Two posts on Armageddon: Inferno is probably at least one post too many, huh?

Three things that occurred to me while rereading Armageddon: Inferno the other day that I couldn't really easily fit into that last post...

1.) Hey, I know all these guys now...! When I first read Armageddon: Inferno in 1992, as a child of 15, I knew most of the characters...at least the superhero ones, anyway. 

I mean, I had watched television before, so of course I knew of the likes of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and The Flash (Although I don't think I had yet realized this Flash was a different one in the costume than the other guy). And having read a handful of the Armageddon 2001 annuals (including the bookend specials) the previous year and having been in a comics shop on a semi-regular basis by then, I had a decent lay of the land of the DC Universe, and thus who knew Waverider, Lobo and Martian Manhunter were. And I wasn't shocked to see that Green Lantern was some guy with a bad haircut and comically large boots instead of the guy from The Super Powers Team cartoon. Hell, I could even identify Power Girl, Troia and the modern Hawkpeople, even if I couldn't tell you what their whole deals were, like, who exactly they were and where they came from (Fun fact: I still can't! Have any of their origins been settled in the last 34 years?).

As a teenager who used to check out copies of the Overstreet Price Guide from the public library just to look at the titles and names of characters and creators (There weren't a whole lot of comics in the libraries back then), I also knew the various Golden Agers who made up the Justice Society of America (well, maybe not Sandy the Golden Boy) and most of the other players in the book; not sure if I recognized Sgt. Rock's name from the guide, or from the closing credits of the original Predator movie, where Shane Black's Hawkins is shown reading an issue of his comic. 

Still, this particular miniseries introduced me to several characters, like Jo Nah/Ultra Boy from the Legion of Super-Heroes, World War I's Enemy Ace Hans von Hammer and World War II heroes Gunner, Sarge and Pooch and Johnny Cloud, The Navajo Ace.

Most of those guys were minor enough that even now, after decades of reading DC Comics, I still haven't read many stories featuring them, and those that I have tend to be ones in which they just make cameos or are name-dropped. (Enemy Ace is an exception though, as I've read hundreds of pages of his adventures at this point, thanks to a Showcase Presents collection (as well as a few other appearances, including miniseries War Idyll and War in Heaven). (Oh, and I'm sure there have been plenty of Ultra Boy appearances since 1992, but for the most part I try to avoid Legion comics; for whatever reason, they just seem intimidating to me.)

This recent re-read of Armageddon: Inferno hit completely different than the series did when I had originally read it. Back then, I was still just dipping my toes into the DC Universe, whereas now I have spent years and years swimming in it and plumbing its depths. This time around, not only did I know all these guys' identities, but in most cases, I now know all about them, what their stories were before John Ostrander wrote them into this time-travel series and where they would go afterwards. Likewise, the names and careers of creators like "John Ostrander" and "Tom Mandrake" and "Art Adams" and "Walt Simonson" are pretty well known to me.

So, this time I was really able to appreciate the comic as something of a Who's Who in the DC Universe by way of a fight comic, and the all-star nature of the creative team.

I even recognized the cameos by The Unknown Soldier and Mademoiselle Marie, who I guess Luke McDonnell drew in that second panel above, although the rendering is awful rough. (The tank also resembles The Haunted Tank, although without a ghostly Civil War general floating around it, I can't be 100% sure that's what McDonnell meant to draw there, or if it's some random American tank with a star on it).

2.) I know the prices of goods and services rise over time, but still...!  I was shocked to learn that each of these issues only cost $1.00. I could have sworn comic books were $2 or $2.50 when I had started reading them. I just checked dc.com, and it looks like the average comic book of theirs today is still $3.99 for 20 pages, which is what they cost when I stopped buying single issues and switched to trades a few years back (I had to double-check, because with the price of everything else seemingly going up in the last five years or so, I couldn't be sure comics weren't even more than $4 a pop now).

While it is not at all surprising that comic books cost a lot more today than they did in 1992, I still thought it worth noting that dang, you could really get a whole four-issue, 88-page mini-series back then for the cost of a single, 20-page chapter of a story arc today (plus an extra penny).

I can't imagine being a 15-year-old in 2026 and going into a comic shop and thinking to myself, "Yes, I would like to spend $3.99 on this issue of Batman, which, if I understand how comics work correctly, will get me one-fourth or one-sixth of a single story." I mean, not when I can get...well, let's see the page-count and price of the last manga volume I bought...about 200 pages for $14.99 on a different shelf of the shop (Or a big box bookstore or online, I guess).

