I’ve got a friend who does stunt work. He had a brief role in Pirates 3 (he was the dude with the melting tat), he mo-capped some stuff for Jet Li’s Rise to Honor and Devil May Cry 3, and so on.

He’s been working on an original movie for the past few months with his stunt crew. Yeah Sure Okay is the title and it looks dooooooope. He’s got two teaser trailers out, the second of which just went live last night or this morning. It looks great, great stunts, great fighting, great comedy.

Mailing list here.

Go check it out!

Big ups, Larry! You’re still King Hater, though.

It’s like a one-two punch, only you don’t feel the two until ten years after the one.

Friday Night Fights, round 03. Where the hits come so fast, you hear the impact ten seconds after you feel the punch.

I took a long break from these babies to do the Wrestlecrap articles, but now I’m back with quite a collection of characters. Some are a bit topical, too.

CROSSBONES

Captain America #360 (1989)

The story of the issue is part of an arc called the Bloodstone Hunt. It involves Captain America and Diamondback taking on Baron Zemo, Batroc, Zaron and Machete over some gem. That part isn’t really important.

Though I will say that Diamondback’s appearance is sort of off-putting here. Her outfit is pink spandex with a series of black diamonds over her front and back. Considering she’s in the water for most of the comic, she hangs around some people in bathing suits, and the way the pink is colored here, it looks like she’s wearing a black thong that doesn’t cover her chest. That’s all well and good, but her costume is torn in places, so now it looks like she has some nasty-ass skin disease.

Anyhow, she and Cap get away with the prize. As they leave, we see that they’re being watched.

Crossbones is so cool.

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Another update on the CHIKARA/comic connection, I’ve discussed twice before. This time, it’s Young Lions Cup V Night 3, taking after New Teen Titans #1.

Top: Super Xtremo, Moscow the Communist Bovine, Hydra
Bottom: Soldier Ant, Amigo Suzuki, Lince Dorado, Player Uno the 8-Bit Luchador

Why, oh why, does Hydra have to be Donna Troy in this? Ten bucks says those chains he’s wielding are really the ultra-light plastic kind they use in kids toys.

I was never big into the Titans, so this doesn’t do all that much for me. It is a nice little homage, though, even if the artist forgot to replace Kid Flash’s speed trail with that building’s windows.

I did go to this show and it is totally worth buying. Not a single bad match on the card. Some matches, like North Star Express vs. Olsen Twins and Jigsaw/Hallowicked/Shane Storm vs. Cannon/Sweeney/Boyer, are great enough individually to make this worth getting. I didn’t get to go to the other two nights, but I have those on the way. Sadly, no comic artwork covers.

Stay tuned, 4L readers. Tonight I should have a new installment up of Deadshot’s Tophat. Good God, it’s been a while.

And every place I go, man, people wanna come to America. They really do. I mean, they start talking about America, make your dick hard for America. You hear ’em talk, man, you say, ‘We got all that shit in America? I gotta get my ass back!’
–Richard Pryor

Captain America is a tricky subject.

He can easily be viewed as a jingoistic symbol of Yankee imperialism. He wears the flag and he’s got blonde hair and blue eyes. He is the Aryan ideal.

That’s not what he’s about, though. Not at all.

Cap represents the American ideal. He is what America claims to be on paper, if not in deed. He is what other people should strive to be.

Captain America was born Steve Rogers. Steve Rogers was a patriot. He saw a war coming and wanted to do his part. The problem is that Steve was 4F– unfit for service. He was too weak to do what he thought was right.

Someone saw potential in Steve and got him into the Super Soldier program. He was injected with the serum, which was destroyed shortly after it took hold. He’s one of a kind. He’s finally fit and able to do right.

Steve Rogers died back when Captain America was born. Steve realized that he was a symbol. He was bigger than Steve Rogers now, and he had to be better. He had to be impeccable. He fought for the government. He was employed by the government. But, he was not the government. He could not represent the government. He represented the ideal. He had to show people what they could become if they embraced the ideal. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

I wasn’t really a Cap fan as a kid. The Avengers, save for Thor and Hawkeye, were pretty much universally lame. They were made up of shrinky people, rich dudes in robot suits, robots dating humans, and other characters I didn’t really care about.

