Sluggo Saturday #94.
RECOGNIZABLE HUMAN ANATOMY
You are currently browsing the archives for February, 2011
In which I discuss my favorite topic.
So I’ve become involved in more online funny business…some of my fellow Bureau Chiefs (the gang responsible for the still-ongoing Fake AP Stylebook and the forthcoming book Write More Good
We have lots more planned, so please keep visiting The Content Farm for more helpful hints and life strategies.
In other news involving me:
- Dr. Polite Scott revisits that terrible, terrible Superman drawing I posted on this very site a few days ago, examining it from an anatomical point of view.
- The almighty Neilalien posted his annual list of top-referring websites to his own site and I’m proud to be the top personal site sending traffic his way for the third year in a row. I first made it into his yearly top lists back in 2005, and then for three years I was beaten out by Dave’s Long Box…until I was forced to destroy him.
I think very highly of Neilalien and his fine comics weblogging, and I am happy to send as much traffic as I am able to his uniquely wonderful site. Excelsior, Neil!
- So that eBay auction for original Superman/Pac-Man art that I linked to the other day? Reader Dave found the auction because of my post, and bought that art! Too bad I don’t work on commission!
- And as a reminder, I’m still doing Estate 4.1, the Tumblr website that’s nobody’s sweetheart.
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!
1. Drivers are going to have to stop waaaay back from this traffic light statue in order to see the lights change. Or they’ll have to strain their necks to see what’s goin’ on way up there.
2. I don’t know that I’d want to put my trust in a spring-wound traffic light.
3. Now I assumed that this seemed like an awful lot of effort to control traffic on a single-lane road, but maybe it’s simply there to frighten off anyone approaching from miles away.
4. I hope this statue ends up making an appearance in the series finale of Smallville.
MY SAFETY CODE
image from Superboy #96 (April 1962) by Robert Bernstein & George Papp
Not to be confused with the arcade game “Super Pac-Man.”
So pal Batfatty pointed me to this original art auction on the eBay:
Plenty more close-up images at the link.
Man, I don’t even know what to tell you. But I’d totally buy it if I had the scratch right now.
“Spiderman is all, ‘Yo, dude! Check out mah spiderskills. I love how radioactivity is equal to magic.'”
From Yahoo! Answers:
This response gets right to the point:
“batman is a superhero dont listen to what anyone says they r complete dumb asses lol batman could very well be the greatest superhero in DC he might not have superpowers but he can defeat superman”
This next person goes the comparison route:
“batman is probably the best superhero. All the others are cheap.
Superman just says ‘hold a sec, busy flying and being a superhuman alien who’s indistinguishable from humans.’
Spiderman is all, ‘Yo, dude! Check out mah spiderskills. I love how radioactivity is equal to magic’
But batman says, ‘Hey, with a butt-load of money, anyone can be a superhero.'”
I’m assuming he meant “Spider-Man.”
BONUS: Everything old is new again:
Best answer, as chosen by the person originally asking the question:
“Only if it’s powered by kryptonite!”
Kryptonite lightsabres, man. Possibly the greatest thing the Internet has brought us (as discussed before).
Happy Valentine’s Day from the Best Batman.
“Batman…when I get out of jail, will you take me on a date?”
“We’ll have plenty of time to think about that, Catwoman…
several years, I’m afraid.”
several years, I’m afraid.”
“If I were to kiss you, would you think I was a…bad girl?”
“But, uh…no…no, of course not, Catwoman.
Kissing is one of the most natural things in the world! Uh….”
Kissing is one of the most natural things in the world! Uh….”
“…”
“Some people kiss almost every day, and I’m told…”
“Well…?”
“C’mon, Batman, the police are here!”
“Boy Blunder…!”
“Catwoman…may I take a raincheck on that kiss?”
“Certainly, Batman…anytime.”
“Holy mush!”
from the second season Batman episode “The Bat’s Kow Tow”
“I’ll appreciate some of you a lot more once I get this 12-foot-high electrical fence built around my house. Ha ha.”
So it looks like Michael Rosenbaum is returning to Smallville to reprise his role as Lex Luthor for the series finale.
Well, good…while the Lex/Clark conflict did wear out its welcome sometime in season 3, it would have been disappointing to have the series conclude without some “closure” (as such, given this is the beginning of the lifelong Superman vs. Luthor enmity) to this particular relationship which drove so much of the series. I realize they could have had another actor portraying Luthor, but it wouldn’t have been the same, really. I mean, the guy I talk about here, or someone like him, would have been okay, but…yeah, it’ll be nice to have Rosenbaum back. The handful of times he was allowed to be a full-on scenery-chewing villain were fun, and gave the show a bit of spark that it was missing.
Of course, being Smallville, I fear they’ll find a way to louse this up somehow, but we’ll see soon enough, I suppose. Still hoping for at least some screen time for Clark finally as Superman, but there’s still the possibility of Tom Welling in the red-‘n’-blues just for the final closing shot. Boy, wouldn’t that just honk some people off.
Speaking of people and the honking-off thereof, I did like this quote from the linked article:
“I appreciate all of their passion, their relentlessness, and even their threats. Ha ha.”
That’s one sarcastic “ha ha” at the end there. You know the dude was getting some serious better-turn-these-over-to-the-police emails from the crazier fans, especially after it had recently been reported he wasn’t coming back to the show.
So anyway, Smallville: usually fun, generally dopey, but it’s mostly been entertaining, and the actors are appealing, and I’ll actually miss the show once it’s gone, I imagine. Well, I won’t miss that season with the magic tattoos. What was up with that?
Sluggo Saturday #93.
THE INERTIA-LADEN TRENDS OF CULTURALLY-MANDATED COMMERCIALISM
from Nancy #163 (February 1959)
Corduroy pillows.
Now, the thing about those images I posted yesterday…I know I read these comics when they came out. I, like commenter Dave-El once was, am a Superman comics completist, at least when it comes to the regular series themselves. So I bought all these Superman annuals for the year 1992, which all tied into the “Eclipso: The Darkness Within” crossover event for that year, and I read them all, and then I slid them into their plastic sleeve-thingies and filed them away into the vast Mikester Comic Archives.
I don’t specifically remember reading them, so I don’t recall my reaction at the time to seeing the art I provided examples of yesterday. I do have a vague sense of not generally caring for these particular comics, but it’s more a feeling of “I didn’t care for this crossover” than “these look really awful.” It’s very possible that, in the Image Comics/Rob Liefeld/extreeeeeeme-art era of the early ’90s, I just took the art in these books in stride…maybe a bit of an eyeroll, perhaps, but I endured it, read the story, and moved on. It’s just that looking at it now, and being able to see it as so indicative of the excesses of ’90s comics, when the need to fill pages was greater than the need for quality control, that the problems really stand out.
In fairness, not all the art in that Action Comics annual was so aggressively…whatever that was. It wasn’t great, or even good, but it was…passable, if wildly uneven, managing to get the story told even with the occasional “…the hell?” panel like that Superman splash.
That Captain Marvel splash panel actually wasn’t too bad artwise, even with the ropes of saliva dripping in his mouth. Mostly I posted it just because of the contrast between Cap’s traditional and ideal whimsical portrayal and his ill fit into ’90s storytelling extremism.
So, anyway: the 1990s. We sure put up with a lot, didn’t we?
image from Superman: The Man of Steel Annual #1 (1992)
And now, a full-page drawing of Captain Marvel on fire and screaming.
And from the same comic, the title page:
You said it, Booster.
…Man, the 1990s.
