It’s Only Love Doing Its Swamp Thing.

filed under Categories swamp thing 5 Comments

So reader LT was good enough to send along a couple of DC Universe Online screen shots featuring Swamp Thing…he tells me this first screen is a shot of Swampy in the Justice League Watchtower’s arboretum (which, I guess if you’re going to have Swamp Thing hanging out with our favorite superheroes, they better make him feel at home in their satellite headquarters):


Here’s a better look at the detail on Swamp Thing’s skin. Looks like the League also offers Turtle Waxing services:


Pull back a bit, and we see a few more characters in the scene with Swampy:


Facing off against Mr. S. Thing (who seems to have a nice grimace, there) is LT’s character:


And off to the side is another character standing next to one of the JLA’s gardening staffers, who clearly is in a rush to finish his work and has no patience for any superhero shenanigans:


LT also tells me that in the game, Swamp Thing’s voice “sounds like somebody trying to do a Barry White parody.” I’m sure that came in handy when Swamp Thing started putting the moves on Abby.

Thanks, LT, for sending those screenshots along!

Doctor Solar Saturday #1.

filed under Categories saturday 5 Comments

ANYTHING UNUSUAL?

YOU MEAN, ASIDE FROM THE GREEN GUY IN THE RED JUMPSUIT?

from Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom #8 (July 1964) by Paul Newman & Frank Bolle

Dare you enter…Superboy’s Souvenir Hall of Horrors?

filed under Categories superman 13 Comments

Seriously, you can’t just drop something like a “super-intelligent but war-like race of mutant ants” into a story and never mention them ever again:


Superboy apparently isn’t big on arranging his exhibits in any kind of sensible thematic fashion:


This may be the most threatening thing Superboy has ever said to anyone:

images from Superboy #109 (December 1963) by Jerry Siegel & George Papp

The shirt off my back.

filed under Categories question time, swamp thing 8 Comments

A few more questions from you, the loyal Progressiveruin.com readers:

  • Thelonious_Nick wonders

    Why do all these big events that the comics companies are always pushing on us sound so awesome ahead of time but end up being so god-awful when they actually occur?

    Well, we’re only human, and we’re comic fans (two states of being that are not mutually exclusive, despite popular belief)…it’s pretty easy to buy into the hype and excitement, or at least absorb a small bit of it, ahead of time, which perhaps inflates expectations beyond any point the event in question can possibly satisfy.

    Or maybe they just end up being terrible. (The true answer is probably somewhere between these two options.)

  • Moonrock rockets off

    “Having just picked up some back issues of Secret Wars II, which I hadn’t read since it first came out years ago, I was curious if I was the only one who thinks the Beyonder looked like Jim Shooter with a jheri(sp?) curl? Mike, do you think Shooter was egotistic enough to write himself in SWII as an omnipotent being?”

    If I remember correctly, there was some thought at the time that the Secret Wars II Beyonder was indeed a “Mary Sue” of sorts for Shooter, and the Secret Wars page on TV Tropes even refers to the Beyonder as “Self Insert Fic” in regards to the character’s relation to Shooter.

    I don’t know if it was an intentional thing, but, to be frank, had I been in his position, I would have done the exact same thing. I totally would have made myself the main character of Sterling W–er, Secret Wars II. Except I wouldn’t have had to change my hair, since my hairstyle has already achieved beautiful perfection.

  • Roger Green inquires

    “Did you see this Swamp Thing item?”

    Actually, I did not see this amusing alteration to Steve Bissette’s drawing of Swamp Thing and Man-Thing palling around until you pointed it out. Thanks! Also learned at the link: there’s a Facebook application which allows you to make your own Life magazine cover, which could result in some mischievous fun.

  • Professor Booty is about to be partially disappointed in at least one answer to his two questions:

    Are you watching Game of Thrones, Mike? On a scale of 1 to 10, how awesome is it?

    I haven’t seen one single frame of Game of Thrones, nor have I even read any of the books. However, I understand Peter Dinklage is involved in the TV show, and Mr. Dinklage always…always…gets a 10 on the awesome scale. (Yes, even in Underdog.)

    Do you wear any clothes with Swamp Thing on them? Did Mike Sterling ever dress as Swamp Thing for Halloween (or just to work or something!) and are there pictures of it? If so, how come I never seen them here?