3.) Oh yeah, comics used to have ads in them, didn't they? I have now been reading comics in trade format for so long now that I forgot what it's like to see ads in comic books. And in the last comics I was reading, the ads were mostly house ads for other books from DC or Marvel or IDW or whoever the publisher of the particular book containing them was. 

It was therefore something of a novelty to read this series in back issues pulled from a long box (It's never been collected in trade, which is how I generally revisit old comics now) and to see any ads at all, let alone the specific ads of 1991. 

They offer a rather interesting window into who DC and the companies who purchased the ads thought must be buying comic books at the time, too. As far as I can tell, it seemed to be kids...and some adults who were comic book fans and/or collectors.

Just out of curiosity, I took note of all the ads in here. The one above was the most surprising, I thought, as that sort of page filled with a checkboard of a bunch of small ads, complete with an ad for a Charles Atlas body and live sea horses, is something I would have guessed would have been in Silver and Bronze Age comics, rather than something from the early '90s. 

Anyway, Armageddon: Inferno contained ads for movies (Cool World, Encino Man and Honey, I Blew Up The Kid, plus one for the video release of Frankenweenie), candy (Three Musketeers, Skittles and Starbursts), collectible cards (Score and Upper Deck's Major League Baseball cards, Fleer's basketball cards, "The Official Trading Car of Super Bowl XXVI" and some kind of parody baseball cards called "Flopps"), videogames (Super Smash TV, Super WrestleMania, Kid Chameleon, Krusty's Fun House, Top Gear and the Game Genie), upcoming comics conventions (John Byrne, Moebius, Tom Lyle, Steve Bissette and more in Boston! Rob Liefeld in New York!) and back issues (East Coast Comics, Mile High Comics, Twin City Books, Kingpin, American Comics & Entertainment), plus Palladium role-playing games, Topps' Batman Returns souvenir magazines, Wyler's drink mix, Estes brand precision rockets and Kiss' Revenge album. 

Oh, and one for the Constitution of the United States from the Ad Council which, if you mailed-in for it, would get you a free informational kit including your very own copy of the constitution.

I suppose the presence of such ads is what helped DC be able to sell these things for only a buck back then.

As for house ads, they were fairly few and far between relative to the DC comics of the past few decades. There was one for Justice League Spectacular #1, another for "The Blaze/Satanus War" in the Superman books, one for the four-book Superman line with a blurb from Comic Buyer's Guide, and another for DC Comics Cosmic Cards ("From Clark Kent to Hell-Bent" the ad read, showing a picture of a Superman card and Lobo card), one offering subscriptions to 31 different DC books (ranging in price from $12 to $21),  and a half-page black-and-white ad for imprint Impact Comics' The Web #10 and The Crusaders #1 (I wouldn't mind DC collecting their Impact books, if they could straighten out the rights, nor would I mind stumbling upon some of those series in a discount back issue bin).  

None of the ads for particular books mentioned the names of the creators involved with producing them. 

**********************

By the way, when Googling something for my post about Armageddon: Inferno, I stumbled upon this five-year-old post at Steve Mollmann's Sciences' Less Accurate Grandmother blog, if you'd like another take on the miniseries. I seem to have liked it far more than he did. I was heartened by the fact that he chose to illustrate the post with one of the best sequences, that in which Simonson draws Enemy Ace gunning down a pterosaur. I didn't include that in my post, but only because I had already posted it on Bluesky. 

The Justice League doesn't really seem to enjoy reading DC Comics.

Many of this past week's DC Comics contained a two-page house ad promoting the DC Essential Catalog, which you can find at your comic shop, or online at dccomics.com/dcessential. It's designed to help sell DC's graphic novels and collections as gifts. Most of the ad consists of the above image by pencil artist David Finch, depicting the founding members of the New 52 Justice League, crowded around a pile of short boxes and graphic novels and reading in the snow in front of the Hall of Justice. The far right includes a checklist of the Top 25 collections and graphic novels on that "essentials" list, under the heading "DC Essential Graphic Novels 2018" (More on that in a bit).

What most struck me about the ad, however, is how downright unhappy the Justice Leaguers all look to be reading comics at all.

Granted, most people don't grin, smile or otherwise evince great joy while they are reading, but come on gang, aren't you trying to sell these dang things? It wouldn't hurt to at least fake some enthusiasm!

