Why does Bahlactus demand Friday Night Fights? No one knows. Maybe he’s just pushy. But we dare not resist. He’s at least nine feet tall, and he eats Chryslers. So on to the punching!

This week, it’s comic writer Ty Templeton vs. a bunch of fanboys who hate Plastic Man. (From 1999’s “Plastic Man Special” by Ty Templeton and Rick Burchett)

I don’t even mind Templeton. Why doesn’t someone write a comic where Rob Liefeld, Michael Turner, or Greg Land get their clocks cleaned?

Green Lantern #22

The Sinestro Corps War continues. This issue, our main event is Hal Jordan vs. Kyle Rayner, possessed by the monstrous fear-god Parallax. Kyle also does the scary-Parallax-monster-mouth thing, which is always nice and creepy. The Green Lantern Corps rides to the rescue, loses a member, and goes hunting for the Ion spirit that empowers the power batteries and for the missing-in-action John Stewart and Guy Gardner. Meanwhile, the Sinestro Corps is preparing to attack Mogo, the Green Lantern that’s also a planet, and Superboy Prime and the Cyborg Superman make their own plans.

Verdict: Thumbs up. All in all, pretty good, but not as good as it could’ve been. It’s really very talky. There’s lots of fighting, but most of it is just background for monologues. I don’t mind monologues at all, of course, and I felt that the story moved along quite well. But I kept wishing for something more.

A few things you may find interesting…

* Ragnell has a trailer/”making of…” featurette about the upcoming animated movie version of Darwyn Cooke’s outstanding “New Frontier” series.

* If you love laughing at some of the bizarre covers and panels from comics’ Silver Age, you really ought to be reading “Superdickery.”

* Brian Cornin dug up some old AIDS public service announcements that DC Comics put together. Brian says they’re pretty awful, and they are. Unfortunately, most comic book PSAs are at least that bad, if not worse.

* Gail Simone talks about taking over writing duties on “Wonder Woman.”

* One of my very favorite posts by Chris Sims — he does a fast review of the (ahem) classic “Godzilla vs. Barkley.” The last panel has me howling with laughter every time I see it.

Can’t get enough news about Captain Carrot? OF COURSE YOU CAN’T! You all LOVE Captain Carrot! You’re all dying for the new Zoo Crew miniseries, and you’d all love to read this interview with the series’ creators!

Morrison says while “The Final Ark” is a story complete in and of itself, it may not be the Zoo Crew’s final arc. “We’ll have to wait and see how the public responds,” Morrison said. “Our editor Joey Cavalieri hasn’t given us any indication either way, but Scott and I are having a blast and would love to keep it going. I will say this, however, it could easily be the end, as the title suggests, or it could be a brand new beginning.”

Shaw! agreed, saying Captain Carrot and the rest of the Zoo Crew have plenty of stories left in the old rabbit hole. “Oh, there are tons of them,” said Shaw! “Enough to fill three hundred issues rather than the three we have to play with right now. But getting the opportunity to tell them all really depends on the readers’ response to ‘Captain Carrot and the Final Ark.'”

And whether or not all these stories – past, present or future – exist in DCU proper, Morrison says that will finally be answered by the miniseries’ final issue. “That question has been debated by fans for years, but this series will erase all doubt as to whether Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew are part of the DC Universe or not. And that’s all I’m prepared to say about that.”

Marvel Comics has just released a preview image of the cover of “Spider-Man #545,” along with a caption that says “The End of an Era.” Click the link to view the image, but the implication is that the marriage of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson is soon going to be over. 

Comic companies go through fairly silly cycles when it comes to marriage and divorce. They get the characters married because they know that a wedding issue will bring in extra sales. And afterwards, they start whining about the characters being married, because they think that married superheroes will run off kids who read comics.

DC has whined for years about Superman being married to Lois Lane, and Marvel has whined about Spidey being married to Mary Jane.

I can’t say I know why they think married characters are unpopular with readers. Seems like I know an awful lot of comics readers who are married, and I don’t know why they’d mind.

