As you may recall from yesterday, Magneto, his kids and his wacky neighbor Xavier took off towards Australia. They couldn’t have stressed harder that it was a flashback if they tried. They crashed and ran into those guys from the Ewok movies. That was then, this is now…

Actually, never mind. This first page is about “then” too.

As always, thanks to ManiacClown, who came up with that recap page. We’ll be back tomorrow to talk about robots. Plus more from Hawkeye. You kids love Hawkeye, don’t you?

Day Three!
Day Four!
Day Five!
Day Six!
Day Seven!

The weekend of chunky guys dressed like Colossus and hot women dressed as Slave Leia has come to an end. I myself had a great time, spent with hermanos from this very site and a whole bunch of guys from Funnybook Babylon. Sadly, Thomas “Wanderer” Wilde deemed himself “too broke” to consider joining us and Hoatzin would have probably involved a gigantic plane ticket paid in rare diamonds, since he’s from Europe. I don’t know. I really have no grasp on how that type of thing works. Besides, Hoatzin seems to have vanished from our planet. What happened to that guy?

This one movie sent the other movie into space.

Day One

Last year I got to New York the day before the con started, which allowed me enough rest and whatnot. This year I had to come in the first day of the event and kill time until David Uzumeri came in from Canada, since he was in charge of dealing with the hotel. I walked straight from the Port Authority bus terminal to the Javits Center, which tired me the hell out.

After getting my swanktastical press pass, I met up with hermanos and Joseph of FBB. They were at a panel starting up that was a screening for a new Will Eisner documentary. Since I was tired from all that walking, I decided to stick around and watch it. I found it interesting in the sense that I honestly didn’t know all that much about Eisner, which is almost a sin if you’re a comic fan. The four of us (David U. showed up towards the end) mostly agreed that while it had some fantastic stuff in there, such as taped conversations between Eisner and guys like Kirby, the sum of it was incredibly dry.

Shortly after, we went to the panel on online journalism, with guys from Newsarama and CBR there. It wasn’t as good as the comic blogging panel from last year and mostly focused on arguing over criticism vs. getting press releases. Once that was done with, I was rested up enough to do some wandering.

Read the rest of this entry �

The next Comics from the 5th Dimention column should be up soon. The big drawback about writing for PopCultureShock rather than here is that you can’t have your stuff up instantly. Them’s the breaks.

I plan to one day write my own comic series. I’m currently trying to move my gears forward on that. That said, I still find myself thinking about what kind of DC or Marvel-owned series I would love to write if I had the chance. Stuff like an Eradicator on-going where he stations himself in Coast City as a way to make up for and investigate the human feeling of guilt he suffers from his failure to protect the city from Cyborg Superman and Mongul. Or a Juggernaut series where he’s on the run from SHIELD, all while showing the parallels of the Superhuman Registration Act and being the avatar slave of Cyttorak.

There’s one comic concept that came to me the other day. What If occasionally had sequels, most of them not very good. Having read so many issues and having some of them so nestled into my memory, the continuity nut in me always compares some issues to events that happened after the release date. Sometimes it’s just to laugh at the continuity screw-up, like how Alicia Masters in What If the X-Men Lost Inferno was really a Skrull and the writer didn’t know it yet. That revelation gums up her part in the story.

Sometimes I realize how much more interesting stories become when you toss in delayed retcons and new pieces of canon. For instance, there’s the issue What If the X-Men Had Died on Their First Mission, where the New X-Men team (Wolverine, Storm, etc.) go to Krakoa to save the original X-Men and they all die. Xavier beats himself up over it, Moira comforts him and eventually another X-Men team is created. It was a good story, but compare it to what we know now. Deadly Genesis showed the other X-Men team that died fighting Krakoa. When they failed, Moira was angry, so Xavier erased her memory of the events. Put the two stories together and it’s pretty fucked up. Xavier deserves to feel bad. His Krakoa mission would have cost him three X-Men teams, totaling at 17 mutants. Then you have Moira trying to keep him from being suicidal, not knowing what a bastard he really is because the son of a bitch removed it from her memory.

What would have happened when Vulcan came back to Earth, not only forgotten, but now without his brothers? Now that would be a sequel issue worth reading.

I think back to other What Ifs that lead to a new status quo and how vastly different things would have been if they continued the story and met up with the events that were destined to happen. I think a handful of them could make for a good limited series.

Read the rest of this entry �

The comic of Jeph Loeb is fearful. Were the new scrapped vessel body and onslaught where the origin it changes read? Is this junk what?

Oh, sorry. I just tried venting at Jeph Loeb’s current work, only I translated it into Japanese and again back to English. It’s funny how that turned out, isn’t it?

