DEAR DC COMICS

“Dear DC Comics,

I’m writing to let you know how much I enjoyed Guy Gardner #11, the first part to what I’m sure will be one of the most thrilling storylines in your company’s publication history, Guy Gardner Year One: Yesterday’s Sins.

However, I must question some of the choices made regarding this particular issue’s cover.

I’m not referring to the large football player emblazoned over the left side of the issue, although, I feel certain football players, even ones as talented as the teenage Guy Gardner, aren’t terribly appealing to a significant portion of your audience, but I digress…

No good sirs, I would ask that you focus your attention to the center image.  Might I suggest that, in the future, you avoid images of young children being beaten by their parent(s) with leather belts as a result of reading comics.  While, yes, thematically, it gets directly to the heart of the story, it’s quite possible that said image could taint potential readers’ desire to purchase your delightful comic mag. 

Nevertheless, I eagerly await more of Double-Gs time-tossed turbulence next issue!

Kind Regards,

T. Shroeder, Jr.
Address Withheld”

“NO, MAN. THAT WAS HAWKEYE. I’M RONIN, SEE?”

Okay, so I just finished reading New Avengers # 50 at lunch, and this page bothered me.Yes, Hawkeye deserves to be upset about Bullseye wearing his costume and taking his name, no doubt.  That one I’ll give you, Mr. Bendis.  But look at what Osborn’s done to the THUNDERBOLTS, man – a team Hawkeye himself used to lead.  Heck, for that matter, look at what’s happened to Moonstone — a woman he used to be (almost) in love with.

I think this kind of thing is my biggest issue with these Bendis Avengers comics.  Not that they’re bad ideas (although some of them are), not that nothing really ever happens or gets resolved in them, or that they have terrible artwork.  It’s the missing nuances of these characters.  I mean, I’m not dying for continuity steeped comics, or a complete recap of how Hawkeye left the Avengers for a time to go lead the Thunderbolts into legitimacy.  But it might’ve been nice if Ronin had given Moonstone’s name instead of Luke Cage.

TCB SPEEDY REVIEW: HULK VS…

Hulk Vs. Wolverine / Hulk Vs. Thor
Story(s) by Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost, and Frank Paur
Directed by Frank Paur

Pretend I’m a cooler comics blogger than I am and let’s say somebody at Lionsgate actually sent me this DVD, and that I didn’t buy it for $15.

Not sure why each movie is on its own seperate DVD.  …Vs. Wolverine is only 37 minutes long, and …Vs. Thor clocks in at just over 45 minutes.

Here’s the deal with …Vs. Wolverine: it serves as an introduction to the world of Wolverine and Weapon X, showcasing many of the characters who’ll be making their world premiere this summer in X-Men Orgins: Wolverine — Sabertooth, Deadpool, etc…  Purely coincidence, I’m sure.

It opens with a Hulk #181 inspired brawl that ends with both Wolverine and the Hulk captured by the Weapon X program.  Wolverine’s capture and sedation leads to a pretty faithful adaptation of Barry Windsor Smith’s Weapon X story, and it plays out pretty grusome on the smallscreen.  Hulk’s in this one very little, but he does break free at the end and goes ballistic on Weapon X and Wolverine.

The story is by X-Force scribes Kyle and Yost, and it’s pretty bland.  The animation isn’t bad, but it’s very stylized, almost to the point of distraction sometimes.

…Vs. Thor is better.

With a Thor movie on the horizon, its purpose, like …Vs. Wolverine, is to mostly introduce newcomers to the world of Thor and Asgard.  And while it does a good job, and still manages to be entertaining, it gets to be a bit much in spots as the writers really do try and put EVERYTHING in.  Check these off your Thor scorecard.

-Odin
-OdinSleep
-Loki
-The Enchantress
-Scourge, the Executioner
-Surtur
-Malekith (seriously)
-Balder
-Sif
-the Warriors Three
-Frost Giants
-Hela
-Fenris

Yeah, all of that in 45 minutes.  And honestly, it kind of works, but still, they somehow manage to never call Thor’s hammer Mjolnir.  Weird, huh?

Special features are okay.  A “Making of…” featurette for each, and some commentaries, which I didn’t get around to listening to.  …Vs. Thor has a featurette on Jack Kirby, which isn’t terribly informative and doesn’t offer anything to longtime fans, but its heart’s in the right place.

If you own the previous Marvel animated features, you’ll probably want to own these two.  But if you’re only mildly interested, you can probably hold off and catch them on Cartoon Network eventually.

TCB SPEEDY REVIEW: GI JOE #1

G.I. Joe # 1

IDW Publishing

Chuck Dixon – W

Robert Atkins – A

First IDW issue – Yo Joe!

Blockbuster movie coming this summer.

Wait?  This super-military comic has very little action.  Bad move.

Dixon keeps his conservative bias in check.

Setting-up a Duke / Scarlett / Snake-eyes love triangle.  Saw it coming from a mile away (insert Low-Light joke here).

