Review: Spider-Man: Spider-Island Companion

Just like it says on the cover, this huge, 360-page hardcover is a companion collection meant to compliment the similar-in-size Spider-Man: Spider-Island; while that book collected all of the chapters of the "Spider-Island" storyline from issues of Amazing Spider-Man, Venom and a few one-shots, this one collects all of the tie-ins from other books, mini-series and specials.

In other words, this is the unimportant parts of the story, but, because of that, it's also the place where you can see creators having a bit more fun with the concept, more striking artwork that falls a little farther away from the House of Ideas' house style and answers to frivolous questions like "What was Hawkeye doing while Spider-Man was fighting The Jackal's mad scheme?" and "What if The Black Panther had six for twenty minutes?" and so on.

There are a dozen stories culled from sixteen different comic books included here, and they vary widely. I couldn't muster up the interest to read all of 'em, but there's certainly some good stuff in here, and unlike the collection it's a companion to, there's a lot more for a causal reader to like here; if you're not into the "Spider-Island" thing, then you won't get anything out of Spider-Man: Spider-Island, but if you're not all that interested in, say, what Shang-Chi or Hercules are up to when the whole city is coming down with Spidey powers, chances are you'll find something else you do like in this...even if it's just some really great art.

As it's an anthology, let's take the stories one by one, shall we...?


"Tingling" by Greg Rucka and Max Fiumara

The writer of this eight-page short, probably pulled from one of the anthology one-shots like Spider-Island: I Love New York, likely tips one off as to who the Marvel hero starring in it is, although it's meant as a surprise reveal made only in the penultimate panel. It's the story of some spider-powered bank robbers using their great powers to commit great crimes, and is mainly notable for Fiumara's excellent, highly-expressive, illustratorly artwork. He draws neat Spider-Man heads and flexed, angular limbs, and there's a touch of Sam Kieth in some of his close-ups. I've like Fiumara's art since I first saw it, and I was surprised and pleased to see it in a silly Marvel comic like this, although now that I look up his bibliography, I guess I shouldn't be, as he's done plenty of work for Marvel in the past.


Spider-Island: Deadly Hands of Kung Fu by Antony Johnston, Sebastian Fiumara, Leandro Fernandez and John Lucas

This is a three-issue mini-series teaming Shang Chi, he with the deadly hands of kung fu, with Iron Fist against The Bride of Nine Spiders. I made it through the second issue, when Silver Sable appears, before completely losing interest, although I did look at the pictures on the next four pages, and Fiumara, Fernandez and company provide some very nice, slightly sketchy art, ink lines clearly visible, which colorist Dan Brown did not bury under shitty coloring, so hooray for well-rendered, well-produced comic book art from Marvel!

I imagine this is better if you have some idea who some or all of the many characters involved are, and/or if you give a shit about them, but I couldn't get into it.

"Spider-Mom" by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Chuck BB

Yes, Chuck BB. This is another short akin to the opening one by Rucka, although it features a very busy civilian mom and how she uses her newfound spider-powers to go about her regular day. It's fun and funny, and mostly notable for BB's art, which looks absolutely like nothing Marvel publishes outside of their very occasional projects like Strange Tales.

Spider-Island: Avengers #1 by Christopher Yost and Mike McKone

You know, I read Alias, and while I'm sure Jessica Jones was stacked—it being a superhero comic and all—I sure as hell don't remember her looking like she does on the cover Leinil Yu drew for this thing. Jesus.

Anyway, this follows Avengers Ms. Marvel, Hawkeye and Jessica Jones (not wearing that costume shown on the cover, but street clothes with tight, black, elbow-length gloves), as they team-up with Frog-Man to deal with the chaos in Manhattan and fight Flag-Smasher, one of of my favorite Marvel super-villains.

With a few segments featuring Squirrel Girl too, this has a pretty fun cast of weird Marvel characters, and Yost writes them all rather amusingly, although I think he might have gone a a bit too far with Frog-Man at the climax. Dude's costume is funny enough all on its own.

