DC Versus Marvel Omnibus Pt. 11: Silver Surfer/Superman #1

Okay, serious question for those who were reading Marvel comics at the time: Was the Silver Surfer a really popular character in the mid-90's...? 

I only ask because this was the second consecutive DC/Marvel crossover in which he starred, and if we look at all four of the standalone crossover one-shots that the two publishers released in 1995 and 1996, the Surfer was prominently featured in three of 'em. 

I know he was carrying his own ongoing title back then—according to Comics.org, The Silver Surfer launched in 1987 and lasted through 1998, running 146 issues—but when I think of popular Marvel characters of the '90s, I tend to think of Spider-Man, Wolverine, The Punisher and Ghost Rider, not Norrin Radd. 

Was he really one of their top characters, or was he simply over-represented in these crossovers, a Marvel character that the various creators involved just saw fit to repeatedly meet with members of the Distinguished Competition's roster? 

At any rate, the character returned to the spotlight in Silver Surfer/Superman #1, a one-shot special published just six months after the DC Versus Marvel miniseries wrapped; obviously, that event series wasn't meant to be any sort of climax or culmination of the publishers' 1990s crossovers, as they would continue unabated for a few more years. (Which means, of course, there are still plenty more posts yet to go in this series).

This time the creative team would consist of the popular and talented George Perez, here relegated to scripting only, with no hand in the art, and the prolific Ron Lim, who had by this point produced plenty of pages for the Silver Surfer comic, not to mention many of Marvel's other titles. (He'd also drawn Superman at that point, but not for any great length.) 

Perez, meanwhile, had written a run on Silver Surfer, and had plenty experience drawing Superman in different capacities for various titles.

Finally, rounding out the creative team was veteran inker Terry Austin, whose name didn't make the cover, as you can see above. (Nor did that of colorist Tom Smith.)

Their Silver Surfer/Superman story really seems premised on the meeting of the villains in the piece; while Superman and the Surfer do indeed have a couple of things in common, it's the villains of this story fulfill similar niches in each publisher's respective universe. In fact, a pretty strong case can made that one's portrayal is based on that of the other.

These villains are, of course, Mr. Mxyzptlk, a character dating back to a 1944 comic from Superman's creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and The Impossible Man, a one-time Fantastic Four character created in 1963 by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee who had since gone on to mess with various other Marvel characters, the Surfer included.

Though their exact natures and powers varied a bit—Mxy was a fifth dimensional imp with seemingly limitless magic powers, while the Impossible Man hailed from the planet Poppup and had extraordinary shape-shifting abilities—both were diminutive pranksters that enjoyed teasing strait-laced heroes, and the stories featuring them were generally more comedic in nature, offering a temporary respite from the more standard and serious superhero fare. 

Thus, this story, entitled "Pop!" is really more of a Mr. Mxyzptlk/Impossible Man crossover than a Superman/Silver Surfer one. 

It's kind of too bad that the villains, if we can really call them that, are so prominently placed on the book's wraparound cover, as it spoils their presence, draining the What's going on? melodrama that our heroes experience at the beginning of the tale, when they find themselves in strange, even impossible circumstances. 

Superman is just finishing up a routine patrol of Metropolis when he disappears in a "Pop", reappearing on what seems to be an intact and populated Krypton...although he can tell from the positions of the stars that he hasn't traveled back in time, and that, as impossible as it seems, this Krypton exists in the present day.

After tangling with Kryptonian soldiers, he's faced with a much more formidable foe: The Super-Skrull!

Meanwhile, The Silver Surfer is investigating a mysterious planet in deep space, when he also disappears in a "Pop", reappearing in Metropolis, where he finds things are very wrong. It's not just that everyone's afraid of him and calling for a "Superman" to come save them, but his powers don't seem to be working quite right, and when he tries to flee for space, he rams into and shatters some sort of glass barrier.

The Surfer soon finds himself standing outside a miniaturized, "bottled" Metropolis, in what appears to be Superman's Fortress of Solitude...although the fortress seems endless, ever-changing, sentient and...to have a sense of humor...?

