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Sorry, gang. The End of Civilization, previously planned for today, has been postponed.

I hope everyone has a nice Thanksgiving, where applicable. Otherwise, have a good Thursday.

from Little Dot Dotland #50 (August 1971)

…that the Laff-A-Lympics will be remembered as one of history’s cultural touchstones:

from Laff-A-Lympics #11 (January 1979)
by Mark Evanier, Tony Strobl, Roman Arambula & Scott Shaw

Just to reiterate: I didn’t dood it. Can’t say why you all would think this was one of mine. (HINT: If you find yourself offended by a specific entry, chances are I wrote it.)

And now…some random things here and there:

• Chris Sims and Eugene Ahn present a new episode of the War Rocket Ajax podcast where they interview writer Chris Roberson. BONUS CONTENT: Special guest Dr. K sits in!
• A few quick reactions to some comics I read this week:

  Irredeemable #8 – I really like this comic, I can’t wait ’til each new issue comes out, but man oh man I swear it feels like it takes no time at all to read it.

  Brave and the Bold #28 – Three issues of this series written by JMS, three smacks square in the head by the Moral-of-the-Story Sledgehammer. And yet I have no intention of dropping the book, because 1) I like the mixes of characters so far, and coming in the announced future issues, and 2) there is an odd fascination in seeing the characters used in these just-this-side of out-of-character ways.

  Adventure Comics #4 – The more Superboy-Prime becomes explicitly a criticism of certain types of fan behavior, the more hilarious he becomes. Honestly, the panel where he exclaims “The Internet! Of course!” literally did make me laugh out loud. And that he gets his own marked-down-to-half-price action figure essentially rubbed in his face is fantastic. Yeah, I know this is very much a “comics eats itself” kind of thing, but I don’t care, I’ll take amusement where I can find it.

• Don’t know that I ever showed this to you…a drawing I received from a certain Mr. Hembeck about a year or so ago:
  
  Fred gave us some sketches to give away with copies we sold of the Hembeck Omnibus, and included that one for me. Pretty awesome.

• Wow, Andrew came up with a Nobody’s Favorite that even I had some trouble remembering.
• Ragnell writes about recent Green Lantern events, and how she’s totally okay with what happened to one of her favorite characters, instead of starting an online petition or something.
• I asked on the Twitter for someone to step in and write today’s post for me, and Twitter-pal Toddster replied like so:
  

  “Bleep blorp Sluggo blip bleep Swamp Thing blahdity blahdity teen magazines!”

  I suspect this really is how I sound all the time. BLOOP BEEP.

I feel vaguely uncomfortable:

from Fantastic Four #315 (June 1988) by Steve Englehart,
Keith Pollard & Joe Sinnott

ads from Teens Now Vol. 3 #12 (April 1974)

• General consensus about that ad from yesterday is that it’s Mort Drucker, which is someone I’d actually briefly considered until I discarded that thought for no real good reason. One person had my back on my Angelo Torres guess, thankfully, so it wasn’t just me!

  One person mentioned what an Al Jaffee tampon ad might be like, showing cross sections and such, but of course it would have to be a Fold-in: a full-page drawing of a bunch of people at a party or whatever, and then you fold it in and the details at the sides of the drawing suddenly form into a big pic of a tampon.

  …Aaaand that’s enough tampon talk. For now.

• Chris Sims and Eugene Ahn posted a new episode of the War Rocket Ajax podcast earlier this week, where they interview the folks behind the Twisted Toyfare Theatre strips in Toyfare magazine! Also, they want letters to be read on a future episode, so get crackin’. “Dear War Rocket Ajax, I never thought this would happen to me, but….”
• Close personal internet friends have created Mangaviews, a hub for manga reviews. Manga isn’t really my thing, but this looks like a nicely designed site, and perhaps some of you folks will find something of use therein.
• REMINDER: I’m still a contributing Bureau Chief over at Fake AP Stylebook, if you want to pop on by for a few grammar laughs. It’s really taking off, and we’re having a blast doing it. Here’s a nice article on its creation and the folks involved, including lots of fairly well-regarded comic bloggers.

Now, about that poster from yesterday…that image was taken from the cover of Superman: The Man of Steel #49 (Oct. 1995), and, as Tom and others noted in the comments, the pic certainly evokes a Batman feel. The story inside isn’t particularly moody or Batman-ish, as it involves Superman fighting leftover Byrne villain Skyhook. But then, Skyhook’s shtick is turning kids into bat-people, so maybe that’s the connection there, tenuous as it is.

