Sunday, March 31, 2013

2012 “DC SH39: Ambush Bug Cubee” by Joshua Wolf

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People tend to forget that Ambush Bug started out his career as a super-villain who murdered a man in cold blood (It was only ink!) I definitely prefer him as an insane antagonist over the schlub that took hold in Son of Ambush Bug and beyond. New 52 reboot?

Joshua Wolf's Villains Cubees

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Justice League of America Television Show Animated Openings



I was recently inspired to compare the various credit sequences from JLA shows, which is easier if they're all on one page, like this one right here in front of you...

The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure Justice League of America segment (1967) ran just three installments. Hawkman is clearly no substitute for Batman.





Super Friends (1973–1974) ran for 16 hour long episodes played seemingly endlessly for forty years now. That's right, it's the fortieth anniversary of SuperFriends. This is what half a lifetime ago looked like, as defined by Wendy, Marvin and Wonder Dog. So remember now, Earth's greatest heroes are Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, and Aquaman. Put that in your web-shooter and snikt it.





The All-New Super Friends Hour (1977-1978) was an hour short of matching the original run's length. The Wonder Woman TV show's success helped spur the revival, which proved much more popular than the original run. I would not extend overly much credit to the Wonder Twins.





Challenge of the Super Friends (1978) got rid of the pesky kids and reversed the policy of very sporadic appearances by occasional super-villains in favor of the thirteen member Legion of Doom turning up for all of the 16 produced hour-long episodes.





The World's Greatest Super Friends (1979-1980) was a real backslide, replacing the Legion of Doom with cheesy Filmation originated threats and restoring the Wonder Twins & Gleek to prominence while ignoring the minority heroes from previous seasons. There were only 8 half-hour episodes.





Super Friends (1980-1982) returned to the international flavored League for 22 hours over three seasons. Most were just seven minute segments, and were buoyed by reruns laced into the hour.





Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show (1984-1985) only produced eight half-hour episodes, divided into ten minute segments. Firestorm and the minions of Darkseid were the draws.





The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians (1985-1986) offered another eight half-hours, and this one time I mean the stories ran the full length of the show. Cyborg was introduced, and this was the only season to forgo narration.





Justice League (2001-2004) is generally considered the best and longest continuously produced JLA cartoon. It was also the first to feature founding Leaguer Martian Manhunter (unless El Dorado was an alias or something.) This does not make up for the horrible CGI animation in the first season opener. 52 episodes were produced across two "seasons" before rebranding.

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Justice League Unlimited (2004-2006) ran an additional three "seasons" of 39 total episodes. This was more like a DC Universe series than a League specific one, and was therefore more awesome than ever.

Monday, March 25, 2013

2011 DCU Movie Fan Casting: Michael Jai White as Bronze Tiger


At 45, Michael Jai White is not a young man, but he is a very fit one. To accurately portray Ben Turner, a fighter who could cripple the Batman himself, you need an actor of great presence with legitimate martial arts prowess. Besides, the guy deserves better in the super-hero sweepstakes than friggin' Spawn...



Diabolic Movie Fan Casting

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Comic Reader Résumé: April, 1985



After all the personal landmark comics I read in March, I guess I must have rested in I only picked up three comic books from April of 1985. I fished a number of comics published this month from Marauder Books, which was one of my early regular shops nestled in a strip mall married to a grocery store. That was in 1989 though, so I'm not prepared to count them for the purposes of this project. Still, I'd like to give shout-outs to Legion of Substitute Heroes Special #1, Tales of the Teen Titans #55, and The New Teen Titans #10 for nostalgia value more than their being any great shakes. I also feel the need to spotlight Grimjack #13, the first issue I paid full price for at Marauder. I'd fished Grimjack #8 out of the bin previously and hated the lead, but I got enough laughs out of the Munden's Bar back-up to give it another try. As it turned out, I hated 98% of all other Munden's stories, and ended up collecting the entire run of Grimjack with #13 as my gateway. Still, that's four years from where we're covering today.