Hawkeye has developed spider-powers, and Yost inventively has him having great trouble trying to control his new stickiness, with his bow, arrows and other objects sticking to his hands.

McKone provides the sort of straight-forward, totally legit superhero art you'd expect from a pro with his pedigree and years of experience.


"Charlotte's Web" by Joe Caramagna and Max Fiumara

Ah ha ha ha ha ha! "Charlotte's Web"; it has the same title as a book and a movie! That's...funny....maybe...? This is another short piece about a civilian getting spider-power; in this case a little girl named Charlotte, who uses her powers to take down a couple of inept bad-guys.

The little-kid-with spidey-powers concept hals already been explored and mined for laughs twice in this collection before this story comes along, so it seems tired by the point a whole eight-page story gets devoted to it. Fiumara's art is even looser here; I hope Marvel gives that guy a monthly title I want to read at some point in the near future.


Spider-Island: The Amazing Spider-Girl by Paul Tobin and Pepe Larraz

Another three-issue miniseries featuring one of Marvel's Spider-Girls, none of whom in any continuity I can seem to bring myself to care about. I think this one is the one that used to go by Arana and wear a dumb vest, although now her hair is grown out and she wears one of the old Spider-Women's old costumes...?


I like Tobin's writing, and artist Pepe Larraz does great work, but I couldn't bring myself to read this one. Looks like some wasp men, The Hand, Madame Web, the new Hobgoblin and a spider-powered Kingpin are all involved.


"9 Lives" by Skottie Young, Dave Guertin and Greg Baldwin

Next to BB's piece, this is the most cartoony thing in the book, and according to the credits, Young writes rather than draws it, although it definitely looks to be done in Young's style, albeit a looser, more energetic version of it.

It's about a cat who gets spider-powers, dons a Spider-Man costumes and fights Venom-possessed pigeons, but it ends up all being a dream, because apparently a cat with spider-powers crosses some line that giving The Kingpin, J. Jonah Jameson and babies spider-powers does not.


Spider-Island: Spider-Woman by Fred Van Lente, Guiseppe Camuncoli and Klaus Janson

Spider-Woman fights a lady in a dumb costume called Gypsy Moth for 20-pages or so. I didn't read this one either, save for a few stray narration boxes, like this one: "Damn! Gypsy Moth used her telekinetic control over clothing to change my costume to look like--" Telekinetic control over clothing...? That's a super-power I've never heard of.

Camuncoli and Janson's art make for a pretty neat combination, but then, Janson inking just about anyone's pencils usually makes for something neat looking, given Janson's distinct style.

Spider-Island: Cloak & Dagger by Nick Spencer and Emma Rios

I tried really very hard on this one, as I love Rios' artwork, like the visuals of the main characters despite never having read anything other than guest-appearances from them and Spencer is supposedly a rising star writer who I felt I should start paying a bit more attention to.

I couldn't make it through the first twenty pages, though.

I did look at every panel though, and Rios did an incredible job with everything from layouts and staging to character acting and costuming to rendering in her own style. Mr. Negative appears to be the main antagonist, and I didn't actually see a whole lot of Spider-Island business, save for a scene where the pair help the Avengers fight some spider-powered, spider-costumed crooks and another where Dagger, wearing street clothes, fights some spider-monsters (Rios draws the best spider-monsters; hers look like shaggy-legged tarantulas, while the ones that appear in the main "Spider-Island" story look smooth, brown and hairless...and not really all that spidery. I suppose it comes down to how good Rios is with design and texture).

Maybe I'll re-borrow this from the library at some point in the future and try again, but with over 350-pages of comics with different characters by different creators, it was very hard to slog through the stories that didn't grab me right at the outset.