So what do you think? Are Spidey and Mary Jane getting a divorce (or worse)? And do you approve or disapprove?

I feel like getting the last of my weekly reviews over and done with right now, so let’s get to it.

Justice Society of America #8

Our focus in this issue is on our purty, purty covergirl, Jesse Chambers, formerly known as Jesse Quick, currently known as the new Liberty Belle. This issue has some backstory to deal with first — the main villain in this piece is Zoom, who is the anti-Flash. He’s partially responsible for the loss of Jesse’s superspeed powers, and he’s the guy who demolished Damage’s face. The JSA is after him, but he’s hiding out in Atlanta, and due to an incident years ago where Damage accidentally blew up a chunk of that city, he’s not allowed to set foot anywhere in Georgia. But Damage wants to tear a chunk out of Zoom’s hide, so he goes in anyway. Now he’s got hold of Zoom and has built up a charge of energy that would kill thousands of people if he lets it off. Jesse volunteers to go in and talk him down.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s nice to see something here about Liberty Belle, who has been a complete cypher until now. That’s really the biggest irritant about this comic, though, because there are far too many characters who we’ve barely seen at all in the past eight issues. Where’s Jakeem Thunder? Is he a current member of the team? Where’s Sand? What’s up with his funky new costume and powers? Used to be, there were almost as many people in the JSA, and they were still able to keep us up-to-date with all of them — that doesn’t seem to be the case now…

She-Hulk #20

There isn’t much of a way to talk about this one, because it’s jam-packed with spoilers. Basically, Artie Zix, the guy who currently runs the law firm, reveals his secrets and gets our main characters to reveal some of theirs, wrapping up a number of old loose plot threads before the next storyarc.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Seems fine, but not particularly outstanding.

Metal Men #1

A very nice relaunch of one of DC’s most enjoyable teams. This one has lots of great stuff, from a return of some of the concepts cooked up during the JLA’s “Obsidian Age” storyline, to a giant robot made up of nanobots and evil toasters. We also see Doc Magnus before he had completely developed the Metal Men into the shapeshifting herobots we know and love, and we get to briefly meet a new Metal Man named Copper. And of course, the Metal Men end the issue completely destroyed, because that’s what the Metal Men do — they get wrecked whenever they save the day…

Verdict: Thumbs up, again. Duncan Rouleau is the writer and illustrator, and his art and storytelling completely overclock the specs on good, action-packed, charismatic fun.

 

This was the most remarkable comic I picked up last week.

Sure, everything else I got had more action, more plot and character development, more people in form-fitting spandex costumes. “The Marvel Tarot” is the one with no action, lots of unfamiliar characters, insanely dense and complicated faux-scholarly research into esoteric subjects, and occasionally unreadable text. And this one is still the one I keep going back to, over and over, so I can re-read it.

What is it? It’s the in-depth notes and research of Ian McNee, a minor Marvel character who used to butt heads with Dr. Strange from time to time. He gives us a quick overview of Hermetic magick, mystical correspondences, and the multiple magical planes of existence. He briefly reviews the history of magic in the Marvel Universe and lists some of the Sorcerers Supreme through the centuries.

The bulk of the comic is devoted to McNee’s study of an enchanted deck of Tarot cards that depicts various Marvel characters on the cards in the major arcana. Fer instance, Ghost Rider is on the Judgment card, Brother Voodoo is the Hanged Man, Dr. Strange is the Magician. But the deck has been broken somehow, so more than one person may show up on the cards from time to time — both Dr. Doom and Naga show up periodically as the Emperor, while the High Priestess card cycles from Agatha Harkness to the Scarlet Witch to Storm.

There’s no story to speak of, and there’s not even any traditional comic art. Every page is composed of pages from ancient grimoires, medieval artwork of angels and demons, and mystic artifacts from around the world. Scattered throughout are McNee’s notes, pastiches of old fairy tales, and the Tarot cards, which are based on the old familiar Rider-Waite Tarot deck you can find in most bookstores.

