In which I risk undermining my 1960s/1970s rock street cred for all time.

filed under Categories reader participation 41 Comments

So here’s a thing I was wondering about the cover to Spoof #3 (January 1973):


Now, I recognize most of the caricatured celebrities on there:


…the Osmonds, the Jackson 5, the Beatles, Yoko, Mick, Elvis, David, those two politicians of some note. But who’s this guy:


No, not the baby. The dude with the sideburns. …Well, the baby sort of has sideburns, come to think of it. But anyway, I may just be having an Old Man Moment, and not placing the face, but it’s just not ringing any bells with me. I even showed this cover to a couple of folks who’d I’d expected to know right away, and even they were like “huh…who is that?” Even the Grand Comics Database entry doesn’t note who it is.

So, if you know, alleviate our embarrassing ignorance by revealing what is sure to be the forehead-smacking obvious answer in my comments here.

Of course, it may be possible that it’s not supposed to be anybody at all, but that hardly seems likely. The non-celeb types seem to be relegated to being background characters, or stuck behind word balloons:


YOU’LL PUT YOUR EYE OUT, KID. Also, get a haircut, hippie.

Progressive Ruin presents…the End of Civilization.

filed under Categories End of Civilization 16 Comments

So…we meet again, Diamond Previews. You may think you have the upper hand this time, but I still have a trick or two up my sleeve. Let us begin, then, and may the best man…or 450-page catalog…win.

If you want to keep tabs on our battle, then grab your own copy of Diamond Previews, March 2012 edition, and follow along:

p. 119 – Legion of Super-Heroes #9:

“One of the greatest LEGIONNAIRES quits!”

Whaa–!? “Greatest Legionnaire?” Why, that could only mean…


…that Arm-Fall-Off-Boy had finally made the team! I had no idea. I guess I should have never quit reading the Legion books.

p. 121 – Smallville Season 11 #1:


Just as a guess, I’m going to say the emotion being conveyed on that face there is “hideous embarrassment.” “…Boy, I sure hope any of my friends who didn’t suffer multiple debilitating head injuries don’t see me in this and guess my secret identity!”

p. 122 – Batman Beyond Unlimited #4:


Oh, you can say more. I’m not seeing any “Swamp Thing Beyond” there, after all.

p. 128 – Mister Terrific Vol. 1 Mind Games TP:


Collecting the entirety of a cancelled series and throwing a “Volume 1” on it? Now that’s just rubbing salt in the wound.

p. 145 – The Dark Knight Rises 1:6 Scale Icon Statues:


I’m sure the follow-up series of statues will have Catwoman standing in the heroic pose, and Batman squatting with his ass sticking out. You know, just to be fair.

p. 147 – Batman Arkham City Deluxe Action Figures:


I didn’t realize Batman fought a Predator and one of the crew of the Nostromo in Arkham City. Now I have to get this video game!

p. 151 – Star Trek The Next Generation / Doctor Who – Assimilation2 #1:


Oh come on. What kind of completely ridiculous, fan-fictiony, totally pandering piece of nonsense that I’m absolutely going to be buying is this?

p. 186 – Youngblood #71:


Now, a long time ago on this site, I opined that if Rob Liefeld had stuck with Youngblood from the beginning, and just kept pumping out an issue month after month after month for years, my guess is that by now that theoretical Youngblood series, which would be in its 170s or 180s, would be amazing. I don’t know if it would be “amazing” as in “actually really good” or “amazing” as in “oh my God what the hell is this,” but seeing this relaunch beginning with #71 just reminded me of a wonderful thing we may never see. Unless he commits to this series for twenty years, of course.

p. 329 – X-O Manowar #1 QR Voice Variant:


When I just saw the headlines about this, as opposed to, say, actually reading the articles and seeing what the actual deal was, I just assumed all the X-O Manowar #1s would have sound chips in the covers, like those novelty greeting cards.

Which resulted in these Twittering shenanigans:


Luckily you’re going to need one of those fancy QR-code-readin’ space phones from the future to enable the talking bit of the talking covers, so you talking comic book covers won’t be gettin’ a hold of me, nosiree.

p. 351 – Why Does Batman Carry Shark Repellent? SC:


Answer: because why wouldn’t he? He’s Batman. Duh. Should’ve asked me first, Brian.

p. 354 – Doctor Who Where’s the Doctor? HC:


Of course, if they were really mean, they wouldn’t tell you which version of the Doctor was hidden in each picture. That’ll keep you Whovians off the streets for a while.

p. 360 – Star Wars Cookbook: Wookiee Pies, Clone Scones, And Other Galactic Goodies HC:


