Chris's Invincible Super-Blog

The Big Reveal

2007-05-02T23:35:00.000-04:00

Before I get started with the big announcement, I'd like to thank everyone who stopped by with compliments, wailing, and assorted gnashing of teeth, which, as it turns out, might well be appropriate at this juncture.

Because you see, dear friends, I've gathered you here tonight for this...

THE FINAL CHAPTER!

That's right, folks: After almost two and a half years of the best in bear-fighting awesomeness and face-kickery, the time has come to say goodbye to the-isb.blogspot.com...

...and say hello to the all-new, all-different, all-awesome www.The-ISB.com!

I mean, come on, folks: You didn't really think I was leaving, did you?

Of course, I know this is a little odd, coming hot on the heels of getting Blog of Note (let alone the increased traffic from Chuck Norris Action Jeans and Batman: Defenders of the Night, but just so everyone knows, the move isn't coming out of any dissatisfaction with Blogger. The fine people here do a bang-up job of providing an excellent free service, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone out there who was thinking of spending uncounted man-hours scanning pages of ROM: Spaceknight for the sole purpose of cracking jokes about his engine block-sized translator. The fact of the matter is, I've had the domain since Christmas--a gift from my pal Scott--I've been wanting to move for a while, and with some truly herculean help from Kevin Church and Shane Bailey, I was able to hammer out a new look that I liked a lot.

So in other words, I'm canceling the ISB and relaunching with a new #1! It's just like Marvel Comics!

But that's enough of that! Like the man says, blogging about blogging is a sin, and there's a bold new era to get cracking on! Now get over there, you cretins!

The Week In Ink: 4-25-07

2007-04-26T23:24:00.000-04:00

Hello again, folks, and welcome to what may well be the last post you read on this blog.

Originally, my plan was to just go ahead and leave my introduction at that, but at the risk of scaring away what little readership I've managed to build over the past couple of years--or get anyone concerned about my whereabouts--I'll explain a little: After tonight's post, I'm taking a few days off to recharge, and while the ISB as you know it may never return, I'll be back Next Thursday night with a surprise that will crack the comics blogger internet in half. Or the parts that revolve exclusively around the eternal conflict of Man vs. Bear, anyway.

Change is in the air, friends. Of course...

...some things will never change.

Yes, come rain or shine, hell or high water, success or utter oblivion, it's Thursday night, and that means it's time for another round of the Internet's Most Final Comics Reviews! Here's what I snagged at the shop yesterday...

...And here's what I thought about it!

Comics

52: Week 51: I actually ended up enjoying 52 #50 quite a bit, but after the unmitigated disaster that hit the shelves alongside it last week, I've been getting the feeling that two weeks from the finish line, 52 has officially run out of steam. It could just be my disappointment with World War III creeping over, but this week's installment just felt like a bunch of stuff that toed the line between being sorta-neat and sorta-awful.

The high point, of course, was Animal Man coming back home to Ellen, and the low point was the reveal of Mr. Mind's amazingly goofy new look (which pretty much ignores the fact that being a weird little worm with a radio around his neck is 90% of what people actually like about the guy), and everything in the middle just sort of lays there like a stack of bad pancakes. I mean really: Robin's line about the reason for his new costume was a nice touch, but where exactly does he get off lecturing the Ravager about not knowing who Terra and Young Frankenstein were when he's the guy who hasn't mentioned them once in the stories that take place one week later and who seems to be perfectly content to let their killer wander around trying to think up a new magic word?

Which, for the record, is "Snausages."

Amazons Attack! #1: I'll be honest with you guys: Besides the obvious, I have no idea what is going on in this comic. Admittedly, there's a footnote in there specifically for folks like me that advises us to check out recent issues of Wonder Woman for the backstory, but since doing that would involve, y'know, actually reading recent issues of Wonder Woman, I think I'm just going to go ahead and pass on that little offer.

Anyway, from what I gather just from this one, Hippolyta's the latest beneficiary of a the completely unnecessary return from the dead, and for some reason, she is very, very angry at Abraham Lincoln. Other than that, I got nothin'. I don't know why she's back, but considering that she's an ancient magical Amazon queen who fought Nazis and then got killed during an intergalactic war in outer spaaaaace, I think it's safe to say that there aren't a whole heck of a lot of explanations that could make less sense then what we're already working with. Me, I'm just reading it because I'm hoping to pick up some tips in my own war with the sinister gynocracy. Vive Le Resistance!

Blue Beetle #14: Last month, I made the offhand comment that over the past year, Blue Beetle's managed to bounce back from a rocky start to become a fun, solid, character-driven title that I look forward to reading every time it comes out, and I was pretty surprised to find that a lot of you guys out there agreed with me. Not that I should've been: John Rogers and Rafael Albuquerque have really hit their stride over the past few months, and are doing a better job putting a fresh spin on the reluctant teen hero than I've seen in a long while, and this issue shows exactly why. Heck, it even makes me actually sorta like Guy Gardner, and I didn't even like that guy during JLI.

Of course, the fact that he and the Beetle team up to fight a transgendered Nazi gorilla at the South Pole doesn't really hurt matters, but the point stands: If you've often found yourself lamenting the precarious state of solid DC Universe titles like Manhunter and Catwoman, then this is one you should definitely be checking out.

ISB BEST OF THE WEEK

Catwoman #66: For those of you who were wondering why I picked up Amazons Attack! given my comments on the current state of Wonder Woman, look no further. I've been singing the praises of Will Pfeifer's work alongside David Lopez on this title almost every month since the OYL jump, and with good reason: This comic is nothing but fun.

Admittedly, this particular issue's probably more suited to my tastes than anything to come out since Nextwave ended, what with the fact that the major plot point of the issue is a fight scene where Holly picks up a chair and drops the hardest hit since New Jack on Blitzkrieg, a new villain who blows things up and dresses like a photo-negative version of the St. Pauli Girl, but while my love of a well-constructed fight scene is pretty well-known, it goes a little further than that.

Even with the rest of the great stuff that happens in this issue, those three pages where Holly throws down on Blitzkrieg stand as one of the best, most satisfying fight scenes DC's had in a long while, and they're a reminder that solid fights with some actual emotional content don't involve characters casually punching people's hearts out or ripping their arms off.

They involve pretty girls hitting each other with furniture, and damn it, there's a difference.

Firestorm: The Nuclear Man #35: One of the most frustrating things to deal with for a comic book reader is when a series meets its untimely end not just while it's on an upswing, but when the axe falls right in the middle of a story, and that's exactly what we've got here. I mean, it's bad enough for a series to end with Martin Stein lost to the clutches of Darksied--although what the almighty Lord of Apokalips could possibly want with a third-rate physicist who couldn't even get a job outside of the fast food industry in 1988 is well beyond me--but when the last page is Firestorm charging through a Boom Tube swearing vengeance, with no clue as to if and when this story's actually going to finish?

It hurts, Dwayne McDuffie. It hurts my heart.

Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes #29: I'm generally pretty favorable towards Tony Bedard given what I've read of his work on Exiles and some of the latter-era CrossGen stuff, but man, this is the first issue of Legion of Super-Heroes that I've read in two years that I consider to be completely skippable, and that includes the entire twelve-volume set of Archives.

I'm not even saying it's Bedard's fault; from all appearances it looks like he was handed the bum job of scripting the issue that "explains" everything--including the relatively limited and generally pretty pointless return of the multiverse--and ties into 52, and to his credit, he handles it better than most. The problem, I think, is that I just re-read the shockingly underrated INVASION! mini-series a couple of months ago where the same themes with the Dominators were done in the mildly magnificent Mantlo manner, and when coupled with the fact that this issue ends with virtually the same shot as the last, it all feels warmed-over and repetitive. Here's hoping this won't be the issue that sets the tone for the rest of Bedard's run.

X-Men: First Class #8: I can't really speak for anyone else on this, but back when First Class started, I honestly didn't expect anything out of it, but here we are eight months later, and I've come to think of this book as a great kind of success story for everyone involved. Admittedly, it might not be that hard to get people to read something that has the word "X-Men" right there in the title, but with every issue, Jeff Parker and Roger Cruz have gone beyond just doing an all-ages book about the original X-Men into a title that's closer in tone to the classic Untold Tales of Spider-Man, leading to a giant-sized special next month and an ongoing series after that.

That, my friends, is the power of putting talking monkeys in your comic.

Trades

Agents of Atlas HC: As my recent eBaying will attest, I'm trying to avoid buying stuff in trade that I already have the issues for, but with this thing, I'm making an exception. And it's not just because Jeff Parker and Leonard Kirk did one of the best Marvel mini-series of the year in a story that taps into an often-ignored segment of the company's history, although that's a big part of it. The love that Parker has for these characters is almost tangible when you read through it, and the fact that he seems to have spent the months since working them into any other place he can--like the upcoming Marvel Adventures Avengers Special with Kirk or Gorilla Man's appearance in X-Men: First Class above--comes as no surprise when you see how much he manages to do with them in the six issues that ostensibly just serve to get the team back together. All that's nice, don't get me wrong, but it's nothing I didn't already get out of the issues.

No, this thing does one better, and includes, along with a bunch of other bonus features, the seldom-reprinted first apperances of all these characters from the Golden Age and the What If story that has them teamed up as the '50s Avengers, which practically doubles the size of the book. The main story alone would almost be worth shelling out $24.99 for, but with that stuff thrown in? It's a no-brainer, and if you haven't read it already, it's less than seventeen bucks on Amazon, and well worth it.

Degrassi Extra Credit v.3: At this point, I realize that the amount of people who care about my affection for Canada's finest high school melodrama can be summed up as, well, me and any teenage girls who stumble across my blog while trying to find kickass MySpace layouts, but some things have to be said. So if you guys could allow me to just put this out there for J. Torres:

I'd just like to say thank you for using Spinner's sister Kendra, who, if memory serves, showed up for one episode, became Toby's girlfriend, and then vanished into the aether, never to be heard from again. I always wondered what the heck happened to her.

And that's the week. As always, if you have any questions or comments about something I read, passed up, didn't mention, or you just want to talk about how Black Panther riding the Silver Surfer's board through space in a battle to save a giant floating head is pretty much everything we all love about Marvel Comics, feel free to leave a comment.

Until next week, though, it looks like this is...

THE END

...or is it?

WARNING: Spider-Man May Be In Your House

2007-04-25T23:02:00.000-04:00

Kalinara once mentioned that when you're used to reading comics in trades, one of the most striking things about going through a run of actual back issues is that you get to see all the old letter columns, and admittedly, if you're used to recent comics, where the time-honored tradition that brought us T.M. Maple and Charles J. Sperling was thrown aside in order to make room for half-page editorial shills, she's probably right.

For me, though, it all comes down to the ads.

Go back far enough, and comic book advertising suddenly becomes, without question, the biggest gold-mine of the bizarre ever put to paper. And whether it's the nonsensical adventures on Earth-Hostess, the deadly fighting styles of Count Dante, or even Sea Monkeys--which, according to NPR's Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me, were created by a hardcore Neo-Nazi--I just cannot get enough of them.

And that's why this one--from the pages of ROM #64, a series that produced a few great ads of its own--stuck out to me.

(Click for a larger image)

I think that pretty much speaks for itself, but allow me to point a few things out here:

There was a time when Marvel Comics thought it was a good idea to put its entire marketing strategy into the hands of the readers of ROM: Spaceknight. This time will henceforth be referred to as "The Golden Age."
FABOOM! sounds like a totally awesome game, but the slogan for Crunchy Cookies makes me feel vaguely uncomfortable.
Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing more ads for candy and sneakers, and less ads where the guy who chucked Gwen Stacy off a bridge advises me to buy a new Honda.

Spider-Man and his Amazing Briefcase just totally broke into some dude's house, and then webbed some ad copy to his wall over a pile of broken glass! I'm thinking if times were that hard at the ol' House of Ideas, maybe they should've tried running more ads.

I gotta say, though: I love that last panel. Spider-Man's so sheepish and apologetic there that you can't help but forgive him for the mildly illegal B&E he just pulled. Maybe it could work for a few other transgressions...

You guys have any ideas?

Fan-Film Roundup: Batman - Defenders of the Night

2007-04-24T23:49:00.000-04:00

As long-time readers may be dimly aware from the one time I've mentioned it--when I unleashed the Seasonal Greetings of Gunther--I have a sort of rule against posting YouTube videos here on the ISB. I'm not sure why I think of posting a video as any more of a cop-out than just scanning a panel from Jimmy Olsen and offering it up without comment, but in general, it's just something I try to avoid.

Tonight, though, I am compelled to make an exception by reader Ralph Burns, who emailed me something that I consider to be the single greatest piece of art ever produced by the hands of men.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...

BATMAN: DEFENDERS OF THE NIGHT

And now, my commentary:

0:01: If there's one thing we simply do not see enough of in today's modern comics, it's Batman hanging out on a windy suburban rooftop in the middle of the day.

0:55: Little known fact? The Batcave's state-of-the-art training center is actually designed to look like the back lot of a local Hardee's, in order to simulate battle conditions. Seriously, it's in 'Tec #433. Look it up.

1:12: OWNED.

1:27: This is the single greatest line in anything, ever:

"I've been looking into something. There's a series of robberies all over... a bunch of technology companies all over. At least seven or nine security guards have been killed already."

2:28: Your eyes do not deceive you: This is basically the best fight scene since The Octagon, and it all ends with Batman hugging someone until they are knocked out.

2:25: Oh man. Oh man. Just the way he runs! This is genius.

3:25: Mark my words, folks: In twenty years, the Joker and Two Face are going to seem like also-rans when you stack them next to Hoodie Guy With A Tree Branch. Just listen to the terror in Batman's voice!

3:57-4:09: ...Or as I like to call it, the greatest shot in the history of film.

4:20: Remember, kids! When struck in the head by the twirling cane of a madman in cargo pants, just walk it off!

5:00: Yes, the Riddler is cawing like a rooster. No, I have no idea why. Yes, it is hilarious.

5:15: Whoa! Apparently Robin took that comment about his balls a little harder than anyone expected! Good thing Batman's there to set him straight!

See? In every way, a masterpiece. And on the off-chance that you're still standing, allow me to blow your mind one more time:

There's a sequel. And it involves both the most fantastic Commissioner Gordon ever, Robin stealing a dog, and a few close contenders for the second best line in anything, ever.

Believe it!

The Monday Meme: Who Does Mary Love?

2007-04-23T22:29:00.000-04:00

Sleestak from Lady, That's My Skull has apparently taken a break from terrorizing Marshall, Will and Holly to pose a question to the comics blogger internet at large.

Specifically, he wants to know Who Mary Loves, but I think her desires tend to run a bit more horriscarifying!

I feel you, Mary. Who doesn't have a thing for the disembodied brain of Jimmy Olsen?

The Annotated Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #6

2007-04-22T22:22:00.000-04:00

Before we get started tonight, I have a small announcement to make.

It's recently come to my attention that Sean J. Jordan, the head editor for Dabel Brothers, has not only read the ISB's series on Anita Blake, but much to my surprise, has actually gotten a kick out of them, to the point where he linked to them on the DBPro website, calling them "an excellent series" and referring to me as "a really funny guy." All kidding aside, I think it says a lot about those guys that they're being good sports and have a sense of humor about their work.

So! Now that I've built up a small amount of good will from the people who make this thing, I think it's time to completely blow it with another round of comprehensive notes on the subtle nuances and were-rat Daisy Dukes of everyone's fourth-favorite vampire hunter, now featuring even more guys in mesh tank tops than anyone could have possibly predicted.

Grab your own copy and follow along!

0.0: This issue marks the first for scripter Jess Ruffner, who replaces Stacie M. Ritchie as the dauntless soul in charge of adapting Laurell K. Hamilton's original novel for the world of comics. To that, I can only say this:

WELCOME TO THE ISB, JESS RUFFNER!
HOPE YOU SURVIVE THE EXPERIENCE!!

1.1: This issue opens with virtually the exact same description of Dead Dave's that closed out #5, in what one can only assume is an effort to cater to the goldfish market, whose members tend to have a long-term memory of somewhere around 3 seconds:

Number 5...

Annnnd No. 6:

1.2-4.1: This sequence marks the first appearance of Luther, who--in the grand tradition of cutting-edge literary stereotypes that brought us a vampire who was actually a little girl--fills the role commmonly referred to by film scholars as "Magic Negro." The problems here should be pretty self-evident.

According to the article, such characters are usually "disabled... by discrimination" (Check!) and serve "as a plot device to help the protagonist get out of trouble, typically through helping the white character recognize his own faults and overcome them."

Check!

8.2: Anita's waving a pistol around her own empty apartment again, and while it's not often that I'll cop to making a mistake here on the ISB, I have to admit I made an error. Last month, I stated that my definitive firearms reference manual, Punisher Armory, did not have any information on Anita's pistol, the FireStar 9mm, when in fact, there is a mention of the gun right there in #3, where it's referred to by Frank Castle as "just another nine."

So it's nice to know that Anita's as picky about her weapons as she is about her gentlemen callers.

8.7: Check it out:

Looks like Anita's not an albino after all. Guess I owe you a Coke, Caitlin.

9.6: Hey Anita! Do you think there's fan-fiction out there where you become Harry Potter's next Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher?

Good call.

10.1: Hey everybody! It's Phillip!

In addition to being the male stripper/semi-professional vampire chewtoy that'll be guiding Anita through the sordid world of the undead key party, Phillip has apparently never heard of sleeves, which prompts even Anita herself--who, if you'll remember, spent the last issue kicking it in a knee-length t-shirt featuring penguins in swimsuits playing volleyball--to make fun of his outfit.

12.3: In a plot that was probably cooked up by John Hughes on a slow day in 1988, Anita and Phillip have to pose as lovers for the evening, despite the fact that she's a vampire hunter, he's a vampire fetishist, and together... they fight crime.

13.5: Oh boy.

This is Madge, and despite the fact that her thighs give me the impression that she's fully prepared for a trek across the Sahara without stopping for water, I think she's supposed to be sexy. Just be glad that I didn't scan any shots of Harvey, who appears to be a potbellied insurance agent clad in a loincloth and a leather harness that was apparently donated by Adam, Prince of Eternia.

18.1: Edward, Anita's hard-living flamethrower-packing sociopathic best friend, reappears here as "Teddy," an identity he uses to go undercover at "Freak Parties." Despite the fact that he's wearing an outfit that includes a vest, leather chaps, and a spiked dog collar, he looks only slightly more ridiculous than he does on the cover, where he's wearing a black trenchcoat with cargo pockets and his grandmother's reading glasses.

22.8: For the second time in the story thus far, Anita's forced to maintain her cover by making out with a long-haired pretty-boy who just shared his sensitive side.

And on a related note, I'm really starting to sense a pattern here.

The Brief and Surprisngly Violent Marriage of Jimmy Olsen

2007-04-21T23:44:00.000-04:00

Earlier this week, I posted a few panels of Jimmy Olsen engaging in some good-natured pastry-based violence, along with a reassurance that, yes, the events leading up to it were exactly as crazy as you think they were.

Normally I would've left it at that, but along with the fact that I will never get tired of discussing the pure wonder that is Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen, I feel that a little explanation might be in order here.

Even so, brace yourselves: Things are about to go BANANA.

Springing from the pages of Jimmy Olsen #82--which features the requisite cover of Jimmy beating the crap out of his best pal for no other reason than he wants to--is "The Wedding of Magi and Sandra," which is unquestionably the craziest Jerry Siegel/Curt Swan story featuring Jimmy Olsen that I have read today, and as you can see from the image above, it centers around Jimmy finally settling down and marrying Lucy Lane.

This is, as we all know, a phenomenally bad idea.

Lucy is, without question, the most emasculating shrew in comics history, taking the mildly annoying foundation her sister built from years of trying to rope Superman into marriage and sharpening it to deadly, soul-crushing precision, except that it's even worse when it's directed at a normal guy like Jimmy.

Complicating matters is the fact that for the first two parts of this daring three-part novel, Jimmy and Lucy have been dating each other secretly as Magi--a suave stage magician with lifts in his shoes and a moustache borrowed from Tony Stark--and Sandra Rogers--an alleged "English Starlet" who presents no evidence to support this claim--and neither knows the other's real identity.

So suck it, Nora Ephron!

Realizing that this is no way to run a relationship--unless you're, y'know, Hal Jordan or someone equally loathsome--they both give up on their dreams of dishonest romance and retire their secret identities. That is, until Lucy decides to blow off a date with Jimmy, put on her wig, and go for a walk as "Sandra," whereupon she's immediately mugged by someone who didn't get the memo that nobody had actually pulled off a crime in Metropolis in twenty years.

Did I mention that her "disguise" consists entirely of a wig? That's it. Jimmy Olsen: Reporter, ladies and gentlemen.

Anwyay, Hey Armed Robber! Complete this Yin Yang Twins Lyric: "And believe me, when I'm up in there..."

"Givin' it the Mike Jones treatment!"

Yes, as you can probably guess from the "magic wand" that made it into my visual punchline, Jimmy not only saw Lucy/Sondra's plight, but had the time to hide his car and change into an ensemble that includes a Wrath of Khan-style fake chest and full tuxedo before rescuing her. It's the sort of thing that Mr. Action's known for, which leads Lucy--who, if you'll remember, is fully aware that Jimmy's in the neighborhood--immediately comes to the obvious conclusion:

Normally, that'd be sarcasm, but in 1965, that actually is the most likely conclusion.

Thus, they hook up again, but before long, nagging fears over living a lie--which seems to work out fine for the majority of their friends and relatives--rear their heads again, and Jimmy decides to embrace a life of honesty by faking his own death and halfheartedly proposing to Lucy, his clear second choice. She accepts, and it's off to a "famous resort," where they're married by a Justice of the Peace who recently recovered from the measles by sitting in a dark room for a week.

If that last bit there seems a little out of place, it's because it's the kind of bluntly stated factoid that's going to allow everything to revert back to the status quo in three pages.

Clearly, this is a marriage destined to last.

Before long, Lucy just can't take it anymore and decides to have the whole thing annulled. It's right about the same time that Jimmy comes to the same conclusion, but Lucy's a little quicker to action, and it's when she goes into his room to leave him a note that she finds his famous disguise trunk, which still contains his Magi outfit. Because when you're on your honeymoon, you want to drag along a box of costumes, one of which allowed you to seduce another woman while remaining incognito.

Surprisingly, Lucy does not immediately flip out, but instead puts on her own Sandra Rogers wig--which, again, she brought on her honeymoon--and goes down to dinner, prompting Jimmy to put on his own disguise.

Hence: Pie to the face.

And so everything works out--hey! Aren't Jimmy and Lucy still married?! And now they have no reason to annul their marriage, so what could possibly happen to disrupt their wedded bliss?!

Oh, well that takes care of that, then. Of course, they opt not to get hitched after all, with Jimmy claiming that "it's almost as though fate were warning us the time isn't ripe yet." Which, when you get right down to it, comes off a lot better than "I just want to be friends."

