An excess of sardonicism.
So thanks, internet pals, for the assorted messages of appreciation/congratulations/pity you’ve sent me on the sixth anniversary of this here weblogatron.
A few items of note that were sent my way for the occasion:
Sleestak of That’s My Skull pointed me in the direction of this Swamp Thing gag from a 1989 issue of Comics Scene. (Gosh, I miss that magazine.)
Longtime ProgRuin reader Michael-Sensei posted this foreign Return of the Swamp Thing poster that I think I may have posted here before, but even if I did, it’s always great to see it again! And he linked to this Japanese video cover for the same movie, which made me laugh. “Waugh!” indeed.
Another longtime reader, Old Bull Lee, comments that his favorite post of mine ever is this one, where I mash together Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns with the Greatest Batman of Them All, Adam West. And the only reason I’m relinking it here is so that I can link to Kevin Church’s more extensive remixing of these two versions of Batman, which is completely awesome.
And another bull, Bully the Little Stuffed Bull, presents a rare image from my childhood as I team-up with one of my heroes.
Oh, almost forgot: here’s a bit of spam that I got at work on the same day as my sixth anniversary:
“Attention:Beneficiary,
“I am Barrister Micheal Sterling. I have a client Mr.Jeffrey, who bears the same last name with you and a national of your Country who used to work with The Arcadia Group London, on the 22nd of May 2005, my client, his wife and their three children were involved in a car accident along Manchester Express Road. All occupants of the vehicle unfortunately lost their lives.”
And then it goes on about how I’m the only relation to the family they could find and boy howdy, do I have a lot of money that’s waiting for me to just jump through the necessary hoops. But frankly, I couldn’t get past the misspelling of “Michael.”
Here’s an odd thing a customer said to me the other day:
“Huh, so they’re making up new characters, are they?”
Said in reaction to the cover of the Marvel Previews catalog. Specifically in reaction to the Ultimate Comics X image on said cover. So 1) I didn’t quite know how to respond to someone expressing mild surprise that comic publishers are making up new characters, and 2) he was looking at an image that essentially had a Wolverine-type character, with hand-claws. I almost responded with “sure, they make up new characters all the time…they’re all variations on Wolverine” but withheld my excess of sardonicism.
To give the benefit of a doubt, perhaps this customer was simply resisting the need for Marvel and DC to push new characters into the marketplace, and not just being amazed that maybe, for whatever reason, a new character just might get created and pop up in a book somewhere.
I am using “new” loosely here, since the character does indeed appear to be another Wolvie knock-off, but it’s drawn by Art Adams and therefore will be right purty.