“My God, that’s Wookiee Pie! …It’s good, though.”

p. 398 – Strong Guy Mini-Bust:


Usually, I poke a little fun at the crazy statues they’ll produce for a hopelessly limited market. But…yeah, I have no problem with this one. Buy it, put it on a shelf, and if anyone doesn’t get it…let ’em wonder.

p. 423 – Spider-Man Back Buddy:


“Hey, there’s a spider on your back!”

p. 433 – Spider-Man Collector’s Edition Monopoly:


Do not pass the George Washington Bridge, do not catch Gwen Sta…oh, what’s that? …Ooh, that’s a damn shame.

p. 433 – World of Warcraft Collector’s Edition Monopoly:


Do not pass, um, the Warcraft Base, do not collect…orc treasure? Or something? Hell, I don’t know anything about World of Warcraft, I have no idea.

Marvel Previews p. 32 – Mighty Thor #14:


“What really happens in your room at night…?” Um, we’re still talking about the comic, right?

Marvel Previews p. 39 – Fantastic Four #606:


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Wait for it….
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Marvel Previews p. 41 – Marvel Zombies Destroy! #1:


Looks like Nazi Zombies are all the rage this year!


I’m going to admit that this is a permutation on the zombie fad I didn’t not expect to be gifted upon us at this late date. Well, if there are two things fanboys love, it’s zombies, and, um, yeah.

Marvel Previews p. 82 – Civil War Prose Novel HC:


Revealed at last! The inner motivations of Clone Thor! What are his hopes? His dreams? His deepest desires? His darkest fears? Finally get into the head of the breakout character of…2006, was it? Like, 5 and a half years ago? Geez. I didn’t need to be reminded of that.

YOGI NOOOOOOO

filed under Categories cranius, sir-links-a-lot, swamp thing, what is it good for 9 Comments

Ah, how could I have forgotten CRANIUS:


When wondering about how many “classic villains” Swamp Thing actually had, I totally forgot about Cranius, the most Un of all the Un-Men, until my blogging brother Tim O’Neil was good enough to remind me of our brain-handed friend.

Don’t worry…I’m not going to get all Cranius-crazy on you again, but yeah…the return of Cranius. Wouldn’t that be something if that were the case?

Anyway, in some site news…I almost decided to fix the commenting settings to require names and email addresses from folks who want to leave a comment, but decided I didn’t want to inconvenience everyone. Besides, it’s not as if someone couldn’t stick a fake email address in there or anything. However, I can ban IP addresses…I don’t want to, and hopefully I won’t have to.

Enough about that…let’s get to some more entertaining stuff:

  • Happy Birthday, Superman!

  • Here are some Frank Frazetta-inspired Cerebus drawings by Dave Sim…including a interesting color commission that sort of expresses Dave’s feelings about superheroes.

  • Finally, one of these “Keep Calm” things that I actually like…almost certainly because it features a certain Little Stuffed Bull of some note.

  • Andrew picked a good’un for the latest installment of Nobody’s Favorites…but mostly I’m just jealous of that post title that I wish I’d thought of first.

  • And now, some “Then…KOREA” pics.

    First, from the aforementioned Bully, the Little Stuffed Bull, comes this slightly revamped version of a post of his from a couple of days ago:


    From the equally aforementioned Andrew comes this shocking tale of an evening’s festivities gone horribly wrong:


    And the esteemed Dr. K has this, a tale of tragedy:


    Oh dear.

I’m pretty sure the transitional phrase “Speaking of Swamp Thing” is implied in most of my posts.

filed under Categories swamp thing 20 Comments

So reader Bryan was playing around with that “Then…KOREA” panel from yesterday, and sent me this:


Very nice. …But then it got me to thinking that, sooner or later, someone’s gonna attempt a M*A*S*H “reboot” and what a bad idea that would be. I’m depending on you young folks to keep that from happening should someone attempt it after I’m gone.

Also, Rich Handley, fan of both apes and swamps, sent along a link to his own Swamp Thing-ified version of the “Then…KOREA” transition, which you can see by clicking on this little ol’ link here.

Speaking of Swamp Thing, over here in this John Byrne Forum message thread someone posted a commissioned sketch Byrne did of Swampy ‘n’ Abby. Also in that thread, Byrne relates a couple of stories about not being allowed to use Swamp Thing in comics he was working on.