    The only piece of Swamp Thing clothing I’ve worn is this 1994 t-shirt, which I couldn’t find a pic of online so, in a Progressive Ruin first, I scanned the actual shirt from my own closet:


    It…shows a little wear, and I haven’t worn it in a while, but I can’t bring myself to get rid of it. And yeah, it’s a bit of a peculiar design, what with Swampy ‘n’ Abby’s daughter Tefe sittin’ up there.

    You know what Swamp Thing shirt I’d love to have? One with this cover. I would so pay money for that.

    I never dressed as Swamp Thing for Halloween, unfortunately. Nor do I dress as Swamp Thing for the shop, nor do I dress as him while just hanging around the house, vacuuming or something. Because I know you were wondering. However, I have had two employees dress as me for Halloween…only one of whom was male.

  • The Mutt shouts

    “Henderson!”

    “HENDERSON!”
     
     
     
    (Listen to a few of these for further explanation.)

Podcasts and swamp creatures.

filed under Categories question time, swamp thing 10 Comments

Okay, one last Twitter question from last night, which came when I was plotting to destroy my enemies sound asleep, from TheMeanGeek:

“do you listen to podcasts? which ones and why? totally self-serving by the way”

“Self-serving,” he says, because he has his own podcast which I haven’t listened to yet, but I promise I’ll give it a try!

Anyway, I do listen to a handful of podcasts, which include the following:

  • War Rocket Ajax – the only comics podcast I listen to, mostly because I usually don’t like listening to people who aren’t me talk about comics. But I like the hosts (Chris Sims and Matt Wilson, and former host Eugene Ahn), I enjoy their senses of humor, they have good interviews, and generally cut through the usual fan-nonsense that pollutes most comics discussion. Or they completely wallow in it to the point of hilarity.

  • Look at His Butt – a title that may take some explaining if you’re not familiar with the podcast, I realize. It’s a William Shatner-centric Star Trek podcast, with the “his butt” in question being Mr. Shatner’s own. The two gals in charge of the site, LT and Jungle Kitty, have a lot of fun talking about Bill, about Trek, about Trek conventions, about Trek merchandise, and some more about Bill. Always an enjoyable listen.

    Also, a couple of years back they were kind enough to interview me about my own Trek fandom, so feel free to give that a listen if you missed it the first time.

  • As some folks may have gathered (more from my Twitter feed than from this site, I’m guessing), I have an interest in science and skeptical matters. A couple of podcasts along those lines that I enjoy are the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe (a longer show with interviews, discussions of current skeptical topics, and general shenaniganery), and Skeptoid (runs about ten minutes, usually devoted to discussing a single topic per episode). (Also, I won’t list them here, but I occasionally listen to a couple of pro-paranormal ‘n’ woo podcasts just to exercise the ol’ “pick out the logical fallacy” muscle.)

  • A couple of comedy podcasts I enjoy: Sklarbro Country, featuring identical twin comedians Randy and Jason Sklar, and the Pod F. Tompkast with Paul F. Tompkins.

That’s not all of them, but those are the main ones I check out regularly. Keep meaning to start one myself, but that would require, you know, time. And effort. And probably equipment.

A question or two from “White Lantern Alec Holland” from yesterday’s post:

“I need a complete accurate list of of all of DC Comics letters pages of the last forty years responding to previous Swamp Thing related guest-appearances and intros in these titles that I have yet to follow, including [LIST OMITTED]”

Oh, Lordy, I don’t know. To be honest, it never occurred to me to collection Swamp Thing’s mentions in letter columns, though I suppose in some cases, if it was a series I was buying regularly, I got them by default. So…um, I’ll have to get back to you on that one.

He also asks

“What did you think of Garbage Man vs. Mossy Man in Weird Worlds #6?”

I’d actually given up on the Weird World series, but Tim O’Neil mentioned to me on the Twitter that there was a Man-Thing-ish type critter who popped up in that last issue, so I gave the comic a quick poke-through at the shop. My general feeling is that this one story felt more like a classic ’70s-style Marvel/DC horror comic than the other “Garbage Man” installments. More even than the (relatively) recent Swamp Thing/Man-Thing comics themselves, which were too much of the Vertigo Comics generation to really be evocative of the simpler stories of times past. The basic story of a misunderstood monster befriended by a child is straight out of an old House of Mystery. Or the Gamera films, for that matter, I realize, but this particular execution of the plot did give me that slight twinge of nostalgia.

