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June 29, 2005
Nerdy News for June 29, 2005
Send in the clones! Spidey's got a new year long storyline that promises to shake up his world, as seen in this Newsarama report. It looks like it will tie into more of Straczynski’s “The Book of Ezekiel” weirdness and I bet a dollar another Spider-based hero will pop up. Sounds like the wrong way to go, I thought he played out that Ezekiel stuff to death. I am much more excited about the return of the Sentry, and you can read an interview with Paul Jenkins about it here. If you want a preview of Astonishing X-Men #11, check this out. This has been a pretty good "fight" arc but it's not nearly as good as the first six issues. We'll get to see the FF on screen next week, and here's an advance review from the fellas at AICN. It's about what I expected. Buzzscope has a preview of next year's Marvel movie, Ghost Rider, taken from Entertainment Tonight. No footage of that flaming head yet, but you can see the luscious Eva Mendes, with an intro by Mary Hart--does that woman drink from the fountain of youth? Moving over to DC, I raved before about Action Comics by Simone, here's an interview with John Byrne on what it's like being "an art robot" on the title he relaunced over 20 years ago. There's a nice interview with George Perez about his career and future DC projects, including news that he may work on a Legion special at some point.
June 22, 2005
Wrath of the Spectre: Weird Adventure Comics!
I loved DC’s characters from the 70s that blended horror and heroes together in a new genre. These characters included Swamp Thing, Phantom Stranger, Deadman, and the Spectre. DC has recently released Wrath of the Spectre
As the foreword states, the editor, Joe Orlando, may have been inspired to create a vengeful Spectre series due to a recent mugging. Michael Fleisher had been Orlando’s assistant and was given the assignment to bring the Spectre back in a regular series. While the Spectre had been created in the 1940s, had joined the early Justice Society, in later years he had languished as a character. There was a 60s series that featured some good issues by Neal Adams and Murphy Anderson, but writers had difficulty with the character, making him more of a superhero one moment, and a supernatural character the next. Fleisher and Orlando decided to make each Spectre story a self-contained vignette (like the Phantom Stranger stories) about punishing criminals in various ways. Lt. Jim Corrigan is the Spectre’s human host, but he’s dead and exists for no other purpose than to help the Spectre seek out criminals. (They don’t recap the Spectre’s origin in any of these tales, which is amazing, as they definitely would today.) Corrigan usually traces the criminals down to their lair and unleashes the fury of the Spectre upon them. This is the fun part, where you see the Spectre turn criminals into glass, dummies, skeletons, etc. In one scene he uses a pair of giant scissors to chop a guy in half. It’s all bloodless and PG-rated but it’s a riot. The writing is pretty hokey. There is an ongoing subplot about a woman named Gwendolyn, who is attracted to Corrigan even though she knows his secret: “Jim! I don’t care that you’re a ghost! I want you to marry me!” Corrigan replies: “Oh, that’s a great idea! Nothing I’d rather hear than the pitter patter of little zombies running around the house!”
If you’ve only read the Spectre during the past two decades, you’ll find these stories a bit unsettling. The Spectre doesn’t exercise god-like powers (like he did in Crisis or Swamp Thing) other than transforming people into inanimate objects. There’s one exceptionally good story here about Jim Corrigan’s role as the Spectre and his relationship with “The Voice”—God, why couldn’t they say that? Corrigan asks the Voice to let him become human so he can marry Gwendolyn in a special two part tale.
What makes this collection worth buying to me is the great artwork by Jim Aparo. In the 1970s his artwork was at its peak when he illustrated the Spectre, Phantom Stranger, and the Brave and the Bold. Aparo artwork was consistently at high quality because he did the penciling, inking, and even the lettering. He seemed to use some of the same techniques as Neal Adams (using zip-a-tone), and he was equally as great at drawing romance, horror, and mystery stories. I’d love to see the Phantom Stranger stuff collected in a similar format, especially the ones done by Aparo and Len Wein. Nuff said.