Snake-eyes shouldn’t need technology to be invisible.  He’s a ninja.

Where the hell’s Cobra, guys?

Needs to get better.  Fast.

TOP FIVE PREFAB VILLAINS: NUMBER ONE

So here we are — the eagerly anticipated ending.  Prefab numero uno is…

DOOMSDAY

First Appearance: Superman, Man of Steel # 17

“What’s Doomsdays deal?”

Well, if you don’t know already, he’s the guy that killed Superman.

And believe it or not, Doomsday actually hails from Superman’s home planet Krypton.

In an origin story that asks a lot of its readers, a mad-scientist named Bertron attempts to create a lifeform that can survive the ultra harsh environs of ancient Krypton.  He goes about doing this by growing a baby and tossing it into the wild where it can be torn apart by the vicious creatures that dominate the planet’s surface.  Bertron would then collect the remains and clone the child over and over again, until he was able to speed up the evolutionary process, and created a creature that could not only survive the experience, but continiously adapt itself to a point where it could never be killed by the same thing twice.

Things went south from there, and “the Ultimate”, as Doomsday was called back then, was eventually exiled from Krypton only to terrorize other planets in the DCU.  Eventually, he was contained by the inhabitants of Calaton, who then did the same thing as Bertron, and launched him off into space for somebody else to worry about… and of course, he landed on Earth.

He “hibernated” for centuries, before waking up in the ’90s and going totally apeshit across most of the United States.

“No concept of gentleness or beauty… it just wants to kill.”

-Louise Simonson

After Doomsday nearly killed every member of the Justice League, Superman decided to put himself in the monsters way again and again, and become the primary focus of its aggression.  The two of them fought for the better part of a day, before ending up in Metropolis, where Superman pledged to end Doomsday’s rampage once and for all… and died doing that very thing.

“What makes Doomsday a prefab villian?”

“Let’s just kill him!”

As the story goes, that was Jerry Ordway’s stock answer whenever group editor Mike Carlin asked his team “What do we do with Superman?” at DC’s annual Superman summit.

But in 1991, DC found themselves in little bit of a bind, and suddently Ordway’s suggestion seemed like it maybe wasn’t such a bad idea.  Y’see, just a year or so before, the Superman team had set up the engagement and eventual marriage of Clark Kent and Lois Lane.  But ABC was riding high on the popularity of Superman’s TV adventures on Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, and wanted to marry them on TV first.  Now, faced with having to push their main storyline back for an indefinite period of time, DC did the unthinkable and announced they were killing off Superman.

But how would it happen?  Who would do the deed?   Shouldn’t it be his arch-nemesis, Lex Luthor?  Probably, yeah, but he’s on the show, too.  Okay, well what about one of his other villains?  Yeeeaaah, sorry… they kind of suck, and nobody’d really care.  But what about creating a brand new villain to take him out?  A guy that no one had seen before, not even Superman… and a character that keeps both existing and the sure to be new readers on the same page.

Enter: Doomsday — a Hulk-like figure that Superman writer/artist Dan Jurgens had been toying with introducing for a year or so.  A muscle bound powerhouse that could stand toe-to-toe with the Man of Steel, and even more, take his life.

SERIOUSLY, MARVEL… WHAT. THE. HELL?

TOP FIVE PREFAB VILLIANS: NUMBER TWO

A late Happy Thanksgiving to all three of my readers… and to anyone else out there who might be stopping by.  Hope you and your family had a great one, and that the good times continue throughout the holiday season and well into next year.

But now, it’s time we got back the internet’s most unreliable list.

TCB’S Top Five Prefabricated Villains: Number Two

GALACTUS

First Appearance: Fantastic Four # 48

“Heresy”, you say?  Well, maybe a little bit, yeah, and the truth is, Galactus almost didn’t make the list.  He’s certainly become a fixture of the Marvel Universe over the last forty plus years and definitely moved way passed one-trick pony status.  However, that’s only in hindsight, and what we’re talking about here is how these guys were conceived, and more importantly, perceived from the onset… and with that in mind, Big G is a total prefabber.

“What’s Galactus’ deal?”

He eats planets.

Created and introduced by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee in 1966, Galactus was intended to be little more than a sales stunt.  Both Kirby and Lee were tired of the usual villains for the Fantastic Four, and sales showed that the audience might be feeling the same way.  So, in an effort to take things up a notch, they came up with Galactus — a planet devouring godlike being from space so far beyond typical “super-villains” that he defies even explanation or title.  He just IS.

“Why’s Galactus a prefab villain?”

If you’ve read the Galactus Trilogy (FF #s 48-50) , you know how strange it feels.  The first 10 of FF #48 is the finale to an Inhumans story started issues before. It’s only about half way through, after the FF have wrapped things up in Attilan, that The Watcher and Silver Surfer show up, and Galactus makes his debut at the very end.  Sure, the cover shows us the Watcher and warns of ”THE COMING OF GALACTUS“, but readers in ‘66 had no idea what any of that meant.  They were just picking up the FF, and suddenly, in what they probably thought was just another Inhumans story, they found themselves knee deep in a battle to save the planet from God and Frankie Avalon.  That’s built to thrill comics, kids… and if you don’t believe me, build a time machine and go hang around a spinner rack to see if I’m wrong.

