> So, lots of folks think that Captain America #600 is going to be super popular and a really, really big deal. Marvel sure is pimping the heck out of the title, offering lots of incentives for retailers to up their orders.
The death of Cap sold like crazy – and we were caught totally off guard by his death like everyone else. So now Marvel is making a real effort to let everyone know that something BIG is going to happen (and let’s just say that the effort they’re making this time is significantly different than the effort they made when Cap died in issue 25).
So I have a couple of problems – I’m guessing Steve Rogers is coming back. Great. Maybe our Cap sales numbers will improve. But if the “BIG EVENT” is merely the return of Steve Rogers, then this is just another resurrection in a long line of resurrections and I don’t think readers are going to care about him coming back nearly as much as they cared about him dying. Let’s face it, the issue where Superman died outsold the issue where he returned by a factor of 10.
So my initial feeling is Marvel got it backwards – they should have made the effort they’re making on #600 when they killed him off in the first place. From a practical matter, it makes ordering very difficult since Marvel won’t tell their retail partners what is going on. But who knows, maybe it actually will be a “BIG DEAL.” And Marvel is offering enough incentives that I feel like I can double my initial order with minimal risk. But if it’s a “REALLY BIG DEAL” doubling my order won’t be enough. And we also have this Monday release issue. I’m sure we’ll do that – we’d be fools not to.
What do you think – is Cap 600 going to be a “HUGE FREAKIN’ DEAL” or what?
> When it comes to strange and quirky characters, no one has the Green Lantern Corps beat. The main principle of the Corps is to recruit intelligent beings from all across the universe, whether they’re humanoid, have tentacles, composed of crystal, have bird beaks and fins, or look like giant hippopotamus/human hybrids. The diversity of the Green Lantern Corps is second to none.
Sometimes it appears as if creative teams of GL past took Earth animals and made them into alien beings like Ch’p, the Lantern who looks like a squirrel, Xax of Xaox, the grasshopper Lantern who was a good friend of Hal Jordan’s, or Bzzd, the fly who is a partner to Mogo, the Lantern who is an entire planet. And of course there’s the dog-like G’Nort, arguably the coolest Lantern of all. Some of the Lanterns don’t even fall into the category of anything recognizable, like Chaselon, the Lantern made of crystal and artificial tentacles. My favorite of these strange looking characters might have to be the plant based character Medphyll who has the body of a human man, and the head of a cycloptic bundle of celery.
If there is a lesson to be learned from the Green Lantern Corps., it would be a message of tolerance of all lifeforms and working together despite our differences. And who better to teach such lessons to new Lantern recruits than Kilowog, who has the head of an angry hippopotamus, and the body of a weight-lifting man on steroids. Killowog is a great character as he is probably the toughest member of the Corps being the best drill sergeant in the universe, yet would be the first to have a beer with you after a job well done. Oh, and apparently, he flirted with communism briefly.
The most recognizable of the Corps aliens by far, would have to be Tomar-Re from the planet Xudar (what’s with all these planets and names with X’s and Z’s?) best known for his parrot beak, and fish like fin protruding from the top of his head. Don’t let his appearance fool you though, Tomar-Re would become one of the most highly honored Lanterns, and after his death, his son Tomar-Tu would fill in as the Corps resident beak and fin Lantern.
There’s a lot of weird characters out there in comic-dom, but the Green Lantern Corps is a team of weird characters spanning the universe. And if you were to ask any member of the Corps which species was the strangest, most of them would answer humans from Earth.
> To kick off definitive X-scribe Chris Claremont’s new series “X-Men Forever,” Marvel Comics put out an “Alpha” issue collecting his three issues of the adjective-less “X-Men.” “X-Men Forever” will pick up from the end of “X-Men” #3, ignoring the eighteen years of continuity that followed. To show the difference, Claremont all ready has given the Cajun X-Man Gambit a new last name and has Nightcrawler and Shadowcat return to the fold in compilation issue’s 8-page “X-Men Forever” preview.