Posted by Adam Warlock at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)June 20, 2005
Superman vs. The Flash: no contest, baby!
DC Comics has been producing some trade paperbacks appealing to those who are interested in the Silver\Bronze Age—or maybe those who just want to buy back their childhood. Superman vs. The Flash
The first race occurred in Superman #199 back in August 1967, and it was written by a teenager: Jim Shooter. In the foreword we find out that Mr. Shooter had always dreamed of such a race. The United Nations asks Superman and The Flash to race against each other (three times around the Earth), with proceeds going to charity; mafia organizations in France and the U.S. are determined to fix the race by sabotaging one of the heroes. The story is full of good, wholesome morals that were dictated by the editor, Mort Weisinger. Superman and Flash treat each other with kid gloves. Superman helps the Flash recover from a spill on an icy lake, in his Clark Kent identity, to spare Barry Allen from a bruised ego (“I could hurt his pride!”). Neither hero actually wins the race; they tie each other at the finish line (“Since neither of us won, none of the gamblers can collect!”). It also happens this way in Flash #175, their second race, written by E. Nelson Bridwell, a few months later in December 1967. Here the dialogue shows the heroes to be a bit snappier; when Superman unexpectedly lends the Flash a hand, Barry Allen says “Why the grandstand play? I was doing okay on my own!” The story is forgettable, about aliens who force the heroes to race across the galaxy.
The best race happened in World’s Finest #198-199, written by Denny O’Neil in 1970. I remembered this story vividly, because it marked a departure for World’s Finest, turning it into a series of team-ups with Superman and another hero. The Carmine Infantino cover was very enticing (on the right, click to expand), with Batman giving the go-signal and the caption “…And This Time There MUST be a Winner!” As the story opens, Jimmy Olsen is fending off a hangover and on his way to the restroom when he falls thru a time portal into a roman chariot. Superman discovers from the Guardians that “anachronids” are invading our universe at a rapid rate and threatening the time stream. To thwart this menace, Superman and Flash must race across the universe, and their speed will somehow destroy these creatures. Doesn’t make sense now, but it did when I was 9 years old! Flash gets a medallion from the Guardians to pave a green-energy “track” which also uses the entire power battery on OA—all Green Lanterns are powerless for the duration. By the time the story is over, Superman/Flash race thru the center of a red sun, and encounter some formidable Phantom Zone criminals. The end of the race was unique: both heroes injure their legs and must crawl to their last destination.
The last race between Barry Allen and the Silver Age Superman kicked off DC Comics Presents #1-2 in 1978. A decent script by Martin Pasko, but it’s the fine art job by Jose-Luiz Garcia Lopez that makes this still worth reading. Again, aliens force the heroes to race each other—but now it’s a race through the timestream. Both Superman and the Flash are pretty experienced at running through time; Flash is trying to save Earth while Superman is trying to save his own birth. It’s totally silly in the end because they easily incapacitate the aliens, but before that happens you will see Lopez draw the Reverse-Flash (Professor Zoom) and the Legion of Super-Heroes.
Adventures of Superman #463 (in 1990) was the first post-Crisis race. This was the hardest story to read, because both Flash and Superman are significantly de-powered following the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Wally West needs a ton of burgers and fries to keep his metabolism stoked and he’s a bit shallow. When Mr.Mxyzptlk forces them to race each other, Wally is certain he will be beaten by Superman. At least the heroes only race around the world (one rotation) and they are really sweating at the end. The last race took place in DC 1ST: Superman\Flash in 2002. Written by Geoff Johns, it’s a novel twist as Superman doesn’t race Wally West, but Jay Garrick, the original Golden Age Flash. It’s tied into many different continuity events in the Flash’s own series, but it has the best ending of all of them. The “magician” Abra Kadabra (really a criminal from the 64th century) breaks out of jail and zaps Wally with an aging “spell”. Wally will die in five minutes, unless Superman or Jay Garrick can outrun him; Abra sets it up so that whoever touches Wally saves him, but at the cost of their own life. At this point in DC history, Wally is so fast that there’s no question he’s faster than Superman, as Garrick says that only Wally’s illness makes him slow enough for them to catch up. I love the cover by Kevin Nowlan so much that I have included it here (upper left, click to expand).