In the days before Previews and the internet, Galactus was huge and completely unexpected.  Fans hadn’t even been introduced to the Celestials yet, and Giant Man was about as big as you got, so when Galactus shows up, all 30 stories tall, tuning fork headgear, and no pants, and says “Hey, sorry, turkeys… but I hunger!”, it must’ve blown their minds.

And just like the Fury, Elecktra, and Bane, Galactus appears without warning or a previous appearance, but fundamentally changes things from there forward.   From a purely fictional standpoint, you’re forced to imagine yourself as the man on the street in the Marvel U.  You enjoy football, have a fairly good job, attend church a couple times a year, help your kids with their homework, etc… then suddenly, without warning, Earth’s going to be fucking eaten.  That’s not destroyed in some galactic war against alien robots or whatever.  No, that’s EATEN.  How utterly hopeless it would be to find out that your whole life and everything you hold dear was Just breakfast in the greater universe.  Yeah, that’s what we call a game changer, folks… that’s Galactus.

Read more about Galactus:

Galactus on Wikipedia

Galactus: The Web Page

Essential Fantastic Four: Volume 3

TOP FIVE PREFAB VILLAINS: NUMBER TWO

Janet Reno

Okay, just kidding.  Real number two goes up tomorrow.

SIDETRACKED

Yeah, I know that we’ve still got two more to go on the list of prefabricated villains, but today, I had to take a second and tell you the best use of $20 that I know of right now. 

Vampirella: Crimson Chronicles Maximum TP, Vol. 1

Don’t laugh.  This thing is fantastic.  It collects every story from Vampirella Magazine # 1 -37 , and fits perfectly on your shelf next to your Marvel Essentials and DC Showcases.

Most of these stories were written by the late, great Archie Goodwin and pretty much read just like Marvel Comics’ horror stories, which I love, so score one big point.  But for me, really, the big surprise was the stunning art by Jose Gonzalez.  Truth is, I’d barely even heard of him before I picked up this book, but now, I’d probably include him as one of my all time favorites.  I just can’t believe he’s not more widely recognized by the greater comics community.

Anyway, if you’re like me, and have maybe wondered in the past how Vampirella got to be so popular (y’know, besides the obvious reasons…), then look no further than this collection for your answer, folks.

If I’ve peeked your curiosity, pick it up.  Tales of Wonder.com even has it on sale. 

Prefab villain number two coming at you tomorrow. 

Peace out. 

TOP FIVE PREFAB VILLAINS: NUMBER THREE

… and we’re back.  As usual, last week sort of got away from me, and my list of prefab villains got derailed.  But today, we’re back, and with villain number three: 

BANE

First Appearance: Batman: Vengeance of Bane # 1

“What the hell is Bane’s Deal?”

After years of outsmarting the Riddler, and kicking guys like the Joker and Two-Face square in the ass, this guy — Bane — comes along with a plan that leaves Batman in traction for a year and new guy running around Gotham who was crazier than both of them.

Bane’s story starts in a prison. Literally, the dude was born in there and forced to live out his criminal father’s life sentence.  Behind bars on Santa Prisca Island, he became a military guinea pig for a highly-addictive, super-steroid called “Venom”, and as a result, gained superhuman strength.

After learning about Gotham City — the city of fear — and the Batman that rules it, Bane becomes obsessed with going there and destroying the Dark Knight and everything he stands for.

And you really gotta give it to the guy, because that’s exactly what he does.  He escapes from prison, makes his way to Gotham, and breaks all the lunatics out of Arkham Asylum and sets ‘em loose on the city.  Bane watches as Batman wears himself down trying to recapture all of Arkham’s escapees and to keep Gotham from going up in flames.  Along the way, Bane figures out Batman is Bruce Wayne and goes to the Batcave to wait for him to come home, and when he does, well…

“Why’s Bane A Prefab Villain?”

Even though Bane made a few appearances before debuting in the bat-books, it’s pretty clear his creators, Chuck Dixon and Doug Moench, were just trying to do a little prepublication damage control.  And that’s understandable, considering the potential backlash against introducing a new villain whose sole purpose was to do what Batman’s greatest rogues had failed to do in sixty years.  DC pretty much just created a guy from scratch who could believably “break the bat”, but not alienate new readers interested in the big event.  With Bane, new and old readers alike were on the same page and witnessing his rise to power.

And Bane did exactly what he was created to do: he posed both a physical and psychological threat to the Dark Knight Detective, and became the primary adversary for the “new” Batman who followed.  His introduction shook up the status quo of the entire line of bat books, and set the stage for years of interconnected stories that kept readers hooked, and DC very happy with the numbers.

Read more about Bane:

Knightfall, Part One: Broken Bat

Knightfall, Part Two: Who Rules the Night

Batman: Bane