in recent times is Roger on American Dad.

It took a season or two for the show to really figure out what to do with Roger's character.  At first he was just an alien shut-in who watches a lot of TV and drinks and talks like Paul Lind.  Eventually though the writers decided to let Roger out into the world, through various disguises.  Like Clark Kent or Diana Prince the disguises are pretty easy to see through (I mean how can you not notice the gray skin, bulbous head, stubby legs, etc?  So like with Superman and Wonder Woman's secret identities you suspend some disbelief that he can get away with it.

Anyway, the disguises let Roger do just about anything, which helps to create various absurd scenarios through all his personas.  It would take too long to go through every example, so here are just a few random ones.  In one episode Roger under the guise of "Roy Rogers McFreely" takes over the neighborhood home association and starts letting people do all sorts of crazy shit to their properties.  Another time Stan, the patriarch of the Smith clan, finds out Roger was part of the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" team he reveres and taking steroids so they have to journey to Switzerland to give Roger's medal back.  In one case he even develops a split personality and actually puts a hit out on himself without realizing it.  It's become such a running gag that they incorporated it into the opening credits, where every week Roger pops up in a different disguise, sort of like the chalkboard message in The Simpsons.

I think what makes this work is that the writers created a twisted Batman vs. the Joker type relationship between Stan and Roger.  Like Batman, Stan is the law-and-order moral authority, whereas Roger, like the Joker, believes in sowing chaos for his own amusement.  Basically Roger does whatever he wants whenever he wants to whoever he wants.  He's kind of like the evil twin of "Alf" or "ET" in a lot of ways.  The kind of chaos that creates is fun to watch.

So there you go.

Tomorrow is about the future of ebooks or something...