If you’re a Flash fan, or you’re trying to get a Silver Age DC library, you’ll want to get Superman vs. The Flash
Nerdy News for Friday, June 20, 2005
There's a bunch of DC and Crisis related news: somehow I missed this item about Geoff Johns taking on an editorial role to oversee the direction of the DC Universe before and after Infinite Crisis. Today there is an article about Grant Morrison taking on a similar role to revamp DC's backlog of characters into new series. If Morrison could make Animal Man into a must-have book, he should be able to do it for any character. They are talking about the Quality characters (Freedom Force, Doll Man, Phantom Lady, etc.) and I would hope that the Phantom Stranger is on the list. Meanwhile, it seems that Mark Waid is in discussions to go home again and become the new Flash writer after Geoff Johns leaves. That would heal my aching heart. I got very excited about learning that DC is working with a company to do a MMORPG based on the DC Universe. How cool would it be to create your own character, go online, and join the Justice League? Going over to Marvel, there's an interview with Bendis on why he thinks Spider-Woman is so cool. Check out that cover; I think she's cool too and I ordered Giant-Size Spider-Woman #1. I wish I still had my entire Claremont run of that book, the later issues with Leialoha on the art were great. In the movie world, these articles may get you excited about War of the Worlds after the Cruise-Holmes fiasco: this one talks about the film itself, while this one interviews Spielberg. Nuff said, I gotta go watch Oprah!
June 17, 2005
Batman Begins All Over Again
I just saw Batman Begins today. It’s a good movie, and it washes away the stink of the Schumacher films. The best thing about the movie is that it concentrates on Bruce Wayne rather than the caped superhero or crazy villains. (This is something that the current comics need to fix as well; Batman is so busy running around the world, he’s pretty much abandoned his Wayne identity.) Batman Begins attempts to show that Wayne is flesh and blood, and how he develops his skills and tools to fight crime. The script takes patches of continuity from various Batman mini-series and weaves them together to come up with an explanation. David Goyer, the screenwriter, has done this sort of thing before on Blade, where he pretty much took the names and powers of the characters and put his own spin on them. There are bits of Miller's Year One and Loeb's Long Halloween, but it's not as satisfying as either of these graphic novels.
Goyer and Nolan make a number of mistakes in Batman Begins. Ra’s Al Ghul should have been a terrific super-villain who has lived for centuries thanks to the Lazarus pits; here he’s portrayed as Batman’s opposite number, someone who suffered from crime and chose to take an even more extreme path than Wayne. I don’t really care for the notion that Ra’s is Wayne’s mentor in the martial arts. It was much better in the comics that Wayne had learned the skills on his own and had won the respect of Ra’s as a worthy adversary. It also that bugs me is that Ra’s isn’t Middle Eastern (political correctness due to our current situation in Iraq) and that he isn’t bent on cleansing the world in a holocaust. He wants to wipe out crime by making Gothamites kill each other? I thought the holocaust plan much more sense in a twisted kind of way.
One of the other problems that Batman has always had is the lack of a steady romantic interest. Goyer came up with Rachel Dawes, an assistant district attorney, who was Wayne’s childhood friend before his parents were killed. Rachel doesn’t seem that interesting to me. Maybe it’s because Katie Holmes plays her and the recent Tom Cruise thing has soured me on this chick, but I think her acting is weak and she’s just not as cute as she used to be in Dawson’s Creek.
I had some minor quibbles with the police in the film. While it’s good that they portrayed Gotham’s cops as corrupt and on the take, they made Flass a much weaker character than in Frank Miller’s story. Miller’s Flass is a strong bully, a tremendous adversary that Gordon needs to overcome; here he is more like fat, disgusting Bullock. There’s a scene where Batman is surrounded by the police, but instead of fighting them as in Year One, they merely summon the bats and he gets away all too quickly.
