I have a question for you.

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Sorry, gang…was tied up working on some other projects, and suddenly, whoops, no time left to generate anything hilarious or thought-provoking or, ahem, copyright-stretching for the site. So, I’m going to ask you a question, and I’ll do a follow-up post on your responses within the next few days.

And that question is:

What’s your favorite currently-running comic book series right now?

You don’t have to tell me why if you don’t want to, but I’d like it if you did. But the only things I do request regarding your responses:

1. Just pick one series…no “well, I can’t decide between these two, so I’ll list ’em both. Or the top three. Or maybe a dozen.” PICK JUST ONE SERIES, PLEASE. Pretend your life depends on it. In fact, maybe it does.

2. Don’t make fun of other people’s choices. Now, I feel terrible even saying that, because most of you folks who populate my comments sections are usually pretty civil, but, you know, there’s always someone who wants to stir up trouble. So don’t be that guy!

3. I’ll allow some leeway for lame-duck series like Atlas, or comics that are effectively the same series, like the ongoing chain of Marvel’s Hercules comics. But I’m going to force you to pick which among Avengers, New Avengers, and Secret Avengers is your favorite, if this is the case, because I’m a jerk.

EDIT: 4. And one of the early responders reminded me…it doesn’t have to be a traditional comic book series, as in the monthly magazine format…if it’s a manga or other graphic novel series, that’s fine, too.

So with that in mind, tell me your favorite comic book series, please. Your credit card will not be charged, and no salesman will call.

The big news from the San Diego Comic Con.

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So while attending the San Diego Comic Con, Employee Aaron, as seen here:


…asked for the hand in marriage of his girlfriend Kempo, as seen here:


…and she must not have heard the question, because she actually said “yes” and now she’s pretty much stuck having to marry the guy.

Seriously, though, congratulations to both of them…I’ve known Kempo since she was just a kid, and now here she is, marrying this Aaron fella. Tempus sure does fugit when you ain’t lookin’.

Here’s a nice photo of the both of them, taken during one of those rare occasions Aaron remembered which side of the razor goes against his face:


Okay, I pick on Aaron a lot, but he really is a nice guy — don’t tell him I said that! — and I do wish these two the best.

• • •

In other news:

  • Yes, that really is Kempo in the Plastic Man get-up…that photo was taken a couple of San Diegos ago. She has quite the affinity for costume-making, and this year she went to the con dressed as Dex-Starr. Yes, the Red Lantern cat. Soon as I get a photo, I’ll run it here. If Kempo doesn’t kill me for running the Plastic Man pic first.

  • Isn’t this like the third time Smallville character Chloe Sullivan has been announced as entering the DC Universe proper? No idea what the hold-up was the previous times (probably no more than “didn’t have the right time and place to squeeze her in,” or maybe the show’s producers put the kibosh on it…really no clue), but it should be interesting to see how they alter/merge her Smallville backstory to fit into Superman’s comic book continuity (such as it is).

  • Holy cow, Fantagraphics will be publishing the complete Floyd Gottfredson Mickey Mouse comic strips. I don’t do a whole lot of Disney stuff on this site, I realize, because, oh, hello Disney lawyers, but I am a fan of the Gottfredson Mickey strips and can’t wait to see this book.

    Hopefully someday we’ll get a collection of those early Donald Duck strips, too, which Gladstone used to reprint in their early Donald Duck comics.

  • So the Infinity Gauntlet will be in the Thor movie. I’m still fanboy enough to think that’s neat. And as Augie De Blieck said on this Twitter thingie, that explains the recent hardcover release of the original Infinity Gauntlet mini-series.

  • I knew attending the Injury-to-Eye panel was a bad idea. Okay, it may turn out no one was actually “stabbed” as such, so there goes my jokes about how after all this time, a fan finally decided to literally “go stabby,” but according to the article someone was scratched near the eye with “a pen or an inflatable toy” or perhaps a puppy or maybe a Ford Fiesta, no one’s quite sure, it seems.

  • David Wolkin has been posting his “Internal Monologue Reviews” of the con, and they’re weirdly amusing and disturbing. Also, he dropped by our store to say hello on his way down to San Diego, and he is one handsome bastard.

  • Huh, new Rocketeer stories, by a bunch of name creators. This mini-series would come very close to doubling the amount of Rocketeer comics in existence, wouldn’t it? Anyway, it won’t be Dave Stevens, alas, but it sounds like it could be interesting.

