As you may recall from yesterday, Magneto, his kids and his wacky neighbor Xavier took off towards Australia. They couldn’t have stressed harder that it was a flashback if they tried. They crashed and ran into those guys from the Ewok movies. That was then, this is now…
Actually, never mind. This first page is about “then” too.
As always, thanks to ManiacClown, who came up with that recap page. We’ll be back tomorrow to talk about robots. Plus more from Hawkeye. You kids love Hawkeye, don’t you?
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.
I’m going to have a big post about Comic Con later in the day, but something caught my eye today and I felt I needed to make mention of it. Back in the mid-90’s, DC released a commercial to the masses about their comics. It was well-produced and even though at that age I couldn’t name half the characters shown, I still thought it was pretty badass.
It would show character art of heroes from that era and morph them into other characters as the announcer went on. Here’s a quick transcript, minus the echoing female voice:
Announcer: DC. Incredible action. Astonishing adventure. The coolest heroes. The hottest heroines. And the most outrageous villains…
Darkseid: TOO TOUGH FOR TEE VEE!
Announcer: …in the universe!
Lobo (with an animated mouth and a voice that tries way too hard to be animated Wolverine): This ain’t yer daddy’s comic book, fanboy!
Announcer: DC Comics!
I never got the whole “too tough for TV” thing. Didn’t they have Batman: The Animated Series around that time?
Maybe you remember this. The only reason I still do is because a fairly local comic shop, Zapp Comics, used the same commercial. After DC decided to stop using the ad, Zapp just took the same commercial and added their store’s information to the last few seconds. It’s weird that they would do a commercial that doesn’t even mention Marvel in any capacity, but like I said, it’s a well-produced commercial.
They aren’t the only ones who do this. A quick search on YouTube helped me find the same commercial, only with information from Humungo Comics in Pennsylvania tacked on.
Why do I remember this commercial and bring it up? Because they still play it! I just saw the damned thing on TV less than an hour ago!
Yes, it’s a nice ad, but it’s been like 12-14 years. Look at all the dated stuff in that commercial. Murderous Hooded Green Arrow, Yellow-Ringed Guy Gardner with the G jacket, Deathstroke shown as one of the “coolest heroes”, Matrix Supergirl, Catwoman with her huge curly hair as one of the first villains shown, MOTHERFUCKING LEX LUTHOR JUNIOR! I could have sworn I saw Evil Raven in the commercial I saw on TV, but she’s not on the YouTube video.
I know comic shops may not have the revenue necessary to make a flashy new commercial every few years, but at this rate, some kid will be watching this and Lobo’s one-liner will be wrong. Those actually were that kid’s daddy’s comic books.
The next Comics from the 5th Dimention column should be up soon. The big drawback about writing for PopCultureShock rather than here is that you can’t have your stuff up instantly. Them’s the breaks.
I plan to one day write my own comic series. I’m currently trying to move my gears forward on that. That said, I still find myself thinking about what kind of DC or Marvel-owned series I would love to write if I had the chance. Stuff like an Eradicator on-going where he stations himself in Coast City as a way to make up for and investigate the human feeling of guilt he suffers from his failure to protect the city from Cyborg Superman and Mongul. Or a Juggernaut series where he’s on the run from SHIELD, all while showing the parallels of the Superhuman Registration Act and being the avatar slave of Cyttorak.
There’s one comic concept that came to me the other day. What If occasionally had sequels, most of them not very good. Having read so many issues and having some of them so nestled into my memory, the continuity nut in me always compares some issues to events that happened after the release date. Sometimes it’s just to laugh at the continuity screw-up, like how Alicia Masters in What If the X-Men Lost Inferno was really a Skrull and the writer didn’t know it yet. That revelation gums up her part in the story.
Sometimes I realize how much more interesting stories become when you toss in delayed retcons and new pieces of canon. For instance, there’s the issue What If the X-Men Had Died on Their First Mission, where the New X-Men team (Wolverine, Storm, etc.) go to Krakoa to save the original X-Men and they all die. Xavier beats himself up over it, Moira comforts him and eventually another X-Men team is created. It was a good story, but compare it to what we know now. Deadly Genesis showed the other X-Men team that died fighting Krakoa. When they failed, Moira was angry, so Xavier erased her memory of the events. Put the two stories together and it’s pretty fucked up. Xavier deserves to feel bad. His Krakoa mission would have cost him three X-Men teams, totaling at 17 mutants. Then you have Moira trying to keep him from being suicidal, not knowing what a bastard he really is because the son of a bitch removed it from her memory.
What would have happened when Vulcan came back to Earth, not only forgotten, but now without his brothers? Now that would be a sequel issue worth reading.
I think back to other What Ifs that lead to a new status quo and how vastly different things would have been if they continued the story and met up with the events that were destined to happen. I think a handful of them could make for a good limited series.
