So, due to various circumstances, Yogi finds himself having to fill in for his lady friend Cindy in her stage play. After the show, a showbiz bigwig (who, you’ll note, happens to be human) hits on the “female” lead:

Okay, if you’re already hitting on a bear, you’re in no position to start getting squeamish when it turns out the bear is a guy. I mean, c’mon.

Well, it looks like my current week’s trend of winning friends and influencing people is continuing, as my comment about New Warriors not appearing to be any good has brought out some defenders for the series, mostly saying that it was in fact good, at least for a while. Er, no offense intended! Every comic book series (and character) is someone’s favorite, and I probably should keep that in mind. But really…Night Thrasher?

And Jason and Nathan both step right up and tell me that the fella in that picture I posted isn’t the victim of bad perspective…he actually has a giant right arm! Now, could he shrink his arm back to normal size when he wasn’t using it to clock somebody? And wouldn’t his balance be all screwed up? And am I putting more thought into this than the people who actually did this particular issue? Probably.

Fred Hembeck picks up on a naughty Brian Bolland joke (under Oct. 2nd – no permalinks) from Bolland’s illustration of Lady Blackhawk for Who’s Who in The DC Universe! I’d always thought there was something up with that image…of course, it is Brian Bolland….

Speaking of odd images, regarding that New Warriors pic I posted yesterday…yeah, I know what “forced perspective” is, but, as Augie indicates, that perspective is downright broken! When something like this is done in Megaton Man, it’s supposed to be funny…here, it’s…um, well….

Which brings me to a related point…was New Warriors ever any good? We’d recently sold a boatload of New Warriors issues at the shop recently, and as I was restocking them I couldn’t help but note how unappealing this series looked. Granted, this type of cover was the norm for Marvel at the time, but something about New Warriors really repelled me. I did read the first issue of the series, way back when…well, more accurately, I read about half of the first issue, as I found it pretty much unreadable. It was just so aggressively…average, I guess. Just filled with cliches and unlikeable characters…I mean, Night Thrasher? Honestly.*

And, finally, courtesy Dave of Legomancer, an even more terrifying version of Psycho-Man:

* Speedball is exempt from any New Warriors criticism, if only because pal Kurt would kill me if I said anything bad about that character!

from New Warriors #54 (Dec 1994) – art by Richard Pace & Bruce Patterson

Dorian knows that he didn’t invent the idea of finding subtext in comic images, but the “Subtext? What Subtext?” thing is sort of his continuing schtick. That’s all he’s saying. That, and that he doesn’t want to look like he’s “borrowing” from someone else the next time he does “Subtext? What Subtext?” — which is what it would have looked like since the site in question is one of the more highly-visited comics weblogs.

The person who posted has since apologized and added a link to Dorian’s site in that post, which is cool, but a couple other people in some of the related threads continue to miss the point. Unsurprisingly.

In happier news, Dorian is now the top Google search for “Nanny Dickering,” so his cunningly evil plan has come to fruition.

In 1983, Eclipse Comics released this portfolio of images based on the just-released Swamp Thing movie directed by Wes Craven. Why it was released by Eclispe Comics rather than Swamp Thing’s publisher DC Comics, I have no idea…perhaps DC wasn’t set up to publish portfolios (though they started doing so just a couple years later, to the best of my knowledge), so perhaps the Swamp Thing movie licensing was left up to the film’s producers, with no say by DC. (Maybe someone reading this can set me straight.)

Anyway, this set features four 11 by 14-inch full-color plates by Paul Gulacy, so they at least look nice, despite being drawn from scenes and characters in the film. The first plate is the same image as on the cover sheet above (sans logo).

Plate two is probably the best image in the set, and I’m not just saying that because of its focus on Adrienne Barbeau. Well, okay, maybe I am, but in this picture Swamp Thing actually looks like Swamp Thing, and there’s a feeling of suspense as “Alice Cable” waits for the approaching “monster.” (An aside for those few Swamp Thing fans who aren’t familiar with the movie…the government liason Matt Cable in the comics was changed to “Alice Cable” for the movie, and Alec Holland’s wife Linda in the comics was changed to being his sister, as to allow for a “Beauty and the Beast” relationship between Swamp Thing and Alice. However, by the time the second movie rolled around, Swampy was gettin’ it on with Heather Locklear, but that’s another story.)

Plate three features Gulacy’s most “guy in a rubber suit” image of Swamp Thing in the entire batch, with Swampy just looking like a bald green guy with some fairly prominent veins. Despite this, it’s still not a bad image, with a good sense of motion and great detail on the figures and faces (which don’t show up very well in this picture I took, I realize).

The classic battle of muck-encrusted mockery of a man versus chemically-mutated Frenchman is represented here in this image, from the film’s climatic battle. Interesting to note that even when drawn by Paul Gulacy, the mutated Arcane costume doesn’t really look any better. And I know that it wasn’t really Louis Jourdan in that costume, but I’m going to pretend that he actually was, because that idea makes me very happy. Anyway, it’s a nice image — points for showing Swampy knocking Arcane around with a club, points off for a marked lack of Adrienne Barbeau.

(Another aside…holy frijole, Louis Jourdan is 85? And yes, he’s reportedly still alive.)

Here’s a nice feature on pal Randy regarding his illustration work for Star Wars.

Randy’s a good guy, and has been doing our front window paintings for years…we’ve had Plastic Man fighting Wolverine, we’ve had Darth Maul in a Santa hat, we’ve had Spider-Man kicking back at the beach, and we’ve had this:

You can find a clean copy of that image on this page.

All of Randy’s window designs are lots of fun, and always get a great deal of attention and positive comments from customers and passers-by. If you like his art, you have a chance of getting an original piece by him from the Star Wars Heritage card set, as he’s one of the artists supplying the sketch chase cards.

On a completely unrelated note, apparently Bazooka Joe has had new people join his gang. (I can’t believe we lost our chance to have a Goth girl appear in Bazooka Joe comics. Crud!)

Felix the Cat #55 (September 1954)

So there I was, poking through issue #169 of Amazing Spider-Man (written by Len Wein, illustrated by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito, from June 1977) when I spotted the following panel:

Okay, that’s definitely your standard-issue mid-to-late-70s Stan Lee caricature, but what’s with the careful attention to detail with those two kids? That seemed a little unusual.

Well, the answer to that is no farther away than this issue’s letters column:

Say it with me: “SPIDER-MAN DANCE CONTEST.” One can only imagine. The TV show Wonderama is recalled on this page — one of the reader-contributed memories mentions said contest. It appears that someone in a Spider-Man costume did “The Spider-Man Dance” on the show, and then the contest was to see which kid in the studio audience could best perform that same dance. Actually, the way the memory is actually phrased, one could infer that Stan Lee did the dance as well. I really, really hope Stan actually did do “The Spider-Man Dance.” If that’s wrong, I don’t want to be right.

By the way, since some of you are probably wondering, here’s a little more information re: Vera Valiant.

And what the heck, here’s Stan the Man’s very own Marvel Universe-style page.