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When we last left the Sentinels, Rick, Cindy, and Crunch were in the diabolical grip of the mindbending…er, Mind-Bender, as the mind-controlled Crunch was about to flip a switch designed to destroy their minds! As opposed to simply bending them, I guess.

Anyway, this story, “Night of Doom,” was the back-up in Peter Cannon Thunderbolt #59 (published by Charlton Comics in 1967), written by “Sergius O’Shaugnessy” (AKA Denny O’Neil) and illustrated by “Sam Grainger,” AKA Sam Grainger. And remember:

Before the switch can be thrown, quick-thinking Rick remembers that all villains love to talk about themselves, even if they are about to defeat their arch-nemesis (or nemeses, in this case) once and for all:

Okay, and once again we get a villain that probably could have made a fortune legitimately, had he just, you know, applied for patents and hired a marketing team or something. Which makes this following statement all the more ludicrous:

…a claim he supports by explaining his origin as a scientist caught in an exploding lab, which gave him the power to intermittently control minds. And thus he’s a businessman. Sure, that makes perfect sen…wha-huh?

All this time, as the Mind-Bender blabs on and on, prodded on by questions from his captives (“Why do you need robots?” “To do the menial work!” Well, sure), Rick is working at freeing himself. Finally, a day or two later, just as the Mind-Bender has decided he’s talked enough, Rick breaks his bonds and grabs some of the power cables on the wall, causing some of the generators in the room to explode, you know, as they do.

Angered at the turn of events, the Mind-Bender topples one of his robots in an attempt to crush the still-bound Cindy, who makes an insightful observation:

Luckily, in all this brouhaha Crunch has managed to bust himself free of the Mind-Bender’s influence, and thus able to save Cindy’s bacon by knocking the falling robot aside with his own body.

In the meantime, the Mind Bender has fled for the hills…well, a catwalk actually, high above the action. Rick flies up in pursuit, thinking “with [the Mind-Bender’s] uncanny mental power, he’s potentially the greatest menace on Earth,” which may be overstating things a bit. But hey, he’s the superhero, I suppose he knows best.

Anyway, once Rick has caught up with the Mind-Bender, MB makes a frank assessment of his failings:

…only to be followed by an admission of personal flaws by Rick during the ensuing fight:

The conflict concludes with Rick delivering a haymaker to MB’s jaw, in a panel that contains no end of delights, from Rick’s witty bon mot, to that fine sound effect, and even to that grunt of “ARGF!”

I want everyone reading this right now to say “ARGF!” out loud, just to hear it. “ARGF!” Rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?

So the Mind-Bender is seemingly defeated, and just as Rick is about to wrap up this little adventure, MB leaps to his feet and pushes Rick (you know, the flying hero) off the catwalk! This gives Rick a chance to again berate himself for his failings:

However, he shortly recovers and flies back up to the catwalk to give the Mind-Bender a little more what-for. He hovers just off to the side of the catwalk, throwing some punches, while MB tries to return a few hits of his own. Unfortunately, MB leans just a little too far off the catwalk and loses his balance. “I can’t reach him!” shouts Rick from about two feet away, and the Mind-Bender goes to his dignified end:

Meanwhile, the lab’s in flames, and it’s up to Crunch to save Cindy and himself from the fire…Crunch grabs one of the Mind-Bender’s robots and smashes it through a wall, making an escape route for all three Sentinels. The group has some final words regarding their fallen foe:

Cindy: “That poor man! He was a genius!”

Rick: “A twisted genius, Cindy! If he had survived…well, perhaps civilization wouldn’t have!”

Again, Rick perhaps overstates the case a little, probably to justify the fact that he essentially let a man fall to his doom.

We leave the Sentinels with this last panel, as Crunch is paid back for his rescue of Cindy by being totally treated like a third wheel. Admire the man’s lantern-jaw and spit-curl while you puzzle over his dialogue:

Plus, I’m not entirely sure what Cindy did to get herself exhausted, but there you go.

Really, the best part of last night’s new episode of Justice League Unlimited was the voice-work of fellow Oxnard native Jeffrey Combs as Steve Ditko’s The Question. Given Combs’ history of playing characters that seem to think they know what they’re doing, but very clearly have a screw loose somewhere (see also the Reanimator films, From Beyond, various roles on assorted Star Trek shows), he really added a layer of peculiarity to The Question, who was portrayed as being a little more obsessive and off-kilter than in any of The Question comics I’ve seen. In fact, there seemed to be just a tiny pinch of Moore and Gibbon’s Rorschach, which has the nice touch of a derivative character feeding back into its inspiration.

At any rate, this episode, with its conspiracies (or “conspiracy,” as the Question says), seeming betrayals, and its portrayal of the Question himself, must be pretty heady stuff for any 8-year-olds tuning in right after last night’s Teen Titans cartoon.

Now that we’ve seen the Question, we’re perhaps one step closer to getting a Mr. A cartoon: “Mommy, mommy, the man in the cartoon said that reality is independent of our beliefs…what does that mean?”

