IDW will make comics out of several Cory Doctorow stories.
David Malki ! of Wondermark wrote an excellent installment of the Comic Strip Doctor about recontextualized comic strips such as the Dysfunctional Family Circus, The Garfield Randomizer and, my favorite, Nameless Dread.
This is the cover I most associate with Crisis on Infinite Earths. It really sums up all the chaos that's going on throughout the multiverse.
We begin with the Luthor kid who has grown to adolescense in just a few days. Oh, and the Monitor is keeping him in a big glass sphere. Fortunately, Luthor Jr. has developed cognitively as well as physically so he can speak English (or whatever language they speak in Monitorland). Harbinger reminds us via internal monologue that she's working for the Monitor's adversary and then she goes off to report to said bad guy.
Harbinger meets Psycho Pirate who was obviously picked on a lot when he was in school. I love it whenever anyone calls Psycho Pirate by his villain name because it always sounds like a rude insult. "Nice going, Psycho Pirate!"
Unnamed bad guy shows himself to be as tired of Psycho Pirate as the rest of us are. He also shows himself to be a bit off the mark when he claims to know what the Monitor is up to "as he thinks it". Um, so, are you aware he knows about the Harbinger-bot who's been programmed to kill him? Huh? Huh?
Bad Guy apparently doesn't have access to comic books in the negaverse, either, because he says, "The dead can present no threat". Dude, the dead show up and threaten things all the time. Oh, well, your funeral.
Now I begin to show my ignorance of DC history. The Flash was exiled to the future? Fair enough. I was just unaware of that. Anyway, Flash is living in Central City in the future of Earth-1 and things are breaking up there, too. He relaxes his internal vibrations to return himself to his proper time. This is why I love the Flash. Hell, this is why I love comics. The Flash is living in the future because he has changed his vibrational patterns!!!! Damn. That is awesome. All he has to do is stop the "future vibrations" and he snaps back to the 20th century.
Flash shows up in the middle of The Teen Titans and The Outsiders who are trying to keep everything from being erased. Here's another scene which reminds me that I was not reading DC in '85. I don't recognize several of the combatants. I know Nightwing, Changeling and Metamorpho, of course but Katana, Kole and Captain Sideburns (Jericho) must not have stuck around much past the turn of the decade.
I'm serious about the sideburns:
"They were called The Losers. But they were winners to the end."
Diesel Sweeties provides The Official Internet Bumper Sticker:
It's like an ironic hat for your blog!
Animation Magazine reports that Platinum Studios is gearing up for a 2nd Comic Book Challenge. New and unpublished comic creators are encouraged to submit their ideas for a chance to have their property developed for print, online, film and television. Go to ComicBookChallenge.com
Holy Monster Pockets! Check out this essay by Greg Burgas! When the words "Moore" and "Morrison" are mentioned in the same article the author is contractually obligated to include "deconstruction" and/or "postmodernism". Burgas does both! It's a long, well-written piece which covers literary elements in comics and why screwing with the status quo is a good thing.
Added to the sidebar: Inside Joke Theatre
Shortpacked echoes my feelings about Darwyn Cooke's The Spirit and Frank "Testosterone" Miller's involvement in the proposed movie.
What I said about it wasn't as funny but it does have a keen scan of an old-school Spirit cover.
Three of the mainstream titles in my holdbox were disappointing. Only one of them was bad enough to make me drop the book. Let's start with that one:
Moon Knight #8 - Marvel (2007)
I'm a big Moon Knight fan. He was the first inductee into the Badass Files. I've been enjoying this revival of the character by Charlie Huston and David Finch enough to keep it in my holdbox but no longer.
I read this issue twice and I have no idea what the hell was going on. The dick-swinging contest between MK and Captain America was boring and everything else was just confusing. I'm tired of this demon hallucination thing, I'm tired of the poorly-executed gritty tone and I'm tired of Finch's little-faces-on-big-heads art.
Jonah Hex #17 - DC (2007)
The Tallulah storyline gets wrapped up in a nearly-satisfactory manner. I would have preferred more meat to the story but it hit all its marks. The art is excellent but I liked the visuals from the earlier issues better.
The only big complaint I have about this title is the dialects. Just write actual English words. We get that they're in the old west. We're not going to mistake this for a P. G. Wodehouse story! Drop the occasional "g" but stop with the "yore" and "caint" stuff. You aren't even using them properly half the time.
Green Lantern Corps #10 - DC (2007)
First, the cover. Nothing even remotely like this happens in this issue. I know, I know, it's a comic book. I shouldn't expect a scene from the story but this one doesn't even reflect the tone or theme of the comic.