I think that my first real exposure to Cap was in the pages of a What If. What If the Avengers Lost Operation Galactic Storm? It was cover dated 1993. I’d never read the original OGS, and I wasn’t reading the Avengers, so I’m not sure how I ended up with that comic. In it, Earth gets blown up and everybody dies, as befits a proper What If. A cadre of Avengers are left behind on the Kree homeworld, where they are immediately imprisoned. Among their number is Cap.

They’re planning a public execution of Cap. Clint, in his Giant-Man costume, sneaks into his cell and changes places with him. He understands that Cap is important. He knows that he’s one of the greatest. And… Cap gets it done. He frees other Avengers, he gets the job done, and the Kree empire goes down. There were a lot of characters in here that I did not, and do not, recognize, but it was a pretty rocking story. It actually made me believe that Cap was it. He was a big deal.
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(kyle baker

Me? I’m going to chill out and catch up on my reading. Might even have a good post for you later on!

So, uh, yeah, my feelings on Storm are pretty well documented, I think.

It’s almost 4am and I’m doing some writing (for work) and thinking about Storm. I’m thinking about Storm due wholly to this (Manstream) and this (B@N). Also, it’s late, and a Brothers’s mind wanders when it’s late.

Anyway, I had a thought hit me a few minutes ago.

I can think of exactly four black people, all of them men, who have written stories featuring Storm in a lead role. Christopher Priest used her during his Black Panther run, and this link suggests that the issue I’m thinking of was BP #26 in 2000, though I think that was a multi-part story. Reggie Hudlin is using her in Black Panther right now. Eric Jerome Dickey wrote her origin miniseries, Storm in 2006. Dwayne McDuffie is writing her in Fantastic Four right now, while she and T’Challa temporarily replace Reed and Sue. The bulk of Storm’s character development was handled by Chris Claremont and, who, Fabian Nicieza and Scott Lobdell? I know that Claremont had her roped up in X-Treme X-Men for the early ’00s.

Claremont wrote the first meeting of BP and Storm in Marvel Team-Up #100. Priest, who had a plan for Storm to marry BP a few years back, wrote them again in BP #26. EJD expanded on their first meeting in the Storm miniseries, and Hudlin married them in BP (new series) #18.

Over the course of her existence, I can think of exactly one black dude she’s dated, which has really only been handled in any kind of detail in the past, what, three years? Two? Which also happens to coincide nicely with the advent of black people writing her stories.

Which also ties in with the complaints that Storm and Panther are only getting married because they’re black, Storm is out of character, she wouldn’t complain about people dissing her hair, and so on.

There is something here, but I don’t know if I can put my finger on it well enough to articulate it.

Found some images while I was googling up some research for this brief post.

Black Panther #27:

Marvel Team-Up #100:

Some Uncanny X-Men Annual

What is up with all these dudes wanting to make Storm their queen? Dr. Doom, this Arkon guy, Dracula, the dude from X-Treme X-Men… dang. What’s she got that Monica Rambeau doesn’t?

edit after five hours of sleep: Please make Scott Eaton, Klaus Janson, and Dean White draw, ink, and color Storm and Panther forever thanks

Lightning from God.

If you aren’t reading Iron Fist, why not?

Friday Night Fights, baby.

For a variety of reasons, I’ve been a bit lax on real content over the past few days. Blame it on how much the Battlemania thing took out of me, work in general, being distracted by the horrific news of that uncharismatic wrestler who went and Parallax’d his once-legendary legacy, etc. Either way, the work I have done has focused a bit more on the site itself. New headers and the like. hermanos has been on a roll lately, so it’s no great loss. I’m just fluff, while he writes actual content.

The point of this post is that I updated the Table of Contents for the first time in a while. It’s starting to get a bit thick and for any new readers, it’s probably not going to seem worth sifting through. I figure that hermanos, Wanderer and I should just mark various articles as “staff recommendations”. But I also think that you regular readers out there are just as qualified. So for those of you who do stick around, what 4th Letter articles are your favorites? What would you suggest to someone who had just stumbled upon this site?