  • Here’s an announcement I didn’t expect: John Byrne’s Next Men is coming back. As I recall, when Byrne ended the series in the mid 1990s, the plan was to revive it when the comic industry’s health improved to the point that it’d be economically feasible to return to the title. Well, I guess he got tired of waiting, because here we go. I am looking forward to this, as Next Men was an enjoyable comic, allowing Byrne’s Byrne-ness to be unfettered by corporate hoohar and goings-on.

  • Here’s a trio of Dark Horse Comics related news items: a movie trailer for The Goon (video autoplays, have to watch an ad), a new Witchfinder mini-series drawn by John freakin’ Severin, and Dark Horse Presents is coming back, with a new Concrete story in the first issue. These are all good things.

  • Scanning some of the online photo galleries of this year’s costumes…now, it’s kinda weird that someone dressed up their six or seven year old daughter as Hit-Girl from Kick Ass, right? It’s not just me thinkin’ that? Another thought I had seeing some of these costumes…they realize they’re going to have to be walking through huge crowds on hot days, right? Maybe a giant costume made of thick fabric and/or with pointy, stick-outy bits is not the best of ideas?

    Also, apparently the Slave Leias are multiplying. At this rate, by the year 2040 approximately 88% of Earth’s population will be Slave Leias. …I hope George Lucas is happy.

So anyway, there I was, looking up bald caps for sale on the Internet…

filed under Categories employee aaron, sir-links-a-lot 7 Comments

…when I came across this item:


First, it never occurred to me that there was a tie-in item of this particular type for the Superman Returns movie, though if you can dress up as Supes, I guess Lex is fair game.

Second, “Luthor” is totally misspelled on the package. I’m reasonably sure this is an official item, which makes the error fairly surprising…and I’ve also found pictures of this product with the correct spelling, so it was caught eventually, in case you were as worried about this as I was.

In other news:

  • Giving the Westboro Baptists any attention is a bad idea, I think, as it plays right into their hands…I don’t like even writing about them here, in fact. So I wasn’t really thrilled with the idea of the counter-protest we all knew was coming when the Westboro clan showed up at the San Diego Comic Con. But on the other hand…it’s kind of hard not to admire the guy with the “DARKSEID IS” sign. The fella(?) dressed as Futurama‘s Bender is amusing too. Pictures at the link if you want to see the hideous carnage.

  • “Say, Mike, what’s the last thing you were expecting to read on the Internet today?” “Well, I’m going to have to say it’s this interview with composer Harry Manfredini about his work on the 1982 Swamp Thing film!” “Wow, that was my guess, too!”

  • Speaking of Swamp Thing, as I so rarely do, Kevin Smith apparently revealed at a San Diego panel that Batman: The Widening Gyre began its life as a proposed Batman/Swamp Thing team-up series. Smith said about Swamp Thing, jokingly:

    “He just talks like a stoner, so it’d be a lot of fun to write.”

    Before any of you say anything…yes, I’d still buy and read it.

  • REMINDER: Employee Aaron is at the San Diego Comic Con, as is his lady friend Kempo (identifying photo of the two here), working the Arsenic Lullaby booth (#2200). Aaron is giving away free hugs, so just walk right up to him and grab him in a big ol’ bearhug. Don’t even warn him…he likes being surprised. Be sure to tell him Mike sent you!

Watchmen, Marvelman, and Moore.

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From this article, spotted on the Twitter:

“However, DC comics co-publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee said, ‘Watchmen is the most celebrated graphic novel of all time. Rest assured, DC Comics would only revisit these iconic characters if the creative vision of any proposed new stories matched the quality set by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons nearly 25 years ago, and our first discussion on any of this would naturally be with the creators themselves.’”

1. Did DiDio and Lee say it simultaneously, in harmony? Did they sing it to the tune of “Money” from Cabaret?

2. Is this the first public statement that DC would be willing to do new Watchmen stories, whether or not Moore and Gibbons are involved? Because, dude, I’ve got one comic book story in me, and that story is Watchmen 2: Seymour Rising.

But seriously, if there were other statements along those lines in the past, I don’t recall them. Mostly I seem to remember “oh, we wouldn’t cheapen the original with spin-offs” or “if Moore and Gibbons ever want to come back, sure.” But this is the first time they said they’d be more to happy to publish Watchmen Two-in-One #1, Batman and the Comedian, by Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis, which I realize they didn’t actually say as such, but I think we can read between the lines, there.

