Stan Lee trades Comics for a Pug!

By everything good and sweet in Odin's beard its Friday, July 23, 2010 and today begins Operation: Cleansweep. The Nozz Compound has been divided into eight zones and every day I'm not out sweating my ass off fixing a beach house in Sandbridge I will be cleaning one of those zones. Today's target: the office. But first..

STAN LEE GOES BOOM!!

Big announcement coming out of Comic-Con is Stan Lee lending his creative skills to BOOM Studios, and he's being backed by some serious talent. Here's the line-up:

SOLDIER ZERO, written by DOCTOR WHO and ACTION COMICS scribe Paul Cornell with art by SUPERMAN artist Javier Pina, tells the story of a wheelchair-bound astronomy teacher who finds himself in a freak accident that bonds him with an alien weapon of war.

THE TRAVELER, written by Eisner Award-nominee and BOOM! Studios Chief Creative Officer Mark Waid with art by AMAZING SPIDER-MAN artist Chad Hardin, features a mysterious new superhero with time-traveling powers battling the Split-Second Men, super-powered assassins from the future.

STARBORN, written by iZOMBIE's Chris Roberson with art by THE X-MEN's Khary Randolph, tells the story of a regular guy who discovers he's the heir to an intergalactic empire, putting him the center of a war between five alien races.

I'm highly intrigued. This is the sort of sci-fi goodness I've really been digging lately, and now that SUPERMAN has gone from awesome space adventures to talking down streets I think these are just what I need to scratch that itch. Also, if you want a copy of SOLDIER ZERO signed by Stan Lee make sure to request one at your local comic shop. There will be some shipped. Lee has created some of the most beloved characters in comics, and these concepts look like he still got a sweet creative touch.

COMIX!!!

Hey speaking of comics, let's look at BIRDS OF PREY #3 which i realize may be old news to many of you, but I didn't get a copy until this week. Now, last time I discussed BIRDS OF PREY it was in one of the "Battleground" segments due to Scans Daily moderators being completely ridiculous in their treatment of BOP scribe Gail Simone over the killing of two characters one of them being gay in the middle of gay pride month. Ms. Simone urged them to wait until the storyline had concluded before jumping to conclusions and making snap judgments. Of course they didn't listen gave Simone and "official warning" for hate speech or somesuch and she saw the writing on the wall and left.

And now one month later we see that she was right and the moderators in question were indeed morons. Although now I suppose they'll have to find something else to attack which will likely be the line "Penguin party in my pants" which I would like to see on a t-shirt.

Paul Levitz has made me a convert as his LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES is being a really good time. The flashback issues on ADVENTURE COMICS are dull as hell, but his book is juts a lot of fun. Yes, it is crappy that 3boot Legion got shafted for this. Yes, the treatment of Jim Shooter was ridiculously stupid and awful. Yes, those costumes really need to be changed. However, Paul Levitz is writing some really fun book.

Onward to TIME MASTERS: VANISHING POINT, which I have to say I love the title. This book is a story inside a bigger story wrapped up in a tortilla. For more on the tortilla I will refer you all to the chart that's is being made over in England right now once its finished. As we know from THE RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE, Superman, Green lantern, Booster Gold, and Rip Hunter are traveling through time trying to find Wayne before he makes it back to the present and destroys everything somehow. So, Dan Jurgens is doing a limited series detailing that there's some chicanery afoot during their search. It doesn't seem to have anything huge therein that readers need to follow the main Bat-storyline, but its a fun little book.

WHO SAYS KIDS AIN'T CLEVER?

Value can indeed be a relative thing. One man's trash is another man's treasure and all that. Something is worth what another person is willing to pay for it, or trade for it. Steve ortiz put that to the test when he went on Criagslist to see what he could get for an old cell phone. With some patience and a lot of time online, this kid ended up with a Porsche. This process took about two years and he traded quite a few things along the way. It fact the Porsche was actually a set down in monetary value from the thing he traded for it which was a Ford Bronco. So why did he trade it?

How many kids drive to high school in a Porsche?

So really its about what is important to you at that point in time. When I was a kid I had Star Wars figures. Played with them. Loved them. After a while I didn't play with them as much. But the guy up the street took a shine to them. So I traded a few of them for some of his comic books that he didn't want. There was some pretty sweet stuff too. So I was amped, the guy down the street was happy. Everyone was happy, except my parents who said that kid took advantage of me and made us trade everything back. So I got my Star Wars figures back which went into a box never to be played with again because I just didn't care about them anymore.

Ortiz has some of him family members saying he's a swindler. Pretty much the same mindset as my parents way back when. Its not about the monetary value attached to the items. Its about two people having something the other wants and them both coming to an arrangement both are happy with. Call it swapping, call it bartering, call it whatever but its as old as the hills and it still works.

