Two entries this time. This first list is from Kyle, one of my oldest friends. I hit him up over IM and bullied him until he gave me his list. I also bullied him into having a 100-item pull list once, too.

Ha ha ha. Eat it.
1. Mr. Mind
2. Darkseid
3. Zatana
4. Warren Ellis
5. Grant Morrison
6. Mike Choi and Sonia Oback
7. X-23
8. Scott Pilgrim
9. Matt Fraction
10. Ed Brubaker
11. Iron Fist and the Other Weapons
12. We3
13. Runaways
14. Jamie Madrox
15. Layla Miller
16. Jubilee
17. Drax
18. Cammy, Drax’s spunky sidekick
19. Both Annihilation series
20. Invincible
21. Watchmen
22. Transmetropolitan
23. Molly Hayes
24. Batman: The Animated Series
25. Nextwave
26. Tim Drake
27. Explaining crazy comic book stuff to people who aren’t keeping up fully with the series.
28. The resulting look on peoples faces when you are explaining that crazy stuff… ranging from confusion, to the inevitable “WTF!” look when explaining DC continuity.
29. Humberto Ramos
30. Justice League Unlimited
31. Heath Ledger as the Joker
32. The Current Wildstorm Universe… never believed it would go that far.
33. Planetary
34. Paul Jenkins
35. Kingdom Come
36. Jerk Batman
37. Captain Marvel from the Peter David series
38. Harley Quinn
39. The Daughters of the Dragon
40. “52”
41. Black Bolt
42. Anytime Black Bolt talks
43. “Son of M”
44. Kabuki
45. “Fables”
46. “Y the Last Man”
47. Echo
48. The Tick
49. “Maus”
50. Chris Latta… voice actor for Cobra Commander and Starscream.

This second list is from 4l reader Lt. Ken Frankenstein. He’s got some great picks here.
1. The second time I read Grant Morrison’s The Filth and it finally all made sense.
2. Reading Alan Moore’s Watchmen at thirteen years old and having my mind completely blown.
3. The cover of Avengers #4.
4. The last eight pages of Grant Morrison’s Animal Man, which get me all misty-eyed every time.
5. Ed Brubaker’s Criminal, the best comic being published right now.
6. The Human Bomb losing it and murdering Dr. Polaris, a moment of unbridled greatness in the otherwise lackluster Infinite Crisis.
7. Matter-Eater Lad, my favorite underused member of the Legion of Superheroes.
8. The first twelve or so issues of Mark Waid’s relaunch of the Legion of Superheroes.
9. The Death of Captain America and the return of Bucky Barnes.
10. Jack Kirby’s Fourth World. All of it.
11. Miracleman #16, the most violent, disturbing, heartbreaking comic I’ve ever read.
12. The last page of Ex Machina #1, the ballsiest moment in superhero comics.
13. The second to last page of Civil War #2, the second ballsiest moment.
14. Booster Gold and Blue Beetle, any time they interact.
15. Geoff Johns, the Michael Clayton of the DC Universe (He’s a fixer. See Green Lantern: Rebirth and especially his run on Hawkman)
16. Ares setting himself on fire and having Hercules fastball-special him into a crowd of warriors. All while wielding twin uzis.
17. Lone Wolf and Cub and Akira, the twin high watermarks of manga.
18. Barry Allen’s sacrifice in the pages of Crisis on Infinite Earths.
19. Brian Michael Bendis’ New Avengers, the ultimate shot of adrenaline into a long-running franchise.
20. Alan Moore’s “For the Man who has Everything,” and its note-perfect translation in Justice League Unlimited.
21. 52, the DCU’s year long mad-science experiment.
22. Mark Millar’s Ultimates, or, “The Avengers if The Avengers were Assholes.”
23. Brian Michael Bendis writing Luke Cage
24. Brian Michael Bendis writing Daredevil
25. Alex Maleev Drawing Daredevil
26. Frank Castle meeting Bullseye for the first time in Daredevil #181. “You might do something stupid. Get yourself killed. I’d like that.”
27. Art Spiegelman’s Maus
28. Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol, one of the weirdest comics of all time
29. Wonder Woman as portrayed on Justice League Unlimted and in Grant Morrison’s JLA
30. Plastic Man serving as the JLA’s resident Ace Ventura.
31. The ‘White Martian’ story arc of Grant Morrison’s JLA, where Batman and Wally West exhibit true greatness.
32. Ultimate Spider-Man, Bendis’ baby.
33. The original Stan Lee/Jack Kirby run of Fantastic Four.
34. Superman: Red Son, especially any scene with Lex Luthor.
35. Christopher Reeves as Superman.
36. John Williams’ Superman theme.
37. The Dark Knight.
38. Batman nightmarishly unleashing a swarm of bats in Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One.
39. Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark
40. Civil War: The Confession, the moment where everything was, ironically, worth it.
41. Superman vs. Captain Marvel in Mark Waid and Alex Ross’ Kingdom Come.
42. Two-Face coming full circle in The Long Halloween: “Two shots to the head. If you ask me, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
43. Two-Face breaking convention at the end of Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum.
44. The Joker as a concept.
45. Jason Rusch: Firestorm.
46. Deadshot’s casual “C’est la vie” murder of Plastique in the Justice League Unlimited episode ‘Task Force X,’ the most brutal moment I’ve seen in a children’s cartoon.
47. Venom as drawn by Todd Macfarlane.
48. The first four or five story arcs of Fabien Nicieza’s Cable & Deadpool.
49. Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles, the ultimate counter-culture comic.
50. All-Star Superman #5, the prison issue. My favorite Superman comic ever is one where he never shows up in costume.