BONUS FEATURE: Jimmy Olsen Is Number Six

Friday Night Fights: SHOORRRRYUKEN!

2007-04-20T22:57:00.000-04:00

Bahlactus may have brought the thunder with another round of Friday Night Fights, but before he steps to the ISB, he might want to think about the deadly moves I learned back when I was a fighter on the streets!

(Click for Super-Sized Face-Wrecking)

And that's real.

The Week In Ink: 4-18-2007

2007-04-19T22:41:00.000-04:00

As some of you may have noticed, the ISB just became Blogger's thousand-and-third Blog of Note, and between that and the spike in hits from last week's discussion of Chuck Norris Action Jeans, I figure there might be some new readers out there wondering just who the heck I am.

So before I get on with the post tonight, I'd like to take a moment to drink up all the Hennesey you got on your shelf, so just let me introduce myself: My name is Chris Sims, and I read a lot of comics. New ones, old ones, good ones, bad ones, I read 'em all. And then I ~~make fun of~~ review them here using my unstoppable blogging powers.

I post every day, so content varies from exhaustive histories of comics that really don't warrant that much attention to a crossword puzzle, a podcast, stick-figure recaps of major storylines done in crayon, and the occasional look at how the work of R. Kelly would be different if it had been written by William Shakespeare. Other than that, I'm also a freelance comedy writer and believe that Sonny Chiba was sent from Heaven to show us the way to a more awesome world.

Anyway, it's Thursday night, and for those of you who don't already know what's coming, that means that it's time once again for the Internet's Snappiest Comics Reviews, which usually lead off with something like this:

"Hey Batman! What are the odds that I'll ever stop using the phrase 'Mind-Shattering' in my post titles?"

And now that you've seen Batman kicking someone in the face, you've pretty much seen everything I have to offer.

But enough with the explanation! I've got reviews to get on with, and we're burnin' daylight! So here's this week's haul...

And here's what I wanted to talk about!

Birds of Prey #105: I think the record will show that I've enjoyed Gail Simone's work on a number of occaisions, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't pretty stoked about the news that Sean McKeever was coming on as the new writer once she leaves. Admittedly, my hopes for a shift in tone along the lines of McKeever's previous work--and a subsequent retitling of the book as Big Barda Loves Scott Free--might be a little unrealistic, but I think he'll do well with it. Of course, that's not to say that, with the exception of "The Hero Hunters," Simone hasn't done a pretty bang-up job on the series for the past few years, because she has, and this week's issue is just another example of how fun and solid her work can be, even if it does feel a little bit like it should be an issue of Secret Six (Guest Starring the Birds of Prey).

And speaking of, that's a team that just gets crazier every time it shows up. And by crazy... I mean crazy awesome.

ISB BEST OF THE WEEK

The Brave and the Bold #3: You know, I'm not quite sure why Batman suddenly ditched Blue Beetle so that he could go fight the Penguin with Cal Ripken in the middle of this thing, but I'll be damned if the rest of it didn't make for some highly enjoyable comics.

And that, my friends, is a joke that will not work once this thing's out in trade. Anyway, I'm not sure whether I should mention this and put my status as a hardcore fan of Legion craziness, but I really don't like the Fatal Five. Well, that's not strictly true: I like the Emerald Empress a lot, and Validus, well, he's a giant super-strong "man-child" whose completely visible brain can shoot lightning and who is always flipping out! How can you not like that? The rest of 'em, though--and I'm looking at you here, "Persuader"--I could pretty much do without for the entirety of my comics reading career.

That's really beside the point, though, which is this: Huge, half goofy, half almost-unbearably exciting stories that blow through every corner of the DC Universe are exactly what Mark Waid and George Perez do best, and this one's been three solid issues of them at the top of their game. It's fast-paced, energetic, and incredibly fun stuff, with a last page that honestly had me cracking up at the sheer joy of it. Simply put, it's excellent, and I don't think it's a stretch to say that it's well on its way to becoming the best DC Universe comic on the shelves.

Conan #39: Conan is one of the rare books that's managed to maintain a consistent, high level of quality not just for the past three years, but even through the change of writer from Kurt Busiek to Tim Truman, so it's often pretty difficult for me to think up something new to say about it. Really, once you've reviewed one issue, you've reviewed them all: "Conan acts like a badass, kills a bunch of dudes, and it's really, really good."

This one, however, sticks out a little, as it's Tim Truman's first use of Janissa the Widowmaker, who might actually be the only genuinely controversial character left in comics. After all, the letter columns for Conan are still filled with people debating the propriety of her origin, which happened twenty-seven issues ago. Me, I like her a lot as a character, if for no other reason than she provides an excellent contrast to Conan, and that's what's brought to the forefront here with a classically-styled sword-and-sorcery adventure that sees them assaulting an ancient temple from opposite sides, each unaware of the other's presence until the end. Janissa's great in this one, too, all finesse and trickery while Conan, equally true to form, gets through with brute strength and some of the hardest lines since Public Enemy. It's self-contained, amazingly entertaining, and if you've somehow managed to get this far without reading it, it makes a great place to start.

Hellblazer #231: As much as I loved the last issue of Hellblazer--the first part of Andy Diggle's debut storyline--I really had no idea how he was going to stretch it into a second part. It ends, after all, with Our Anti-Hero calling up the spirits of a hitman's victims just when the poor guy thought he had Constantine beat, and if that's not the most Hellblazer-ish ending a guy can ask for, I don't know what is. I get the feeling that this one, though, is where Diggle's setting the tone for his run, with a story that's equal parts Constantine loathing himself for the bastard that he's become and reveling in it as he swaggers around five steps ahead of everyone else.

I've said before that as far as I'm concerned, this is a book that could've ended when Mike Carey left and been perfect, but it's stories like this one that make me glad it didn't.

Invincible #40: We can all agree that I like violence, right? I mean, in this very post, you can find a picture of someone getting kicked in the face, so I think that's a pretty safe bet. And what's more, I like super-heroes committing violent acts against villans, and--assuming we're still counting Batroc Ze Leapair as a villain instead of the Savior of Mankind that we all know he is--I like it when villains beat up super-heroes, too.

But Sweet Christmas could we maybe take a break here? Invincible's one of my favorite comics, bar none, but this issue's big fight between the Guardians of the Globe and the Lizard League--which I'd originally hoped would be a sinister-but-fun pastiche of COBRA, HYDRA and the Serpent Society--is just ridiculous, especially when you consider that Dupli-Kate alone is graphically murdered nine times, and that's not counting her various dismembered bodies laying around the floor. I realize that shocking and disturbing are the goals here, but if there's one thing I've learned from DC over the past few years, it's that on its own, excessive graphic violence is utterly meaningless, and the whole sequence just comes off as cheap and poorly done. To make matters worse, the other subplots running through the issue don't suffer from that at all, which just strengthens the contrast. It's not a book that I'm going to rush out and drop--one bad issue out of forty isn't a bad track record, after all--but it's a pretty huge disappointment from a book that I usually look forward to, and I'm hoping it's not the start of a downward trend for Invincible.

The Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st Century #1: My earlier discussion of the Fatal Five aside, I like the Legion a heck of a lot. Not enough to go back to buying Brad Meltzer's nigh-atrocious Justice League of America or anything--I mean, I'm not crazy--but a series by two creators that I really like based on a cartoon that I've never seen? I'll give that a shot at the drop of a hat. Besides, until Chynna Clugston starts returning my calls, this is probably the closest I'm going to get to my proposed collaboration, The Many Loves of Triplicate Girl.

Manhunter #30: So, to sum up: Manhunter (which is totally awesome) has been uncancelled again. Suck it, Spider-Girl.

Marvel Adventures: The Avengers #12: Page 16, Panel 3:

EGO, THE LOVING PLANET (To Earth): I see your situation, baby. I know you got a shorty... I'm cool with that.

Jeff Parker, you are a delight.

Nightwing Annual #2: Despite the fact that I've never, you know, written fan-fiction about the guy, there was a time in my life when Nightwing was probably my favorite comic. Embarrassing, I know, but believe me: That time ended well before Devin Grayson showed up and decided it'd be a good idea to kill major supporting characters off-panel and began the downward spiral that made it one of the worst books on the stands. Still, I'll always have some shred of nostalgia for the character and the way that the Chuck Dixon run provided a fun string of adventures starring a younger, more fallible Batman, a void that's now being filled very well by Adam Beechen and Freddie Williams in the pages of Robin.

So that's what got me curious about this one, and it turned out to be a solid read. Of course, that's not really a surprise: Marc Andreyko regularly knocks it out of the park when it comes to solid, character-driven stories rooted firmly in the DCU over in the woefully underappreciated Manhunter, and his work here lives up to it very well, with a great retrospective on Barbara Gordon and Dick Grayson's relationship, and one of Barbara's best lines in years.

To put it bluntly, this is everything that World War III should've been: If you're not going to explain the "One Year Later" changes in 52--which, if you'll remember, was the original point of that series--then take some time and do them right and do them well instead of cramming them into a stupid, pointless fight that doesn't make any sense to begin with. But we'll get to that in a second.

The Spirit #5: Kevin pretty much covered the major plot point of this one already, but to be honest? I just wanted to post that fantastic cover, and take a breather before I got to...

World War III, Parts 1-4: I don't usually do a Worst of the Week in my comics reviews, but, well, you're looking at the comic that made me want to start. Last night I referred to it as an "incompetent clusterfuck," and that might actually be a little too positive, because This comic is a failure on every possible level.

Even without getting into the story, it's actually difficult to purchase. It's a four-part series that shipped all on one day with covers that have the exact same layout with minor changes. Honestly, did nobody forsee that there might be a problem with this? I mean, I worked the register of a comic book store last night, and there were several people who came up with just one issue, thinking they were just variant covers. Eventually, we just started bagging them up as sets for the people who wanted to get all of them, but it's a problem that could've been solved easily just by making it an Eighty Page Giant. Of course, nobody's going to buy an 80-Page Giant for ten bucks, so there goes that.

Not that anyone should buy this thing anyway: It's awful, and given that the actual fight with Black Adam happens in its entirity in the pages of 52 (which is where WWIII allegedly "begins"), it's thoroughly unnnecessary. It reads like it was written on someone's lunch hour who was given the vague instructions to explain all the changes from the OYL jump, but didn't bother to actually read the books to see what was going on in them. They're explained so poorly that I'd honestly rather they weren't explained at all. And to make matters worse, all these huge, major changes happen two weeks before the OYL books start, which means they could've been called "Two Weeks Later" with the same effect!

Example: I really liked Kurt Busiek's take on Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis when it hit the One Year Later issues, but cripes, man: Atlantis fell into shambles because Aquaman was gone for two weeks? You're telling me that guy lost his mind and became the mysterious Dweller in the Deep in the span of less one day? Really?

And that's not even getting into another good-natured round of Black Adam punching teenagers' hearts out--which, again, nobody seems overly concerned about two weeks later. It's utterly irredeemable, and suffice to say that if you haven't been suckered in yet, avoid it like the freakin' plague.

And that's the week, but as always, leaving questions or comments about something I read (or that you read and just want to chat about) should not be avoided like the plague. Instead, avoid it like delicious muffins.

Which is to say, don't.

The Mind-Shattering Malevolence of Mageddon!

2007-04-18T21:46:00.000-04:00

Man, I don't know what you guys are talking about; World War III is awesome.

I'm referring, of course, not to the incompetent clusterfuck that shipped from DC this week--because yeah, that thing blows--but rather an event that rocked the DC Universe to its core in the distant past of seven years ago, which is apparently a long enough wait to re-use the name:

Say what you want about Grant Morrison and Howard Porter's run on JLA, but you pretty much have to admit that it was big--and World War III, Morrison's last storyline before Mark Waid jumped on with Bryan "Once An Epoch" Hitch, was the biggest of them all. I mean really: It's the sequel to a story where the Justice League fights Lex Luthor's Injustice Gang while also battling Darkseid... in the future... during the Apocalypse.

Man, Rock of Ages is awesome. But that's beside the point.

This story, in typical Grant Morrison fashion, sees the Apocalypse moved up ahead of schedule, and the Injustice Gang--this time consisting of Lex Luthor, Queen Bee, Prometheus and the Genera--is right in the thick of it. Within the first issue, they've already wrecked the Watchtower, found Oracle, and generally completely wrecked the Justice League. And to make matters worse, well, take it away, Mister Miracle:

Ah yes: MAGEDDON!: One of those wonderful comic book concepts that can only be described with a judicious use of exclamation points:

MAGEDDON! THE ANTI-SUN!
MAGEDDON! THE WAR-BRINGER!
MAGEDDON! THE PRIMORDIAL ANNIHILATOR!
MAGEDDON! THAT THING AZTEK'S TOTALLY GOING TO WRECK IN ABOUT SIXTY PAGES!

But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

Originally referenced in his very first story arc, Mageddon(!) was the plot point that Morrison was building up to for his entire run, so it's pretty safe to say that it's a suitably big threat. Essentially a giant, planet-devouring sentient ball of hate and fear from fifteen billion years ago that already destroyed an entire planet of super-heroes twenty issues beforehand, it sets its sights on a planet and then slowly drives the entire population to madness until they annihilate themselves, leaving it to destroy the wreckage. And not to get too pseudo-intellectual here, but with Morrison's notorious meta-textual elements and the fact that he uses the League as a symbol of hope and the realized potential of the Good In People, it's no stretch to say that Mageddon's the embodiment of everything the League exists to fight.

Also--and I may have mentioned this--it is huge:

<

"Mother Box struggles to contain my rage for cosmic destruction."

And even with all that going on, even with countries literally declaring war on each other and mobilizing troops as Mageddon drives them to the edge of madness, Morrison and Porter still find the time to drop in one of the single most badass moments in comics history.

And everyone who's actually read this thing knows exactly what I'm talking about.

For those of you who only know of Prometheus from his brief, forgettable role as Hush's punching bag in A.J. Liberman's bottomlessly atrocious run on Gotham Knights, it may come as a surprise to learn that he was actually really, really awesome in JLA. This is, after all, a guy who nearly took out the JLA by himself in his first appearance, an accomplishment that included him beating the living crap out of Batman thanks to a device in his helmet that allowed him to download the moves of the greatest martial artists in the world directly into his brain.

Needless to say, it's a pretty radical throwdown, but the rematch is even better. Why? Because when Prometheus starts to get the upper hand, Batman uses a device that he prepared for just such an occasion--you know, because he's Batman--and rewrites the programming, giving Prometheus all the fighting ability of (drumroll, please)...

<

"Did I see you cheating?"
"Winning. First time I ever hit a man with Motor Neuron Disease."

I could seriously look at that page all day, I love it so much.

The thing about "World War III" is that everyone has that kind of amazing character moment--even Orion's dog--but as much as it might shock those of you who are familiar with my abject love of Batman-related grevious injury to the face, that's not the part that I get emotional over when I think about this sotry.

By the time the extra-sized 36 page final issue hits--which, for the record, contains more scenes of Orion flying around in his Astro-Harness shouting some of the most amazing phrases ever put on paper--Superman himself has been defeated by Mageddon and chained up within its "techno-active" body and reduced to an almost-mindless shell, reduced to an almost-mindless state. He eventually gets out, thanks to Aztek sacrificing his own life to blow up a good chunk of Mageddon by unleashing an explosion of 4-Dimensional energy (because Grant Morrison, that's why), but he's sorely outmatched.

Which is why the rest of the Justice League concocts a plot so complex that I can only tell you it involves a giant hamster wheel, the Purple Healing Ray, and the stone heads of Easter Island that temporarily gives every single person on Earth super-powers. And that's when the whole of humanity rises up as one to fight alongside Superman against the massive embodiment of despair and hopelessness, because after all the times that he saved them, how could they not save him when he needed them to?

It's an amazing scene, and it's one of the few moments in comics that I get honest-to-God choked up over every time I start talking about it, which is something I can't imagine anybody saying about Black Adam punching Terra's heart out or a clumsy, shoehorned plot about why the Martian Manhunter decided to wear pants this year. But really, I can only say so much, so if you haven't read it, you really ought to.

Sickday 2007

2007-04-17T23:00:00.000-04:00

As most of you have probably figured out already from the fact that my last few posts have been of the "Here, look at this amusing picture" variety, I've been fending off a cold for the last week or so, and tonight, I think it might be worth some time to actually try sleeping instead of enticing my readership with teaser images for my upcoming ROM Week.

Instead, please enjoy this picture of Jimmy Olsen hitting his girlfriend with a pastry:

Oh calm down, it all works out okay:

Here's something to keep you busy until I feel better: Try coming up with a story that ends with those two panels that is anywhere near as crazy as the Jerry Siegel/Curt Swan original.

BONUS FEATURE: Bonus Content Rides Again!

If you feel like you just can't go on without your daily bit of criticism from me, your beloved Internet loudmouth, take heart: I've got a new article up on CRACKED.com where I examine Ben Stiller's film career with the same critical eye that brought you observations like "Batman kicking people is awesome."

Here's my favorite bit:

Madagascar (2005)

Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, and Sasha Baron Cohen in a movie together? Sounds great! What? It's a computer-animated kid-flick about zoo animals trying to get to the wild and learning a lesson about themselves in the process? Well, okay, I guess it could—oh, David Schwimmer's in it?

Yeah, we'll pass.

Go read the rest!

It's-a Meme! Luigi!

2007-04-16T23:59:00.000-04:00

In a saintly effort to prevent me from having to actually generate any content tonight, longtime friend of the ISB Mark Hale has started up a meme centered on Mario Quiz Cards, which I desperately need to own.

So what's got Mario's much-maligned brother in such a panic? Could it be the slavering army of the undead that even now threatens to breach the castle gates?!

Or maybe it's something even more terrifying that's giving him that look of existential dread...

There's no end to the trouble Luigi can get into with the magical world of reading! Why not try your own?

The Many Porn-Faces of Power Man and Iron Fist #60

2007-04-15T23:30:00.000-04:00

And my personal favorite...

God bless you, Marie Severin and Steve Leialoha.

(And a special thanks to Mark Hale for help with tonight's highly inappropriate image title gags, for which I am truly, truly sorry)

Just A Reminder...

2007-04-14T23:33:00.000-04:00

ROM Week? Oh it's coming.

How can you not love a toy ad as self-deprecating as this one?

"ROM's translator is the size of an engine block! It lights up! You can.. uh.. you can pretend he's from space, I guess. Maybe he fights bad guys?"

ROM Week on the ISB
Summer, 2007

Friday Night Fights: Sweep The Leg!

2007-04-13T23:37:00.000-04:00

Not even the threat of disqualification from the All-Valley Karate Tournament can stop the weekly engine of destruction Bahlactus has unleashed upon us all!

In fact, the comics blogger internet has gotten so violent over the past five weeks that I thought it might be prudent to use this week's entry to offer up some handy self-defense instructions from--where else?--the September, 1988 issue of Inside Karate magazine!

Because they know how to do it... Cobra Kai Style:

Oh, Inside Karate! Is there anything we cannot learn from your teachings?

The Week In Ink: 4-11-07

2007-04-12T23:09:00.000-04:00

Warren Ellis knows what the people want!

Admittedly, that's more of a stomp than a kick, but it's foot-to-face contact, and that's all that matters! After all, when it comes to the Internet's Dopest Comics Reviews, there's only one rule: There Are no rules!

Wait, no, that's not right at all. There are actually plenty of rules.

Rule #1: I post a list of what I bought this week:

Rule #2: I write about them!

Rule #3: I am then given a large assortment of delicious pies.

Comics

52: Week Forty-Nine: It probably says a lot about Robert Kanigher, but in this issue of 52, tiny versions of the Metal Men attack a giant sentient egg with with a set of metal spider-legs with machine-guns on them, and that's not even close to being the craziest thing I've ever seen those guys do. Although admittedly, there was a giant egg involved that time, too. Regardless, the Science Squad of Oolong Island continues to be the most entertaining part of 52 through this whole thing, but I can't shake the feeling that it might be the one that finally breaks the "real-time" aspect of the book. This issue, after all, takes place entirely in the span of one day, which means that when the next issue hits, it'll mean that a week's gone by before the story picks up again, and I've got the sneaking suspicion that we're going to end up with a another jumbled plot element like the fact that it took the police six weeks to get around to arresting Lex Luthor after the big throwdown.

That said, seeing T.O. Morrow kicking it with his Hawaiian Shirt and his crazy Science Gun pretty much makes the whole thing worth it, and that's before Will Magnus gets around to freaking out so hard that it's going to start World War III, and that's an exciting bit of comics.

All-Star Superman #7: When this book first came out, I said that if it would only come out on time, it may be the best thing ever, but now, well, it's three months since the last issue, and you know what? It's still pretty awesome. To be fair, this one has been my least favorite issue of the series thus far, but with the amount of pure, manic joy that I experienced from scenes like Jimmy Olsen transforming himself into Doomsday to battle an evil Superman in a scene that won the ISB's Dave Jackson Memorial Award for Best Comic Ever, that's not really much of a criticism. It's still an amazingly fun comic to read, with the fast-paced action that I've come to expect from Morrison and Quitely. The only major problem, in fact, is that with a last page cliffhanger as compelling as this one, the next few months of waiting for #8 are going to be almost unbearable.
.

Dynamo 5 #2: This is a comic that opens with a gothy ex-film student in a bathing suit punching a dinosaur-man in the face, ends with the same girl beating said monster into submission with a car, and features a few panels of her stretching thrown into the middle for good measure, so I think it's safe to say that Jay Faerber has his finger right on the pulse of what the comics reading audience would like to see in their new super-hero titles. And, well, that's pretty much what happens in this issue. Of course, I could mention that Faerber--always at his best working with his own creations--keeps the action moving along while simultaneously fleshing out the backstories and relationships of his characters and laying down plot threads almost seamlessly within the stand-alone story, but let's be honest here: If a girl knocking out a dinosaur-man with a car didn't strike you as being worth $3.50, then I'm pretty much out of my element as far as reviews go.

Fables #60: You know, it's not every day that you get to read a story where Little Red Riding Hood clamors for bloody vengeance. Thank you, Bill Willingham, for showing me how empty my life has been up to this point.

Then again, it's been well-chronicled around here that I'm a total sucker for revenge stories, but the point stands: Alongside the always-fantastic pencils of Mark Buckingham--whose clean linework here has turned Flycatcher into a slightly more freckly Alan Moore--Willingham's building off of the heartbreaking revelations from the Christmas issue in one of the most exciting ways he possibly could, and no matter what direction he takes it from here, I can't imagine it not being awesome. What's more, that's just one of the plots that's running through the series at this point, and the rest of them are just as compelling, like the slow-burning stories of Frau Totenkinder and Baba Yaga or (and I honestly never thought I'd have an occasion to type this phrase) the recent developments with Hansel. It's a book that's so consistently well done that it's easy to take for granted, but it always bears repeating: This is an excellent piece of comics.

