HAPPY BIRTHDAY STAN LEE! 91 Years Young! Excelsior!

One of my personal heroes turns 91 today.  The outstanding, stupendous and infallible STAN LEE!

Here are a couple of my favorite pictures of him posted over on CBR's Robot Six.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HERO!
~Steve

"Mini" Reading - X-Men Black Sun

Mini (Series) reading can admittedly suck sometimes.  For the most part they are, as a rule, hit and miss but every once in a while you get a winner.  The X-Men are mini-series whores.  Like a few cheerleaders, they might not know it but they just are.

I actually bought these books on a whim from ebay.  You know when you buy something and then that same seller has other items for good prices and your like, "heck why not, I'll get combined shipping".  Yep this was one of those.  I really enjoyed it for a few reasons my number one was the return of MAGIK!  Not only is she like my 6th favorite X-Men but that is also my preferred spelling of the word magik (also known as magic).

Chris Claremont does a great job weaving this tale but I wont go over the whole story because some poor soul has already done that in great detail @ UXN.

I did want to however want to share some of my favorite panels.  Even though it's painfully clear the art in these books are classic late 90's early 00's style there is still some really cool stuff from artist Tom Derenick.

As seen above there is some great stuff in this mini-series and any X-Men fan should have a copy in their collection!  And in the last pages, a classic comics wrap up and who doesn't love a good "with great responsibility..." speech?

Back to reading more comics,
~Steve

Cool Comic Stuff From The Internet

Everyone remembers those art history classes they make you take in college right?  Well I really enjoyed mine.  No seriously.  As proof, I still have my art history text book while others went in the garage sale box. (Okay I realize that's not real proof because I'm just telling you I still have it but it's all I got, so accept it)

Anyways I stumbled across this and had to share because guess who just got a new desktop background!

Awesome right!?!  What, not convinced of it's awesomeness?  Okay here's the original:

See?  Crap in comparison just like I said!  Move over Michelangelo, Nick Perks in the Sistine Chapel Hizouse!

Perk’s “Creation of The Surfer” is a masterpiece!  The original concept transformed into Galactus and the Surfer is genius.

Check this out and all the other awesome stuff @ CBR Comics Should Be Good - The Line It Is Drawn

As Always Wishing I Could Draw,
~Steve

Batman The Killing Joke Original Art Revealed (Enter Dramatic Music Here)

A REALLY cool piece of comic lore as popped up recently and this is the story thanks to my favorite comic news source CBR:

As if recent renewed debate about its ending weren’t enough to demonstrate that, after 25 years, Batman: The Killing Joke can still spur discussion, now new original artwork has surfaced indicating the scene depicting the torture of Barbara Gordon was initially far more graphic and sexualized.A photo of the inked page (below, definitely NSFW) was tweeted Sunday by Bill Hynes, a former employee of Gosh! Comics in London, revealing a naked and bleeding Barbara among the montage of images shown to her father James Gordon. In the published comic, by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland, that shot is replaced by a close-up of Barbara’s face.

Indeed, whether the Joker raped Barbara Gordon has been long debated, with some readers insisting the violence was physical and not necessarily sexual. This page now may cast the scene, and the already-controversial comic, in a slightly different light.

Read the full article at CBR.COM

Here are my thoughts:

This doesn't change anything for me in the story. Everyone is going to assign their own assumptions to the story whether the art is “graphic” or not. That’s something about the comic medium I love and this is one story that uses the readers imagination masterfully and it’s made this into one of the greatest Batman stories of all time.

For instance for me the Joker has never had any interest in sex. Whether in his day to day life or in his crime it’s never been a priority or focus for him so I never saw this scene as one where he sexually violated her. This is all about humiliating, torturing, degrading and just plain beating down the Gordon’s in the most sadistic way possible. So, check check and check.

Although I do have to say this is a really cool piece of comic lore and if anyone ever does get their hands on this art they’ll either get a pretty penny for it or hold onto it and be transformed into a Geek God from it’s power. How’s that for an origin story!

Doing my best to keep up with the "cool" comics guys,
~Steve

Weird Stuff In Comics - Superboy and the Legion of Superheroes 253 & 254

Weird Stuff In Comics.  I realize this title implies that seeing weird things in comics would be an out of place oddity, when in fact the majority of the things written in comics are implicitly and by definition, weird.  But that aside in the interest of getting to the good stuff, if it helps think of it as, "The REALLY Weird Stuff In Comics"!

Today's focus is on a little known hero by the name of SUPERMAN!

Okay, so in this case Superboy and his favorite after school club that happens to be 1000 years in the future and full of super beings: The Legion of Super Heroes!

Superman has been around for a long time and in that time has had MANY writers scribe his adventures and it's the older Superman comics that are known for having some of the wackiest stories and plot lines in comics history.  Following along those lines Superboy and the Legion of Super Heroes issues 253 & 254, does not disappoint.  Published Circa July/August 1979, written by the legendary Gerry Conway and brought to life by Joe Staton & Dave Hunt.

Here is the summary before the weirdness:  A group of super powered beings has come together under the banner of revenge to kill the six legionnaires they believe is responsible for destroying their planet!

THEN they systematically target and "kill" all six of the Legionnaires (enter shocked and surprised gasp here).  BUT WAIT!  What was that steak of light?

Crazy right?  I laughed out loud after reading these last three pages.  I mean come on, Superboy takes a wild guess that some gases they all inhaled would put them in a protective coma if he zapped them with his x-ray vision and it works!?!  Well of course it works, it's a comic book!  But come on Gerry!  At what point do you think he said, "yeah that sounds good lets go with that"?  Even the Legion and Superboy himself can't believe this crap:

So yeah it's quirky, wacky, zany and every other word for crazy but this is something I love about old comics.  Everything was science fiction back then.  Even the things we can now say are conceivable or even plausible because of what we know, was impossible back then, which meant nothing was off the table and it sure made for one hell of a ride through some of those stories.

NEXT: Comics? Movies? Comic Movies?,

~Steve