Here we see Superman and Wonder Woman, both standing up and reading--they both have super-endurance, so it may not be as uncomfortable for them to stand up and read as it would be for any of us--and standing incredibly close to one another while they do so. Each of them hold half of the book in one hand, and I have no idea who turns the pages, given that they are so close neither would be able to reach it with their other arm.

They are reading DC Universe: Rebirth #1. Superman looks pretty bored, while Wonder Woman either has a slight smile, or maybe that's just the way she did her lipstick. Perhaps Superman is bored, though; he can probably read each spread at super-speed, and then has to wait for Wonder Woman to catch up.

Green Lantern Hal Jordan is hovering above his teammates reading Batman Vol. 1: I Am Gotham by Tom King, David Finch and others. He seems to be the happiest of all the Leaguers, but I think there's a pretty good chance he's just faking it for the picture. After all, I'm not entirely sure that Hal Jordan can read.

The Flash is reading Watchmen over Batman's shoulder. He looks bored, but then, he probably is bored, given the speed at which he can read. He may be off fighting the Rogues in Central City, and just running back to the Hall of Justice to read a page every thirty seconds or so during the slow parts of the battle.

Cyborg, resting his huge mechanical bulk atop a pair of short boxes and no doubt crushing the contents within--so much for Near Mint!--is taking in Sandman: Overture. He looks pissed.

Aquaman has similarly tried to make himself comfortable by using the short boxes full of comics as furniture. They don't have either comic books or cardboard boxes in Atlantis, so perhaps his confusion is understandable, but I can't imagine his super-dense, well-muscled body is good for the boxes or the books within. If this scene continues very long, I imagine both he and Cyborg will fall through the collapsing boxes at some point.

Aquaman is frowning at the pages of Justice League Vol. 1: Origins, and I don't blame him! What has got him so upset about the book? Is he shocked at how casually Superman murders his foes? Is he appalled at everyone's New 52 costume redesigns? Is he missing his pal Martian Manhunter? Or can he just not believe his sideburns and necklaces in that story?

Finally, here's Batman's frozen scowl as he reads Watchmen. Does he hate the book? Or is he simply irritated that Flash is reading over his shoulder? Neither. That's the face he always makes; he's Batman, after all.

As for the top 25 books on the 2018 reading list, I was struck by how damn old so many of them are. From the 1980s you have Watchmen, Batman: The Killing Joke, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, V For Vendetta and Batman: Year One. Of slightly more recent vintage is The Sandman Vol. 1: Predludes & Nocturnes which, of course, brings us into the '90s, when such books as Batman Adventures: Mad Love, Preacher Book One and Batman: The Long Halloween were published.

There are a handful of collections from The New 52 reboot/relaunch, including Justice League Vol. 1: Origin, Batman Vol. 1: The Court of Owls, Wonder Woman Vol. 1: Blood, The Flash Vol. 1: Move Forward and Aquaman Vol. 1: The Trench. From the most recent publishing initiative, the "Rebirth" era, there's DC Universe: Rebirth, Batman Vol. 1: I Am Gotham and Superman Vol. 1: Son of Superman.

I think Batman: The Dark Knight: Master Race is the most recent publication on the list.

Many of those 25 are classics of the super-comic genre, and are therefore evergreens, but I found it somewhat striking that there are so many decades-old comics being promoted in that house ad, you know?

Of possible interest is the fact that of these 25 books,  two are drawn by DC co-publisher Jim Lee, three are written by the publisher's president and chief creative officer Geoff Johns, three are either written and/or drawn in part by Frank Miller and three are written by Alan Moore, whose Watchmen is currently being used as fodder for a DC Universe event story written by the company's publisher, very much against his will.

Halloween 2014 just got a whole hell of a lot scarier

This was one of the many Guardians of the Galaxy-related ads to appear in Marvel books from the last batch of comics I bought. As you can see, there are Guardians costumes for the whole family! Star-Lord costumes for men and boys! Gamora costumes—dabs of green paint, I guess—for women and girls! And a Rocket Raccoon costume for anyone small enough to wear it!

If you want a Groot costume, well, you've gotta make that yourself. And if you want to dress up as Drax, I suggest you start working out right now.

...

Say, wait a minute. Now that I look a little closer at that Rocket...

