art from milestone comics’s static #1Sorry this is late! It’s been a busy day (what’s that? I have two conferences in town this week?) and I’ve been running ragged.

Today? Today we’ve got Dwayne McDuffie.

You might have heard the name before. I mean, he was only instrumental on one of the best comic-book based cartoons ever. You might know it as Justice League Unlimited? Before that, he worked in comics. He did a few series for Marvel. Damage Control, Deathlok, you know. Books like that.

When he moved to DC, though. Wow. He started up Milestone Comics with a group of like-minded individuals and tried to set the comics world on fire. They gave us a fleet of diverse heroes without beating anyone over the head with Issues. Static was a brand new hero in the Peter Parker mold, but with the added benefit of modern day maturity.

Where Lee and Ditko had to kind of hedge their bets with regards to bringing real life issues into their book, McDuffie, Robert Washington, and John Paul Leon didn’t have to worry about that at all. In the first few issues, Static has girl trouble, gets beaten up, gets humiliated, leaves his house with murder on his mind (he chickens out), gains powers, and loses the girl. He has those teenaged problems that we can all relate to, and he reacts about how a teenager would. He isn’t always right, he doesn’t always win, and sometimes he is hilariously in the wrong.

Did Milestone set the comics world on fire? Well, they went out of business after a while, so that’s arguable. However, they did the next best thing. They set more than a few minds on fire. They showed a generation of kids that it could be done.

From Wikipedia:

Milestone provided the opportunity for many emerging talents who had been passed over by larger established companies, beginning the careers of many comic industry professionals. Among them are John Paul Leon, Christopher Sotomayor, Christopher Williams (aka ChrisCross), Shawn Martinborough, Tommy Lee Edwards, Jason Scott Jones (aka J.Scott.J), Prentis Rollins, J.H. Williams III, Humberto Ramos, John Rozum, Eric Battle, Joseph Illidge, Madeleine Blaustein, Jamal Igle, Chris Batista and Harvey Richards.

You know what? That’s a rock solid legacy. You ever meet someone who doesn’t love Milestone Comics?

McDuffie is one of the unsung heroes of comics, as far as I’m concerned. His miniseries from a couple years ago, Beyond, was a great little spotlight on a few forgotten Marvel characters. His run on Fantastic Four was not only years in the making– it showed a remarkable grasp of character work. Characters sounded exactly like they should, and the jokes were actually funny. His recent Damage Control miniseries is off to that same start.

When he came to DC, he was put on JLA. Perfect fit, right? He rocked on the cartoon series and he’s got some comics clout. He did good work at Marvel, maybe he can bring some of that magic to DC?

I’ve been less than enthused with his JLA, to be honest. The writing is solid, but the stories keep tripping into Countdown crossovers and being covered up with pretty shoddy work on the part of Ed Benes and Joe Benitiez. Why grab a great writer and then weigh him down with sandbags? Why not just let him work?

Despite all this, I’m glad that he’s still in comics. He’s a great voice and, I believe, a necessary one. I just want a company to be brave enough to throw him on a name book, give him a hot artist, and let him go wild. I’m willing to lay 2.99 a month on the fact that we’ll get something hot.

Static made #5 on my top black male characters in comics a while back. That’s for a really good reason.

(i snuck this article in under the wire, huh? whoops.)

It still surprises me that Double Dragon died out completely. You’d think we’d see a remake or sequel for the Wii or PS3 around this time, but nothing. No flashy resurrections like Ninja Turtles or Transformers. It just died, unless you count the re-release on the Gameboy Advance.

The game’s story was pretty basic. Billy and Jimmy Lee are two brothers with identical fighting skills. In a slightly decrepit future, their mutual girlfriend Marian is shot by a machine gun-toting cyberpunk and taken away. The brothers have to fight through legions of punks before saving Marian. In the NES version of the game, they couldn’t get the 2-player co-op to work, so they just made Jimmy Lee evil. Ignore that.