No film is perfect; all superhero films seem to have some weaknesses. Batman Begins does an awful lot more right than wrong. Part of the magic is the perfect casting of Christian Bale as Batman, Michael Caine as Alfred, Gary Oldman as Gordon and Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox. Showing the origins of Batman, the Batcave, and the Batmobile is a really cool deal. There is a chase scene involving the Batmobile which is very exciting. I always wondered how Batman would deal with helicopters following him out of town! Although wouldn’t they comb the area for tire tracks afterwards? The Scarecrow is the only “costumed” villain in the movie and he’s wonderfully played by Cillian Murphy. He’s a good psychological foil for Batman and he leaves you wishing we had seen more. It’s a good movie, not quite the crowd pleaser the first Batman movie made by Tim Burton had been, but good enough to reinvigorate Warner’s superhero franchise (the ending leaves you a teaser as to what's coming if there is a sequel). Next year: Superman Returns! Nuff said.
Why the Defenders are the Greatest Non-Team Ever!
CBR posted a preview of the new Defenders series by Giffen, DeMatteis, and Maguire. Surprisingly, I liked it, even though this series is played for laughs, I think they’ve somehow captured the spirit of these unique characters working together. And that led me to wondering, why do I think the Defenders are so damn cool?
The Defenders premiered in Marvel Feature #1 back in 1971. The cover was beautifully drawn by Neal Adams, and it featured the three title characters rocketing towards the viewer: Sub-Mariner, Hulk, and Dr. Strange. Click on this image to expand it; notice the flames in the background, the lamp-post about to fall, and the car turned over on its side. People are fleeing in a panic. When I saw this in the Marvel house ads, it was quite a mystery, you see, because you would think that at least two of these people (Namor and Hulk) would just as soon destroy the world as save it. In Namor’s case he had attacked the surface world a number of times in the Fantastic Four; the Hulk had made several rampages throughout cities in the Marvel Universe. While Dr. Strange was a pretty good guy, we never saw him interact with a lot of super-heroes other Spider-Man. And so when I saw this cover, I had to buy this comic. Only I wouldn’t be to find it until thirty years later at a Wondercon. In truth, the first three Defenders stories in Marvel Feature 1-3 are probably only magical if you’re a kid. In each of them, Dr. Strange is the catalyst for bringing Subby and the Hulk together to aid him on a quest. My favorite one here is Marvel Feature #2: it takes place during Halloween in Rutgers, Vermont, the scene of a parade where Roy Thomas (the creator of the Defenders) actually attended. Dr. Strange’s old foe, Dormammu, attempts to cross-over from his dimension via Dr. Strange’s body. Doc, in turn, uses his astral image to bring Namor and the Hulk to his aid.
In the stories themselves, the trio acted like heroes. Yet to the world around them, they seemed threatening. And despite the occasional guest appearance, mostly to fight the other heroes, these three were quite isolated in the Marvel Universe. This, to me, is what made the Defenders unique: they were all loners. They were outcasts. If Iron Man or Captain America saw the Defenders taking action, they would assume the worst. And unlike the Avengers, the Defenders had no headquarters (although Doc’s mansion was a meeting place), no jet planes, no communication devices, no charter, and no government connection. Almost at the end of every story, the Defenders seemed ready to break up at any given moment. The Hulk and Namor would storm off and tell Strange never to summon them again, but events would dictate otherwise.