Gah! That thing is horrifying! It's stiff, frozen, unmoving face! It's strangely uniform, manufactured pelt covering everything but it's human hands. Oh God, I'd hate to wake up in the middle of the night and see a couple of these things foraging in the dumpster outside my apartment complex through the window, or scurrying in and out of the drain by the curb at the end of the street...

"#in_your_face_this_July!"

I am madly in love with the ads for the new relaunched New 52 Teen Titans, which looks to be the exact same as the previous Teen Titans—terrible costumes, terrible logo, practically the same line-up—but with a new #1 and a new, better creative team. And a new ad campaign!

Who calls the Teen Titans "weapons"...? Is it the Justice League? I'm assuming it's the Justice League, since Red Robin is holding a burning copy of Justice League #1 in his hand there (You know what would be really edgy, Tim? If you were burning a copy of Action Comics #1).

 I'm vaguely aware of the fact that there was a storyline somewhere—maybe a Teen Titans and Ravagers crossover?—that maybe had something to do with clones or teenage superheroes being grown or used as weapons or something. I never read any Teen Titans. It was by Scott Lobdell and Brett Booth, and it looked a little like that, only a thousand times worse. It looked like a joke of what a rebooted, started-from-scratch Teen Titans comic book in the second decade of the 21st century might look like.

Anyway, I kinda dig the whole weapon/tool joke. It sounds like a joke from eight years ago, which feels about right for a New 52 Teen Titans comic.

In addition to the "This Is..." house ad, DC also has a six-page preview of Teen Titans in the backs of some of their books this week, a sequence which includes the cover for the first issue, festooned with funny Twitter Chirper hashtags:

Social media! That's what teens are into!

I do like that they added the names next to the characters, since they don't look much like their pre-New 52 incarnations, or like the characters appearing in such cartoons as Teen Titans, Young Justice or Teen Titans go, with the exception of Beast Boy, who was previously introduced as red rather than green in the pages of Ravagers.

So we've got Wonder Girl, who is a blonde girl with huge breasts, gold, metal claws and a length of glowing red Spider-Man webbing. We've got Red Robin, still looking like a "Heroes Reborn" version of Robin. We've still got Bunker, the new character with can-make-glowing-bricks-appear powers. And we've got Raven, who wears a cloak of huge, blue, reptillian scales and a mask that obscures her head and face made out of...knives? Bones? Coral? You know, like a raven.

That's followed by five pages featuring panels of the various characters in action, saving a school bus from high-tech terrorists, while their names appear next to them, and we get little snippets of narration or dialogue, saying things like, "...see, that's the thing. I don't have a relationship with her" and "You look like you could use a little excitement."

This is really great. It really looks like someone at DC called a meeting, and everyone sat around for a while trying to figure out what they could to "fix" the Teen Titans title, and all they came up with was hashtags and adding at least one character who resembles a character from the cartoons.

At least Rocafort is a good artist.

Some of those other "This is..." house ads are pretty amusing, but still not in the same class as the Teen Titans one.

There's the dick-joke ad for Grayson...

That's pretty good. That's probably what I would have come up with if they asked me for suggestions on advertising a new Dick Grayson series. In fact, whenever anyone asks me for suggestions on just about anything, I generally suggest that they try more dick jokes. I am 100% supportive of dick jokes in almost every context.

And then there's this one for New Suicide Squad...

...in which DC tailors the "Keep Calm and Carry On" meme to Deathstroke, the Terminator, who, of course, carries a big sword.

What are you so worried about, Doom?

His crotch is now the perfect height for a metal-encased headbutt or a well-placed uppercut!

And if you want to fight a little less dirty—and why would you?—you could always go for one of the ankles on those ungainly legs; I'd go for the Captain America on on his right leg, rather than the Hulk one on his left.

What exactly are Marvel, Mad Engine and Kohl's trying to sell with this ad?

Is it shame? I bet it's shame.

Umm...

I saw this ad in this week's issue of Superior Foes of Spider-Man, and I imagine it appeared in plenty of other Marvel comics this week. Quick, glance at it for a moment, and then glance back down at the rest of this sentence: What exactly, is it advertising...?

For about a second and a half, I thought it was for an upcoming relaunch of Thunderbolts. Then I thought for the next second maybe it was for a three-part Thunderbolts spin-off miniseries, entitled Thunderbolts: No Mercy. Then I noticed the "#20.NOW", and realized that "No Mercy" must refer to a story arc, and, for some reason, they are promoting it as a title within the title; the "#1" is the same shape and size of the #1 on their "Marvel NOW!" books, though (And numbering installments of a story arc with a number following a "#" symbol, instead of going with, like, the word "Part" or something).