#12 was why I kept reading Ex Machina. I got the Free Comic Book Day issue from Kyle way back when. I checked it out, read it, and was like “Eh, that’s all right, I guess, but I don’t know if I’d buy it.” Then I got to the last page. And then I started buying Ex Machina. I switched to trades when I realized its pacing, though. Here’s the last two pages, for reference:

Geoff Klock writes “Remarkable: Morrison’s Authority:”

Morrison has re-envisioned how to make this book work like it did in the first few issues of Ellis’s run. Ellis’s Authority are supposed to feel HUGE but after a few issues we are deadened by the constant battles and HUGE begins to feel regular. With this final page, just one character suddenly feels MASSIVE again – you believe he COULD start World War Three on his own. As the Doctor, the team’s Shaman, says in this issue, in this world they cannot but be monsters, trampling on natural laws until they break. Implicit in Ellis’s story was the feeling that his “heroes,” in spite of the fact that they saved the world, were really bad guys – killing indiscriminately, changing the world as they saw fit, and answering to no one. Morrison’s protagonist from the first issue says it explicitly, asking the team, who identify themselves as the good guys, how they KNOW they are good guys. In terms of both physics and ethics, their whole world has been turned up-side-down – or right-side-up.

Myriad Issues talks to Leigh Walton

If you treat your comics as newspapers from a fictional universe, there’s no reason to read them twice. Marvel and DC have essentially told their readers that any given issue is not important—it’s only important as long as it connects to this network of events, or because it contains a certain plot point, they’re creating stories that can be replaced by reading a spoiler on a blog. And when you create that type of story, you have to follow that logic to its natural end, and relish the ephemerality. Make the best piece of disposable entertainment you can! Make it look like the other kinds of disposable entertainment that we understand.

God only knows why Marvel hasn’t had Spider-Man get sucked into a techno-dimension and lead into a summer crossover where part of the story is exclusively on MySpace or Marvel.com, or an alternate reality game that reveals what Dr. Doom is up to, or a chance to get text messages from Captain America if you give us your phone number. Play up the NOWness of it. You missed it? Oh well, you’ll catch up; that’s how these things work.

Comics are junk. Embrace it.

Julian Lytle hit me with fifty… and then fifty more.