I may have bought Muppet Babies #2. I'm not certain, as I think this cover art was used in house/STAR Comics subscription ads, but I did like me some Muppet Babies at the time. I recall making the conscious choice to avoid Secret Wars II, despite my enjoyment of the first volume. The Beyonder just looked too doofy for my taste, Al Milgrom was way not Zeck or Layton in handling hordes of heroes, and it just plain looked bad. I thumbed through my half-brother's copies when we started having a relationship a year or two later, but never actually read this series. Similarly, I recall John Byrne's cover to Rawhide Kid #1 when it hit the stands and wondering "why this?" I probably got Sectaurs #2, but it didn't make a strong impression on me. For all I know, it was in a three-pack months later, or even came from a buddy years later. Whatever.



Blue Devil #14 was cute, and I'll confess that the first time I saw Robin's debut in Detective Comics #38 years down the line, it reminded me of Kid Devil. That's kind of wrong.



Dreadstar and Company #2 landed in a weird place between close to home and Afternoon Special with its tale of Willow's troubled life, but the story was solid overall and I adored the art. This was my book, and I cherished it.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

2012 “Vil18: Eclipso Cubee” by Joshua Wolf

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I've been a fan of Eclipso since his early '90s mini-series, and have the dubious distinction of having bought his entire ongoing series from month to harrowing, often wretched month (including, of course, the Bloodlines annual.) I need to cover this fellow more here, but for now, I'll wonder if there's any way to convert a "Cubee" into some semblance to a diamond, instead...

Joshua Wolf's Villains Cubees

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Comic Reader Résumé: March, 1985



I only picked up three comic books from February of 1985. I recall seeing Amazing Spider-Man #265 in a three pack and not being impressed, while I've never to this day continued the Captain Britain/Mordred story into Captain America #306 because of that lousy cover (not that Paul Neary's interiors were any more scintillating.) Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #103 had a compelling cover, but I think Spidey just fought normal people inside, so I didn't follow up on it. I pulled the surpringly solid Tales of the Teen Titans #54 out of a quarter bin, but that was so many years later (anytime from 1989 to the early '90s) that it doesn't count here. Having noted those I passed, the books I did buy this month stuck with me long after the fact.

Dreadstar and Company #1 was one of the most important comics I've ever purchased. I still had beat up copies of my uncle's abandoned Captain Marvel and Warlock comics, which had made me a fan of Jim Starlin for as long as I can remember. However, this was easily the most influential and my favorite of the three. Dreadstar was Starlin purging himself of all of his rage against organized religion (Catholocism specifically) and the military-industrial complex with a clarity inaccessible during the acid trips of his earlier work. Here, Starlin moved away from his strong Silver Age influences and looked to older masters like Hal Foster and Alex Raymond, a stylistic renaissance that marked the pinnacle of his abilities. The actual story in this one comic is no great shakes-- a lengthy recap of "The Metamorphosis Odyssey" from Epic Illustrated, the 1981 Eclipse original painted volume The Price, and Marvel Graphic Novel #3, followed by a cute heist short story that demonstrated the book as a whole being a well above average Star Wars pastiche (not unlike Firefly, come to think of it.) However, the ground covered here got a young reader up to speed on a rich cosmos of continuity, and I was ravenous for successive issues.



Daredevil #220 sported a striking cover, which complemented a story that haunted my memory forevermore. Matt Murdock's ex-girlfriend Heather Glenn wouldn't leave him alone, until something happened to her that he couldn't ignore. Driven by guilt, Daredevil investigated the circumstances of a tragedy, and was not at all consoled by the answers he found. Where Dreadstar had epic scope that confronted me with big issues, this story was one of the first mature works I read, in that it made me keenly aware of the choices made in life that are irrevocable and often damning. The sick feeling of responsibility for the damage suffered by others is a weight we all carry, and Denny O'Neil warned me in a tale far more sophisticated than the preachy '70s garbage he built his legacy upon. David Mazzucchelli was a perfect compliment, defining "grim and gritty" with a moody noir that illustrated true human frailty. This was more than an entertaing periodical-- this meant something.