The storylines that are to play out in the new series are billed as being Claremont’s plans for the X-Men before he left the book. This Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed, however, creates some doubt as to whether that is even possible. According to the article, Claremont has already used many of his planned plotlines in his other X-Men books in the intervening years. Furthermore, the events of “X-Men” #1-3 all ready seem to deviate from the storylines spelled out by the blog post.
I also find that the Nick Fury storyline in “X-Men Forever” feels awfully similar to the direction Claremont put the X-Men in his last run of “Uncanny X-Men.” I could be off base but for most of this decade, he has seemed interested in connecting the X-Men to law enforcement and the idea of the X-Men as a legitimate organization. Those themes really don’t seem that apparent in his work two decades ago. The only thing that really suggests this could have been in the works back then is Fury’s reoccurring presence in storylines of that era.
Whether or not these stories truly are the unresolved of 1991 “X-Men,” I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious what Claremont has in store for the X-Men. His repeated attempts to return to the X-Men have previously created some lackluster tales, but each time I’ve been unable to resist keeping at least an eye on the events that unfold. The nostalgia really kicks in with August’s “X-Men Forever” offerings, as Paul Smith returns to draw the X-Men once more. That combo may be hard to resist, even with Claremont’s shakey track record. However, as unpredictable as the future of “X-Men Forever” is; readers can rely on the “Alpha” issue to deliver a fun storyline that is as classic as anything from 1990s Marvel can get.
> Lockjaw is such a great character. What’s cooler than an inter-dimensional teleporting bull dog. The cosmic canine first appeared in Fantastic Four 45 as a member of the Inhumans royal family. Originally a Inhuman child, Lockjaw was exposed to Terrigen Mists and transformed into the shape of a giant bull dog. Though he is generally treated like a pet for the Inhumans, he does have human level intelligence and can talk (though he rarely does). Lockjaw’s main ability is to teleport a large number of people roughly the distance of the earth to the moon or to different dimensions.
Lockjaw is now the star of his own limited series Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers. Featuring Kitty Pryde’s dragon Lockheed, Falcon’s falcon Redwing, Firestar’s puppy Ms. Lion, Ka-Zar sabertooth tiger Zabu, Speedball’s cat Niels and Frog Thor or Throg, Lockjaw has his own super team of weirdo pets ready to be teleported into action at any minute.
Still, its the classic 60s Lockjaw that I like the best. What was up with his relationship with Crystal? The picture up top definitely looks like their relationship goes beyond pet and master. All I know is I would give Lockjaw best-in-show any day.
>For part two of my guilty pleasures blog, I’ve chosen cult favorite Blue Monday by Chynna Clugston . The series teems with indie hipster quirkiness, a touch of punk rock sensibilities, pop culture references, and is quite funny, but it does have an element of teen girly soap opera-ness that just makes a manly man like yours truly feel a tad guilty for enjoying it.
Blue Monday follows the mis-adventures of Bleu Finnegan and her circle of misfit friends,Clover,Erin, Alan, and Victor as they deal with high school and all the complications of that awkward phase in life. the girls exchange pranks with the boys, Bleu has an almost unhealthy obsession with Adam Ant, and all the kids love ska and British pop music. Chynna Clugstons art style is a combination manga and western ‘zine indie comics, and a little bit of old school comic strip style. During moments of intense emotional displays, the characters become super-deformed manga figures. I think I enjoyed the series because of the pop culture obsession that runs rampant in the pages, which is what kept me reading despite the inherent girliness of the book.
I discovered the series a few years ago when I was on a big Oni Press kick, since they were producing quality, self contained graphic novels and felt compelled to give Blue Monday a try after hearing some good things about it. I did indeed enjoy it, but wouldn’t want anyone to know it…which you all do now.
> In Jon’s blog about the half-man/half-pterodactyl Sauron, he asks the question, “What more is there to a super-villain?” Well, how about creating a super-gang to humiliate your intellectual rival? This is exactly what evil-genius the Wizard aimed to do when he joined along side the amnesia stricken Medusa and prison escapees Sandman and Paste Pot Pete to form the Frightful Four. This original line-up of the criminal quartet serves as the defining super-villain team for me possessing all the classic arc-types of 1960s Marvel super-villainy.