Johanna Draper Carson had commented on her Twitter thingie about it, to which I responded, essentially, that if the Watchmen movie hadn’t killed sales on the graphic novel to the point that DC felt it was necessary to rebuild interest in the series via new material, that we’re probably safe from non-Moore/Gibbons follow-ups. Of course, that doesn’t mean it will never happen, but I think the time for it to happen was during the movie’s lifespan. Of course, we are talking about the comics industry, where barn doors are always closed after the horses have escaped, so new Watchmen material being produced years after its chance at getting as large a potential audience as possible wouldn’t surprise me.

Speaking of Alan Moore, guess who wasn’t mentioned once in this week’s Marvelman Primer? The one mention of Moore’s 1980s revival of the character is a passing mention from a full-page plug for Marvel’s 1950s Marvelman reprint projects:

“If you only know him from his dark, deconstructionist ’80s revival, then you don’t know Marvelman!”

Of course, that ignores the fact that the “dark, deconstructionist ’80s revival” is the Marvelman work most people are primarily curious about. The reprints of the ’50s stories are amusingly entertaining, granted, but it feels like treading water until the details are sorted out with getting those ’80s stories back in print.

Back to Moore…there are plenty of opportunities to bring him up, by the way: there’s a discussion of British comics publishing which mentions Warrior, the magazine where Marvelman’s revival originally appeared, but is not mentioned in the article at all. There’s another history specifically of Marvel’s forays into British comics, which cites their Captain Britain series and mentions creators such as Steve Parkhouse, Chris Claremont, Paul Neary and John Stokes, but does not mention Moore, who wrote what are probably the best-known and most sought-after of the UK-edition Captain Britain comics.

I have no idea how far along, if at all, Marvel is regarding the rerelease of the ’80s Marvelman work. If the answer is “not very,” then I suppose it’s in their best interest to deemphasize that particular run for the time being, especially if they have new material in the works of a different revival of the franchise. But the ’80s comics are very noticeable in their absence from a publication intended to be an overview and introduction to these characters, particularly when the detailed historical articles gloss right over their publications and the writer behind that relaunch.

Or maybe nobody else cares any more, Marvel feels no obligation to cater to that handful of folks who recall some short-run Marvelman series from 25 years ago, and only big ol’ nerds like me are getting all worked up about it. That too is a possibility.

The official “Mike’s still tired, so here’s a lazy link post” post.

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  • Friend of the site Rob Kelly gives us not only a Dick “Swamp Thing” Durock PSA, but an Adrienne Barbeau one as well.

  • If Superman #701 hasn’t been kicked around enough for your liking, here’s Dr. Polite Scott explaining why that one scene with Superman diagnosing that person’s heart condition is dumb.

    As Scott notes (and I’ve seen forms of this criticism pop up elsewhere), the point that this whole “Superman walkin’ the country” hoohar came from guilt over being accused of not doing enough to save someone’s life. …So let’s end the issue with Superman not doing enough to save someone’s life. Sure, why not.

    Also, I suspect removing “flight” from his travel options is increasing the number of Superman-preventable deaths in the DC Universe. …This whole comic is a test for potential Superman editors, isn’t it?

  • COMPLETELY UNRELATED: Thor is walking across the United States to get in touch with the non-divine, and happens upon a fellow with some heart trouble…resulting in the greatest sequence of comic book panels you will ever see.

  • Costuming for the Green Lantern movie and the Thor movie has been revealed, and lo, blood rained down from the sky, and brother did turn upon brother.

    Well, I think they look okay.

  • Announced is Vertigo Resurrected, a series of reprints of some classic Vertigo comics, and, most notably in this first installment, the first publication of the Warren Ellis Hellblazer story about school shootings that was pulled off the schedule after the Columbine murders.

    I’ve seen some inquiries here and there whether this means we’ll see the canned “Swamp Thing meets Jesus” story at long last…not holding my breath, though I’m curious what DC’s going to do when they reach that point in the paperback reprints.

    (RELATED: Why DC hasn’t jumped ahead and put out reprint volumes of Mark Millar’s Swamp Thing work, taking advantage of the current amount of press he usually gets. That won’t last forever, folks, so ride those coattails while you can!