“I think the thing to do is produce the best material you can, and on a regular basis, so that your readers know you can produce on a deadline, no matter what. Yabs showed editors, I was told, that I could hit a new idea each week, in a different ‘voice,’ and maintain a certain level of quality. A ton of editors read it each week, and a bunch offered me a shot. All of which I turned down, but that’s another story!”

— Gail Simone giving advice to Gavok

The other day I started cleaning my place, trying desperately to sort my DVDs, games and comics for the first time in about a year. There’s a chair where I toss stuff I had just bought that had gotten so ridiculously cluttered that I discovered barely-read magazines from months back.

Having finally sorted out all my comic trades, it was shocking how many of them remain unread. Some don’t really count because they’re collections of stuff I’ve already read as issues, like All-Star Superman and the first two volumes of 52. The real deal stuff I stacked into one big pile, guarded by an unbeatable team.

Gentlemen… BEHOLD!

The Sentry has the power of a million exploding suns, which is why everything is so glossy. Really. That’s why. Shut up.

I work at a bookstore and when I get paid, I use the option of having my check cashed on the spot. When that happens, I get high on my cash and want to spend immediately. This leads to too many comics and that neglected stack above. By admitting my problem, I hope I can finally push myself into making this stack lighter.

Here’s the what’s what of my far-too-tall tower. What are the books? Why did I buy them in the first place? If I bought them, why the hell haven’t I read any of them? We’ll start from the top and go down.

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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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:quagmire:

’nuff said.

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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From The Invisibles volume 3: Entropy in the UK:

Have you ever wondered why we talk of “spelling”? There is a spell word implanted in the brain of every English-speaking child, the root mantra of restriction, the secret name of a mighty hidden demon: “eybeesee dee ee eff geeaitcheye jai kayell emenn ohpeequeue are ess tee youveedouble you ex wyezed”. That name and all the names it generates were designed to set limits upon humanity’s ability to express abstract thought. What you see depends entirely upon the words you have to describe what you see. Nothing exists unless we say it.

Ever read Orwell’s 1984? The idea that no one will ever be able to revolt if they cannot think of the ideas to revolt is this in action.

There is an issue of Morrison’s JLA that deals with this, though I’ve only just now realized it. A robot named Tomorrow Woman is created by T.O. Morrow and Professor Ivo for the purpose of infiltrating the Justice League and wiping their minds with an EMP bomb.

The trick is that they didn’t want her to have free will, so they left the word “freedom” out of her programming.

In the end, she chooses to be a hero anyway. As she lay dying in Superman’s arms, the only thing she can say is something like “Term not found *klik*.” It was really kind of a touching scene, despite a robot (robotette? gynoid?) dying in Electric Blue Flavored Superman’s arms.

Interesting stuff. Just thought I’d put that out there. I don’t think that these ran at the same time. This would’ve been issue 19 of Invisibles, putting it at what, 95? I think Morrison’s JLA started in 1996. Maybe these were done around the same time.

From Geoff Johns’s forum:

First things first, I haven’t done any of the fill-ins because, beyond JSoA and GREEN LANTERN, I’ve leaped ahead on ACTION COMICS and am already working on the last half of 2007 and into 2008. Kurt and I are totally in sync and have laid out the plans for 2007 and 2008 and it’s always a pleasure to work with him in the same Superman-verse.

Much like WONDER WOMAN, the last chapter of LAST SON will be in ACTION COMICS ANNUAL #11 later this year when Adam’s finished with it. This, quite frankly, allows us to move ahead and get our work on Action Comics coming out monthly with the stories we want to tell.

Donner and I resume our Action run with Eric Powell’s three issue arc “ESCAPE FROM BIZARRO WORLD” which we’re already working on. I’ve seen the first several pages and Eric is doing fantastic work.

I’ve really been enjoying Action Comics, so it’s nice to see that Last Son will finish and we’ll get some Eric Powell books this year.

However, DC has thoroughly botched two launches through late creators: Action Comics and Wonder Woman.

Last Son was supposed to be six issues long. It was supposed to end this month, or maybe last month. We have seen three parts of it. The bad part is that Last Son was good and supposed to be monthly. I’m sure that the trade will be wonderful.

Wonder Woman is going to have five writers over 13 issues. Allan Heinberg, Will Pfeifer, Jodi Picoult, J. Torres, and Gail Simone. Gail is definitely an improvement, but to be quite honest I don’t know that she’s enough of an improvement. Her latest work has left me kind of unimpressed. I mean, a Barney joke in Gen13? What?