Steve Englehart took over the writing for the first twelve issues of the Defenders when they graduated to their own title. He was the perfect choice in many ways, as he wrote the Dr. Strange series (highly regarded) and had written many issues of the Hulk. He was complemented by the pencils of Sal Buscema, who had followed his brother John to Marvel, and was just blossoming into his own full talents an artist. (I had the chance to speak with Mr. Buscema a few months ago on World Talk Radio and he mentioned that the Defenders were one of his favorite series.) Englehart’s first issue started off with a bang: the Hulk wanders thru a hillside and encounters Namor falling to Earth. Namor is unconscious, protected by an invisible barrier, and the only thing the Hulk can do is to locate Dr. Strange. (I love ol’ Greenskin’s line: “Don’t worry, fish man. Hulk will save day.”) Thus begins an adventure that leads the trio to their fourth member, the Silver Surfer. The Surfer fits all the requirements for Defenders membership: he’s the ultimate loner, flying above humanity, and sometimes attacking them when he’s going stir crazy inside Earth’s orbit. The Surfer left after three issues, mostly due to Stan Lee’s edict that the Surfer be used sparingly in case Lee would ever return to the character, but he would return sporadically.
Just as the Surfer exited, the Defenders were faced with a woman who had lost her mind: Barbara Denton. She had been imprisoned by the Nameless One and driven insane. When the Defenders encounter the Black Knight and the evil Enchantress, the witch binds Barbara’s soul with an Asgardian female warrior known as the Valkyrie. The Valkyrie has almost no memories of her life as Barbara, but she’s fully formed and ready to kick ass. While I liked this character, she didn’t really seem to fit the classic Defenders profile. Her main purpose was a character unique to the series; just like in the Avengers, when Roy Thomas created the Vision, this was a character that couldn’t be found in any other comic. An ongoing sub-plot developed about the Valkyrie’s search for Barbara’s past. She became part of the glue that held the loners together.
The Defenders reached its stride (and possibly series high point) during issues #8-11. They crossed over with Marvel’s standard bearer group title, The Avengers. At the time, Englehart proposed something that had never been attempted before: a cross-over storyline between two titles that would last for the entire summer of 1973. When I saw the cover of Avengers 116, with the Silver Surfer blasting the Vision over a flaming volcano, it intensified my interest in the whole Defenders concept. The Defenders were not only outcasts in this situation, they were the underdogs. A Silver Surfer vs. Vision and the Scarlet Witch was pretty even, but how about Iron Man vs. a guy with arrows—Hawkeye? Dr. Strange vs. Mantis and Black Panther in a physical brawl? Yet the Defenders managed to overcome nearly every battle. This culminated in the classic Defenders #10 when the Hulk took on the Thor in an incredible fight that somehow climaxed yet avoided answering the question of which one was stronger.
The war with the Avengers legitimized the Defenders in the Marvel Universe. Sales were good and the title switched to a monthly publication status. When Marvel launched a series of quarterly Giant-Size titles, the Defenders was one of them. Len Wein took over writing the regular series and turned in some solid work. He also brought in a new, regular Defender, called Nighthawk. Nighthawk had been a “Batman” (with wings) amalgam for the pseudo-Justice League team, Squadron Supreme. AKA Kyle Richmond, Nighthawk joined the Valkyrie as a unique member of the team, with his own ongoing sub-plots. Nighthawk entered the series just as Namor left, which was a big loss for the team dynamics. While Namor had a fire and ice relationship with the Hulk and Dr. Strange, Kyle was pretty much a pacifier; I never felt that Nighthawk was a good choice for a Defender. Wein also experimented with bringing in different loners, such as Luke Cage, Power Man. My favorite Wein story was in Giant-Size Defenders #2, drawn by Gil Kane with a fantastic inking job by Klaus Janson. This may have been the first time I saw Janson’s inks and it blew me away. The Defenders get help from another loner, the Son of Satan, to rescue the Hulk who is trapped in hell.