Gen13 #7: And speaking of phrases I never thought I'd have an occasion to type, try this one on for size: I think Gail Simone's taking Gen13 a little too seriously. It might just be a matter of me becoming a fan of hers while she was on Agent X (an amazingly underappreciated book that struck a great balance of occasional serious character moments to counter things like the title character fighting off hitmen with a toilet) and the fact that I have slightly-more-than-fond memories of the lighthearted, almost nonsensical stories from Gen13's original incarnation, but the stories this time around seem to be coming on a little heavy-handed for my tastes. This is, after all, a book where Caitlin Fairchild puts on her fur bikini and fights off a tyrannosaurus rex, but the only impression I got from reading it was that it just didn't seem like Simone was having any fun with it.

Of course, I could be wrong. This might actually be the fun part in and of itself; taking the underlying concepts of the orignal series--like this issue's pretty obvious homage to Gen13 v.2 #3-5--and trying to apply any sort of deeper meaning at all rather than just rolling with the complete and utter lack of subtext that characterized the old stuff. If that's the case, though, it really just comes down to the fact that, well, Adam Warren already did that, and he didn't lose any of the fun with it, either.

And that, for the record, is more analysis than anyone has ever put forth for Gen13 in the title's history. I should get an honorary degree or something.

ISB BEST OF THE WEEK

Nova #1: Yeah, I know, I was surprised too. To be perfectly honest, I've never really cared about Nova. It's not that I've got anything against the character, but he's never really sparked my interest. I don't even think I've read a single issue before last week, but I like Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning a lot from their work on the Legion, and if there's one thing those dudes know how to write about, it's teenagers in space.

So maybe it shouldn't have surprised me that much that this one turned out to be an amazingly solid and engaging first issue. It's a simple formula for a story: In the aftermath of Annihilation, Richard Rider's the last of the Nova Corps, and he's the only thing standing between the galaxy and a thousand world-shattering crises that need his attention, so he spends the entire issue flying from one planet to the next, averting extinction-level disasters without even pausing to take a breath in between. It's exactly the sort of fast-paced adventure that immediately grabs the reader and makes for a great first issue, and in one scene where Nova argues with the Xandarian Worldmind (your standard-issue repository for all planetary knowledge that's now stuck inside Nova's head) about how he's pushing himself too hard, Abnett and Lanning told me everything I need to know about Richard Rider to get behind him as a hero.

It's excellent stuff, and Sean Chen's artwork only compliments the frenetic pace of the story, right down to the little touches like Nova making gun fingers before blasting a giant space robot. Give it a shot.

Punisher War Journal #6: At this point, I think we can all just settle in and take it as a matter of fact from now on that this is going to be one of my favorite comic books for the duration of Matt Fraction's run as writer. I was going to make an attempt to review it here, and mention all the awesome moments that get thrown in as the Punisher goes on the run from SHIELD, but when you get right down to it, everything I love about it--heck, everything I love about the Punisher--shows up in this one perfect panel:

Now that's exciting.

Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four #1: The Fantastic Four and Spider-Man go together like chocolate and peanut butter, like Riggs and Murtaugh, like... like... well, like Jeff Parker and Mike Wieringo, now that I think of it. Parker, of course, is currently making a career writing nothing but stories that I want to read, from the phenomenal Agents of Atlas to the mind-blowing all-MODOC issue of Marvel Adventures Avengers, and as far as I'm concerned, 'Ringo could've drawn the FF for as long as he wanted and it still wouldn't be enough after the amount of quality that marked his run with Mark Waid, so this one was pretty much a no-brainer when it came time for me to order my comics.

And it worked out, too: Not only does this issue feature the Impossible Man giving a pair of hapless New Yorkers a lecture on the dangers of getting Teen Pregnant, but it's got one of the best Ben and Johnny gags I've seen in a long time. Very fun stuff.

Trades

The Eye of Argon: Like a lot of people, I suspect, I first ran across The Eye of Argon several years ago as a "MSTing," which, for those of you who don't know, is essentially fan-fiction for Mystery Science Theater 3000, only keeping true to the theme of the show, it's based around making fun of other people's fan-fiction and the occasional piece of spam. It was funny stuff, but as great as a lot of those jokes were, they just did not compare to the innate humor of the story itself. Why?

Because it is, without question, the worst piece of fiction ever published.

Admittedly, I haven't actually read the Anita Blake books in their novel form, but I think that's a pretty safe statement. Here, see for yourself:

"What are you called by female?"

"Carthena, daughter of Minkardos, Duke of Barwego, whose lands border along the northwestern fringes of Gorzom. I was paid as homage to Agaphim upon his thirty-eighth year," husked the femme!

"And I am called a barbarian!" Grunted Grignr in a disgusted tone!

"Aye! The ways of our civilization are in many ways warped and distorted, but what is your calling," she queried, bustily?

"Grignr of Ecordia."

"Ah, I have heard vaguely of Ecordia. It is the hill country to the far east of the Noregolean Empire. I have also heard Agaphim curse your land more than once when his troops were routed in the unaccustomed mountains and gorges." Sayeth she.

Yes, the saga of Grignr the Ecordian--or Fauxnan, as I like to call him--was originally written by a guy named Jim Theis and published in a fanzine in 1970 when he was sixteen, and while Carthena asking her question "bustily" is certainly the high point as far as I'm concerned, the rest of the story is full of gems like that. And now, after thirty-seven years of transcriptions and contests at conventions to see who could get through reading it without breaking into hysterical laughter, it's finally back in print with a definitive edition.

If you haven't already experienced it, you can find the full text online, and trust me, it's well worth it. In fact, it might actually be to blame for my peculiar fascination with horrible writing that continues today, and for those of you out there wondering why I'm stil reading Tarot, it might clear a few things up.

And that's the week. As always, any questions, comments, or discussions of how to best put Rule #3 into effect can be left below in the comments section or sent to me via email.

And Now...

2007-04-11T23:10:00.000-04:00

...the ISB presents another alarming installment of Jimmy Olsen:
#1 With The Ladies.

More From the "And Now..." Files:

| The Mermaid I Love Is Mortally Wounded! |
| Dr. Doom's Pimp Chalice |

Behold! The Hidden Gusset!

2007-04-10T22:02:00.000-04:00

Look, I already know what you're going to say, okay? And you're right.

Chuck Norris jokes are done. And not only that, but I've done them to death on this very blog with my bits on The Justice Riders and that one issue of Karate Kommandos. Even Dave Campbell did a piece on him last year, so it's safe to say that ol' Lone Wolf McQuade over there's about as novel as the mistranslated intro sequence to Zero Wing at this point.

I know this.

And I do not care, because this is the most awesome thing I have ever seen:

Those are Chuck Norris Action Jeans, and just in case your mind can't process it because you are too busy freaking out, they are pants specifically designed to be worn while you are kicking people in the face. And they retail for less than twenty dollars.

And that is just one of many, many mind-shattering images that lie within the pages of the September, 1988 issue of Inside Karate magazine that Ben loaned to me and--if I have any say in the matter--he will probably never get it back. It's 76 pages long, roughly two-thirds of which feature Chuck Norris, and the pages that don't are pretty much all forms for mail-ordering nunchucks.

It is, in short, the most perfect magazine ever published.

BONUS FEATURE: "Hi, I'm Chuck Norris..."

"...and this is the outfit I make my love in."

Art of the Shill, Round 2

2007-04-10T02:44:00.000-04:00

The pulse-ponding finale to my three-part saga of a single issue of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen appears below this post, but in the interest of making myself upwards of three dollar signs, I wanted to let you all know that I've got another round of eBay auctions up!

Amazing Spider-Man #252 and Secret Wars #8: The first appearance and secret origin, respectively, of Spidey's black cosutme! Because really, if I'm going to sell them, now's the time.

Young Avengers #1-12 and Civil War: Young Avengers & Runaways #1-4: I actually really like this series, but with the hardcovers, it's just a matter of needing the extra space. That run of Power Man and Iron Fist takes up some room, you know?

Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore's Battle Pope #1-12: Please Note: this is probably the only time you will see me willingly part with a Christmas issue, just because "#1-11" doesn't sound as good.

Mouse Guard #1-6: Again, it's a series that I really like, but like I mentioned in one of my Previews Round-Ups, I'm going to pick the hardcover up when it comes out.

And don't forget, if you're an ISB reader and you win the auction--and you, y'know, tell me that before I send the stuff out--I'll throw in an official ISB Certificate of Awesometicty at no additional charge, hand-drawn by me on a high-quality 4x6 Index Card, like the one I did for my Civil War auction last week:

Okay, that's it for capitalism! Actual content continues below!

The Mind-Shattering Madness of Jimmy Olsen #86, Part Three

2007-04-09T23:59:00.000-04:00

This may come as a surprise to... well, absolutely nobody, really, but in my day-to-day life, I have a lot of conversations about Jimmy Olsen, and it was during one of these with my pal Scott a year or two ago when he said that Jimmy Olsen was "the best sidekick since Goebbels."

It's a pretty accurate statement, I guess, but that's an odd phrase even for my conversations, which is probably why it's stuck in my mind ever since. You can imagine, then, the sheer, unmitigated joy that I felt when I mentioned it offhand to Dorian Wright, and he came back with this:

And now you know the real reason I've been talking about this issue for three days. Because really, this is a comic book where Jimmy Olsen teams up with Hitler and that story doesn't even make the cover, and if that doesn't warrant three days of discourse, then I'm pretty sure Team America didn't either.

Yes, it's Leo Dorfman and (who else?) Curt Swan with "Jimmy's D-Day Adventure," and the whole thing gets started when Jimmy's visiting the Pentagon one sunny mid-sixties afternoon for a screening of captured Nazi documentary footage. One of the film canisters "accidentally" finds its way into Jimmy's briefcase, and being the kind of inquisitive lad who'll pop a reel marked "overexposed" into the projector just to check it out, he's surprised to find that it contains a film of someone who looks exactly like him hanging out with history's greatest villain and his pals.

Clearly, this is going to require some time travel.

Two things about this panel:

1. The fact that Jimmy doesn't immediately realize that going back in time means that it's going to be him in the picture and not his mysterious "double" means that he a) has absolutely no pattern recognition skills whatsoever, or b) is not that quick on the uptake.

2. As much as I like the idea of Silver Age Metropolis as a place where you could travel through time on less than a day's preparation, I'm actually more impressed by the fact that he was able to find that costume. Seriously, I'm not sure that I've ever actually seen a costume shop in my entire life, and yet Jimmy knows one that stocks fully authentic World War II correspondent uniforms.

Anyway, to effect his travel back to The Big One, Jimmy employs one of Professor Potter's rare inventions that actually works like it's supposed to, the Time Bomb, which looks like a crystal ball, and, if separated from Jimmy, will leave him stranded in 1944. Both of these facts are apparent, but only one's going to turn out to be a plot point.

One quick explosion later, and Jimmy's sent rocketing through the rainbow-colored time-barrier to Omaha Beach on D-Day, where he walks around thinking "What a thrill!" which, again, is probably not the right word to describe a battle that even the official 1st Infantry Division record describes as "a struggle for survival and rescue."

Jimmy Olsen: Not Easily Impressed.

He does take time to goggle at General Eisenhower, though, but before long his curiosity gets the better of him and he throws in with your standard issue stubble-sporting tough-guy Sergeant (not Rock, unfortunately), sneaking across enemy lines by disguising himself as a Nazi soldier and marching them to the cleverly-named "General Fritz" as his prisoners, at which time he chooses the single best way to ingratiate himself with the enemy:

Just a reminder here: Not only does Jimmy think that the best course of action here is to draw attention to the one item that he needs to keep on his person to avoid beingstuck in Nazi Germany in 1944, but from one High School German class, he's able to pass as a Psychic Nazi Soldier. That is just how Mr. Action rolls.

Thus, in a sequence that includes quite possibly the most remarkably sinister picture of Jimmy I've ever seen, he uses his apparent ability to predict defeats for the German Army right before they happen (so that they can't actually do anything about them) as "Von Olsen" to quickly rise through the ranks until he's become the right-hand man to the Führer himself:

His dubious clairvoyance aside, Hitler still doesn't quite trust Jimmy, and so he sets him up to test his loyalty with a tempting fraulein who slips him a note that identifies her as a spy for the Allies, at which time Jimmy promptly turns her over to the Nazis after employing the same kind of deductive reasoning and observation that would later show up in the opening scenes of Vin Diesel's masterwork, XXX:

Yep: He's willing to take the risk of selling her out and condemning her to a horrible death at the hands of the Nazis because she is not wearing wooden shoes. James Olsen, you are cold as ice!

And yet, the Ladies cannot get enough.

I think "I'll pretend I enjoy kissing her so those Nazi rats won't get suspicous!" just about sums it all up.

Of course, it's not until Jimmy's actually handed a Marshal's baton in front of a camera that he realizes it was actually him in the newsreel footage (see Point One, above), and things go downhill pretty quickly from there when he fails to "predict" the ill-fated assassination attempt on Hitler, who then finds his cheat sheet of events that led to the downfall of Nazi Germany and orders Olsen executed on the spot. When he runs for it, though, he finds himself staring right down the barrel of Lotte Lutz's lethal Luger, but since she apparently learned how to shoot from COBRA, everything turns out okay:

Somebody chucks a grenade at Jimmy, but Just Then™, the Time Bomb goes off (after over a month of Jimmy kicking wartime-style) and he gets pulled back to the (alleged) present, just in time to realize a crucial and completely nonsensical element to the story, just before the last third of the page is taken up with an ad about coin collecting:

And with that, pretty much any claim to legitimacy that Marvel Comics had on slapping the phrase "The Strangest Team-Up Of All!" onto a story where Ghost Rider teams up with Franklin Richards or whatever was blown out the window.

THE END

More Adventures with Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen!

| Jimmy Olsen's Three-Way Revenge |
| Sort Of Like A Love-In, But Much More Hateful |
| Jimmy Olsen's Guide to Life |
| A Day In The Life of Jimmy Olsen |
| Olsen = Pimp |

Bonus Link:

Mike Sterling did his own write-up of this story back in 2005 (which I haven't read, to resist the temptation to steal his dulcet phrasing outright). Check it out, because seriously: This is the kind of story you're not going to mind reading about twice.

The Mind-Shattering Madness of Jimmy Olsen #86, Part Two

2007-04-08T23:59:00.000-04:00

If any of you were paying attention to the cover that accompanied last night's post, you may have noticed the fact that it contains one of the greatest plot elements in the world of fiction: Jimmy Olsen's Brain In A Jar:

The fact that this single image did not immediately spawn a hundred-issue run of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen's Brain In A Jar may have been the biggest missed opportunity in comics history, but it did give us the story I'll be focusing on in the second installment of my spine-tingling exposé of Jimmy Olsen #86!

Ah, the friendship of Jimmy Olsen and Superman! Kinda brings a lump to your throat, doesn't it? But what happens when Jimmy replaces his dynamic pal with a bald green man in a pink polo shirt, tiny shorts, and white go-go boots?

Well, truth be told, I have no idea, because this is a two-part story and I wasn't able to track down a copy of the next issue. But fortunately for our purposes, there's enough in the mere six pages that this thing runs to keep us here all night.

It all gets started when Jimmy goes on a ride-along with an armored car carrying the phenomenal sum of one million dollars. Fortunately for Jimmy, the armored car is composed of a new alloy discovered by one of the city's roughly sixty-eight thousand eccentric professors, the indestructable Vulnite.

Unfortunately for Jimmy...

...Vulnite isn't quite as tough as previously advertised, which puts it right alongside most of the inventions of Professor Potter or Professor Lang in terms of effectiveness. Really, though, what else can you rightfully expect from a bunch of scientists who never bothered to get their doctorates?

Anyway, the explosion quickly attracts the attention of Superman, who shows up just in time to pimp-slap the living bejeezus out of the thugs, but alas, it's too late for Jimmy, as the explosion has resulted in potentially fatal brain damage.

Superman's solution to this? Simple:

Stick 'em in the Phantom Zone!

For the record, this is also Superman's solution to unforgivable crimes against Krypton, dealing with childhood friends with allergies, and especially malicious midgets.

Before Superman can go grab his projector and condemn his best friend to a thousand years in a dismal, shadowy hell where he'll be picked on by a guy who looks like Dr. Phil for being retarded, though, Brainiac--"the most terrible of all space villains!"--shows up and offers to save Jimmy's life.

Music, please:

And all that happens on one page. Suck it, decompression.

Once on board the ship, of course, Brainiac does save Jimmy's life by extracting his damaged brain and replacing it... with a computer! Thus, the world's first Terminator is born. But once he's released upon an unsuspecting Metropolis, where even his best friend doesn't know that he's a murderbot programmed for Superman's ultimate destruction, what unstoppable horrors will his emotionless robot mind unleash upon the world?!

Ant Farm Sand-Counting!

Charity Horse-Racing!

Phenomenally Disturbing Innuendo!

And that, along with forcing Jimmy to throw away all of his Superman merchandise and replace it with memorabilia relating to his own accomplishments, is apparently the full extent of Brainiac's sinister master plan. Well, that and turning some farm equipment invisible and waiting around for Superman to show up, but I think it's safe to say that Superman foils his dastardly schemes and returns Jimmy to his bowtie-sporting status quo.

What Happens Next? Who Cares!
I don't, and neither will YOU if you're here tomorrow night
when The ISB takes on the most brain-melting historical saga of the Silver Age!

If You're Thinking Of Missing It...

DON'T!

The Mind-Shattering Madness of Jimmy Olsen #86, Part One

2007-04-07T23:50:00.000-04:00

Between me, Jake Bell, Mike Sterling, and, well, the rest of the comics internet, I'm pretty certain that by this point, every single issue of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen has been smashed with the famously subtle sledgehammer that is web-based comedy and displayed for your reading pleasure. Even so, as strip-mined as that series has to be at this point, there comes a time in my life where I find a comic so mind-blowingly fantastic that I feel it is my duty--nay, my calling to share it with you.

Jimmy Olsen #86 is that comic.

That's right, folks: My personal feelings about Jimmy Olsen are already well-documented, but for the next three days, the ISB goes all-action--All-Mister-Action, that is--to rip the lid off this thing.

"But Chris," you may be saying to yourself, considering that most of my readers have gotten to the point where they speak out loud to their computers when reading reviews of forty-two year-old comics, "What makes this issue any different from the other Jimmy Olsen stories you've put up over the years?"

Well, Hypothetical Sam, to answer that, I can only offer you the splash page from tonight's selection:

JIMMY OLSEN: APE MAN!

And here's the best part: This is nowhere near the craziest thing that happens in this issue.

Of course, at this point, that's all relative. This particular adventure--a Leo Dorfman/George Papp classic--gets started with Jimmy presiding over a meeting of his own fan club, and really, that's about as egotistical as you can get. The point of this particular meeting seems to be that Jimmy's popularity has reached international status, to the point where a branch has just opened up in "The Heart of Africa."

Not coincidentally, said Heart of Africa also happens to be playing host to a couple of ne'er-do-wells involved in a shady scheme called "Project Kryptonite," which prompts Juma, the president of the local Olsen club, to contact Jimmy in a scene where he looks for all the world like a young Louis Farrakhan. Must be the bowtie.

Needless to say, Jimmy hops the next flight to Africa--which was apparently as specific a destination as you needed back in 1965--and meets Juma, who inexplicably presents him with a costume once worn by a life-sized Superman statue they used to have. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and will therefore be the plot point that the entire story hinges on. Sadly, the meet-n-greet can't last forever, and before long, Jimmy ends up running into our ol' pal Congo Bill!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the character--which is a perfectly acceptable hole to have in your knowldedge of DC's simian-based third-stringers--I'll sum up. Congo Bill is, essentially, your standard-issue Great White Hunter type, except that one day he acquired a magic ring that allowed him to switch minds with a golden ape to become Congorilla! The fact that there wasn't an in-depth discussion of the gorilla hanging out in Bill's body and picking bugs off of his highly uncomfortable coworkers until Rick Veitch's 1987 Swamp Thing annual was a tragedy.

Anyway, Bill's got a broken arm, presumably from an incident where his other half went on a rampage looking for his wire mother, and really doesn't feel like going on an adventure today, so he loans the Congorilla ring to Jimmy to help him with his mission to stop the mysterious "Project Kryptonite." So Jimmy tracks down the gorilla, doses himself with a sleeping pill, switches bodies with the ape, and then ties his own drugged, ape-brained body to a tree, which, conincidentally, is the same recurring nightmare I've been having since I saw Every Which Way But Loose when I was eight. After that's done, it's a simple matter for Congorilla Jimmy to hike fifteen thousand feet up Mount Kilamanjaro, conquering Africa's tallest mountain in the span of an afternoon:

Because a super-strong gorilla with a human brain might need an axe. That's why.

As it turns out, Project Kryptonite is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Taking advantage of the apparent fact that every single piece of the planet Krypton was shot directly at Earth when it exploded, two science minded thugs have invented a "Hyper-Magnetron," which can attract nearby chunks of Kryptonite from space and cause them to land nearby.

I'll go through that one more time: Two guys have invented a machine that can attract radioactive minerals from space, and they can't think of anything better to do with it than try to kill someone who saves the entire planet on a weekly basis. Silver-Age Villainy, folks.

Jimmy, of course, will not let this aggression stand, and so along with a tenuous resolution involving Jimmy building a snowman and dressing it up in the costume he got from Juma back on page three for some reason, the reader is blessed with a scene where a gorilla-man flies a helicopter through a deadly radioactive meteor swarm, or as I like to call it, the reason this comic exists:

Thus, the day is saved and everything pretty much works out okay. And yet, that is not the end of the story.

Comics in the sixties had a weird sort of fixation on explaining how legends and superstitions got started, like the story from Fantastic Four #5, where Dr. Doom's master plan is to use his time machine--his time machine!--to send the Thing back to Old Timey Pirate Days, where he ends up inspiring the "legend" of Blackbeard, completely ignoring the fact that Blackbeard actually did exist, and was not, by all accounts, an orange rock monster. That's pretty much what happens here, with Jimmy plagued by the sub-freezing temperatures of the summit of Mt. Kilamanjaro and the abject lack of pants that comes from inhabiting a gorilla body for an afternoon, and finding himself fending off a case of the sniffles by wrapping himself in a discarded tent while he breaks all the bad guys' equipment, thus giving them the idea that he is, in fact, the Abominable Snowman:

Because that whole sequence of events makes way more sense than, y'know, Yetis.

You've Seen Him In His Odd Purple Shorts!
You've Seen Him As An Ape-Man!
But Can Anything Prepare You For The Shock And Horror Of...

JIMMY OLSEN'S COMPUTER BRAIN!

Well, yeah, it probably can. But be here tomorrow on the ISB anyway for Part Two of our death-defying diatribe!

Friday Night Fights: Spell It M-I-S-T-Y!