As Dave pointed out to me on the Twitter regarding the one incident that occurred during Byrne’s initial Action run in the ’80s, Byrne blames the Vertigo editors despite that imprint’s existence being several years away, so the Vertigo/DC editorial split wouldn’t have been the excuse to keep Byrne from using Swamp Thing in a Superman team-up. Interesting that, as it’s told, the Big Name Creator DC essentially put in charge of the entire Superman franchise at the time couldn’t use whatever character he wanted from the DC Universe, but the New Guy Writing the Weird Horror Book could use a Superman character (Lex Luthor) over the Big Name Creator’s protests. …Perhaps the first stirrings of the coming DC/Vertigo split, or just favored treatment of one creator over another as Byrne says…who knows. But it’s certainly an interesting story about that period of Swamp Thing’s history I hadn’t heard before.

(If you want to read about that specific usage of Luthor in the Swamp Thing comics which Byrne objected to, I discussed it briefly a few years back.)

In other Swamp Thing news, there’s an interview with Swamp-writer Scott Snyder where he hypes Swamp Thing’s arrival (finally!) in the new Swamp Thing series. Also noted is the return of “a really classic villain” from Swamp Thing’s past, not named by Snyder, but really, aside from Arcane, how many other “classic villains” does Swamp Thing have? Jason Woodrue, the Floronic Man? General Sunderland? M’nagalah? God help us, Sabre? …Seriously, if this ends up being the return of Nathan Ellery, well, you know what’s gonna happen then?

“Then…KOREA”

filed under Categories what is it good for 10 Comments

From Battle Stories #5 (September 1952), here is one heck of a transition:


I mean, holy cow, just look at that panel:


And then, of course, I started thinking about what other comics could benefit from this very same sudden transition, like Adam 12 #4 (August 1974):



Or perhaps Peanuts #2 (2012):



This is what I think about, late at night, when there is no one around to stop me.

Probably more “monster” than “bird,” but I’ve remembered it as a bird for 37 years and that’s what I’m sticking with.

filed under Categories cartoons, pal plugging 11 Comments

So just on a whim (and still riding that ape high after rewatching the excellent Rise of the Planet of the Apes), I decided to rent from the Netflix the first disc of the Return to the Planet of the Apes animated series from the mid-1970s:


Now, because I’m old, I was around to watch this when it originally aired…and I haven’t seen it since. According to this Wikipedia page it had been rerun a number of times since, even relatively recently. But I never saw it again after my initial viewings, and for decades all I retained of what I watched was a brief scene of a giant bird swooping down and grabbing something. …Yeah, I know, but I’m pretty sure Beneath the Planet of the Apes would’ve been improved by a giant bird.

I popped the disc in and watched the first episode…the theme music is evocative of the original movie, and the opening sequence is interesting:


…be sure to stay for the dramatic reading of the name of the series at the very end.

I’ve only seen the first episode so far, and while it seems like things pick up a bit in the later episodes, judging by the plot descriptions on the Wiki page, the initial installment is very casually paced. I think we spend about, oh, ten minutes watching our human cast wander through the desert:


And there’s a lot of “panning over still images” as animation, and reused shots, and other cost-cutting devices common to this sort of thing. However, it’s sort of nice to watch a cartoon that is, as I said, casually paced: holding a shot for more than a second, and not constantly screaming at you. It also seems like it’s relatively intelligently written, giant birds aside, and I look forward to delving a little deeper into this series.

I can’t say I’m exactly reliving childhood memories with this, since, aside from the one barely-remembered scene, I don’t recall any of it. And before you ask…I’m planning on checking out the DVDs for the live-action TV series, too.

I’m also throwing one of these thingies here, since it’s been a while and I can stand to have a little more Amazon action:


It’s shameless, I know.

To offset my selfish grab for pennies, let me recommend a couple of Planet of the Apes-related books by Rich Handley of Roots of the Swamp Thing fame: Timeline of the Planet of the Apes: The Definitive Chronology and Lexicon of the Planet of the Apes: The Comprehensive Encyclopedia, and you can learn about both of ’em (and download free excerpts) right here.

I think I’ve probably featured that Galactica card on the site before, but c’mon, just look at it.

filed under Categories star wars, trading cards 8 Comments

So as a young Mikester in the late ’70s, I found this particular Star Wars trading card to be of interest:


…as it gave us one of the few really good glimpses as to what the Jawas looked like under their hoods:


The official (or semi-official, or “canon,” or whatever) explanation is that the Jawas are “rodent-like,” and that what we’re supposedly seeing there isn’t a Jawa’s actual face, but just more protective covering with gemstone eyepieces. But I think it’s this specific image that has me associating Jawas with more insectoid characteristics than rodential. I mean, look at it…it’s like a giant ant under there. That’s completely creepier than a rodent.

By contrast, this Battlestar Galactica sticker featuring the Cylons’ Imperious Leader could’ve used a little more mystery:


The Cockeyed Space Tyrant is puckering up…for you.