The Wizard’s petty motivations are a Marvel Comics’ classic as countless world-beaters from Dr. Doom to Loki are motivated by jealously. Add in his hilarious character design and the fact that the Wizard is short for the Wingless Wizard, and you have one hilariously wicked gang leader. I’m convinced to this day that “Venture Bros.” bad guy the Monarch is inspired by this character.
The rest of the gang is just as timeless. Medusa provides the misguided villain who turns out to not be evil at all. The Sandman is the terrifying thug, who is tough enough to battle the FF alone. Paste Pot Pete captures perfectly those villains that just want to be somebody. His desperation to matter hit home by changing his name from the ridiculous Paste Pot Pete to the Trapster in a bid for more respect. All these characters united to form a team fearsome enough to keep Marvel’s First Family on the ropes for a few issues, while being able to provide you with some laughs as well.
Most other early Marvel teams capture a similar formula, like the original Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and Masters of Evil line-ups. The perfect combos of these original super-villain teams didn’t last. As characters like Medusa went straight or got killed (like the Masters of Evil leader Baron Zemo), team make-ups like these were lost forever. These days, they try to recreate the super-villains crews but the new ranks just don’t capture that classic feel. A Frightful Four featuring the Wizard leading Hydro-man, Cole, and Salamandra just doesn’t have the same ring to it, you know.
> Like most of the Star Clipper staff, I’ve got a real affection for some of the more odd ball characters in the world of comics. One of my long time favorite wierdos is X-character Sauron. Half man half pterodactyl, Sauron was originally Karl Lykos. The son of an explorer’s guide, Lykos was guiding a client named Mr. Anderssen and his daughter Tanya to Tierra del Feugo. On there way, Lykos was forced to defend Tanya against mutanted pterodctyls and was bitten by one of the prehistoic lizards. After the pterodctyl bite, Lykos was cursed with an unending hungry to drain life energy from humans. Later, to win over Tanya’s love, Lykos joined medical school and became a physician. However, as a doctor he would secretly drain the life force out of his patients while they were under hypnosis. What a lousy HMO. Anyway, when the the not-so-good doctor was requested to help his colleague Professor Charles Xaiver cure Havok in the original X-Men series, Lykos attempted to drain Havok’s life force. Unfortunately, his monsterous hungry backfired while trying to drain the life from the mutant X-Man and it morphed him into a vampiric pterodctyl.
From that point on Sauron is most associated for retreating and living in the Savage Land. The X-Men had their famous second encounter with him there, where he lusted uncontrolable to drain Storm’s life energy. Though he is reveiled to be an ally of Ka-Zar, the misunderstood anti-hero remained cursed with his Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde-esqe transformation curse. Sauron remained in the Savage Land and formed the Savage Land Mutates, a group that used human sacrifice to improve morale in the Savage Land. He later moved back to America and became a member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, even though he wasn’t actually a mutant.
All the reasons to like Sauron however are summed up in the John Byrne illustration above. A Pterodctyl vampire who drains the life energy of scantily clad babes in the jungle. What more is there to a super villain?
>In keeping with this week’s blog theme of guilty pleasures, I feel compelled to confess my affection for Eurotrash comic magazine Heavy Metal.
I remember sneaking into the theater to see this R-rated flick when I was a wee lad of 12.
Not only was I shocked that there was nudity and *gasp* sex in a cartoon, but the gross out factor was awesome, too. I had no idea it was based on a magazine – I just thought it was cool that John Candy voiced a character.
A few years later I clued into the fact that it was a magazine and I’ve been reading it pretty much ever since.
The magazine’s sales are all over the place here at SC. Sometimes we’ll sell out in no time, other times we’ll only sell a handful of copies and sit on the rest. I’m not really sure how people decide when they want to pick up a copy…I just know that I try not to miss it, even when AJ mutters under her breath when she catches me reading it…
Highly recommended if you’re looking for a guilty pleasure, too.