I'm not sure what they're thinking here...if they're insistent on putting "#1" on their comics more often, maybe as often as each story arc, perhaps they should abandon the monthly, ongoing numbering, and switch to a series of miniseries model that a lot of Dark Horse Comics used to use, particularly effectively with their Hellboy and BPRD and Mignola-verse titles.

I'm really looking forward to seeing the cover of, um, Thunderbolts #20.NOW (does that follow a book numbered Thunderbolts #20, like the ".1" numbered books did...?) to see if it will be as jumbled and confusing as this ad, or if it's just the ad itself and the cover will be a little easier to make sense of.

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Most iconic? Yes, what character could possibly be more iconic than a renamed character based on a character who was a thinly-veiled counterfeit version of Fawcett's Captain Marvel character created solely to continue publishing Captain Marvel comics in the UK after Fawcett discontinued publication of their Captain Marvel comics as part of a legal action taken by DC Comics contending that Captain Marvel was too derivative of Superman...?

What character could possibly be more iconic than a renamed derivation of a derivation of a derivation of Superman, a character best known for a relatively short run of comics that no reader younger than Those of a Certain Age have been able to read, due to complicated legal issues just now being untangled, some 30 years after those comics were originally produced...?

And as for "and popular"...? I have no idea what metric they might have used to determine that Miracleman/Marvelman was the most popular superhero that comic book fans have ever read, but I generally consider comic book sales, licensing revenue and "being a superhero that people might have actually heard of in their entire fucking lives" to be pretty good indicators of a character's popularity.

UPDATE: Please read the comments, where it is revealed whether it was IGN who said something dumb, or Marvel who misquoted IGN.

"Take that, foot!"

So, any idea what Natasha's doing here, exactly? Other than apparently trying to shoot herself in the foot? Check out the background. Is she falling off a building? Or did he jump off a an off-page ledge or open window in order to kick that "/1" while shooting herself in the foot or...?

At least Captain America had the good sense to just stand there and pose in his Dr. Pepper ad, rather than trying to kill himself for some soda ad money.

So who exactly is the target audience for Marvel's comics?

I have a hard time telling, based on the juxtaposition of these two ads on the very same page of Daredevil #30, one for a prose novel series about serial killers promising a "grittier, bloodier" sequel, another for a children's cartoon appearing on a Disney cartoon channel.

Ads of note from this week's Marvel comics:

Well, I had read the reports, I had seen the character design and I had read the solicitations, and now here's the house ad indicating that yes, this is really a thing that is happening: The hellspawn-hunting angel "Angela" character that Neil Gaiman wrote in an issue of Spawn when I was a freshman in high school that the writer and Spawn creator and artist Todd McFarlane fought about in court forever really is joining the Marvel Universe some reason I can't even begin to imagine. Look, there she is! Appearing in a random issue of a Guardians of the Galaxy comic book, for some reason that probably makes sense to someone somewhere!

As hard as it is for me to wrap my head around this being a thing that is happening, it's still harder to imagine Neil Gaiman and Brian Michael Bendis co-writing a comic book together and harder still to imagine it's Bendis that gets top billing.

We don't get to see much of Angela in this image, but I'm struck by how familiar she looks....and it can't just be because I read one comic with her in it when I was 14. Her top looks awfully Wonder Woman-esque in this particular image...

This is another Marvel/sponsor fusion ad I just don't get. There's an image of Tony Stark in a busted-up Iron Man suit in a bank of snow, followed by something about how great your job is when you drive an Audi, and then a couple of drawings of a car.

Is the implication that commuting to work in a suit of Iron Man armor sucks? Because that would actually probably be pretty awesome (The image is a drawing of a scene from the film, however, after Iron Man crash lands, having just escaped a massive terrorist attack that leveled his house). And that driving an Audi is better? Why not just lose the top image, and have pictures of Tony Stark driving his Audi around...?

I'm not sure but I suppose it's possible those bottom two images are also scenes from the film—I remember the end of the film involving Tony Stark getting into a car and driving away, although I don't remember the make or model of the car.

But most perplexing of all is, if you're going to use scenes from the film anyway, why not just use the stills from the film, rather than having an artist poorly re-draw them? Like, that second image—I think Stark is getting into the car, and the door is thus slightly ajar, but because of the way the image is cropped, it also looks like maybe he's just leaning his head out the window like a dog while he drives...?