GREATEST PUG EVER!!!

Even money says our good friend Richard over at Teatime Brutality would trade his Doctor Who box sets for that dog. Well, maybe a couple of them.

MUSIC!!

Continuing this week of my favorite songs, here's one I wish that all songs were as awesome as.



That's it for Friday. I'm going to begin the cleaning process. In the sage words of Lando: "Here goes nothing."

31st century fashion critic

I'm a LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES fan. I liked the comic when I was a kid. The Legion has been through a ton of changes since they made their first appearance. DC has had more than a few continuity shake-ups. So, the team would get rebooted. Well, it does make it tough to keep continuities straight and sometimes when talking about the Legion you have to specify which Legion you're actually talking about.

So we have yet another incarnation of the Legion which is supposed to be a previous incarnation of the Legion as part of DC going retro which I'm obviously a huge fan of. As you can see by my Top Ten list I'm not terribly thrilled with the costumes of this Legion in carnation. Gary Frank is a great artist, but those costumes are mostly terrible. I look at this image and it doesn't strike me as an iconic superhero team.

Had a chat with Linda about this last night. She's a bigger Legion fan than me and she agrees about the costumes. She dislikes them to the point of calling Ultra Boy a 'doof' because of his costume. Well, of course I had to counter by making fun of Brainiac 5's coat since she made fun of my favorite Legionaire and I needed to counter in a mature manner.

To take things a little further I did some quick sketches of some ideas I would likely use if I was redesigning the costumes.

Lightning Lad is one of the premier Legion characters. Along with Cosmic Boy and Saturn Girl, he founded the team. When I was a kid reading the comic I always thought he was the leader of the group. I wanted to keep is costume pretty straight forward. A bit of old school time tested stuff. Very blatant lightning motif. The areas i shaded a bit would be a dark blue. Gloves and pants would be white. Trim and lightning bolts yellow. This isn't a big departure from many of the classic costumes the character has had. Please notice that he does have sleeves. I kept the haircut conservative. I wanted his look to scream 'traditional super hero'.

Timber Wolf is another poor sole who suffers from 31st Century Sleeveless Syndrome. His previous costumes have ranked from straight super hero to urban fighter. He's also had some tricky costume issues since his color scheme of orange and dark brown were swiped by a Marvel Comics character with a somewhat similar power set, Wolverine. Well, it time he took it back. The shaded areas would be dark brown with the non-shaded being orange. Timber Wolf also used to have very animalistic facial features and a haircut that seemed to resemble wolf's ears. While it did set the character apart from others visually, I didn't see much need for it. I kept it short and spikey figuring the character would want a hair style that's low maintenance and out of his face. Having a set of slightly larger canine teeth to resemble fangs would work nicely too.

Wildfire was another favorite of mine from childhood. His costume is different because it serves a distinctive function. It's a containment suit. The character was human put has been transformed into an energy based being. The suit keeps him from dissipating. I went with a more armored look. Had to keep the trademark face visor on the helmet. The main armored parts of the suit would be red with torso and sleeves being orange. I put his "winged star" emblem on the shoulders of armor. Its a bit of a departure from the classic look but not as much as the see through casing with little armored bits here and there look. I don't need to see his glowing innards. The character may be more comfortable with himself and his glowing innards, but I don't have to see them.

Finally, we have Ultra Doof-AHEM-Ultra Boy. He's the last of the big trio that suffers from 31st Century Sleeveless Syndrome in the current incarnation. It's one think for a Legionaire like Blok to run around shirtless, after all he's a huge giant who looks like a rock. Ultra Boy is one of the heavy hitters, but the nature of his power means he's going to need a bit of protection provided by his costume. So I went with a jacket, gloves and a larger belt, like a weight belt. The thing with Ultra Boy is that he can only use one power at a time. If he's using his super strength then he's not invulnerable. The boots are kinda funky, but its a throwback to his original costuming. His color scheme has always been a bit much with black, red, brown, and green; but simplifying it wouldn't really help anything and only make him less identifiable. Boots, belt and gloves would be brown. Under-shirt and jacket trim would be red. Shaded area is black. The rest is green.

I thought about doing a Karate Kid sketch, but the current version is having a slight case of being dead.

Legion Top 10!

As many of you know LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES ended it's run with issue 50, and I called for a letter writing campaign to address this. Well, I've since done a complete 180 on this topic, so without further ado:

The top 10 reasons why Geoff Johns Legion book will be better than the previous Legion book!

10: Johns Legion Brainiac 5 doesn't waste resources heating his lab. That's what his mad scientist coat is for!

