Mister Miracle: Black
Ra’s al Ghul: Arab
Talia al Ghul: European, Chinese, and Arab (apparently)
Renee Montoya: Dominican
Me: Looking back on the past month or so of DC’s comics
Dave Sim‘s fabulous, startling, and _____ glamourpuss magazine has taken a decidedly political stance in just its fifth issue! The eponymous glamourpuss has something to say and she isn’t holding back! Read on, but brace yourselves, because this is fabulously startling!
Oh my! Sadly, the brutality of the print industry strikes again. No, glamourpuss (the magnificent magazine) hasn’t been canceled, nor has glamourpuss (the fabulous fashionista) been removed from her lofty position. No, she’s just missing a bit of the latest development in the now-past presidential race:
Barack Obama made Hillary Clinton (wait for it) Secretary of State.
The nerve!
I’m done. Horse is dead.
Here’s a question*. Do you think that people who are interested in reading Vixen: Return of the Lion, with words by G Willow Wilson and pictures by CAFU, care about this?
The correct answer is no.
Vixen is a series that is a repositioning of a recently reintroduced Justice League character who hasn’t appeared regularly for years. Batman appears on a few pages out of the issue as a guest star on a rescue mission. There’s no mention of his troubles in RIP– he’s just Guest Star Batman. Guest Star Superman, Guest Star Red Arrow (ugh), Guest Star Black Canary, and Guest Star Black Lightning round out the cast.
No one cares about Batman RIP because it doesn’t matter in the context of Vixen. How about we kill this continuity spider-web stuff and just stick to the shared universe approach? “Hey, it’s Batman! I like Batman, and even though he is currently Jean Paul Valley in his ongoing comic, I’m not enough of an anal-retentive OCD nerd to care!”
I’m not saying that you should never acknowledge things… but use some discretion. It’s worthless here.
On the flip side, this is kind of hilarious. One of my favorite things about Marvel is that they don’t throw anything at the wall to see what sticks– they throw everything.
For those of you who don’t know, Midnight Sons was Marvel’s ’90s supernatural line. Morbius, Blade, Hannibal King, Frank Drake, Ghost Rider, Johnny Blaze, Vengeance, and Marvel’s other supernatural characters were in a supergroup, or loose affiliation to this supergroup, called the Midnight Sons. They fought vampires, satanist mummy people, demons, Mephisto, and whatever other vaguely supernatural enemies decided to come calling. They were about as edgy as you’d expect, too. The satanist mummy chick had her pentagram on her right breast, for example.
Anyway, it’s the kind of idea that you’d never expect to make a comeback, but so far we’ve said that for Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Bucky, Hellcat, Captain Marvel, Moon Knight, and so on- you get the picture. Marvel has a habit of revitalizing their b, c, d, and z-list in a way that’s either genuinely entertaining or entertaining on a curiosity level, at least temporarily.
I can’t promise it’ll be good, but it’s almost sure to be more interesting than the latest Superman origin re-telling.
*This question takes place after Secret Six Discussion, but before Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Sometimes you’re on your computer, you’re not going anywhere, and you just want to yack about a comic with people.
Go below the cut to start flapping your fingers about Secret Six. Don’t click if you don’t want to get, as the kids say, ‘spoiled.’
This is from Haunted Tank #2, words by Frank Marraffino, art by Henry Flint:
I was going to review it, but I got a surprising message from a fan of 4l! who beat me to the punch. Prince, how did you feel about the issue, and this page in particular?
Ouch.
Ayo!
I guess it’s true what they say… “pimpin’ ain’t dead, it just moved to the web.”
RIP PIMP C UGK4LIFE
I love YouTube. Did I ever tell you that? Well, I do. There’s so much great stuff to be found within.
The other day, I went on a voyage into its dark underbelly to discover some rather interesting superhero-related commercials. Some of it is too great not to share.
It all started when someone brought up this odd commercial about Ralph Nader discussing kryptonite. I haven’t the slightest clue what this is even about and I suspect nobody does other than Nader himself.
That opened the floodgates.
Another amazing early Batman short.
Thanks to SomethingAwful forums user snackmar for these scans. They’re absolutely nuts. Gavin hooked me up with this Superman page that he described as “one of [his] all-time favorite Superman moments.” It’s from Superman: Sunday Classics from 1941.
It looks like there’s a new Supergirl in town. Or maybe it’s the old one. Tough to say. In December, DC -will be publishing Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures In The Eighth Grade.
The preview pages on Newsarama show that her kryptonian name is still Kara, but the solicit states that Supergirl will be known as ‘Linda Lee.’ This comes just after issue thirty-four of Supergirl, which establishes Kara’s civilian name as ‘Linda Lang.’ It could be that DC is trying to establish some continuity to the character, or perhaps they have a long term goal of shoring up the extremely uneven Supergirl series with an influx of younger readers who, having presumably gotten past eighth grade, will graduate to a heroine with more drama and fewer clothes.
Either way, the new Supergirl looks very cute. If the book turns out to be any good, I’ll be reading two Supergirl books and have to turn in my Batfan credentials.