But again, like I said in the comments, it’s not as if I don’t like Jon Bogdanove. I do. I think he did a swell job during his run on Man of Steel…very loose and cartoony and fun. I realize it’s not to everyone’s taste, but hey, we don’t all have to like the same things. I didn’t even mind the image from that poster as a one-off cover, out of the half-dozen or so Superman covers DC published that month, just for a little variety. But as the image for a store to hang on the wall to advertise the Superman books? They couldn’t find anything a little more…Superman-ish?

But then again, this was the mid ’90s, near the beginning of the comics market crash, and folks were casting about for anything that worked. “You all like dark ‘n’ gritty? Here’s dark ‘n’ gritty Superman for you.”

In fairness, here’s a promo poster I did like, a double-sider Bogdanove drew tying into DC’s Zero Hour event. One side is likely familiar, as it was the cover for Man of Steel #37, with Superman facing off against a number of different Batmen in the styles of the character’s many artists:

And the other side of the poster featured an image that, as far as I can recall, only appeared here (but may have been in a house ad, too…I don’t remember), and reversed the situation:

Always thought these were pretty neat, but I wish the Supermen were more posed looking inward at Batman, like the Superman/multiple Batmen poster. Though perhaps it may have been harder to tell what style was being mimicked without seeing Superman head-on.

Anyway, here’s another nice Batman-esque pic of Superman from Bogdanove:

I might have liked that image better as a promo poster for the Superman line of books.

HEY KIDS

IT’S SUPERMAN

1995 promotional poster – art by Jon Bogdanove & Dennis Janke

Still going through my disc-by-disc viewing of Batman: The Animated Series…just finished watching the initial Ra’s al Ghul two-parter written by the villain’s co-creator Denny O’Neil. It was quite the globe-trotting adventure, tightly plotted and very exciting, and, yes, it ends with shirtless Batman and an equally shirtless Ra’s battling it out in a manly-man swordfight while the fate of the world hangs in the balance. Now that’s a Batman story.

Especially nice is the vocal work of David Warner as Ra’s. The way he intones the word “Detective” (being Ra’s…Ra’s’s?…preferred name for Batman) contains so much. It sounds like an offering of respect for Batman, while at the same time sounding like a challenge. So nicely done.

At the same time, I’m still slowly going through the Ruby Spears Superman cartoons…it certainly says something about the quality of the cartoons, I think, that I put aside the Superman disc to watch through most of the Batman disc once it showed up in the mail. Now that I’ve watched a few more episodes, my opinion of the series is a little higher…the animation is passable, though the storytelling is still on the level of “ah, it’s just for kids…this is good enough.” And the situations are occasionally so out there that they’re almost surreal, like this one episode where Luthor buys the Great Wall of China. Well, sure, why not…wait what?

Yes, he put the LexCorp logo on the Great Wall of…well, the Great Wall of Lex, I guess. Oh, and also in this episode, Lois and Clark are in China to get the exclusive story on Lex’s deal, and at one point Clark is late to meet up with Lois because he’s off buying Disco Mozart tapes. “Disco Mozart tapes,” is what I said. I’m hoping this is part of Superman’s bizarre self-loathing secret identity protection scheme in that by buying disco music in 1988, he thus reinforces Clark’s apparent lack of coolness and with-it-ness. Or maybe Supes really does just like classical music done to a disco beat. Who can tell with extraterrestrials?

Anyway, I think I came into this series with decades-old high hopes, ever since reading about the involvement of Marv Wolfman and Gil Kane in that long-ago issue of Comics Scene. And hey, Jim Woodring worked on the series as a storyboarder/design supervisor. Yes, that Jim Woodring. And there are several other names I recognize from the world of comics as well (like Rick Hoberg and Adrian Gonzales).

One thing I haven’t mentioned is that each episode ends with a short second feature, presenting the adventures of young Clark Kent back in Smallville. These have been pretty good, covering Clark’s adoption, going shopping with Ma, being babysat (long before this story), and so on. That shopping episode does effectively demonstrate that trying to raise a super-powered baby would be an enormous pain in the ass, so at least these cartoons have an educational element to them.