Herc #7-#8 by Greg Pak, Fred Van Lente, June Brigman and Roy Richardson

I lost track of the Pak/Van Lente Hercules story a while back, thanks in large part to Marvel shifting it from title to title and miniseries to miniseries, with delays between chapters and a price-increase in there somewhere, and I haven't been able to find it again in trade yet, as I don't exactly remember where I left off. This is one of those storylines that Marvel seemed to be playing defense on, trying their damnedest to keep readers from reading it (although I suspect their true intent was to find a way to keep sales high enough for Pak and Van Lente to keep telling it somewhere, even if they and Herc couldn't sustain a monthly), and I like to think of myself as a fairly engaged follower of the goings-on of the Big Two.

Anyway, this is two issues of the latest incarnation of Pak/Van Lente's Hercules story, in a title called Herc featuring a de-powered Hercules. In these two issues, however, he gets powers, they're just Spider-Man's rather than his own.

He gets a Spider-Herc costume too, and it's neat to see such a big, beefy Spider-Man spider-ing around. He battles the X-Men (Wolverine, Gambit, Storm and Emma Frost) and has some dealings with Ananzi and Arachne.

The climax, in which Herc has transformed into a sort of centaur (if you subtract the horse part and replace it with a spider-part) deals with Arachne is...interesting. The Brigman/Richardson art team is decidedly old-school in flavor, but it's good old-school.


Black Panther: The Most Dangerous Man Alive #524 by David Liss and Francesco Francavilla

This issue seems to be continuing whatever was going on in this title before it was forced to crossover with "Spider-Island," so, for all intents and purposes, the main thing it has to do with the storyline is that The Black Panther has six arms instead of two.

He chases a car-driving villain named Overdrive and fights Lady Bullseye. It's no great shakes, save for Francavilla's art, which is incredible. I have no idea how this title was, but Francavilla's a great artist, well-suited to a crime narrative and a visually interesting character like Black Panther, although I suspect this was a particularly insane chapter, and difficult to judge the book by.

Spider-Island: Heroes For Hire #1 by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Kyle Hotz and Bob Almond

I rather liked the cover for this one, which boasts some crazy visuals that don't actually occur within the book (How did they all make new costumes to allow for their extra limbs? Would Falcon be able to fly like this?)

This is tied to the already-canceled and abandoned (I think...?) conception of Heroes for Hire as Marvel's answer to the old Birds of Prey, with Misty Knight playing the Oracle role, and various street-level characters and mercenaries like The Falcon, Black Cat, Silver Sable, Elektra and so on acting as her agents.

In this story, they are all dealing with various Spider-Island craziness, although it is mainly the story of Misty developing feelings for Paladin, who is in the process of turning into a giant spider. Like that of McKone and Brigman, Hotz's art is of a more standard super-comic variety than a lot of what you'll find in this collection, but I really like it here; there's just enough of a flair to it to give it a slightly cartoony edge. It reminded me an awful lot of John McCrea's art on Htiman, save with stronger, sharper blacks and better, brighter coloring.

A few quick thoughts on a few recent announcements

I just don’t think white is a good color on Sinestro, given his coloration.

That said, I am glad he got the white ring instead of Hal Jordan (whose coloration wouldn’t look too much better in all-white anyway; that’s a hard color to pull off!), and I hope Geoff Johns leaves it on Sinestro’s finger through the end of the eighth and final issue of Blackest Night.

I think the Bad Guy Who Always Thought He was Doing the Right Thing Finally Gets a Chance to Actually Do the Right Thing story seems a lot more interesting than The Writer’s Favorite Character Saves the Whole Universe and Everyone Continues to Love Him for Being the Best Ever story, you know?


So Eddy Barrows is going to be J. Michael Straczynski’s collaborator on Superman, huh?

I was kind of curious about what JMS’ Superman would be like, but I don’t care for Barrows’ artwork...so much so that I’ll definitely be skipping this (Superman seems to be really exerting himself on that wall up there, doesn’t he? Why’s he trying so hard? It’s just a wall. And what’s with the anguished grimace? That wall must not only be really strong, it must be a real jerk to get Superman so angry).