Finally, there was New Mutants #29, initially the dog of a three-pack, but I can't tell you whichever other comics it came with. Bill Sienkiewicz was the poster boy for bad art in my eyes, and a critic in training boasted that even I could draw better, which was a boldfaced lie at the most basic level before considering Sienkiewicz's challenging the boundaries between funnybooks and fine art. Chris Claremont's scripts were ever a poor conduit for Sienkiewicz's pretensions, offering mutant punks in gladiatorial combat and purple prose. I singled the book out in an attempt to get rid of it at a garage sale, but nobody was buying. It stayed in my collection, and as my sensibilities matured, I began to realize my initial evaluation was clearly that of a child. I never truly developed an affection for Sienkiewicz, but more proper respect did come...

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

2012 OMAC color art by Ramon Villalobos

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"They’ll pay for this, Lila. They’ve done more than trifle with human life… they’ve made a mockery of the spirit.

Daaaang, Kirby wasn’t playing around. I love the crazy social commentary in OMAC."
Me too. I also dig Villalobos' 2009 OMAC effort.

Ramon Villalobos

Saturday, January 5, 2013

“Night of the Huntress” color art by Kit

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Color art by kit-kit-kit

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Comic Reader Résumé: 1983 DC Sampler #1



Mike's Amazing World of Comics is an excellent resource for four-color knowledge, and the primary facilitator of this column. However, it is not infallible, and failed to list one of the more important comics of my early reading days. I believe that I found a copy of DC Sampler #1 at a flea market booth that was the closest I would get to a comic shop for years. It was a giveaway, so the price was right, but it technically wasn't a comic. No normal person could make the distinction, since the proportions were correct and its pages were filled with super-shenanigans involving hand-lettered text. According to Mike, it came out on June 30, 1983, but there's no telling how long it took to find its way to me. It was probably one of the single most important comics I've ever owned, since it was my first exposure to the whole of the DC Universe at the specific point in time when I was making the transition into devoted comic collecting. I stopped updating this column because I felt I could not go further without looking at the book, but of course I can't seem to find my copy anywhere. Frustrated, I've decided to wing it with hazy memories and internet resource, just like pretty much every other Résumé post I've done so far.



Ed Hannigan isn't revered enough for his streak of unforgettable Bronze Age covers. Somewhere around the house I have a benefit comic collecting a bunch of them (unfortunately only Marvel ones,) and you can spend an afternoon trying to recall how many of them have been blatantly swiped in the years since. Despite the number of characters and density of alien technology on display, the cover feels spacious and inviting, as opposed to cramped and discordant like entirely too many seen on : The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe. This first Sampler featured mostly new art created just for this project, which by rights should make it a hot commodity in the back issue market, but you can inexplicably still pick it up cheap. The entire production budget for most free sampler books over the past twenty years would probably have been paid for what it cost to commission this one piece, but that effort and expense also makes the difference between a cherished memory and some filler crap I threw in the garbage. See that cover to DC Comics: The New 52 #1 above that some gopher threw together in Photoshop? I've got two copies I never even gave a proper thumbing through lining the bottom of a milk crate, and I only know that because I stumbled across them trying to find my copy of DC Sampler #1.



Getting inside the book, following a front page Meanwhile... column by Dick Giordano, Jerry Ordway provided this poster image of the All-Star Squadron. I could tell the characters were meant to be old fashioned, but I don't know that I had a clear perception of Earth-2 at the time. They seemed a bit silly and weird, but the art was fantastic, and I was intrigued by the more X-Menish Infinity, Inc. I ended up buying a few issues of A-SS off the stands, and have more terrible copies of Infinity, Inc. in my longboxes based on the intrigue inspired by fresh pieces like this. Arion, Lord of Atlantis got the next spread, probably by Jan Duursema, and featuring his supporting cast and villains. Promotional images for this book were always fascinating, and I wanted to get into the book so much, but as written by the reliably boring Paul Kupperberg my every attempt was met with meh. The Omega Men got the next spread. When I was in grade school, I got to spend less than a week at a summer camp as part of another sort of free sampler, and I managed to talk a councilor out of a postcard he had featuring the art from the first issue. Anything "omega" is inherently cool, Chuck Heston swipe be damned, and I liked the idea of a finite intergalactic war along the lines of Star Wars and Dreadstar. Never quite got into the book, but I did try.