2007-04-06T22:58:00.000-04:00

Tremble, mortals! For four bone-shattering weeks, Bahlactus has kicked off the weekend with the abject violence of Friday Night Fights, and this time, he took it all the way back to Avengers: Under Siege.

Now that's a fantastic story, no lie, but when it comes right down to it, anybody can smack Jarvis around once he's tied up...

But it takes Misty Knight to punch a shark right in the face:

(From Classic X-Men #13, by Claremont and Bolton!)

I didn't even have to change the dialogue. And that's real.

The Week In Ink: 4-04-07

2007-04-05T23:48:00.000-04:00

As tragic as it might seem, there are some weeks where I don't read a single comic that features a kick to the face. It's shocking, I know, but as the internet's premiere outspoken advocate of sequential violence, I like to think that I'm doing my part to make sure it doesn't happen too often.

And then there are weeks like this one, where people are getting stiff-legged everywhere I look. All-New Atom, Spider-Man Family, 'Tec, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, heck, even Frank Castle takes a stiletto heel to the jaw in this week's Punisher, and it's leaving me with almost too much to choose from when it comes time to start things up around here. But then I stop to think about it, and realize that while there may be a lot of comics with face-kicks in them...

...there was only one that featured Iron Fist kicking somebody right in the jaw while another guy named Iron Fist jumped behind him shooting kung fu-powered handguns like lightning from the hand of God.

I don't know if I've mentioned this lately, but I freakin' love comic books.

So much so, in fact, that I bought all this...

...and now plan on giving up yet another night's worth of sleep to bring you the internet's jazziest comics reviews! It all starts here!

Comics

52: Week 48: With as good as this one's been over the past few weeks, the jarring return back to mediocrity was pretty much inevitable, and, well, here it is. The most noticeable thing, of course, is the art, and while Darick Robertson did a great job with the Ralph Dibny issue back in February and does a fine full-page shot of Renee Montoya's first official appearance as the Question, the rest of the issue's marked by scenes that just feel a little off. It's not all his fault, though: If Nightwing's hasty explanation for why the "twice-named daughter of Cain" doesn't refer to Batgirl (you know, the twice-named daughter of David Cain), there'd still be the Crime Bible to deal with. That thing gets more and more ludicrous every time it shows up, and I'm pretty sure that Bruno Manheim reading the reasons that it's taking him so long to get around to stabbing Batwoman out loud pushes the goofiness quotient right into critical mass.

Don't get me wrong: Normally, being way over the top in a story revolving around something called the Crime Bible would only make it better, but when it's a serious plot element that's coming off as a lot sillier than, say, the Cricketron, there might be a problem here. Fortunately, there is something that saves it. Unfortunately, it's the last-page teaser and the ad for next week's issue, which has one of the most radical covers I've ever seen. But I'll get back to that next week.

Avengers: The Initiative #1: I've been a fan of Dan Slott's since he was on Batman Adventures and up through his current run with She-Hulk, so I've been looking forward to his take on the post-Civil War super-hero scene since it was first announced. As for how it worked out, well, the word that immediately springs to mind is "underwhelmed." I don't actually think it's a bad comic by any means--it is, in fact, a perfectly interesting start for a new series that does a quick job of putting the characters together and doesn't waste a second before it gets around to introducing the element of danger--but it's not quite as good as I wanted it to be. For one thing, there are certain things that really ought to be addressed when they crop up in a script, like the fact that Gauntlet spends a good piece of time badmouthing the New Warriors while standing about ten feet away from Rage. And really, whomever it was over at SHIELD who thought of putting the new untrained super-hero proving ground at Stamford lacks planning skills almost commensurate with whomever it was who decided to just figure out what people's super-powers were by throwing them into a fully-operational Danger Room. And that's a bad move that's almost on par with covering up the members of Nextwave on the cover with the book's logo.

But like I said, it's not all bad. In fact, the most surprising aspect of the book comes from artist Stefano Caselli and colorist Daniele Rudoni. These are, after all, the same people who brought us the mind-shatteringly horrible art of Civil War: Young Avengers and Runaways, but Caselli's pencils are much tighter, and while Rudoni hasn't completely abandoned the idea of panels where everything's a certain shade of pastel pink, it's far less often and much more well-done than it was previously. There's a lot of room for improvement here, but it's not a horrible start, and at this point, it just feels like a matter of seeing when it gets better, not if.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #2: "Season 8" continues to roll right on out, and while I liked the last issue a heck of a lot, this one pretty much blows it right out of the water. I mean really: The dialogue on the last page might as well have been "General, would you care to step outside?" Tell me that wouldn't have been great and I'll call you a liar, buster brown.

Anyway, if there's one thing we've learned from Joss Whedon over the past few years of Astonishing X-Men, it's that that guy knows how to write exciting comic books, and on that front, Buffy does not disappoint. It is, after all, a comic that opens with an all-girl ninja Royal Rumble, closes with a legion of unkillable zombies laying siege to a castle, and still manages to take time in the middle for conspiracy theories, a lengthy dream sequence, and witches fighting slayers in their pajamas. It's everything that's solid and fun about the show, done on the comics page without the constraints of a special effects budget, and if you're a fan, that works out to be a pretty awesome combination.

Detective Comics #831: I have never and will never pass up a chance to read a Paul Dini Harley Quinn story, but I just can't help imagining how much more awesome this issue would've been if it'd been drawn by Darwyn Cooke or Bruce Timm. I don't mean to dis Don Kramer here--because really, most comics would be better with art by Darwyn Cooke or Bruce Timm--but since he's stepped in to fill the gap that J.H. Williams III left after two issues, he's just sort of felt like a fill-in artist, and that's never really been more evident than here. As for the story itself, the plot plays out like the logical continuation of two of Dini's Animated Series episodes, "Harley's Holiday" and "Harlequinade" (minus the musical number), and while those represent some of Dini's best work on the show, it makes the whole thing more than a little predictable.

It's all worth it, though, for the two page flashback of the Ventriloquist in Arkham. It's the sort of thing that reminds you that Batman's got the most interesting group of villains in comics, and if you haven't been reading Dini's work with this book lately, you really ought to jump on the new trade. It's good stuff.

ISB BEST OF THE WEEK

The Immortal Iron Fist #4: There's not really a whole lot I feel I can add to the picture that leads off tonight's post, but it always bears repeating: Immortal Iron Fist has got it all. I mean it: Hydra agents, giant robot spiders, Sal Buscema, two guys named Iron Fist... Heck, it even opens with a Victorian gentleman in a top hat crashing an Art Nouveau airship into a city of magical kung fu warriors and then threatening them with a crazy four-barrelled pistol, and if that's not the kind of secret origin that gets you excited, then why are you reading comics?

It's even got the Steel Serpent, and for those of you who don't know, here's the short version: he's a guy who showed up, stole Danny Rand's Iron Fist power, and then kicked the crap out of him for a while until Danny finally hit him so hard that he exploded, and the amazing thing about that is that it's not nearly as awesome as what actually happens in this issue. It's amazingly well-done from top to bottom, with Brubaker and Fraction delivering a story that hit the ground running in #1 and continues to roll along, not missing a single beat as they weave a whole new series of legends and adversaries for the character. It's no overstatement to say that this is Iron Fist as he was always meant to be, and every issue just makes me like it more. Great stuff.
.

Incredible Hulk #105: It's not often that I'm wrong--or at least, it's not often that I admit that I'm wrong--but this issue marks the end of a storyline that I was sure I was going to hate. Needless to say, that wasn't the case, but while I thought that this one made an enjoyable and satisfying--if a little predictable--ending for "Planet Hulk," there are some out there on this grand old internet of ours that felt differently.

I probably shouldn't even mention it (because really, I complain about more than my fair share of comics), but honestly: If you've ever found yourself complaining that someone at Marvel has totally messed up the the Hulk by having something bad happen to him, then you are probably retarded. He's the Hulk. Bad things happening to him is pretty much his entire deal, and is in fact what generally causes him to become the Hulk in the first place. You can't possibly want to read a story where nothing bad happens to the Hulk, because then he'd NEVER TURN INTO THE HULK IN THE FIRST PLACE, and there'd be no story. Add to that the fact that you're complaining about a writer killing off a character that he introduced to the book in order to give the Hulk the motivation to come back and go apeshit on everybody (which we all knew was coming well before the words "World War Hulk" were ever written down), and... Well, the mind boggles.

Okay, tangent over. Suffice to say that it's good stuff, and features a last page that is both scientifically impossible and scientifically awesome. Believe it!

Madman Atomic Comics #1: I hate to admit it, but up until his work on X-Force/X-Statix, I'd never actually read anything by Mike Allred, although I'd always been aware of his work. This means, of course, that I pretty much missed out entirely on Madman, and while I've already taken steps to correct this by ordering the potentially life-threatening Madman Gargantua, which I'd assumed would come out before this one to catch me up. Clearly, this was not the case, but Allred kicks things off here with a suitably crazy recap issue (complete with one of the best titles I've seen in a while), and it doesn't take any prior knowledge to enjoy that guy's artwork. It's beautiful, with the phenomenal sense of motion that characterizes Allred's work, and even if he wasn't going out of his way to make it accessable, it'd be well worth it.

Omega Flight #1: When Omega Flight was first solicited, I was holding out to see how it actually was before I picked it up since there's really only one character involved that I care about, but reading over Blood Oath again last week reminded me of how much I really liked Mike Oeming and Scott Kolins on that book, so I went ahead and picked it up Wednesday. It is, of course, nowhere near as awesome as that story was--which I think we can all agree is because of a complete and utter lack of Volstagg--but even taking that into account, this first issue misses its mark in a fair number of places. Some of the dialogue--especially in the scenes with Walter Langkowski and Agent Brown--is clumsy and poorly constructed, with run-on sentences that I had to read three or four times to make sense of. And while I'm all for seeing the Wrecking Crew, and freely admit that they have a long and storied history of making wild threats at Canadian super-heroes, a grand total of five exclamation points capping off the last sentence in the book seems like a little too much.

There's enough here to keep me around for the next issue--like the promise of Spacehorse and his magic hammer--but I'm not holding out a lot of hope here.

Runaways #25: I think I've mentioned it before, but when we were talking about how much it sucked that Brian K. Vaughan was leaving Runaways after it was first announced, Tug said, and I quote, "The only way it's going to be any good is if they get, I dunno, Joss Whedon or something." That, as it turns out, was exactly what they were doing, which brings us to Whedon's first issue, which does pretty well for itself. It's not much of a surprise, considering that Whedon's no stranger to writing about teenagers with super-powers (see above), but there are a few rough spots to mention, like the possibility that the move from LA to New York could be permanent, but for me, it really all comes down to one thing: The Punisher.

I'm not saying that I'm an expert on the character--although I did read through about 320 issues in the span of three weeks a couple years ago--but I have a hard time believing that Frank Castle would threaten children, especially given the actual reason he goes around killing people. There's no getting around the fact that he's not a good person, and that is in fact half the fun of the character, but for him to work, there has to be some possibility of sympathy, and hurting kids takes that away with the quickness. I'll buy him trying to shoot Chase; he's old enough to know better and has a dinosaur. But pointing a gun at a presumably defenseless twelve year-old girl like Molly Hayes? That's a bit of a stretch. Of course, it wouldn't be nearly as dramatic if he was just standing there hanging out, and there's a distinct possibility that I'm the only one emotionally invested enough in both the Runaways and the Punisher to be bothered by it, but it stuck out. Other than that, though, everything's swell.

And that's this week's roundup. If you have any questions on anything I bought but didn't mention, or if you just want to hear me talk about how much I love it when the Legion pulls a fast one on their enemies or gripe about the latest issue of Superman, feel free to leave a comment.

In the meantime, I'll be over here, thinking way too much about the fundamental aspects of Frank Castle as a protagonist.

What's Batman Writing?

2007-04-04T23:41:00.000-04:00

I'm late to the party on this one, but a few days ago, Brandon of Random Panels posted a picture of Batman recapturing the lost art of letter-writing and sent out the call to the Memeosphere to contribute.

But really, when springtime rolls around and a young man breaks into a sweat and considers a loaded gun as his only alternative...

...can it be anything but love?

Chris vs. Previews: April 2007, Part Two

2007-04-03T22:02:00.000-04:00

With this post, it'll be three months that I've been doing these Previews Round-Ups, and while I've stuck to the tried-and-true format of doing the major publishers one day and the small press companies the next up to this point, I've been seriously considering an adjustment to that little formula.

I mean really--and I say this as someone who owns more shirts from Graphitti Designs than any sane person ought to--I could go on about the apparel section alone for days. Why?

Because this is the third month in a row that they have offered this:

The mind boggles.

But there'll be time enough for that later! For now, there's still half a catalog to get through, and we're burning daylight here!

P.222: Amaze Ink/Slave Labor Graphics: I've mentioned it once or twice, but it really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone familiar with my sense of humor that I rank Evan Dorkin right up there with Michael Kupperman and Kyle Baker as one of--if not the--funniest creators in comics today. So needless to say, I'm looking forward to Biff! Bam! Pow!, the first new comic that he's put out since October.

Because really, a comic about a crime-fighting Interstellar Boxing Champ named "One-Punch Goldberg" is pretty much exactly what I want to read.

P.265: Dynamite Entertainment: In addition to their first issue of The Boys now that they've acquired it from DC under mysterious (to me, at least) circumstances, this month's output from DE--or as I like to call them, The Last Thing We Need Comics, Inc--includes nine titles with a grand total of thirty covers between them. Admittedly, this is lagging behind Avatar's 7:32 ratio, but considering that they've managed to find something even more tasteless than the Lady Death vs. Pandora bondage cover with their Dead Baby homage to Nevermind, I'm going to have to award this round to Dynamite.

Well-played, DE. Well-played.

P.289: Digital Manga Publishing: Given my previous comments about Manga in last night's post and the fact that you're not reading this on a LiveJournal account, you've probably already deduced that my interest in yaoi is pretty much nil. Even so, if DMP keeps making ads like this...

...then they can make whatever the hell they want, because that is the funniest thing I have ever seen.

P.300: First Second: Long-time ISB readers are probably familiar with the fact that I've developed a pretty cordial relationship with the good people over at First Second based on the fact that they send me their books, I flip out about how awesome they are, and everybody goes home happy. Even if it wasn't for that, though, I'd still be telling you to order Eddie Campbell's The Black Diamond Detective Agency, purely on the basis that his last book from :01, Fate of the Artist, stands alongside American Born Chinese as one of the best graphic novels I've read in the past year, and I can pretty much guarantee that you won't want to miss it.

P.384: Zenescope Entertainment: When the solicitations for Return to Wonderland went up online, I recieved an email from Matt Algren, who claimed that it was my duty as an American to once again lay my own sanity on the line and review a series that includes a splash page that he described this way:

That's a grown up Alice of Alice in Wonderland, who has just attempted suicide in a bubble bath (hawt!!!) and has been found by her daughter, who has apparently dragged her out of the tub and put the bubbles in just the right position so she could be drawn nekked as she lay dying all splayed out on the floor. (2x hawt!!! . . . I guess.)

Well, Matt, as much as I hate to disappoint, I've leafed through an issue of Grimm Fairy Tales, and those things are damn near incomprehensible. Sure, I read Tarot and Anita Blake, and while the things that happen in those books are really, really stupid, there are at least things happening. But with this stuff, aside from poorly presented fetishism for latent pedophiles, there's just not a whole lot there.

Books

P.400: 52: The Novel: ... Seriously?

Calendars

P.415: Okay, before we go any further, I feel like I should warn you that things are about to get really, really geeky, even by the standards of a comic book blog. Heck, they're about to get geeky even by the standards of a comic book blog that devoted the better part of a week to discussing the majesty that is Volstagg, so for those of you who are already perilously close to nerd overload, I'll meet you down at the T-Shirt section.

Okay, anybody still here? All right, this is just between us here, and it's a question in two parts that I want you to think very carefully before you answer:

1. Who would win in a fight between Number Six and the Daleks?

2. How freakin' awesome would that be?

Apparel

Ah, the apparel section! There's really no better way to cleanse the palate of one's own forays into the abyss than by mocking products directed at those even worse off than me! Whatcha got for me, T-Shirt Section?!

P.441 Jimmy Olsen T-Shirt:

Ah, crap. Yeah... I'm gonna need that.

Come on, there's got to be something in here I can poke fun at to deflect my own misgivings about hypothetical mid-60s British Sci-Fi matchups!

P.445: Dragon Catcher Double-Sided T-Shirt:

Ah, that's better. Thanks, Previews! I knew you wouldn't let me down!

And that's the catalog. If anything caught your eye this time--or if you have any responses to my estion-quay about Atrick-pay Goohan-McAy--feel free to leave a comment!

Chris vs. Previews: April, 2007, Part One

2007-04-03T01:16:00.000-04:00

As sad as I am to bid farewell to the internet's #1 Volstagg Fan-Site, the moment has passed. Sadly, a world where webmasters battle it out amongst each other to prove their devotion to the Lion of Asgard must remain a beautiful, beautiful dream. Instead, it's back to normal here at the ISB, and with the start of a new month, that means it's time for another stern, uncompromising look at Transformers movie adaptations, anime t-shirts, and five hundred fifty-eight more pages of stuff nobody really needs!

Well, except that Many Transformations of Jimmy Olsen trade. Yeah... you're gonna need that.

But could there be any other must-haves this time out? Gird thy loins*, gentle reader, because tonight, it's the major publishers!

Dark Horse Comics

P.42: Gunsmith Cats Revised Edition v.3 and P.43: Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service v.4: It's been a few years since I've described myself as a manga reader, but if my anticipation at getting another huge slab of Kenichi Sonada's work that focuses exclusively on pretty girls blowing things up wasn't a good enough sign that I'm back on the train, then my excitement about a crossover with Mail in the next volume of Kurosagi should be a pretty big clue.

It's just that... I mean... I don't have to wear one of those stupid headbands, do I?

DC Comics

P.68: Action Comics #851: Owing to the fact that Geoff Johns and Richard Donner were delivering a pretty patently unnecessary story, I dropped Action from my subscription a few months ago. Still, if I have proven anything over the past two years here on the ISB, it's that I have pretty much no ability whatsoever to say no to an offer like "Superman fights the Superman Revenge Squad... IN 3-D!"

Now if it was only on something that was as guaranteed-awesome as that new All-Star Superman over on p.70, we'd be set.

P.72: The Amazing Transformations of Jimmy Olsen TP: At this point, my pure, unwavering devotion to Superman's Pal is a matter of public record, but how could anyone turn down stories featuring Porcupine Jimmy, Bizarro Jimmy, Fat Jimmy, Wolfman Jimmy, Suspiciously Phallic-Headed Jimmy, and--of course--Six-Armed Kolchak The Nightstalker Jimmy! You can't, and that is science!

P.74: Countdown #47-41: You know what the DC Universe needs? More goth cheerleaders.

P.81: Justice League of America #10: At this point, anything I can say about Michael Turner's hilariously atrocious cover for this issue--which features a glassy-eyed Power Girl sprouting a badonkadonk from the middle of her curiously elongated thorax in an image that'll make blood shoot out of your nose like a fire hydrant if you stop to think about how it's right next to Kirby art--would be redundant at best, but man: Someone got paid to draw that.

P.99: Samurai Commando Mission 1549, v.1: My earlier comments about manga aside, I'll always have a little bit of a soft spot for anything that produces titles like that one. But what's really shocking here is that I'm pretty sure this thing is based on the same source material that brought us Sonny Chiba's GI Samurai, which has one of the single greatest trailers I have ever seen, owing to the fact that it features Sonny Chiba taking out a small army of Samurai with a helicopter.

P.113: Clubbing GN: Okay: Confession time. I kinda... sorta... really like Josh Howard's art. There you have it, folks, my big secret's out: I like really angular drawings of goth chicks. Sadly, it is just how I roll.

Unfortunately, I really can't stand him as a writer, and so aside from the pair of pinup books he's put out (the second of which features a little too much sasquatch for my taste), my collection's remained realtively Howard-Free. With this one, though, I'm already excited about the new Minx titles, and with a script by Andi Watson, I'm relatively sure that I won't be seeing any zombie cheerleaders hitting each other with axes or something.

P.130: DC MiniMates Sgt. Rock & Blackhawk 2-Pack:

Translation: "Hey Chris Sims! Buy some more little action figures!" "Okay!"

Image Comcs

P.166: Spawn 2.5 Inch Kubricks:

Translation: "Hey Chris Sims! Buy some more little action figures." "... Yeah, I'm good, thanks."

Marvel Comics

P.23: Avengers Classic #1: On the one hand, I'm pretty sure that the last thing we really need at this point is a fourth ongoing Avengers title, but on the other, it'd be nice if more of them were actually, you know, good, and since this thing's got ISB favorites Dwayne McDuffie, Mike Oeming, Kevin Maguire and Art Adams involved--not to mention a story where the Hulk pretends to be a robot that is also a clown in order to accomplish absolutely nothing--that's not really the sort of thing I want to say no to.

P29: Daredevil: Battlin' Jack Murdock #1 (of 4): "Learn the story of Daredevil's father--the comic-book icon Battlin' Jack Murock!"

Seriously?

P.34: Immortal Iron Fist #7: Tom Foss at The Fortress of Soliloquy caught this one when it first showed up online, and immediately declared that my hard work has paid off, and that we have finally reached the point where Marvel is publishing comics specifically for me. His evidence? The single greatest solicitation since Nextwave ended (with his emphasis preserved for effect):

"Her name was Wu Ao-Shi, and she was known as the Pirate Queen of Pinghai Bay... and that all came after she left K'un-Lun and took the power of the Iron Fist with her. Kicking her way out of the pages of THE IMMORTAL IRON FIST #2, this stand-alone issue tells the story of Wu Ao-Shi, from the moment she became the first woman to touch the heart of Shou-Lao the Undying to her mysterious, controversial, and epic ending. At long last, America, someone has combined pirates, kicking, girls, and Iron fist into a single comic book. You're welcome."

Truly, this is the pinnacle of civilization.

P.82: Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Guilty Pleasures v.1 HC (DM Exclusive): Despite the fact that it's listed as being twenty-four pages longer than the regular edition (although both contain the extra story pages, according to the solicits), I have not been contacted about the inclusion of my exhaustively researched annotations of the series as a "bonus feature" in the Direct Market hardcover collection, which fans of dubious literature will no doubt regard as a tragedy of the highest order.

And that's the big hitters for this month. Be here tomorrow for the rest of them, though, including another harrowing journey into the Heart of Darkness that is the Apparel Section! Believe it!

*: Sorry, leftover Volstaggism.

AFD 2007: Blood Oath In 30 Seconds

2007-04-01T01:01:00.000-04:00

[Instead of the normal layout, visitors to the ISB on April 1, 2007 were greeded instead with the shocking pink sight of Fatasgardian.net: The World's #1 Volstagg Fan-Page!, complete with its own This was, of course, intended to be a joke, despite the fact that I pretty much already have the world's #1 Volstagg fan-site. Anyway, in an effort at self-parody, I spent my workday on a "30 Second" recap of Thor: Blood Oath that I hope everybody got a kick out of. For the full effect, check out these pictures!]

