It still surprises me that Double Dragon died out completely. You’d think we’d see a remake or sequel for the Wii or PS3 around this time, but nothing. No flashy resurrections like Ninja Turtles or Transformers. It just died, unless you count the re-release on the Gameboy Advance.

The game’s story was pretty basic. Billy and Jimmy Lee are two brothers with identical fighting skills. In a slightly decrepit future, their mutual girlfriend Marian is shot by a machine gun-toting cyberpunk and taken away. The brothers have to fight through legions of punks before saving Marian. In the NES version of the game, they couldn’t get the 2-player co-op to work, so they just made Jimmy Lee evil. Ignore that.

Several sequels were made, each playing up the same formula. Marian gets kidnapped and the brothers beat up street gangs in retaliation. Some of these games added weird mystical stuff to the series, like demonic gymnast crime bosses and evil mummies. There was a fighting game made for the Neo-Geo, but I never played it. Around then, the series took a turn for the worse.

A cartoon series was released and it was pretty bad. Instead of plainclothes martial arts vigilantes, the Lee brothers were full-blown superheroes. This led to a movie with a similar plot that was atrocious. In the videogames, the brothers teamed up with the Battletoads in a completely random crossover. Double Dragon 5 was released, but in actuality, it was a lame one-on-one fighter tie-in to the cartoon.

Back in 2002, SNK Playmore was set to release a follow-up fighting game called Rage of the Dragons, but the licensing fell through. Hence, the characters became Billy Lewis, Jimmy Lewis, Mariah and Abubo (rather than Abobo).

This comic, released by Marvel, came out in 1991. This is several years before the cartoon and the movie and the game where they fight a giant space rat named Big Blag. Instead, this is right around the time when Double Dragon 3 was released on the NES. Despite that, the series strays from loyalty to the games. Yes, Billy and Jimmy beat up punks and Marian is there, but besides that, the comic goes out into left field to add color. It’s more similar to the cartoon in ways, with the mystical superpowers and off-the-wall villains. The comic doesn’t even have Abobo in it!

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Punisher: War Journal #12 came out this week. The whole Hate-Monger storyline went on a little too long, but since then, things have been looking up. The Bucky issue was a nice diversion and now we have this entertaining World War Hulk tie-in.

Here are three pictures of the issue for you. It’s okay, these aren’t much in terms of spoilers, unless you’re anal about it. Each picture is set-up for what you just know is going to be some sweet, sweet payoff.

Stuart is better than Microchip ever was. Stuart is an artist.

That last page and everything that follows makes me believe that Matt Fraction knows who I am and wrote this issue specifically to make me happy. If you enjoy it too, good for you, but that was never the point. It’s all about me. So there.

(Thanks, Mr. Fraction!)

In other news, Runaways is really losing me. Straying from the core plot mixed with delays makes me forget what the hell is going on.

Stay tuned tomorrow. I’m going to have a nice, full article up. I made it. For you. For Christmas.

Geoff Klock is one of my favorite bloggers, and his three part dissection of JLA Classified is a good read. One, Two, and Three.

JLA:C 1-3 are his most favorite superhero comics of all time… and I’d be hard pressed to disagree with him. They’re pure, outlandish, and fun superheroics.

Go give it a read.

I’ve been on a real Kirby kick lately. I keep telling people that only Grant Morrison and Walt Simonson are allowed to write Kirby concepts. Here’s more proof.

It’s Kirby-esque without aping him. The Suicide Jockeys are that perfect mix of absurd and terrifying. “Death is life’s objective! Death is life done right! So lock an’ load! Let’s hit the road! The jockeys ride tonight!”

Actual text later on!

JLA #14. Death of the New Gods. Grant Morrison, Howard Porter, I think John Dell on inks.

In a couple hours, I’m going to be leaving for the weekend for my brother’s wedding. No computer access during that time, so the site is in the hands of the leader guy, the newbie and the guy who’s too busy doing real writing work.

Some quick notes before I go:

– The Dr. Strange movie is the better of the four Marvel animated movies (Strange > Ultimates > Ultimates 2 > Iron Man). The animation is better, the ugly shading is fixed and some of it is genuinely good. Unfortunately, it’s marred with goofy additions like having Strange, Mordo and the others fight by conjuring swords instead of straight sorcery. The ending is the absolute stupidest and laziest deus ex machina I have ever seen in any superhero movie, which is saying a lot. In conclusion, the movie is okayish.