According to the Grand Comic Database, Don Heck drew a Wonder Woman spread. Not a much revered time for the Amazing Amazon, and my vague recollection of the composition of the image is not kind to the artist or his subjects. I surely preferred Jim Aparo's Batman spread, teasing the arrival of the Outsiders, but the image isn't firm in my mind. They did cancel my favorite The Brave and the Bold to make room, which would ultimately diminish my Caped Crusader collecting and foist one of comics' worst teams on the public. I can still picture Ernie Colon's Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld spread though. She was bursting out of an energy portal, her grinning supporting cast in tow. There were some nifty designs there, and I continue to regret never giving her book a serious chance. I was much more interested in the George Perez New Teen Titans spread, and all the questions it posed. This was followed by a cute spread in which the G.I. Combat creative team were lined up for execution by firing squad. While Sgt. Rock and Easy Company were well past their prime, Kanigher and Kubert's book had another four years left in it.



I read World's Finest off and on, so the patchwork pitch registers only as a blip. I got a bigger kick out of Keith Giffen and Larry Mahlstedt offering silent panels of Legion of Super-Heroes action married to semi-obscure old DC logos ("Secrets," "Mystery in Space," "Young Love.") It did nothing to satisfy my curiosity about the 30th Century though, since I could never find any Legion comics back then, and I knew them only from house ads. Carmine Infantino did a Flash spread that did a good job of recapping the extended story arc involving the Reverse Flash's murder of Iris West, attempted murder of Barry Allen's new fiance, and the Scarlet Speedster's murder trial for killing Professor Zoom. I never liked speed powers, but it made the Flash seem a lot more interesting, and I tried his book as a result. Also, I think this Gil Kane Superman spread was in here somewhere, but it wasn't listed on GCD.



In another case of false advertizing, Arak Son of Thunder got a spread by Ron Randall during his mohawk phase where he grabbed a satanic entity by the horn while swinging through the air and brandishing a tomahawk. So Conan! I read a few Araks, and they came across more like Prince Valiant. Supergirl was being done by Paul Kupperberg and Carmine Infantino at the time, which meant her spread was like the Anti-Flash's. It was a series of panels that made the Maid of Might look ridiculous, like being miniaturized, multiplied, and sucked up in a vacuum cleaner by cornball villains. In direct contrast, Pat Broderick was completely forgiven for inserting himself and Gerry Conway into a spread for The Fury of Firestorm, the Nuclear Man because his detailing on characters like Tokamak and Flamebird was revolutionary. I'll never understand why an artist as intricate and influential as Broderick wasn't a bigger name, and I enjoyed him both on Firestorm and Captain Atom. Get a bigger, better view at Firestorm Fan. What a great parting shot, from a book that may have cost DC a fortune with no short term gain, but paid off dividends in softening my heart to their wares for decades afterward.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Illusion On-Demand's Top 20 Villains



According to Wikipedia, "Illusion On-Demand is an American VOD Video On Demand cable TV network focused on science fiction and fantasy programming. Illusion launched nationally in October 2007 with a special Halloween lineup. The regular programming consists of 21 shows and content blocks." I'd never heard of it, but while killing time checking out free programs on my cable box, I stumbled upon a 21 minute program counting down the "network's" top comic book bad guys. The production values were YouTube low, mostly static images (pulled directly off sites like Comic Vine and Wikipedia) with generic screen script and extremely repetitive bland (Creative Commons?) rawk music playing. Anyway, this sort of thing is how I gets me kicks, so here's their(?) picks...