Steve Gerber took over the writing of the Defenders with issue #20. Gerber was the most unlikely choice to write any super-team. His most popular works were Man-Thing, Howard the Duck, Crazy, Son of Satan, the Zombie, and other titles. He had done some nice stories with the Thing in Marvel Two-In-One, but when it came to writing books like Daredevil, something was lacking. With the bizarre non-structural nature of the Defenders, Gerber’s talents were able to shine through. He immediately took to the characters Valkyrie and Nighthawk, and further developed their backgrounds. Valkyrie discovered that Barbara had a husband, Jack, who had been searching for her. Jack follows Valkyrie to New York and in effect becomes a Defender, aiding the team in unlikely scenarios. Jack gets the most sympathy out of any of the characters, because he’s on a hopeless quest: he loves Valkyrie because she’s Barbara; yet Val has little memory or emotion for Jack. And in the only story where I appreciated this character, Nighthawk discovers that his fortune is being used to fund a Ku Klux Klan like organization called the Sons of the Serpent. But Gerber’s wackiest and most infamous contribution to the Defenders were the Headmen: Dr. Nagan, Jerry Morgan and Chondru. The first two are men of science, while Chondru is a mystic. The Headmen were, in a way, the dark mirrors of Namor, Hulk, and Dr. Strange. They came up with bizarre plots to foil the Defenders, such as excising Nighthawk’s brain and replacing it with Chondru’s, who infiltrates Dr. Strange’s mansion. Later the Headmen are joined by a technological perversion called Ruby and an alien called Nebulon, who has a Scientology-like religion to make people believe they are “Bozo” clowns! The Headmen storyline ran for over a year in Defenders #31-41, and finally concluded in the first and only Defenders Annual.
Defenders Annual #1 was Steve Gerber’s swan song on the regular title. In a way it makes a fitting place to stop reading the series, for the Defenders never again had a writer that really understood the quirky dynamics of the various loners. In this last tale, Gerber took things a step too far: Kyle Richmond, who always wanted more legitimacy, actually set the team up in a headquarters with computers and a meeting table with the characters’ logos. This took the team into Avengers territory. Not a good move, but there was a hell of a weird fight with the Headmen at the end. Gerber would write one more Defender tale in the Howard the Duck Treasury Edition, which featured Howard teaming up with the group. The best part was a quirky villain called the Black Hole, who said an infamous line when using his powers (“The Black Hole Sucks!”), and seemed entirely appropriate for both Howard and the Defenders.
Various other writers took the Defenders to strange places. David Kraft wrote some tales that almost worked, along with penciller Keith Giffen. Later J.M. DeMatteis would write a long run, and his most notable creation was a character called the Gargoyle. DeMatteis brought back the Son of Satan and had him romance a female hero called (appropriately) Hellcat. Towards the end, the Defenders jettisoned Dr. Strange and the Hulk in favor of some ex X-Men. Most recently, Kurt Busiek brought the Defenders back and came with the planet entity Gaea as the reason why the big three kahunas needed to come together to save the world. But I felt that he made a mistake in also bringing back Nighthawk, Valkyrie, etc. The new Giffen/ DeMatteis/Maguire series looks promising, because from the icons on the cover logo, you can see they know who the core Defenders are: Hulk, Namor, Dr. Strange, and Silver Surfer. All outcasts, all loners, coming together through weird circumstances to save the world. That’s exactly right, and the laughs never hurt Gerber, so it won’t bother me at all now. Nuff said.
June 16, 2005
Hot Shots Golf Open Tee: Grip it and Rip it!
Hot Shots Golf Open Tee
First, the positives: HSGOT is a beautiful looking game on the PSP. The golf courses, while entirely fictional, are animated very realistically. They even seem to use paintings or photographs for the background. The golfers themselves are the typical “big-head” Japanese characters. By winning tournaments in the single player challenge mode, you can unlock new golfers, new caddies, and new accessories to customize your golfers. These unlockable features are what make HSGOT so compelling; it’s almost like a role playing game. The trick in leveling up your golfer to release new golf courses is to enter the challenges that have a solid gold star next to them; an empty star or no star just means you’ll unlock a small item. It took me a while to figure out why I never advanced to level 2 even though I had played thirty games. But once you do concentrate on the starred challenges, you’ll level up quickly. There are six golf courses, but HSGOT tries to divvy them up into 9-hole experiences that can be played in 10-15 minute chunks of time. There are other modes, like a putting challenge, which is a bit interesting, and multiplayer modes (that I haven’t tried) for the local wan, not the Internet.