Several sequels were made, each playing up the same formula. Marian gets kidnapped and the brothers beat up street gangs in retaliation. Some of these games added weird mystical stuff to the series, like demonic gymnast crime bosses and evil mummies. There was a fighting game made for the Neo-Geo, but I never played it. Around then, the series took a turn for the worse.

A cartoon series was released and it was pretty bad. Instead of plainclothes martial arts vigilantes, the Lee brothers were full-blown superheroes. This led to a movie with a similar plot that was atrocious. In the videogames, the brothers teamed up with the Battletoads in a completely random crossover. Double Dragon 5 was released, but in actuality, it was a lame one-on-one fighter tie-in to the cartoon.

Back in 2002, SNK Playmore was set to release a follow-up fighting game called Rage of the Dragons, but the licensing fell through. Hence, the characters became Billy Lewis, Jimmy Lewis, Mariah and Abubo (rather than Abobo).

This comic, released by Marvel, came out in 1991. This is several years before the cartoon and the movie and the game where they fight a giant space rat named Big Blag. Instead, this is right around the time when Double Dragon 3 was released on the NES. Despite that, the series strays from loyalty to the games. Yes, Billy and Jimmy beat up punks and Marian is there, but besides that, the comic goes out into left field to add color. It’s more similar to the cartoon in ways, with the mystical superpowers and off-the-wall villains. The comic doesn’t even have Abobo in it!

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NEWSARAMA.COM: JLA WEDDING SPECIAL #1 PREVIEW

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

I’m psyched.

First impressions are important. I’ve spent several hours pondering about how to start my introductory post on 4thletter, and in the end I decided to just take the easy route. Hi, I’m Hoatzin, 4thletter’s newest staff member, but call me Paul if you like. I am Dutch. I like comic books. But only when they are good comics. I also draw, badly, but I’ll leave that for another article. For now, just to get an idea of what type of comics I like, I’ll leave you with some random thoughts on this week’s comics. And yes, I do basically read every single Big Two book that’s being published. Thank you for noticing.

Action Comics 853 – Despite my usual enjoyment of Kurt Busiek’s comics, the fact that this is a Countdown tie-in really hurts the book. Although Busiek does a better job at making me care about Jimmy Olsen’s plight to become a superhero than Countdown, the general storyline is still pretty lame and predictable.

All New Atom 14 – Pointless fan-pandering is rampant in part three of the Hunt for Ray Palmer, with the (temporary) return of Ted Kord in a book that does not feature any characters that should care about him. But Donna Troy is soooo amaaaazing.

Black Canary 3 – Oliver Queen is a moron.

Countdown 39 – A Sean McKeever issue, so at least the dialogue is decent, but the pacing remains glacial, none of the plotlines and characters are compelling and the artwork is once again fairly atrocious. The character introduced as last issue’s cliffhanger panel does not actually show up until the last two panels of the second to last page of the main storyline and the cliffhanger page after that is hilariously pointless. The only reason I’m still reading this book is because it will lead into the Grant Morrison-penned Final Crisis.

Detective Comics 835 – Dini is apparently busy with Countdown, so it’s a filler issue, but a surprisingly solid one at that. John Rozum (creator of Milestone Comics’ cult-hit Xombi) re-invents the Scarecrow as a genuinely terrifying enemy in part one of what promises to be a very interesting two-part story arc. The dark tone of the book is perfectly complimented by Tom Mandrake’s excellent atmospheric artwork.

Fantastic Four 548 – Dwayne McDuffie continues what has so far been an entertaining run on the book. I disagree with the numerous complaints that McDuffie has been overplaying Black Panther; T’Challa is essentially Marvel’s Batman, always ready with a plan and quick on his wits, so his portrayal in the book has been perfectly in-character.