Anyway: Weird, ugly, confusing ad.

This week's ads of note

What? A reality show?! No Mr. The Rock! Don't do a reality show! You're better than that!

Why are you doing this? Surely there are sequels to Journey 2 The Mysterious Island and G.I. Joe: Retalliation and a Fast and the Furious 7 to make, right? Or hey, I have a script for a comic book miniseries about a dinosaur-fighting barbarian that could be retooled into a script for a The Rock vehicle pretty easily...! Just don't do reality television! Surely it hasn't come to this already, has it...?

I'm pretty curious about this title for three reasons.

1.) Greg Pak is a writer who has done a lot of work for Marvel Comics, making his debut at DC Comics (as far as I know) at a time when DC Comics seems to be somewhere between dismissive and monstrously hostile towards its creative talent, perhaps especially its writers (based on what at least a half-dozen or so writers have said about their time there in the last year or so, and based on what one can see from the vantage point of not being within the company, but watching its moves from outside.

2.) The series is being pitched as a Greg Pak-written, Jae Lee-drawn one, but it's hard to imagine Lee staying on a monthly schedule for too long. The previous iteration of this series changed artists every story arc, and, after the first few arcs, even the writer changed every arc.

3.) It should be interesting to see how Pak handles New 52 continuity. Even the scant info given in this ad seems suspect, based on the first arc of Justice League, in which Batman and Superman meet an team-up for the first time.

The individual continuity of those two characters seem pretty messed-up and out-of-synch, so a series devoted to their relationship seems to be handicapping itself right at the conceptual level.

Here's a bad scan of the two-page ad they're running for the upcoming tertiary Superman title, the bafflingly entitled Superman Unchained by Scott Snyder and Jim Lee.

I found it interesting that they devoted only two pages to hyping this new series, versus the six pages devoted to hyping the new Action Comics creative team of writer Andy Diggle and artist Tony Daniel, which ended up only lasting a single issue.

I wonder if it's simply a matter of a Snyder and Lee collaboration selling itself in a way that a Diggle and Daiel one doesn't, or if their ad department got skittish with the results of that last effort to sell Superman comics, I figured if they only used two pages to advertise this one, it'd last at least three issue...

This week's comic book ads of note

Marvel comics are often full of ads for mind-boggling licensed products these days, and this one might be the most mind-bogglingest of all. At least that I can remember as I'm typing this (after your mind's been boggled a few times, the memory starts to slip).

It appears to be a line of zip-up hoodies in which the zipper extends to the hood itself, and the hood is something a bit like a bag you put over your entire head, so you can, uh, completely cover your head with a hood, as if you were wearing a fabric version of the helmet, torso and sleeves of the armor worn by Iron Man (or War Machine or Iron Patriot).

I'm not entirely sure why you'd want to do this, particularly if you can't see out of the hood (Can you see out of the hood? I'm not seeing any eye-holes there). And breathing can't be particularly easy, either. But there is a piece of officially licensed clothing that totally exists.

DC Comics, meanwhile, featured this ad for TV show Arrow:

I see that after a brief flirtation with not showing actor Steve Amell's naked torso in the ads, choosing instead to show a close-up of his face in a hood, the ad people have returned to the sensible choice of promoting their show with shirtless images of Amell. And for this one, they even get his crotch in there. And some phallic arrows. And an explosion! Just about any image can be improved upon by having an explosion like that in the background.

I'm torn.

I don't think either the main Iron Man armor that Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark wears throughout Iron Man 3 (MK 44, I think he called it...?) or the Iron Patriot armor from the movie are particularly cool-looking, and I don't think these toy versions look all that cool either, what with their big, goofy toy weapons and chunky shoulder pads.

But I nevertheless think these Assemblers toys sound super-cool, and the idea of being able to buy a bunch of Iron Man toys that you can take apart and reassemble in something I would have really wanted to get in on if I were younger. Say, 8. Or 12. Or 18. Or 28.

Meanwhile, in DC comics last week, I saw this ad:

I can't help but notice a distinct lack of Stephen Amell's naked torso in it, which was the focus of the previous ads I've seen for it in my comics.

Come on, Arrow ad-makers: Less hood, more muscles. Don't you want anyone to watch the show...?

I don't get it.

