This week gave us the final issue of Marvel Zombies 3, written by Fred Van Lente with art by Kev Walker. Despite the history of the series, I still have to say… this is totally worth reading.

I’m not joking. It’s actually really fun.

The first Marvel Zombies was decent. Not great, but it was a good enough read just because Kirkman had so many toys to play with. He had an entire universe to desecrate as he saw fit. Marvel Zombies: Dead Days was a boring disaster of a prequel that barely answered any of the questions brought up in Marvel Zombies. Marvel Zombies vs. Army of Darkness was better than it had any right to be. And Marvel Zombies 2? Oy.

With Marvel Zombies 2, Kirkman had done away with all of his unending potential, replaced with five issues of writing himself into a corner. I enjoy Kirkman’s work, so I stuck with it just to see where it was leading, but the ending was underwhelming as hell. Finally, even I was done with the series.

Thomas Wilde suggested I give Marvel Zombies 3 a shot based on the first issue. I’m glad I took him up on that. They’ve moved in a very different direction that brings back the potential for fun and over-the-top stories of mayhem. How? By bringing it into Marvel 616.

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Even back in the day, before I even really read comics, I had somehow heard of Scud: The Disposable Assassin. I’m not really sure how. I didn’t have any diehard comic-reading friends. I’ve never even touched a Sega Saturn, so I wouldn’t have paid attention to his game. Yet somehow I knew of the series and what the main character looked like despite the series having less than two years’ worth of issues during its initial run while being published by an independent company. That’s pretty impressive.

In all the years I’ve been into comics, I never thought about getting into the series because all I had ever heard of it was that it was jarringly unfinished. I’m a guy who enjoys closure, so that would have bugged the hell out of me. Luckily, series creator Rob Schrab finally got around to finishing the series off ten years after the fact with four additional issues.

I learned this when the Barnes and Noble I work for got in Scud: The Disposable Assassin: The Whole Shebang. That’s the funny thing about being the comic guy at the book store. You’d see something pop up in the receiving department and buy it yourself. Then when the store gets in a second copy in to replace it, you’ve already convinced a co-worker to pick it up. It’s a while before the book-buying public gets a chance to see it.

I picked up Whole Shebang on a whim. I remember hearing enough good things about the series and the art looked fun, so why not. I got through the whole book, filled with 25 and a half issues, in about a week and I had a complete blast doing so. I highly recommend it.

The comic takes place a couple decades into the future where murder is perfectly legal, at least in America. Street corners have vending machines that offer disposable assassins referred to as Scuds. Upon completing their mission and killing their target, they self-destruct. Our Scud is part of the company’s “Heart Breaker Series” and is hired to take out a nightmarish female mutant creature named Jeff. Midway into the mission, he discovers the sign on his back warning bystanders about his eventual self-destruction. Not wanting to die, he instead wounds Jeff, calls 911 and has the monster put on life-support. Scud gets to live, but he also needs to pull assassin jobs to pay for the life-support.

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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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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 �

The Contest of Champions paved the way for the event miniseries that Marvel and DC have become dependant on. The star-studded scavenger hunt wasn’t the greatest story in the world, but it was still memorable and classic for being the first step. Naturally, there would one day be a sequel.

If you can call it that.

When I think of Contest of Champions II, I think of the Infinity Gauntlet. Bear with me on this. Infinity Gauntlet was a popular Marvel miniseries starring a bunch of heroes that was eventually used as the basis for Marvel Superheroes, a very good arcade fighting game. While the game did include characters like Psylocke, Magneto, Juggernaut, Blackheart and Shuma Gorath (that still boggles my mind), the gist of the story was that it was supposed to be a retelling of Infinity Gauntlet, only the heroes aren’t useless.

What does this have to do with Contest of Champions II? Marvel Superheroes was a fighting game based on a Marvel miniseries. Contest of Champions II is the opposite. It’s a Marvel miniseries based on fighting games.

Funny thing about fighting games is that there aren’t many variations of the story out there. For the most part, every fighting game’s story is based on one of two concepts. Sometimes it’s just about a quest where different characters run around with a goal, meet each other and fight. Marvel Superheroes was basically this. The other, more popular one, is the tournament. It’s the easiest reason to have different warriors from different walks of life battle each other, especially when there’s no animosity between some.

The tournament stories are occasionally straight-laced and legit. That’s boring. Many others would have the tournament just be a front. In actuality, the host of the tournament is trying to use this as a way to kill off all threats to his or her plans for world domination. Maybe the host plans on using the beaten warriors as zombie cyborg soldiers. A lot of the time, all the fighting is just a way to unleash some long-imprisoned monster god thing to wreak terror on the lands.