Justice Society of America 8 – After the (terrible) Lightning Saga crossover, Johns has decided to take a breather with two more low-key issues focusing on two of the lesser known JSA members. Last month was a one-shot focusing on the new Commander Steel, this month is a story about Jesse Quick, the new Liberty Belle. It’s a welcome change in pace, but the issue itself is a mixed bag. Jesse’s characterisation is well done, but her relationship with Rick Tyler is obnoxiously written. Johns should also either give Zoom a rest or do something new with the character, because at this rate he’s growing stale really fast. I still fail to care about Damage and his clichéd damaged (ha ha!) past. This issue also has fill-in art by Fernando Pasarin, and although it’s decent, it’s nowhere near as good as Eaglesham’s. Despite all this, it’s not a bad read overall.

Metal Men 1 – The surprise book of the week for me. I was unfamiliar with Duncan Rouleau’s writing prior to this, so I don’t know how it stacks up to his previous work, but this was definitly an entertaining read. There’s a lot of content crammed into 22 pages and most of it is interesting. The banter between the Metal Men is amusing and they each have distinct, defined personalities, Will Magnus is a nice sketch of a character so far and the mysterious ongoings are intriguing, especially the last page cliffhanger. The artwork is another high point. It’s cartoonish and vibrant and the coloring is lovely, with inventive panel layouts and lots of energy. It’s not perfect; at points it gets overly busy and some of the computer effects are annoying, mainly the copy-pasting of specific elements, but it’s a nice break from the conventional look of most current DC books.

And now that I’m halfway through my books for the week, I’m going to take a little break. More thoughts (in particular the new Supergirl and World War Hulk issues) later!

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

The latest issue of Dwayne McDuffie’s run on Fantastic Four addresses the issue of whether or not Storm’s hair is a weave. Spoiler alert: it isn’t. Her eyes are natural, too.

Now, seriously, 100% no lie: every single black person I’ve ever known who read X-Men asked “What’s up with Storm’s hair?” with a dash of “She’s got blue eyes?” I have wondered this for probably seventeen years, so it’s nice to see some explanation, especially nice from McDuffie.

And Manstream gets it wrong. Ugh. People do ask dumb questions about hair. It goes for men and women alike– try growing an afro and see what kind of dumb ideas people come up with. No, I’m not sticking a thing in my hair, jerk.

I don’t even know how I found this link, because I don’t read Manstream. It’s like I have some kind of radar sense that draws me to terrible things on the internet, and it’s working overtime when I just wake up. I had to FIGHT not to just post “U MAAAAAAAD.”

And the assumptions! I mean, obviously addressing hair complaints means that Storm is going to start snakecharming her neck and start “telling Ben not to “get up in her grille” next.” I mean, only a certain kind of person has a weave, right? Right? (It’s grill, not grille. Grilles are on cars.)

This is why we need more black bloggers and writers and artists.

A more insightful post coming later today! I read a very interesting comic by a writer I enjoy who has a reputation for being a gross-out humor specialist, but who came on point with the social commentary!

Oh… that is so wrong.

We’re back for part two of our look of WWF Battlemania. Before starting, I should point out that Sensational Sherri, who was featured in the last article, has passed away at the age of 49. That’s a huge shame. Add another line to the list, I guess.

On a happier note, I’d like to mention that the Wrestlecomics part of 4th Letter got featured on the Wrestling Observer (twice!) and Figure Four Weekly Online. That’s pretty sweet, as Wrestling Observer is like the wrestling equivalent of Newsarama, only with maybe a shuffled step higher.

Continuing on issue #3 of Battlemania, we get to a story involving the Ultimate Warrior that I thought was actually pretty good. It’s shocking. Even more shocking was when I discovered the reason it was so good. Dwayne McDuffie of all people wrote this thing. That’s right. The guy who will soon be writing Justice League of America wrote a story about the Ultimate Warrior. I’m not knocking the guy in any way, and I do understand that you write what you can get, but I think it’s just such a random realization. Next you’re going to tell me that this guy wrote a Double Dragon comic.

Huh? He did? Oh. Well, now I know what I’m reviewing in the future.