1) X-books from 1991-1999
2) Generation X drawn by Chris Bachalo
3) That ill cover to the old Who Killed Jean DeWolfe Spider-Man trade
4) Erik Larsen on Amazing Spider-man
5) The First pages of X-Men #1 drawn by Jim Lee with the X-men in a training session
6) X-men #4 where they are playing Basketball
7) Jubilee in all her Mutant awesomeness
8) Backlash by brett booth
9) Back in the day when Savage Dragon and Pitt would guest star in almost every Image comic
10) Michael Turner on Witchblade
11) Joe Madueira on Uncanny X-Men
12) Storm in punk rock gear and no powers with a Mohawk
13) X-Men Series 1 trading cards all drawn by Jim Lee
14) Marvel Universe Trading Cards Series 3
15) Spaceman Spiff
16) Kandea
17) Kaneda’s jacket and bike (it’s an ensemble)
18) Mad Love
19) Dark Knight Returns
20) A Dame to Kill For
21) Kingdom Come
22) New Frontier
23) Darwyn Cooke
24) Bruce Timm
25) Gen 13
26) Humberto Ramos
27) Crimson and Out There
28) Geoff Johns’s Teen Titans Run
29) New X-Men By Grant Morrison
30) The Fourth World by Jack Kirby
31) Spider-Man
32) Galactus
33) Batman
34) Superman
35) Crisis on Infinite Earths
36) League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
37) Luke Cage beating Dr. Doom for his cash
38) Dr.Doom
39) Inhumans by Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee
40) Earth X, Universe X and Paradise X (with Heralds)
41) The Legion of Super Heroes
42) SUPERBOY-PRIME
43) Love and Rockets
44) Mike Mignola
45) 7 Soliders by Grant Morrison and various artists
46) 52
47) Akira
48) Naruto
49) Calvin and Hobbes
50) Peanuts
51) The Crew
52) Priest’s Black Panther
53) Bendis writing Luke Cage
54) The New Avengers arc with the Hood drawn by Lenil Francis Yu with no inker
55) The Crew’s White Tiger aka Kasper Cole
56) The Master of Kung Fu
57) The Phantom
58) The Authority By Ellis and Hitch
59) Planetary
60) Alan Moore
61) Alan Moore and Travis Cherest on WildC.A.T.S.
62) Cyber Force
63) The Justice Society of America
64) Captain Marvel (Fawcett)
65) The Ultimates 1 and 2
66) Ultimate X-men By Millar and BKV
67) Dazzler
68) Boom Boom
69) NextWave
70) Dragonball
71) TMNT
72) Concrete
73) Elfquest
74) Jason Todd
75) Robin
76) Runaways
77) Young Avengers
78) The Metal Men
79) Rusty and Skids
80) New Mutants
81) Adam Pollina on X-Force
82) War Machine
83) Ed Brubaker’s Captain America
84) Casanova
85) Umbrella Academy
86) Marc Silvestri on Uncanny X-Men
87) Watchmen
88) Podcasts
89) San Diego Comic-Con
90) New York Comic-Con
91) Alex Ross
92) Moebius
93) Gambit charging a bike to blow up the Phalanx creature the X-men fought
94) Secret Wars
95) Maus
96) Sinestro Corps War
97) The Punisher
98) Preacher
99) Cliffhanger
100) Capcom’s Marvel fighting games

Me and Julian are from the same era of comics, man. Jim Lee X-Men, Jubilee, Moebius (who remembers that Silver Surfer story he did?), Gambit… it’s all dope.

Here’s his #5, for example:

I learned the word “cripes” from this comic. No joke.

My review of Special Forces #3 is up at PCS. I got a shout on today’s Journalista,, too.

Matt Cruea, long-time 4l reader, did his own list of 50 things he likes about comics here.

In addition to that, I’ve been getting some responses from fans with their own. Here are 50 things Matthew Bensen loves about comics:

1. X-Men 132 – “Okay suckers – you’ve taken yer best shot! Now it’s my turn!” (back when Wolverine was still cool)
2. Spider-Man fighting the Juggernaut
3. Secret Wars – The Hulk holding up a giant mountain, the X-Men getting their asses handed to them by Spider-Man and Wolverine cutting off the Absorbing Man’s arm
4. The Michael Jackson Beyonder from Secret Wars 2
5. The Miracleman series – despite the fact I had to pay a trillion dollars on Ebay to get the back issues
6. Stormwatch’s evil Henry Bendix
7. Avengers #274 – Hercules getting his ass handed to him by the Masters of Evil because he is drunk
8. Deathstroke the Terminator and his creepy relationship with an underage Terra
9. An idiotic Ultron, who for some reason felt compelled to build himself a robot bride (Jocasta)
10. All-Star Superman
11. The boxing tournament set up by the Champion in Marvel Two-In-One Annual #7
12. A deaf Hawkeye nearly missing his shot with Mockingbird
13. Crisis on Infinite Earths
14. When the Invisible Girl became an Invisible Woman
15. The Headmen
16. The paparazzi getting naked photos of She-Hulk while she is sunbathing
17. Jonah Hex
18. Bullseye tossing a scalpel at Matt Murdock just to test his wild theory that he may be Daredevil – then hightailing it out of there
19. Changeling and Kitty Pryde making out on Metron’s chair
20. Thor being transformed into a frog
21. A drunk Colossus getting into a fight with the Juggernaut
22. Geoff Johns writing the Justice Society
23. Doc Frankenstein
24. The Claremont/Miller Wolverine limited series
25. Thor fighting the rest of the Ultimates
26. Ultimate Wolverine trying to kill Ultimate Cyclops on a mission just so he can steal his lady – only to have everyone later forgive him for this betrayal
27. Robin giving up the short shorts to become Nightwing
28. Jericho’s blond ‘fro and chops
29. Tony Stark as a drunk
30. Thor’s trysts with the Enchantress and her sister
31. Woodrue’s autopsy of Swamp Thing
32. Morrison’s Animal Man
33. Fables
34. Wormwood’s escapades in Leprechaunia
35. The Thing’s girlfriend who was also a thing
36. Ozymandias dismantling Rorschach and basically telling him to give up
37. Storm’s Mohawk
38. Captain Hero pounding in Iron Fist’s head while trying to wake him up from a trance
39. When Sobek eats Osiris in 52
40. Emperor Doom
41. The last page of Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps Special #1 which shows all of the villains together
42. Kraven’s Last Hunt
43. Dazzler’s walkman and rollerskates
44. Because the 90’s eventually ended and good comics returned
45. Because Jim Lee still manages to produce art every once and a while
46. John Stewart’s arrogance leading to the destruction of Xanshi (because the Anti-Life creates a yellow bomb) in Cosmic Odyssey
47. The continuous cover for the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe
48. Ed Brubaker comics – Sleeper in particular
49. God Loves, Man Kills
50. The fact that Marvel never sold out and brought Captain Marvel back from the dead – oh, wait…

