A short summary of Stendhal's The Red and the Black. This free synopsis covers all the crucial plot points of The Red and the Black. Jan 25, 2018 - Hi Guys, After playing around with digital audio de-embedding/capturing for sacd playback & backups, (), I've come to the conclusion that this.
'The Scarlet Letter' by Nathaniel Hawthorne The grass-plot before the jail, in Prison Lane, on a certain summer morning, not less than two centuries ago, was occupied by a pretty large number of the inhabitants of Boston, all with their eyes intently fastened on the iron-clamped oaken door. Amongst any other population, or at a later period in the history of New England, the grim rigidity that petrified the bearded physiognomies of these good people would have augured some awful business in hand. It could have betokened nothing short of the anticipated execution of some noted culprit, on whom the sentence of a legal tribunal had but confirmed the verdict of public sentiment.
But, in that early severity of the Puritan character, an inference of this kind could not so indubitably be drawn. It might be that a sluggish bond-servant, or an undutiful child, whom his parents had given over to the civil authority, was to be corrected at the whipping-post. It might be that an Antinomian, a Quaker, or other heterodox religionist, was to be scourged out of the town, or an idle or vagrant Indian, whom the white man's firewater had made riotous about the streets, was to be driven with stripes into the shadow of the forest. It might be, too, that a witch, like old Mistress Hibbins, the bitter-tempered widow of the magistrate, was to die upon the gallows.
In either case, there was very much the same solemnity of demeanour on the part of the spectators, as befitted a people among whom religion and law were almost identical, and in whose character both were so thoroughly interfused, that the mildest and severest acts of public discipline were alike made venerable and awful. Meagre, indeed, and cold, was the sympathy that a transgressor might look for, from such bystanders, at the scaffold. On the other hand, a penalty which, in our days, would infer a degree of mocking infamy and ridicule, might then be invested with almost as stern a dignity as the punishment of death itself. It was a circumstance to be noted on the summer morning when our story begins its course, that the women, of whom there were several in the crowd, appeared to take a peculiar interest in whatever penal infliction might be expected to ensue. The age had not so much refinement, that any sense of impropriety restrained the wearers of petticoat and farthingale from stepping forth into the public ways, and wedging their not unsubstantial persons, if occasion were, into the throng nearest to the scaffold at an execution. Morally, as well as materially, there was a coarser fibre in those wives and maidens of old English birth and breeding than in their fair descendants, separated from them by a series of six or seven generations; for, throughout that chain of ancestry, every successive mother had transmitted to her child a fainter bloom, a more delicate and briefer beauty, and a slighter physical frame, if not character of less force and solidity than her own.
The women who were now standing about the prison-door stood within less than half a century of the period when the man-like Elizabeth had been the not altogether unsuitable representative of the sex. They were her countrywomen: and the beef and ale of their native land, with a moral diet not a whit more refined, entered largely into their composition. The bright morning sun, therefore, shone on broad shoulders and well-developed busts, and on round and ruddy cheeks, that had ripened in the far-off island, and had hardly yet grown paler or thinner in the atmosphere of New England.
There was, moreover, a boldness and rotundity of speech among these matrons, as most of them seemed to be, that would startle us at the present day, whether in respect to its purport or its volume of tone.
Don't get excited. That is not the cover for the sixth and final issue of DC's thunderously disappointing DC Universe Vs.
Masters of The Universe crossover series, nor is it a cover for an upcoming issue of DC's ongoing He-Man and The Masters of The Universe series. Rather, it is simply a pin-up that artist drew, and which I noticed on his Facebook feed the same day I happened to buy the previous issue of the DCUvMOTU series. I post it here simply for contrast.
If you're familiar with the characters (i.e. You grew up in the 1980s), then you'll notice that they are a) slightly tweaked versions of the characters as they appeared in the, let's face it, pretty terrible animated series, based on toy line (McKenny's Skeletor is much thinner, almost skeletal, and Evil-Lyn's neckline plunges deeper than I remember from the cartoon, but otherwise, they look like an artist filtering the original designs through his own style) b) the core line-up of the villains, Skeletor's 'Evil Warriors' (well, the core line-up, plus ). Of those eight villains on the image, only Skeletor and Evil-Lyn actually appear in DCvMOTU, and then in severely redesigned, you-might-not-recongize-'em-form. It seems inconceivable to me that you would do a miniseries based on the premise of a clash between these two worlds and not even include the obvious encounters that occurred to toy makers years ago.but hell, what do I know. I guess what I found so incredibly disappointing about the series is that I tend to view these sorts of crossover stories as once-in-a-lifetime sorts of exercises (Think JLA/Avengers or Marvel Vs.
DC), and therefore I expect them to be both very good and to get in everything a fan might want to see happen. It's hard, but not impossible. DC isn't a great example, but JLA/Avengers is.I'm pretty sure writer Kurt Busiek and artist George Perez worked in every member of every team ever, all of their villains, all of their supporting characters, chunks of their history and every available location. This is nowhere near as ambitious, perhaps because Giffen plotted it to simply be another chapter of the ongoing DC He-Man and The Masters of the Universe comic book DC is publishing, which has set about redesigning the characters costumes just as severely as the New 52 initiative redesigned DC's superheroes, and rather radically altered the status quo.
Seen that way, I guess it makes sense this is really just another terrible story arc of a terrible ongoing comic book series, and wasn't approached as anything special or historic or something-somebody-somewhere-might-conceivably-give-a-damn-about. And, unlike those DC/Marvel crossovers mentioned above, I guess there's no reason DC can't publish another, better DCU/MOTU crossover at some point in the future. I'm fairly certain that they can't publish a worse one those, as comics don't get much worse than this. The third cover artist to contribute to this six-issue series is Mikel Janin, regular artist for Justice League Dark, who is not exactly doing his best work ever here.