– If you’re going to get the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters on DVD, don’t do it for the 80 minute deleted movie. It’s just an early version of the movie where the animation is only two-fifths done and the deleted scenes (which are available with full animation elsewhere on the DVD) are inserted. Though to its credit, there is a nice unused ending that involves Dr. Weird screaming at Meatwad, “Well, keep it down! I’m trying to fuck a tangerine!” a second before the end credits.

– Booster Gold #1 is fantabulous. It really, really is. The comic is about a muscular idiot in tights, his annoying robot companion and a guy who knows way too much about history banding together to repair the past and keep time stable. Hm…

I always thought this show needed a second chance. Thanks, Geoff Johns!

Okay, I was going to post some more about last week’s comics, but there’s been a change of plans. Batman #667 just came out, and it’s the first of a three part mystery story! I love mysteries, I love Grant Morrison and I love J.H. Williams III, so I’m definitely on board. It’s great to see Batman be an actual detective for once. I spent my time looking for potential clues as to who the mysterious killer is that called the former Club of Heroes to a desolate island. Let’s hope the conclusion won’t be as disappointing and nonsensical as that of Identity Crisis. I’m going to list all the facts in chronological order, and present my theory from there. Also, I won’t be including the information about the Club of Heroes that Morrison has revealed in interviews, as that would be cheating; we should be able to gather everything we need to know from the issues themselves. So let’s begin… Read the rest of this entry �

First impressions are important. I’ve spent several hours pondering about how to start my introductory post on 4thletter, and in the end I decided to just take the easy route. Hi, I’m Hoatzin, 4thletter’s newest staff member, but call me Paul if you like. I am Dutch. I like comic books. But only when they are good comics. I also draw, badly, but I’ll leave that for another article. For now, just to get an idea of what type of comics I like, I’ll leave you with some random thoughts on this week’s comics. And yes, I do basically read every single Big Two book that’s being published. Thank you for noticing.

Action Comics 853 – Despite my usual enjoyment of Kurt Busiek’s comics, the fact that this is a Countdown tie-in really hurts the book. Although Busiek does a better job at making me care about Jimmy Olsen’s plight to become a superhero than Countdown, the general storyline is still pretty lame and predictable.

All New Atom 14 – Pointless fan-pandering is rampant in part three of the Hunt for Ray Palmer, with the (temporary) return of Ted Kord in a book that does not feature any characters that should care about him. But Donna Troy is soooo amaaaazing.

Black Canary 3 – Oliver Queen is a moron.

Countdown 39 – A Sean McKeever issue, so at least the dialogue is decent, but the pacing remains glacial, none of the plotlines and characters are compelling and the artwork is once again fairly atrocious. The character introduced as last issue’s cliffhanger panel does not actually show up until the last two panels of the second to last page of the main storyline and the cliffhanger page after that is hilariously pointless. The only reason I’m still reading this book is because it will lead into the Grant Morrison-penned Final Crisis.

Detective Comics 835 – Dini is apparently busy with Countdown, so it’s a filler issue, but a surprisingly solid one at that. John Rozum (creator of Milestone Comics’ cult-hit Xombi) re-invents the Scarecrow as a genuinely terrifying enemy in part one of what promises to be a very interesting two-part story arc. The dark tone of the book is perfectly complimented by Tom Mandrake’s excellent atmospheric artwork.

Fantastic Four 548 – Dwayne McDuffie continues what has so far been an entertaining run on the book. I disagree with the numerous complaints that McDuffie has been overplaying Black Panther; T’Challa is essentially Marvel’s Batman, always ready with a plan and quick on his wits, so his portrayal in the book has been perfectly in-character.

Justice Society of America 8 – After the (terrible) Lightning Saga crossover, Johns has decided to take a breather with two more low-key issues focusing on two of the lesser known JSA members. Last month was a one-shot focusing on the new Commander Steel, this month is a story about Jesse Quick, the new Liberty Belle. It’s a welcome change in pace, but the issue itself is a mixed bag. Jesse’s characterisation is well done, but her relationship with Rick Tyler is obnoxiously written. Johns should also either give Zoom a rest or do something new with the character, because at this rate he’s growing stale really fast. I still fail to care about Damage and his clichéd damaged (ha ha!) past. This issue also has fill-in art by Fernando Pasarin, and although it’s decent, it’s nowhere near as good as Eaglesham’s. Despite all this, it’s not a bad read overall.