…

So long as I’m in a question-answerin’ mood, if you have any lingering queries, go ahead and pop ’em in the comments and I’ll give ’em a go. In the meantime, I’ll just be sittin’ here approximatin’ a casual speakin’ voice by replacin’ letters with apostrophes.

#AskMike.

filed under Categories question time 7 Comments

So normally when I do my “question times”, I put the call out on this site and gather up a few dozen comments and then answer them at length over the following eight or nine weeks, much to the delight of everyone who reads this site, I’m sure. But this time, I pulled a Chris Sims (who regularly does this for his Comics Alliance “Ask Chris” column) and put a question-call on my Twitter thingie. In short order I received, amongst the abuse, a few actual questions, so let’s see what I can do here:

From Chris Sims his own self, he asks

“My question is Swamp Thing is dumb, and I’ll take my answer off the air.”

Well, Mr. Chris “I Love My Little Pony with All My Heart and Soul” Sims, I’ll have you know that, as revealed in Swamp Thing #75 (August 1988, by Rick Veitch & Alfredo Alcala), the template for Swamp Thing’s mind was formed around the critically-injured and dying Alec Holland’s mind:


…and as such, doesn’t function as well as a normal, healthy brain. However, over the course of this issue, Swamp Thing grew himself a big ol’ brain to think himself out of a particular stumper of a dilemma. So he’s not really dumb, since his mind is based on that of a scientist, after all…it’s just that his thinker doesn’t think too quickly. A limitation he can get around, apparently, but sitting down and growing a giant Hector Hammond-esque head. So put that in your Twilight Sparkle and smoke it, mister!

“Franzferdinand2” wants to know

“Jay-Z and Nas decide to revisit their beef, but will settle it without using rap. What is the forum they use?”

I know next to nothing about either of these men, aside from having heard Jay-Z’s name in passing, but I will go with the default time-honored method of solving any disputes: Rock-‘Em Sock-‘Em Robots, which you can read about here, or, apparently, see in this forthcoming movie from the looks of things.

Pal Alex dares to ask

“who / what is this Swamp Thing everyone’s talking about? sounds dumb”

Swamp Thing was rocketed from the distant planet Houma and crash-landed on Earth, whereupon he was bitten by radioactive eelgrass and thus gained all the powers of plantlife, such as climbing walls and the invaluable “plant sense” – which comes in handy when he’s confronted by the metallic tentacles of the nefarious Doc Arcane.

Alex also tempts fate by asking

“What was it like going to high school with Abe Lincoln when dinosaurs still walked the earth?”

Man, these new school textbooks aren’t doing anyone any good.

JacobMartin queries

“I feel pop culturally baffled as to what to get into next, and the movies coming out recently fail to interest. What to do?”

Well, if nothing new is grabbing your fancy, that’s okay. There’s no need to force it…you don’t have to be “into” something at any given moment. Just go ahead and enjoy what you’re already enjoying, and chances are that thing will eventually lead you into something new, or that your attention will eventually be caught by something new that comes along. You don’t always have to chase it…sometimes it’ll come right to you.

Leeatard has a question:

“Do you think there’s a possibility the upcoming DC reboot will finally cure event fatigue?”

That’s hard to say. It depends on whether or not DC stops doing “events” after the September Number One-alanche, and I think we can all assume that the big events will continue. Particularly if the whole initiative flops and DC suddenly has a “Crisis of Going Back to The Way Things Were” crossover series.

But then again, this September thing is sort of the ultimate expression of a Big Event, isn’t it? Can they kill the disease with a big ol’ dose of said disease? We’ll find out in a few months.

And of course, it’s not like Marvel is going to scale back their eventifiying. It’ll probably be two or three going on at any given time, as per usual.

Tim O’Neil wonders

“Who is more powerful, Gladstone Gander or Longshot?”

They do both have powerful “luck” powers, in which events will somehow miraculously fall in their favor. It does seem like an “immovable object meets irresistible force” situation, but I will give the nod to Gladstone, as he is a funny animal, and funny animals have that additional level and / or expectation of “defying all sense of physics and realism” that human comic characters generally do not have. Well, aside from Plastic Man.

TheBrobe inquires

“Have you ever had a week without a mistake or damaged book from Diamond? In my three years it hasn’t happened once.”