9: Lightning Lad and Ultra Boy prove that sleeves are entirely passé.

8: Speaking of clothes, Shadow Lass was wearing way too much before. That's been rectified!

7: Saturn Girl has been long overdue for a butch haircut.

6: Now we get to see Green Lantern 1000 years in the future, because Johns really isn't doing enough Green Lantern stuff.

5: There really aren't enough comics with teenagers that look like they're thirty.

4: The other Legion couldn't go running to Superman to solve all their problems.

3: Johns Legion Karate Kid and Triplicate Girl (well, one of her) were in COUNTDOWN, and we all know how great that was!

2: Lack of content for the last twenty years provide mystery and intrigue!

And finally:

1: Unlike Mark Waid and Jim Shooter, Dan DiDio isn't afraid Geoff Johns will take his job and therefore has job security!

Times a-changin'...

I'm not liking what I am seeing from where my entertainment money goes. I one consistent expense for my own amusement is my weekly comic fix. The majority of the comics I buy are DC. DC is heading in directions I don't like. What really galls me is that the writer attached to much of what I'm not liking is someone I had been a fan of: Geoff Johns.

What I liked about Johns was that the stuff he wrote was genuinely engaging to me. He's very good at hooking a reader in. I liked his FLASH run. I loved his TEEN TITANS run. He's still doing stuff I enjoy. I love BOOSTER GOLD. But then things start to pop up. GREEN LANTERN: REBIRTH was the first big bump in the road. Its no secret to anyone who has followed this blog for a while that I feel that DC should have never brought back Hal Jordan. I think it degrades the excellent stories, like FINAL NIGHT, however I went along with it. I picked up the first few issues of the new Jordan starring series and now had evidence of something I knew all along:

Even though I loved Hal Jordan when I was a kid, I'm not a kid anymore, and Hal Jordan isn't really very interesting.

Seriously folks, who would you think I'd relate to: the fearless, skirt chasing jet test pilot or the artist/graphic designer who was in the right place at the right time but does his best to step up to the plate?

Fast forward to this week. LEGION OF THREE WORLDS #2 and ROGUES' REVENGE #3 hit the stands. Both penned by Johns. ROGUES' REVENGE wraps up things paving the way for the impending FLASH: REBIRTH (very imaginative title, insert eyeroll here please), bringing the return of Barry Allen to the title role of the FLASH comic. As I've written before, this is easily the stupidest move I've seen DC make. To make matters even stupider, at the end of the issue in question, the Rogues are referring to Allen's return, saying he's the Flash that never cut him any slack. If he's coming back then it's big time trouble.

Barry Allen? Hardcore? Whiskey tango foxtrot?

Moving over to the Legion. Yes, I've written and sent my letter trying to save the current series. Then I go and read LEGION OF THREE WORLDS. I want to say I haven't seen such bias in a long time, but its an election year so we know that's false. George Perez is the sole reason that this book wasn't a complete crapfest. Perez, as always, brings all the goods to the table, and while I rarely endorse a comic solely for the art, I will do so here. Kudos to Mister Perez. Jeers to Johns. We get the textbook, big super villain team up. We get the heroes bickering over whether or not to bump off Superboy-Prime. We get Sun Boy seeing the action from his apartment, making a really corny line about a sun shining and retreating into his apartment, likely to write self-loathing poetry. Nice to know the emo fad has lasted 1000 years into the future. We get the horribly uncharacteristic writing of the Threeboot Brainiac 5. Add in some Green Lantern fanboyism and of course a character from the current Green Lantern books managing to still be alive a millennium later. I'm really on the fence about dropping this book. Lousy writing, but spectacular art.

My current pull list has been hemorrhaging DC titles this year. So what will this mean for my future as a read? Will I go over to Marvel? No, I dropped them back in '96 and see nothing there to entice me back over. Will I drop DC entirely? Also no, they're still putting out great titles like WONDER WOMAN and TINY TITANS, and those are works I'm very much enjoying still.

So which direction will I head in? DC seems to not want my business as much anymore with their insipid "retro trend". Honestly, if I want to read about the silver age Justice league, I'd buy the old comics, I don't need the characters resurrected. I'm not heading back over to Marvel, because I'm not into the whole Skrull-o-rama deal.

It's time to explore other options. More on this later.

SAVE THE LEGION!

At the Baltimore Comicon last weekend, Senior Vice President and Executive Editor of DC Comics Dan DiDio announced the the cancellation of LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES. Not the best way to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Legion. The plans are to scrap the current run and relaunch later with the Silver Age Legion team recently reintroduce back into continuity by Geoff Johns.

