Hey, ThWiPsters. We’re getting closer and closer to the big 250th week landmark with panels from myself, Matlock, Gaijin Dan, Space Jawa and AnarChris. Original Sin continues to be Marvel’s more entertaining and less rapey version of Identity Crisis and I’ve been very happy with that. The two TMNT comics were also fantastic this week.

Helluva lot of Frank Castle stuff this week.

Elsewhere, I’ve written a review of the first arc of the WWE Superstars comic, as well as a look at various storyline aspects I expect to see in the next Mortal Kombat game.

Avengers #31 (Matlock’s pick)
Jonathan Hickman and Leinil Francis Yu

Avengers #31 (Gavin’s pick)
Jonathan Hickman and Leinil Francis Yu

Avengers World #8 (Gavin’s pick)
Nick Spencer and Marco Checchetto

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Hey, look at that! A new header image. Thank YOU, Spider-Man/Deadpool crossover one-shot!

Like always, it’s me on lead vocals with Matlock on drums, Gaijin Dan on guitar and Space Jawa on triangle. Saga is back, which is fantastic. Plus Frankenstein’s showing up in more DC comics, which I guess is a good thing. Even if I haven’t heard much promise from Futures End. Matlock’s the one reading it, not me.

Speaking of stuff I haven’t read, Space Jawa brings in a lot of stuff from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 30th Anniversary comic. In that Archie TMNT panel, Leonardo’s kind of a hypocrite.

It was a busy week for me otherwise. Over at Den of Geek US, I’ve written an article about how Charles Soule is the “great fixer” of Marvel and DC, I celebrated the return of CHIKARA Pro Wrestling with a look at the ten best CHIKARA storylines and I got to do my first ever phone interview with Joey Ansah, the guy behind Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist.

On Sunday I took a trip to see the CHIKARA return show You Only Live Twice. One of the highlights included seeing the debut of “Smooth Sailing” Ashley Remington, who upon winning his match, handed his opponent a fruit basket. His opponent’s reaction went from angry to confused to, “Hey, all right!”

Now for the panel stuff.

All You Need Is Kill #15
Hiroshi Sakurazaka, Ryosuke Takeuchi, Yoshitoshi ABe and Takeshi Obata

Amazing Spider-Man #2
Dan Slott and Humberto Ramos

Avengers World #6 (Gavin’s pick)
Nick Spencer and Marco Checcheto

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It’s that thing where me and some guys take comics we read and cut them down into one panel that best explains the comic! Yeah! That thing! It’s me along with Matlock, Gaijin Dan, Space Jawa and smashpro.

For the first time in forever, we got a good issue of What If. Plus TWO enjoyable Cullen Bunn comics in one week. I’m as shocked as you are.

All You Need Is Kill #12
Hiroshi Sakurazaka, Ryosuke Takeuchi, Yoshitoshi ABe and Takeshi Obata

Batman #30 (Gavin’s pick)
Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo

Batman #30 (Matlock’s pick)
Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo

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It’s panel time! I’m joined by Space Jawa, Matlock, Gaijin Dan and a rare entry from Dickeye. Jawa has double the panels due to some screw-up from his shop last week.

Writing-wise, I went back to the old What If well for old time’s sake by writing about 20 Uplifting What If Stories for Den of Geek US. It felt like coming home.

This week brings us the end of Jeff Lemire’s Animal Man and to be honest, I feel like it wasn’t worth my time. I don’t mean the issue, but the entire run. Despite being one of the must-read comics from the beginning of the New 52, it led to a big arc that went on for far too long, killed off his son (when the most beloved take on the character went out of the way to explain why this was a bad idea) and then meandered until its finale. Meanwhile, Wonder Woman is still well-written enough, but it feels so pedestrian as it reaches its big climax.

I’ll probably start picking up Superman/Wonder Woman because Charles Soule has been rocking my socks off on everything else he’s written, but I feel my interest in DC dwindling by the day.

All-New Invaders #3
James Robinson and Steve Pugh

All-New Invaders #3
James Robinson and Steve Pugh

All You Need Is Kill #8
Hiroshi Sakurazaka, Ryosuke Takeuchi, Yoshitoshi ABe and Takeshi Obata

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Triple 2s! Neat! And with a Two-Face comic in there also!

Huge, huge week this update, breaking forty images, which may be a ThWiP record. Helps that I have Matlock, Gaijin Dan, Space Jawa and Was Taters backing me up.

My time’s been eaten up by a lot of personal things, but I have some stuff coming up in the next couple days. A really nice guest article and a little something different. In the meantime, here’s a review I wrote for Den of Geek US on a comic called Rainbow in the Dark. It’s the Matrix meets Pleasantville meets They Live as a rock opera with Sam Elliot as the wise mentor character.

Animal Man #26 (Gavin’s pick)
Jeff Lemire and Cully Hamner

Animal Man #26 (Matlock’s pick)
Jeff Lemire and Cully Hamner

Avengers Assemble #22
Kelly Sue DeConnick, Warren Ellis, Matteo Buffagni and Paco Diaz

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Why, hello! Big week of panels, including Two-Face’s lame-ass New 52 origin. Because who cares about Two-Face when Tomasi needs to push his forgettable female gangster character?

I’ve shown up in a couple little features at Den of Geek US over the past couple of days based on my Comic Con experiences. Here’s me as Wreck-It Ralph photobombing people and here’s me as Wreck-It Ralph just hanging out with other cosplayers with commentary by me as Ralph.

Help comes from Matlock, Gaijin Dan, Brobe and Space Jawa. Let’s get to it.

