Okay, time for a new set of 12 rounds of Friday Night Fights, and this time, SpaceBooger has declared a theme — every new round has to include a character from the previous fight.

And honestly, there’s no way I can do that.

My comics collection isn’t that vast, the organization is pretty poor, and an awful lot of my comics aren’t really known for good fights. Twelve fights, all linked from one character to another? I could never get something like that to work.

So instead, I’m gonna cheat.

I’ve got an old CD-ROM that includes every single issue of “Fantastic Four” all the way from the first issue to 2006. (Y’all know where I can find more of those? Wotta bargain, I gotta say.) And I’m pretty blasted sure I can find 12 Fantastic Four comics that feature Ben Grimm kickin’ some yahoo’s patootie, or sometimes, getting his own craggy butt whupped.

So here we go: From October 1968’s Fantastic Four #79, by the one-and-only Stan Lee and the even more one-and-only Jack Kirby: Ben has finally found a way to shed his rocky exterior and rejoin the human race, but when he and Alicia Masters are attacked by one of the Mad Thinker’s androids, he has to choose between letting the android wreck the place up, or putting on a pair of gloves that’ll turn him back into a rock monster permanently. What do you think he decides?

And there we go, with Round 1 out of the way. Next week? I think it’ll probably include the Thing.

Crud, I’ve been trying to think of a nice clever hook for this latest edition of Friday Night Fights, but it just ain’t happening. But with this particular battle, the best hook may be the battle itself.

So here we got August 2006’s Nextwave #6 by Warren Ellis, Stuart Immonen, and Wade von Grawbadger. It features Elsa Bloodstone, armed only with a shovel, and Tabitha Smith, armed only with her usual “Tick Tick Tick BOOM,” against a horde of samurai robots.

I’ll repeat that for added emphasis: SAMURAI ROBOTS.

Let’s get right to the mayhem:

Don’t forget to head out to SpaceBooger’s place a little later this evening and vote for your favorite fights — the winner gets a prize. Yes, your votes could cause me to get stuff and that’s the BEST THING EVER.

Y’all have a great weekend — see ya Monday…

I’m not much of a fan of St. Paddy’s Day, and I always actually end up avoiding wearing green on March 17. Quite honestly, I’ve got enough natural Irishness in me — why should I have to advertise it any further? I can sing “Danny Boy” with a proper Irish tenor lilt, and you still want me to go out and drink cheap green beer? Suck my shillelagh, laddy-buck.

But SpaceBooger wants to have a special post-St. Patrick’s Day edition of Friday Night Fights, featuring green contestants? Okay, I’m fine with that.

From Green Lantern #106, late October 1998, by Ron Marz, Paul Pelletier, and Terry Austin: time-lost Green Lantern Hal Jordan takes on time-lost Parallax Hal Jordan:

Hope y’all had a happy St. Patrick’s Day, either wearing green and wishing you were Irish, or not wearing green and smirking at all the wannabes. Now bring on the weekend!

Alright, short and simple tonight. Y’all know the rules, right? Friday Night Fights is all about the fightin’.

Tonight’s battle comes from July 2009’s Chew #2 by John Layman and Rob Guillory, as the very calm, very sophisticated Mason Savoy faces off against a bunch of mafia ninjas.

So there we go. See youse mugs next week!

Dwayne McDuffie died this week. And I’m still not over it. He wasn’t my favorite writer, but he was up in the top ranks. He’d worked on comics I liked, and he’d founded an incredibly cool comic company. His work turned me into a comics reader again, after years away from the hobby. He had his head on straight, and I respected him enormously. So naturally, I decided to see if I could find something he wrote for Friday Night Fights.

I was all set to scan a really cool fight from one of the first few issues of Icon — Rocket awesomely knocking around lots of thuggish, bullying cops. But I found something I liked better. It’s not as over-the-top violent, but it’s one of the most powerful things I’ve ever gotten to read in a comic.

So this is from November 1993’s Icon #7 by Dwayne McDuffie, M.D. Bright, and Mike Gustovich. The backstory: Icon is an extremely long-lived alien who was stranded on Earth in the 1830s. His escape pod was found by a slave, and the pod automatically rewrote his DNA to match whoever opened the pod, to improve his chances of survival. So after 150 years as a black man, Augustus Freeman has become a very wealthy businessman with a very conservative outlook. Raquel Ervin is a teenager from the bad side of Paris Island who has discovered that Freeman has superpowers — she persuades him to become a superhero, and he gives her an alien-tech belt that allows her to become his sidekick, Rocket.

Anyway, Raquel discovers that she’s pregnant and goes to Freeman asking for a loan so she can get an abortion. She’s angry about it and gives him a lot of guff, expecting that he’ll disapprove of her decision. But he reveals that a few decades ago, when he was married, his human wife got pregnant. It seemed likely that a baby with human and alien DNA wouldn’t be viable and would certainly endanger the mother’s life, so they made the then-risky and illegal decision to abort the baby. At that point, Icon says:

And Raquel responds in a way that surprises the reader, Icon, and probably Raquel herself:

And there we go. Two different characters with radically different backgrounds and personalities, neither one conforming to easy stereotypes. That’s what I loved about McDuffie’s writing — his characters would be interesting with or without powers and colorful spandex. And what he wrote always had power.

I hope there are more writers out there emulating what he was able to do. Comics need good writers and good characters.

We know the routine by now — Friday + Night + Fights = FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Today’s fight is from February 1969’s Detective Comics #384 by Mike Friedrich, Gil Kane, and Murphy Anderson (and reprinted just this week in the previously reviewed Detective Comics Classics one-shot) as Batgirl meets up with some underworld do-badders.

Wow, hats off to Gil Kane, folks. The man could draw the holy screaming heck out of a fight scene!

Well, I’ve heard how you’ve been spending your weekends, and I’m very disappointed. You could at least try to live it up, instead of spending all your time eating cold biscuits, raking the yard, organizing your underwear drawer in order of colors of skidmarks, and taking glamour shots of your refrigerator. Please try to spend your weekend the right way — with debauchery and sleeping late and running about making the neighbors think you’re crazy… and you can get it all started with a little FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Today’s battle comes from April 1998’s Quantum and Woody #11 by Christopher Priest, M.D. Bright, Greg Adams, and Keith Williams, as we enjoy a flashback of Eric Henderson taking care of a bunch of racist douchebags.

Y’all have a hellaciously awesome weekend, and I’ll see y’all back here on Monday.

Well, the bad news is: It’s February. The worst month of the year. Luckily, it’s also the shortest, but that means you get a maximum amount of horribleness packed into each and every day. And the good news is: Well, there is no good news. I mean, it’s February.

But we can take a little comfort in the fact that it’s Friday, and that means the weekend, and that means FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Our fight today comes from February 1989’s Silver Surfer #20 by Steve Englehart and Ron Lim, in which Mantis shows up somewhere, jumps out of a plane, and kicks the carp out of two random security guards.

One may ask why Mantis felt the need to beat up cops who probably had a good reason to ask why a green woman had just jumped out of a plane. Maybe they want her to disembark through the terminal, like a normal passenger. Maybe they wanted to make sure she remembered to go pick up her luggage. Maybe they like green women in skimpy clothing. But who doesn’t, right?

But both of them learned a valuable lesson: February is a horrible, horrible month.

Awright, people, line up! We’ve all had a rough week, and we’re all aching for the weekend to get started. I assume you’re all going to get busy with your usual weekend plans — eating club crackers, painting the doghouse, shaving various body parts, and re-organizing your silverware drawer. Well, forget it! You are going to live this weekend like you’re not going to get another one for five whole days, and that’s all there is to it! And the right way to start off a good, crazy weekend? Say it with me now — FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

We’re going to make sure tonight’s battle is one for the ages — we’re going with a true comic classic: February 1963’s Fantastic Four #11 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby! It all starts quietly as the FF are going through their fan mail…

Waitaminute — no return address? No, Ben, don’t open it — it’s from your greatest archnemeses…

Yep, the Yancy Street Gang strikes again!

See you guys back here on Monday — hope you get rested and refreshed before then…

Awright, I slacked off last week, but it’s time to pull out some scans from some actually decent fights for a change. So let’s kick out the jams and jump right into tonight’s edition of… FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

This evening’s battle looks like it might’ve been better suited to Halloween… but I don’t want to wait another nine months to use this, so it’s getting used right now. From December 2008’s Monster-Size Hulk #1, from a story by Jeff Parker and Gabriel Hardman — Victoria Frankenstein, the granddaughter of, well, Frankenstein, has used a gamma-powered blood transfusion to revive the legendary Monster of Frankenstein!

I hear hitting each other with tractors is the traditional way to celebrate Fridays in Transylvania.

Everyone have a great weekend, and I’ll see y’all back here on Monday.