I wasn’t exactly a huge fan of Michael Turner. He had a ’90s Image style I wasn’t really into, though it had its moments, and I never really got into Aspen. However, all I’ve ever heard about the man is that he’s a trooper and one of the nicest pros in the world.

He drew a trio of Flash covers that I absolutely loved, though. He also co-wrote an arc of Superman with Joe Kelly that I, despite all possible logic, really enjoyed. It was the story with Superman in Kandor with no memory or powers, but a crazy Akira-style motorcycle. It was dumb fun, like a lot of comics I’ve enjoyed.

I nicked this from iFanboy, who in turn got it from the Aspen forums:

Hello all,

Unfortunately it’s with great sadness that I must inform everyone that Michael Turner tragically passed away last night, June 27th at approximately 10:42 pm in Santa Monica, Ca. Turner had been dealing with recent health complications arisen in the past few weeks. More details concerning Turner’s passing, and services, will be given shortly.

Anyone wishing to send their condolences to Michael Turner’s family is encouraged to send to:

Aspen MLT, Inc.
C/O Michael Turner
5855 Green Valley Circle, Suite 111
Culver City, CA, 90230

Aspen also encourages anyone wishing to make a charitable donation to please send to Michael Turner’s requested charities:

The American Cancer Society

Or

The Make-A-Wish Foundation

Official Contact: Vince Hernandez

Hey, who remembers Bart Allen? Impulse? Kid Flash? Flash? Yeah, that kid. Remember when he died and DC restarted the series with a back-from-limbo Wally West?

Oh. That was just a year ago.

Flash’s mid-stride reboot, courtesy of Mark Waid and friends, has not been all that well received.

From an interview:

I don’t know. You know, I just think, in retrospect, the stars were not in alignment in a lot of ways. I kind of knew we were in trouble right off the bat when I so loved Daniel Acuna’s artwork. I so loved it. And I was so unprepared for the insane volume of hatred from the online community about how much they just despised his work on the title. I knew at that point, I thought, “Oh god, we’re in trouble.” Once more, the online community has me questioning what I thought was good. Which I shouldn’t let happen, but it’s hard not to do when the volume is that loud.

And at this moment in time, I just … in terms of superhero work, I feel frozen. I kind of… I feel like I’m momentarily out of step with what fandom wants because I don’t get it. The same voices that are screaming that we gave Flash a wife and kids and family, because they say that’s not what Flash is, are the same people who are screaming that they’ve broken up Mary Jane and Peter Parker. “How dare you take his family away!” I’m like, wait! Wait! What? Which way is it? So… growth and change good… or growth and change bad?

That’s about it in a nutshell. Waid helped put the Flash back on the map back in the day. He’s one of the biggest writers in comics. DC is still strip-mining Kingdom Come. He’s put in a lot of work writing exactly the kind of stories that DC fans enjoy. I mean, for a while, they’d do a thing at cons where you’d try to stump Mark Waid on DC trivia. He’s a fan’s fan.

I’m not sure why his Flash didn’t work. I bought the first few and pretty much enjoyed them, even though I thought the Inertia imprisonment was creepy. It was an interesting twist on the Flash series, but I didn’t exactly jones for the series.

The question is, however, who wants to read a book about Flash, his wife, and his twin kids who keep aging at superspeed?

I dunno, but after Flash #241, it turns out that I do. Of course, I would realize this the week that what’s probably going to end up being the last arc for this creative team is announced.

I read the latest issue and turned a corner. Waid is off the book and Tom Peyer has taken over. Freddie Williams II is still the artist, and he’s doing a pretty good job, I think. I like the way he shows superspeed. But, I realized this issue that Tom Peyer really gets Mark Waid’s Flash Family idea. Waid called him “probably the best writer out there that no one knows about” and I think that he’s absolutely right.

A couple of things turned me around on Peyer. Not that I disliked him or anything, don’t get me wrong– if I didn’t like him, I would’ve quit buying Flash. But, I didn’t love his work on Flash.