This is pretty much what Contest of Champions II is.

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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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It’s time for another look at decent comic book scenes as having been skewed by horrible Photoshop skills. First, we have Civil War, where Reed Richards shuts down the cyborg Thor clone with his complicated voice-activated code.

Being in an Illuminati meeting was pretty fun stuff if it was a holiday.

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Steve Epting went from this:

to this:

Patrick Zircher did very passable work on Cable/Deadpool. Good, not great. Here’s a few covers:

But, have you seen his Terror, Inc pencils?

Holy crow! What’s Marvel putting in the water? I know that there are a few other artists who have really manned up under Marvel’s iron fist, too. It’ll be interesting to see who else goes through big changes.

And yes, I realize Steve Epting came back with Crossgen or whatever, but still! His work is incredible.

Oh, man, it’s been a minute! Where have I been? Busy, that’s where!

In terms of work stuff, I have been co-writing Guide for The Darkness. I think the game drops later this month? I went to one of these Hot Import Nights show. Better yet– it was for work. I’d never been to an import tuner show, mainly because my taste runs more toward Continentals and Cadillacs than RX-7s and Mazda 3s, you know? It was cool. A lot more models than I expected, though. I didn’t get to see any of San Diego, either, and that kind of sucks! I’ve also been doing a gaggle of galloping game manuals. Curiously, all of them are nerdy or comic game franchises. In fact, the manual I’m wrapping up tomorrow morning is related to a certain franchise that Dark Horse publishes.

In terms of real life stuff, I’ve been adjusting to life in San Francisco, trying to figure out a workable budget that’ll let me stock my place and pay my bills, picking up a diet, and I’m probably going to start exercising here in my place. Need to find a pull-up bar that doesn’t need screws, but that ain’t likely. I’ve also been burning through these Entourage DVD sets I have. I haven’t had a haircut or a shave in a over month now. Time to lose the stubble and cut my hair down to a proper 1/8 inch. Gotta find somebody to do the hair line, though.

My neighbor, I think downstairs-ish, is playing Waiting on the World to Change by John Mayer right now. Last week, it was Sade. I can’t really fault her taste in music, you know? Really laid back. I’ve been listening to a lot of Ludacris and Outkast, myself.

Life is weird. Life is good.

In terms of internet stuff, I’ve been thinking up clever MySpace display names (“Darling, after Valentine’s, I’ve decided!” [get it?]), modding Something Awful’s comics forum (which really isn’t that hard), chatting about ISSUES IN COMICS with people I know, and reading and enjoying most of the blogosphere. Listening to podcasts, too. Check the Funnybook Babylon link on the right-hand side, there.

A couple people said on a blog that there are no non-stereotypical or non-offensive non-white male characters in comics. That was an interesting two days diversion, I must say.

In terms of blogging stuff… I’ve been slacking. I owe a certain comics blog that I really enjoy a guest post (which I’ve finally cracked after a few weeks of stage fright/lack of time). I owe 4l a ton of posts, too.

I’ve been trying to get things straight in my mind. I want to talk about how Nymphet getting canceled made me realize that I, and probably a lot of other people, only care about the first amendment when it suits me. Change comics? Whoo! Cancel pedo books? Whoo! Censor a book I like? Whoa, nelly! Hold up there.

How do making a change in someone else’s comics to reduce sexism/racism/*ism and respecting their right to free speech track? It’s an interesting dilemma. If you have any insight, feel free to share. I’ve thought about making this a separate post, but I don’t feel like I have my mind wrapped around it right yet.

I’ve also been wondering how to follow up my big post from the other weekend, too. I mean, how can you drop a manifesto and then come back with “Deadpool sure is cool hurrrrrr” you know? Here’s the answer: you won’t know how until you do it.

Anyway! I’m well-rested after my weekend in San Diego (kind of) and I really want to get back to 4l. The review post I owe you is up next (and I plan to write it tonight so I won’t be a liar!) and then hopefully some good stuff.

Peace up, A-towns down!

I feel kind of silly making this article since it was supposed to be done months ago. There are several things that kept me from finishing it, but I’m going to take the easy way out. All the time I usually use to write these What If articles was really used to pretend I was writing for Lost. I love writing Sam the Butcher’s dialogue the most.

Starting it off, here’s a series of sig images I made for the Batman’s Shameful Secret sub-forum at Something Awful. I guess they worked.

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