“Follow Your Spirit”: Ultimate Warrior’s Workout
Ultimate Warrior vs. Sergeant Slaughter

We start the story with neither the Warrior nor Slaughter, but a battle royal in a second-rate gym filled with generic no-names. One of these generic guys is Ben Bradford. While the announcer mentions that Ben is a bit unorthodox in his wrestling style, he continues to dominate the match. In the front row is Lewis, Ben’s little brother. Lewis is confined to a wheelchair and is a major wrestling fan and art enthusiast.

Ben wins the match and is announced the winner. As a special surprise, his trophy and prize money are delivered by the Ultimate Warrior himself. Warrior holds Ben’s hand up and congratulates him on his victory.

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Have you guys read the new Marvel and DC solicits? I love comics, but those things are a bore and a half. It’s like they don’t even want you to read their books.

It’s cool, though. Here are the ones that are new and good and interesting. Jumping-on points only here, with one exception, perhaps. My pithy and vitally important commentary is in italics.

DC Comics is first since Marvel is better!

BATMAN #667
Written by Grant Morrison
Art and cover by J.H. Williams III
The Batmen of All Nations reunite for a weekend of fine food and nostalgia, but an unexpected visitor has other plans for the gathering. Batman, Robin, and the rest of the Club of Heroes find themselves trapped and at the mercy of a dangerous madman on the Island of Mister Mayhew!
This is why I read Grant Morrison. Mad ideas that sound completely goofy. He’s Silver Age with a Modern Age sensibility. Plus, I hope the sweet Knight and Squire from JLA Classified 1-3 shows up.

ROBIN #163
Written by Adam Beechen
Art by Freddie E. Williams II
Cover by Patrick Gleason & Wayne Faucher
It’s Tim Drake’s first Father’s Day as Bruce Wayne’s adopted son, and he wants everything to be just right. Unfortunately, the justice-crazed supervillains known as The Jury pick that very day to go on a murder spree in Gotham City!
This is a great idea for a story. The “family” part of Bat-family doesn’t get looked at often enough. “The Jury,” though, conjures up images of a certain ’90s anti-Venom team.

BATMAN: HARLEY & IVY TP
Written by Paul Dini and Judd Winick
Art by Bruce Timm, Joe Chiodo and others
Cover by Timm
Paul Dini and Bruce Timm -two of the masterminds behind Batman: The Animated Series – join forces in this volume collecting the miniseries BATMAN: HARLEY AND IVY! Also included is the special: HARLEY AND IVY: LOVE ON THE LAM by Judd Winick and Joe Chiodo, plus a newly-colored story rom BATMAN BLACK AND WHITE VOL. 2!
It’s Harley Quinn, so shut up and buy it.
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Firestorm has had a rocky run recently, but the quality has never wavered. Jason Rusch’s coming of age tale has been smart, interesting, and well-drawn. I even got Jamal Igle to sign the Firestorm trade I bought at the con that collects the One Year Later story arc… and is also the only collection out.

Yes, lads and ladies, DC’s crap trades department put out a trade of a series 20-odd issues in and are going to cancel the series with #35 in April. A few trades earlier on and Firestorm could’ve built an audience. C’mon, DC! You’ve got Time Warner backing you. If Marvel can trade every series ever, including Marvel Nemesis: The Imperfects, you can do it, too! The bookstores are the future!

No biggie, though! There’s nothing wrong with buying canceled books, especially ones that look as good as this. Stuart Moore and Jamal Igle had a great run, but Dwayne McDuffie and Ken Lashley are on tap for the final three issues. Here’s the solicit for #33.

The superstar creative team of Dwayne McDuffie (JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED, STATIC), Dan Jurgens (Superman, Captain America) and Ken Lashley (The Flash) bring Firestorm to bold new heights! Jason Rusch and Prof. Martin Stein just want to get their lives back to normal, but the New Gods have other plans! When Orion comes looking for Prof. Stein, you can bet a throwdown’s not far behind! Guest-starring the Seven Soldiers’ Mister Miracle!