The first thing that made me turn was when I realized that he did a really fun Jack Kirby homage in #241. When looking to pay tribute to Kirby, most people go for the typical– Kirby Krackle (or Dots), a guest appearance by a Kirby creation, or something like that. Something really obvious and unmistakable. What Peyer did in #241, though, was something entirely new to me– a Kirby dialogue homage. See for yourself:

A lot of Kirby’s dialogue was clunky and cluttered, but he did one thing that really stood out to a lapsed English major like myself. He used quotation marks like they were going out of style. Peyer bringing that back for a page, plus the Kirby-style dialogue and terms (Negatonin? Brother Drive?) were really nice to see. It’s the kind of thing that’s unobtrusive if you don’t get it, and dorky fun if you do.

The other thing is less of a one-off gag and more of a theme for the series. Basically, it’s about the terror inherent in starting, and maintaining, a family. From what I’ve seen, parenthood is pretty much equal parts joy and sheer brain-curdling terror. Your kid smiles and it makes your day. He busts his lip and you’re suddenly thinking about maybe buying a cushioned bubble, organic food, and a bodyguard.

I’m big on family in comics. This should be old hat by this point, honestly. I love seeing it done well and have an irrational hatred of it being done poorly. I have straight up stopped reading books because of a character doing something stupid with regards to their family. I will write endless paragraphs about how characters are jerks for being jerks to their family. Maybe I have a complex, I dunno, but it counts for me.

Peyer’s Flash gets it right in a few short pages. Flash has always had a strong element of family to it, and now it’s been cranked up to eleven. The best parts of this issue aren’t the fighting, which there isn’t a lot of, anyway. It’s the dialogue between Iris and Jai about their shortened lifespan and their shared moment. It’s Wally’s pure terror at the thought of losing his kids, and willingness to put that aside to let them live the life they deserve. It’s the Flash Family racing to go do good. It’s the uncertainty of a man who has fought the worst mankind has to offer and still worries about his kids. It’s of a parent having to put on a happy face when he’s gripped by fear.

In a way, isn’t the fear that your children will grow up too fast a common one for parents? That you, and they, won’t get to enjoy their childhood before they enter the terrible world of adults? That’s this, but filtered through a superheroic lens.

It’s even more interesting since it’s been filtered through Wally. We’ve had the benefit of actually seeing him grow up over the years, from Kid Flash to Flash to Father. He’s easily seen the most character growth of the big name characters in the DCU. Sure, Dick Grayson went from Robin to Nightwing, but the biggest difference there is that he lives in a different city now, he wears pants, and he’s six inches taller. A super-family means super-problems, and Wally’s got to deal with that.

Look at all the changes Wally went through in comparison. He went from being the kid sidekick to the hero with no self-esteem to the petulant hero to the seasoned hero to the stuck-up hero to a hero with kids. It’s been an interesting evolution, and I kind of hope that Barry coming back isn’t just going to leave him by the wayside.

I like the kids. I like the conceit of them randomly aging. I like Wally suddenly having a very real weakness. I like Linda having to become an overnight expert in high velocity biology. I like the Flash Family. It’s interesting and engaging.

It’s a very un-DC comic, I think. DC Comics about imperfect heroes tend to be about mind-bogglingly huge things. Superman in For Tomorrow, John Stewart in Mosaic, Hal Jordan and Coast City, Green Arrow and his stupid city getting invaded by demons or whatever… all very large scale and very enormous. They are more like challenges, rather than continuing imperfections. After Barry died, Wally was the hero who felt he was owed the world. It’s nice to see that Peyer is continuing the trend of Wally being very realistic in a certain sense.

So, yeah, Peyer has me on the hook. What sucks is that Peyer has two issues left before the (very capable!) Alan Burnett comes onto the book for “This Was Your Life, Wally West.”

Better luck next time, I guess. Hopefully I’ll get a nice trade out of this arc to go along with the Mark Waid HC in August.

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.

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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.

Short on time, long on work, so this’ll just be a quote for you folks. I’m going to try to have content every day of the week, but we’ll see how it goes! I’ve got to bang out a few manuals and possibly start a new strat guide, so I’m going to have to learn to juggle pretty hardcore if I want to keep up a good pace!