If you recall, a few months back I posted an article that featured the comic adaptation of the Street Fighter live action movie. Sure, I had a ball with it and hopefully you enjoyed it as well, but something felt off about it. Having already seen the movie, it took out a lot of the flavor of the comic. That got me thinking.

There are a ton of comic book superhero movies out there and when you look at it, only recently have they been getting it right more often than naught. Back in the day, yes, we had stuff like Superman 2, but good movies like that were flukes. I like a bad movie as much as the next guy, but even I’ll admit that I’ve stayed away from these monstrosities for one reason or another.

Luckily, I don’t have to see these movies. Marvel and DC have almost always been kind enough to release these superhero stories the old fashion way, within the pages of a comic book. Why overpay for popcorn and sit in a cold theater when I can read about Shaq fighting crime while laying in a hammock in my back yard? I’m sure I won’t have to worry about bad acting or bad special effects.

This will be my first of several articles delving into the double-translated works of superhero movie comics.

The background of this movie confuses me a bit. From the little research I did after reading the comic, it was finished and released in the UK back in 1990, but then they did a bunch of re-shoots and edits before simply releasing it on video in the US in 1992. When I read a summary of the story for the finished version, it definitely shows that Stan wrote his comic about the initial screenplay of the film prior to the edits.

What’s that I said about Stan? Yes, I mean that Stan. The Stan. Stan Lee wrote the comic version of the movie with Bob Hall on art. This makes everything more interesting, since Stan Lee’s storytelling contrasts with anything you can imagine in a movie environment.

Read the rest of this entry �

from marvel comics’s truth: red, white, and black by bob morales and kyle baker

Black history is American history.

Welcome back, friends. Last time we met, Wolverine talked about meeting Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, followed by his ordered attempt to kill the latter. Then dinosaurs happened. Thankfully, we’re about done with his endless flashback.

That line at the end of the second page? I think we have a new 4th Letter tagline.

This is the part of the article where I give a token mention to ManiacClown for the assist. More tomorrow, as Iron Man and Black Panther show up for a spell.

Day Six!
Day Seven!

Nothing much happened yesterday. I mean, it was just a cover, a recap page and Wolverine talking. That’s how 40% of Marvel’s comics start out these days. Anywho, here’s some more of Wolverine talking.

Join us tomorrow, as me and ManiacClown cover more of Wolverine talking.

Day Three!
Day Four!
Day Five!
Day Six!
Day Seven!

This is the Ultimate Edit, of Ultimates Volume 3. Good guys, bad guys and explosions as far as the eye can see. And it goes to issue 5. I wonder how it will be. This is the Ultimate Edit, of Ultimates Volume 3.

If you missed the first and second issues, then you should probably go read those. It’s okay. I’ll wait.

Scarlet Witch got shot, a bunch of mutant badguys popped into the mansion, fought the heroes and skipped town with the corpse. Now Wolverine’s there. Spider-Man is probably still unconscious but nobody cares about him.

One thing that doesn’t come up in these edits that really bugged the hell out of me is the narration. At the very end of the second issue, once Wolverine steps in, it makes a mention that this takes place, “one second ago”. Why the first two issues were counting down to Wolverine’s mid-sentence, I don’t know. But in the first page of the third issue, taking place immediately after Wolverine’s entrance speech, it explains the scene as taking place “last night”. WHAT?

That’s going to mess with somebody’s mind once the trade comes out.

As always, a thank you to partner ManiacClown.

Day Two!
Day Three!
Day Four!
Day Five!
Day Six!
Day Seven!

Here’s our final round for the issue. Yesterday, Captain America and Hawkeye fought Sabretooth and Multiple Man to their hearts’ content. This story is going to have to move real quick if it’s going to wrap up in three pages. Good thing we have Quicksilver.

And that’s the end of that, at least for a couple weeks. As always, thanks go out to my imaginary friend ManiacClown. Thanks also to all of you who read this, enjoy it and make the effort to get others to read and enjoy this. Yes, Virginia. You can polish a turd.

Ultimate Edit Week 3!
Ultimate Edit Week 4!
Ultimate Edit Week 5

Welcome back. Previously on Ultimate Edit, Thor was seduced into fighting Valkyrie and Iron Man gave Blob a ride to the bus stop. That’s about it. We’re almost at the end of the issue, but for now, let’s have another moment with Captain America and Hawkeye.

This one had a lot of stuff cut out. ManiacClown really wanted to drive home the whole Sabretooth/Triple H comparison, but I didn’t think too many people would get it. I was going to have Captain America tell Sabretooth, “Tigger, please!”, but it was too forced and really didn’t go well sandwiched between hermanos’ whole Black History Month fiesta. And ManiacClown wanted Hawkeye to really, really hate apples for whatever reason.

We finish off the issue tomorrow, so I know you don’t want to miss that fun.

Day Seven!