C’mon, now. You’re a comics fan on the internet. I know that you liked Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. Dwayne McDuffie was behind a lot of the cool stuff on that show, so Firestorm #33 is pretty much guaranteed to deliver a good-sized bang for your three bucks.

Still not convinced? Look here for an interview and a quick preview. Jason Rusch is growing up, gaining confidence in his powers, and is still rookie enough to make Orion mad.

It drops today, it’s got New Gods, super-science, and a quality protagonist. We may not be able to save the series before it’s canceled, but we can read a good story along the way.

Hey!

Today marks the one year anniversary of 4thletter! Technically, we had a Blogger blog before then, but 4l! is what it is now, not what it was then. 365 days, 112 posts and 31,476 visitors later (as of this moment!) and we’re still here. We’ll be here for some time to come, if all goes well!

One year. It’s crazy, huh? One full year of completely questionable taste in comics, Gavok-style lists, brief appearances by the Spotted Wanderer, and hopefully bellies full of laughter. I was going to call 4l! Year Two “Questionable Taste In Comics Harder!” but focus groups decided that that was too clunky. Maybe “Where’s My Money, Honey?” U DECIDE.

Just FYI, 4l! Year One was “Is it time… or hypertime?” I don’t think I actually told anyone that, though, so don’t stress it. It won’t be on the test.

Muchas gracias to my blogmates Gavin and Thomas. The Big Gavoktus is consistently funnier than I am, but the site is named after me technically so it’s cool. We have spent enough time on IRC talking about A) What we would do if we had gigs at Marvel or DC and B) hilarious What If?/Elseworlds ideas that I am confident that if we ever did manage to con/blackmail our way into a position at Marvel or DC, the world would be a better and funnier place for it. Thomas brings a razor sharp critical analysis to the table and lets me bug him on AIM with ridiculous comics questions. He has a Tricky Brain, did you know that? He also has a sick mind for comics trivia, particularly in the X-Men and Spider-Man arenas.

Basically, though, we all love comics. Wait, scratch that. We all love good comics. Bad ones can go hang.

In the past year, I’ve learned that the comics blogospherohedron is kind of shockingly DC-slanted. (That may be just my inner Marvel Zombie speaking, though.) Tons of people have fond memories of the Legion of Super-Heroes, which I only recently got into with the Waid/Kitson reboot, and no one likes Identity Crisis. Feminism in comics is pretty big, too. A couple comics blogs have gone mainstream and ended up attached to Newsarama and Comic Book Resources, and I think that the comics media is better for it. I learned… you know what? This is slightly less profound than I expected. Let me cut to the chase.

I learned that a lot of cool cats like comics and want to talk about the effects of comics just as much as who would win in a fight, Big Barda or Wonder Woman (Big Barda, see below).

I would like to give a special shout-out to the people who let me blab on their blogs comment lines. The crew at Comics Should Be Good and Blog@Newsarma are all good people (and I really need to add B@N to my links there on the right). Kalinara @ Pretty Fizzy Paradise, Ragnell @ Written World, Johanna @ Comics Worth Reading, and Carla (I think?) @ Snap Judgements are all cool peoples. I should probably give special notice to my livejournalin’ buddies Lynxara and JLG. Fun times! Dwayne McDuffie’s forum is also a cool place to hang out, not to mention Batman’s Shameful Secret over at Something Awful’s forums. Best comics forum out, I will tell you what.

Also, my mom apparently reads the blog, so– Top of the world, ma!

One year down, hopefully many more to go. More questionable taste, more inexplicable love for ’90s comics, more stuff you never wanted to know about comics but now you do so you can’t un-know it, sucker!

I’m hoping to get some cool articles from all three of us up to celebrate the anniversary of this blah-blah-blog. Thanks for reading. Stick around, you might learn something!

As promised, here is why Big Barda trumps Wonder Woman:

Yes, it’s future Wonder Woman, but you can’t argue with five tons per square inch. Big Barda is the truth.