I’ve started writing for AOL’s Comics Alliance. I’m going to be doing a few pieces a week, as of this week, and you can check out my posts here. So far, I’ve written about Astro boy vs Pluto and done a brief history bit on the pulps, with an eye toward DC’s Batman/Doc Savage Special.
Bookmark it, RSS it, do whatever the kids do these days. Twitter it, I guess. Put it on Friendster or AOL Chat or whatever.
Let’s start this review with a look at Batgirl #7. What’s that you say? It’s only issue four? I don’t care. We need to look at this awesomeness.
Now, to issue four.
so I’ll just let y’all judge these quotes from IGN’s The Final Days of Dark Reign interview with Brian Michael Bendis and Brian Reed yourselves:
On Ms. Marvel’s identity crisis
Bendis: “Carol Danvers is awesome. She’s another character where there’s a lot going on in her own series. But she’s in every single issue I’ve written over the last six months, so there’s a lot going on with her. But what’s interesting is if Moonstone is sleeping with all of the Dark Avengers, they might not realize later which Ms. Marvel they had been sleeping with, and there might be trouble down the line.”
On Moonstone’s secret weapon
Bendis: “Now Moonstone I’ll probably get some letters on. She’s going to be using sex as a weapon, not because that’s what I feel women do, but because that’s what I feel this mentally ill woman would do in close quarters. She started with Marvel Boy and will begin making her way through the team.”
Just some station identification type stuff-
-Thanks to a word in my ear from Matt Jett, I’ve added Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and Stumbleupon links to the bottom of each post, rather than the obtrusive and ugly ShareThis popup box.
-If you’re logged into your Twitter account and someone here says something infuriating/horrible/hilarious/stupid, just click that Twitter button and you’ll be taken to the Twitter web interface with the title of the post and link ready to go. Edit away, hit Update, and bam, you’ve twittered 4l!. Congrats.
-Facebook blah blah blah, Share links, blah blah blah, college, blah blah blah, too many family members on it, can’t talk about keggers and strippers and drugs any more, blah blah.
-Reddit is like digg, innit? We’ve got digg and Reddit now, you should use both.
-StumbleUpon Sure, Stumble us. Do that.
-Someone happened upon a post I wrote a couple years ago about the Top 3 black women and was so offended by my statements about Storm that she had to drop in and condescend a little because I am clearly totally wrong. I’m only posting this here because Tucker wanted to call attention to something I said down in the depths of those comments. So, you know, if you want to see me be mean to somebody, g’head. My general rule of “all smart dumb cats be quiet on the internet” still applies.
Last time, I discussed the first few issues of Chaos Comics’ Undertaker, as well as the specials that came from it. The Undertaker, Paul Bearer and a newly-created character the Embalmer each hold a Book of the Dead and are going to war over who can get all three Books and become the ruler of Stygian, Hell’s prison. Meanwhile, Kane is sneaking around, watching the Undertaker and Mankind is able to see that some of the wrestlers in the WWF are really demons in disguise.
Just for shits and giggles, for those of you reading who don’t follow wrestling or haven’t followed it for long, here’s a list of some of the Undertaker’s silliest storylines:
– Fought a nearly 8-foot-tall dude who wore a muscle suit with fur covering the shoulders and crotch. Their “epic” battle at Wrestlemania 9 ended with this big dude, Giant Gonzales, chloroforming the Undertaker. This got Undertaker a win via disqualification and they always have to sidestep this fact when they go over how the Undertaker is undefeated at Wrestlemania and show a highlight reel.
– A match was set for Survivor Series of Lex Luger and his patriotic American guys vs. Yokozuna and his evil foreigners. Due to a last-minute injury, they needed someone to step into Luger’s team. This spot was filled by the Undertaker, who proceeded to do a lengthy promo that compared his gimmick to what America is all about. He ended it by growling, “Let freedom RIIIIIIIING…” and opened up his jacket to reveal a 1776 American flag stitched on the inside. Lex Luger saw this and got way too pumped about it.
– Undertaker had a match against Yokozuna where you won by stuffing your opponent into a casket. Just about every bad guy in the WWF came out to help Yokozuna by ganging up on the Undertaker and shoving him in the casket. As the casket is wheeled away, the big screen above the entrance shows a camera inside the casket, where the Undertaker promises he will return. Then he (or Marty Janetty in an Undertaker costume) flies off into the heavens on strings.
– The Undertaker delivered a Dominos pizza to Leslie Neilson as part of the lead up for the Undertaker to fight his evil doppelganger.
– The Undertaker had a rematch against Yokozuna, this time with Chuck Norris there to make sure nobody interfered this time.
I can go on with this for days. To be fair, I do really love the Undertaker and he has had his share of kickass moments. Like that time Paul Bearer did an interview from the safety of his own home and Undertaker burst in, yelling, “Did you think I forgot where you live?!” and pummeled the everloving hell out of him. Then it cut to the arena’s locker room, many miles away as Kane went into a hysteric crying rampage and Mankind had to try and calm him down. That was neat.
Let’s say you’re reading the editorial on a comic, or an interview with a comics professional, or maybe just scanning the solicits for upcoming comics, and you see something that seems a little off.
Something a little inappropriate; both gruesome and coy. Something that hints at terrible, momentous events but is played off as a detail.
