Way too much about Marvel.
We’ve been ordering these British import magazines, The Classic Marvel Figurine Collection, which are small painted lead statuettes of Marvel characters accompanied by a thin, full-color magazine detailing that character’s history, powers, and so on. They’re actually nice little packages, $12 a pop, and the figures themselves are quite well made.
I’m bringing them up today because yesterday I mentioned “The Lockjaw Incident,” a story in the ’80s Thing series in which it was revealed that Lockjaw, who appeared to be a very large mutated dog with superpowers that was a pet of the Inhumans, was in fact an actual Inhuman who assumed the form of a dog when exposed as a child to the mutative mists that give the Inhumans their powers. Holy crap, was all that one sentence? Sorry about that. Anyway, as you can read in the linked article, there was some debate as to this revelation, and a later story attempted to explain it away as a prank played on the Thing by the other Inhumans.
Well, we received the Classic Marvel Figurine edition with the Thing this week, and as I was paging through the magazine, under the Lockjaw entry, they come down firmly on the “Lockjaw is a mutated Inhuman” side of the debate. The Marvel Universe entry also states he is a “a member of the Inhumans royal family, mutated by the Terrigen Mists into his canine form.” I suppose this is the official Marvel stance on the matter (though I haven’t checked the most recent Marvel Universe comics for his entry…maybe someone can let me know in the comments).
Okay, not only can’t I believe I went on this long about Lockjaw, I can’t believe I went on this long about Lockjaw again. This particular “controversy” (and I use the word “controversy” extremely lightly) is just one of the things I love about comics, I guess.
And as long as I’m blabbing about Marvel…Ghost Rider #94 is out, the long-awaited conclusion of the previous Ghost Rider series. Well, the previous, previous one. Um, the Ghost Rider series about four or five series back. You know which one. Anyhoo, that series was tanking so bad at the time that Marvel, then undergoing some slight financial issues (like trying desperately to stay in business) couldn’t take the hit publishing a comic that was likely to lose money. So #94, the final issue of the series, went unreleased.
It’s released now, however, and I’m sure that had nothing to do with a bomb movie on the horizon. There’s a surprisingly frank editorial page inside describing in a little more detail the economic reasons why the comic had been held back, and even more surprisingly, this comic sold quite well on Wednesday. I honestly didn’t think, ten years or so on, that anyone really cared that much about wrapping up that story. I guess there’re still some fans of the Danny Ketch incarnation of Ghost Rider left.
Ultimate Civil War: Spider-Ham #1 – a revival of the old Peter Porker series featuring a funny animal version of Spider-Man. While the old comic was amusing, if not great, it’s head and shoulders above this new release. The art, for the most part, is pretty good, but it’s all in service of a story that’s really not very funny. Okay, they got a smile out of me with their parody of The ‘Nam series (“The ‘Ham”), but mostly just because of that title. Otherwise it just feels like a parade of pin-ups with animal parodies of Marvel heroes, presented as being funny simply because they’re funny animals in superhero drag. Not much different from the original series, I know, but at least they tried a little harder to be amusing back then. This comic didn’t work for me, but maybe I’m just bitter and grumpy and I’m not in the mood for it…maybe some of you will like it better.
Oh, and as I figured, we didn’t get enough of the Marvel Spotlight: Dark Tower comic. Now I’m a tad worried that we may not have enough of Dark Tower when it comes out…next week, I think? Hoo boy.
As I was looking at Marvel’s site to check a thing or two about a thing or two, I saw that they still haven’t fixed this banner (first noted, I think, by Kevin):
It’s “WHOSE,” Marvel…“WHOSE!”
And honestly, if anyone is still deciding to be on Iron Man’s side at this point….
Okay, enough Marvel stuff, you want more Pirate Batman. I was going to scan more pics from that annual (Detective Comics Annual #7, 1994, if you’re curious), but, hell, let Chris take the bandwidth hit. Pirate Batman…versus a shark? Can it be true? Oh, yes it can, friend, yes it can.
