Tiny Titans #7

Starfire takes the rest of the Tiny Titans into space with her so they can visit her home planet and help her clean her room. But it takes a long time to travel through space — how will the Titans keep from getting in trouble for getting home so late? All that, plus Psimon plays checkers with Mallah and the Brain.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s the little things that make this so cool, like the way the shark toy eats the heck out of the Aquaman toy, Raven reading a “Patrick the Wolf Boy” comic, and especially the sound effects. When someone walks into a scene, the sound effects are: “Walk Walk Walk Walk.” And cleaning Starfire’s room gets sound effects like “Sweep Dust Pick Carry Put” — dang it, “Put” is a purely awesome sound effect. On top of all that, there is nothing in this world cuter than the Tiny Titans version of Monsieur Mallah and the Brain.

 

Atomic Robo: Dogs of War #1

Atomic Robo, an intelligent robot created in 1923 by Nikola Tesla, gets drafted to help fight the Nazis during World War II. The Germans have a new super-weapon, and Robo has to get to the Nazi’s secret lab in time to destroy them. Can he do it? Not if they want to keep this miniseries going for another four issues…

Verdict: Come on, it’s got robots fighting Nazis! Of course it’s a thumbs up! Robo is such a cool character, and Scott Wegener’s art is a lot of fun. There’s also quite a bit of regular wartime action, much of it done by non-robots, which is a good thing — it’s important for us to get to know the troops who will soon be threatened by those Nazi super-weapons.

 

I Kill Giants #1

A weird little story starring a fifth grader named Barbara Thorson. The local social outcast, Barbara smarts off to her teachers and family, wears bunny ears in class, abuses the other kids in her D&D games, and is absolutely obsessed with hunting and killing giants.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Like I said, a weird little story, but I love these kinds of character studies.

Hopefully, y’all are familiar with Project Rooftop, which focuses on superheroes and fashion — specifically, on having talented artists re-design costumes for familiar characters. In the past, they’ve had re-design competitions for everyone from Superman and Iron Man to Spoiler and the Rocketeer. The re-designs themselves are grand fun to look at, and to read the critiques of, so it’s a good read for anyone, artist or not.

Anyway, their newest competition is a Vampirella Revamp, for the horror cheesecake character best known for her skimpy red ribbon of a costume. The judges include original Vampi designer Trina Robbins, Vampi artist Joe Jusko, and slam-bang horror-pulp painter Dan Brereton — and the winning artist gets his or her design printed in a future issue of “Vampirella” as a pinup.

And I want to specifically challenge our Lubbock artists in the Lubbock Sketch Club — I’d like y’all to submit your Vampirella redesigns to the Project Rooftop competition. I know there are tons of talented Lubbock artists who could make a really awesome redesign, and even if a Lubbock design doesn’t make it in as the top winner, I think it’d be great publicity for the Sketch Club to hear the judges say they’re impressed by how the Lubbock artists stepped up to the plate and delivered their A-game.

The deadline is September 8th. Everyone get redesigning!

Let’s keep this one short and sweet this time. Bahlactus demands that Friday nights be dedicated to Friday Night Fights, and if we don’t do it, then Big B brings the pain. I just can’t stand pain, man.

From 1989’s Doom Patrol #26 by Grant Morrison, Richard Case, and John Nyberg, the Japanese superhero Sunburst (and a really, really enthusiastic TV host) meets up with the lovely but drowsy Sleepwalk from the Brotherhood of Dada:

And after a punch like that, Sunburst probably caught a little shut-eye, too…

Speaking of the Doom Patrol, when’s Crazy Jane gonna make it back into regular DC continuity, hah?

Ever since I’ve been a kid, there has never been anything that’s made me madder than stuff like racism, sexism, homophobia, all the various haterisms. Hating and abusing people because of the way they were born has always been something that just plain makes me see red.

Part of it is that my folks raised me right. They’ve always been conservatives, but they always taught us kids that people are people, and genetic differences are absolutely no excuse to treat anyone as an inferior.

Part of it is — I dunno. I hear a co-worker tell about someone in the grocery store dropping the N-word on him from outta nowhere, and I get mad. I read about studies that show that female bloggers are much, much more likely to attract abusive trolls than male bloggers, and I get mad. Most people can just let this stuff slide off, but haterism sets me off for reasons I really just can’t fathom.

So there’s stuff like this, and it makes me mad. And John DiBello seems to be happy with folks reprinting the whole thing, so here it is:

Overheard at San Diego Comic-Con while I was having lunch on the balcony of the Convention Center on Sunday July 27: a bunch of guys looking at the digital photos on the camera of another, while he narrated: “These were the Ghostbusters girls. That one, I grabbed her ass, ’cause I wanted to see what her reaction was.” This was only one example of several instances of harassment, stalking or assault that I saw at San Diego this time.

1. One of my friends was working at a con booth selling books. She was stalked by a man who came to her booth several times, pestering her to get together for a date that night. One of her co-workers chased him off the final time.

2. On Friday, just before the show closed, this same woman was closing up her tables when a group of four men came to her booth, started taking photographs of her, telling her she was the “prettiest girl at the con.” They they entered the booth, started hugging and kissing her and taking photographs of themselves doing so. She was confused and scared, but they left quickly after doing that.

3. Another friend of mine, a woman running her own booth: on Friday a man came to her booth and openly criticized her drawing ability and sense of design. Reports from others in the same section of the floor confirmed he’d targeted several women with the same sort of abuse and criticism.

Quite simply, this behavior has got to stop at Comic-Con. It should never be a sort of place where anyone, man or woman, feels unsafe or attacked either verbally or physically in any shape or form. There are those, sadly, who get off on this sort of behavior and assault, whether it’s to professional booth models, cosplayers or costumed women, or women who are just there to work. This is not acceptable behavior under any circumstance, no matter what you look like or how you’re dressed, whether you are in a Princess Leia slave girl outfit or business casual for running your booth.

On Saturday, the day after the second event I described above, I pulled out my convention book to investigate what you can do and who you can speak to after such an occurrence. On page two of the book there is a large grey box outlining “Convention Policies,” which contain rules against smoking, live animals, wheeled handcarts, recording at video presentations, drawing or aiming your replica weapon, and giving your badge to others. There is nothing about attendee-to-attendee personal behavior.

Page three of the book contains a “Where Is It?” guide to specific Comic-Con events and services. There’s no general information room or desk listed, nor is there a contact location for security, so I go to the Guest Relations Desk. I speak to a volunteer manning the desk; she’s sympathetic to the situation but who doesn’t have a clear answer to my question: “What’s Comic-Con’s policy and method of dealing with complaints about harassment?” She directs me to the nearest security guard, who is also sympathetic listening to my reports, but short of the women wanting to report the incidents with the names of their harassers, there’s little that can be done.

“I understand that,” I tell them both, “but what I’m asking is more hypothetical and informational: if there is a set Comic-Con policy on harassment and physical and verbal abuse on Con attendees and exhibitors, and if so, what’s the specific procedure by which someone should report it, and specifically where should they go?” But this wasn’t a question either could answer.

So, according to published con policy, there is no tolerance for smoking, drawn weapons, personal pages or selling bootleg videos on the floor, and these rules are written down in black and white in the con booklet. There is not a word in the written rules about harassment or the like. I would like to see something like “Comic-Con has zero tolerance for harassment or violence against any of our attendees or exhibitors. Please report instances to a security guard or the Con Office in room XXX.”

The first step to preventing such harassment is giving its victims the knowledge that they can safely and swiftly report such instances to someone in authority. Having no published guideline, and indeed being unable to give a clear answer to questions about it, gives harassment and violence one more rep-tape loophole to hide behind.

I enjoyed Comic-Con. I’m looking forward to coming back next year. So, in fact, are the two women whose experiences I’ve retold above. Aside from those instances, they had a good time at the show. But those instances of harassment shouldn’t have happened at all, and that they did under no clear-cut instructions about what to do sadly invites the continuation of such behavior, or even worse.

I don’t understand why there’s no such written policy about what is not tolerated and what to do when this happens. Is there anyone at Comic-Con able to explain this? Does a similar written policy exist in the booklets for other conventions (SF, comics or otherwise) that could be used as a model? Can it be adapted or adapted, and enforced, for Comic-Con? As the leading event of the comics and pop culture world, Comic-Con should work to make everyone who attends feel comfortable and safe.

Yeah, that’s the kind of stuff that just sets me off. It’s hard for me to think of very much I can say about it, without either going the Spider Jerusalem route and dropping the F-bomb about 8,000 times, or booking a ticket to the next Comic-Con just so I can hit people with hammers.

There’s no excuse for anyone to be harassed or assaulted anywhere or any time, and there’s also no excuse for a huge event like the San Diego Comic-Con not to have anti-harassment guidelines and procedures in place. Granted, there’s no way to stop creeps from being creeps, but any convention that doesn’t have policies to eject harassers, stalkers, and abusers, or to protect convention attendees from assault, abuse, or harassment — well, they need to get those policies in place now. If only to keep my blood pressure and killing rages under control.

 

Hellboy: The Crooked Man #2

We got two horror masters working on this one. Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy, handles the writing, while Richard Corben takes care of the art. Hellboy, Tom Ferrell, and Cora Fisher are heading for a church in the Appalachian Mountains to bury Tom’s father. But the witches in the area — including the creepy, subterranean, monster-witches who live in the mines below — don’t want Cora to get away from them, so they hex her until her body explodes with hordes of eyeless albino frogs, bats, snakes and centipedes! Yuck! When Tom and Hellboy finally get to the church, they find it mostly ruined, but the blind preacher who runs it tells them that Cora’s soul was saved and that the church, as consecrated ground, is guaranteed safe ground from witches. But is it safe from the evil Crooked Man himself?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Very creepy. I mean, very, very creepy. Most Hellboy stories tend to have as much pulp action in ’em as horror, but this one, so far, is pretty pure scary stuff. Grand fun.

 

B.P.R.D.: The Warning #2

The entire B.P.R.D. team mobilizes to track down Gilfryd, the immortal mad sorceror who’s been invading Liz Sherman’s mind. They find his temple in the South American jungles, but they can’t find him. Or rather, he won’t let them find him. He puts the rest of the squad in a trance and appears to Liz alone, threatening to kill everyone if she doesn’t come with him. Everyone else gets caught completely flat-footed — Liz vanishes, Gilfryd gets away, and they even lose their transport planes to sabotage.

Verdict: I think I’ll give it a thumbs up. Nothing real fancy, but the story’s advancing nicely, and we still get some good creepy moments.

 

The Goon #27

We take a break from our regular storyline to get a trio of stories here. First, Eric Powell brings us the, umm, heartwarming story of a zombie momma and her horde of gross but devoted zombie-monster babies. After that, Kyle Holtz sends the Goon and Frankie on a quest to track down the monstrous and smelly Skunk Ape in its new disguise. Finally, Rebecca Sugar has a short story about the criminal mad scientist Dr. Alloy. And Eric’s letter column includes news about the cage fighter and roller derby team he’s sponsoring. Plus, bank managers in South Africa and China want Eric to send them some money!

Verdict: Baby, I do believe “The Goon” always gets a thumbs up. Funny, goofy, gross, and weird, so it’s got all the stuff I love.

Batman #679

In this issue: Batman’s craaaaaaazy.

He’s running around Gotham City dressed in a garish purple, red, and yellow version of his costume, he’s getting advice from Bat-Mite, who probably isn’t there at all, and he’s able to talk to gargoyles. He pulls out one of his teeth, because the Black Glove hid a tracing device there. Batman’s craaaaaazy.

But he’s able to capture and brutally interrogate Charlie Caligula from the Club of Villains, and Robin manages to elude Pierrot Lunaire and Springheeled Jack. The Knight and Squire are on the way, too. But Commissioner Gordon’s stuck in a deathtrapped Wayne Manor, Alfred has been tied up and beaten, Nightwing is scheduled for a lobotomy in Arkham Asylum, Jezebel Jet has been captured, and the Black Glove claims to be Thomas Wayne, Batman’s father. And the Joker is still waiting in the wings…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Utterly madcap lunacy. Does anyone know where Grant Morrison is going with this? Does Grant himself know? I reserve the right to hate where everything may wind up, but for now, wow, what a ride.

Captain Britain and MI:13 #4

Captain Britain has returned to life, pulled Excalibur from the stone, and has taken the battle to the evil super-magical Skrull. Dr. Faiza Hussain is trying in vain to save the life of the Black Knight. Pete Wisdom, Spitfire, and John the Skrull have been captured by the Skrulls in the other-dimensional Avalon. The Skrulls kill John for mouthing off, but Captain Britain manages to kill the head Skrull, returning magic to Avalon. At this point, all the supernatural evil in Britain is empowered to return to earth, but because Wisdom freed them, they grant him a single wish. Can he manage to use one wish to save everyone?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Excellent action all around. Good character bits for Faiza Hussain and Pete Wisdom. Haven’t really seen very much from Spitfire — hope that changes soon. Looks like the new team will have their hands full taking care of all those evil spirits, too. I’m disappointed that John the Skrull exited the scene so quickly, though.

Fantastic Four: True Story #1

This is what they’re talking about when they talk “high concept”: a bunch of fictional superheroes travel through the universe of fiction and encounter a bunch of characters from fiction.

Basically, everyone on earth has lost interest in fiction. No one’s reading books, no one’s watching movies. And actually, something pretty nasty is happening within fiction itself — we see something dark and scary threatening Tarzan, Riki-Tiki-Tavi, and the heroes of M.R. James’ ghost stories. So Reed Richards invents the science of, well, let’s call it fictionography and creates an imaginary fictocraft that the FF can use to travel into the world of fiction. Once there, they meet their guide, Dante Alighieri, writer of — and a character in — “The Divine Comedy.” And the team’s first mission? Fight off a horde of imps and gremlins to protect the Dashwood sisters from Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility.”

Verdict: Thumbs up. There are some really funny moments in here — Johnny Storm, Ben Grimm, and a defeated monster surrounded by mimes; Ben and Johnny’s quarrel condensed down to basic script descriptions; Reed happily dropping a “Behold!” on everyone; the FF not understanding why Dante refers to them as “comic book characters;” and Ben dropping Jane Austen quotes while clobbering monsters.

I do wish the story was moving a shade faster, and I’ve got to quibble about some of the selections for the FF’s favorite fictional works — Reed Richards loving the “Josie and the Pussycats” movie and Ben Grimm loving “Of Mice and Men” just don’t really make sense. Reed is so a sci-fi fan, if only to scavenge the plots for new things to invent, and Ben seems like the type to go for either Mack Bolan novels or old action pulps.

Manhunter #33

Kate, still trying to track down who’s killing scores of women in the Mexican deserts, gets ambushed in a pharamaceutical company by a bunch of superpowered security guards. Elsewhere, her mother and (I guess) dad learn that her (I guess) brother has gotten superpowers. Kate also runs into the Suicide Squad, not knowing that the Birds of Prey are on the way to bail her out.

Verdict: Thumbs down. I know I’m not as well acquainted with Manhunter’s backstory as I could be, but this story confused the tar outta me. Not real thrilled with the art either.

This is a story I just couldn’t resist.

Some of y’all (hopefully a lot of y’all — I don’t think I’m that much older than the rest of you) may remember a product of the 1970s called “Wacky Packages” — bubble gum trading cards and stickers that featured gross parodies of well-known consumer products. I used to love these when I was a kid — I’m sure they’ve all been thrown away long ago, but they were (to my high-toned grade-school mind) extremely funny and fun to stick on your bike or your notebook or your school desk.

And it turns out that one of the original “Wacky Packages” creators was Art Spiegelman, the guy who wrote and drew the Pulitzer-Prize-winning graphic novel “Maus”.

Not that Topps, or more specifically illustrator Art Spiegelman and writer Jay Lynch — goaded by Topps’ Woody Gelman and Len Brown — knew the import of the work. In the preface to the new book “Wacky Packages” (Abrams), a collection of the first seven series of the Topps cards, Spiegelman — yes, the same Art Spiegelman who won a Pulitzer Prize for “Maus” — remembers the creation of Wackies as being “a dream job,” but something that would probably be forgotten.

“It was all done as Part of a Day’s Work, much like the way early comic books were made: they certainly weren’t made as art, they weren’t sold as art, and they weren’t thought of as art,” he says in the book’s introduction. “Wacky Packages just formed an island of subversive underground culture in the surrounding sea of junk.”

It’s amazing that these are considered collectable now. I think if I had a package of these now… well, I’d probably just go stick ’em on my desk at work. Can’t go wrong with the classics…

 

Comic Book Comics #2

The comic book about this history of comic books continues. The creation of Captain America and his crushing workload cause Jack Kirby to spontaneously manifest the Kirby Style; Stanley Leiber becomes Stan Lee and makes Kirby want to kill him; most comics creators spend the war creating artwork and comics for the military; Walt Disney begins his slide into “Citizen Kane” style megalomania; Bert Christman dies in the war; romance comics become the big post-war craze; William Moulton Marston’s kinky sex life helps create Wonder Woman; Bill Gaines takes over EC Comics, recreates it as an edgy crime-and-horror shop, and sets himself up for a confrontation with Fredric Wertham and the U.S. Congress.

Verdict: Way, way thumbs up. The guys who revolutionized nonfiction comics with “Action Philosophers” are doing a bang-up job with this new effort. I hadn’t heard half of these stories before, and even the ones I already knew (William Marston was a very kinky boy, the kind you don’t take home to mother) got an extra boost by adding some more historical context.

And the cartooning is really great fun. There’s a ton of humor in every drawing, from the futuristic Archie gang to the hilarious twists and turns of romance comics to the many madcap adventures of Bill Gaines. Also lots of fun is the letter column in the back (No, seriously, even more good historical tidbits, some funny stuff, and some extra comics) and the section on the “World’s Greatest Comic Book Collection” with market values for some of the groundbreaking comics featured in the issue.

If you haven’t gotten it yet, go give it a try. Get better acquainted with yer hobby, why don’tcha?

 

Short answer? I have no idea.

But it is something I’ve been pondering. It’s absolutely certain we’ll see at least one more sequel in this franchise — after pulling down over $400 million in a little over three weeks, there’s no way Warner Brothers will let director Christopher Nolan or Christian Bale walk on this. But the big talk in movie circles is who the next Bat-villain will be.

Now let’s not talk actors — Nolan’s gotten great results by going with actors you’d never actually associate with the characters they played. Besides, anything you’re hearing now about Angelina Jolie or Johnny Depp is strictly scuttlebutt that almost certainly won’t come to pass.

So who are our possibilities?

I really doubt we’ll see the Joker or Two-Face make a return appearance. No one’s going to be dumb enough to try to fill Heath Ledger’s shoes for a sequel, and Harvey Dent’s dead. No, no weaseling out of this — no “Well, they didn’t take his pulse, we don’t know he’s in the coffin, he might be alive.” No, he’s dead. Bringing him back to life is a comic book trick, and Nolan isn’t playing these movies by comic book rules.

Nolan’s already said he dislikes the Penguin and doesn’t want him in a movie, so it’s a pretty sure bet we can rule him out.

Everyone keeps talking up the Riddler and Catwoman, but I don’t see it happening. They just don’t fit into the previous films’ mold. Ra’s al Ghul, Scarecrow, and the Joker all had big plans to change the face of Gotham City, and Riddler and Catwoman have never been that variety of crazy. Catwoman is a burglar, and Riddler is an obsessive-compulsive bank robber. They’re not “Destroy the City” types.

I also think we can rule out Batman’s more fantastical villains, like Mr. Freeze, Killer Croc, and Clayface. I think they’d make pretty interesting villains, but the movies have gone for a more realistic feel, and superscientific freeze guns, crocodilian mutants with superstrength, and amorphous shapeshifting blob-men just don’t fit into the movie’s universe, no matter how cool their stories may be.

I’m not sure that Harley Quinn would work without the Joker, but she might make a believable Joker substitute, with the right tweaks.

Poison Ivy and the Mad Hatter straddle the realistic/unrealistic barrier. With the right adjustments in their origins and powers, they might be workable.

Bane, Hush, and the Ventriloquist would have the right amount of realism on their side. Bane and Hush definitely have their hate on for Batman, and might be willing to hatch city-destroying schemes to get at him. The Ventriloquist has definitely got the craaaaazy workin’ for him, but I don’t know whether you could turn him into the type who wants to wreck large swaths of the city.

My picks, in order of preference? (1) The Ventriloquist — when three of your past four movie villains have been jam-packed with insanity sauce, I think Ventriloquist and his puppet Scarface are cracked enough to fit in just fine; (2) Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn — again, with the right tweaks, I could see them being great, and isn’t it time we saw some good Bat-villains who were female?; (3) Bane — not my favorite villain, but he’s got a good built-in storyline; (4) Hush — another who’s not my favorite, but he makes a pretty good anti-Batman; (5) Mad Hatter — his obsessions with Batman’s cowl and using mind control on Gothamites would be pretty good, but I worry that all the bizarre “Alice in Wonderland” stuff might make him too weird to be useable.

So there are my picks. What are yours?