20. The Kingpin (presented by Dan Slott)


19. P'Gell (presented by Jimmy Palmiotti)


18. Bullseye (presented by Dan Slott)


17. Poison Ivy (presented by Afua Richardson)


16. Doctor Octopus (presented by Justin Gray and Dan Slott)


15. Skrulls (presented by Dan Slott)


14. Two-Face (presented by Dan Slott and Jimmy Palmiotti)


13. Venom (presented by Sonya Paz and Afua Richardson)


12. Sentinels (presented by Jimmy Palmiotti and Dan Slott)


11. Catwoman (presented by Afua Richardson and Amanda Conner)


10. Green Goblin (presented by Sonya Paz)


09. Red Skull (presented by Jimmy Palmiotti and Dan Slott)


08. Dark Phoenix (presented by Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner)


07. Darkseid (presented by Jimmy Palmiotti)


06. Nazis (presented by Amanda Conner, Jimmy Palmiotti and Dan Slott)


05. Magneto (presented by Afua Richardson)


04. Doctor Doom (presented by Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti and some redhead)


03. Galactus (presented by Jimmy Palmiotti, Dan Slott, and Arthur Suydam)


02. Lex Luthor (presented by Dan Slott, Afua Richardson and some redhead)


01. The Joker (presented by Amanda Conner, Afua Richardson, Sonya Paz, Justin Gray, and Jimmy Palmiotti)

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

2011 Steel color art by Cusson “Shun” Cheung

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Cusson “Shun” Cheung

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

2007 Captain Comet inkwash art by Craig C. Cermak II

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Adam Blake is one of my favorite DC obscurities, and my exploration of the character's history on another blog helped inspire the creation of DC Bloodlines. It's about time I took the opportunity to revisit him!

Craig C. Cermak II

Sunday, November 25, 2012

The Top 10 OMAC Covers

It's funny how delays work. I started developing this list before the launch of the New 52, and I fretted over the lack of diversity in the covers. I had the bare bones down around the time the third issue of the relaunched series was released. Now that I'm finally getting ready to publish over a year later, the New 52 series has already ended, a slew of guest appearances related to membership in the new defunct Justice League International have come and gone, and Kevin Cho still made little impact on the list as completed in 2011. Well, at least this'll be relatively stable for the foreseeable future.



Speaking of which, after the failure of Jack Kirby's Fourth World Saga, the King scaled back his ambitions considerably. His one success at DC was Kamandi, a riff on Planet of the Apes, so he seemed to riffle through his junk drawer looking for self-contained ideas that could be similarly commercial. One was an unpublished idea for a Captain America legacy hero in the future that he'd decided not to give to Marvel. Fueled by the socially conscious science fiction of the day, Kirby offered DC the One Man Army Corps. A schlimazel appropriately named Buddy Blank is picked by the seemingly omniscient satellite computer Brother Eye to receive an instant surgery that turns him into a superhuman powerhouse with wicked fighting skills. This gift is bestowed in service to keeping a world on the brink from collapsing into war and chaos. OMAC was always pitted against superior forces, in numbers and/or raw power, that he could pulverize into submission to the positive New World Order. It was decidedly blue collar speculative fiction, but ended up being surprisingly prescient. Still, the world is hard on prophets, and OMAC wasn't selling well enough to bother continuing with it after Kirby left DC with the eighth issue.

Very little of note was done with the concept over the years, surely in part due to DC's shying away from alternate futures after they streamlined their continuity in the 1980s. In the 00s, elements were recycled into a new, contemporary concept wherein forces of a shadow government infected unsuspecting citizens with nanites that turned them into sleeper agent T-1000s. It was an okay if highly derivative premise (a summation of writer Greg Rucka's entire career,) and was more successfully implemented thanks to ties to several major company events. What heat there was cooled down though, and an attempt to offer comics a single prime OMAC came to nothing. A new Asian OMAC hewing closer to Kirby's original, as a hero but not as a world building prediction engine, bit the dust after exactly eight issues.