Speaking of tone and theme, this issue barely had one. It was a disjointed combination of two-and-a-half storylines which will probably get fleshed out in future issues. This wasn't a bad issue it's just that not much happened. The stuff that did happen involved my favorite Lantern, Dr. Natu! The cover of #11 features Natu and her new partner. Looks like fun.
I finally saw 300. It's good. You can read actual reviews of it all over the web. All I'll say is that 300 was exactly faithful enough to the original material (both the visuals and the story) to still be an enjoyable movie. Sin City, on the other hand, was fanatically faithful and the movie suffered.
Here's something I didn't know about: Stan Lee Media (no longer associated with Stan) sues Marvel for ownership of many characters.
Comics Should Be Good continues its Comic-Book Urban Legends series with one related to Captain America #25, sort of.
Added to the sidebar: Comic Pants. Randy Lander and a veritable Spartan army of other dudes post here. And there's a podcast! Do I have to click the link for you?!?
The Internet's Dave Campbell speaks the magic words and posts about Lame-Ass Villain #18.
And now: Rot Lop Fan
I have a lot of issues...of Fantastic Four! My mom bought me subscriptions to FF and Marvel Team-Up back in the late '70s and I kept them up until the mid '80s. In going through the issues, I realized that FF covers generally fall into two catagories:
1. The FF fight something huge.
2. The FF are dead.
The covers below stand out for me because they break the pattern.
#257
The little, floating FF heads kind of dilute the impact of this image but it says something that when I dredge it from my memory all I see is the awesome split Galactus/Death visage.
Oh, and because this is a Marvel comic book, the Death's head on the cover isn't a metaphor. Death actually shows up in the issue. Wotta revoltin' development!
#276
I remember taking the brown paper off this one and thinking "Wow!" It still has that effect on me. This simple, striking composition combined with the narrowest of palettes conveys the level of power our heroes are up against. Also, the title's awesome.
#240
This is my favorite FF cover of all time. It's also my favorite FF story. You know how Attilan, the Inhuman's home city, is on the Blue Area of the Moon? No? Is it just me? Anyway, this is the issue where they moved there! That's a whole, freakin' city they're levitating! Fantastic Four is best when the stories are big and this is one of their biggest.
It showed off the Inhumans kewl powerz along with developing them as people. Awesome stuff. Also, Black Bolt actually shouts! I bet he enjoyed that.
The image above makes me happy. You know how much Tegan likes Aquaman? That's how much I like the Green Lantern Corps. There's a review of the latest GLC issue on the way but until then enjoy Sinestro Triumphant!
Click here for a bigger version from Newsarama.
I really liked the first issue's cover but this one is confusing. It's hard to see what's going on and the perspective is weird. Still, it's got that cool Statue of Liberty way in the background and an ape in the foreground. "You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"
On to the issue:
First off, we take a trip to "The Dawn of Man" to meet Anthro. I suppose his brothers "Psych" and "Poli-sci" are back at the village. The Dawn of Man bit is for real. Anthro's dawning all over the place. He gets three full pages all to himself which, given how much stuff Wolfman and Pérez had to cram into this issue, is a lot of real estate.
Anthro is the first Cro-Magnon and he's surrounded by Neanderthals. I know how he feels; I used to work for the government.
Anthro tries to stop a stampeding herd of wooly mammoths from squashing his village. Y'know like the anti-matter is doing to EVERYTHING ELSE! Man, where do I come up with these parallells? Genuis! Anyway, hijinks ensue. It's a regular prehistoric sitcom even after Anthro gets a vision of 30th-century Metropolis.
Which is where the mammoths end up. That's right, due to the multiversal freakout, a herd of raging proto-pachyderms goes tearing through the Legion of Super-Heroes HQ. This is all a setup for Brainiac-5 to use his enormous thinkin' powers to determine that everything's gonna go away real soon.
Cut to Batman interrupting one of The Joker's lamest schemes ever. Joker has killed this rich dude in order to get the rights to colorized silent movies. However, the caption just before this revelation states clearly that the dead dude has heirs. Maybe Joker's gonna kill them, too. He is totally batshit.
Anyway, Batman has enormous thinkin' powers along with enormous ass-kickin' powers. Before he can completely kick The Joker's ass, though, The Flash shows up and dies horribly. He just withers and turns to dust. "WTF?" says Batman. This scene is seriously creepy and Pérez really sells it.
Pérez is not just a good artist, he's one of the best visual storytellers in the business. This whole Joker-Batman-Flash sequence is a masterpiece of panel arrangement. Things are placed in an unconventional manner but it all works so well that I didn't notice any of it until my second readthrough. Pages 13 & 18 of this issue should be included in textbooks about sequential art.