This is another example of DC Comics moving backwards instead of forwards. The current Legion book took a fresh look at the established characters and has sold better than any Legion book in the past 20 years.

I'm supporting a letter writing campaign to try to save the current book, and ask any fans of LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES to join me.

DC Comics
1700 Broadway
New York, NY 10019

Attn: Dan DiDio

Make your letter intelligent and thoughtful please. If I can resist the urge to write "Eat it, Grandpa!" you can too.

Comics: mine, others, and Crisis Avoided

First up: my stuff!

Chris has finished up MERE MORTAL issue 3, and if taking the week off to work on other thing and a site update before starting issue 4. I've completed the first chapter of NIGHT LIFE, and will be taking the week off as I'm transitioning from a strip format to a regular comic page format. This is a bit intimidating for me, but you don't get anywhere by being a wuss. You may be asking how we managed to get to end of our prospective chapters at the same time? We're just slick that way.

And now: other people's stuff!

In a random act of e-narcissism I Googled myself. That always sounds dirty, no matter how many times you say it. Anyways, a listing came up for me at boxxet.com under 'Blue beetle' and the page, which I had absolutely nothing to do with, had a bit from this here blog and told the gentle readers to check here for more info on BLUE BEETLE. Of course, I haven't said anything about BLUE BEETLE since that one post that got ganked for that site, UNTIL NOW! This week's issue was good times. I like Sturges on the writing chores, and we have Rafael Albuquerque on art, so I'm a happy camper. I was really worried about this book after John Rogers left, but it seem to have gotten it's footing back.

Over in TEEN TITANS we get a very nesty bait and switch story. I honestly sat there and said, "That did not just happen". This title's been in some trouble since Geoff Johns left it. It just doesn't seem to be able to keep my focus. I thought the Terror Titans story was alright, but not great. The team keeps losing members. I know there's some spin off series planned, but right now, I don't know how intersted I really am in checking it out.

LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES had my attention for the first time in a long time, and not just from the last page of shocker of two of my favorite Legionaires canoodling. I like the series, although it does need to tighten up just a little more on the narrative. I'm very glad that the series will be surviving the Legion of the Three Worlds event. There was quite a bit of worry from myself and other Legion "Threeboot" fans that this version of the Legion would be done away with in favor of the Legion that Geoff Johns brought back in his Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes story.

Justice Society of America continues it's story of Gog and Magog, which ties in with Mark Waid and Alex Ross's series KINGDOM COME. The story continues to be a strong one, whether your a fan of KINGDOM COME or not. Lots of good elements coming into play as Superman from the KC universe watches event unfold before him that had dire consequences on his world. Unfortunately this story is geared towards readers who have been reading comics for quite a while. Yes, still story loses quite a bit of punch if you ahven't read KINGDOM COME, but it's still worth the time to pick it up.

And on to SUPERMAN, which marks the first time I've really followed this title. I showed up for James Robinson's writing and I haven't been disappointed. The hook on the end of this issue has got me eagerly awaiting next month. Even you haven't read the title in a while, now's a really great time to come on back.

Finally: Final Crisis management.

It's no secret that I'm terribly disappointed in FINAL CRISIS and BATMAN: R.I.P., and I've dropped both titles. I gave both three issues, and neither could keep me interested. Here's the thing on FINAL CRISIS, no I don't like the series, but I'm really loving the spin offs.

Meltzer's LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT is not a direct tie in, but it's an event so I'm talking about it here. As stories go, it's a solid one. It revolves around the final night of the DCU. Something's happened, which Meltzer is vague on, but that probably a wise move, but it's bad. End of the world kind of bad and the heroes know that this is very likely their last fight. Much of the story revolves around Geo-Force wanting to finally get his revenge on Deathstroke for his sister. Much of what goes on with other heroes is handled in a page of two. The story is solid, but unless you're a fan of Geo-Force, and at last count there were about twelve of us, you likely will not care.

Second issue of ROGUES' REVENGE hit and I'm loving this book. The Rogues, like myself, decided to give the whole FINAL CRISIS thing the finger. And while I'm getting heat at the comic shop for my decision, Captain Cold and his crew are getting their own heat. They're looking to handle a few last bits of business before going to ground, namely, killing that punk Inertia. Libra's got a problem with them not playing ball, and it's on like Donkey Kong.

Then there's the SUPERMAN BEYOND 3D. I don't like 3D anything. Never been a fan. The story is tight though. This is the kind of stuff I wanted to see in FINAL CRISIS. Champions of the multiverse coming together fo take on some big badness. Superman kicking butt and taking names. If we had more of this sort of thing in FINAL CRISIS I'd be singing it's praises to the heavens.

So, that's my week in comics. Later.