That big, toothy pile of color effects in the background is 'Dark Orko,' the villain of the piece, while various members of the Justice League and the Masters of the Universe line-up rather asymmetrically on either side of the cover, Battle Cat doing the best job of hiding himself in shame from the readers' eyes (He's mostly obscured behind the UPC symbol and creator credits). Wonder Woman's head, neck and raised fist, and at least half of The Flash, are still visible behind the tagline, reading 'FINAL BATTLE! DARK ORKO VS. While there is a sort of George Perez, Anti-Monitor vs. The DC Universe homage panel near the climax, 'Everyone' here is a lot less ambitious than one might expect, given that two entire universes full of characters are mentioned right there in the title.
In truth, the 'Everyone' refers to the eight characters from the Masters of The Universe universe and maybe two dozen DC characters max, only a relative handful of whom actually do much of anything, or even get lines of dialogue. For the final issue, the creative team re-falls apart a bit. Keith Giffen is responsible for the plot (Boooo!), whereas the script can be blamed on Tony Bedard (Boooo!). The art is mostly by Pop Mhan, who badly draws 14 pages, while an Eduardo Francisco draws six pages. There are two colorists, but they don't split their page assignations to correspond with that of the artists. If you've forgotten where we left off, or succeeded in blocking it from your memory because it just hurt too much to think about, let me remind you of what has come before.
Orko discovered the magic evil skull of Hordak's dad, and it turned him into 'Dark Orko,' a big, evil, monster version of himself; he conquered his home dimension of Trolla, turned all the other Orkos there into scary monsters, and then sent Skeletor to the DC Universe. There, the redesigned New 52 Skeletor teamed up with Black Alice, who was apparently just there to give Skeletor someone to talk to, and placed 12 magic siphons all around the world; these draw magic from the DCU and will channel it to the Orko, destroy Earth-New 52 in the process (So I guess that means we should root for Orko and Skeletor.?). To keep the heroes off his back, Skeletor possessed the Justice League and pit them against He-Man and other arrivals in this dimension from Eternia, the first battle seemingly ended with He-Man stabbing Superman through the torso and making the Man of Steel disappear (In actuality, he was simply teleported to Trolla). As of last issue, all the heroes were finally all on the same page, and they decided to team up with Skeletor to stop Orko. In retaliation, Orko possessed all of the super-people in the DCU and sent them to the House of Secrets to fight Skeletor and whoever was un-possessed. Why not just possess everyone via this global mind control spell?
Because.Okay, I can't think of a good reason. Anyway, let's read the last issue of the most disappointing comic book story of my life! PAGES 1-4: According to Skeletor, ' Orko sent your world's mightiest beings to destroy us!' These consist of Blue Beetle, Firestorm, Orion, Cheetah, Black Manta and a bunch of Batman villains—including The Joker (again), although I'm pretty sure that's an(other) art mistake. This motley crew, visually identified as mind-controlled by the red lightning rising out of their eye-sockets, are meant to take out The Eternians, Batman and the Justice League Dark line-up. In order to cut off Orko's power supply (an save the world), Skeletor sends various teams of the un-mind-controlled to attack the siphons.
PAGES 5-8: Prince Adam, which we all know is He-Man before he says 'Shazam!' And gets all big and muscular, has tried sneaking into Trolla in order to rescue Superman. After he exchanges some words with Orko, Adam shouts his catch prhase, turns into He-Man and cuts the magical shackles imprisoning Superman. Orko sics 'a billion' Trollans on them.
PAGE 9: We see four of the teams who have gone to destroy four of the siphons, each of which is apparently guarded by a mind-controlled DCU character. In Greece, John Constantine and Evil-Lyn are faced with Wonder Woman. In Egypt, Man-at-Arms and Madame Xanadu are faced with Black Adam. In Cambodia, Stratos and Deadman-in-Battle Cat are walking around (Not sure why Deadman is in Battle Cat; this version of Deadman doesn't need to possess anyone in order to speak to the living the way he did before the reboot). And, finally, in France, Roboto and Frankenstein fight Cyborg. PAGE 10-11: Skeletor is fighting the mind-controlled Deathstroke, Batgirl, Scarecrow, Clayface, Bane and Killer Croc, but by 'fighting' I simply mean he is posing and talking, while they are posing in his direction.
The rest of the page is devoted to Batman giving Black Alice a pep talk: 'You have the ability to tap into the powers of those you've been in contact with,' he says incorrectly (She has the ability to tap into the power of any magic-user, whether she's met them or not). At Batman's urging, she uses her power to borrow some of Orko's magic.
Now, the neat thing about Black Alice is that when she does this, she generally gets a one-time costume redesign, appearing in a generally scanty, goth version of a costume worn by a DCU magic user. Instead, she just appears as a pair of eyes in the sky, breaking the mind-control spell, thus sparing Man-At-Arms from having his arms ripped off by Black Adam and Constantine and -Lyn from being similarly dismembered by Wondy. PAGEs 12-14: Superman tells He-Man he's 'not much good against magic,' so He-Man lends him his Sword of Power. They don't have to fight long though, as Orko opens a portal in Earth in order to collect the power he's had siphoned—but Skeletor jumps through it shouting ' It's Mine!!' While they wrestle, Superman and He-Man fly through the portal back to Earth, and Skeletor and Orko stumble after. Although now that I look at them both at once, the Perez image is a little more detailed and dynamic, huh.? PAGES 17-19: Using his X-Ray vision, Superman sees the evil Hordak's Dad skull inside Orko, and hurls He-Man's Sword of Power at it, impaling it and instructing He-Man to 'Get ready to light him up!'
He-Man intuits that this means to shout 'By the Power of Grayskull!' This causes lightning to SHA-KOOM the sword-impaled skull, which.shatters the skull and doesn't something bad to Orko. Skeletor jumps on Orko's back, still shouting about the Power and that he must have it. Constantine then snaps his fingers, and SWHFF the two villains disappear.
'Where are they, Constantine?' Batman asks, to which the mage responds 'Gone, Batman. Forever, if I got it right.'
Man-At-Arms isn't so sure; he cooly regards the closing vortex and says, 'Let's hope so.But if there's one thing I've learned about Skeletor, it's that he always comes back.' PAGES 20-21: And then, Man-at-Arms and company suddenly react completely differently, raising their arms into the air and cheering at the defeat. He-Man and his mom hug (Oh yeah, He-Man's mom was in this, if you forgot. She's a lady from the DCU, and is somehow cursed so that she can never return to Eternia). The best part is Teela and Man-at-Arms pondering their next move. 'What do we do now?
' Teela asks. 'I mean, we did come here hoping to recruit Skeletor in our war against The Horde.' 'We'll just have to find a different way to liberate Eternia,' Man-at-Arms responds. The Justice League and a handful of superheroes from the DCU, who just accepted He-Man and company's aid in saving their world from Skeletor and Orko, not only don't volunetter, but Madame Xanadu and Constantine immediately open up a portal to Eternia and say 'Godspeed to you all' and 'Don't forget to write.'
Nice heroing, a-holes. At the bottom of the final page, there's a tag saying 'Don't miss the origin of She-Ra starting in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe #13!' But, if you somehow made it through all six of these awful issues, I can't imagine you would be at all interested in following the Eternians on to their next adventure. Or the heroes of the DC Universe on to any of their further adventures. Rather than serving as some sort of incentive to sell the He-Man comics to DC readers or DC comics to He-Man fans, this miniseries was basically a strong argument for never reading any comics featuring any of these characters again. But don't judge all of the DC line of comics by this miniseries!
While it's true many of them are not very good, and most of them are mediocre, few if any that I've read have been as poorly made as DC Universe Vs. Masters of the Universe, which we need never speak of again, and can, in fact, now being consciously trying to forget. Or should we instead keep it in the back of our mind at all times? Well, I don't know that we should, but certain comic book publishers, editors and creators should think of it as a good example of how not to do a cross franchise story. After all, those that forget the past are doomed to repeat it, and therefore I assume that those that forget DC Universe Vs.
Masters of the Universe are doomed to repeat it, and nobody wants that. In addition to an Aquaman Vs.
Mer-Man two-pack set, Mattel also produced a Superman Vs. He-Man, a Lex Luthor vs. Skeletor, She-Ra Vs. Supergirl, Green Lantern vs. Zodac, Bizarro Vs.
Faker and Hawkman Vs. Stratos.that last match-up is the only one to actually occur in the comic book series, aside from the He-Man and Superman fight. Is it even worth pointing out that the toy lines have the characters in their classic looks, rather than the New 52 redesings of the DC characters and the updated looks of the MOTU characters? For the most part, it looks like the designs from the Super Friends or Super Powers show doing battle with the designs from the original He-Man cartoon.with the Bizarro and Supergirl hailing from Superman: The Animated Series. There's an establishing shot of the Jean Grey School of 25 years in the future, and, among the crowd of the New Mutants new mutants is one that is apparently just a bipedal giraffe. I'm not sure if he might have any super-powers of any kind, or if just being a giraffe man is his mutation.
Nor can I imagine what his codename might be.although given that the Class of 2014 includes a guy covered in eyes named Eye Boy and a girl who can turn into a humanoid shark named Shark Girl, I have to assume he would be named 'Giraffe Boy,' even if that's not all that X-Manly sounding of a name. At any rate, teenage anthropomorphic giraffe in a school uniform?
Dark Horse's second miniseries featuring Robert E. Howard's late 17th century Puritan vanquisher of evil, Solomon Kane: Death's Black Riders was published in 2010. Like its predecessor, The Castle of the Devil, it was the work of writer Scott Allie and artist Mario Guevara, and based on an unfinished fragment of Howard's.with an adaptation of short story 'Rattle of Bones' nestled somewhat uncomfortably within the extrapolated title story. It's a pretty strong piece of pulp fiction turned elegantly illustrated pulp comics. Still wandering the Black Forest after his adventure in the previous series, Kane comes across a strange scene. A band of gypsies was in the process of being robbed by a pair of highwaymen, when the entire group was attacked by bizarre and hideous monsters.
Kane intervenes, killing most of the creatures, and then he and one survivor hole up in a lonely inn called 'The Cleft Skull,' where 'Rattle of Bones' is adapted.and then the monsters return in greater numbers to besiege the inn. As with the previous volume, Mike Mignola provides a great cover, one so solid in design and execution that I wished the interior art was in the same style, and Guy Davis provides the monster designs, as the generous portion of backmatter makes clear. And man, these are some really great monster designs. So great, in fact, that it almost seems a waste that Davis septn so much time and creative energy so thoroughly designing them, right down to forms of locomotion and the way the creatures might store their weapons on their bodies, that it seems a shame that they exist only in this miniseries, and even then, Guevara has somewhat redesigned them (Also as with the previous volume, there's a short comics story in here as well; 'All the Damned Souls at Sea,' which is drawn by Guy Davis and originally appeared in a pair of MySpace Dark Horse Presents issues. In it, Kane fights a scary-looking witch, and then a curse-created monster built out of boat pieces).
It's my understanding that the 'Death's Black Riders' fragment is just that, a fragment, with only a few lines actually completed by Howard. Those lines involved Kane meeting, in the words of whoever handles the Sa olomon Kane Wikipedia page, 'a shadowy ghost rider on the road.' In designing the riders, Allie said he wanted a monster that could be mistaken for Solomon Kane on the road at first sight, and, indeed, here is Guevara's first image of a rider from the story. As they finally appear in the story, they have a pair of mouths, a detail that I didn't really like, as it seemed like a more generic, lazy monster; that is, assigning exaggerated human features or additional body parts, whereas the one-mouthed creatures had a bizarre, alien sense of anatomy; that is, they didn't look like men with mouths in their stomachs; the 'other' mouth near the eyes make them seem a little too human. Guevara draws each of the creatures a little different though. Here are some images of them.
The sixth collection of the Jason Aaron-written, Jean Grey School-based X-Men comic differs from the previous ones in a few important ways. First, it is all a single story arc running through its five issues; the fifth of those serves as a sort of epilogue and primes the pump for the next big storyline, but its climax is tied to the adventure that fils the first four issues. Second, it actually has a single artist, from start to finish: Ramon Perez. The premise is pretty straightforward, an X-Men-ized version of a common school experience: The field trip.
For the super-powered mutant students of the Jean Grey School and their instructor Wolverine, however, the 'field' in question is the dinosaur-filled Savage Land. Wolvie takes the kids—Quentin Quire, Idie, Genesis, Glob, Eye Boy, Shark Girl, the newly-christened Sprite and the still-monstrous Broo—in a Blackbird and drops them off with the following challenge: Survive together as a group without him long enough to find the waiting plane or, um, don't.
It's a pass/fail class, obviously. The challenge is made infinitely more difficult by the arrival of Dog Logan, Wolverine's big brother from Origin, who Jason Aaron picked up and explored as a potential rival, foil and villain for Wolverine in the present in the pages of, aided by the 'time diamonds' from that series, and egged on by a time-traveling version of himself to go after Wolverine. He does so, but he's not just planning on beating up his now-famous little brother. Rather, he wants to prove himself a better teacher than Wolverine, so once he incapacitates the guy with his name on the book, Dog then hands out guns to the school kids, and leads them as they fight not only the dinosaurs of The Savage Land, but also the cowboys, cavemen and killer robots from the future that Dog himself brought with him. It's a typically tightly-plotted story from Aaron, in which he shows the students pretty much disintegrating when left to their own devices, and then each coming into their own and almost instinctively forming a team when faced with the common threat of Dog. The narrative consistently flashes back to something Wolverine said privately to each of the students on the plane-ride to the Savage Land, something that turns out to be rather key to their triumph (Even in the case of Eye Boy, who responds to Wolvie's claim that he told each one of them all they needed to know, 'Um, all you taught me was how to play five card stud'). Aaron also devotes some time to Dog as a character, showing his origin story from different angles—and, as in Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine, the passages set in Dog's past are rendered in such a way as to suggest the imagery of Origin, rather than the more straightforward super-comics look of the rest of the book.
Perez has a pretty challenging gig here, drawing not only a fairly large cast of colorful characters with fantastic powers in a prehistoric jungle setting, but also all the other crazy characters that crash the party. And then there's that last issue. After the trip to the Savage Land ends, with the Jean Grey School losing a student to the emerging bad guys school, the final issue finds the entire school assembled for a time capsule ceremony, and then flashes forward 25 years, to the point where a gray haired, bearded Wolverine finds and opens it. I'm pretty sure Perez actually draws every single member of the entire school on the bottom half of a two-page splash, he then designs a whole new student body for the future version of the school, as well as drawing at least a few members of the 'present' cast in new, future forms (Most notably former Eye Boy, Eye Man). In this issue, Aaron has the two narratives inform one another, and, notably updates past conflicts for the future and teases the outcomes of various sub-plots (There's a student who has both Ice Man and Kitty Pryde's powers, Shark Girl is the leader of an X-Force Squad, Eye Man detects 'what appears to be a dirigible of human remains.I'm guessing Frankenstein, Inc. Is back in business').
As with the previous five volumes, this one is a lot of fun. And, thanks to Perez, it's a a great-looking volume, from start to finish. Okay, so there were two new comic book-comic books I read this week that I didn't: All-New Ghost Rider #1 and Silver Surfer #1.
I did not review them here, because I was going to review them at Robot 6,. Also at Robot 6 today, while comparing and contrasting Forever Evil with the 2002 original graphic novel JLA/JSA: Virtue and Vice, which have a few things in common. Mike Allred Okay, so obviously the portmanteau word 'cambot' being used to refer to a robot that is also a camera isn't the most brilliant or inspired word ever created by man or woman, but is it cool for Dan Slott to take the name of the quietest but most vital of and pluralize it? When I read that panel in the really rather good Silver Surfer #1 (Not reviewed here! But to-be-reviewed elsewhere tomorrow!), I admit to thinking, 'Hey, you can't do that!' Or I don't know, maybe he can.
Maybe Jack Kirby invented the word 'cambot' in 1966, and Joel Hodgson and company coincidentally chose it as the name of their robot cameraman 25 years later. Jack Kirby invented a lot of stuff that people forgot he created. Superman's pre-New 52 costume: Proof that absence makes the heart grow fonder. Empowered Special #6 (Dark Horse Comics) Brandon Graham is one of my favorite comics artists, one of those guys of whom I might hyperbolically declare, 'Man, I wish he drew all the comics I read!'
So this is sort of a wish come true, as it is Brandon Graham drawing one of those comics I read that he doesn't normally draw, Adam Warren's Empowered. This is, of course, one of those full-color, done-in-one comic book format stories that Warren writes (and draws book ends for) while a guest artist draws them. They tend to come out between volumes of the all-Warren original graphic novel series. They are, like the main Empowered series, always awesome, but this issue was particularly awesome. Given Graham's skill at drawing sexy women as well as cool, crowded science fiction-y settings, he is naturally a perfect fit for drawing the scantily-clad stars of Adam Warren's ever-expanding superhero universe. In this issue, Empowered and Ninjette are called to a special superhero hospital (Like Kurt Busiek and company's Astro City and Alan Moore and Gene Ha's Top Ten, one of the pleasures of Warren's Empowered has been the way he superhero-izes even the more normal, pedestrian aspects of his world) to Fantastic Voyage into a the sentient, organic babyship of a sentient, organic mothership in order to surgically remove a parasitic infection; if they fail, the mothership will destroy a large portion of earth in revenge.
The hospital is staffed by nurses in super-sexy nurses' outfits that make even the skimpiest naughty nurse Halloween costumes look modest (male and female nurses; another of Empowered's many virtues is its ability to be sexy without being sexist), and full of weird, superhero shit—I particularly enjoyed the waiting room, and the Crisis On Infinite Earths gag., if needed. Graham does a great job on the protagonists, accentuating the differing body types of the two characters—something Emp herself obsesses over—and it's great fun to see Warren's designs filtered through another artist who I like just as much. Graham also letters the story himself, just as Warren letters his pages and Empowered, so it was nice to see the Empowered characters 'sound' like King City characters (One thing I don't like about Warren's Empowered? The way he underlines words for emphasis.
Graham doesn't do that, but instead uses italics and bolding. The only other thing I don't really like about Empowered is the way Warren handles swearing, putting black bars over swear words, but there's no swearing at all in this issue). I also liked the way Emp's powersuit is dull, solid blue all the time, until she uses her powers, and then it gets sparkly and star field-y. That might always happen, I don't know; if so, it's not as obvious in black and white as it is in color. I actually kind of feel bad that I'm only reviewing this comic here instead of somewhere that will earn more eyeballs. It was a ton of fun, and I'd highly recommend it. I would love to see more of Graham's version of Empowered, Graham being one of those artists I kinda wish drew all the comics I read, but then, Warren is another of the artists I kinda wish drew all the comics I read (I do Warren should contribute a cover or pin-up to the next Multiple Warheads comic).
Hawkeye #18 (Marvel Entertainment) And back to L.A. For another chapter of the Kate Bishop narrative, drawn by Annie Wu. This comic has become a really fucking weird one, in terms of the way it's constructed. Have Marvel or DC ever published a comic like this, where two characters with the same superhero identity take turns starring in alternating issues of the title, by alternating artists, in two separate and distinct storylines that aren't really connected, but occasionally acknowledge the existence of one another? Marvel Entertainment's comics line seems to be in a pretty great place right now— creatively. I think their marketing, their pricing, their numbering and their shipping schedules are all kinds of bonkers at the moment, of course, but they seem to have pursued an interesting, post- Daredevil, post- Hawkeye strategy with their B-list (and lower) characters and concepts over the past few years.
The guiding principle seems to be to find good writers and good artists, and give them books on which they are encouraged to employ their own take and make their own mark. 'Funny' is a hard thing to define, let alone quantify. Generally, an individual either finds something funny or they don't, and any discussion regarding ranking or rating different kinds of funny can get vague and meaningless pretty quickly.
So I can't honestly say with any sort of certainty, nor can I produce an elegant argument to back it up, that is one of—if not the—funniest cartoonists whose work I've ever encountered. I can say that I've never read any work of his and not enjoyed doing so. And that I've never regretted any time spent with a Henderson book or cartoon. And that even his worst work is still funny, in an anti-joke way that can be just as funny as a pure joke joke. And that, along with Johnny Ryan, he's one of the only artists whose books I used to be able to leave out at the house I shared with friends in Columbus, and every single person who lived under that roof and every single one of their guests would pick it up, spend at least a few minutes with it and find themselves in hysterics (Tony Millionaire was a third cartoonist with a similar effect, however only his Maakies; visitors might flip through a Sock Monkey or Billy Hazelnuts, but not feel compelled to sit down and read it the way they would a Magic Whistle or an Angry Youth Comix). This book, a co-publication of Top Shelf and Alternative Comics, collects Henderson's strip from Nickelodeon Magazine, a publication I have never read or seen in the wild, but which has a pretty great reputations for having given work and exposure to some really great cartoonists.
It was a kid-friendly publication, obviously, so there aren't any dick jokes in here, nor any butt jokes that I remember, which might seem weird, as kids love butts and jokes about butts, but this is Henderson not only at his most family-friendly, but also at his classiest. The premise for the strip, for any of you reading this who have also never read Nickelodeon Magazine, is that there's this guy, a typical Henderson guy, and this animal—I thought it was a cat or dog until page 96, in which the two are apparently running against one another in an election, and the podiums they stand behind read 'Man in '04' and 'Bear in '04.' So it's a bear, I guess. (Sadly for America and the world, it was who won in 2004, and not some random bear.) And this man and this bear, they do stuff. But they never speak. And, um, that's it.
That's really all there is to it. Sometimes they're roommates.
Sometimes they seem to be little kids, and siblings at that. Sometimes one is a doctor and the other is a patient, or one a motorist and the other works at a gas station, and so on. It's a very open, very old school, Vaudeville-inspired, Golden Age of Animation sort of style of comedy. Silent film comedy on paper.
It helps that everything Henderson draws is pretty funny simply by virtue of the fact that Henderson drew it; he has one of those very naive, very primitive 'Hell, I could draw that!' Styles that is actually really, really hard to imitate (I've tried it a couple times, making illustrations for blog posts here in the past). It's extremely loose and often pretty vague; the bear is a very detailed character for Henderson, in that he has, like, distinctive features, rather than just being a funny pair of eyes and mouth on a human-shaped outline guy. Most of the gags revolve around the rule-less physics of comic strips and cartoons, and, read all at once, this book seems like a grand symphonic performance of the unique possibilities for jokes in the comics medium.
There weren't any words, and yet it was still somehow one of the best things I've read in like forever. The collection features some fun extras, most notably an introduction—something I think all collections should have—by cartoonist (AKA, the funny Van Sciver). But rather than simply writing an introduction with a bunch of words forming sentences forming paragraphs, Van Sciver, a cartoonist introducing a collection of comics by another cartoonist, gives his introduction in the form of a comic strip. It's a two-page, 18-panel comic called 'Sam Henderson Changed My Life' which seems to include a whole bunch of lies, including what has to be the world's most unflattering portrait of Henderson. Van Sciver proudly calls himself 'part of the Henderson Generation' of cartoonists, and shares a'some of the great things about being like' he and Sam.
I was so impressed by artist Simon Gane's work on with writer Duane Swierczynski, which has since wrapped up and been collected into three volumes, I started Internetting around to see if Gane had ever done any other comics featuring giant monsters, and was surprised and delighted to find All Flee!, a monster-themed gag comic that Gane drew and Gavin Burrows wrote. The one issue was published by Top Shelf about a decade ago, (Unless I bought the last one; Top Shelf was the only place I could find selling copies online, but my search wasn't too terribly extensive; maybe ask your local retailer first.?). It takes its title from something two Godzilla-like professors at a finishing school for monsters chuckle about; apparently that's what people in Tokyo say before you trample on them. There are three strips in the book, the first two of which are on the subject of giant monsters.
The first is entitled 'A Finishing School For Monsters,' and stars an older, Godzilla-like monster with white sideburns, a little white beard and a cane, decrying the sad state of his students ('You can KEEP your digitally remastered remakes and.and you Pokemon cards and.and backwards hats.' ) before quitting and having a pretty miserable day. His students consists of those pictured above, a pair of gorillas with robots parts on 'em, a giant spider and so on; his walk home to Monster Island takes him through New York, where 'Kenny' (looks like King Kong to me) is dangling from the Empire State Building, fighting biplane, and a horned cyclops like that from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad is selling packs of humans out from a vendor's pushcart. Though Gane's art is obviously much more cartoony, both in his monsters and in his humans, its still recognizably his, certain features simply exaggerated to a bigger size and higher level of blockiness.
He still excels at drawing cute girls, and packing the panels with detail, so that he offers particularly interesting backgrounds and cityscapes. In the second story, 'All Flee!' , the same crotchety monster teacher meets a new faculty member—a female monster teaching Contemporary Trampling—but when he sees how fetching she looks in her smart suit, he's head over tail in love with her. They visit Europe together, destroying things, but their affair ends when she takes a job in Hollywood as a 'a MAYHEM ADVISOR.for the latest REMAKE.' The third story is completely monster-free. 'Cruisin' With The Dorks' is set in a pub, and features a dorky character telling three other characters about the band he was in, and the dork-power movement it inspired. It's a very British strip, and there's really only one joke repeated in various ways throughout, but it's funny enough—perhaps not as universal as jokes about Godzilla and company though.
There's a nice, pointed panel making fun of modern comic books, and it's a treat to see Gane's big, chunky cartoonier style applied purely to human characters and human scaled settings after the previous stories of a giant monster society built atop a tiny human one. Rounding out the book are a couple of ads and a couple of fake ads; the latter features a monster getting sand kicked in his face by a human beach bully before going in for some Charles Atlas-style confidence building ('Couldn't you just trample those humans?' ) and a Hostess inspired one for Human Fruit Pies, in which the mayor distracts a giant monster from eating humans by giving him giant fruit pies.filled with humans. The above link includes a preview featuring six pages from the first story, if you'd like to see some more of Gane's art from the book, including some of his other monsters.
The fifth collection of the Jason Aaron-written, many artist-illustrated X-Men series set at the Jean Grey school highlights one of the aspects of the book that have helped make it such a welcome and engaging X-Men comic: Superhero school sitcom premise aside, it is really more of a straightforward superhero book than a Marvel mutant book; the characters occasionally deal with threats and conflicts that aren't completely reliant on their being mutants or X-Men. That is, they don't continuously cycle through Magneto, Apocalypse and Mister Sinister as villains, or spend all their time fighting for survival against mutant hate groups and anti-mutant religious and political leaders. Sometimes they fight Swarm (at least for a page), often they deal with space aliens, and once in a while they encounter something like Frankenstein's Murder Circus, the conflict that dominates this collection, which includes #19-#24. (That's only six issues, but they're drawn by three different pencil artists, five inkers and three colorists; I guess that's the result of the accelerated shipping, and why this series is technically called ' Wolverine and The X-Men By Jason Aaron' in collected form).
Bradshaw draws the entire Murder Circus art, and it's all-around great, even impeccable stuff. He's perfectly suited to superheroics, horror, action and humor, and this story calls on him to do them all—often on the same page. While the story makes up the bulk of this volume, it's book-ended by others. The trade opens with a nice post- Avengers vs.
X-Men issue, in which we check in with various players and get a sense of the new status quo. There are new students like the aforementioned Eye Boy and another who will become Sprite in the next volume; Beast is desperately trying to save the life of Broo, who was seemingly shot dead at the end of the last volume; Wolverine and Rachel are hunting for his killers; his killers are setting up shop near the school; and Kitty Pryde is interviewing potential new teachers from throughout the Marvel Universe. That last bit is basically just an issue-long running gag, and Kitty's a little too curt to be taken seriously, shouting 'Next!' Like a casting agent, but it does give us the opportunity to see how Bradshaw draws a whole mess of different Marvel characters, and hear a joke or four about each. These include, among others, Blade, Sasquatch, Puck, Dr. Nemesis, Longshot, Spider-Man, Gorilla Man, Deadpool ( repeatedly) and so on (Bradshaw's Ghost Rider skull and his Sasquatch are both particularly accomplished). The job goes to Storm, though, seen here with Kitty rubbing her breasts in her crotch.
That's followed by a one-issue story drawn by Steve Sanders (wait, ), in which we meet new mutant Shark Girl, who Angel manages to recruit to the Jean Grey Academy before Mystique and the Silver Samurai can recruit her for the new villain school for mutants that the bad guys are apparently setting up. Then, after the Murder Circus storyline, there's another done-in one, this one drawn by David Lopez and Alvaro Lopez, which is another sort of catch-up story, set after the events of (Time-lost teen Jean Grey shows up for a scene with Quentin Quire, for example, and Beast's new ape-ish look is seen in this title for the first time; it's a shame, given how good Bradshaw drew a lion-like Beast).
It's mostly soap opera stuff, with various pairings of characters going on dates, discuss their relationships and kissing in one way or another. As always, Aaron's writing is super-strong, and while the art in this issue may be the weakest in this particular collection, it's not like it's bad or anything. This is the second consecutive trade to close with a shocking cliffhanger involving Broo, too. This month's look at Marvel Entertainment's solicitations offered me another of those 'Whew, thank God I'm not a retailer!' Moments, as all I have to do is try to figure out how to find and read the damn things, rather than make decisions involving money and a whole bunch of customers based on vague, cryptic information and some incredibly poor titling and marketing. So are Marvel's solicitations for what they intend to publish in June of this year.
And below are some thoughts on them. So check out all the information they give retailers and potential readers on some books that I'm assuming must be tie-in to their Original Sin event series: FANTASTIC FOUR #6 JAMES ROBINSON (W) LEONARD KIRK (A/C) EVERYBODY HAS ONE. 32 PGS./Rated T+ $3.99 Bonus Digital Edition Included ALL-NEW INVADERS #6 JAMES ROBINSON (W) Marc Laming (A) Cover by GREG LAND EVERYBODY HAS ONE. 32 PGS./Rated T+ $3.99 Bonus Digital Edition Included NOVA #18 GERRY DUGGAN (W) DAVID BALDEON (A) Cover by PACO MEDINA TEASER variant also available EVERYBODY HAS ONE.
32 PGS./Rated T+ $3.99 Bonus Digital Edition Included I'm not sure what it is that everyone has, but I'm assuming it is not opinion, or that thing everyone has in addition to an opinion that is part of that saying about opinions and the fact that everyone has got one. Note how little actual info there is there: Title, creative team, ridiculously high price, mention of a 'bonus' digital edition so some readers won't feel like the publisher is over-reaming them and.that's it. How do retailers figure this stuff out? For Fantastic Four, do you order on some formula that is like JAMES ROBINSON FANS + LEONARD KIRK FANS + PEOPLE WHO READ FANTASTIC FOUR EVERY MONTH - ANY OVERLAP BETWEEN THOSE FACTORS, and, like, add six for the tag line or something.? ORIGINAL SINS #1-2 (of 5) EVERYBODY HAS ONE.
(EACH)/Rated T+ $3.99 (EACH) Bonus Digital Edition Included ORIGINAL SIN #3.1 MARK WAID (W) MARK BAGLEY (A) Cover by JG JONES TEASER Variant by JG JONES EVERYBODY HAS ONE. 32 PGS./Rated T+ $3.99 Bonus Digital Edition Included SIN #3.2 KIERON GILLEN (W) LUKE ROSS (A) Cover by JG JONES EVERYBODY HAS ONE. 32 PGS./Rated T+ $3.99 Bonus Digital Edition Included SIN #3.3 MARK WAID (W) MARK BAGLEY (A) Cover by JG JONES EVERYBODY HAS ONE.
32 PGS./Rated T+ $3.99 Bonus Digital Edition Included ORIGINAL SIN #3.4 KIERON GILLEN (W) LUKE ROSS (A) Cover by JG JONES EVERYBODY HAS ONE. 32 PGS./Rated T+ $3.99 Bonus Digital Edition Included Ah, I remember pointing and laughing at Marvel for publishing three Fear Itself epilogues, and giving them each a decimal pointed number: Fear Itself #7.1, etc. And I can remember pointing and laughing at Marvel for publishing a big, crossover series entitled Avengers Vs.
X-Men and, simultaneous to that, a tie-in series entitled Avengers Vs. X-Men: Versus. This is like a trifecta of WTF, a triwhatthefuckta. So, in addition to the big, twice-montly, eight-part miniseries Original Sin, Marvel is also publishing a tie-in series called Original Sin s, plural? And between issues of the series, they're publishing a whole miniseries worth of material, designated by number decimal point as being part of the main series, but a less important part of that series.? As someone who will eventually read this in trade, I hope it's collected in a way that makes some small amount of sense. Hey, any of you guys Marx Brothers fans?
Have you seen A Day at the Races? Particularly the, where Chico cons Groucho into buying more and more books to make sense of his original investment? For some reason, I don't know why, I suddenly remembered that scene while reading these solicitations. ALL-NEW GHOST RIDER #4 FELIPE SMITH (W). TRADD MOORE (A/C) VARIANT COVER BY FELIPE SMITH “ENGINES OF VENGEANCE”. The streets of East LA flare up with drug-fueled gang violence form DR.
ZABO’s power-enhancing narcotic. Will ROBBIE REYES submit to the sprit inside him and go too far in protecting the neighborhood?. What is MR. HYDE’s diabolical plan to expand his underground empire? 32 PGS./Rated T+ $3.99 Oof.
The old super-drug plot, huh? I felt like I had read some 750 superhero comics involving narcotics that grant or are based on the abilities of super-people years ago, so, um, well, this doesn't sound the least bit interesting. But hey, look at that cover!
It sure looks interesting! All I've seen of Tradd Moore at Marvel so far are his covers, but I'm really looking forward to seeing if his interior art is as clear, crisp, fluid and action-packed. DAREDEVIL #4 MARK WAID (W) CHRIS SAMNEE (A/C). The Owl is back! But he’s not working alone! Watch as the Daredevil team permanently redefines one of DD’s oldest enemies deadlier than ever!
Plus-whatever happened to Foggy Nelson? 32 PGS./Rated T+ $3.99 That's a damn fine cover Samnee put together for this issue of Daredevil. From afar, it actually looked like a Mike Mignola one in it's basic design and in the owl image.on closer inspection, it looks like a Samnee drawing inside a Mignola cover. Now what's this about The Owl being 'back'.? He's been in Superior Foes of Spider-Man for months now! GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY #16 BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS (W). NICK BRADSHAW (A/C).
Starlord on the run from a mysterious new adversary— alone without the aid of the Guardians! 32 PGS./Rated T $3.99 Is that Starlord on the cover!
I am not down with giving him a new coat in order to make him look more like the movie version of himself! I see Nick Bradshaw is the next excellent artist Bendis is working with on this title.
That' funny; I've been reading Wolverine and The X-Men in trade, and I was just wondering where Bradshaw was headed now that Jason Aaron's run on the book is over and it's been rebooted. I think Bradshaw is a pretty incredible talent, and I hope he finds and keeps a book he can almost kinda sorta make his own, the way he almost kinda sorta did with Wolverine and., although with Marvel's current shipping practices, it's pretty much impossible for any one artist to define a title anymore.
HAWKEYE #21 MATT FRACTION (W) ANNIE WU (A) Cover by DAVID AJA The Finale, Part 1:. David. The Building. The Tracksuit Draculas. Ever seen “Rio Bravo?” Check it out, it’s pretty good.
32 PGS./Rated T+ $2.99 It's another issue of Matt Fraction and David Aja's Hawkeye, sans Aja. I like Wu's art just fine, but I'm kinda confused by this book of late.
![Scarlet book execution date Scarlet book execution date](/uploads/1/2/5/3/125385866/368939832.jpg)
I thought it was settling into a groove of Wu on Lady Hawkguy in L.A. One issue, Aja on Hawkguy Prime in NYC the next issue.?
Also, I don't like the sound of that story title or the description of the book. Makes it sound like Hawkeye is winding up, and heading for a reboot, if not cancellation. Also also, while that's a nice-looking cover, I'm kinda sick of the style of the covers and the color scheme Aja has been employing on them. Too many of them look too much like too many other Hawkeye covers.
I've actually missed a couple of issues because I can't tell them apart on the rack (and my shop forgot to put to put them in my pull file, as they sometimes do). NEW AVENGERS #19 & 20 JONATHAN HICKMAN (W). VALERIO SCHITI (A) Cover by DUSTIN WEAVER ISSUE #19 –. It’s the battle you didn’t know you wanted to see—until now! As the New Avengers take on the combined power of the Great Society—and only a single parallel Earth can survive! 32 PGS./Rated T+ $3.99 ISSUE #20 –. How far is Doctor Strange willing to go to protect the Earth from the Great Society?
Too far 32 PGS./Rated T+ $3.99 The New Avengers Vs., huh? That's a fight I never expected to see. SHE HULK #5 CHARLES SOULE (W).
RON WEMBERLY (A) Cover by KEVIN P. WADA.
She-Hulk& Hellcat must uncover the secrets of the Blue File – a conspiracy that touches the entire Marvel Universe!. This new mystery brings us She-Hulk’s most terrifying role ever: DEFENDANT!. Charles Soule (THUNDERBOLTS) and Ron Wemberly (MIGHTY AVENGERS) continue the smash hit of All-New Marvel Now! 32 PGS./Rated T+ $2.99 Well, whatever's going on with this conspiracy that touches the entire Marvel Universe, Spawn is definitely involved. Wait, Ron Wemberly? That is a different name that Javier Pulido! Where's Javier Pulido?
I am reading this comic because I like the Javier Pulido! SILVER SURFER #4 DAN SLOTT (W). MICHAEL ALLRED (A/C). In order to return alien abductee Dawn Greenwood home, the Surfer must travel to the one place in the galaxy he dreads the most. Planet Earth!. And what should be a quick drop off turns into turns into one very. Strange adventure.
Featuring: DOCTOR STRANGE, THE INCREDIBLE HULK, and some surprise guest stars. Including those movie stars on the cover!
32 PGS./Rated T+ $3.99 Let's see, Silver Surfer, Doctor Strange, The Incredible Hulk.I sure hope one of those surprise guest stars is Namor, The Sub-Mariner. THE SUPERIOR FOES OF SPIDER-MAN #14 STEVE LIEBER (W/A) Cover by KRIS ANKA. A year of duplicity and double crossing leads to this – who will live, who will die, who will get the head of Silvermane?
32 PGS./Rated T+ $3.99 Yikes. I like the sound of this solicitation even less than I do the one for Hawkeye, as it sounds kinda final. Also note that regular artists Steve Lieber is both writing and drawing, rather than simply credited with 'A.' And then there's that price change. Don't leave us, Superior Foes of Spider-Man.!
Or, if you must, can you just re-boot yourself into a $2.99 All-New Sinister Five, with the same creative team? I'd probably be okay with that. THE UNITED STATES OF MURDER INC.
#2 BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS (W). MICHAEL AVON OEMING (A/C) VARIANT Cover by BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS VARIANT Cover by DAVID MACK This new crime epic saga from the creators of POWERS continues! Welcome to a world where the influence of organized crime has risen to a place where parts of the United States are actually fully controlled by the five families.
At the end of last issue, the biggest secret in history of the five families was revealed! The newest made man, Valentine, now must figure out how he and his associate, Jagger Rose, are supposed to continue on knowing what they now know. Every issue delivers powerful visuals by Eisner Award winner Michael Avon Oeming and a story by the writer of some of your favorite Marvel comics including ALL-NEW X-MEN! 32 PGS./Mature $3.99 I just wanted to note this one because I think it's cool and kinda cute how Bendis keeps doing this creator-owned stuff with Marvel, where it doesn't get noticed the same way it would if he published it.pretty much anywhere else. Also, I have completely lost track of all the similar projects Bendis has done in the last few years. Whatever happened to that weird Scarlet book that I think people might have reviewed the first issue of? Was that completed, or did the creators abandon it?
What about that kids comic Bendis was doing with Oeming. Takio, I think it was.? Or his movie pitch comic with Mark Bagley ( Brilliant?).? Oh hey, I just notice the 'VARIANT Cover by BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS' up there when I was going to delete the variant cover info.that's cool. I can't remember the last time I've seen a Bendis drawing. Caleb Mozzocco is a freelance writer and (extremely) amateur(-ish) artist who lives and works in Ohio. This is his blog.
You can reach him at [email protected]. Creators and publishers who would like their books considered for review here and/or anywhere else he contributes can feel free to contact him at the address above. Editors and publishers of respectable publications who would like Caleb to write about comics for them are also welcome to contact him and offer him work. He loves money.