Which is my way of saying:

More meat than last week. Also features Deadpool’s new black glove fingernails. hermanos pointed them out to me and I can’t not notice them throughout that issue. Why does Deadpool now have black glove fingernails? Why?

Blackest Night: Wonder Woman #2
Greg Rucka, Nicola Scott and Eduardo Pansica

Deadpool Team-Up #897
Adam Glass and Chris Staggs

Read the rest of this entry �

Me reading a Captain N comic didn’t happen because someone suggested it to me. Nobody told me that there was a Captain N comic. I didn’t stumble upon it or come across an issue in a bin anywhere. It’s just that one day I randomly reminisced about the cartoon and thought to myself, “Was there a Captain N comic book? I bet there was.”

Lo and behold, my instincts were correct. You know I had to get my mitts on this one. The five-issue series came out over the course of 1990, released by Valiant Comics. They released the Game Boy comic around that time, which I’ve reviewed months back.

To fully understand the comic and what makes it worth talking about, you have to understand the TV show. Captain N: The Game Master is a cartoon about a teenager named Kevin Keene who is so good at playing his NES that he and his dog Duke are pulled into his Nintendo by “the Ultimate Warpzone”. It’s there that he exists in a multiverse of videogame franchises, even if they weren’t Nintendo-owned. Armed with a controller belt buckle and a zapper gun, Captain N fights for the original character Princess Lana along with existing videogame heroes Kid Icarus (aka Pit), Mega Man and Simon Belmont. Those three are probably banded together due to their shared success in having awesome theme music. The main villain is Mother Brain from Metroid, commanding over the Eggplant Wizard, King Hippo, Dr. Wily and the Count (they couldn’t call him “Dracula” for whatever reason). Donkey Kong’s there too, but he’s more of a wildcard villain, like the crocodile from Peter Pan.

In concept, it’s a videogame fanboy wet dream. Unfortunately, there were some snags to the show, such as the character designs for the preexisting heroes. Kid Icarus is a midget who won’t stop adding “icus” to the end of his sentences, yet he’s the least problematic. Mega Man is also a midget, only pudgy and more annoying. They saw how dynamic and cool his 8-bit sprite was and came up with that? Then there’s Simon Belmont. Jeeeesus. Instead of a badass vampire hunter, he’s a doofy narcissist with pilot goggles. I get that these guys are all based on early 8-bit designs that lacked characterization, but as a marketing ploy, I can’t imagine any kid was thinking, “I want to play as that annoying, scratchy-voiced toddler in the green tights!” It got even worse in the third season when they introduced Alucard, re-imagined as a totally radical skater dude.

It’s like if Poochy wanted your blood.

Read the rest of this entry �

I have a review of a comic about a certain late-80’s/early-90’s animated series almost finished. In the meantime, here’s a segment from it that I couldn’t find a spot for in the article.

How did a shitty cartoon turn into a surprisingly good comic series? Check back in a day or so.

When I noticed that last week was so dry in terms of releases, I got the idea of doing “This Year in Panels”, especially since I’ve only covered a fraction of 2009. I suggested the idea to hermanos, who wasn’t a fan because he can’t remember enough of 2009 to come up with a collection of panels. Thanks a lot, pot.

Instead, he suggested we do a lovefest gallery for our favorite covers of the year. I’m easy. Let’s do it.

20th Century Boys v.4
Naoki Urasawa

100 Bullets #100
Dave Johnson

Read the rest of this entry �

Welp… here it is.

Blackest Night #6
Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis

Origins of Siege
Brian Michael Bendis, Lucio Parrillo, Fred Van Lente and many others

And that’s it! That was anti-climactic. Luckily, we of 4L have a little more content to make up for this, but that will have to wait for tomorrow.

It’s time for the second part of the journey to check out the other alternate universe takes on Venom. We should probably start off with—wait, a sec.

What about Exiles? That’s a series that’s all about different Marvel universes. From what I’ve seen, Venom got shafted throughout. There was an inclusion of Peter Parker with the Carnage symbiote (I think), but Venom wouldn’t appear until the very last issue.