Something, in other words, that is guaranteed to get the serious and touchy fans burning up their keyboards. And that is, kind of, the point. (Or part of it. The other part is the fact that comics professionals don’t take comics quite as seriously as fans – and a good thing, too, considering many of them work in close proximity and have sharpened pencils on hand.) Interviews and editorials are meant to garner publicity, and unhappiness usually shouts louder than contentment. Especially on the internet.
That’s where you get to the problem with shouting your unhappiness with this prospective storyline; it’s kind of like giving a kid a candy bar every time they throw a tantrum. In time you will end up with a toothless, tantrum-prone child and a shortage of snicker bars and an alcohol problem. I may be stretching the metaphor.
My point is, though, how does one criticize a company’s choices in a business where almost any publicity is good publicity? Because the only way I can see turning these things to my advantage is telling you guys that clicking the ads on this site registers a formal complaint.
Brandon Thomas, creator of Miranda Mercury, has jumped from Newsarama and launched a new blog to hold his thoughts and long-running Ambidextrous column. Ambi 316 went live this morning, and it’s a clearing of the deck/status report for Miranda. Definitely worth reading.
I wrote a review of the first issue for another site back when it first came out, but it’s apparently been lost to the wilds of site redesigns and Google page ranks. Lucky for you, I’ve reproduced it below. Go show Brandon some love, pick up his comic when it comes out again, and let’s get this book turned from a Thing into an Avalanche. It’s a little bit Kirby, a little bit Star Wars, a little bit Indiana Jones, and a lot of day-glo adventure comics. It’s fun in a way that doesn’t need modifiers.
You can see a preview of #295 here, and the sadly unreleased #296 here. Remember that the front cover is the first page of the comic.
(I love the idea of the radial pulse cannon.)
Let me list three of my top five favorite creators: Frank Miller, Jim Lee, and Brian Azzarello. All three of them dropped books this past week, and yet my book of the week was produced by Brandon Thomas and Lee Ferguson?
Let me introduce you to The Many Adventures of Miranda Mercury #295. No, you didn’t miss 294 issues of a comic somehow- Miranda Mercury‘s conceit is that there is a storied past behind the title character and that this is just the latest of her adventures. Miranda is a hero in the Doc Savage, Tom Strong, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers mold. She’s out to have a good time, see the sights, and maybe even learn a little bit while she’s out and about.
The book first caught my eye because it stars a black female. If you’ve been reading 4l!, you know that I feel pretty strongly about the lack of positive black females in comics. Lee Ferguson’s art delivered up a black girl who is both cool and attractive without being sexed up. Thomas’s script brought it all home when it put Miranda’s quick wit and stubborn will on display.
Basically, this comic is great. The cover page ties into the story in a big way (here’s a hint: it’s the first page of the story), the art is insanely attractive, and the story is a great one. Despite being dropped in mid-scene, it’s very easy to follow. You have the villain, the heroine, the sidekick, the hook, and the twist. The villain is a short fellow with an anger problem. The heroine is a skilled fighter in that Indiana Jones kind of way. The sidekick is a supersmart kid with a penchant for possibly being too smart for his own good. The hook is a magical cube that lets you have one wish once you solve its puzzle. The twist? The twist is something I won’t ruin, but which casts the series in a new light.
This isn’t Brandon Thomas’s first comic. He wrote an issue of Robin a few months back, just pre-Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul, that was the best single issue that book had seen in probably eight years. It was just a quick done-in-one about Robin, and ended on a few pages that really nailed the Batman/Robin dynamic for me.
Thomas displayed a deft grasp of the characters and dialogue in that book, and it’s carried over to Miranda Mercury. You get a feeling of real history between all the characters, but not the kind of history that feels manufactured. There’s none of the “Like that time on Alphozon-VII, where you narrowly escaped my clutches!”-style awful exposition. Just quick lines that hint at a shared past and allow your imagination to fill in the blanks.
The Many Adventures of Miranda Mercury #295 is, as far as I’m concerned, an incredible success. The characters and art are equally vibrant, the story has a great twist at the end without being an annoying cliffhanger, and I’m genuinely interested in where the story is going to go. Miranda Mercury is an A+ right off the starting block.
Reader ACK let me know that Cassandra Cain turns ten this year, and I realized that she’s a character I enjoy, and she’s a Batgirl, so I know Esther likes her, too. Luckily, we have a podcast where we can talk about her for hours. Luckily for you I edited that down to about 48 minutes.
-Pedro Tejeda, a true man among men and Funnybook Babylonian, clues us in on a few things you’ll never hear on the Fourcast!, at least until I trick him into being a special guest.
– 6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental opens up the show…
-I kick off the Continuity Off with Kurt Wagner, Nightcrawler, and run down his hits and misses. I left out the swashbuckling stuff by accident, but no one’s perfect.
-Esther talks about Batgirl some, which makes me talk about Batgirl some, and then we are down the rabbit hole, ladies and gents.
Share your favorite Cassandra Cain moments down in the comments, good or bad, and we’ll catch you next week!
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Time for another installment of TWiP. Or should we call it ThWiP? That makes it a comic pun. Whatever. Reader Solenna had us include a panel of Psylocke #1 to show that according to her, the comic can be summed up with “sphere boobs”.
Batman Confidential #36
Royal McGraw and Marcos Marz
The Boys #36
Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson
