Long day at work (what with it being comic book day and all), and I haven’t even had time to read any of my new comics yet. I’m writing this weblog entry instead…see what I do for you people? Anyway, I’ll probably have some kind of comics overview tomorrow.

We did get in Art Spiegelman’s new book In The Shadow of No Towers, and I can say it’s a very nice-looking package. The first half of the book, which relates Spiegelman’s reaction to the 9/11 attacks and the country’s response, is visually very compelling, looking for all the world like one of his old RAW magazines. The second half is classic comic strips from the beginning of the last century, thematically linked to Spiegelman’s observations in the first half. I haven’t had a chance to read and see for myself if it deserves the mixed critical reaction it appears to be receiving, but at the very least it’s visually appealing. My one concern is that the book’s spine may not be up to the job of repeated readings…it feels awfully darn fragile.

In other news:

• Beaucoup Kevin relates what comic creators he would shag if he were gay. Representative quote: “BENDIS! I’d lick his head and send him on his way….”
• AiT/Planetlar honcho Big Larry continues his examination of the comicsweblogosphere at Comic Book Resources. Against Lar’s better judgment, I’m sure, he continues to include comments from me.
• Okay, who wants to go in with me on bidding on Crossgen? (PayPal donations gladly accepted.) Related is this story about the creators of the fine Abadazad Crossgen comic trying to get back the rights to that series.
• Found out from a customer today that cartoonist Jack Lawrence is off the Darkham Vale book he created for AP Comics. However, he has a new forthcoming book entitled Lions, Tigers, And Bears that should appeal to his fans.
• Just added Jason Kimble’s Trickle of Consciousness to the weblogroll, which I probably should have done a long time ago.
  

from World’s Finest #187 (September 1969)

Found via my referral stats: my favorite page linking to the Seven Deadly Harveys.

Milo George, who always delights and baffles, presents The Greatest Flash Gordon Daily Strip Ever.

In case you missed this link at the end of my interminable Superman post from yesterday, you’ve gotta see the Superpup page. No, it’s not a hoax…I’ve actually seen the show in question. (EDIT: Just noticed that pal Andy has linked to the page as well…so you better go see it fast, just in case bandwidth issues knock it out! Just in case, here’s an Angelfire page with more stills.)

For Scott Saavedra: more Space Canine Patrol Agents info here, here, here (warning: gnarly pop-ups), here, and, because God is good, Space Canine Patrol Agents fan fiction (with special guest-star, Ace the Bat Hound)!

If you like the old comic covers, get yourself over to the Viper Comics Raw Feed for some of Greg Gatlin’s spicy delights. I have no idea why I just typed the phrase “spicy delights.” I apologize.

To steal an observation from pal Dorian, everybody may be talking about Amazing Fantasy, but has that translated to sales?

The first issue of the British comic Dandy sells for £20,350 (just over $36,000, to us Colonials).

You can find the cover and 5 pages from the Cure issue of Rock ‘n’ Roll Comics on this Cure fan site.

Just added to my weblogroll: the mighty Mae Mai, the unique Utopia Moment, and the crispy Christopher Butcher.

Johanna’s Fallen Angel contest ends today, so go enter, you slackers.

If you don’t enter (or you enter and don’t win) you can always step into your local comic shop tomorrow (REMEMBER: NEW COMICS ARE ARRIVING TOMORROW, not today) and pick up a free copy of Fallen Angel #1. Quantities are pretty limited (retailers are only getting copies equal to half their orders on Hellblazer #200), so act fast.

EDIT: Because I’m an idiot, I forgot to put in the link to Johanna’s contest page when I originally posted this message. I fixed it now, not that it matters…but I did post the link a couple days ago, so hopefully people saw it there. Sorry, Johanna!

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!”