It does happen, if rarely. With the sheer number of books and comics being processed, errors and damages are bound to creep in, and that’s, you know, just a thing you gotta deal with. However, this one time, after a string of error-filled shipments, we had an order come in with no problems whatsoever. Completely flawless. So impressed were we that we placed our regular call to our Diamond sales rep anyway, just to compliment folks on a job well done! …And we think we ended up irritating our rep, who thought we were being sarcastic. We weren’t, honest!

Celamowari asks

“What is your stance on other swamp monsters like the Heap, the Glob, etc.?”

MY STANCE IS WIDE. Er, that is to say, I’m cool with other swamp monsters. I really dug Steve Gerber’s Sludge, for example, and enjoyed what little of the Heap I’ve been able to read. And I liked this brief Heap revival book from 1971. So I’m all for more swamp critters in my funnybooks.

Celamowari also asks

“Tapping Tommy – threat or menace?”

A tap-dancing super-villain? “Freakin’ annoying” is what I’d call him. I hope Scourge shot him twice.

And then he adds

“What is the deal with DC super-villain Quakemaster?”

He makes quakes. What’s so hard about that? Pretty sure he does it out of anger over the discontinuing of his favorite cereal.

Finally, Celamowari wants to know

“Do you…do you like me?”

Oh, I guess.

We are living in a world where there are two different Abin Sur solo comics on the stands within a month of each other.

filed under Categories retailing 7 Comments


So Abin Sur, the alien Green Lantern who crashed on Earth and passed his ring along to Hal Jordan, will have two number one issues out this month. One is part of the prequel one-shots to the film, which I couldn’t find the proper cover for online, and I don’t have one to scan since it’s not out ’til Wednesday, but all the prequels basically just have the promo posters as their cover images, that’s what I used up above there.

The other is the first issue of the three-part Flashpoint tie-in, one of the first four tie-in series that launched a couple of weeks ago. And of the bunch, this has been the fastest seller for us, necessitating a second reorder just this week for more copies. As much as I’d like to credit this to a strong but previously-unexpressed demand among fans for poor ‘ol Abin Sur to finally get his due, I’m guessing the impending release of the Green Lantern movie might have more to do with it.

But then again…while all the Green Lantern comics have been selling exceedingly well at our shop (and we’ll see if they take the usual post-movie sales drastic decline nearly all comics have once the film is released), the two movie prequel books released so far (Tomar-Re and Kilowog) haven’t really sold to expectations for us. I didn’t expect them to sell like the regular GL books, since they’re (gasp) outside of continuity, but the covers are appealing, and I was expecting some pre-movie interest in GL titles and I figured we’d move a few at least a few that way. But so far…eh, not exactly flying off the shelves here.

Now, the Flashpoint: Abin Sur book…nearly all of the first week’s batch of Flashpoint tie-ins either sold through completely or very nearly, with Secret Seven being the one that moved the slowest. The two that moved the fastest, requiring me to place immediate reorders, where the Batman tie-in and, as I said, the Abin Sur book. It could simply be that the two tie-ins focused on and titled after specific characters attracted the most reader interest, while Secret Seven and World of Flashpoint just didn’t grab the reader as readily.

The second week’s batch of tie-ins, with Citizen Cold, Deathstroke-whatever, and the other two…are selling, but not nearly as quickly. It could just be this next batch of series wasn’t as attractive…or that having four new #1s of mini-series tie-ins on top of the four #1s that came out the previous week scared folks off. And when four more new #1s come out this week…well, I’ll be interested to see how it goes.

Flashpoint itself has been selling quite well and certainly has been grabbing customer interest, and I noticed an upward bump in demand when word started getting around that this was leading into DC’s September renumbering hoohar. But…and this is probably too soon to be worrying about this sort of thing, maybe, as I’m only going off a couple weeks’ worth of observations…watching the sudden dip in hesitance about buying a bunch of first issues in subsequent weeks has me wondering if we’ll get great sales on the first week or two of DC’s #1 releases in September, with First Issue Fatigue setting in once the fourth or fifth week rolls around.

