Brother, can you lend a thumb?
So Captain Marvel’s creator C.C. Beck had a short story called “Vanishing Point” published in a magazine back in 1959. The site SFFaudio recently posted an MP3 of a reading of that story…you may need to scroll down a bit to find it.
In this message board thread, the Comics Buyer’s Guide‘s Maggie Thompson confirms it’s the same C.C. Beck, and later in the thread someone supplies a scan of the story’s title page from its initial publication.
If you aren’t interested in having someone read the story to you, you can read it yourself by downloading a text file from Project Gutenberg.
In other news:
- Robert Elrod at Monster Portraits has posted the inked version of his Man-Thing vs. the Vision drawing. Very nice!
- Another artist, Brian Hurtt, delivers up a swell Swamp Thing drawing in a web posting with a terrible, terrible title which I’m afraid I may have chuckled at. Don’t you judge me!
- Pal Dave instigates a discussion about word meaning, context, and responsibility. Yes, it’s comic-related.
- Comics internet treasure Bully the Little Stuffed Bull has been getting his special comic artist friends to create portraits of him, and he’s been nice enough to share the results with his loyal readers. They’re all great, but dig the one by Stan Sakai, and the accompanying photo! Everyone loves Bully!
- Neilalien says a few words about Ultimate Dr. Strange’s fate in the frankly peculiar Ultimatum mini-series. He also says a smart thing or two about “alternate future, only fans need apply”-type stories.
- Following up on the Bat-posts from earlier in the week…I did indeed give the “Batman Reborn” issues of Batman and Red Robin a shot, and…well, they’re not for me, unfortunately. Not that they were necessarily bad by any means…they had their moments, but nothing really grabbed me. Now, it may just be me. I’ve pretty much read all the Batman I’ve needed to read, so it has to be something that’s really outstanding or just tickles my fancy to get me to pick it up (hence my love for Batman and Robin and the now mostly-theoretical All Star Batman). Or it may be that I am less curious about the “larger meaning of it all” and continuity-shenanigans of this twist in the Batman saga, and more interested in the “show me some cool stuff” aspect of the comics by Morrison and Quitely (and friends). So just because I wasn’t compelled by them doesn’t mean you won’t be. As the saying goes, Your Mileage May Vary.
I am still interested in the forthcoming Batwoman stories in Detective, so we’ll see how that works out.
A couple of other cool comics I grabbed this week:
Muppet Show #2 2nd printing – gave up a copy of the first printing to a customer, like I did with the first issue, so I needed this here reprint. And, seriously, this comic is absolutely spot-on in its humor, in its characterizations, and in its sentimentality, delivered in just the right amount. It’s the perfect comic. Four thumbs up (I’m borrowing two from a friend).
Uptight #3 – haven’t had a chance to read this yet, and it actually came out last week, but sold out before I could grab a copy. Got the restock this week, and the reason I picked it up? The absolutely stunning and strange cover (which you can see here). It’s Jordan Crane, so it’ll be a good read, I know, but man, that cover’s something else.
Fantastic Four #567 – I’ve given the title some grief over its unsurprisingly-erratic publishing schedule, but the comic itself, by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch, is a fun read. I’d already linked to Tim O’Neil’s review, and, yeah, what he said. I’ve always loved the Fantastic Four, though I’ve not always enjoyed what’s been done with them…but what’s going on here is different enough and strange enough to grab my attention, and it’s a shame the team will be leaving the book soon.
R.E.B.E.L.S. #5 – I really enjoyed the original L.E.G.I.O.N. ’89 (and ’90, and ’91, etc.) series, though it petered out at the end and I never got into the original R.E.B.E.L.S. series that followed it up at the time. But this new incarnation of the series, with a very bastardly Dox and his assemblage of cohorts, willing and not-so, has been a lot of bad fun so far. This issue is mostly just fight-fight-fight and set-up for more fight, so you don’t get a whole lot of what makes this book different (i.e. Dox being an entertainingly manipulative dick), but I’m sure we’ll get more of that next time.
Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers #2 – a very silly and fun series starring the animal sidekicks/knockoffs of various Marvel heroes. And I guess this means, once and for all, that Lockjaw is a dog, and not a mutated Inhuman. Anyway, Frog Thor is in this comic, and therefore it is fantastic. I’m not thrilled that a future issue is going to be yet another installment in Marvel’s (and comicdom’s as a whole) ongoing Obama-exploitathon. I mean, nothing against our President, but c’mon, seriously.
I didn’t buy this, but I had to relate this bit of description from the back cover of the X-Men: The End trade paperback collecting all three mini-series. I offer, without (much) comment, the blurb where it says that the mini-series are
“…A trilogy of books in the style of the LORD OF THE RINGS movies.”
Really. Huh.