On the negative side, HSGOT has only 6 courses, and I haven’t seen anything as interesting as the wilder courses (like the desert course) on the console version. The caddies are present but you can only hear them and not see them; I really miss that Jerry Lewis Nutty Professor guy following me on the greens. The golfers on HSGOT seem to be all new—I’ve never seen them, at least—and I’ve got half of them unlocked. I haven’t seen any of the usual suspects like Tiffany, the Hollywood guy, Granny Goodness, or the Samuel Jackson type from HSG3 or HSG4. The lack of courses, the missing caddies and golfers make this lose a star in my book; I hope that Clap Hanz will fix this in the next PSP version. They really need to add a multiplayer mode thru the Wi-Fi Internet connection as well. The unlockable items need some work as well; they change your appearance but don’t affect your game experience in the slightest.
All in all, this is the best golf game currently available for the PSP. While I love Tiger Woods’ on PS2 and Xbox, the TW PSP game had terrible load times and choppy graphics. Hot Shots Golf Open Tee has incredibly fast load times and almost no delay when going to the next hole. The graphics are HSGOT are very sweet and smooth. If you like golf games, this one’s for you. Even if you don’t like golf in real life, you should check it out. Nuff said.
June 15, 2005
Crazy Retro Cool: Strangest Sports Stories Ever Told
I picked up two DC Specials that I really loved as a kid: Strangest Sports Stories Ever Told. One of DC's best qualities in the 60s and 70s were there anthology titles covering humor, horror, romance, westerns, and war. I never forgot these two collections, DC Special #7 from June 1970 and DC Special #9 from Dec. 1970. The stories are crazy, combining sports with crazy SF themes. One of them features a team of baseball players from another planet that challenge the New York team after they win the World Series. The trick: the aliens are invisible but still wear baseball uniforms! The catch: the aliens want to win the NY team’s championship flag which holds a “proto-globe” device vital to their survival. They can’t touch it or take it by force (thru a hokey plot device) so they play baseball. It’s wacky fun, and if you like baseball and gorillas there’s a story here for you. Gorillas evolve and play baseball but it’s only the first step to conquering humanity. There are stories covering many types of sports, including golf (on Mars), boxing (fighting an alien), football (berries transform a weakling into a quarterback), and racing (a 1890s horseless carriage travels thru time and wins the Indy 500).
While the stories may be outrageous, what carries the reader thru them is the artwork by Carmine Infantino. Infantino was great at drawing comics in a variety of genres; here he combines his best science-fiction style (from Adam Strange) with the modern era of the 1960s. There are no capes, no super heroes here. Sports stories were pretty difficult to convey in comics until Carmine Infantino came up with some creative ways to solve the problem. His technique was to use silhouettes inside the captions, explaining something about a particular sports move. He also used it to show crowd reactions or explain a pseudo-scientific concept. While Infantino used similar techniques in other comics, I think its greatest impact was in the sports genre. He was the master at clear storytelling; using hands on captions in the Flash to point out specific plot points and making it look exciting. Today’s artists would do well to study this man’s work.
If you are a Strange Sports Stories expert, click on the Comment link below this post and tell me: Where did these stories originally appear? And were these the only two DC Special collections?
