With all this talk about various TV properties going to comics, I’ve thought of something that desperately needs to be an maxiseries, preferably with art by maybe Scott McDaniel, Adam Warren, or even better, David Aja of Iron Fist fame. Someone good at action and flashy.

The Last Dragon.

Don’t act like you wouldn’t watch it. You would. This movie was “The Warriors” for a new generation. The only movie I watched more often than this was Transformers, or I guess maybe Ninja Scroll, but I’m not 100% on that.

Well, well, well. If it isn’t the serious, elusive Leroy Green. I’ve been waiting a long time for this, Leroy. I am sick and tired of hearing these bullshit Superman stories about the wassa legendary Bruce Leroy catching bullets with his teeth. Catches bullets with his teeth? Nigga please.
–Sho’nuff, the Shogun of Harlem

Sho’nuff is the meanest, the prettiest, the baddest mofo low down around this town. It’s just too bad that Leroy Green has got the glow.

Sho nuff.

DEATHBLOW #7

32 pages, $2.99, in stores on Sept. 26.

Half machine, half dinosaur, 100 percent OSAMASAURUS.

Yes.

SUPERMAN/BATMAN #40

32 pages, $2.99, in stores on Sept. 19.

I also really, really like this Dustin Nguyen cover for Superman/Batman #40. Yeah, it’s got Batman with his hand over Bekka’s chest, and if she’s Orion’s wife she’s gotta be a take-no-crap kinda gal, but it’s just so… elegant? It’s like a piece of fine art. Not to mention the machinework. Nguyen is really one of the best out. I love this image.

Do you see the Superman logo on that cover? It took me a second, but it’s there. Very cool.

There is a lot to like in the new DC solicits. I might have to dedicate a whole post to it.

There’s not a lot to like on scans_daily, on the other hand. I mean, it’s a suggestive scene. That’s kind of the point. He’s seducing her to the darkside, so to speak. To see it as forced oral, though, is a bit much. I mean, look at his arms. No way does Maximus have a 36 inch penis. But, hey, that white highlight on her cheek must be you know what!

Ugh, I’ve got to stop clicking on links to parts of the internet I hate. Personally, I blame Tejeda.

Wow, I haven’t written crap in the last two weeks. To be fair, I have been writing. I just haven’t been posting. Work’s been giving me hours that aren’t writing friendly and a lot of my time off has been spent either sleeping, going to Chikara shows or proctoring the SATs. The last of which is the easiest money ever and if you can find someone who can give you that gig, go for it.

I do have something fairly big set for this Sunday, so definitely tune in for that.

In the meantime, and I don’t want to sound like a corporate shill on this, but Barnes and Noble has an annual sale around this time that kicks a certain amount of ass. For the month of June, all their DVDs are “buy two, get one free”. All of them. This means I’ll be picking up the Wrestlemania I-V boxset, the Wrestlemania VI-X boxset, with the Rocky I-V boxset tossed in for free.

More importantly, and getting back to the whole comics thing, it means I’m finally done collecting my Diniverse DVDs. Four Batman sets, three Superman sets, three Batman Beyond sets, four Justice League sets, Mask of the Phantasm, Sub-Zero and Return of the Joker: Awesome Version. Technically, the collection isn’t complete, since I’m missing Mystery of the Batwoman, Brainiac Attacks and Return of the Joker: Pussified Version. Maybe I’ll end up picking up Batwoman, since it wasn’t all that bad, but the latter two can rot in a dumpster for all I care. Off-screen electrocution my ass.

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.

Linkblogging again today! I’m off tomorrow so I can put some work in then.

– I am flying out to San Francisco on Sunday and staying until Wednesday! I’m apartment hunting for my move there in May. It’s fun trying to guess at your take-home pay without knowing how much the gov’t is going to ream you for taxes!