You've probably all heard about it already, but for those of you who have missed out on the latest controversey, well, Jerry (the idiot who runs TubbyViking.com, the world's SECOND best Volstagg Fan-Site) is at it again.

In his latest "fan"-fiction (and I use the term loosely, Jerry), "My Dinner With Volstagg," he writes about a guy named Barry who becomes Volstagg's best friend on Midgard (Earth) and then spends the second half of the story having Volstagg talk about how much better he is than his old friend, Rick Tims.

Not Cool, Jerry!!!!

Did you really think I wouldn't be able to see through your "clever" ruse? You're not Loki, pal, and your little schemes are only showing the world of V-Stagg Fandom how petty you really are!

But far be it from me to sink to your level! Instead, I'm offering up what everyone REALLY wants to see: The latest installment in my comprehensive series adaptating every major appearance of the Lion of Asgard! And this time, it's Mike Oeming and Scott Kolins' voluminously awesome mini-series, Blood Oath!

Click any of the pictures to view them at a size worthy of the greatest of the Warriors Three!

I think that shows who the REAL #1 Volstagger is around here, Jerry.

More AFD Shennanigans:

| AFD 2006: chris's vulnerable emo blog |

Friday Night Fights: A Monster Unleashed!

2007-03-31T00:59:00.000-04:00

Before I get to the violence that has been mandated by decree of Bahlactus, allow me to pose a question to you, gentle reader.

What is the most exciting phrase you can possibly imagine seeing in a comic book?

Take a moment to think about that, because there are certainly a lot of viable options here. "By Bob Haney and Jim Aparo," for instance, almost guarantees twenty-two pages of awesome whenever it shows up, and when Jack Kirby's promising you "a conflict that dwarfs the infinite," it's pretty safe to say that you're in for a good time.

When you get right down to it though, has there ever really been a match for "NAZI FRANKENSTEIN?!"

Yes, rising from the grave to terrorize the pages of Invaders #31, it's this week's FNF contender, the Fascist Flesh Golem as only Mighty Marvel could bring it, courtesy of Don Glut and Chic Stone in a titanic tale they just had to call..

I think that's quite enough alliteration for one night, don't you?

Anyway, there's the merest hint of a story attatched to this thing, but when you're working with an idea like NAZI FRANKENSTEIN, all you really need to know for the story is contained in those two simple words. Suffice to say that the Captain America and Bucky hear about a mysterious Nazi plot centering around a small Bavarian village (complete with its own castle, of course) that the Human Torch and Toro went to investigate and never returned, they decide to check it out.

The castle, of course, is Castle Frankenstein, the site of all the standard old legends, which--as tends to happen with these things--turn out to be one hundred percent true. Result?

Nazi Frankenstein drops a stiff-arm the likes of which have never been seen on Captain America, at the behest of his creator, the wheelchair bound Dr. Basil Frankenstein. Basil is, of course, a Nazi, and has not only furthered his ancestor's research into re-animating corpses, but has also concocted a plan to kill Cap and transplant his own brain into Steve Rogers' body so that he can better love his lady.

No, really.

Needless to say, it doesn't quite pan out for ol' Basil, and the Monster is revealed to be a mere pawn in Basil's evil scheme, a gentle soul that never wanted to obey his master's fascistic commands in the first place, which prompts the Human torch to try to capture him without actually hurting him.

And then Namor shows up and punches the living crap out of him anyway, because hey: Nazi Frankenstein.

And that is just how the Avenging Son rolls. Booyakasha!

The Week In Ink: 3-28-07

2007-03-30T00:14:00.000-04:00

Aw, come on, is it really Thursday night already? I mean, I seriously just did this. Ah well, that's what I get for taking last week off.

Anyway, if there's one thing I've learned in seventeen months of doing this every week, it is this:

Sometimes, Batman kicks the living crap out of people. And really, isn't that exactly the sort of thing that brings us here tonight for the Internet's Snappiest Comics Reviews? I'd like to think so.

So for those of you keeping score at home, here's what came home with me this week...

...And here's what I thought about it!

Comics

Batman #664: As much as I actually ended up enjoying the last issue when it was all said and done, I've got to say that it's nice to get a Grant Morrison Batman story that's an actual comic, and not a well-written, poorly illustrated novella. Of course, that's not to say that this issue's completely without its problems, either. As you can probably tell from the image that leads off tonight's post and the fact that there's a sequence devoted to Batman kicking faces and intimidating the heck out of what appears to be the DC Universe version of Farnsworth Bentley, there's a heck of a lot to like about this one. Still, as much as I enjoy seeing smooth-as-silk Bruce Wayne hitting the slopes, charming the ladies and Batmanning it up a little bit, the whole opening sequence feels more than a little tacked on and extraneous here. It could just be the lack of context, but it feels like a framing sequence that never gets around to ending, and while that could certainly be fixed in the next issue, it sticks out like a sore thumb in this one.

Of course, when you get right down to it, it's all worth it just to see Batman handing out Bruce Wayne's business card to the wayward youth of Gotham City and telling them to go get an honest job. I'm a sucker for that stuff.

Catwoman #65: I noticed this week that Catwoman isn't selling nearly as well as it should be, and with an issue like this one--which contains killer robots, explosions, time travel, and a heroine who smack-talks the cornerstone of the DC Universe just because she isn't in any mood to deal with him at the moment--I am utterly mystified as to why. I've been meaning to go back and pick up the issues before the jump for a while now, but ever since I hopped back on for "One Year Later," Will Pfeifer and David Lopez have done nothing but tell some phenomenally entertaining stories, and if you've missed them, check out the trade. You won't be disappointed.

Fables #59: I've mentioned it a few times here on the ISB, but it bears repeating that Superman Adventures #41 is easily one of my single favorite comic books of all time. If you haven't read it, Mark Millar closes out his incredible run with an issue called "22 Stories in a Single Bound," wherein there's a full story from beginning to end on every page, with everything from a week in the life of Lois Lane to Mr. Mxyzptlk versus Batman.

So what, you might well be asking yourself, does this have to do with Fables? Well, in this issue, Bill Willingham takes a break from the regular trials and tribulations of everyone's favorite myths and legends to pull a similar gimmick with vignettes that answer questions sent in by readers. There isn't one on every page, but he does manage to cram in eleven quick stories--each by a different artist, ranging from Street Angel's Jim Rugg to Barry Kitson--and while the events discussed are largely inconsequential to the overall plot, they're a heck of a lot of fun to read through. It's another great issue, and it'd be worth it at twice the price just for the scene with the new Three Little Pigs. Excellent stuff.

Fantastic Four #544: Ever since he came on to wrap up the events of Civil War, it's been pretty obvious that Dwayne McDuffie's been having a lot of fun with the title. I'm pretty sure that feeling has a lot to do with the fact that he's done everything short of addressing the reader by name in the stories, whether it's his quick, sensible fix for J. Michael Straczynski's laughable "HUAC Was Right!" portrayal of Reed Richards, or the Thing throwing his two cents into the debate over whether Reed's been acting out of character for the past year. With this one, though, how can you not have a good laugh with him at the idea of Johnny and Ben putting on new black costumes so that everybody'll match at the same time that Spider-Man's running around in his black costume for no apparent reason? It's a hoot.

As for the story itself, McDuffie's picking up where he left off with last year's incredible (and thoroughly underrated) Beyond! with a story that manages to go from Gravity's descrated grave to the Blue Area of the Moon to the outer reaches of space in the span of ten pages, and that's the sort of pacing I can get behind.

Firestorm: The Nuclear Man #34: And just in case you're still wondering why I like Dwayne McDuffie so much, well, there's this issue, which features Firestorm and Mr. Miracle slugging it out with the Female Furies while Orion takes on Stompa--whose super-power is essentially that she can kick you in the face until you die--in a battle of who can hit the other person with more cars.

Man that is awesome.

Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose #43: Jim Balent may actually be the most likeable creator in comics, but more on that in a second; we really ought to at least attempt a plot summary here. In this standalone epic, Tarot shows up at somebody's house for a meeting, only to find herself mysteriously alone. Of course, Tarot being Tarot, she immediately takes off her clothes and gets sucked through a swirling green vortex into a world inhabited by the spirits of dreams people have given up on, which is represented here by a knife-weilding ballerina with her vagina sewn up with pink ribbon.

Yes, really. No, I don't know either.

Anyway, and I swear this is all true, Tarot eventually fights her way through a crowd of demons (which are also naked women) and an evil scarecrow (which is also a naked woman) before finding a doorway in a tree (which is also a naked woman), popping back into our dimension in the living room of... a naked woman. This last one's fat, though--or as Balent seems to prefer saying, fluffy--and is upset because she's never going to be as hot as Tarot, but Tarot reminds her that blah blah blah be true to yourself blah blah we're all beautiful blah blah diff'rent strokes to move the world. Which, really, is pretty easy to say when you're Tarot, but it's the closest thing to a moral of the story you're going to find, so I'll take what I can get.

The real gem, though, comes from the always-amazing letters page, where a Yaoi fan writes in to ask if the Talent would ever drop some man-on-man action into the pages of Tarot, which prompts him to claim--in what appears to be total innocence--that Tarot's not just a porn fantasy for straight men. Why, he's got girls making out with each other and having threesomes all the time! Tell me that's not worth $2.99 every two months, and I'll call you a liar, pal.

Texas Strangers #1: With a new all-ages series, Antony Johnston, Dan Evans III, and Mario Boon seem to be taking the same path that Kurt Busiek and Carlos Pacheco used for Arrowsmith, slapping the traditional magic-and-monsters aspects of the fantasy genre and applying them to another setting. In Arrowsmith it was World War I, but here, it's the Wild West, and while that's an idea with a heck of a lot of potential, this one honestly doesn't stand out as Johnston's best work.

Of course, that's a bar that's been set pretty high with stuff like Wasteland and The Long Haul (both Johnston's takes on the Western genre), and to be fair, the second half of the story runs a lot smoother than the first, but there just seems to be something missing. Fortunately for Johnston, Evans, and Boon, though, there's enough good stuff here that I'm willing to give the series the benefit of the doubt when it comes to first-issue awkwardness, and stick around to see if it keeps picking up next month, too.

ISB BEST OF THE WEEK

Usagi Yojimbo #101: This really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, but when it's all said and done, I have no doube that Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo is going to go down as one of the greatest epics in comic book history.

I've got a few of the trade paperbacks and the Art of Usagi Yojimbo book, but this is the first single issue with actual story that I've ever bought, and I honestly don't think I could've picked a better time to jump on. Done with Sakai's consummate skill in everything from the clean linework to the distinctive lettering, it revolves around a dream Usagi has after being poisoned by ninjas--evil ninjas, naturally--where he's been taken over by the spirit of Jei, a seemingly indestructable madman who believes he's been sent on a mission from the gods to rid the world of sinners.

Considering that the last time I saw Jei, he and Usagi were having a throwdown that pretty much defined the term "battle to the death" over the fate of the Grasscutter, that was a pretty exciting thing to see here, but even without any prior knowledge, I can't imagine not enjoying this story. Sakai's a master at visual shorthand, and with the way the evil Usagi in the dream mows down his opponents while gleefully speaking to them in word balloons decorated with skulls, you'll get everything you need to know without the story slowing down a bit. It's an absolutely fantastic comic, and I'm kicking myself for waiting this long to jump on. Excellent, excellent stuff.

Wonder Woman #6: I'll be honest with you: I'm always a little bit wary when writers from other fields make the move over to comics. After all, for every Paul Dini or Greg Rucka there's a Brad Meltzer or a Ron Zimmerman just waiting in the wings, and if her first issue's any indication of how the rest of her run's going to go, I think it's pretty safe to throw Jodi Picoult right into Group 2. Granted, it's not the worst comic I've read all week, but, well, Tarot came out, and it was still a pretty heavy contender.

Why? Simply put, it's a mess. Picoult's Wonder Woman comes off as both petulant and inept, and Nemesis--who once stared down Amanda Waller in the pages of Suicide Squad--has been relegated to the status of a whiny, bumbling idiot sidekick. None of these are the qualities that I'd really care to see in my comics, but when it's coming as part of a well-publicized push to get Wonder Woman back on track as one of the iconic figures of the DC Universe, not to mention the iconic model of the strong heroine, it's pretty ridiculous. Even Drew Johnson appears to be delivering his pencils entirely via phone, and I know that guy can draw Wonder Woman, because I've got the issues he worked on two years ago during Rucka's run. At the very least, it's a disappointment after the promise that Alan Heinberg showed with the initial relaunch (which has since vanished into the ether under the pressure of a rigorous quarterly deadline schedule) and Mark Andreyko's excellent portrayal of the character in Manhunter, and I honestly can't see it improving from here.

So you know what that means.

Yeah, I have no idea what that picture's about, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Anyway, that's all for the reviews this week. As always, if you have any questions about something I didn't mention, or if you just want to mention that Blue Beetle's turned out to be a surprisingly solid read every month, feel free to leave a comment.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to head out to the DMV... and renew my License to Ill.

The Annotated Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #5

2007-03-28T23:46:00.000-04:00

Despite the recent delays in the posting schedule here on the ISB, time and tide wait for no man, especially where the wonderfully atrocious adventures of everyone's third-favorite Vampire Hunter are concerned.

And that's why our crack research department leapt into action with last week's release of Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #5, even going so far as to look up one (1) thing on Wikipedia--the human race's greatest repository of pro wrestling holds and anime-based knowledge--in an effort to explain just what the heck is supposed to be going on in this thing.

It's an exhausting process, I assure you, but it must be done. Grab a copy of your own and follow along!

1.1: This issue opens up directly after the events of #4, with the story pausing only long enough for Anita to grab a shower, which apparently has the effect of washing every last bit of pigmentation out of her skin. Except, of course, for her scars, which tend to look like oddly-placed grape juice rorschach tests.

1.5: Anita's weapon of choice for this issue is the compact "Firestar 9mm." Unfortunately, this particular handgun was never covered in my definitive firearm reference, Punisher Armory, and so no further information is available.

1.6: Oh what is this?

Yes, in an effort to blend in while still packing heat, Anita apparently decides that it's a good idea to walk around in public sporting a white nightshirt, black bike shorts, and a pair of Nikes with Flashdance-esque rolled down socks. The fact that she's willing to risk direct sunlight on so much of her clown-white skin could be further indication of her developing super-powers.

2.5: Is this Anita's boss Bert Vaughn (described in previous panels as "a scalawag") or Crack Stuntman, the voice of Gunhaver on TV's Cheat Commandos?

U-DECIDE!

5.4:

That's what she said.

5.6: In a scene that kicks off here and runs for the next three pages, Anita--whose head appears to be in imminent danger of being devoured wholesale by her own Slashlike hair--tries to talk some albino gothtard's equally pallid, elfin mother out of letting him join the ranks of the Living Dead. At first, this might seem like she's worrying way too much about this guy, but once you realize that she's doing her level best to keep the world from having to deal with some whiny, immortal emo kid, you start to realize that Anita might not be that bad after all.

9.4: Hey everybody, it's Phillip!

For those of you whose long-term memories were irrepairably damaged by the sight of the Wererat King and his Daisy Dukes, Phillip's a male stripper and vampire fetishist from way back in #1. He's slightly less manly than the Oxygen television network, and--like every other supporting character in the book thus far--will be playing the role of Anita's codependent sidekick for the duration of his appearance.

10.5 - 10.7: For a more enjoyable experience, you can replace Phillip's dialogue here with pretty much any line from Top Gun.

Seriously, here's the original (click for more legible images):

And now, improved:

And again:

...and one more time, because I could seriously do this all night:

11.2: In the midst of her customary facial spasms, Anita spends a lot of time over the next few pages worrying about whether or not she's hurt Phillip's feelings, then deciding that she doesn't care, then worrying some more, and then deciding that she does care, and then buying him lunch. Her constant struggles with indecision would echo Hamlet's if Hamlet was, y'know, really, really shitty.

15.2: At last, Anita throws in some kung fu! And while I can't find a bit of fault with her technique, one is left wondering why her opponent--who has the thighs of a praying mantis--doesn't just leap to the safety of a nearby rooftop.

16.5: According to Anita, a "Freak" is "someone who likes vampires." I point this out only so that everyone knows that I'm not making a joke at the expense of Laurell K. Hamilton's readership here.

22.4: Although it's not made clear by anything other than the fact that Anita's wearing a different shirt with slightly different--and yet, no less annoying--penguin cartoons on it, this panel is actually the beginning of a flashback sequence that closes out this issue.

23.1:

Haaaaaahahahahaha!

25.1:

AAAAAAAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!

Man. That one cracks me up every time.

More Exhaustively Researched Annotations of Anita Blake:

| Matchup #1: Anita Blake vs. Dracula |
| Matchup #2: Anita Blake vs. Batman |
| The Annotated Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #3 |
| The Annotated Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #4 |

Marshall Rogers: One Of The Good Ones

2007-03-28T00:29:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago when Arnold Drake died, I mentioned that I'm often uncomfortable eulogizing comics creators, even the ones whose work means something to me beyond just my standard affection. To be honest, it's not something that I think really plays to my strengths, but when I heard yesterday that Marshall Rogers had died, I felt like I had something to say about it.

Longtime ISB readers may be familiar with the fact that Batman is my favorite character, and even sitting here years after the first time I read it as a set of Baxter paper reprints, Marshall Rogers' run with Steve Englehart still ranks as one of my all-time favorite portrayals of the character.

That one image alone ought to explain why I like his art so much, and with any other artist, Batman leaping forward with every good intention of beating the living hell out of some hapless thug would be enough. With Rogers, though, it goes beyond that. He's not just a good draftsman or a great penciller; he was a great comics artist and a true master of the sequential format of the page.

I could go on all night about the sound effects alone. They're one of the truly unique aspects of comics, and the way Rogers worked them into the art--whether it's the screech of a car peeling out written out along its tire tracks or the way his characters dodge around the sounds of their own punches in a fight--just makes for an amazing visual.

And his page layouts work along the same lines:

Reading through these issues when I was a teenager blew my mind, and made me realize how much you could actually cram onto the page. The middle section of the image above could've been a page all on its own with the amount of tension that builds from the panels, each one a heartbeat racing faster as Batman has to decide whether beating on a criminal's going to really make him feel better about breaking up with Silver St. Cloud.

It probably would, which is what's so cool about the way Batman nonchalantly drops the guy, insults him, and then cruises out like a cool breeze, but really: once you've already wailed on a guy for third of a page...

...there's only so much stress you can relieve.

And then there's the Joker.

Brandon over at Random Panels already posted that panel, but it's always worth another look, because it's hands-down one of the best single images of the Joker ever printed: Lanky and sinister, wrapped in his own evil laughter as he strolls in, literally dropping his calling card as he casually holds a city for ransom with menace in his eyes and a smile on his face.

According to an interview I once read in Back Issue, Rogers believed that the Joker was actually physically incapable of not smiling, and as much as I like the way he's drawn by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, or even the wildly exaggerated emotions that give him so much character with Bruce Timm's designs, I agree with his line of thinking. It's adds such a great element of tragedy to him and his motivations if he's a guy that can see the worst the world has to offer and literally have no choice but to laugh at it.

Even so, I can't help but imagine that if there was one thing that could wrench his permanent smile back into something a little sadder, it'd be the thought of a world without Marshall Rogers.

BONUS FEATURE: One More Awesome Page...

That image of the Joker ranting about infecting cattle with poison, then helpfully turning the page has got to be one of my favorite things in comics. If you've managed to get this far without ever reading Englehart, Rogers, Wein, and Simonson's Strange Apparitions, then you really, really ought to.

Tonight, On Biography...

2007-03-27T00:51:00.000-04:00

...a look at the Invincible Super-Blog's Chris Sims, Age Nine:

Who could've predicted the effects that a copy of Punisher Armory #3 could've had on the young man who would become the Comics Internet's Most Beloved Loudmouth?

(Note: Despite the fact that I do a pretty passable Peter Graves, that's actually not from an upcoming A&E special about my life and the development of my abject love for the Punisher. It is, rather, from Adam Warren's fan-tastic Empowered, which I would probably post something from every day if I didn't think somebody out there would eventually get tired of it.)

The Art of the Shill

2007-03-26T01:55:00.000-04:00

Actual Content resumes below this post, but in my tireless efforts of self-promotion, I wanted to let everyone know that while I was off for the past few days, I decided to finally sit down and figure out how this whole eBay thing works.

So, if you find yourself wanting to by comics that come from My Actual Collection, look no further! Here's what I've got up there right now:

Civil War #1-7!
You've seen the recap, now get the actual comics!

The Walking Dead #1-29
Robert Kirkman! Zombies! The Kids Love It!

Red Sonja #1-12, Plus Bonus Issues!
Because everyone likes hot women in metal bikinis with swords, right? Right?!

And along those same lines...

D&D Miniatures: Drizzt, Drow Ranger!
Oh Drizzt! With your lavender eyes, twin scimitars, and magical panther, how could you not steal our hearts?

Feel free to click on the above links to see my overly-verbose product listings, but just so this isn't an entire waste of a blog post, there's one more thing I'd like to mention.

If you happen to win the eBay auctions for any of my stuff and mention to me that you're an ISB reader before I get up enough motivation to actually ship everything, then I'll include--at no extra charge--an official ISB Certificate of Awesometicity verifying your comics as part of my actual, totally radical collection. Here's the one I made for the Walking Dead:

It's on a high-quality 3x5 index card, and depending on how low your standards are, may very well be suitable for framing. Doesn't it just make you want to get out there and support capitalism?

Okay, that's all for the shilling. There's a real post under this one, I promise.

The Week In Ink: 3-21-07

2007-03-26T00:59:00.000-04:00

And we're back.

Yes, my mother's back home and doing very well, so much to the consternation of Princess Zelda (who still hasn't managed to free herself from the evil clutches of the Twilight King), the daily update schedule of the ISB can finally resume. But I'm going to warn you, it's not going to be the same blog you might be used to, because in the four days since her heart attack, I've learned a few things.

1. With over a hundred comments offering sympathy and wishing her a speedy recovery, I've come to the realization that my mom has a HUGE fanbase. Seriously, she could be the most marketable property since Solomon Stone, and I've just been sitting on a goldmine. In the future, ISB readers'll thrill to Mantlo Mondays with Mom, featuring a 56 year-old school-teacher's thoughts on Marvel Two-In-One.

2. In times of crisis and personal trials, I've learned that there is a power greater than myself that I turn to invariably for support when things look darkest.

That power?

The power of a good solid kick to the face.

Okay, so maybe it is going to be the same blog you're used to. And what better way to get back into the groove than with a return to the internet's most mind-bending comics reviews for last week's books? Here's the list:

And now, here's what my stress-addled mind managed to process last Wednesday!