With Marc Guggenheim taking over Action Comics, it looks like I’m going to continue to steer clear of the Super-books for the foreseeable future. The scripts of Guggenheim’s I’ve read have all lead me to believe he’s a fair writer—not brilliant, not bad enough to go out of one’s way to avoid—but I really don’t feel like paying cash money for comics written by the guy who said some really stupid things about gay marriage, civil unions and the Spider-Marriage while trying to promote his books that one time.

Oh well. There’s always that Superman: Earth One graphic novel series of JMS’…that’s still on, right? They haven’t decided to drop that and just run JMS’ planned stories in the main Superman title, have they? (Because now that I think of it, I guess it is somewhat weird to have the same writer on both versions of Superman simultaneously).


Speaking of Straczynski, this sounds like the same idea as the meta-human hospital introduced in 52, except his super-hospital has a different name and is located in a different city.

Actually, the second issue of the last volume of TMNT featured Michelangelo being taken via flying ambulance to a secret superhero hospital, and the Action Age’s Awesome Hospital seems to cover some similar ground. I’m not accusing JMS of ripping the idea off of anyone. “Superhero hospital” isn’t that unique an idea; it’s basically just a riff on all the similar superhero plus some mundane real world business ideas that have popped up in superhero comics over the years. You know, your superhero tailors, superhero bars, supervillain bars, supervillain real estate agents, etc. But the fact that the DCU already has one and JMS went ahead and made up a second one seems kinda strange to me.


I don’t generally like to just republish press release-type stuff here unless I have something to say about the comic or book being hyped, but Boom Studio’s forthcoming CBGB miniseries, bearing the name of the legendary rock club and devoted to “portraying the tales of music, discovery, heartbreak, confusion, rebellion and greatness.” The image above is the cover of the first issue, by Jaime Hernandez (obviously), and the creative roster includes comics people Kieron Gillen, Rob G., Chuck BB, Kelly Sue DeConnick and newcomers to the field like Ana Matronic (of the band Scissor Sisters), Sam Humphries of MySpace and Kim Krizan (screenwriter of Before Sunset and Before Sunrise).

Boom sent out an electronic copy of a special one-page story being used to promote the series. It’s drawn by EDILW favorite Chuck BB. Check it out:

Links, and commentary about them

I spent a really long time looking at this site (and so should you): You probably recognize that silhouette above as that of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, but do you know who drew it? Believe it or not, that’s an Eric Talbot drawing.

I used to love the Mirage-published black and white TMNT comics; in fact, they were among the comics that really got me into the reading comics regularly in the first place (along with DC/TSR’s Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Alan Grant and Norm Breyfogle’s Batman comics).

And Talbot was one of my favorite artists working on them.

He was a frequent collaborator with Kevin Eastman, and handled inks and tones on a lot of TMNT stuff, bringing a dark, scratchy line that covered the art in a palpable layer of grit. Without consulting a long box, I remember Talbot worked on #17 and #20 of the original series, and I believe he worked on the Casey Jones story in Plastron Café, but my memory is hazy), and pin-ups and ads for things he drew were sprinkled throughout a lot of Mirage publications.

For some reason, I was pretty surprised by Talbot’s style as seen on his sketch blog. I don’t know if, in the back of my brain, I had always assumed something that was actually Eastman/Talbot was what Talbot/Talbot looked like, or if his artwork has evolved a bit in the last, oh, almost 20 years or so, or both, but it’s really great stuff, and I particularly love his big, white-eyed turtles and, especially, his pointy-nosed Splinter.

Here’s a taste:


In addition to a lot of ninja turtles and characters from their comics, you’ll also find sketches of Batman, Two-Face, Hellboy, Usagi Yojimbo, Mr. Miracle, Wolverine and a whole lot of tentacles, stitches, skeletal faces and pages and pages of silhouette sketches like this:

So go look around for a while. I’ll still be here when you get back.


The worst thing about DC’s fantasy presidential election comic DC Universe: Decisions?: Too few people read it.