With hermanos becoming the senior editor at PopCultureShock, it was only natural that I’d tag along. Now, as it turns out, the last three days have featured me in some fashion.
For Wednesday, it’s me doing an article for Alternate Current, the weekly thing where a guest blogger writes about whatever. Here, I discuss the five What If comics that came out over the past months, which will be available next month in trade form. Really strong year for those. If you’re by any chance interested in doing an Alternate Current article, contact hermanos.
For Thursday, it’s the very first installment of Comics From the 5th Dimension! That’s right, I now have my own weekly column, where I discuss the stranger corners of the comic universe. Read on as this week I discuss The Adventures of JELL-O Man and Wobbly, a really wacky comic written in part by Peter David and Kurt Busiek. Plus it has a Sonic the Hedgehog preview insert as a bonus mini-review.
Keep in mind that hermanos wrote that front-page headline for it. I saw that and was like, “JELL-O Man was before Bill Cosby? What? No!”
And for Friday, I sit in for another installment of Picks and Pans. Along with four other reviewers, I take a look at a handful of stuff that came out this week. For me, I went with Immortal Iron Fist, Invincible, Wolverine: Origins and Incredible Hercules.
So go and read if you’re up for it and join me every Thursday for another go at Comics From the 5th Dimension. Believe me, I have like a year’s worth of material already.
Marvel’s panel on the X-Books at Wizard World Los Angeles just ended. Check here for Newsarama’s coverage, here for CBR’s. The most interesting news? Matt Fraction is joining Ed Brubaker on Uncanny X-Men as co-writer starting with issue 500, with rotating art duties by the Dodsons and Greg Land.
Wow. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Fraction and Brubaker are two great tastes that taste great together, and the Dodsons are fine artists, but Greg Land? Seriously? Haven’t people caught on to his plagiarizing ways yet? Why is he on a comic that matters? He’s going to make that book annoying to read at best, unreadable at worst. Just look at the cover for issue 500 alone:
Let’s play “Spot the Ripoffs”!
– Warpath, Cyclops and the guy behind Cyclops have exactly the same body. Land has used it at least once before.
– Tattooed guy on the left and Colossus have exactly the same body.
– Wolverine and long-haired shouting man in the background on the right have exactly the same body, only Wolverine’s head is different. Land has used it at least once before. I distinctly recall Ultimate Namor in this pose as well, but I don’t have the relevant issue at hand.
– Land has used Cannonball’s body at least once before.
– Land has used Rogue (is that Rogue?)’s body at least once before.
– Land has used Storm’s body at least once before.
– Land has used Pixie’s body at least once before. It also happens to be the one with that ridiculous porn face made immortal by Ultimate Scarlet Witch. Very appropriate for a sixteen year old girl!
This is from spending maybe five minutes looking at this image and skimming through four issues of Ultimate Power. I could probably find a lot more if I spent effort on this. Maybe I’d even find the photographs he traced these from. Come on now. This is absolutely ridiculous. Why can’t we have an artist that actually draws?
Getting love from the Scans_Daily crew, it’s the final installment of Ultimate Edit Week 3. Yesterday we saw Iron Man show off the magic Wanda-killing bullet to Wasp, right after everyone left for the Savage Land. So, what now?
(You really should read yesterday’s last page before continuing here.)
If you have any of those songs stuck in your head now, I consider this a job well done. ManiacClown will join me again the next time an issue drops, but in the meantime, I’ll still be around writing my usual brand of blogduggery. I have a handful of articles that are just sitting there, half done. I really should do something about that.
As we last left our heroes, Wolverine finally shut the hell up and Wasp came up with a plan. They would try to sneak into the Savage Land to surprise a bunch of villains who have every reason to expect them coming. Brilliant.
Admittedly, not too many jokes this time around. For once, we’re actually getting plot progression here. Shocking, I know.
If that first page offended you, send all your hatemail to ManiacClown. Not that I’m going to give you his email, since I’ve grown to like the guy.
Tomorrow is the last three pages with a yawn-inducing cliffhanger. See you then.
Welcome back, friends. Last time we met, Wolverine talked about meeting Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, followed by his ordered attempt to kill the latter. Then dinosaurs happened. Thankfully, we’re about done with his endless flashback.
That line at the end of the second page? I think we have a new 4th Letter tagline.
This is the part of the article where I give a token mention to ManiacClown for the assist. More tomorrow, as Iron Man and Black Panther show up for a spell.
Time once again for another three pages of Ultimate Edit. Last time we checked in, Wolverine bragged about getting some witch booty. Now let’s go forward one generation.
Sorry for the pun on page two. I had to get that joke out of my system.
Thanks to ManiacClown for the help and thanks to muscles like this? for getting this stuff linked on Something Awful. In the next installment, I promise we’ll actually have scenes dedicated to the Ultimates. You remember them? The guys this comic was named after?