52: Week 46: on last week's Shopping List, I mentioned that I'd start caring about 52 again when the Mad Scientists came back, and that is exactly what happened in this one. It's easily the best issue in months as Black Adam takes on the crew from Oolong Island, and considering that it involves pages and pages of scenes like Adam being swarmed by Insectrons, Will Magnus fending off the advances of a topless end-of-the-world fetishist, and T.O. Morrow blithely remind us all that he used to fight the entire JLA by himself, it's pretty easy to see why.

Of course, it's not flawless: The inherent problem of a weekly series that moves in "real time" has reared its ugly head in the sequence where Lex Luthor's finally brought in by the cops in a scene that would seem a lot more compelling if it hadn't taken the cops six weeks to get over there and arrest him. And of course, there's the fact that the Secret Origin of Batman included neither uppercuts and shirtless makeouts nor battery throwing, and I think I'm safe in saying that those are pretty essential elements of his character.

Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter #5: You know, I did a lot of thinking in the few days I took off from the blog here, and, well, I'm not saying there's a connection between my mom's heart attack and the fact that I was thoroughly bashing a piece of lady-centric vampire-heavy fan-fiction, but it's the kind of thing that makes me think about whether I should be devoting so much of my time to tearing down the work of others.

And then I read this thing and remembered how beautifully horrible it is. Expect Annotations for this issue--which features Anita dressed like a mentally-challenged 3rd-grader for about twenty pages--later this week.

The Brave and the Bold #2: There's been a lot of discussion over this issue--what with the fact that a good portion of the banter revolves largely around Supergirl's crush on Hal "Blondes! My One Weakness!" Jordan and his constant thought-balloon reminders that she's Super-Jailbait--but I thought it was a hoot. Mark Waid's proven that he's pretty much the only person able to write Kara Zor-El so that she's likable and entertaining, and far from the angst-fueled tarting around she's been doing in her own title, Supergirl's flirting comes off as a lot more earnest and in tune with Waid's Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes version. As for Hal, the whole thing where he repeats her age like a mantra seems played more for tongue-in-cheek laughs than as him actually struggling to show restraint, and as a character who really does have an established weakness for flirty blondes, it makes for a good gag--especially once his "total honesty" comes into play.

Of course, when Supergirl shows up with her hair in pigtails in a fluffy-skirted Lolita costume, it gets totally over the top, but again, I'm way more inclined to view that as a parody of her constant oversexualization in Joe Kelly and Jeph Loeb's scripts than an actual continuation, and while it could be a textbook example of a biased reader giving Mark Waid and George Perez the benefit of the doubt when Joe Kelly and Ian Churchill get nothing but carefully measured-out scorn, it just feels more like a fun, goofy lark in this one. Plus, it's got the first appearance in years of the mind-blowingly awesome Planetary Chance Machine and a cover that was pretty much designed to thrill Ragnell, so there's something for everyone. It's great.

Conan #38: In this issue, Tim Truman and Cary Nord have pretty much captured everything that I want from my two-fisted loincloth-wearing barbarian adventure stories. Let's face it, people get killed every month in Conan, but man, this time around, there are some dudes who get KILLED. It's brutality at its finest, but like it has been for the past three years, it's amazingly well-done, with great character moments for Nestor the Gunderman right up to the point where he meets his inevitable end. Admittedly, I'm probably more of a sucker for a revenge story than the average reader, but if you can read a scene where Conan chops off a dude's head and then brings him back to life so that he can kill him again without getting crazy pumped, then you're probably reading the wrong blog, Buster.

Hellblazer #230: I've mentioned more than once that I consider Mike Carey's last issue of Hellblazer (#215, for those of you keeping track of my reading habits at home) to be the absolutely perfect last issue for the character, and that after reading it, I was fully prepared to put John Constantine on the shelf for the rest of my comics reading career, secure in the knowledge that I could consider his stories to be over and done with. Of course, that was before the announcement that Andy Diggle was coming on, and while I may not be a fan of his current work on the thoroughly unnecessary Batman Confidential, he's the kind of writer that I'll give anything he does a fair chance thanks to books like The Losers and--not coincidentally--Lady Constantine.

As for this one, well, John's in a heap of trouble because of some ne'er-do-well at the beginning, but by the time twenty-two pages have gone by, you realize that he's been four steps ahead of the villains and the reader all this way, and somebody meets the horrible fate that they so desperately deserve. It's as typical a Hellblazer story as you're likely to find, but like Mike Carey's one-issue fill-in last month, that's not a bad thing. It's a formula that showcases everything you like about the character, and considering that it's being billed as "To Be Concluded" next issue, it has the potential to work as a great foundation for events to come. When it comes right down to it, there are a lot of worse ways to kick off a run than this one, and it makes for a highly enjoyable done-in-one story for new readers to try out, so if you haven't, consider it recommended.

Marvel Adventures Avengers #11: Last week, Jeff Parker stopped by the ISB with some well-wishing for my mom, and with that, he's pretty much earned my loyalty as a reader for the duration of his comics-writing career. Not that he was ever in danger of losing it, as evidenced by the fact that this issue includes a well-run and efficient cult, Spider-Man working a crowd and lamenting the fact that nobody remembers that he's really smart, a sixty-foot woman wrestling a giant snake (no, literally), and best of all, a four-page throwdown with IT! THE LIVING COLLOSSUS!, and that guy's not even the villain of the story! It's another great issue that really lives up to the promise of an all-ages book with fun action and a few genuinely hilarious moments from Parker and Santacruz, showing that even with two ongoing Avengers titles in the "regular" Marvel Universe (and a third one on the way), this is unquestionably the best.

Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane #16: This issue marks the first for new penciller David Hahn, and while he wouldn't have been my first choice to replace Takeshi Miyazawa (which would be, of course, Colleen Coover), he acquits himself pretty well here. That might sound like damning him with faint praise, but as big a fan as I am of Miyazawa and as attached as I've grown to his work on my favorite teenage super-hero romance title, I wasn't expecting to like him at all. Stylistically, he's a departure from Miyazawa's clean, sharply-drawn figures, he doesn't quite nail Spider-Man's motion as well, and his figures are a little inconsistent, but there are certain panels--like Firestar shyly kicking up a cloud of dust on a rooftop or Spidey's embarrassed reaction to her microwavey hug--that are just perfect for the story. The rest of the team, of course, performs excellently, from McKeever's standard top-notch story to Christina Strain's beautiful coloring, although I do feel I should point out that it's another month gone by and they still haven't printed my letter. It's tragic.

ISB BEST OF THE WEEK

The Spirit #4: Darwyn Cooke's The Spirit is rapidly becoming one of those books that I know I'm going to have trouble talking about every time it comes out, because there's only so many ways to say it's awesome. Each issue so far has been amazingly well-written with fast-paced single-issue stories that are just beautiful to look at, thanks to Cooke, J. Bone, and colorist Dave Stewart, and each one seems better than the last. Even the Will Eisner-style splash pages are amazing every month, with this one standing out in my mind as one of the best examples of the trick I've ever seen.

But there's something beyond those elements that struck me with this one. At the risk of spoiling it, it's a moment that comes from the final panels of this issue, where Silk Satin quite literally claws her way back from the brink of death and talks about being tough enough to live and fight another day, and while it was certainly unique to the situation I was in when I read it, it was the perfect moment for me to see last week. It's a reminder of how good comics--and how good stories in any medium, really--can touch people in ways that even the creators might not expect, and if that's not worth being the Best of the Week, then I don't know what is.

If you're not reading it, you should be.

Wisdom #4: I don't think I've mentioned it on the ISB before, but I've been following Paul Cornell's Pete Wisdom story off and on ever since it got started, and for some reason, it's never clicked with me. It's weird, because I can't really put my finger on what I don't like about it. The plots, for example, sound awesome, and there's really no way that I'm going to miss out on a story where Kitty Pryde's old boyfriend fights an army of alternate-universe Jack-the-Rippers, just like there was no way that I was going to skip last month's story where he teams up with Shang Chi to slug it out with the last dragon in England, but it's just missing something for me.

It could be the fact that it's a MAX book, and the tradeoff of a $3.99 cover price so that I can see Pete drop the occasional F-Bomb doesn't quite seem square or the fact that John the Skrull often seems like an idea that's a little too clever for its own good, but I really don't know. What I do know, however, is that this particular issue, with references to Edgar Allen Poe and Alan Moore thrown around and a great little set of action sequences and Lovecraftian psychic warfare, is the best one yet for the series, and gives me hope that within the next few months, it's finally going to hit its stride and make it all worth it. Check it out, maybe it's just me.

Trades

Empowered: I will literally buy anything Adam Warren would like to put out. Seriously. It can be a story where Iron Man's armor gains sentience and listens to hair metal or an Elseworlds one-shot where a computer program emulating Batman takes over a kid's body and proceeds to kick people in the face with other people's feet, I will buy it, no questions asked. Heck, at this point, I'd sign up for a thirty-six volume Adam Warren Illustrates The Phone Book series as soon as it showed up in Previews.

Of course, Adam Warren's Phone Book would probably still involve sexy girls and explosion-prone robots made of nanotechnology, so there's a pretty good reason why I'd do that. I say this only so that you all know where I'm coming from when I say that Empowered is probably the most purely entertaining graphic novel I've read all year.

The whole thing's essentially Warren's 248-page treatise on bondage fetishism starring a heroine who is more prone to being captured and tied up than any character in comic book history. That's right, Golden Age Wonder Woman: You may finally lay down your burden. It starts off with Warren's customary zippiness, with Empowered--the character's name, an irony which she herself is well acquainted with--with short, slam-bang-punchline stories that clock in at a quick four or five pages before moving on to the next bit, and there's a lot for Warren's fans to enjoy here. It feels like it has its roots in his work on Gen13 and the elements he played around with there, like Fairchild's propensity for having her costume shredded and Freefall's body issues, but by the time you hit the "real-life" origin of the character, you'll realize that there's a lot more here than just leftover plotlines where hot girls get tied up in varying states of undress.

Not that there's not a lot of that, too, because brother, there's a lot of hot girls getting tied up in varying states of undress here. I mean, really, it's pretty much the most "Mature Readers" thing he's done since he dropped the cover to Milk #2, but just like his work with the Dirty Pair, it's the kind of story that--even amidst wildly over-the-top sex scenes, explosions, and ninjas--manages to transcend itself and find a solid heart to it.

Plus there's a character called Rum, Sodomy & The Lash, and that is pure genius. So yeah: I freakin' love this thing, and if you somehow managed to miss out, then get on it, doggone it..

Showcase Presents: Hawkman v.1: I hate Hawkman, and I really don't know why. I mean really, if you go by the formula of the things I tend to flip out over, than a bare-chested spaceman flying around smacking the shit out of winged gorillas with medieval weaponry should, by all rights, be exactly what I want to read.

And yet, it doesn't. He's Hawkman, and the one thing he does--you know, the flying--is something that everybody can do. But I'm getting all the Showcases, so I ordered this one, thinking I'd put it on the shelf and get around to leafing thorugh it whenever Silver Age Aquaman stories stopped being funny enough to post about here on the ISB.

And then Kevin goes and posts a panel where Hawkman talks about how Thanagarian science never got around to inventing the sandwich, and I'm forced to re-examine all of my paradigms.

And that's the reviews! As always, any questions on something I read or didn't read, or questions for my mother's upcoming advice column can be left in the comments section below. Feel free to drop a line!

Not To Be Melodramatic Or Anything...

2007-03-22T00:07:00.000-04:00

...but my mom had a heart attack today. According to everyone involved, she'll be fine, but as you might expect, that's not the kind of event that leaves a guy in the best mood for cracking jokes about ROM: Spaceknight or whatever.

So needless to say, no content tonight, and I don't know if I'll be back tomorrow with the normal Thursday night reviews either. Assuming nothing else goes haywire, though, regular posting should resume within the next couple of days.

Until then, I have nothing to offer you but a photograph of the two greatest men in American history:

Abraham Lincoln and Galactus

Together again, just as Jah intended.

UPDATE!

Mom's okay. According to the doctors, there was no permanent damage, and the fact that she drove herself to the emergency room--stopping to get gas on the way, in an almost freakout-inducing incident of Old Lady Toughness--worked out well, as it kept her from suffering a major heart attack within the next few months.

Surgery wasn't necessary, but she had some stints put into her arteries and she needs to be careful from now on, but honestly? She's already home, and the whole thing feels like a Very Special Episode from a sitcom that went back to normal at the end. So that's a plus!

I told her about all the well-wishing from the blog, and she was very touched, as was I. But I'm still taking the next couple of nights off from the ISB. I'll be back Sunday night (or, y'know, Monday morning).

Thanks again, everybody, from both of us.

Great Moments in Comic Book History, Volume Four

2007-03-21T00:03:00.000-04:00

In the imaginary world where comics bloggers are constantly being hounded by fans searching for truth, I'm often asked what the single greatest panel in comic book history is.

It's a tough question: There's just so much to choose from that even attempting to narrow it down to one panel is as close to impossible as you're likely to find. There's Skurge holding the bridge to Hel, or Rorschach taking on an entire prison, or the Punisher socking a polar bear, or OMAC punching his way into the city of the super-rich. Heck, there's pretty much every splash page Jack Kirby drew during the '70s. And, of course, there's my personal favorite, Batman, the car battery, and the unluckiest thug of 1988.

Still, as much as I like the comics of the past twenty years, if we'd decided to go ahead and stop making 'em back in 1987, there's a part of me that really wouldn't have a problem with that. Why?

Gumby's Summer Fun Special.

Bob Burden.

Art Adams.

(Click for Double-Sized Radness)

Shoulder to shoulder, Pirates and Space Bears.

For those of you who were wondering why I was so excited about the upcoming Gumby trade, well, that's why.

BONUS FEATURE: Just Because It's Awesome...

...here's the back cover:

If you are not Freaking Out at the prospect of pirates, space bears, vampires, robots, flying saucers, midget skeletons, and a freakin' werewolf, then you are beyond my skills, because that is the definition of awesome.

More Great Moments in Comic Book History:

| Volume One: Pirate Batman Throws Down On A Shark |
| Volume Two: Nick Fury Appears Like a Human Cyclone |
| Volume Three: The Unconquerable Captain America |

Kurt Busiek Is A Bad, Bad Man

2007-03-20T00:59:00.000-04:00

A while back, Mike "Sugarbear" Sterling did a post about "comic book Easter eggs," the fun little bits slipped in by artists and writers as a gag, like Mike Grell's editorializing sound effects, and I think I've noticed another one that qualifies.

I spotted it while I was reading through Kurt Busiek and Pat Oliffe's Untold Tales of Spider-Man, which, for those of you who have never read it, was an excellent run that stood as the best and most overlooked Spider-Man title of its time. A few odd hairstyle choices aside, it perfectly captured the fun, lighthearted spirit of the early Spidey stories without ever really shying away from the various tragedies that'd crop up in Peter Parker's life in the future, and was recently collected for your convenience.

Anyway, it's the splash page from Untold Tales #8 that caught my eye, and while a lot of writers usually just go with a headline and a few blocks of "Lorem Ipsum" dummy text to represent newspaper copy, Busiek went all-out with this one. Check it out:

For those of you who don't have the inclination to click for larger version (or the desire to strain your eyes trying to make out the tiny copy on the page), allow me to point out the relevant part:

"...patrolwoman Misty Knight, who recovered much of the material working with Scarfe. 'It'll be like Christmas every day for the next six months. I'd give my right arm for some of this evidence--but I don't have to, do I?"

Oh, Misty. If only you knew.

Just Imagine...

2007-03-18T23:00:00.000-04:00

Not long ago, ISB reader and alleged "goth ninja" Erin Palette put out the call for re-imagined versions of super-heroes as written by established prose authors, kicking off the whole thing with her own highly entertaining offering, Chuck Palahniuk's Batman.

And that's how I ended up with something like this:

For Maria
Our love was a mystery,
But now you are riddled with bullets.

Gentle Reader,

I'm sorry to say that the story you are reading is horrifically violent. It is, to say the least, an extremely brutal tale of a very angry man who, despite being rather clever and possessing a very grim sense of humor, has chosen to react to tragedy by shooting, stabbing, or blowing up virtually every single person he encounters who is not dressed in some sort of garish spider costume.

In the volumes leading up to this one, in fact, he has perpetuated an uncountable number of crimes, found himself strapped to a gigantic cannon, attended an ersatz ninja training camp in the dreadfully boring flatlands of Kansas, and, in one particularly disturbing scene, struck a polar bear in the face with a closed fist.

Such is his lot in life, but I would encourage, nay, implore you to seek out some lighter super-hero fare, perhaps settling for one where someone who runs very, very fast defeats a bank robber armed with a curved stick. For there is no such joy to be found here.

Least of all in the person of Jigsaw, whose face could charitably be likened to a man who fell in love with a waffle iron and, against his better judgement, showed said affection by lavishing kisses upon its surface while it was still plugged in. Needless to say, he was slightly unbalanced, and since being unceremonously thrown face-first through a plate glass window, he had devoted his life to the utter destruction of Frank Castle.

It was a fact that Frank was well aware of as he lobbed a generous helping of Willy Pete--a militaristic codename which here means "White Phosphorus," a useful compound for creating smoke screens and incredibly painful burns, both necessities in Frank's day-to-day life--over the partition that separated him from the rest of the abandoned warehouse.

The amount of abandoned warehouses within the city is staggering, but not entirely unexpected when one takes into account the continuing recession of the construction industry, which has led to both shoddy materials and a constant, ever-present danger of death by falling masonry. Still, when finding yourself in one of these abandoned monuments to a more propserous time, engaging in a running gunfight as you attempt to murder someone is considered almost unforgivably rude.

Unfortunately, needs must--a phrase which here means that when faced with a choice between breaking the rules of polite society and suffering the indignity of a closed-casket funeral courtesey of a mildly disfigured madman, one should almost always take the latter--and so Frank stepped out from behind the relative safety of the partition. Using Jigsaw's coughing--and a string of words which my concern for readers of a weaker constitution prevents me from repeating here--Frank shot three times into the smoke, feeling a mild sense of satisfaction at the sound of a wet thud and the clatter of a dropped submachine gun across the concrete floor.

I truly wish I could report that this action was the end of the evening's violence, but, sadly, there was much, much more in store for Jigsaw and fourteen employees of sub-legal industries. For the sake of happiness, however, we shall turn our attention to Joan the Mouse and her dismal culinary offerings for the rest of the chapter.

More Literary Mash-Ups From the ISB!
| William Shakespeare's Trapped in the Closet |

The Second Annual Great Moments in Irish Super-Heroics Special!

2007-03-17T23:47:00.000-04:00

Top o' the evenin' to ye! Yes, as you can tell by my Claremontian salutation, it's St. Patrick's Day again! And that means that today, we celebrate the time that Dum-Dum Dugan chased the Serpent Society from the Emerald Shores of Oul Eire.

Or something like that. I still don't have a good handle on it, but, well, I was raised Zoroastrian.

Point being, today, as you may have heard from someone's t-shirt, everybody's Irish! And that means that it's time once again to highlight our occasional heritage by celebrating the three defining aspects of Irish life, as learned from a lifetime of reading comic books:

Wee Folk!

Alcoholism!

And of course...

The Dulcet Tones of
Merle Haggard!

Happy St. Patrick's Day, everybody!

BONUS FEATURE: Sing Along With Vic!

I've mentioned it before, but it always bears repeating: The Question #2 is awesome.

Friday Night Fight Club!

2007-03-16T23:45:00.000-04:00

Hear, mortals! Bahlactus has spoken, and while I don't think I'm supposed to talk about it, he's thrown down a challenge for the comics blogger internet for the greatest conflagration of visual violence on record!

Clearly, I could not pass this up. It's Friday Night Fight Club, and in this corner... The Mind-Boggling Chin-Checkery of Batman!

He will even go upside down on a chump!

Whose violence will reign supreme? You Decide!

BONUS VIOLENCE: Jim Gordon Will Wreck Your Face

Fact: The Batman Adventures is totally awesome

More All-Out Violence From The ISB!

| Batman: Master of the Chin-Check |
| Attention, Criminals! |
| A Weekend of Violence with Golden Age Batman |
| Awesomeversary Special: Man vs. Beast! |
| A Friendly Reminder From Power Man |

The Week In Ink: 3-14-07

2007-03-16T00:42:00.000-04:00

Say what you want about how they allegedly "ruined" Batgirl, but I'll go to bat for the post-OYL issues of Robin any day of the week.

Why? Because of the sheer poetry that is the Kick to the Face.

Is there any sweet sight in this grand old world of ours? I think not.

And that's only partially because someone getting a boot to the chops heralds yet another installment of the internet's zaniest comics reviews! Here's the truly shameful amount of stuff that I bought yesterday...

...and here's what I thought about it.

Comics

BPRD: Garden of Souls #1: It's been a while (specifically, about six months) since the last BPRD series finished, and while Universal Machine had some of the best work I've seen in the entire Hellboy franchise, it did nothing better than it got me excited about the next installment. Mike Mignola, John Arcudi, and Guy Davis haven't missed a step yet with the entire run, and considering that this issue features a monkey-demon thing in a mask breaking out of a glass jar with a .45 to fight a man undergoing accupuncture and a disembodied spirit in a rubber suit who is truly excited about going through some files, that doesn't look like it's about to change. It's exellent stuff as always, and if you've somehow missed out and want to see what it looks like when horror comics are done right, jump on the trades. You'll be glad you did.

ISB BEST OF THE WEEK

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8 #1: Despite the impression I may have given with last night's post, I was actually pretty excited about this one, and I've got to say that it's pretty awesome.

As I've mentioned, I was catching up with the show on DVD when TV suddenly got good again with The Office and 30 Rock, so while I'm trying to jump back on the train and get up to speed, I haven't actually seen the last season and a half of the show. Still, with just a quick "here's what you missed" lecture from Tug yesterday at work that hit the high points, I was able to get through it pretty easily, which is always a plus.

As for the story itself, there's a lot that appeals to me here. Specifically, I'm thinking of the way that the story opens up with Buffy jumping out of a helicopter leading a team of multicultural sidekicks who sport Claremontesque accents and function like a demon-fighting teenage girl version of the Blackhawks, and the fact that I'm ridiculously excited about that concept ought to give you an idea of my particular biases here. It's fun, and even with a couple of double-page spreads thrown in for good measure, it's exceptionally well-paced, to the point where I thought there were way more than 24 pages of story involved until I actually counted them out. Georges Jeanty does a fine job handling art chores as well, and while he relies heavily on photo reference--which is something of a necessity when you're drawing characters that are based entirely on actors--he does a good job of blending them into his art style rather than having them stick out as obviously as, say, a Greg Land.

