First off, Halloween happened. That led to this.
Thankfully, I didn’t come across anyone dressed as Lawrence Taylor or Major Payne.
Now to panels. This week I’m joined by Space Jawa. There are other kinds of Jawas?
Action Comics #894
Paul Cornell, Pete Woods, Nick Spencer and RB Silva
Avengers #6
Brian Michael Bendis and John Romita Jr.
This week we have a special collaborator Was Taters who didn’t want me to credit her, but I am anyway. So there.
I personally love the pick for Batgirl #13, because I’m imagining that Meatwad is nearby, off-panel.
B.P.R.D.: Hell on Earth New World #1
Mike Mignola, John Arcudi and Guy Davis
Batgirl #13
Bryan Q. Miller and Pere Perez
It’s a busy time for the Hulk. Not only is his movie at the top of the box office charts, smashing up the Happening, but he’s getting a lot of play for a character who currently only has a supporting role in his own book. A shitty book, but at least he has connections elsewhere. Incredible Hercules, co-starring Hulk’s little buddy Amadeus Cho, is one of Marvel’s best books right now. Skaar: Son of Hulk just started up and last week gave us a one-shot by Jeff Parker about futuristic warrior feminist Thundra going back in time to scrape some DNA off Hulk and make a green futuristic warrior feminist daughter. Then you have Wolverine, where we see that 50 years in the future, Hulk’s inbred grandchildren rule California with an iron fist. Whatever that’s all about.
Hulk is becoming like the gamma irradiated Wilt Chamberlain of Marvel.
A few weeks ago at work, we got a bunch of Hulk books for kids to tie in with the new movie. Junior novelizations, picture books, coloring books and so on. One thing we got was an activity book that came with a tiny little Hulk figure, held onto the cover with a plastic shell. The figure is supposed to be tossed into water, where it will expand into six times its original size.
Being that some (most) children are little bastards, one of the copies of that activity book got trashed. The plastic covering got torn off and it became unsellable. I pulled that copy of the book to be sent back to the publisher, but decided to at least put that Hulk figure to good use. I called over my manager and we got a cup of water, filled it up and dropped the Hulk in there, ready for the mild thrill of watching it grow like one of Rita’s creations.
…nothing happened.
Going back to the book, we found that we needed to wait up to ten days for it to grow. Christ, what’s the freaking point? If I felt like waiting over a week for some pointless green thing to grow, I’d buy a Chia Pet.
Could you imagine how lame Hulk would be if Banner had to wait ten days to transform, like some kind of superhero Brady Law? “Sorry, Tony. I’d love to help you and the guys fight Kang the Conquerer, but I have three more days of making myself angry before I can be any help. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a Small Wonder marathon I need to get back to.”
Enough days have passed and the Hulk has indeed grown quite a bit. Although he may be bigger and stronger, Hulk has certainly seen better days.
You ever read Marvel Ruins where instead of becoming a green-skin giant, the gamma bomb turned Bruce Banner into a mountain of tumors? If you haven’t, don’t. The comic sucks. But I can’t shake the memory from looking at this thing. Maybe his bicep isn’t angry enough.
Those black lines are supposed to be ridges in his forehead, but I can’t help but think of them as cartoony eyes. Like something Kirby would have. In fact, it reminds me of Roast Beef from Achewood.
Poor, poor SpongeHulk Tornpants. Maybe he can get a job working for Dr. Frankenstein or move into a bell tower.
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?
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.
How many comic characters have come up with recently revealed/brought back into play children?
Wolverine has Daken and X-23, kinda. Agent 13 is preggo with Cap’s baby. Namor had that son show up in his mini. Superman has Chris Kent. Batman has Damian. Hulk has Skaar or whatever. Corsair had Vulcan, though that’s kind of stretching the timeline a little. Punisher’s got a tyke.
That’s eight in, what, just under two years?
Anyway, Christos Gage is one of my new favorite writers. His Union Jack was the bomb, his House of M Avengers was mostly recap/revamp for Cage fans, but good, and so on. He’s got a couple books dropping soon. Iron Man Annual #1 and T-bolts: Breaking Points. Both are one-offs.
Tony Stark as James Bond + Bruce Wayne is a brilliant move, seriously. Why hasn’t anyone done this before? It’s totally Tony Stark. Danny Rand is Kung Fu Billionaire, Tony Stark should be Mecha James Bond. I want to pick up both books now. Gage generally does good.
But yeah, there’s something else in those previews that I noticed. Check out this image and think back a few months to the Mary Jane statue thing.
I laughed.
My question is– is this a knee-slapper with a knowing wink or a face-slapper with a mean glare? It’s kind of obviously presented as something that isn’t altogether kosher or positive… my money is on wink.
