I really like comics. Sequential art is possibly my favorite medium. But unfortunately not all comics are good and sometimes it’s necessary to show some tough love. Occasionally one must criticize books that fail at their intended goal and examine what precisely went wrong, for the sake of comics, because comics should be good. The recently completed White Tiger, written by Tamora Pierce and Timothy Liebe and drawn by Phil Briones and later Al Rio and Ronaldo Silva, happens to be one of those books.

Although it’s a niche book, I feel it deserves closer examination for a variety of reasons. It’s a spinoff of Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev’s fantastic definitive run on Daredevil. It’s a comic about a legacy character. It’s a comic about a female character. It’s a comic about an ethnic character. It’s a comic by a popular novelist (and her husband) doing their first comics work. It’s also a comic that, so far, has done very badly in sales, dropping from 24,663 copies for issue #1 to 13,621 copies for issue #5.

Although stellar sales figures shouldn’t be expected from a niche book by an unproven creative team, the fact that the book shedded over ten thousand readers in the course of issues 1 to 5 means people just plain aren’t liking it. In an industry where new characters, even legacy characters, are hard to push and both ethnic and female characters are rare, it’s sad to see a book about a new ethnic superheroine fail so badly. But why did the book fail? After reading it, I have come to a conclusion: It’s a bad comic book, in just about every way. Let’s review. Bear with me: This will be long. Read the rest of this entry »

After nearly three months of ignoring it, I’ve finally updated the site’s Table of Contents page. Other than adding the newer articles, I’ve added Hoatzin’s section, got a better picture for the “Ruining the Moment” section and added the Juggernaut.

See? Cain can be seen dashing into any articles deemed suggested reading by 4th Letter’s writers or readers.

In other news, CHIKARA has a new contest based on their DVD covers. By sending in your own artwork, you could possibly have it grace the cover of their yet-to-be-named November 07 event and win a bunch of free crap. The requirements:

– .jpg or .psd file
– 200 dpi
– RGB mode (NOT CMYK!)
– Measuring 5.125” (width) by 7.25” (height) inches
– Keep it family friendly

Send the entries to lfchikarason@gmail.com with your name and address. You can enter as many times as you want. I’m going to try and break out the pencils for the first time in years and see what I can do with this.

Finally, I made a couple purchases yesterday for the next series of articles that I’ll get to once I finish the Professor Marc’s Homework Trilogy. All I can say is that despite all the comics I’ve read over the course of this site’s history, nothing… NOTHING… has made me fear for my sanity more than what I have in store. Stay tuned.

I like the Sentry. I think he’s a righteous dude. The thing about him is that he’s all about history. We know who he is and what he used to be. We know the legacy. Now his role in Marvel’s world is stagnant. He’s either there to show how powerful an opposing threat is, stepping out of sight to give the Avengers more of a challenge (“Oh, Patriot’s hurt? I’ll be back in a bit.”), or he’s yakking about the Void and their inner war. He’s currently taking his time to enter the fray in World War Hulk, but after that’s over and done with, who is he going to fight? The Void is the only part of his past that’s here to stay and we need some variety. His other villains were mostly Silver Age jokes that don’t deserve a push to the forefront.

The Sentry needs a real arch-nemesis.

Over the past couple of days, I had finally read through both Deadly Genesis and the Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire. I recall hearing bad things about both of them as they were coming out, with the addendum that they make great reads in trades. Plus Brubaker is Brubaker and I really liked that What If from last year based on the big Deadly Genesis retcon.

As I read through Deadly Genesis, I grew to love Vulcan as a villain. Good, new comic characters – especially villains – are a hard find these days. I was happy to finally have somebody new who I could buy as a major threat. The more I read of him, the more I realized that he would make a fantastic enemy for the Sentry. While the Void is the Sentry’s anti-conscience and acts as his sinister shadow, Vulcan really comes off as the true Anti-Sentry.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve written 25+ pages this weekend, and I should really put in some more work before I duck out this evening for a meeting, but I’ve got to share something.

I took a break from writing a little while ago and picked up my copy of Percy “MF Grimm” Carey and Ronald Wimberly’s Sentences. It’s an autobio comic out of Vertigo, if you hadn’t heard. Grimm is a rapper who’s been around for a good while.

I don’t know if I could do it just right now, but I want to review this book. I’ve only seen a few reviews online for it, none of which are from the comics press or blogosphere. It deserves the attention.

You see, Sentences: The Life of MF Grimm is one of the best books I’ve read this year and my official front-runner for Book of the Year. It’s completely awesome.

Review coming as soon as I can block out some free time. The only thing I’ve got to say right now is “Buy this book.”

NEWSARAMA.COM: JLA WEDDING SPECIAL #1 PREVIEW

Dwayne McDuffie’s first page is twice as good as Meltzer’s full run.

I’m psyched.

From the Black Canary Wedding Planner:

Is this supposed to be cute, playful ribbing?

How about now?

Why are these two getting together again?

I’m still alive, by the way, just neglecting my writing duties like an asshole. I have something in the works, though!

COMICON.com: McNAMARA’S QUEST FOR CONTINUITY

My buddy Jason McNamara’s been interviewed by Jen Contino over at The Pulse.

THE PULSE: What influenced you the most in coming up with the world her dreams occupy? How’d you design this pharmaceutical police state?

McNAMARA: The dreams are the downside of wish fulfillment. Got a crush on some dude? Bam, now you’re pregnant. Hate everyone in your hometown? Super, now they’re all dead. Feel bad? Too bad it’s your fault.

As for the pharmaceutical stuff, I approached it by marrying the marketing of awful food to inappropriate medication. That gives you stuff like Low carb morning after pills, the abortion patch, sweet and sour anti depressants, circumcisions while you wait!