Of course, the fact that it's all wrapped up in an absolutely beautiful Jo Chen cover doesn't really hurt matters either, and while I do feel compelled to remind people that Nick Fury still had both eyes when he led the Howlers, it's fun stuff. At this point, though, I can't help feeling that a review's going to be pretty meaningless: If you like Buffy, odds are that you've got it already, and if you don't, well, a book with the same characters that's written by the show's creator probably isn't your speed anyway. I liked it, though.

The Damned #5: Between BPRD, Buffy, and the last issue of Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt's demon-noir crime story, it's been a heck of a good week for comics about the supernatural. I've seen the book criticized for just telling a standard crime story with demons in place of gangsters, but it's the fantastic way that Bunn blends the genre that makes the whole thing so much fun, whether it's the mystical interrogation of Eddie's snitch, the truly creepy aspects of the double-crosses set up as the characters betray each other over a book detailing who sold their soul and why, or--in what might be my favorite moment of the entire series--an eight foot-tall demon mafioso rolling up his sleeves and charging down a hallway while lesser monstrosities try to hold him back with a tommy gun.

How can you pass that up?

Gen13 #6: The first arc of Gail Simone and Talent Caldwell's Gen13 relaunch comes to a close, and while I've honestly been doing my best to enjoy the genuninely good bits that Simone works into the script--of which there are a few here and there--I just haven't been able to get into it as easily as I thought I would. Even looking at it through the lenses of nostalgia, I know that the original Gen13 comics that I read ten years ago weren't what you'd call "very good," but even re-reading them for my two-part "Brief History", there was a sense of goofiness and not taking itself too seriously that seems utterly absent in the relaunch. Of course, that sort of thing didn't really start showing up until the ongoing series launched, and since the first arc of this one essentially re-tells the mini-series, there may be hope for it yet. I just can't help thinking that in a market that aready has books like Runaways, which does the "teens with powers being hunted by and rebelling against oppressive forces" bit better than anything else, it's even more unnecessary now than it was when it was just another team of mutants back in the mid-90s.

Jack Kirby's Galactic Bounty Hunters #5: And speaking of books that I have a hard time getting into, we have another issue of Jack Kirby's Old Man With Knives Fighting Giant Lizard Monsters, and while that might sound really exciting in theory, it's a little underwhelming when you actually read the issue. To be fair, this is the best one so far, but even with my unabashed love of the King, I can't shake the feeling that I'm reading warmed-over Kirby ideas being executed by somebody else with loose character notes as a guide.

Which, unless I'm misinformed, is pretty much exactly what it actually is. That said, I'm still planning on buying it, because with as much as Jack's work has entertained me in my lifetime--and will continue to do so for years to come--Lisa Kirby could walk up to me on the street every month for the rest of my life and ask me for three bucks and get it every single time.

Punisher War Journal #5: Before we get to the actual review here, I'd just like to mention that Ariel Olivetti draws Frank Castle with the hugest arms I have ever seen. Anyway, Matt Fraction continues his non-stop drive to what internet-based fans of contractions are already terming "Capunisher" with a story involving the amazingly ludicrous Bushwacker. For those of you who haven't slogged through three hundred of Big Frank's adventures and aren't aware, allow me to hip you to the fact that Bushwacker, one of roughly two guys who could actually be called recurring Punisher villains, can turn his arms into guns--or flamethrowers if he thinks to drink kerosene ahead of time--which puts him just above Random on the scale of Most Mid-90s Super-Powers Ever. As such, he is one of the best bad ideas in comics history, and just seeing a chubby G.W. Bridge stumble out of a building and shout, and I quote, "BUSHWHACKERRRR!!!" adds a whole new level to the hilarity that is his existence.

As should be perfectly clear by this point, I really, really like this comic.

Tales of the Unexpected #6: Well, it's finally happened: After half a year of trying to get through the utter nonsense that is David Lapham's Spectre story, I've finally given up and decided to skip reading it entirely in favor of enjoying the Dr. 13 backup, and I don't think there's anyone out there who would question that decision at this point. I did flip through it on my way through the issue, though, and managed to see that this month's nerve-wrackingly trite installment revolves around a clown molesting a little girl--which was a cliche fifteen years ago--while the Spectre and the Phantom Stranger stand around doing... what's the word I'm looking for? Oh, right: Nothing at all.

But that, of course, is less than irrelevant as compared to the pure, unfettered genius of the backup story. After the massive letdowns that were "Broken City" and "For Tomorrow," I was honestly ready to write Brian Azzarello off forever, but six eight-page backup stories about Dr. Thirteen and Genius Jones, and I want that guy on any book he wants to write. It's a hoot, and the fact that he's willing to throw the Mount Rushmore Monster--his own creation, as Dr. K pointed out to me when I couldn't remember what it was from--in there alongside a bunch of characters that nobody really cares about is just the kind of self-depricating icing on the cake that makes it a joy to read.

Of course, when they turn into the guys writing 52 and start arguing about dialogue choices, that's just pure genius on the level of a vampire nazi gorilla. Man, I love this story.

Teen Titans #44: This is one of those books--like Irredeemable Ant-Man--that's lately become one bad issue away from getting dropped like a fresh beat, but despite some odd moments, it's at least interesting enough to get a stay of execution for another month. At the very least, it doesn't look like Geoff Johns is relying entirely on the amazingly cheap cop-out that would be using Deathstroke's mind-control drugs to explain a character shift that occurred well before One Year Later with Batgirl, even if it feels like a half-baked attempt to get things back to status quo rather than playing them out in a logical manner.

Which isn't to say that this issue is without its problems. We talked about his healing factor at work today, but if Deathstroke can be stabbed through the heart and stay on his feet throwing punches, then what exactly was the point of stabbing him at all, other than an homage to a scene that nobody really gives a crap about from the mid-90s? Admittedly, this could just be my thorough, unrelenting hatred of Jericho talking--because I seriously hate Jericho--but it would've been a much nicer moment if it had actually, y'know, affected the story at all.

But then again, if I drop the book, I won't get to see Risk's wicked sweet porn 'stache anymore. And that would be a tragedy.

What Were They Thinking?! Go West Young Man: Comics blogger, rising star and Official Friend of the ISB Kevin Church, who wrote two of the four stories in this volume of Boom! Studios' laugh-a-minute comic remix title, asked me to relay this prepared statement.* Be advised, though, he was very very drunk:

"Yo, tardos: If you want to read a book full of old, borderline offensive Western stories that Chris Ward and I have put a bunch of dirty words into--including stories of donkey worship, corporate gentrification, Civil War-era musical copyright violations, and vikings--then this is the place to do it. And if you don't, I will eat your family. Think about it."

Trades

American Elf: The Sketchbook Diaries of James Kochalka, v.2: By their very nature of being daily, James Kochalka's strips are often pretty hit-or-miss, which is concept that the readers of this very blog are no doubt all too familiar with. Even so, when they're good, they're hilarious, and when they're bad, well, you've still got Kochalka drawing his friend Jason X-12 to look like a little dog, and that's a good time that everyone can enjoy.

What everyone can't enjoy, though, is the fact that one of the strips in this volume has been censored. Admittedly, it's probably the dirtiest strip of the entire published Sketchbook diaries, but if I didn't already know the joke from a conversation I'd had at work when it was originally published in 2005, I'd be pretty upset about it, and as it stands, I'm pretty cheesed off. There are, after all, plenty of strips in this volume that feature Kochalka indulging in some full-frontal nudity in his self-portraits, so I can't think of a reason why the strip in question shouldn't have gone through without black bars across a full half of the dialogue. After all, when I pay twenty bucks for a book full of James (Superfuckers) Kochalka, I expect to get everything there is to it, and that's not what this is.

So as pointed out in the comment section below and an email that James Kochalka sent to me, I actually have no idea what I'm talking about here, and was totally misremembering the original strip. So, just to clear things up here: American Elf v.2 is uncensored, controversy-free, and a highly entertaining way to spend your twenty bucks. I, however, am ill-informed and should probably not be writing reviews at four in the morning.

Gunsmith Cats : Revised Edition v.1: One of these days I'm going to sit down with this book and go on at length about how much I love Gunsmith Cats, but for right now, I'll just put it this way:

Kenichi Sonada is a guy who gets up in the morning and draws guns, cars, and pretty girls all day long. It's all he does, and that somehow resulted in what's probably the single greatest action manga of all time. Thus, this volume is absolutely essential for anyone who likes things that are awesome, especially at $16.95 for what appears to be eight million pages.

It Rhymes With Lust: For those of you who were intrigued by my discussion of the late Arnold Drake's work on Monday night and wanted to read more of his stuff, you could do a lot worse than to pick up Dark Horse's beautiful reproduction of this 1950 original graphic novel. Written by Drake with Leslie Waller and Matt Baker handling the art, It Rhymes With Lust not only has one of the most amazing titles in the history of crime fiction, but stands as one of the earliest examples of comics designed specifically for older readers. It borrows beats from Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillaine as it tells the story of a hard-luck newspaper reporter who gets caught up in the seedy world of his manipulative ex-girlfriend, Rust Masson in the aftermath of her political bigwig husband's death, and it holds up about as well as Chandler and Spillaine's works, even almost sixty years later.

It's a great reproduction, with the original cover (complete with the banner advertising it as a "Picture Novel") restored and re-colored, and even with a $14.95 cover price, it's well worth picking up.

And that's this week's haul. As always, any questions about things I may or may not have read, comments about my snappy judgements, or guesses as to what album I was listening to while I wrote tonight's post (and if you guess correctly, you might just win a prize!**) can be dropped into the handy comments section below, or--for the shy types among you--sent via email.

Now if I could just remember how that Alan Heinberg Wonder Woman story ended, I'd be doing pretty well.

*: This is not true. Kevin did not write any of this and is probably mad at me for making people think he calls someone besides Mark Hale a "tardo."
**: There is not actually a prize.

A Borderline Libelous Review of Buffy: Season 8 (No, The Other One)

2007-03-15T00:59:00.000-04:00

Today saw the release of Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer "Season 8" comic from Dark Horse, and since I've already had a phone call from a friend of mine telling me it was sold out where he tried to buy it, some of you out there might be interested to know that if you desperately need to find out what happened after the TV show's final episode, there is an alternative.

I am, of course, speaking of Emma Paige Langley's monumental forty-minute Buffy fan-film, Forgotten Memories.

Originally brought to my attention by adorable novelist Caitlin Kittredge as something I needed to see, Forgotten Memories does not revolve exclusively around people getting repeatedly kicked in the face. As such, there's only one other reason someone woud want me to take a stern look at a piece of vampire-themed media, and that is this: It is not very good.

Admittedly, I may not be the target audience here. I actually do like Buffy, but I haven't watched the last season and a half, but enduring several weeks of Grayson and Star Wars: Revelations on a loop at work, I've developed a monolithic, all-consuming hatred of fan-films, so I'll cop to coming at it with a certain chip on my shoulder.

Of course, the fact that it's pretty hilariously bad doesn't help matters either.

For that, I think it's safe to lay most of the blame on Langley herself, whose roll as "screenwriter and star" should be familiar to anyone who managed to get through the Joe Estevez classic, Soultaker as a combination that doesn't always work out so well for amateur filmmakers. To her credit, though, the whole thing's pretty amazingly ambitious for someone who wrote and shot it at the age of 17 with what looks like a high school drama club to help her out, and as a guy who fancies himself as a creative kind of guy who puts his work out there almost every day for people to see, I'm fully aware of how much it sucks to have some jerk-off get on his blog and talk about how awful your work is.

And that's why I already feel bad for what I'm about to say. But since my particular talents tend to fall into what could charitably called "reviews"--or, y'know, "kicking people while they're down" if you want to get accurate about it--I'm going to make the immense personal sacrifice of my peace of mind and do it anyway.

There is, unfortunately, one pretty obvious problem with casting Langley as Buffy, and I'll put this as gently as I know how. My friend Brandon, who tried to overcome my noted distaste for the undead and introduced me to the show on DVD, likes skinny white women like some people like oxygen, and even he thought that after a few seasons, Sarah Michelle Gellar got too thin, and, well, that's not one of the criticisms you can level at this one.

She does, however, manage to keep her accent consistent through the course of the film, which, really, is the least of your worries when dealing with a cast of teenage Australians.

And that's the major problem with a fan-film that uses established characters. Nobody looks, speaks or acts quite right. Dawn, for instance, is supposed to be Buffy's little sister, but I swear to you that she comes off like somebody's angry mother. This could, however, be her uncanny resemblance to Marsha from Spaced, which might explain why I was constantly expecting her to light up a cigarette and start yelling at Amber.

The best example, though, has got to be the guy playing Angel, who acts with the consummate skill of a cardboard box, speaks with a lisp, and is roughly three and a half feet shorter than the guy playing Spike:

It's fantastic. It made me want to see an entire season's worth of that guy re-enacting episodes of Bones with the girl playing Willow.

Also, this is the guy playing Giles:

Cracks me up every single time.

But it's probably best to move on. I could literally go on about the cast here all night, but by all rights, there oughtta be a plot summary in here somewhere.

Here's how it goes down: In the pre-credits teaser sequence, Buffy's training up a new slayer, Crystal, who is pretty, blonde, and thoroughly incompetent, thus explaining why we shouldn't be that bothered that she's not going to survive the episode. She attempts unsuccessfully to deal with a vampire, at which time Burly the Vampire Slayer up there steps in with a chair leg and does the heavy lifting and gives Crystal a stern talking-to. Cut to an allegedly evil ritual performed around a lopsided pentagram, where one of the attendees suddenly throws back her standard-issue Rennaissance Faire hood to reveal a head of hair that has been teased to within an inch of its life.

"Surely, this cannot be our villain," you may very well think to yourself. "Any minute now, she'll finish her ritual and summon the real villain, and we can all get on with it."

Get used to disappointment, pal: this is Despica.

Yeah, that's her name. And they manage to get through the entire forty minutes without a single Daffy Duck joke. It's astonishing.

Her evil plan involves re-opening the Hellmouth, but--assuming I'm hearing things correctly--she's continually stymied by a need for ramen, until she figures out that what she actually needs is the blood of a Slayer. How that connection is made, we may never know.

Meanwhile, life goes on for the rest of the cast--including a scene where Faith is ruled to be too hot for college--until Slayer Trainees Paige and Crystal finally get permission to go out and battle the undead without a chaperone, which for some reason nobody recognizes as a bad idea.

Crystal, having never seen a movie in her entire life, decides that it's a fine idea to go wandering off by herself in a city populated almost exclusively by vague lurking horrors, and--as tends to happen with this sort of thing--is immediately set upon by Dispica and her crew of flunkies. Two minutes later, and we have our first special effect of the evening.

In this case, it's a jar of delicious Smuckers Strawberry Ice Cream Topping trying its level best to pass as blood.

And apparently, said topping represents the entirity of the special effects budget, because when Buffy visits Angel to find out more about the Talisman of Ramen--the preferred magical artifact of cash-strapped college students everywhere--an office intercom is substituted by someone standing off-camera and talking.

What follows is an emotional funeral, complete with a lot of people yelling at Buffy for not forcing her Trainees to follow Rules 1, 6, 12, and 18 of Successful Adventuring, but the real gem of the sequence comes at the burial, where Paige--distraught over the sudden murder of her best friend--awkwardly propositions Xander at the gravesite.

Eventually they figure out what's up, and before long it's Buffy and Despica in an epic swordfight, the likes of which I haven't seen since my 10th Grade English class sat through a twenty-minute version of the Scottish Play, where a hefty MacDuff gently tapped Macbeth's sword while laboriously reciting lines between breaths. After a few soft pokes with her katana (of course it's a katana), Buffy gets a cut on her hand, which, for reasons that I could not begin to fathom, turns the battle in her favor.

And then--and I swear to God this happens--she smirks at the much smaller Despica, says: "I guess size matters," and then proceeds to kill and eat her.

Okay, that last part, I made up. But that line is totally in there. Thus, Buffy cuts off Despica's head, Faith snaps a bunch of peoples' necks, Buffy and Spike have sex, Willow and some girl make out, and all of that somehow causes everything to work out okay.

For those of you who want to experience the unmitigated hilarity for yourselves, Forgotten Memories is freely available to download on Langley's website, and is well worth it.

I mean, it might be one of most hilariously awful things I've seen in my entire life, but, well, I still like it better than Fray.

More of the ISB Taking On Supernatural Mediocrity!

| Matchup #1: Anita Blake vs. Dracula |
| Matchup #2: Anita Blake vs. Batman |
| The Annotated Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #3 |
| The Annotated Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #4 |
| The Mind-Melting Horror of Halloween with Tarot |
| The Senses-Shattering Horror of Tarot #41 (Or: Yule Be Sorry) |

A Look At a More Innocent Time

2007-03-14T00:27:00.001-04:00

I've thought pretty carefully about how I should introduce what you're about to see, but, well, there's not a whole lot I can add to it.

So tonight, the ISB is proud to present...

Captain Marvel Beating An Old Man With A Hammer

By Otto Binder and C.C. Beck, of course, from Captain Marvel Adventures #100. Ah, those were the days.

Bigger Than A Breadbox... And Twice As Deadly!

2007-03-13T00:59:00.000-04:00

With the exception of a the hasty image I threw together when Pat Morita died, I don't usually do memorial posts. My goal with the ISB, after all, is comedy, and while my family's got plenty of history with making jokes at the expense of the recently deceased (my mother's infamous punchline on our way into Dad's funeral springs to mind), it's not usually the sort of thing I'm up for.

Plus, like Hova says, "they never really miss you 'til you're dead and you're gone," and while it's easy with my usual focus on back issues, I don't want to fall into the trap of only celebrating someone's work when they've shuffled loose this mortal coil.

For Arnold Drake, though, I'm willing to make an exception. He did, after all, create this:

Back before I decided it was worth trading a couple hundred bucks to keep up to date on the mind-blowingly awesome insanity of The Future, the first volume of Doom Patrol was the first Archive I ever owned, and, well, covers like that one ought to tell you why.

Yes, it's The Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man, Drake's brainchild from the pages of Doom Patrol #89, and he may just be the craziest foe those guys ever fought. And considering that their arch-enemy is a talking militant French gorilla in love with a disembodied brain, that's saying something.

"All matter is divided," the story begins, "into three categories!" They are, of course, animal, mineral, and vegetable, and as much as this may come as a shock, that's not exactly hard science we're working with here, but rather the categories into which the object of a game of 20 Questions fits. It's an easy mistake to make, though, so it's probably best to just move on.

The whole thing really kicks off with a visit from Dr. Sven Larsen, an old school chum that the Chief decides to impress by having his small army of paramilitary carnival attractions kidnap Larsen from a transatlantic flight and walk him up the outside of a building, which, really, is the Silver-Age DC Mad Scientist equivalent of showing up at your high school reunion with a supermodel girlfriend and a winning lottery ticket. It turns out, though, that Larsen's still holding a grudge from their wayward youth at whatever school it is that teaches offers a triple major in Robotics, Brain Surgery, and Liberal Arts, and has thus decided to get revenge in the most sensible way possible:

He turns himself into a giant rampaging paramecium. Come on, we've all thought about it.

Also of note about this scene--as though a thirty foot-tall hot-pink one-celled organism threatening to destroy vast sections of downtown wasnt enough--is the fact that we learn a little something about Niles Caulder:

He is the very soul of optimism.

Of course, a giant amoeba bursting out of a warehouse to wreak untold havoc is just another Thursday for the Doom Patrol, but the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man's a little trickier than their usual fare, given its ability to shapeshift entirely at random. Over the course of eight pages, the AVM-Man becomes the aformentioned single-celled horror, a pile of sulfur, a bird of indeterminate quality, a dinosaur, a ten-story sponge, a lead monster, and an inappropriately lecherous tree before making its escape as a dandelion.

Because in the mad world of the Doom Patrol, a self-loathing robot, an energy creature that can move at the speed of light, and a giant starlet in a Go-Go miniskirt can be thoroughly vexed by a flower that usually succumbs to a mild breeze.

And that, of course, is the pure genius of the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man: Why have a story where the heroes fight a giant tranatula when you could have them fight a giant tarantula that can turn into a swam of gnats?! It's perfect!

Before long, though, the Chief's able to put a stop to all this nonsense with a laser death ray blaster that he just happened to have laying around (you know, for theoretical science purposes), Larsen gets dropped into the de-monsterfying box, and that's pretty much the end of that.

And that's the way it should be. But today, with Arnold Drake gone, the world makes a little more sense. As you can see for yourself, though, that's not always a good thing.

BONUS FEATURE: Bruno Premiani Is The Man

Like every other early Doom Patrol story, "The Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Menace" was drawn by Bruno Premiani, whose artwork in those issues was easily some of the cleanest, most dynamic, and all-around best stuff that DC put out during the Silver Age, but that's pretty much all I know about him.

Still, I can't shake this feeling I have that back 1964, he'd get these crazy scripts that called for dinosaurs and chemical monstrosities, shrug his shoulders, and go back to trying to figure out how hot he could make Rita Farr while still keeping things well within the Comics Code.

Seriously, check that stuff out. You'll see what I mean.

Always Remember...

2007-03-10T23:59:00.000-05:00

Brace yourselves: Dorian's Internet Classic lives again!

Great Moments in Comic Book History, Volume Three

2007-03-10T23:38:00.000-05:00

Despite the fact that they've given a thoroughly unreasonable amount of coverage to the alleged death of Steve Rogers in Captain America #25, the media seem to have missed one crucial fact about the story. Namely: We have all been down this road before.

And I don't just mean the revolving-door afterlife of comics in general, but with Captain America himself. Specifically, I'm thinking of Jim Steranko's "The Strange Death of Captain America" in 1969's Cap #113, wherein Cap's been taken out by the surprisingly hot forces of HYDRA, who then move to ambush the rest of the Avengers at his funeral.

Of course, he's only dead for about eleven pages, at which time he crashes into the graveyard on a rocket-powered motorcycle--a recurring theme in Steranko's work--and then proceeds to beat the ever-loving hell out of everyone.

It is beautiful.

(Click for Super-Awesome Giant-Sized Version)

A man can be destroyed! A team or an army can be destroyed! But how do you destroy an ideal--a dream? How do you destroy a living symbol--or his indomitable will--his unquenchable spirit? Perhaps these are the thoughts which thunder within the murderous minds of those who have chosen the way of HYDRA--of those who face the fighting fury of freedom's most fearless champion--the gallant, red-white-and-blue-garbed figure who has been a towering source of inspiration to liberty-lovers everywhere!

How can the fearsome forces of evil ever hope to destroy the unconquerable
CAPTAIN AMERICA?

More Great Moments in Comic Book History:

| Volume One: Pirate Batman Throws Down On A Shark |
| Volume Two: Nick Fury Appears Like a Human Cyclone |

And Now, a Musical Interlude From The Pages Of 52

2007-03-09T23:23:00.000-05:00

Renee are you okay?

Can you tell us if you're okay?