Animal Man #24 (Gavin’s pick)
Jeff Lemire and Rafael Albuquerque

Animal Man #24 (Matlock’s pick)
Jeff Lemire and Rafael Albuquerque

Avengers #21 (Matlock’s pick)
Jonathan Hickman and Leinil Francis Yu

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Heya. So the idea was that Friday I was supposed to do another installment of This Character in Panels because it was the 4 year anniversary of this weekly segment. Then when working on it, I remembered that it takes like ten times as long to do one of those updates as it does this. Yeah, so I’ll try to have that done tomorrow. The last week’s been a complete mess for me and I’m super glad to have it all done away with.

Elsewhere, I’ve written a review of Street Fighter Origins: Akuma that got posted at Den of Geek US.

This week ends Villains Month at DC, meaning I can go back to knowing what it is I want to read from that company. Thanks to Matlock, who read about 95% of that experiment and gave me panels for it. Also thanks to contributors Gaijin Dan and Space Jawa.

Action Comics #23.4
Sholly Fisch and Steve Pugh

Aquaman #23.2
Geoff Johns, Tony Bedard and Geraldo Borges

Avengers #20 (Matlock’s pick)
Jonathan Hickman and Leinil Francis Yu

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Hey! It’s you! I’m busy as hell this week, but I’m still going to be doing a bunch of ThWiP off-shoots over the next couple days. Tomorrow it’s This Year in Panels while this Friday I’ll be doing the return of This Character in Panels. Why? Because it’ll have been four years as of Friday, that’s why. Ah, the days of ThWiP Week 1 in 2009.

Back when people still remembered Skaar.

So anyway, this week brings us the end of Injustice: Gods Among Us for the time being. “Year One” just ended and there’ll be an Annual in November. Then it relaunches in January. In the meantime, I’ve written a retrospective/review of sorts for Den of Geek US the other day. Speaking of which, I’m going to be doing more hands-on stuff with that site, so that’s pretty exciting for me.

This week I have my fellow Injustice reader Matlock, who is still reading up on most of the DC villains comics. Gaijin Dan still has his manga and Was Taters makes her grand return. Let’s get to it.

Action Comics #23.3
Charles Soule and Raymund Bermudez

Batman #23.3
Frank Tieri and Christian Duce

Batman ’66 #12
Jeff Parker and Sandy Jarrell

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Yikes! I never thought this would ever last this long. Started as an exercise in keeping me on some kind of deadline, This Week in Panels has been going strong for the last two hundo weeks. The idea is simple. Take the new comics me and my calvary have read over the week and chop them down until there’s one panel that best sums up the issue. It’s fun and people seem to like it, which is why it’s lasted so long.

My crew this time includes Gaijin Dan, Space Jawa, Matlock and Jody. Buddy Dickeye tried to toss me a panel for Avengers, but it kind of doesn’t work.

Yeah, Space Knights (sans Rom, the only one anyone cares about). Those are cool and all, but they have barely anything to do with anything. They’re in there for one panel and are never referenced. Still, I posted it here anyway because I didn’t want my first panel for ThWiP 200 to be whatever the hell that nightmare is in Animal Man.

No, seriously. What the fuck is this thing?!

Animal Man #22
Jeff Lemire, Steve Pugh and Francis Portela

Avengers #16
Jonathan Hickman, Nick Spencer and Stefano Caselli

Batman ’66 #3 (Gavin’s pick)
Jeff Parker and Jonathan Case

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SHAZAM

Alias: Captain Marvel, Billy Batson, Captain Thunder
First Appearance: Whiz Comics #2 (1940)
Powers: The wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles and the speed of Mercury. Able to summon lightning by saying, “Shazam”
Other Media: Old-timey film adaptations, had his own live-action show in the 70’s, an animated series, was on Legend of the Superheroes, guest-starred on Justice League, Batman: the Brave and the Bold and Young Justice.

I might as well get the name thing out of the way because I’m sure it’s confusing as hell for people out of the Shazam loop. The magical wizard is Shazam. The superhero is Captain Marvel, only sometimes they call him Shazam, like in current comics and this game. It’s for silly legal reasons that I’ll get to, but for the sake of simplicity, I’m just going to call him Captain Marvel throughout this thing.

It’s a little sad that your average Joe doesn’t know who Captain Marvel is because during the 40’s, he was THE top superhero. Published by Fawcett Comics, his adventures sold more than Superman and Batman. He was the first superhero to get his own movie (which featured him taking out a bunch of enemy soldiers with a gatling gun. Times were different back then). Elvis Presley based his on-stage wardrobe on Captain Marvel’s sidekick Captain Marvel Jr. Captain Marvel was the man.

Only he really wasn’t a man, but a young boy named Billy Batson. Chosen by the wizard Shazam for his purity, orphan news reporter Billy was bestowed the power of becoming Captain Marvel upon saying the word, “Shazam!” Powered by the gods, Captain Marvel fought the likes of Dr. Sivana, Mr. Mind and many others. What made the character work was that he was just a kid. It was pure power fantasy. The idea that you could become this great superhero no matter your age.

So what made him so much better than Superman in the nation’s mind? Well, to be brutally honest about early Superman comics, Captain Marvel was interesting. Superman was a novelty act. He was in God Mode, going through the motions, taking out criminals who were no threat to him. Watching him beat up wife-beaters or throw around mobsters was fun in its own way, but even the mad scientist characters didn’t work all that well. It was usually, “Haha! Let’s see what happens when I pour molten lava over Superman! Nothing? Well, shit. What if I send my giant robot forces? Torn apart with ease? Damn it.”

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