The physical design is all Tony. When he read the script he just knew what it was supposed to look like. I put a couple suggestions in the script and he, as usual, ignored them. My favorite image is a park bench that has been fenced off. That page can always make us laugh.

Go check it out. Jason Mac is great, and I’m not just saying this because he’ll kill me if I don’t.

Where I work, I have a friend there who I will simply refer to as Professor Marc. I won’t post a picture of him since he may not dig that. Plus, he is really, really weird looking and if you’re reading this while in an early morning stupor, it will really fuck up your day and possibly take you out of the article. So to hell with that.

Marc’s level of comic knowledge makes me look like a guy who asks, “What’s a Bucky?” He’s about eight years older than me and has tons more experience than I do as a comic geek. It’s the kind of thing where I mention my “Deadshot’s Tophat” articles and he immediately gets the joke of the title. He’s the kind of guy that can name every single member of the Superfriends, including the guys that showed up for one episode like Plastic Man, Green Arrow and the ones I still can’t recall. In a sad kind of way, I sort of look up to him.

How do you become a comic know-it-all, anyway? I can read a bunch of comics, but it’s hard for me to branch out. Picking up something completely random and giving it a read is easier said than done. I could be spending that time reading a really good Justice League run or catching up on Daredevil. Still, I’m a man who loves his obscurity. A lot of the stuff I review on this site is stuff I make sure hasn’t been overly reviewed elsewhere on the net. That’s one of the reasons I haven’t touched the Ultimate Warrior comic. It’s old hat.

Professor Marc decided to lend me a hand. From his bottomless comic collection, he handed me nineteen random backissues to help build character. Stuff I would never think of reading on my own. Some issues are from comics I know of. Some issues are from comics I had no idea even existed. Only one of them is an issue that I’ve even heard of prior. Professor Marc’s list has more of a Marvel slant, but there’s still a good amount of representation all around.

I’ve read through six of these issues so far, so it’s time for part one of my book report.

Year: 1991
Writer: Doug Moench
Artist: Rod Ramos
Synopsis: This had to be the first one I read. I really don’t have much experience with the Toxic Avenger, honestly. I used to watch the Toxic Crusaders cartoon and years ago I watched Toxic Avenger 3 during one of those weekends when we got free Cinemax. But he is the Steve Rogers of New Jersey, so it’s my Jersian duty to read up on him.

Read the rest of this entry »

First thing, big thanks to whoever submitted the comics/wrestling parallels article to Fark. You are a true class act, whoever you are.

Said article is also deemed incorrect thanks to Mr. Kennedy getting himself suspended and therefore written out of the “Vince McMahon’s long-lost son” storyline. Though I guess that does make him the wrestling version of Captain Atom.

Electronic Arts has announced another Marvel fighting game with no title yet. Rather than be a sequel to Marvel Nemesis, even in style, the game appears as a Marvel version of War of the Monsters. War of the Monsters was an all right game, though pretty shallow. The new game doesn’t look very different.

Here is the trailer and here is the in-game footage. The roster so far is Spider-Man, Captain America, the Hulk, the Juggernaut and Dr. Doom. Allow me to rail on the footage, character-by-character.

Spider-Man: Cool that they go with the small-eyed look, much like Alex Ross intended with his original Spider-Man movie designs. The part where he saves the blond lady from the falling building, but does nothing to save Bruce Banner reminds me of that Jay Pinkerton parody with the avalanche.

Captain America: Apparently able to punch the Hulk a mile away, Captain America pretends to be alive for this upcoming game. The designers show that they’ve come up with like a hundred sketches of what Captain America should look like here. Listen, I know I’m not paid the big bucks like you fine fellows, but why not… I don’t know… make him look like Captain America?!

See? Capcom got it right.

Hulk: They end the trailer with the Hulk yawning. I don’t get it.

Juggernaut: For a guy magically given an instant and infinitely buff body, why does the Juggernaut look like he needs to do some sit-ups? And stop trying to make him resemble the Vinnie Jones movie version. That’s not something that needs emulating.

Doctor Doom: First off, nice kilt, Scrooge Von Duck. Here I thought Doom was a strategic mastermind that acted evil behind the defenses of diplomatic immunity, not a guy who terrorizes the populace by taking a stroll through New York City in broad daylight. It looks like Jim Rhodes redesigned Doom’s armor by giving him missiles instead of the trademark energy gauntlets. Plus he blows up a building in his attempt to kill Spider-Man, showing that even Doom is over 9/11. No tears this time.

I’ll have a real article up tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Blah blah blah, I like Jubilee. You know this refrain. verse one and verse two.

In a comment on that latter post, Julian Lytle linked this Jubilee redesign that I kind of dig. It’s funky. He’s got a flickr here with some extremely awesome art inside. My favorite is probably the Jubes sketch, but I really dig the design on the Guns’n’Honey ones. Go check it out. I’m way overdue on this link.

My favorite X-Men eras are the Jim Lee era and the Grant Morrison era, in that order. Lee’s X-Men was just incredibly fun and out there, and this Mojo story was short, stupid, to the point, and entertaining. I wish X-Men 1-11 were all in a trade as like “X-Men Legends” or whatever. I’ve got 1-7 or so in a trade (Mutant Genesis?), but I want the entire Lee run. (That last image? My new desktop.)

Also, Wolverine as mewling weak coward-type? Scott Lobdell and Jim Lee’s version is better than the PIP PIP OH DEAR! one from Astonishing X-Men.

Oh yes

I went there.

(“I… I ain’t never backed down to a skirt” is just like the ultimate in Wolverineisms. The perfect encapsulation of who he is and what he does. Which, obviously, is not backing down to skirts.

He’s fond of chiffon.)