Posted by Adam Warlock at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)Nerdy News for June 15, 2005
It's been a slow news month so far, but we finally have some interesting tidbits! We alerted you to Jonathem Lethem's Omega the Unknown mini-series from Marvel, which we were excited about until we saw a preview of the art. Now it turns out from Lying in the Gutters that Steve Gerber is upset about this and wishes Lethem had not revamped his creation. Gerber has more things to say about this on his blog here. I do for sorry for Gerber, he's been kicked around by Marvel awfully hard. There's a couple of comic previews that are worth checking out: Astro City: Dark Age #1 and JLA Classified #8 where you can see Mary Marvel's Nazi like dark costume. This second "I Can't Believe It's Not The Justice League" series is even better than the first one! Rich Johnston and other people have rumored that Grant Morrison will take over Detective Comics with Andy Kubert on the art, which sounds just fine to me. Another rumor has Adam Kubert working with Kid Cosmic Jim Starlin on an ongoing Adam Strange series, which sounds like a match made in heaven! Finally, if you're a game-a-holic and in the midst of summer's dry season, GameStop has a sale going on: buy 2 games and get a 3rd one for free, whichever is the cheapest. I picked up 3 games for $19: Project Gotham 1, Morrowind, and Medal of Honor Frontline; oldies but goodies. Nuff said.
Posted by Kid Flash at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)June 14, 2005
WANTED: Grand Theft Auto in Alternate DC Universe
WANTED
The story centers on Wesley Gibson, a sad sack of a man in a dead-end job with a best friend who constantly shags his girl every time he turns his back. Just like the Matrix, however, Wesley finds that he’s been living in a false reality. This was a world in which there used to be super-heroes, but that all ended in 1986 when a “Crisis” like event wiped them all away. Long time DC readers will remember the issue of Crisis on Infinite Earths when the super-villains teamed up to strike at the heroes in the middle of the war with the Monitor. In the world of WANTED, you can think of it like the villains won and the Monitor just went away. A crippled Superman-like hero is in an old folks home and he’s not in play at all for this story (let’s see what happens if there is a sequel). They’ve duped the entire world into forgetting the truth, and Wesley finds that he’s the son of a super-villain called the Killer (think Deadshot from Batman and Suicide Squad). This super-villain mafia (made men and women who can plunder, kill and rape to their hearts content) induct Wesley into their ranks and he gets personal attention from the sexy Fox (think Catwoman). Wesley pals around with other thinly disguised villains such as Professor Solomon Seltzer (Lex Luthor), Doll-Master (Toyman), Imp (Mr. Mxy), Sucker (Parasite), Fuckwit (Bizzaro), Shithead (Clayface) and Deadly Nightshade (Poison Ivy). But in every story, there must be a conflict. In a world without heroes, the conflict comes from the villains fighting each other. There is a “Council of Five” of criminal leaders who divided up the continents among themselves. One of them, Mr. Rictus (the Joker), isn’t too happy with getting Australia to run and wants more, more, more.
WANTED has a terrific premise and it really takes off like a rocket—despite a stumble on the launch pad when Millar mentions Wesley’s “African American boss”. It’s when it comes back to Earth that I have a few problems. When Wesley becomes the new Killer, he seems to become the most unstoppable force in the world; he fires guns that never run out of ammo and he never misses. I never felt that there was any moment he was really in danger. Deadshot, by contrast, is a far more interesting character, because he does fail at certain times (John Ostrander posited that it’s for an emotional reason). Likewise, Wesley’s father (the original Killer) is a much more complicated figure, and he makes Wesley seem like Melba toast. The ending of the story causes the most problems; there’s a sum of ten million dollars involved, and it doesn’t quite seem like enough money for a man who will run an entire continent. There’s a final resolution to Wesley’s relationship with a loved one that doesn’t seem right. And the last two pages are an insult to the reader, which again is a nod to Trainspotting, which made fun of sleepy, materialistic suburbanites. I don’t know if I find the page upsetting or if I just think Millar made a blatant theft from his favorite film.
Despite this, I can give WANTED a nod to certain readers. If you always enjoyed DC’s villains and wanted to see a mature “Elseworlds” take on them, then you’ll love this as well. Or, if you always thought the standard super-villains in most comics were just too dumb to ever go for the jugular vein, and don’t mind graphic language, sex, and violence, you might go for this as well. For me, I’m in the former camp, I’m just glad I waited for the trade. But this definitely isn’t as good as Millar’s other work: The Ultimates Vol. 2: Homeland Security