Anyway, if you’ll pardon me getting a bit cerebral for a moment, this is a quote from one of my favorite comics. Kabuki is one of those series that sticks with you, and there’s some philosophy to be found inside its pages that just makes perfect sense. I’ve tried to put more than a little bit of this into action in my life. Enjoy!

Start by recalling what you liked to do as a child. Around the age of 9 to 11. At that age, your personality is sophisticated enough to know what you like to do and are internally motivated to do, but it is right before the age where you begin to submerge your natural identity to accommodate the expectations, preconceptions, and rigid categorizations of the adult world… that you become increasingly sensitive to as you enter adolescence.

You can take a part of you that died or was damaged… and bring life to it. Take your problems, your baggage. And turn your garbage into gold.
–David Mack, Kabuki: The Alchemy #4

I’ve seen this in a couple places, so I activated my giant brain and put some thought to it. 72 hours later, I have a solution.

Short answer: they don’t.

Long answer:

In World War Hulk, Sentry is shown as unresponsive and noncommittal. He has yet to lift a finger to help the anti-Hulk side.

In a recent issue of Mighty Avengers, so recent it just came out yesterday, something happens. Lindy Reynolds, wife of the Sentry, is apparently killed by Ultron. I say apparently because there is at least one 100% fake death in the series already, not to mention the fact that Ultron can create appendages and probably change shape.

People are linking this and WWH to explain why Sentry is so out of it. Here’s a simpler idea–

The Hulk is a good friend of Sentry’s. He’s only calm around the Sentry, so the Sentry has kind of a paternal love for him. He wants to be able to help him as best he can. And then, one day, Hulk comes back and blames Reed Richards and Tony Stark for firing him into space. The Sentry’s own friends betrayed Hulk.

And then they come to him and ask him to help the Hulk… by taking him down.

When they ask him to help, Sentry asks Tony for a moment. He wants a word with him. My bet is that Sentry asked Tony, “Is it true? Did you send him into space?” and Tony said, “Yes.”

That’s why he’s sitting on the sidelines. His own friends are using him.

WWH is a good story and it stands on its own. It doesn’t need Mighty Avengers and it’d be foolish to tie that in.

WWH is about old Hulk vs new Hulk. His new friends vs his old friends. General Ross shows up in the last issue. He’s an old enemy, but his daughter was married to the Hulk. She’s dead now, I think. Hulk’s invading Earth because his wife died. There’s your drama right there.

The Rick Jones = Miek thing is pretty dumb, though.

WWH, when you boil it down, is about relationships. World War Hulk: X-Men is proof positive. (It’s also the only tie-in I’m enjoying.) The X-Men, even after all the crap Xavier has put them through, stand by their former headmaster. Xavier is willing to give in, but the X-Men are a family. All for one and one for all. It’s pretty good stuff.

I’m betting that the big fight in WWH isn’t Hulk vs Sentry. Not at all. I feel kind of like it’d be an depowered Hulk (read: Banner) versus Bob Reynolds. It’s just a hunch.

Oh, and Spider-Man: One More Day isn’t about Mary Jane dying at all. That’s a smokescreen. Joe Q is pulling the wool over your eyes again.

It’s about Aunt May getting one more day with Uncle Ben, or maybe her family, before she dies.

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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DAVID LAPHAM: DOWN AMONG THE SILVERFISH – NEWSARAMA

DL: It kills me to put Stray Bullets on hold like it’s been. Maria and I both put a lot of years and a lot of hard work into the company and the book. And I still have one issue left in the current arc, left dangling. But the reality the last few years has been that it’s faster and pays more to work freelance right now. The reality is I have a family and I can’t just say stop everything and let’s do Stray Bullets for love. I do love Bullets and know I will complete it, and the sooner the better, but I just can’t commit to anything firm.

Just in case you don’t know, the cliffhanger ending is brutal. Argh.

Silverfish looks dope, though.

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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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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