I was looking forward to an Internet-wide, Ultimates 3-style drubbing of it by critics. But I suppose that was silly of me. People actually liked and looked forward to Ultimates and Ultimates 2, and were thus really looking forward to seeing what would happen when a new creative team—including known crazy person Jeph Loeb and that guy who perfected the art of missing deadlines—took over the franchise for a third volume.

But who cares which fake-ass, made-up candidate Green Arrow is endorsing in the cloud cuckoo land of the DCU (Probably some liberal guy, because as Denny O’Neil has shown us in decades past, bowhunters are the Democrats’ most reliable base), or if Lois Lane is supposed to be Republican or Libertarian based on the political beliefs she states in the story (despite the statistical unlikelihood of a big city investigative reporter being either).

Yes, who really cares about any of that nonsense, particularly since the real-world election is getting so completely insane that no writer could even make this stuff up*.

Thank God for Nina Stone of The Factual Opinion then: She at least was brave enough to take on DC Universe: Decisions #1. Go give it a read, and then join me in a prayer that she and/or Tucker Stone and/or a civilian they rope into reading comics and reporting back to them will read the next three issues as well.


And speaking of…: After twelve seconds of research—i.e. asking my local comic shop-keep if they received copies of DC Universe: Decisions along with the now-infamous All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder and the OMG Superman drinking beer maybe! issue of Action Comics—I’ve developed a theory as to why it wasn’t shipped as originally scheduled.

My shopkeep said they received issues of the swearing comic and the drinking comic, but not the “political” comic. Decisions just didn’t show up at all that week.

Perhaps then it wasn’t recalled and pulped like ASB&RtBW and Action, but was instead simply delayed a week? It was scheduled to come out on Wednesday, September 10, which, if I’m doing my math right, is only one day before September 11. Since terror attacks on presidential candidates are central to the plot, maybe DC wanted to avoid risking someone being offended if they published a comic book about that during that particular week.

If this was the case, I think they overreacted. Simply avoiding real-world politics, they’ve ensured that no one would even notice the book outside the direct market-audience for Judd Winick and Bill Willingham books, and nothing offends those readers anyway.


Too bad it’s not Chuck BB illustrating the lyrics of Chuck D: I don’t normally publish press release type info here, since so many other places on the Internet do a much better job of it, but I’ll make an exception based on how cool this particular project looks.

Boom Studios will be publishing a new version of H.P. Lovecraft’s prose poem Nyarlahotep.

Now, the only thing more boring than prose or poetry is prose poeery, but this $15, 32-page book has something going for it that most prose poetry (and prose and poetry) lacks: Full-color illustrations by Black Metal’s Chuck BB.

They look like this:

I’m not sure when the in-store date for this is exactly, but if you follow the link above, you can get the Diamond order code and bug your comic shop about ordering you a copy (and see a few more illustrations).


What is wrong with Marc Guggenheim?: A lot, apparently. On Tuesday Dorian Wright noted a particularly insane-sounding couple of paragraphs in an interview with Guggenheim that coupled the issue of gay marriage to the Spider-Man continuity reboot for…some reason.

The original interview, written up by longtime writer-about-comics Jennifer M. Contino, is a pretty basic sort of Creator Talks About His Projects type of interview, common throughout much of the comics press.

He talks about his work on the Amazing Spider-Man almost-weekly, his TV show and a superhero movie script he’s apparently working on.

And, in discussing the fact that a lot of people don’t like the new Spider-Man direction on the basis that it is really stupid, he says this:

"Here's my attitude, if anyone is upset about the marriage going away, then they must all be pro gay marriage," he continued. Because if you're pro gay marriage, you understand the distinction between a marriage and a civil union -- that a civil union is not equal to a marriage. We downgraded Mary Jane and Peter to a civil union. If that bothers you, then you're pro gay marriage."

I’m kind of disappointed that Contino didn’t take the opportunity to say, “I don’t understand what you mean. Could you explain that?” Perhaps she didn’t notice how insane it was until she sat down to transcribe the interview…?