The situations are not entirely analogous, I realize. The Flashpoint tie-ins are in addition to DC’s regular monthly output, and they are “parallel universe” stories that don’t impact the “real” (ahem) stories (except in this case they sorta do, since everything’s restarting as a result of Flashpoint, but let’s not confuse the issue). The new #1s are, at least in part, carrying over from currently published series. Chances are…well, mostly good that the folks who buy Action #904 will continue buying when the numbering rotates back to numero uno. It’s the new series we’ll have to watch…not that we weren’t going to be watching the sales closely anyway. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, that I suspect a Mister Terrific #1 coming out in the first week may have more of a chance than, say, a Blackhawks #1 coming out at the end of the cycle, when folks reach the end of their willingness to try out new titles after keeping up with their regular series and sampling other new #1s in the previous weeks.

And there are other considerations, of course. A new tights-and-capes superhero #1 coming out in week 5 will still likely get more sales than a comic that is less obviously a superhero comic (i.e. Blackhawks #1) coming out in the first week.

So anyway, near the end of July, if you see me tearing what’s left of my hair out as I’m hunched over the retailer order form, you’ll know I’m trying to nail down numbers for these books. I can feel the migraine already.

Just a brief post today…

filed under Categories green lantern, sir-links-a-lot 2 Comments

…linking to the reaction of noted biologist and skeptic PZ Myers to Alan Moore speaking about magic. Thought some of you out there might find that interesting.

Speaking of Moore, a couple of his stories were adapted in the recently-released Green Lantern: Emerald Knights animated moviewhich I just watched last night. “Mogo Doesn’t Socialize” makes it through more or less intact, but “Tygers” (the Abin Sur one, illustrated by Kevin O’Neill) is only barely recognizable, having been thoroughly reworked to meet the demands of the movie’s overarching plot. Nothing of the original’s impact makes it into the final product. Otherwise, the film was okay…it’s neat seeing all the Green Lanterns in action (and what must be, what, the sixth or seventh redesign for Kilowog?), but it’s a shame that Special Guest Ultimate Menace Krona didn’t get much to do other than be large and roar a lot. I think I would have rather seen this Krona-centric story made into a movie. But, you know, no one ever asked me.

Remember when they rebooted Peanuts and took that jagged line off of Charlie Brown’s shirt?

filed under Categories peanuts, publishing, superman 5 Comments

Two things that struck me while reading the latest Complete Peanuts volume:

1. This book is reprinting from the years 1979-1980, which is also about the same time I was reading just about every Peanuts strip reprint book I could lay my hands on at the time. So, I was reading a whole lot of strips from before 1979, but not a whole lot of contemporary ones which hadn’t yet made it into the reprint books at the time. As a result…nearly this entire book feels “new” to me, since I recognize almost none of the strips. I suppose I may have caught a few in the paper, but I wouldn’t recall those as well as the strips I’ve seen in the various Peanuts collections that I would read over and over again.

Yes, that means I didn’t really read any of the reprint collections from the early 1980s onward. I wouldn’t get back into seeking out Peanuts books ’til the late 1990s, reprinting those last few years of the strip.

2. There’s a sequence of strips in this book where the gang attends what appears to be some kind of religious cult summer camp. I may be reading a bit into this, but clearly something has gone horribly wrong when this kind of injustice is perpetrated upon innocent youth:


Those monsters.

Anyway, Peppermint Patty gets a bit freaked out by one of the guest speakers going on about “the last days” and the end of the world. Not a storyline I really expected in my Peanuts book, but yet another example of Charles Schulz’s continuing topicality…though in this case, the regular arising of doomsayers is nothing new and was bound to cycle through again. SPOILER ALERT: Peppermint Patty gathers evidence and uses skeptical, critical thinking to resolve her particular issue here.

• • •

I’m kind of all “new DC”-ed out at the moment, so I’m breaking from the commentary…even though as I write this, we’re only hours away from the official announcement of what the hell’s going on with the Superman family of books. The pics already leaked…via DC putting them in their blog’s image directory and people finding them…so we’ve all already seen them by now, I’m sure. And that pic with Superman’s new costume…that only goes to show George Perez can make anything look great. Anyway, those of you reading this Friday morning or later can hie yourself hither to the DC Comics weblog and check ’em out yourself.

About the titles announced Thursday…I guess we can blame that movie for the more striking and recognizable Jonah Hex title for going away, to be replaced by the Hex-starring and more blandly-titled All-Star Western. And I’m not sure why a new series starring the grandson of Sgt. Rock amuses me, but it does.

BUT I’M NOT TALKING ABOUT NEW DCS AT THE MOMENT so shutting up now.