I mean, I get the words at the bottom, and that the implication is that Dr. Pepper, like Captain America, is one of a kind.

But I don't understand what the image, slash and number are meant to communicate, exactly. Is it...a fraction gag, of some kind...? Or math...? That Captain America can't be reduced further than Captain America...?

I don't know. But now I associate Captain America and Dr. Pepper with forgotten grade school math and overall confusion, and therefore would prefer to avoid them both. It's Batman and Mr. Pibb for me.

A few ads of note from this past week's comics:

I love how upfront The CW is with the main appeal of their new-ish Green Arrow television show.

I wonder if Arrow might garner greater ratings if instead of changing Green Arrow's superhero name to Arrow, they had instead called him Shirtless Arrow...? Or perhaps Bare-Chested Arrow...? Maybe Naked-From-The-Waist-Up Arrow...? (They would also need to modify his costume accordingly, of course).

Not trying to be a jerk or anything, but I honestly can't recall every seeing anyone saying anything so positive about artist Eddy Barrows that could be construed as "acclaim."

I'm certainly no fan of his work, but, that said, based on this image alone, Teen Titans seems like it will be ever so slightly improved by his presence. The costumes are all still high aesthetic crimes (and they all pretty much match too...? What's up with that...?), but this image isn't anywhere near as repellent as many of the other Teen Titans covers I've seen since the New 52boot.

That was one of the nine house ads I saw in Green Lantern #15 this week (all of the ads were house ads, save one for The Kubert School and one for Geek magazine, which features DC's superheroes on its cover in the ad). Of those nine, 1/3 were trumpeting new creative teams as if those were positive things, and not a sign of some sort of behind-the-scenes creative chaos in the not yet a year-and-a-half old comics series (In addition to Teen Titans getting a new artist, ads for Green Arrow #17 and Demon Knights #16 proclaimed their new teams; the other ads were for Justice League of America #1, Before Watchmen: Dollar Bill #1, Animal Man Vol. 2, Earth 2 Vol. 1, the "H'El on Earth" crossover in the Superman titles and the new series Threshold...if that is indeed its real title).

Exactly how is it that we've gotten this far into our culture's still-surging zombie craze and no one thought to make collectible zombie figures in the style of the pink MUSCLE figures of my youth until now...?

It's too bad these SLUGs are using the color green. I always thought it would be awesome if DC Direct did a line of 7,200 Green Lantern Corps toys in this same style, featuring every single member of the Corps in green, MUSCLE-like form.

Am I reading this wrong...?

Or is this ad actually suggesting you read the comic book while you are wearing the mask...?

You guys...? Comics are starting to get kind of weird.

I'm sure there's a reason this is the image they chose to sell a cartoon adaptation of one of the most influential comics of the 20th century.

Probably a legal reason, possibly a business reason, maybe even a personal reason.

Given the fact that Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 1 is a direct-to-DVD cartoon adaptation of the miniseries-turned-graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller—a genuine, bona fide, honest-to-God master of graphic imagery; one who specializes in conveying maximum information in relatively simple, icon-like imagery; and a guy who filled the comic being adapted with oft-imitated visuals that could easily be adapted or repurposed into an ad—and someone may nor may not be available to draw or re-draw something for this stupid ad, likely depending on just how insane he is at the moment (see his response to the "Occupy" movement last year) and how much money DC has to offer, I can't imagine what the reason is that they went with this shitty coloring book cover-looking image of his version of Batman and Robin in such an un-FM style for their ad.

(My apologies for the especially poor quality of the above sentence, which may be one of the worst sentences I've ever written. The punctuation's gotta be screwed up, and I would rather get punched in the face really hard than attempt to diagram it. Don't have enough time/interest in the subject to go back and write it better though, so....Sorry, gang! I'll try to write more better next time!)

So I see the Arrow ad campaign is off to a good start.

I've been quite perplexed by certain aspects of the upcoming TV show based on DC's Green Arrow superhero, starting with the fact that they're calling it Arrow instead of Green Arrow, which seems a little like Warner Bros. calling the next Batman movie Bat.

But then I saw the above ad in a couple of the DC comics I bought at the shop this week, and realized that despite the name of the show, the ad folks have zeroed in on exactly what my female friend who watched Smallville liked about its Green Arrow character (played by Justin Hartley), and what first attracted her (and, I assume, most of the initial audience) to Smallville in the first place.

They didn't ever actually call him this, did they?