– I finally got the out of print Mr Majestic TPB. I now own each TPB of his two solo series, which is kind of a weird feeling. It took me a while to realize how much of a big Wildstorm fan I am. Anyway, the book collects issues 1-6 and the Wildstorm Spotlight by Alan Moore and Carlos D’Anda. I think that the series went on for eight issues total, but what we’ve got here are six done-in-ones plus a special. From the back cover copy: “Mr. Majestic rearrangest he solar system, repairs a temporal anomaly, gains a son, halts an intergalactic prison break, and meets the Ultravixens.”

Also from the back cover copy: “Remember when superheroes could move planets?”

The first Maj series is kind of a precursor to All-Star Superman in theme, if not in quality. Both stories take these wild silver age tropes and, rather than looking at them ironically (“Ha ha why do you need an invisible plane”) they just take them at face value. Majestic can move planets. Why? Because. It’s a pretty light and warm book from what I remember, and the team of Joe Kelly, Brian Holguin, and Ed McGuinness is the perfect fit for it.

Another choice line: “What the @#$# is wrong with you?! I’m a freakin’ nun!”

Ah, Ladytron.

– I love Jim Lee’s new Batgirl design for All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder. (For color reference, see here.) It’s just all around awesome. The freckles visible under the bat-mask, the bats on the boots, and the big yellow bat-symbol work really, really well. I also love costume designs made up of just two colors for some reason, so that’s icing on the cake. I’m also really, really fond of Frank Miller’s dangly and busy way of drawing earrings. It’s funky and different. Also, is it me or is that a Daemonite head that Batgirl (who I’m assuming is Barb Gordon, if only because of the freckles and hair?) is standing on?

– 52 this week (#51, to be exact) was pretty good and paid off in all the expected ways. Buddy returning was a nice capstone to his story arc, though he now may be the most powerful thing in the DCU. I can’t imagine DC dropping the ball on that, so expect him to show up in Countdown. Also, I totally called the Mr. Mind in Skeets thing, just like 51% of the rest of the internet, but the payoff was so much better than I expected!

– Is anyone else reading and enjoying Garth Ennis and Goran Parlov’s Barracuda as much as I am? It is trashy and ugly and excellent. Barracuda has turned out to be a lot smarter than anyone ever gave him credit for and the series has been quite a ride so far. Be interesting to see where it goes!

– What’s it say about me when the most striking part of the first Outsiders trade is John Workman’s lettering? I love that man’s work. He’s got style and he’s unique.

This is a straight up fanboy post, so bear with me. I’ll have actual content later on, hey?

I love the Wildcats and the whole Wildstorm Universe, but no way can I explain why. It just works for me, in no small part because of the Jim Lee connection.

Joe Casey’s run on Wildcats is a personal favorite of mine, with 3.0 being tops in my book. There’s a bit in where Grifter, who was injured in an earlier battle, is training the man he wants to be his replacement. A Grifter II, if you will.

Anyway, there’s a bit of a training montage, which, if you’ve ever seen an action movie, is a staple of the genre. It’s important, and kind of cool to see in a comic. He’s showing him all the basics of, superheroing and being a bad dude. “Remember, the cooler you look, the less likely it is you’ll actually have to shoot.” Check out the bottom. Wisecracking is an important part of superheroics, and of course wisecrackery is a big part of your training. I’d always thought that was a particularly clever bit of writing, with a properly corny one-liner. (I love Die Hard, pardon me.)

I picked up the first WildC.A.T.s trade on the cheap the other day (“because I am a sucker,” is what you all are thinking). Part of the way through the first chapter, I saw a familiar scene.

Oh, Grifter.

I’ll have a post with some actual content (about Superman and fathers again, if things work out right), rather than fanblatherings, later on.

(The first Wildcats trade is really kind of a so-so comic at best, to be honest. I am a sucker, though. I’d probably buy Absolute WildC.A.T.s if they put it out.)