Wright mentions some of the obvious problems with that quote that I won’t repeat here (Go read Wright’s). But there are a lot of problems with it. (Feel free to skip down to the next item if you don’t want to read about Spider-Man continuity and comic book writer dumb-assery for a few hundred words).

It’s been interesting to watch just how defensive some of the writers involved with the new Spider-Man direction have been regarding how they got there. One of the main problems with the J. Michael Straczynski/Joe Quesada “One More Day” storyline, in addition to it being poorly written, poorly drawn, over-priced and behind schedule, was that it didn’t make a lick of sense.

Repeatedly in interviews creators like Quesada and now Guggenheim have stated that nothing changed in Spider-Man’s timeline (what we mean by “continuity”) beyond the fact that Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson weren’t married for the decades during which they were married. Something happened on their wedding day that prevented the consumption of their engagement, but, otherwise, everything else remained the exact same, Quesada had maintained.

This isn’t true. At all. In addition to their not ever having been married, Spidey and MA weren’t dating as of the beginning of the “Brand New Day” storyline. Aunt May was no longer on her deathbed in the hospital dying of an assassination attempt on her nephew, but was perfectly well again. Her house, which was destroyed, was now un-destroyed. The knowledge of Peter Parker’s secret identity, which was known to Aunt May and everyone else in the world, was suddenly forgotten by May and everyone else in the world. Harry Osborn was no longer dead; he was just in Europe.

Those are some pretty big changes right there, beyond the “they just weren’t married.” It gets even harder if you follow the Marvel Universe in general, not just the Spider-Man title, because Spider-Man and his family lived in Avengers Tower, all of the Avengers knew his secret identity and his family, his secret identity reveal was a pivotal part of Civil War, a storyline that defined the entire state of the Marvel Universe. Changing just the unmasking and the marriage changes all of that. And, for the hundreth time, continuity between consecutive events is the entire point of serial storytelling like that of Spider-Man comics.

So no, Guggenheim. False. That is not the only thing that changed.

By reducing the changes to a single change, Guggenheim can then go on to state that if you don’t like the post OMD/BND direction of Spider-Man, you must not like the marital statue reboot. But you could also dislike all the other reboots, or the idea of any kind of reboot at all, or the weekly format, or you could think the writing is awful, or you could hate the art. There are a lot of reasons to dislike particular comics (I’ve only read two story arcs, so I’m not endorsing any of those opinions; I loved Marcos Martin and John Romita Jr.’s art, and Dan Slott’s writing was pretty decent in those arcs).

Then Guggenheim jumps to the, if you object to the reboot of the marriage, you must be pro-gay marriage bi, “Because if you're pro gay marriage, you understand the distinction between a marriage and a civil union -- that a civil union is not equal to a marriage. We downgraded Mary Jane and Peter to a civil union. If that bothers you, then you're pro gay marriage."

Wright and a few others see this as Guggenheim gay baiting; if you don’t like my comics, that makes you a fag.

I’ll give Guggenheim the benefit of the doubt and assume that’s not what he meant (although he’s a huge ass for comparing his Spider-Man comics to the gay marriage debate at all, and thus getting himself into the position where he could be accused of gay-baiting).

I’m pro gay marriage personally and understand there is a distinction between the two. This personal belief has nothing to do with Spider-Man’s love life. I’m also pro civil union. (Here in Ohio, we don’t even have civil unions. In fact, most of the country doesn’t. That seems to be step one here. Until the latter is actually commonplace, advocating the former over the latter seems a little silly in places like Ohio. Is marriage better than a civil union? Yes. Is a civil union better than nothing? Yes.)

Spider-Man and Mary Jane not being married but living together and sharing a bed doesn’t mean they suddenly have a civil union. It means they’re dating; cohabitating; “living in sin.” A civil union is something between that state of affairs and an actual marriage; did they go to the trouble of trying to get a civil union? (I don’t know the state of civil unions in New York state; is it even possible at the moment?) If so, why the fuck did they do that? Why didn’t they just get married? They’re straight people; there’s no law against them getting married! A civil union is the consolation prize for people who can’t get married. It’s the next best thing.

