Yes, "mud"...

Gabby, the talking monkey sidekick of Jack Cole's Spirit clone Midnight, takes on the Nazis with whatever weapon is on hand in the story "War Over Iceland!" from 1942's Smash Comics #32.

Here's a panel from the very same story: You know, I'm a fairly well-read guy. I graduated from a private, college prep high school, and went on to minor in history at a good college. I also have two rather loquacious grandfathers who served on the frontlines of the European theater during World War II.

And yet, if it weren't for comic books, I would never have had any idea how deeply weird World War II actually was...

Is there a subliminal message in Marvel's Avengers campaign?

You've probably already seen several examples of Marvel's "I Am An Avenger" teaser campaign, like the Spider-Woman image above, throughout the last week or so, right? Well, this weekend I spent much longer looking at these images that anyone should (in the service of making some bad jokes), and, for the first time ever, I noticed that the "Avengers" logo is actually awfully sexually suggestive, what with that big phallic arrow snugly interlocking with the v-shaped space on the right side of the A.

It's even more so in the background of these teaser images, where the arrow is about to fill the void in the A:
So if you find yourself getting excited by these teasers, but aren't really sure why the excite you, perhaps it's simply a matter of super-subtle sex symbols implanted in the imagery.

Here's something you don't see every day:

Or ever, really. I think there was some dinosaur droppings in the first Jurassic Park movie, and poor Plastic Man was forced into a pile of it off-screen in that Dinosaur Island episode of The Brave and the Bold (see, he disguised himself as a shovel to hide from the gorillas and...never mind, it takes too long to explain), but how often do you see a dinosaur in the act of going to the bathroom?

This particular image of this particular thing I you don't see very day was scanned from The Dinosaurs (Bantam Books; 1981) by William Stout, who wrote the introduction to Dark Horse's recent Turok, Son of Stone Vol. 1, and has a new art book coming out soon that I sure wouldn't mind getting a review copy of (hint, hint).

I've been trying to read The Dinosaurs for about two weeks now, but I keep getting distracted by the images, and spending a while looking at and re-looking at them and never actually getting to the words (After a few attempts, I'm only on like page ten). If you like dinosaurs or drawings I'd highly recommend the book, as it's just bursting with fantastic illustrations of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. If I were going to give it an in-depth review or discussion, I would want to scan some images, but narrowing it down to a couple of great ones would be pretty tough, and I'd want to scan about 50 or so.

So I decided to just scan one of a dinosaur going to the bathroom, and making a pretty funny face while it does so. Click on the picture for a better view of what kind of expression a sauropod might have had on its face while relieving itself.

Don't worry Barry; it happens to everyone at some point

Or so I'm told.

>snicker!<

(Panel rom Justice Society of America #22 by Geoff Johns, Alex Ross, Dale Eaglesham and Nate Massengill)

I find three things amusing about this image:

1.) You can't tell by this drawing, but that malformed goblin hanging off of The Crimson Avenger is actually Wing, a Chinese man who served as his sidekick. This comic was drawn in 1941, which was well before anyone in America had ever actually seen an Asian person in real life, and they all just assumed that all of Asia was populated by some kind of sub-human mole men.

2.) Rather than swinging on his own rope or clinging to Crimson Avenger's back or shoulders, Wing decides to nestle his face against the Avenger's ass and get a good grip on his dick. Surely that can't be a safe or comfrotable way for either of them to swing between rooftops.

3.) The narration box to the left says "The Gay White Way!" In a splash panel featuring a dude copping a feel off another dude.



(This panel was drawn by Jack Lehti and originally appeared in 1941's Leading Comics #1, but I scanned it out of 2004's The Golden Age of DC Comics: 365 Days by Les Daniels, Chipp Kidd and Geoff Spear, a book specifically designed to provide me with lazy content.)

Two funny bits from Too Cool To Be Forgotten

I reviewed two new graphic novels for this week's Best Shots column that I didn't cover here: Alex Robinson's Too Cool To Be Forgotten and Elizabeth Genco and Sami Makkonen's Blue. So if you care what I had to say about either of those and haven't already, head on over to Newsarama and read away.

As I said there, Robinson's book didn't quite earn a literal "I laughed, I cried" review, but it was in the ball park, as it did make me laugh (quietly) aloud while reading it alone in a coffee shop, and I did feel a bit melancholy during certain bits. Of the parts that made me laugh, here are two of my favorite scenes, to give you a better sense of how awesome the book is. A better sense than my words could probably convey, anyway.

So the premise is that middle-aged Andy Wicks finds himself flung backwards through time and somehow reliving high school. In this scene, he's just arrived and doesn't yet realize what's going on, or that his middle-aged mind is now in his teenage body (Robinson draws him middle-aged, because that's how he still thinks of himself).




Ah, the casual cruelty, naieve homophobia and juvenile humor of high school! Robinson captures both the stupid but funny-stupid humor of the teens and the frustrated reaction of the victim so perfectly, particularly due to the fact that Andy is still outsider, and has apparently forgotten the way high schoolers talk to each other.