You see, Marvel always has to give Chris Claremont something to do… or else. He’s like the incompetent nephew that Quesada always has to give work to or else his sister will give him hell. They tend to give him stories that take place outside of Marvel 616, such as Exiles. The series became New Exiles and Claremont ran it into the ground, all while fulfilling his rampant [insert female X-Men member] fantasies. They relaunched it with Jeff Parker at the helm, where Morph would lead a team made up of Blink, Scarlet Witch, Beast, Black Panther, Forge and Polaris. It was fun, but nobody cared because of the stigma attached to the previous run. It was canceled by #6.

Venom appeared for a single panel. Why did I go through all that explanation to cover a single stinking panel? Because in it, the team sees another Exiles supergroup and I just know that Jeff Parker made the wrong choice.

Look at that team! I swear, if Parker went with that lineup instead of mutants and wacky Black Panther, it would be outselling Blackest Night.

Read the rest of this entry �

Ready for another week. Sadly, the super awesome Ares miniseries comes to a close. I’ll miss it.

Amazing Spider-Man #616
Fred Van Lente and Javier Pulido

Arkham Reborn #3
David Hine and Jeremy Haun

Read the rest of this entry �

It’s a special Christmas edition of TWiP! I’m not just talking about Guy Gardner’s festive new Lantern color scheme, but at the end of this week’s entry, we have a little extra surprise from guest panel guy David Uzumeri!

Anti-Venom New Ways to Live #3
Zeb Wells, Paulo Siqueira and Marco Checchetto

Authority: The Lost Year #4
Grant Morrison, Keith Giffen and Darick Robertson

Read the rest of this entry �

You may have noticed that 4L has been rather light on content lately. hermanos has been writing for like 50 other sites and Esther, from what I understand, has been taken down by seasonal illness. Me? I just haven’t had the energy due to my job. I’m working Barnes and Noble and we all know how fun retail can be in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

I’ve been through it many a time before and you know I’ll be back to it with the strength of a gorilla. But in the meantime, I want to show you a defining sting of the 2009 holiday season.

There’s a product called Elf on the Shelf. It’s a book that comes with a little sitting elf doll. Last year, the B&N chain completely underestimated how popular it was and the warehouses were sold out immediately. I think we sold a dozen before being tapped dry. This year, they decided to go balls out. They sent us about 180 copies of it and starting in mid-November, we put up three different displays for it throughout the store. The main display is on a table a few feet behind the big Customer Services desk in the center of the store. This area is somewhere most employees have to spend hours around during each shift.

On this table is a big pile of Elf on the Shelf boxes surrounding a DVD-playing monitor that’s been tied down by like 5 locks so nobody runs off with it. In the player is a special DVD lasting a mere 3 and a half minutes. Then it loops. This is what we’ve had to put up with NONSTOP FOR A MONTH!

Jesus Christ. It’s creepy and annoying, but I don’t know which trumps the other. Now imagine having to listen to that day in and day out for a month. It starts with that annoying theme song blaring. Then the generic holiday music is okay to take in. The talking is harsh, but you can filter it into background noise after a while. That is, until the whole thing restarts and the loud jingling bells in the intro song remind you of this hellish DVD!

Just yesterday, we were finally able to shut off the DVD player and put it away for the holidays. Why? Because we finally sold out of this shit! Yes, people actually get this… and they get it a week before Christmas! The whole point of this thing is that you use it for the weeks leading up to Christmas, so what’s the deal here?

One last thing about this abomination: I was looking it up in the store computer one day and I noticed that under the product’s information, it was labeled “Light-Skinned Elf”. Intrigued, I found that yes, we did also carry the “Dark-Skinned Elf”, though in far less quantity. I figured it made enough sense, since it’s little different from there being black Barbies. Then I came across one of them and found that by “Dark-Skinned Elf”, it was just an elf who had spent 3 hours in the sun and came out with a very slight tan. He also has orange pupils, making him even more disturbing than usual.

And that’s the story of how I saved Christmas.