10) Kamandi, The Last Boy On Earth #50 (May, 1977)

I have to confess that there are any number of better covers that I could have put in the #10 spot. The truth is, I couldn't be bothered to strain over deciding who rated highest in last place. Meanwhile, this cover was my introduction to OMAC, tied the two Kirby properties together, and was inked by the underrated Alfredo Alcala. So there.

9) OMAC #8 (April, 2007)

Renato Guedes did some very attractive work on this series, including detailed, cinematic covers. Unfortunately, it's hard to get excited over robots smashing cars on the Las Vegas strip when Kirby was draining whole oceans and scooping out the brains of America's unsuspecting youth decades prior. Even here, with OMAC battling a Brother Eye built out of space junk, it's hard not to notice our hero looks like the Tick after getting punched in the face by a Megadeth album cover.


8) O.M.A.C. #1 (November, 2011)

Doom was predicted for this one right out of the gate, and I find an OMAC set in the world that is misses the point entirely. Still, I've heard the book was fun while it lasted, and it was nice to see a new Asian hero who didn't fit any sort of comic book ethnic mold. Keith Giffen seemed to be having a good time, but his simplistic covers paled against Kirby's, or even reference happy Renato Guedes.


7) Countdown Special: OMAC #1 (April, 2008)

This is a little more Magnus Robot Fighter than OMAC, but it's also a nice Ryan Sook image in the iconic Steranko mold. Okay, I'll admit that there are only six great(ish) OMAC covers, and this is where the line gets drawn between relevant (below) and merely pretty.


6) OMAC #4 (March/April, 1975)

What a difference the lack of a colored border makes. Kirby doesn't draw one damned thing once the logo barrage kicks in, but by simply allowing for breathing room under the clear blue sky, the world expands. It tricks you into thinking that monstrosity fills the entire cover, and really sells OMAC as David to its Goliath. Those are OMAC odds!


5) Firestorm #18 (December, 2005)

Yeah, this Borginess is very much divorced from the Kirby original, but it's creepily effective, and has the Nuclear Man ever had a cooler look? You will be assimilated!


4) OMAC #3 (January/February, 1975)

So here's OMAC in his goofy little Kirby flying machine with the suggestively placed stick, coasting out of the sun against a lemon yellow sky, tra-la-la. But wait, what about that semicircle of cannons as he is confronted by A HUNDRED-THOUSAND FOES! So, so OMAC.


3) The OMAC Project #5 (October, 2005)

For me, one of the defining characteristics of a great OMAC cover is to have as much stuff going on as possible. The future is coming so fast and hard that our puny 21st century brains should struggle to process it. Here we have a central figure generating multiple weapons amidst an explosion of pieces on a chessboard that's being written in binary code. Yeah, that's about blipvert enough for me.


2) OMAC #6 (July/August, 1975)

This one is awesome because of how it goes whole hog. OMAC isn't just bounding at the reader, but carrying a bound woman with him. They aren't just leaping off a wrecked train; you've got three cars of shattered windows and wrenched wheels. You know it's a dilapidated subway station because it's covered in battered signage and platform docks. You know the place is crawling with mutants, because the ones not reaching for our heroes amidst the wreckage are grasping from outside the frame. The only major flaw is that nearly half the image is taken up by clumsy, flat negative space drowning in bad copy and obese logos.


1) OMAC #1 (September/October, 1974)

This is actually kind of a terrible cover. There's an absolute vacuum for background, there's all manner of copy everywhere, the layout is awkward, the hero is a tiny figure, and there appears to be some question as to whether he is in fact a "One Man Army." On the other hand, was there a more twisted vision of sexuality in the Bronze Age (anticipating Realdoll by decades) than Lila the "Build-A-Friend?" Was there a more deliciously hyperbolic come-on than "A Startling Look Into... The World That's Coming!?" It's all so off, it's somehow on.

Honorable Mentions
OMAC #2 (1974)
OMAC Book One (1991)
Wonder Woman #221


Cornucopia of Top Comic Covers