The pace picks up at this point, which is saying something. The fifteen super-beings recruited by the Monitor in issue #1 are sent around the multiverse to protect these big-ass tuning forks which are supposed to mitigate the anti-matter energies. Man, I love comic-book physics!
The Guardians of the Galaxy get their collective ass handed to them by the still-unseen bad guy and Kal-El Baby Luthor (remember the one from Earth-3 in the first issue?) starts growing faster than a soap-opera baby. I don't have a good scan of the Luthorbaby so I'll substitue this image of Pip the Troll.
Quick note: House of the Ded is back online. Pudge Heffelfinger commands you to click the link!
I found another really good "Nameless Dread" to share with you:
Making fun of Family Circus is always a good thing but adding Lovecraft lines to it is G-E-N-I-U-S.
By the way, if you want to screw with some Bill Keane drawings, yourself, go here and try it. It's fun for the whole fungoid family!
No, really! This one has a story about Nebraska in it.
The next installment of "Blogging the Crisis" will be up tomorrow. Until then, here are a couple more links:
The Freemont Nebraska Tribune has an article about a stolen comic book worth $4,000 - $5,000. It was recovered, which is good, but the article left out the most important bit of information. What was the comic?!? Was it that super-hot-hot-hot Captain America #25?
In non-Nebraska news, IF Magazine has an interview with Scott Allie, editor of Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Season 8. Man, there sure is a lot of space between each paragraph. It's like those papers I did in high school which had to be a certain page count so I pushed the margins in and triple-spaced all the text.
Also, in honor of Boom! Studios' excellent Cthulhu Comics, here's one of my favorite "Nameless Dreads" -
Oh, Jeez! Comics Oughta Be Fun brings us the adventures of The Mighty Clor.
There was a lot of stuff wrong with comics in the '90s. Comics Should Be Good highlights an issue which exemplifies all of it.
Jonah Hex is one of my favorite comic characters. I even kinda liked it when he was in that cyberpunk setting. Anyway, Scott from Polite Dissent discusses What's up with that freakin' scar. Also, there's a picture of a disfigured Britney Spears. Bonus!
Y'know something else I like? Jimmy Olsen's wacky adventures. Jake from Ye Olde Comick Booke Blogge does too. The difference between us is that Jake got a bunch of comic artists to sketch Jimmy for him.
I like GI Joe. I like the animated series, I like the action figures and I really like the comic books. Below are some of the covers that stand out in the nostalgic sludge I call a memory.
The first cover is much more recent than the second two but it's a cover that seriously did it's job. I bought it because I had to know the story behind that image. Also, the style and composition just scream "Comic Book!".
#27 possesses the platonic form of a GI Joe cover. Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes kicking each others asses in the middle of a city isn't enough for the Joe team! No, we've got to throw in a gunship! "Clearance be damned, sir, there's a ninja on that train!".
I'm cheating a bit by posting the cover for #21 because, while it is an awesome cover it's actually the contents of the issue that stand out. This was the Silent Issue. The story was told with nothing but pictures. No word balloons, no captions, nothing. It blew my little comic-reading mind at the time and it still holds up as an excellent story.
And here's a bonus cover 'cause it's got dudes with chainsaws attacking a freakin' plane! Man!
While I'm at it, here's an installment of Comic-Book Urban Legends from a while back about the Joes.
I'm a big Lovecraft fan. I also like a lot of the Cthulhu Mythos writings by other authors over the years. This comic goes in my "like" list. It also goes in my hold box. Here's why:
First off, the art. A good Mythos tale is about atmosphere. Cthulhu stories aren't always scary, as such, but they should always be eldritch and creepy. Jean Dzialowski's art conveys the proper atmosphere. There were a couple of frames where it was difficult to figure out what was going on but nothing that ruined the story.
Dzialowski switches styles a couple of times to show that the action has literally moved into a different realm. The majority of the book has a painterly, stylized look to it which is enhanced by the dark, narrow palette. The art in the Dreamlands sequence is more traditionally comicky and reminds me of Watchmen-era Dave Gibbons.
One of the advantages of writing a Cthulhu story is that there are libraries full evocative, creepy lines from earlier stories in the Mythos. Michael Alan Nelson uses these previous writings to great effect. The story features Abdul Alhazred, the Mad Arab who wrote the Necronomicon. When your main character is the batshit-craziest dude who ever lived you've gotta try hard not to get a good story out of him.
Some knowledge of the Cthulhu Mythos is useful for full enjoyment of this sequential-art product but not essential. Nelson does a good job of filling in the blank spots and Dzialowski draws the hell out of it.
In a time where Cthulhu is the punchline of jokes made by people who have never actually read Lovecraft, it's nice to see someone bringing the creepy back to it.
