It’s time to wrap things up, kids. In this episode, I’ll wrap up this little ongoing series of articles. Really, by this point, it ought to be a case of ’nuff sed.

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Next Monday seemingly marks the end of one of the greatest eras in animation. For fourteen years, we’ve been given what people call the “Diniverse” (named after a guy who barely writes actual episodes anymore). It started back in 1992 with a primetime showing of Batman: the Animated Series and after all these years, it’s going to die out with the finale for the fifty-eighth spin-off, Justice League Unlimited.

Lord knows the Diniverse made its stamp on both the world of animation and the world of comics. Characters like Harley Quinn were introduced… as well as more forgettable folk like Livewire and Lockdown. The comic version of Supergirl started wearing the white t-shirt and tight skirt made popular by Superman: the Animated Series. John Stewart took Kyle Rayner’s place as the token Green Lantern on the Justice League roster. Batman Beyond showed up in the pages of Superman/Batman for no reason whatsoever.

There are obviously changes here and there over how certain characters are portrayed. Many consider the Kevin Conroy-voiced Batman to be the defining version of the character, compared to the close-minded, paranoid caricature he’s become in the comics. Sure, the Joker kills people here and there on the cartoons, but at no point would they ever have him cripple Batgirl and strip her naked in order to drive her father insane on Cartoon Network. In the comics, Green Lantern and Hawkgirl have never been an item, nor has a big chunk of the JLU roster been members of any Justice League roster. Hawk and Dove sucked in both mediums, so there is that. Read the rest of this entry �

Allow me to reiterate something. This wouldn’t necessarily have to be an Ultimate book. Instead it could be a Marvel Max book, so instead of deformed Chitauri they’d again be Dire Wraiths, and similarly, the other names would remain the same. The reason for this being some of the subject matter. The Wraith/Chitauri have made deals with dark, abominable powers. Essentially, I’d intend to emphasize some of the black magic aspects that were touched on in the original series. Tentacled horrors, gods best left nameless, that sort of thing. In the original series, the wraiths were able to summon Deathwings with a spell/ritual. Imagine instead if in order to summon a Deathwing you needed to lay forth a hecatomb (look it up, it’s pretty sick) of human sacrifices, and even then, you only had a weapon that you could maybe point in the direction of where you wanted it to kill.

The most unspeakable thing the Dire Wraiths did in the original series was to deposit a magical plague in the blood supply of a hospital. The result of this was that anyone who was a recipient of the hospital’s blood supply turned into a hideous, gibbering monster. For this series, this would merely be a starting point of just how depraved the Wraith/Chitauri are.

For now, let me outline the first story arc.
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Little known fact– we take guest articles here at 4l. So, if you got something you want to harp on, explain, or just pimp out, fire off an email to 4thletter/at/gmail.com and we can get you hooked up.

Speaking of guest articles (how’s that for a segue?), we’ve got one from a guy we’ve known for a while, one A.o.D. He’s here to tell you that Rom the Spaceknight is still a viable character. Read on.
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Superman #163: What Do You Get the JLA for Christmas?

This very special issue of Superman comes from 2001, after Lex Luthor was elected President. In it, Superman goes around meeting with various JLA members to complain about the Luthor situation before giving them a crappy Christmas gift. Then he goes and fucks Lois in the city of Kandor while ripping off Plastic Man’s jokes.

The list of presents are as follows:

For Plastic Man: rubber bands
For Martian Manhunter: a box of Ore— er Chocos Cookies
For Aquaman: a Metropolis snow globe
For Green Lantern (the one without pubes): jewelry polish
For Flash: tube socks
For Wonder Woman: a tiny replica of Mjolnir, no doubt to remind her of the most unimportant subplot in Marvel vs. DC
For Batman: a magnifying glass
For Booster Gold and The Question: supporting character roles on the greatest cartoon on TV

A gimmick of the issue was that each segment was drawn by a different artist. That included the absolute horror of Rob Liefeld drawing Aquaman. Read the rest of this entry �

I love Marvel. I have ever since the beginning. I still own the first two comics I ever read. Amazing Spider-Man numbers 316 and 317, the second story involving Venom, I believe. It was a David Michelinie/Todd McFarlane joint. FOOM, Merry Marvel Marching Society, Marvel Zombie, you name it, I was it in an unofficial way because I was little and had no money. This stands to this day. Most of the DC books I read are published by Wildstorm.

There’s a lot of things I like about Marvel (Spider-Man). High on that list (after Spider-Man) is their trade policy. Is there a miniseries coming up soon that you want to check out, but you’d rather read it all in one chunk for better enjoyment? Grab the trade that’s gonna hit somewhere between one month and three months after the last issue ships. This is somewhere between two and two billion times better than DC’s trade program, which is “You’ll get the trade when we remember to actually print it.” Identity Crisis, for example, had a year-long wait and was released twice in floppy form before we finally got a trade. Common sense would tell you to strike while the iron is relatively hot and push that trade out there. Marvel does what DC don’t (that pun works a lot better with Sega and Nintendo, I think), though, so it’s all good.
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You can scope info on the Religion of Comic Book Characters here.

Batman (Bruce Wayne) – Catholic

Superman (Clark Kent/Kal-El) – raised Protestant (in some versions prior to 1986, he worshipped Kryptonian god Rao, which was explicitly addressed beginning in mid-1980s)

Spider-Man (Peter Parker) – Protestant

Wonder Woman (Princess Diana aka Diana Prince) – Greco-Roman classical religion

Captain Marvel (Billy Batson, published by Fawcett, then DC) – Greco-Roman classical religion

Daredevil (Matt Murdock) – Catholic

Captain America (Steve Rogers) – Protestant

Elektra (Elektra Natchios) – Greek Orthodox (clearly depicted at the funeral of her father in the 2004 movie; according to some sources she is depicted as Catholic in the comics)

Very interesting stuff. Links courtesy of The BEAT.