Metal Men 1 – The surprise book of the week for me. I was unfamiliar with Duncan Rouleau’s writing prior to this, so I don’t know how it stacks up to his previous work, but this was definitly an entertaining read. There’s a lot of content crammed into 22 pages and most of it is interesting. The banter between the Metal Men is amusing and they each have distinct, defined personalities, Will Magnus is a nice sketch of a character so far and the mysterious ongoings are intriguing, especially the last page cliffhanger. The artwork is another high point. It’s cartoonish and vibrant and the coloring is lovely, with inventive panel layouts and lots of energy. It’s not perfect; at points it gets overly busy and some of the computer effects are annoying, mainly the copy-pasting of specific elements, but it’s a nice break from the conventional look of most current DC books.

And now that I’m halfway through my books for the week, I’m going to take a little break. More thoughts (in particular the new Supergirl and World War Hulk issues) later!

A couple weeks ago, Marvel Zombies vs. Army of Darkness finished off. Marvel Zombies 2 has just been solicited for October. With that in mind, it’s about time I laid out my thoughts on the whole Zombieverse.

It all started back in 2005. Mark Millar was in the midst of his Ultimate Fantastic Four run and he started making some hints at a certain special story arc. From the looks of things, the Ultimate Marvel Universe was about to make a crossover with the mainstream universe Marvel 616. I wasn’t paying attention at the time, since I wasn’t reading Ultimate Fantastic Four, but I can only imagine people were annoyed as hell. Not only did this defeat the purpose of the Ultimate continuity, but Millar probably didn’t garner all that much faith going into what would be such an important story.

But the evidence was there. The story was titled “Crossover”. One of the variant covers for the first issue showed Ultimate Reed exchanging a shocked glance at an older Reed with snazzy white hair tufts. The second issue of the arc showed a more mainstream version of Magneto manhandling the Ultimate Fantastic Four. The first issue builds up to this meeting, including a scene where the two Reeds discuss the differences between their worlds. Older Reed — shown via hologram — mentions the Avengers and his children Franklin and Valeria.

Truly, this had to be the Ultimates/616 crossover we’d been dreading.

Or not.

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From Newsarama:

Marvel recorded 48.42% of the Unit Market Share, nearly 20 percentage points above DC’s 28.57%. Both the size of the “spread” between publishers and DC’s percentage of share are perhaps both historic figures in the Diamond/single distributor era.

From a Dollar standpoint, Marvel’s 43.62% to DC’s 27.07% is comparable to May’s figures.

That’s Marvel up twenty percentage points in market share. This is not even remotely a good thing for DC, obviously. Five books in the top twenty? Countdown shedding a couple grand worth of readers a week? Not cool.

I hate on DC a lot, but it’s out of love, believe me. Or maybe like. Anyway– I want them to do better, because they’ve got a sick cast of characters. I love Charlie Huston, but what is Moon Knight, an eternal B-lister, doing selling more than Detective Comics, Wonder Woman, and Superman? What’s DC doing wrong?

DC can do a lot of right. Here’s one you might not of heard of. Son of Vulcan, a miniseries by Scott Beatty and Keron Grant. It’s a legacy book, or at least pretends to be one, so that’s DC’s niche right there. It’s got a kid hero, an older kid hero (who is in a retirement home), and a very colorful and entertaining cast. It’s the kind of world-building that DC just doesn’t do any more.

Scratch that– Blue Beetle, written by the excellent John Rogers (who also wrote the best movie of the summer featuring Robots in Disguise), does this kind of thing and it’s one of the greatest books DC has. That isn’t damning with faint praise, either– Blue Beetle is excellent. In fact, SoV is kind of a proto-Beetle in a lot of ways.

Son of Vulcan. Balls nasty. Six issues. Great comedy. World building. It’s what DC needs more of. Don’t believe me? Here’s a few pages. I want to talk more about the series later on, but I’m still pretty wiped after E3. I’d love to see more of this series, but I don’t think it fits in with NEW EARTH and COUNTDOWN TO EXILES OF NEW EARTH and KILL CHARACTERS IN LIMBO FOR CHEAP THRILLS, you know?

Me, I’m just waiting for Death of the Z-List DC Characters You’ve Never Heard Of mega-crossover.

Enjoy.

from issue one

from issue five

Let’s be honest here.

I would pay DC money if they let me write an Injustice Gangstas miniseries. Even a one-shot.