Finally, let’s look at that last bit one more time: “We downgraded Mary Jane and Peter to a civil union. If that bothers you, then you're pro gay marriage."

Like I said, I haven’t been reading a whole lot of ASM, but I’m pretty sure Marvel didn’t actually downgrade them to a civil union. Quesada said they just didn’t get married on their wedding day for some reason, and I don’t remember seeing any covers marked “Collector’s Item: The Civil Union Special!”

I should point out that there are many thousands of people in the U.S. who are bothered by civil unions, but definitely aren’t pro-gay marriage. They’re bothered by civil unions because they hate gay people, or are grossed out by them, or think they should always be treated as second-class citizens, or are afraid gay couples are trying to gain special rights to game the system and use tax dollars to fund gayness initiatives, or because they’re crazy coo-coo banana birds, or because they’re super-ignorant. A lot of the people who are bothered by civil unions are even more bothered by gay marriage.

So brilliant bit of anti-marketing, Mark Guggenheim! Now when I see a new comic book with the name Guggenheim on the cover, I won’t be able to think, “Oh, it’s the guy who wrote that great Blade series that was unfortunately cancelled,” but “Oh, it’s that defensive dumb-ass who said some pretty ignorant shit about civil unions and gay marriage when trying to convince people to read fucking Spider-Man comics.”


Art contests are fun: If you’re reading this, that means you read comics blogs on the Internet, and that means you probably also read Chris Sim’s The Invinicble Super-Blog which, while perhaps technically not invincible (that is, vincible), is in fact super.

If not, that means you’re probably a friend of mine who only reads this because you know me, or you’re someone who got here by accident after googling “Justice League Ice Cream” or something. Either way, you should probably be reading Chris Sim’s Invincible Super-Blog.

Especially posts like this, which featured the results of the ISB unconventional nunchuk contest (inspired by a drawing of Batman with nunchuks made out of sharks, which was in turn inspired by Sims’ own post involving Lego Batman’s sharkchuks, the only weapon capable of defeating evil wizard Shaquille O--look, I can’t explain this stuff. Just follow the link).

I pretty much laughed through the entire Batchuk results post; it’s one awesome design after another. It’s pretty remarkable how Sims-spefic so many of the designs are, using as raw materials things Sims loves, loathes or talks about all the time. The only thing missing was, as he pointed out himself, OMAChuks and, perhaps, nunchuks made out of Lucy and Lois Lane or out of John Workman-lettered KRAKK-A-DOOM! sound effects.

Meanwhile, in Canada, our enemy to the north, Rachelle Goguen (who, oddly enough, made a guest-appearance in one of the most random Batchuk contest entries), had a sketch contest of her own, involving entries combining two of her favorite things: superheroes and hockey.

The winner was frequent EDILW poster Sally, whose entry unsurprisingly involved both Green Lanterns and their butts.


Speaking of both Sims and Batman: Today the former has an examination of the one time the latter almost murdered The KGBeast.

I never read that story, but I remember it being referred to in the Batman: Year Three/ “A Lonely Place of Dying” era that immediately preceded the introduction of Tim Drake as a Robin-in-waiting, cited as evidence that Batman was totally losing it in the late ‘80s without a kid in a cape around to keep him from killing dudes.

KGBeast was never put to very good use again after that story though, was he? I know he showed up a lot in 90’s Batman stories, but he was always just kind of a big guy with a stump for an arm who talked funny, and I believe he’s dead now (at least the bad guys in Nightwing were recently robbing his grave of the big one-handed corpse in it…that’s usually a sure sign of a character being dead, even in super-comics). The end of the Cold War wasn’t very kind to the soviet assassin…too bad he didn’t live to see the dawn of our new Cold War, Cold War II: The En-coldening…

This man liked Identity Crisis: Devan MacPherson has a pretty good review of Identity Crisis up here. And by “pretty good” I mean both the way it was written as well as the overall assessment of one of my least favorite comics of the last 2,000 years.

