"As you would expect, all information regarding SuperShadow is above top secret (classified at the highest level)."
AT LAST:
This week brought us the release of The Most Perfect Issue of Looney Tunes Ever, as #143 contains the cover-featured story teaming Marvin the Martian and the Tasmanian Devil.
Why “perfect?” Because, 90% of the time, when I receive a request for a Looney Tunes comic, it’s from someone looking for either Marvin or Taz. And 90% of those times, it’s from someone trying to find tattoo ideas.
And thus I’m tempted to reorder another 500 copies, so that for the foreseeable future, when anyone comes into the shop asking “Hey, do you have any Looney T–” I can immediately shout “HERE! THIS IS WHAT YOU WANT!” and throw one of these comics at ’em.
Now if I can just get my hands on a giant stack of Hot Stuff comics, that’d take care of the rest of the tattoo customers.
Employee Josh: “Wow, this issue of Giant-Size Wolverine sure is giant.”
Me: “Yeah, that comic’s bigger than your mom!”
Employee Josh: “And the staples are about as loose as your mom!”
Me: “Oh, SNAP.”
Former Employee Josh: “Um…what?”
Speaking of employees, former or otherwise, Kid Chris sent this text message to my cell phone the other day:
"Dead Heat. Genius piscopo film. Genius."
I have very strange friends. Not that I’m disagreeing with Kid Chris, of course.
Notable new releases:
Swamp Thing poster, with Eric Powell’s cover for #22 of the recently-deceased series. I don’t buy many posters, but I bought this one. I think the last poster I bought was the previous Swamp Thing poster (the one by Michael Zulli).
Complete Peanuts 1961-2: only four more decades to go! Hang in there! Classic, funny, insightful, and poignant stuff, as always.
MAX Sampler – We need to stop ordering these preview/sketch/sampler books from Marvel, since they’re always crap and they don’t sell, even for the low $1.00 price tag. If you want to pay a dollar for some unfinished, undialogued art for series you’re either going to buy anyway, or going to continue to ignore because this “comic” ain’t gonna convince you, well, here’s your chance.
Life of Pope John Paul II in Comics graphic novel – I haven’t checked to see if this pope story matches up continuity-wise with the life story as presented in the Marvel version…otherwise we’re going to have issues with discrepancies in the Pope-iverse, requiring either a Pope of Earth-1 and a Pope of Earth-2, or perhaps even a Crisis of Infinite Popes, and nobody wants that to happen.
Old Jewish Comedians hardcover – beautiful book with black and white full-page illustrations of, yes, Old Jewish Comedians, as caricatured by Drew Friedman. Nice touch of having each comedian presented with their real name first, and their stage name in parentheses.
American Splendor #2 – More mundane-yet-compelling Harvey Pekar slice-of-life stories, as only Pekar can do ’em; 52 #22 – my customers are expressing some weariness with the series, so something better grab their attention soon…I’m enjoying it, myself; All-New Atom #4 – new artist, no Swamp Thing cameos, same fun writing.
Another item we received this week was the new issue of Star Wars Insider, which I glanced through briefly and came across a Q&A in which someone was asking about whether something they read on a particular website was true or not. What surprised me was, rather than being coy about it and giving a generic “well, don’t believe everything you read,” the site was mentioned by name, and the answer explicitly stated that not only does Lucasfilm have nothing to do with that site, but that a good deal of the content is outright fabricated and that Lucasfilm has gone after this site for some of its actions in the past.
Well, I had to see this site for myself, and you can too, right here. Now, I don’t know how I missed this site before, as apparently it’s been around a while and a thorn in the side of what’s left of Star Wars fandom. Even if you don’t want to check Supershadow.com directly, the history of the site on Wikipedia is a hoot, especially the stuff about the site owner’s purported series of “girlfriends.”
The best bit of the site has to be where the owner pretends to be George Lucas and answers fan questions. “George” does this exclusively for Supershadow.com since:
“Answering questions at SuperShadow.com is the best part of my life. I could not survive without SuperShadow. He has made Star Wars into what it has become.”
Now, part of me thinks that this whole site is a put-on, just someone pretending to be a fan pretending to be George Lucas’ bestest pal (particularly since, if it is a put-on, that previous quote could be read as a criticism of certain types of SW fans). But, hoax or not, it’s certainly good for a laugh or two.
And something about the sheer level of…obsessiveness about it tells me that it may very well be legit, that the fan actually believes all this stuff he’s spouting (or that he thinks he’s fooling everyone with his claims). There’s a Myspace page supposedly by Supershadow, owning up to the bogus nature of his site, but, you know, who knows if that’s real or not.
Stupid internet, obfuscating the truth. Anyway, here’s the text from the “About Supershadow” page, which…well, here, check it out:
“As you would expect, all information regarding SuperShadow is above top secret (classified at the highest level). Mysteriously and very enigmatically, nothing is known about SuperShadow except that SS is very close, personal friends with George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars.
“SuperShadow.com played a crucial role in the development of the prequel trilogy. Many fan ideas submitted at SS.com were integrated by Lucas into the final scripts of The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. A majority of film critics attributed the phenomenal success of the prequels to Lucas utilizing the talents of the legion of SS fans to improve the Star Wars saga. Lucas has acknowledged many times in public that SuperShadow is the best thing to ever happen to Star Wars.
“SuperShadow is also legendary for revealing the plot scripts to Star Wars Episode 1, 2 and 3 many years prior to their theatrical release. SS.com was the only web site permitted by Lucas to post the scripts and plots to the prequel trilogy. Currently, SS is employed by Lucasfilm as a high-paid consultant related to future Star Wars and Indiana Jones projects.
“SuperShadow.com is the official web site of George Lucas.”
I mean, c’mon. There’s so much wrong there that this has to be a prank, right? …Right?