> I’ve possessed a soft spot for alternate worlds and divergent realities for as long as I can remember. Whether it was an issue of “What If?” or a trip over to Star Trek’s Mirror Universe, part of me always enjoys seeing the changes to the characters and their worlds regardless of how bad the story actually is. While this fascination may not lead me to falling in love with every alternate take that is printed, I more than likely have at least taken a glimpse at it. When letterer Todd Klein ran a retrospective on the logos for the DC/Marvel crossover Amalgam Comics, I was reminded of one of the most fan service filled alternate takes of all.
The crossover event contained a series of one-shot comics, each one starring the characters that combined Marvel and DC proprieties into brand-new creations. As a result, the comics featured characters like Dark Claw (a Wolverine/Batman hybrid) and Speed Demon (a Flash/Ghost Rider/The Demon combo character). Beyond creating some pretty bizarre looking characters with some of the most unwieldy names in comics (Shatterstarfire, really?), Amalgam provided a fun game of trying to sort out just who made up these Amalgam characters. A few of the Amalgam mash ups were strokes of pure genius, like teaming Fantastic Four villain Red Ghost with Flash staple Gorilla City to form communist ape nation of “Gorillagrad.”
Amalgam titles weren’t all novelty, however. A few titles managed to produce decent stories under the gimmick very premise. One of the most critically acclaimed Amalgam stories was Doctor Strangefate. The mystical comic penned by Ron Marz and with art by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Kevin Nowlan mixed master mages Doctor Strange and Doctor Fate. The story, tying into Marvel and DC’s greater crossover plans, presented a hero that calculatingly manipulated agents for the greater good and turned his deeds into a stand-out issue. Writer Kurt Busiek and artist Paul Smith teamed up to produce Iron Lantern. The Iron Man/Green Lantern hybrid combined Iron Man’s technology-heavy adventure with Green Lantern’s space-focused exploits to create a pretty fun read that only experiences a little bit of awkwardness due to the co-mingling of properties.
Titles like Thorion (combining Thor and the New Gods) and the Superman/Captain America mash up Super Soldier join Doctor Strangefate and Iron Lantern as some of the experiments successes. Any of the solid execution in these books, however, almost feels like an afterthought. These comics exist to feed the fanboy desire to geek out over self-referential creations. They would provide little entertainment value to readers not in the know and that is just how they should be. They were created as a fun novelty for the fans of DC and Marvel Comics and, lucky, at that they succeed.
> Is there anything more stressful than planning for a wedding? Yeah, try planning for a super wedding. On top of having to bring all of the bride and groom’s families together, getting fit for the gowns and tuxes and arranging the whole “perfect day,” super-heroes have to plan ahead for a who’s who list of their arch-rivals who are going to try and crash the whole thing. Okay, Uncle so-and-so might have got a little too drunk and made a fool of himself at your wedding reception. So what. At least you didn’t have to deal with Doctor Doom creating the High Frequency Emotion Charger to fill every villain in New York with hate that Sue Storm and Reed Richards were getting married. Comic weddings get so ludicrous that they are definitely one of my ultimate guilty pleasures.
There are so many travesties that happen at super weddings that I don’t know why these super-folks would keep getting married. I guess it’s the nature of super celebrity. Ah, but what treasured memories. Who could forget when Janet Van Dyne and Yellowjacket unexpectedly get married, and Princess Python hides a snake in the wedding cake.
The best part about that issue is that apparently Yellowjacket is suffering “accident induced schizophrenia” during the wedding. I suppose his insanity would kind of invalidate the law of getting married with a sound mind, but what court is counting? Another of my favorite comic wedding moments is when J. Johan Jameson is smoking a cigar and crying while Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson get married. I can hear his inner monologue now, “Stop the presses boys, I’m darn proud of the poorly paid photo intern and his marriage to this out-of-his-league supermodel.” The Spider-Man wedding was such a big comic event that it not only crossed into the comic book and newspaper strip simultaneously, but Stan Lee also arranged a faux Spidey wedding a Shea Stadium.
With all the drama you get in a super wedding, could you imagine if comics start having more super divorces? “What you mean Betty divorcing Hulk? Now Hulk really ANGRY!”
One of my favorite bookstores in St. Louis. Star Clipper offers not only the best selection of comic books and graphic novels in the city, but also a cornucopia of art, design and pop-culture related books and magazines. 