MacPherson notes that he’s not a member of the read-new-superhero-comics-every-Wednesday crowd, so he wasn’t too tied up in knots about any of the continuity issues (unlike some people I know), and he seems to have read it in the final, collected trade rather than in the monthly installments.

I wonder if it’s easier to like/harder to hate if originally experienced all at once rather than read chapter by chapter over the better part of a year. I know those of us who read it in seven sittings had a lot longer to puzzle over the murder mystery aspects, and thus had more time to notice holes in the story (Why did the killer bring a flamethrower with her if she didn’t mean to kill the victim? Why was she in disguise if she was going to be invisible to her victim anyway? And so on).

And, of course, if you don’t plan on seeing Green Arrow, Hawkman and Black Canary next Wednesday, do you really care how far they went to protect a friend’s loved one, or how far they went to keep a secret? If you weren’t planning on seeing Dr. Light fighting scantily clad teenage girls in the near future, would you think his being retconned into a rapist was such an inappropriate thing?

I don’t know, but I like reading well-articulated opinions that are completely different than mine, as it helps remind me that not everyone who disagrees with me is a dodo bird.


Don’t read this one if you don’t live in Columbus: Death Note II: The Last Name, the second live-action Death Note movie, will be playing in town on October 15 and 16 only. The AMC theaters at Lennox and Easton will be hosting showings, as will three other area theaters I’ve never been to and wouldn’t be able to find without a compass and Google Maps. Event info here. Make sure you read the manga first though, as it is the greatest thing ever.


Minx no more?!: Wow, I was surprised to hear that DC’s pulling the plug on their Minx line so fast. here’s a Blog@ post that includes a round-up of reactions. As usual, Tom Spurgeon and Dirk Deppey have some of the best analysis. (UPDATE: Not to mention Kevin Church).

My reaction, if anyone honestly wants it, was intense surprise followed immediabley by disappointment. I liked just about every Minx book I read (I only skipped three) on some level, and some of them quite a lot. There was a lot of criticism right out of the gate about the way Minx’s editors were talking about it (“comics for YA readers” would have sounded a lot less patronizing than “comics for girls”) and the relative lack of female voices involved, and I realized a few of the books that appealed to 31-year-old male Caleb might not appeal equally to teen girls (Josh Howard and Ross Campbell’s sexy girl art in Clubbing and Water Baby, for example) , but by and large the books were positioned to appeal to all comers: Art comics fans, YA readers, manga readers.

Was DC expecting an overnight success here? From my view, the line received an incredible amount of press coverage, overwhelmingly positive criticism (Some did receive mixed reactions, but some were pretty much universally praised) and a lot of library penetration (at least in central Ohio), but I don’t know how they were selling, how much of the (fairly incredible) amount spent on marketing them was being recouped, and how much the creators were being paid.

Obviously the people who do know all this did the math and concluded that it wasn’t worth it, but, like I said, I’m surprised. I assumed this was more of a five-year investment than a two-year investment.

So does this mean copies of Minx books are going to skyrocket in the back-issue market now?


Well, it’s about time: Marvel Comics decided to finally take advantage of the fact that a Very Famous Celebrity Who Likes Plugging Things That Have To Do With Him, the one with a half-hour show on cable television four days a week, is running for president in the Marvel Universe.

The initial press release states that Kevin Maguire will provide a variant cover (I state that he should be doing interior art too; who better to capture Colbert’s raised eyebrows?). I hope it’s a costs-the-same-as-the-standard-cover type of variant and not a costs-several-dollars-more-than-the-standard-cover type of variant…

And don’t forget, if you don’t pre-order this comic, that means you support gay marriage.


It happens to all comic book characters eventually: Has Mickey Mouse ever died and come back to life? What about Donald Duck?



*Although, to be fair, Judd Winick is no writer. Zing!