The comic is not always easy to read — some of the text is sideways, upside down, or printed in Latin or another ancient language. But it’s a beautiful book, and David Sexton, the writer/designer deserves major kudos for his work here.

I’m not sure I can vouch for the accuracy of the material about the Tarot, Hermetic magic, and all that, but in my youth, I was very much into this sort of thing, so I read lots of books on these topics. If they’re not accurate, they at least sound really accurate.

Oh, and I also like the idea that Marvel is going to make magic something other than simple hocus-pocus and big explosions. It looks like they’re going to push the idea that magic is hard, magic is strange, magic is scary. It doesn’t take very much research on the real-life Hermetic traditions to get the idea across that magic, back in the old days, required lots and lots of study of lots of weird, scary, vague books. I love the idea that Marvel may start focusing on magic as something truly and exquisitely complex and bizarre — that’s something you don’t see a lot of in fiction.

Verdict: Thumbs way up. A very challenging read, but a very rewarding one as well.

Bringing your artwork to life

Here’s the latest from the Lubbock Sketch Club:

The figure drawing group has been fairly successful so far. We have a lot of people wanting to participate in the figure drawing group – and in fact wanting to expand on it, and I want to make this happen. I am pretty good at getting things started, but it’s challenging for me to maintain them. Especially as I get more and more busy. So I would like your help in better serving you guys with this figure drawing group. We’ve got a good start but I think it could be much better. So how can we make this more efficient, reliable, and enjoy the process?

The one thing I know for sure is a good place to start is to print out an address list for everyone, listing figure drawing group member phone numbers and emails as well as host addresses. So if you would like to be a member of the figure drawing group, please send me your email address (not myspace) to sketchclub@gmail.com, as well as your phone number and home address (if you are available to host occasionally). Label the email subject: Figure Drawing group. This will be our regular mailing list. This means there will be no more update bulletins about this on myspace.

Some other suggestions that we are working on are a plein air group and a painting group. These thing will happen eventually. It just takes a while to get stuff going. We are a few weeks from having a studio space that will help in making this happen.

Another suggestion has been to actually go through a curriculum of sorts, as a group. I’ve bought a model skull that we drew from this week. And that went well. I’ve also ordered an Asaro head that we can start working from. We can do these things in conjunction with studies from Andrew Loomis and George Bridgeman. This is as close to an Atelier experience as we can get in Lubbock for now, as far as I know. Learning as a group. If you would like to be in on this from the beginning, this is a good time to start.

Please write me back with feedback if you have any. Send suggestions on what you would like to happen, and how you think this could be improved, or just a different perspective these ideas. I appreciate your time. And I thank you all for participating and contributing so much, this would be nothing without you.

Remember, you can see the Sketch Club’s MySpace page right here, or e-mail them here. They meet on the first and third Saturday of every month over at the Freebird’s restaurant on the South Loop. If you like art, drawing, painting, you name it, go check ’em out.

Didn’t I see this in a movie somewhere?

Actually, despite the similarity to the arctic Fortress of Solitude in the “Superman” movies, this is a real cave in Mexico. The Cueva de los Cristales has some of the world’s largest known natural crystals — some of them as long as 36 feet. No, it’s definitely not ice. They’re gypsum crystals, formed over a few thousand years, thanks to mineral-rich water that used to fill the caverns and a constant temperature of 136 degrees.

Hopefully, they can figure out some way to preserve the cave — it’s in some danger from local mining, and it would be nice to see something that beautiful preserved.

(Link via Oliver Willis)

Mighty Bahlactus decrees that Friday nights are alright for fighting, and when Bahlactus decrees, we must obey!

From the final issue of “Major Bummer” by John Arcudi and Doug Mahnke:

That’s a time-traveling alien with six arms using one superhero as a club to beat up an older version of that same superhero. And yes, the word “Bludgeon” is repeatedly used as a sound effect.

That’s why they had to cancel the comic — they broke DC’s printing press with Pure Brain-Breaking Awesome-osity.