Okay, so the last thing Devin Grayson did on Nightwing was have Dick Grayson propose to Barbara Gordon. I think that was a neat twist and kinda cool. Should they be together? I don’t know, but I am curious!

Then OYL hit and the plot was dropped entirely.

Nightwing Annual #2 hit this week and explained why they aren’t together, in addition to showing some scenes from their past. These include, but are not limited to:
1. Dick Grayson showing up six months after Joker shoots Babs, sleeping with her, and then hitting her with an engangement announcement for his wedding to Starfire the very next morning.
2. Babs going to Dick’s college dorm with flowers shortly after he declares his love for her, only to be meet with Starfire answering his door in panties, a t-shirt, and what I assume is Dick’s letterman’s jacket. They speak, Barb leaves in tears and Kory doesn’t think to tell Dick that one of his best friends just dropped by. PS this is followed by the revelation that Kory was Dick’s first sex partner, as revealed by an insufferably smug Babs Gordon who knows Dick Grayson just that well apparently. Barfo!
3. Babs and Dick being stuck in a safe together by Crazy Quilt of all people, leading to a scene where Dick is trying to hide his bat-erection from Batman.
4. Barbara making the executive decision to cancel her engagement to Dick, despite their twoo wuv (he swears to come back to her and she wears the engagement ring on a necklace) because a) he needs to go off with Batman somewhere and b) she feels that he defines himself by his relationship to others and he needs to find himself before he marries her.
5. Barbara Gordon being a thoroughly unlikeable and heartless person.
6. Dick Grayson being a thoroughly unlikeable and heartless person.
7. Some really awkward dialogue, lovey-dovey and otherwise.

Seriously, this was a bad comic. It was competently written, and I actually really dig the art, but it was bad in a “What were you thinking?” sort of way. Sins Past was bad, and artifically aged Gwen & Norman twins are bad, but this is beyond even that. Every single person comes off as horrible or unlikeable or both. Why should I care about these people?

I don’t even really like Nightwing. I read it because I was interested in that plot about the marriage.

This was like if someone asked me “Hey, what’re some things you don’t particularly care to ever see in a comic?” and then put everything I listed in that comic. It’s gross and not good. I mean, cool, heroes have/should have/do have sex and relationships but for some reason Babs talking to Dick Grayson about losing his virginity to Starfire just comes off mad creepy in that weird nerdy sort of way that comics do so well. I’m not even a prude, man. I own the Bomb Queen trade, I am all about some gratuitous nudity and graphic violence. This, though? This is yuck.

The worst thing is that Nightwing Annual #2, like the similarly useless World War III, feels so editorially mandated that you can picture Dan Didio sitting on your shoulder going “This patches that weird sequence from Tales of Nightwing #209, and this bit means that the guy from Adventures of Superman #132 isn’t in continuity any more, and this close-up shows that there was no penetration in Batman #133 so Robin technically didn’t have sex with his girlfriend…”

Seriously DC, stop with Continuity Patch Comix(TM). They aren’t good. We learned that in the ’90s. I almost wish this story had remained untold, because the reason the two didn’t get married is stupid and now both of them look like jerks because of the reason and the dumb-dumb flashbacks.

And if I never read a book with a Bat-erection in it again, it’ll be too soon.

I’ll talk about some good comics tomorrow. Ones that aren’t gross.

If you’ve spent more than two minutes at this site, you may have noticed that it absolutely blows to navigate through. You want to look for that time I ranted about Wolverine? Check Google, because chasing through the archives will probably take you two hours.

That’s at an end… hopefully. I finally put in a Table of Contents page. You can see it under “Pages” on the right side of the screen. Here we have a majority of the 4L articles, split up into little groups. And a big group for David’s articles, the show-off. Plus you can actually get a little blurb about what the article in question is about.

Give it a test drive and tell me if you come across any mistakes.

I really should replace that Green Arrow image with a headshot of Ruin from Superman, but I can’t find a decent enough image of him. Damn me for coming across that arc towards the end.

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.