The Week In Ink: 3-07-07

2007-03-08T23:13:00.000-05:00

And now, the ISB proudly presents yet another reason why Paul Pope is awesome:

Yes, that's Johnny Storm, Spider-Man, and the phrase "Foot Meet Face," and that can only mean that it's time once again for the ISB's uncompromising, slightly informative look at this week's comics! To say the least, it's been a pretty big week, thanks largely to the unstoppable hype machine that is Marvel Comics, so let's not waste time!

For those of you keeping score at home, here's everything I bought...

...and the World's Snazziest Comics Reviews start now!

Comics

52: Week 44: As much as the climax of the last issue was telegraphed well in advance, this week's 52 managed to get a few surprises out of me, even if they do have their own small share of cheating. Specifically, I'm talking about Sobek here, who I'd originally suspected was the "new look" version of Mr. Mind, which I'm sure was the intent of the creators. Still, revealing him as the last of the Horsemen of Apokalips (or the "Monster Society" as they're called here) was a nice touch, coming just long enough since we've actually seen the Mad Scientist plotline that I'd almost forgotten Famine was sent out early, and it's going to make a nice catalyst for all of the stories to come together.

The "cheating," of course, comes from the fact that Famine totally doesn't fit in with the other three Horsemen. Sure, a six-foot talking crocodile who eats people is a frightening sight, but when he's thrown in a lineup with a twenty-foot robot made of machine-guns and a giant, goat-skull-headed embodiment of death, it's not hard to figure out which one of these things is not the same. Still, it's a fun read and it does a nice job of providing some forward motion to the story.

The Authority #2: Yes, a mere five months after the line relaunched, the second issue of Wildstorm's alleged flagship title finally hit shelves, and surprising everybody who read the first issue, things actually happen in this one. Don't get me wrong: I'm about as big a fan of Grant Morrison and Gene Ha as you're likely to find, but with the slow-paced setup issue that came before and almost half a year waiting on this one, it's hard to keep any kind of excitement for the title built up. Fortunately, that's exactly the kind of task that Morrison and Ha excel at, and with this issue (which might as well have been the first one), they do a pretty darn good job of it. The idea of the Authority showing up on "Earth Prime" and trying desperately not to eradicate evil and create a world where Warren Ellis maintains order with an elite army of murdervixens while the Midnighter chomps at the bit is one that lends itself easily to Morrison's style and could provide for some truly fantastic pages.

If, of course, it ever bothers to actually come out. I mean, really: I want to be excited about the Midnighter kicking so much ass in the next issue that it has the possibility of starting World War III, but there's no reason to believe it won't be another five-month wait, and in the meantime, my attention can be better served with, say, Garth Ennis's Midnighter solo title. I'm still going to buy The Authority, of course, but, man, can't we get Zander Cannon in there to do inks and speed things up a little?

Captain America #25: A friend of mine told me today that a set of both covers for this one sold for over a hundred bucks on eBay yesterday, and down at the shop, I've been fielding non-stop phone calls asking if we've got it in stock, and there was even a comment on my MySpace page from one of my old high school friends about this issue. Heck, even as I sat down to start writing up tonight's post, Stephen Colbert was talking about it, and that's just one of the national news outlets that have been covering the book's release. Which I can only think means one thing:

It is amazing what two panels featuring Batroc ze Leaper can do for a book.

I mean, that's what everybody's flipping out about, right? Because the only other alternative would be that there's nationwide media coverage and rampant speculation over a "major death" tied into a storyline, which would mean that society has learned absolutely nothing about comics in the past fourteen years, and that people bought into cheap hype for absolutely no reason despite the fact that we've been down this road with Superman, Phoenix, Hawkeye, Thor, Green Lantern, Reed Richards, Norman Osborn, Cyclops, Magneto, Bucky, and dozens of others without catching on to how comics work, and that would just be depressing.

Maybe it's best to ignore it. I will say, though, that like every issue for the past two years, Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting knock this one well out of the park. My initial thought was that at worst, it's a bad idea that's being done very well, and I'm not even sure that applies here. With Captain America turning himself in at the end of Civil War, Brubaker's options are pretty limited: Cap can either break out, thus defeating the entire shaky purpose of CW #7, or he can do a title about a super-hero in prison, which he literally just did last year in the pages of his truly phenomenal first arc on Daredevil. Instead, we get this, and while there's no way in Creation that Cap's "death" is going to stick, the sheer quality of the issue speaks volumes about Brubaker's ability to craft great stories with these characters. It's an excellent read, but right now it stands as one of the few books that's getting all the attention it deserves for exactly the wrong reasons.

Criminal #5: While we're on the subject, if anyone ever asks why I have such utter faith in Ed Brubaker's writing, all I'll have to do is point to Criminal. I've mentioned my love for crime fiction before, and while Brubaker and artist Sean Philips did a note-perfect heist story, this issue's sudden, inevitable turn into a hard-boiled tale of revenge had me excited to an almost ridiculous degree. It may not come as a shock to anybody, but from I, The Jury on down to Payback, there's not a whole lot I like more than somebody going on a rampage of bloody vengeance, and the way it's all built up here with the source of Leo's cowardice being revealed is simply a fantastic piece of comics. Excellent, excellent stuff.

Dynamo 5 #1: I've never really cared for his work on mainstream titles, but it's no small stretch to say that Jay Faerber does some pretty amazing work on creator-owned books like Noble Causes, and from the first impression, that's a category that Dynamo 5 falls into pretty solidly. For me, the premise--built around a philandering super-hero who dies, leaving five illegitimate kids who each inherit one of his powers--was intriguing enough, but with Noble Causes just now starting to climb out of a slump that bogged it down until around #25, I decided to hold off and reserve judgement until I was acutally able to read it. I should've had a little more faith: From the interaction of the characters to the highly enjoyable last-page shock, Faerber's at the top of his game with this one, and Mahmud Asrar's art is a nice, clean style that could almost pass for Ryan Ottley's smooth pencils for Invincible in some places. It's a fun read, and with 28 story pages, it's well worth taking the risk on, even at $3.50 a pop.

Fantastic Four #543: There's something to be said about an Anniversary Issue that manages to hit the shelves a year after it ought to, but that aside, Dwayne McDuffie's doing some great stuff here. Two issues in, and so far he's been saddled with the unenviable task of making sense of Civil War, and while the last issue featured Johnny tearing down J. Michael Straczynski's nonsensical characterization of Reed Richards, this one sees him directly confronting the readers through Tony Stark. It's an interesting moment, and in the hands of a lesser writer, it's the type of thing that could come off as an annoying bit of defensive self-congratulation, but McDuffie manages to pull it off. The backup stories, as seen above, pretty much speak for themselves, and if Paul Pope doesn't make the extra dollar on the cover price worth it by himself, then seeing Nick Dragotta and Mike Allred illustrating the oddly charming hucksterism of Stan Lee certainly does it.

Hulk / Power Pack #1: Despite the fact that I don't particularly care for the new artist here, I don't really have much of a review of this one. Instead, I just wanted to point out that the backup story by Chris Giarrusso and Banana Sunday's Paul Tobin features a rare cameo appearance by the ISB's favorite Golden-Age Z-Lister, The Vagabond. Adjust your buying habits accordingly.

Manhunter #29: Let the rejoicing commence: Manhunter has been uncancelled again. I'm starting to think that cancelling this book might actually end up being some sort of annual event for DC, sort of like Christmas but with letter-writing campaigns and blog-based complaining instead of presents. Even so, it'll be worth it if the tradeoff is more issues of what's easily become one of my favorite DC Comics, and I say that as someone who never expected to be that excited about Dylan Battles kicking down a door in a full-page entrance shot. The only problem in this issue comes from the otherwise-fantastic artwork, which at one point suggests that Superman was just hanging out outside Kate Spencer's window in exactly the same pose for a few hours. Even that's relatively small, though, and when it's put up against stuff like the way that Wonder Woman's characterized, the nice reveal that ties into 52, and the Cameron Chase sequences, it's easy to overlook in favor of a great, well-done comic. Good stuff.

Midnighter #5: Despite the fact that I drop f-bombs like a drunken sailor with a stubbed toe, I do try to keep things at least moderately "safe for work" here at the ISB. And that, my friends, is the sole reason why this post didn't lead off with the kick to the face featured in this awesome little piece of badassery, which is set up with such a great parallel to Charlie Brown that I could't stop laughing after I read it. Oh Garth Ennis, your violent dismemberments are a delight!

Phonogram #5: At this point, it's been well-established that David Kohl is a bastard. It's sort of a central theme to the story, and it was even the main thrust of Gillen and McKelvie's great ad campaign, which had Kohl cast as a smarmy, self-important jerk even before page one hit. It's one of the things that makes him so likeable, and that's what makes this issue of Phonogram so great, as it's all based around the idea that someone's taking that horrible personality and everything else that goes with it.

It's a device that Mike Carey used towards the end of his run on Hellblazer with Stations of the Cross, but while John Constantine jumped at the chance to get away from being the biggest bastard in comics for a change, Kohl has nothing else to go to, and seeing him fighting to keep his abbraisive self-identity is amazingly entertaining, even before the resurrected zombie goddess in Adidas kicks shows up. It's another excellent issue of the best mini-series going, and if you haven't already jumped on, you're going to want the trade.

Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil #2: As much as I loved the first issue, this one features six pages of Captain Marvel just wailing on a gang of evil talking crocodiles, thus making it one of the greatest comics DC has ever published. Seriously, though: Wonderful stuff.

Trades

ISB BEST OF THE WEEK

Nat Turner v.2: I never learned about Nat Turner in school. Admittedly, this may have been as much a product of my lack of attention as it is of the South Carolina public school system, but I distinctly remember doing fifteen minutes on the Stono Rebellion in the 8th grade, so I think I'd remember if it was covered.

Kyle Baker's book, then, is the first time I've read up on the subject, and like most of Baker's work, it's a truly astonishing pice of graphic literature. The first volume was essentially a traditional origin story for Nat Turner, buildilng him up as a man who rose above being enslaved to at least temporarily conquer his oppressors--setting him up as "America's favorite new comic book hero," as it says on Baker's website. This one, though, dives into the revolt itself with an uncompromising look at the sheer brutality and violence of the event, as Turner and his men kill fifty-five people, including the murder with an axe of a sleeping infant. It's a shocking moment to see from the same artist who does the "Family Circus done right" gag strips of The Bakers, but it's in there, just like everything detailed in The Confessions of Nat Turner, with Baker's phenomenal art taking over when the words of story aren't evocative enough, and it's all part of a truly amazing, thought-provoking, and accessable work that should be part of every library in the country.

It's a phenomenal work from one of the true masters of the form, and it was well worth the wait.

And despite the fact that I'm pretty weirded out by ending an allegedly humorous review column with high praise for a book full of historically accurate axe-murders and lynchings, well, them's the breaks. As always, if you've got any questions, or just want to talk about why the latest Justice League of America might be the most hilariously awful comic ever, feel free to drop a line to my email, or leave a comment.

If I could be real for a moment, though? Red Tornado sucks so hard.

The Most Important Blog Post You May Ever Read!

2007-03-07T22:14:00.000-05:00

Back when I first started working at the shop, the first major event I went through at the store was a huge sale on the back issues. This was back when I was using my inborn gift for shameless hucksterism--a characteristic which can now be seen daily on this very blog--for evil instead of for awesome, and for those of you keeping score at home, it's the same sale where I convinced at least three people that parting with $1.75 in exchange for a run of EuroHit was a good idea.

I've since repented, of course, but despite my remorse, I don't consider that to be the biggest mistake I made that day. No, that was wilfully parting with what may in fact be the most fantastic comic book ever produced. But today, my friends, another copy has been located. Rejoice! For tonight, I give you...

NINJUTSU!
The Art Of The Ninja

Originally published under the art direction of Rich Buckler in 1986 by Solson Publications--the same fine people who brought you Bushido Blade of Zatoichi Walrus--this was a one-shot that was ostensibly produced in order to drum up excitement for Solson's Codename: Ninja, a series that according to the GCD, lasted a mere two issues before being silenced by unknown forces for daring to reveal the truth behind the Ninja's Invisible Art. Truth with which I am about to rock your face.

That's right: Tonight, for the first time ever, the ISB reveals the deadly fighting secrets of the world's most lethal assassins, at great personal risk. There are masters of the fatal arts who would descend on me from nearby Carolina-in-the-Sky University for even thinking about showing you what you are about to see.

But no matter! By studying and mastering the following techinques, you too will be able to join my army of Invincible Super-Ninjas, thus bringing my goal of Total Internet Domination that much closer.

Quite possibly the best thing about this entire book--and believe me, there's a candidate for that honor on virtually every page--is the straightforward, randomly bolded way that it's written, which reads like what would undoubtedly be the best Wikipedia article ever in certain places. In others, of course, the combination of sentences like "One of the most frequently used tools is the rope and grappling hook" and the black-and-white art on newsprint make it read like the world's most irresponsible coloring book.

So really, it's a win-win.

The real important thing about this page, though, is the phrase: "OFt times, Killing was a necessary part of the ART OF THE INVISIBLE WARRIOR," a sentence that we can all easily adapt to our day-to-day lives. For instance:

"Anybody want to hit up Taco Bell for lunch?"

"Oft times, Consuming Three Gorditas is a necessary part of the ART OF THE INVISIBLE WARRIOR."

Try it out.

From this lesson, we can learn two important lessons:

1. Using their indomitable Chi, squirrels can merge their bodies with trees.

2. Simply master the art of shape-shifting, and you'll be a lot better at hiding.

Really, though, that last one's a given.

Perhaps the most crucial part of a Ninja's training is the meditation required to unlock his inner mystical powers--such as flight, freestyle rapping, and the ability to generate wailing, Van Halenesque guitar solos--by focusing on the nine Kuji-In Hand Positions. The one pictured above, for instance, is used to develop your inner power...

...and this one serves as a reminder that even a Ninja must rock out hard. And of course...

...THIS one may be used to signal when you're about to utilize the deadly Diamond Cutter finishing move, which can be hit from 52 different positions. Bang!

Of course, mystical techniques and wailing guitars are no substitute for a sturdy weapon at your side, as evidenced by the next section, Ninja Weaponry. Most of what's in there is common knowledge, but just so we're all clear, I would like to point out one thing:

I'm pretty sure that's the exact set of throwing stars that's available on p. 498 of the current Previews.

So really, that's all there is to it. My advice? Study the information I've provided carefully, and eventually you too shall be endowed with kicks that can kill lions or bears.

I'm pretty sure that's guaranteed in there somewhere.

BONUS FEATURE: A Gallery of Ninja Fighting Techniques!

Volstagg's Guide to Life

2007-03-06T22:49:00.000-05:00

Even with last night's post about the sheer majesty of the Warriors Three, I've still found myself doing a lot of thinking about Asgard's greatest fighters today, and I've come to the conclusion that there's an awful lot we mere mortals of Midgard can learn from that font of godly wisdom, Volstagg.

Yes, Volstagg, the Henpecked Lion of Asgard! And really, who better to take advice from? He's family man who enjoys the finer things in life, and on the weekends he puts on a pink doublet and beats the living crap out of Frost Giants with his best friends. Truly, he is everything we all want to be.

So once again, it falls to me to disseminate a nigh-immortal lifetime's worth of achievement into a series of easily digestible mantras that will be--as I'm sure we're all hoping at this point--my last word on the subject for a while. Thus, I give to you...

The Wit and Wisdom of Volstagg the Voluminous

Volstagg on... Generosity!

Volstagg on... Priorities!

Volstagg on... Parenting!

Volstagg on... Moderation!

And of course, Volstagg on... Keeping It Real!

Truly, he is a sage for our times.

More Helpful Hints from the ISB:

| Jimmy Olsen's Guide to Life |

The Warriors Three Are Totally Boss And That Is A Stone Cold Fact.

2007-03-05T22:22:00.000-05:00

To support this claim, I'd like to offer up the absolutely gorgeous work of Charles Vess, from Marvel Fanfare #34-37. Featuring...

Fandral the Dashing!

Hogun the Grim!

And of course...

Volstagg the Voluminous, The Lion of Asgard!

The Warriors Three. Could they possibly rock any harder?

I SAY THEE NAY!

BONUS FEATURE: Ride The Lightning!

And now, the first installment of my latest ongoing featurette, Comics Panels That Could Totally Be Mid-80s Heavy Metal Album Covers:

That is what Ronnie James Dio sees every time he closes his eyes.

More From Thor's Three Buddies in Non-Stop Action:

| Six-Fisted Asgardian Adventure! |

The Abject Lack of Quality That Is... Banzai Girl

2007-03-04T22:12:00.000-05:00

If you ever find yourself suddenly consumed with a desire to read the worst, most exploitative comic imaginable, but can't find any back issues of Tarot or Ant, don't worry: Banzai Girl makes a dandy substitute.

Yes, long before Anita Blake redefined the world of softcore supernatural porn comics, there was Banzai Girl, a comic based so heavily around upskirt shots that issues were actually offered bagged and boarded with Official Banzai Girl thongs.

No, seriously. Ask your friendly neighborhood retailer.

The plot, such as it is, is a lot like a paper-cut: thin and surprisingly painful. Nevertheless, I'll do my best to get through it.

Created by beauty pageant winner and schoolgirl unform enthusiast Jinky Coronado, Banzai Girl concerns the adventures of, well, beauty pageant winner and schoolgirl uniform enthusiast Jinky Coronado, thus placing it squarely below the latter works of Chris Claremont in the Grand Heirarchy of Published Fan-Fiction. One can assume, however, that Jinky-the-Artist does not battle as many tentacle monsters as Jinky-the-Character.

Ah yes. Tentacle monsters. Because what else could it be?

These particular octopedian horrors--referred to as the "Shadow Whisperers" for no particular reason--are interdimensional fiends bent on conquering the Earth as part of their sinister plot to acquire... Calcium. Because apparently, obtaining the fifth most abundant element on the planet requires them to brutally murder pretty much everyone they run across and viciously shred Jinky's clothes at every opportunity from their secret headquarters in the basements below the shopping mall.

Of course, due to the refractive properties of Calcite and other sciencey-sounding expository dialogue, Jinky's troubled by dreams about her interdimensional counterparts, who look just like her, except with even more fetishistic outfits. Essentially, it's the late-night Cinemax version of Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld, but starring Space Cheerleader Jinky, who rolls around in a "liquid metal battlesuit" blowing things up with a space-bazooka, which inevitably causes her skirt to blow up and reveal her Liquid Metal Battlethong™.

Amazingly, this is actually less fun to read than it sounds.

Fortunately for Jinky--the character, not the creator, for whom nothing I say in this post can be considered "fortunate"--she's got a standard-issue crew of friends to help her fight the creeping terror of calcium-deprived monstrosities:

First up, we've got Jinky's sidekick, Katie J., who is always referred to by her full name every time she's discussed. With her short, spiky hair, penchant for wearing combat boots and fatigues beneath her party dress, and hatred of--and I quote--"girl clothes," Katie J. could only be more stereotypically leading if she offered to give Jinky a massage while they watched the WNBA.

Next up is the Veronica to Jinky's Betty, Michelle, her good-natured rival in the local beauty pageant. Aside from having parents who get mind-controlled by the evil dairy-craving tentacle beasts, Michelle's only remarkable for reacting to her best friend being abducted by monsters in the mall's dressing rooms by... going and recording herself singing karaoke. Truly, this is the stuff of legends.

Also, as depicted, there's one time where she completely forgets to button up her shirt, which, really, ought to be expected at this point.

Rounding out the cast--so to speak--is geeky horndog Rommel, so named because somebody thought it was a good idea to name a comic relief character after a famous World War II German Tank Commander, and alleged movie star Miss Miko, who contributes absolutely nothing to the plot aside from vaguely resembling a leftover female version of the Scorpion from late-90s issues of Spider-Man. Charming!

Oh, and there's also an "adorable" cartoon character stuffed animal brought to life by an explosion of "life energy" or something, but you know what? I can only take so much. Let's move on to the story itself.

Needless to say, it is not very good. Let's see here: Scene transitions are nonexistant and the dialogue reads like every third word was replaced with a panty shot. The major adversaries that are built up for the first three issues actually aren't the culprits behind the mall-related abductions. That dubious honor belongs to a monster who shows up at random and is later revealed to be the brother of the mall's owner, who hands out a few million dollars after Jinky beats up the monster, thus setting everything right. And the Shadow Whisperers, much like the Horrors of Party Beach, can be defeated with the liberal application of salt.

And then in the last issue, there's an extended musical number.

But that's not the worst of it. No, that's when Jinky gets her new battlesuit from her father, who may or may not be an inventor of some kind, a distinction left ambiguous by the half-formed script. Said battlesuit, like the halloween costumes of my childhood, has her codename written right on the chest, as well as some amazingly creepy extra powers.

Yeah, I think I'm done here. When someone starts battling the forces of darkness with the power of highly inappropriate groping, there's not a whole lot I can add to it.

The ISB Guide to Writing: A Preview

2007-03-03T23:59:00.000-05:00

As part of my ongoing book deal--which promises to kick into high gear later this year when my first novel, The Chronicles of Solomon Stone, Book One: Enter: Solomon: Stone Me Deadly hits shelves just in time for the St. Swithin's Day rush--I've been approached about writing a handy How-To Guide for the aspiring comics blogger.

And why not? With over six dozen unique visitors stopping by to see the latest in crayon-based parody or super-hero animal-fighting, I've certainly achieved a truly profound level of success. Unless you take "success" to imply any kind of monetary reward, in which case... well, maybe I should just go with "notoriety."

Regardless, not a day goes by that I'm not stopped in the street and asked something like, "Chris, how do you do it? Ladies love you, girls adore you, I mean even the ones who never saw you! What is your secret?"

"Well, Dave Campbell," I say, "It all boils down to one simple rule." And in the interest of whetting your appetite for the How-To Guide (tentatively scheduled for release on Take Your Daughter To Work Day Weekend of 2009, assuming the internet hasn't crumbled under repeated crackings in half due to Ronin being revealed to be Aunt May or whatever), I'd like to present that rule to you right now:

Know your audience.

More ISB Guides to Writing:
| Silver Age Horror Comics For Fun and Profit |

Friday Night on the ISB

2007-03-02T23:22:00.000-05:00

As you may have heard from Kevin, the final issue of Civil War: Frontline, a book that manages to be so unflinchingly awful that it laps back around to "hilarious," involves a scene where journalist Sally Floyd takes Captain America to task for an apparent cultural irrelevance.

As someone whose very first Marvel Comic was an issue of Cap, my immediate fannish response is to leap to Cap's defense, but, well, she's right. Captain America, the Living Legend of World War II, probably doesn't spend his free time hitting on underage girls via MySpace or checking out videos of people lip-synching to Coldplay on YouTube.

Why?

Maybe because he's been busy FIGHTING A BEAR.

And damn it, he did it for America.

(Images from Mark Gruenwald and Tom Morgan's Captain America #336)