Anyway, this is a textbook example of how to screw up a big-time relaunch.

Small wonder that Marvel is beating the pants off DC in numbers. Eight out of the top ten books are Marvel, with only JLA #6 charting for DC at #6.

Something’s gotta change. DC isn’t working and OYL turned out to be a non-starter.

You’ll have to pardon the lack of a post today. It’s just that JLA #07 was such a thoroughly inept comic on every single level (except I guess the lettering) that it booted me off the internet.

It was just dumb after dumb after dumb. Roy’s eyes, the HALL OF JUSTICE NO WAIT SPACE SATELLITE, keeping Dr Light’s helmet up there along with Red Tornado’s head, having Red Tornado in the comic at all… blah.

I do have something cool cooking, though. It’s time for another Who Would Win In A Fight. This time? It’s Tony Stark vs Tony Starks. Soon.

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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(Images have been added to the post! Scroll all the way down.)

Have you ever had something take you utterly by surprise that, in hindsight, is completely obvious?

That happened to me with Annihilation. I had no idea that Annihilus was the villain of Annihilation until the end of the Annihilation Special. No duh, right? I’m usually pretty good with picking out plot twists. I bet watching tv shows or movies with me sucks, since sometimes I just can’t help going “That guy’s the traitor, his wife is the hero in disguise, and that little one-liner about being good with explosives means he’s going to fake his death.”

But, I’ll still miss some completely obvious things.

So, pull up a chair and check this out. I’m probably going to spoil the ending of Fantastic Four: The End for you in the process. That’s still a few paragraphs down, though.

Just for clarity’s sake– FF: The End is the first of two (!) FF: The End projects. The upcoming one is being done by the team of Stan Lee and John Romita Jr. The one I’m talking about here, though, is the recently concluded FF: The End by Alan Davis and Mark Farmer. As usual, Farmer inks while Davis pencils and writes.

The last project I remember Davis and Farmer collaborating on is JLA: The Nail and JLA: Another Nail. They were Elseworlds tales about Superman being raised by Amish farmers, rather than the Kents, and the differences that brought out in the world. They weren’t perfect stories, as I seem to remember Jimmy Olsen somehow getting superpowers or something a little ridiculous like that, but they were great fun. JLA: Another Nail actually had the best Green Lantern ever. A deceased Mister Miracle escaped from death on Apokolips and into a GL ring which was worn by Big Barda.

A husband-and-wife Green Lantern. Awesome.

Davis has a lot of strengths. Costume design, for one. Another Nail is full of pretty sweet redesigns, and FF: The End is no different. He is kind of overly fond of raised collars, but he comes up with a cool in-story explanation for why so many Inhumans wear masks, so it evens out. Another is that he’s the original Bryan Hitch. Hitch used to be a Davis imitator, and his inker Paul Neary is well known for working with Alan Davis. Both of them have a great eye for detail and realism, which means that disaster scenes and low-key scenes both hit with appropriate impacts.

What I’m trying to say is that Alan Davis is an awesome artist. With FF: The End, he becomes a good writer, too.

FF: The End is set after the Mutant Wars, and after Reed Richards has finally put his mind toward improving the Earth to its fullest potential. He’s extended the lives of everyone on the planet exponentially. Lives are measured in the centuries now, which also provides a convenient reason for all your favorite heroes to show up still youthful, though Doc Strange missed out on the treatment. Crime is essentially gone, and there are heroes all over the solar system. The solar system itself has been quarantined, shut off from the Kree, Shi’ar, Skrulls, and most other Marvel space aliens. Marvel is finally a utopia.

That’s not to say that it’s been a bloodless advancement. The prologue shows that Franklin and Valeria Richards died in the FF’s final battle with Doctor Doom. We fast forward to twenty years after that, and the FF didn’t manage to stay together. Ben Grimm retired to Mars with Alicia Masters, his longtime girlfriend, and they have a handful of kids. Ben can turn from monster to man and back again, as well. Johnny Storm goes by John now, and he’s a bigshot hero in his own right. He’s extremely well-respected, to the point where he’s the top dog in the Avengers. His is the only new costume that I’m not really digging, but he thankfully gets some FF duds part-way through the series. Either way, the hothead has grown up into a true hero. Sue has buried herself in archaeological research and is hunting for various esoteric objects all over the Earth. She’s also sporting a boyish haircut that is pulled off amazingly well, and speaks to Davis’s sense for character design. Reed? Reed is alone on a satellite, cut off from human contact nine times out of ten, tinkering with his inventions and looking to keep pushing forward. Marvel’s First Family aren’t much of one any longer.
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