Other observations from the cartoon: I think we just saw the animated origin for Power Girl (given the Supergirl clone’s attitute and “cleavage ahoy!” costume). Also, I believe I spotted a Wildcat cameo, which should make you-know-who happy.

In other news:

So, all those articles popping up lately about Jim Caviezel playing Superman in the new movie (here’s a representative sample)…is Mark Millar pretty much the only source for this rumor? Well, at the very least, Millar knows how to get people talking about him…including me, I suppose.

In response to someone in the comments section of my previous post — I don’t have a cover scan for Marvel Comics’ Life of Pope John Paul II immediately available, but you can find images of varying quality on eBay.

And go enter Johanna’s Fallen Angel contest, gosh darn it. Don’t make me tell you again.

Treasure Chest Vol. 18 #1 (September 1962)

At the shop today, as we’re doing some restocking of back issues, pal Dorian sez to me, he sez “so why do people think Spawn is any good?” I think my response was something along the lines of “well, you know, at the heart of it, it really isn’t a bad idea….” In fact, I thought it was a great idea, especially back when it was called The Grim Ghost.

Anyway, that reminded me of when it was first announced, waaaaay back in the early ’90s, that Marvel’s most popular artists were going to split off and form their own company, Image Comics. For a brief moment, I thought about what a great opportunity this would be. Hugely popular artists, at a time when comics sales were skyrocketing, going off do to their own thing, without the constraints of a big company making them work on superhero properties. Why, this would be a great way to expose all those superhero readers to new genres! McFarlane fans would have followed him to, say, a Western comic (which I think McFarlane’s art would have been well-suited for, actually), or Jim Lee to a sci-fi pulp adventure book, or Valentino to a detective comic, and so on.

Ah, if only I were that young and foolish optimistic again.

M: “Hey, you stole one of my observations.”

D: “Which one?”

M: “The one about parents that bring their kids into our store for the express purpose of torturing them with things they can’t have.”

D: “So? You weren’t going to use it.”

M: “I might have.”

D: “No, you weren’t.”

M: “Well, fine then. I’m going to write about gay-themed comics and Wildcat. How ’bout them apples?”

D: “Ha! Go ahead!”

M: “Damn! My bluff’s been called!”

So it has to be the day that Big Larry mentions my site in his article on comics weblogs that my webhoster has a day-long outage. Aaaaargh!

Anyway, things appear to be back to normal, so to anyone visiting from Comic Book Resources — hi! How ya doin’? I usually have real content on this site, I swear. Go look at my archives!

Well, rats: Grotesque Anatomy is closing up shop. Good luck to you, John!

AiT/Planetlar‘s Big Larry revives his Loose Cannon column at Comic Book Resources to talk about the comicsweblogosphere. Even includes a quote or two from me, but don’t let that scare you off.

A reminder: go enter Johanna’s Fallen Angel contest.

1. Added to the weblogroll: Ed Cunard’s The Low Road.

2. Of these two conversations held in our store today, which is geekier: pal Ian and pal Corey wondering what they would do if they ever met their Earth-2 counterparts; or me telling pal Sean that Bullseye‘s girlfriend must really be happy with him since, due to his power of perfect aim, he never pees on the toilet seat?

3. New funnybooks today: slim pickins for me, as I only bought four:

• Firestorm #5 – continues to be very intriguing, and brings up a moral issue to the character’s power that he’s trying to deny
• Street Angel #3 – this issue reminded me, oddly enough, of a more action-oriented Chester Brown
• Swamp Thing #7 – read the preview issue last week…always weird to see Richard Corben doing ground-level comics. Do people even still say “ground-level” in reference to modern comics? I think I’ll start using that instead of “mainstream”
• …And, my low-brow pick of the week, Hulk/Thing: Hard Knocks #1 – actually, not bad…all set-up, but it has me curious as to what the Thing’s goal is
  

Normally, when I’m only getting a small number of comics like this, I’d try something else out, but given that last week I had a ton of stuff come in, I thought I’d better give myself a break this week.

4. We finally got our copies of Scott Pilgrim in…but once again, we were shorted our DC Comics Preview Pack. Grrrr.

5. Also, courtesy of a store run by a friend of ours who ordered a few too many, we were able to get a couple more cases of those Dark Knight Returns figures based on the Frank Miller designs. Batman, Superman, and the Joker fly off the shelves…Robin continues to be the very definition of “pegwarmer.” Anyone else noticing that problem in other areas?

6. I brought in that album of Neil Hefti Batman music that I mentioned a couple days ago, but played it before we were open, while we were breaking down the order. I think playing the Batman theme song in a comic shop while we’re open and the customers can hear it may be…gilding the lily a bit, don’t you think?

…when we as a culture feared the Great Guitar-Playing Prehistoric Space Hippie/Beatnik-Hybrid Menace?

The Great Gazoo #17 (July 1976)

There’s nothing quite like pestering clerks at local video stores and explaining to them that you’re looking for a DVD of Swamp Thing cartoons. Yes, they all looked at me like I was a crazy person. And no, I didn’t have any luck, so I had to order it online.

Anyway, it’s out today, so if you want to see how not to make a Swamp Thing cartoon, this DVD has five 20-minute lessons on that very subject.