On another note, A.o.D., the guy who brought us the Ultimate Rom: Spaceknight articles, has been crossing his fingers for the past several months ever since Annihilation: Conquest had been announced. He’s been hoping that Wraith, the dark gunslinger of the cosmos, is in fact Rom himself. Over time, his hope had died down, but recently, it’s stronger than ever.

Let’s look at the facts.

1) Wraith looks an awful lot like Rom’s human form, in all his “get a haircut, cyber-hippy” glory.

2) The Spaceknights have a pretty big role in Conquest already.

3) Rom’s enemies are the Dire Wraiths.

4) Marvel is unable to use the name Rom, nor are they able to show Rom as a cyborg. On the other hand, they can do whatever they want with Rom’s human form, his backstory, the rest of the Spaceknights and the Dire Wraiths. That explains his random human appearances, like at Rick Jones’ wedding or in Universe X.

5) Despite being so grim, Wraith seems to go out of his way not to kill a villain in the preview for his first issue. Rom also had a thing against killing.

6) Solicits did say that Wraith’s backstory would make science fiction fans happy.

I for one welcome our new post-cybernetic overlord!

Garth Ennis is known for a few things. Blood, curse words, comedic facial deformities, sex jokes, a mild hatred of superheroes, and more blood and then a few more curse words. On the good side, he’s a pretty solid plotter, he knows his strengths, he does great dialog, and he’s the best war writer since Kanigher and Kubert.

Just in case you aren’t familiar, he’s written comics where a demon named Baytor becomes master of hell, Nick Fury strangles another dude with his own intestines, an alien sex pervert becomes a British diplomat and gets eaten by a tiger while dressed in a corset with an orange up his butt, a soldier constantly tries to trick his superior officer into kissing him by faking death, a guy gets his nose swapped with his penis and vice versa, an Australian pope has sex with nuns and curses, the Saint of Killers shoots God, a short man with glasses has sex with a giant statue made out of meat, superheroes are depicted as a bunch of people who are completely worthless human beings (and sex perverts), a dude has sex with himself and then shoots himself in the face in front of his son, and– actually, this is a pretty good sampling of the stuff he’s known for. Plus, this is going to completely ruin the search terms on this site.

Anyway, Ennis has got something of a rep. He’s done his fair share of gross-out comics, though it’s usually played for humor. But, I’ve been noticing something in his comics. He keeps sneaking in these little things that make a scary amount of sense. I don’t necessarily agree with Ennis on the religion front, but he makes good points about how to live life. Sexism, racism, whatever– it’s all stupid. It doesn’t matter. Leave it behind and just do right.

The quote up top is from The Boys #8, a series about some humans whose entire job consists of smearing and then beating the snot out of superhumans, who are all sex perverts and callous jerks. We’ve seen a bulldog have sex with another, smaller dog, and a Teen Titans-alike have a screwed up coke orgy. The book opens with a guy swinging around with his girlfriend like they were in a movie, only a superhuman comes crashing down and basically explodes her on impact, leaving the guy holding her severed arms. There’s also a dude who lives below a comic shop who basically calls Will Eisner a punk. And despite all this grisly stuff, you get little scenes like the one in that image up there.

Punisher: The Slavers dealt with white slavers. On the one hand, it’s a wish-fulfillment fantasy. We, the reader, get our revenge on the rapist and slavers of the world through Frank Castle’s actions. He kills quite a lot of them, and the series ends with him lighting a local boss on fire on video, looking into the camera, and saying “Don’t come back here.” He sends the video back to Eastern Europe with one of the allies of the slavers. On the other hand, though, I can’t remember the last time I saw the aftereffects of rape and kidnapping in a comic. One of the cops featured in the story actually quits the force, because she believes she can do more good helping track and assisting the girls who were kidnapped. The last two pages of The Slavers are heartbreaking. You don’t have the full context here, obviously, but I think the pages are worth sharing. Check out the softcover or the hardcover (B&N link) if it catches your interest. The softcover’s like ten bucks, it’s worth it. I cut out the pages where Cristu was burned alive because they aren’t 100% relevant here.

For reference: Viorica lost her daughter to the slavers.

(words by ennis, art by fernandez)

“All she can do is live with what life they left her.” Ouch.
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