I miss Seven Soldiers.

(Shameless ripoff of those weird Japanese comic strips.)

Weird Wonder Tales #3

Year: 1973
Writer: Various
Artist: Various
Synopsis: Weird Wonder Tales is a collection of older Twilight Zone-type stories reprinted together. There are four of them here and none of them have much to do with that cover. No mud monsters attacking people in cemeteries here.

The closest is the first story, which begins with our female protagonist being assaulted by a fish man crawling out of a muddy canal. Things calm down immediately, as the fish man means no harm. He’s part of an underwater race of fish people and got lost. Now he’s on the surface and people run and scream from him. The woman allows him to stay at her place for the night so he can continue the search the next day. The fish man remains at the woman’s place longer than expected, but keeps giving her gifts like pearls and other jewelry. She comes to realize that this creature is in love with her. On her way to find the creature and confront it, she finds the police are in her shed, brutalizing the poor guy. Turns out that the fish man had been robbing jewelry stores for these gifts.

And then…

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Has he totally lost it, or has he, like Alan Moore, looked upon the legacy of his ’80s work and run screaming in the other direction?

Alan Moore has spent the past 15 years reinventing himself to be Grant Morrison. Has Miller spent the past few years doing something similar?

Bear these two quotes in mind when you answer:

I’ve seen all these characters of my childhood fall into disarray. They’ve become neither fish nor fowl. Those of us who wanted to test the boundaries of what a superhero comic book could do, unfortunately broke those boundaries and the results have not all been very good. We pushed against the old walls, and they fell-but nothing much has been built to replace them. And now the roof is leaking and the sewer’s backing up. So I’m taking this romp through the material again and showing just how spiffy this stuff is. I’m doing it without cynicism and giving my best. I’m also having a very good time.

What I want to bring back to superheroes with this project is a sense of play. Things have gotten so dreary. The heroes have gotten so ugly that even their muscles have muscles. The elegance of Gil Kane is gone. You don’t see the sheer joy of Green Lantern’s power ring. The magic of somebody like the Flash-somebody who’s able to move so fast that you can’t see him move-is gone. There’s no sense of the basic wish that any of these characters have.

I think anyone who’s working on a superhero comic should be obliged to write down in one sentence what the central wish is of the character. Every story has to play to that theme. “Adolescent power fantasies” isn’t just a tired cliché; it’s too broad, too crude. There’s more than that to these characters, the good ones, anyway. As it is, I don’t know who these characters are anymore. I don’t know why they do what they do. Why Green Lantern became a drunk driver when he can fly always loses me. And I’m told they turned him into a mass murderer as well. The fun’s gone out of it. I want to try my hand at bringing it back.

The Isotope signing for JH Williams III went off great! I had a great time, hung with some great people, and got to babble at JHW3 for a while. He’s got some great stuff coming up and a few surprises in store. The next two years or so should be a great couple of years for fans of the guy.

He had a ton of art on sale, including pretty much all of his Batman work. A few friends brought a couple spreads, but I had to hold off since I should be “responsible.” I did, however, find some stuff that I’m going to buy later on. He had some sketches for fascist-themed X-Men, including an awesome one of Jubilee that I want. He also had a great Guardian 7 Soldiers design sketch.

The creme de la creme was this cover. I saw it in his sketchbook while I was leafing through and was like “No, no way does he still have this one for sale.”

Guess what! He did. So, I’m going to buy it. I loved The Crew, I loved those covers, and I love Kasper Cole as the White Tiger.

All in all, it was a great night. I’ll post the flickr link when the pics go up.

At work, we’ve been receiving some comic anomalies lately. For one, there is the Ronald Reagan graphic novel biography, which I admittedly bought for my friend’s birthday since he’s a Reagan nut. Then there is the Kiss 4K comic, based on an average rock band doing stuff in the future. Neither of these two get more double-takes than this baby.

That’s right. A Jesus Christ manga. Look at that. Look at the tagline! Sweet protagonist!

If you’ve been following this site long enough, you know me well enough to think that I would buy this for the sake of review. The truth is, I did put a lot of thought into it. Then my friends put forth an intervention against my bad comic buying ways and insisted I not purchase it. I gave in, though I did flip through it for a bit. Something is really off about seeing Pontius Pilate with one of those manga-style angry blood veins on his forehead. Judas is portrayed here as a red-haired bishonen. It’s wacky.

So yes, I did agree that I wouldn’t buy it, but that makes me feel bad. I hate wasting things, so here is a list of all the jokes I would have made for the Manga Messiah review that never was. Enjoy.

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Yep. It’s time for another edition of Ruin the Moment, distracting you as I work on the next Professor Marc article.

This is based on Tim Drake receiving the call that Bart Allen has been killed needlessly because DC wrote themselves into a corner.

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Any 4l readers in the Bay Area? JHW3 is coming through the Isotope this weekend. Come through for drinks, cool people, and one of the best artists that ever did it.

If you’re lucky, you might even be able to buy a dope page or two.

So far I think World War Hulk has been pretty great. A good deal of thought has gone into the event, but they didn’t over-think it, like they did with Civil War. I admittedly haven’t read the badly reviewed Frontline (fool me once…) and Gamma Corps, but most of the other tie-ins were pretty fun. I even enjoyed the Ghost Rider arc, so suck on that.

The X-Men tie-in was cool for what it was. It was just a slugfest where Hulk was meant to dominate the entire X-roster. They used this space to develop Juggernaut’s story. Maybe “develop” is the wrong word here. “Rubber banding” is more accurate, unless this is all misdirection and they’re going to keep him good in the long run, as they really should.

Either way, it was an effective subplot. Juggernaut was one of the few major threats to face the Hulk. Only something about it bothered me and I couldn’t put my finger on it. Like with many Marvel comics, my mind likes to come up with possible What If stories based on canon events. It’s a side-effect from that damn list, so cut me slack.

This fall/winter, we’re going to be getting more What Ifs. The ones announced are all based on the big events. What If: Planet Hulk is a trilogy of stories that sound downright orgasmic. What If: Annihilation pushes the events of Annihilation, Civil War and Silent War into one big, unpredictable melee. There’s a two-story Civil War issue based on Captain America either beating Iron Man, or even getting everyone to join his side. Plus What If Vulcan Had the Power of the Phoenix.

What could the eventual World War Hulk story be? It got me thinking.

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It’s time for another six issues of random. Sorry it took so long. One of the issues was an 80 Page Giant and you know how those can be.

The Phantom #3

Year: 1988
Writer: Peter David
Artist: Joe Orlando
Synopsis: The Phantom is the ultimate legacy superhero; a mantle existing throughout the years under different members of a bloodline. To give balance, there is the Chessman bloodline, which has been antagonizing Phantoms for ages. This miniseries focuses on the modern-day battle between Phantom (the 21st one) and Chessman.

There are two parts to the issue. To delve deeper into the legacy picture, we read about the great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather of our main Phantom, Christopher “Kit” Walker. In a story transcribed by the 13th Phantom’s son, the Phantom has been beaten by the Chessman Brothers and is locked up in a pirate ship. Not only that, but one of the brothers stole his badass skull ring. Due to desperation and being totally pissed, the Phantom breaks the chains that bind him, beats up a bunch of pirates, sinks their ship and is saved by some allies. The Chessmans get away.

As a nice touch, this old timey Phantom doesn’t wear a domino mask, but rather has black paint or makeup splotched around his eyes.

He seeks out the Chessman that stole his ring and takes him on in a duel of swords. He steals his ring back, punches Chessman in the face, impales him with a dagger and tosses him out a window. That’s a pretty full day.

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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.