Once he realizes what's going on and adjusts, though, he has a much easier time dishing it out. Here he is, now drawn as a teenager, wearing spikes in his hair because, hell, he's temporarily a teenager again, so why not?


While responding with some variation of "your mother" was something I considered absolutely hilarious back in high school (and continue to find quite amusing), it's the parenthetical addendum Andy makes above that just kills me, what with the "of course."

This is Not A Graphic Novel: Time To Pee!

I've mentioned before what a fan I am of the work of artist Mo Willems, whose pigeon and elephant and piggie books are all pretty great. Over the last few months I've been tracking down as many of his children's books as I could through my local libraries (all of which are nicely illustrated, even if none seem to be as all-around brilliant as Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! and the elephant and piggie line).

I'm pretty sure I've read them all at this point, since I've even read the one that was shelved in the "toilet training" area of the parenting section of the children's department:
That would be Time To Pee! (Hyperion; 2003), in which a bunch of very clever mice talk a couple of children through how to pee in the toilet like big kids.

I like Willems' animals better than his people, but he's a pretty good person-drawer, too, and while the subject matter of this book isn't anything I'm particularly interested in (having long ago learned how to pee in the toilet like a big kid and not yet having any little ones in need of learning this important life lesson), I really appreciated some of the clever narrative techniques he uses here.

Each of the pages reveals a two-page spread (way too big for the scanner I use; each image stretches to double the length of these scans), and features one of several different children during various steps of the peeing process. This allows Willems to make the protagonist look like the reader, whether they're a boy or girl, pale-skinned or brown-skinned. The narration comes not from a narrator, but from the mice, who are full of different ways to hold up signs, and who are so numerous that in many pages they're engaged in many different activities, giving young readers (or read-to-ees) a lot to look at on every page.

Here are four pages; the first two formed one long image, the second two were relatively nearby them in the book:




After assuring you that it's okay to get that feeling and it's nothing to freak out about, the mice instruct the kids to get up, excuse themselves, go to the bathroom, pull down their pants and either stand at or sit down on the toilet (depending on whether they're a boy or a girl) and then, aftwerwards, to wash their hands, and not worry about as they're all done peeing...for now!

Kind of cute, right?

Eventually, though, it dawned on me why these poor children might have some trouble making it to the bathroom to use the toilet, presumably instead opting to just go in their pants now and then. I mean, just look at the houses these kids live in. They are literally crawling with vermin, with the number of mice greatly intensifying around the toilet.

Look at what their bathroom looks like. Would you want to go anywhere near that toilet, let alone pull down your pants in front of it?

Hell, considering the number of mice running around their houses, if the worst thing wrong with these kids is that they occasionally go in their pants, I think they're doing pretty well developmentally, all things considered.

Fun fact: I think tonight may be the first time I've ever actually typed the word "pee."

Another fun fact: The title of this book is even funnier in Spanish.

One more fun fact: This book guest-stars the pigeon who isn't allowed to drive the bus; at least in toy form...

Man, I wish I had a toy bus with removable toy pigeon action figure...

We'll be right back after these messages...

As the more observant among you have no doubt noticed, I've been reading a lot of "Satellite Era" Justice League comics of late (which is why every other post contains a panel written by Gerry Conway).

The ads in these are pretty interesting because of what they reveal about the audience—or at least the intended audience—of Justice League comics at the time.

There are a lot of ads for DC's other comics, which seemed to be heavy into fantasy stuff at the time(Warlord, Arion, Arak, Camelot 3000, Amethyst, Princess of Gem World), and for subscriptions to DC comics.

There are a lot of ads for videogames, which hasn't changed at all (well, the graphics in the games sure have, but the presence of videogame ads in comics hasn't), and a lot of games for role-playing games, something I've seen progressively less and less for over the years (the last round I've seen in comics were those advocating playing D&D with a group of friends in person instead of role-playing online, a whole ad campaign seemingly in reaction to the slow decline of role-playing games that aren't video games of some sort).

I haven't seen a single ad for a film so far, which strikes me as odd, as when I started reading comics in the '90s, film ads were a constant presence.

I've also seen a lot of ads for toys, candy and gum, which makes me think that as late as the early '80s, kids were still the major audience for comics.

There were scads of those awesome Hostess ads, though they seem to be petering out now that I'm in 1982 (Aside: I would totally buy a graphic novel featuring all of DC's different Hostess ads, perhaps with some creator commentary).

Oh, and then I saw this ad:



Which may just be my favorite comic book ad ever.

Now, I was only five years old at the time that this ad was set to expire, so maybe this is a silly question, but were Rubik's Cubes really that popular that they created a market for ancillary products? Ancillary products like special lubricant for them? And were un-lubed cubes a major problem back in 1982? Did people end up wasting lots of time solving the cubes simply because they were locking up and hard to turn due to lack of proper lubricant?

And did I really just scan and post this image because I think "lube" is inherently a funny word?

Yes, yes I did.