Good list, yeah? A few of these are things I’d entirely forgotten about, but loved when I saw them. If you’ve got a list, send it over or link back. I’ve got more to come, too.

Joëlle Jones took a stab at redesigning a few of the X-Women, with colors by her friend Terry Blas.

Props to Khux for the find.

Click here, scroll to the bottom, and vote for Genius.

Thanks.

Rad Nauseam » Blog Archive » Have You Got Yourself an Occupation?

Like all great things, Babysan is extremely racist, heavily sexist and oh-so erotic. Published in 1953 (a year after the American occupation of Japan ended), Babysan is a series of one panel cartoons accompanied by a few paragraphs of explanatory condescension.

These are amazing. Click through and check these out. FBB4l affiliate David Cole also runs Atavism and will design you an awesome website if you give him money.

I did the 50 Things meme with a twist, so I figure I better give y’all the answers, right?

Here we go–
1-10 – Awesome comics chicks (on a story level, dorks)
11-18 – Characters from the ’70s who don’t get used often enough
19-23 – Avengers that I actually like (ayo!)
24-28 – The extended Marvel family – Billy Batson, Mar-vell, Genis-vell, Mary Marvel, Phyla-vell. I forgot to include Noh-varr, who should totally date Mary Marvel.
29-35 – X-Men Blue team, a.k.a. the team Jim Lee drew
36-39 – Rapper/comic characters. John Blaze/Method Man, X-Man/Xzibit, David Banner/David Banner, Tony Stark/Ghostface
40-41 – Real life comics characters
42-45 – The best Daredevil writers
46-50 – Awesome webcomics

Easy, right?

Solenna from Solarts (and unofficial member of the FBB4l axis) sent over her list. She went ahead and included categories for you, too. She’s got impeccable taste in artists.

Guys I <3 are:
1. Dick Grayson
2. Danny Rand
3. Bucky Barnes
4. Bobby Drake
5. Jaime Reyes
6. Ares (DC’s version)
Ladies who are awesome:
7. Elsa Bloodstone (mostly in NextWAVE)
8. Catwoman
9. Barbara Gordon
10. Wonder Woman
11. Shining Knight
12. Layla Miller
13.Misty Knight
14. Colleen Wing
Costumes/Character design I like:
15. Hepizbah (it’s the poofy pirate sleeves)
16. Nightwing
17. Blue Beetle III
18. DC’s Frankenstein
19. Thena (Eternals)
20. Abraham Sapien
21. Hellboy
22. We3 (all 3 of them)
23. The Hecatomb
24. All of the Immortal Weapons
Artists who kick ass:
25. Chris Bachalo
26. Humberto Ramos
27. David Aja
28. JRJr
29. Tony Daniel
30. Stuart Immonen
31. Frank Quitely
32. Adrian Alphona
33. Jo Chen
34. Adam Hughes
Writers who kick ass:
35. Matt Fraction
36. Grant Morrison
37. Mike Carey
38. Warren Ellis
39. Brian K. Vaughan
40. Greg Rucka
41. Zeb Wells
Things that have made me cry:
42. Percy Gloom
43. We3
44. Identity Crisis
45. Civil War: The Confession
46. Blue Beetle 28
47. Wonder Woman 217
48. Watchmen
49. Runaways V2 #18
50. Gunnerkrigg Court

My friend Andrew Bayer did his list of 50 comics here, old buddy Mark Poa did one, too, and Cheryl Lynn has some great stuff on her list, too.

Anybody else want to take part? If you don’t have a blog of your own, hit me with your list and how you want to be credited.