Superman eventually figures out what's going on—or at least thinks he does—and he punches out the Super-Skrull while shouting in big red letters, "GAME OVER, IMP!!"

It turns out he's got the wrong alien prankster though, as the Super-Skrull was really the Impossible Man in disguise, not Mxyzptlk. Impossible Man then explains the situation to Superman: He ran into Mr. Mxyzptlk (who he continually refers to as "Mixed Pickles") in one of the "dimensional interfaces" that he travels through when popping. They hit it off, and came up with a challenge of sorts, where they would swap playmates with one another. 

Mxy doesn't play entirely fair, however, leading to he and Impossible Man battling one another in a fun four-page sequence where they each take on the appearances of heroes from their respective universes, only color-coded, so that green and purple Marvel characters fight orange and purple DC characters. This gives us a rapid succession of strange panels like Thanos punching out Plastic Man and Wonder Woman blocking Wolverine's claws with her bracelets and so on.

Eventually, thanks to the Impossible Man's trickery and some similar quick-thinking from our heroes, all four end up in the same place at the same time, and Mxy is prevailed upon to join his powers with the Impossible Man's and put the heroes back in their home universes.

This is, by the way, another crossover in which the DC and Marvel characters are explicitly denizens of two separate universes, their crossover only made possible by the villains' extraordinary powers piercing the border between the DC Universe and the Marvel Universe. Perhaps also worth mentioning? At one point, Access from DC Versus Marvel is name-dropped by the Impossible Man: "Mixed Pickles and I found out it took both our combined powers to make the switchover between you and the Surfer work," he explains to Superman, "Neither one of us is Access after all."

Overall, it's a rather fun outing, and the best kind of crossover, one that finds similar characters from each publisher and lets them play off of one another, comparing and contrasting them. It's just that in this case, somewhat unusually, it's the antagonists more than the heroes who are most similar.



Next: 1997's Batman & Captain America #1

DC Versus Marvel Omnibus Pt. 10: Green Lantern/Silver Surfer: Unholy Alliances #1

Although it was the ninth DC/Marvel crossover overall, 1995's Green Lantern/Silver Surfer: Unholy Alliances was the very first to suggest that the DC Universe and the Marvel Universe were two different, separate, distinct and (usually) inviolable universes. 

That status quo now seems obvious, even intuitive. It not only offers in-story rationales for why DC and Marvel characters don't interact with one another constantly, but it's in keeping with both publishers' decades-old concepts of alternate universes, parallel dimensions and a multiverse to imagine that their two respective lines of comics were each set in their own universes.  

DC traditionally cataloged alternate worlds with a letter or number system that was originated by writer Gardner Fox in his Silver Age Flash stories, beginning with Earth-Two and then expanding to Earth-Three, Earth-X, et cetera. Marvel had its own system, introduced to the public by Alan Moore in a 1983 Captain Britain comic, one that gave universes their own numerical designation, with the Marvel Universe being Earth-616.

For a comics reader, it was easy enough to think of the Justice League someday visiting Earth-616 in the same way they used to regularly visit Earth-2. 

Obviously, none of the previous DC/Marvel crossovers acknowledged this premise, though, with each of the first eight just sort of assuming that DC and Marvel characters belonged in the same universe and could thus meet one another if they just visited one another's home cities. Even if that did raise a niggling question in the back of a certain kind of reader's mind (A question both Jim Shooter and Chris Claremont acknowledged in the scripts for the crossovers they had written, with first Spider-Man and then the Teen Titans' Cyborg noting how strange it is that they have never crossed paths with the other publisher's characters before).

That was almost certainly the way to go, too, particularly given most of the characters involved in those crossovers so far. I can't imagine that any of those comics would have benefited had their writers taken a few pages to acknowledge some concept of a multiverse and then figure out some way to get Spider-Man from Earth-616 to Batman's Earth-1 Gotham City or whatever.

The biggest DC/Marvel crossover of all time, 1996's four-issue DC Versus Marvel miniseries, was on its way though, and the very premise of that crossover revolved around the fact that the DC Universe and Marvel Universe were two separate realities. 

It's not entirely clear to me now to what extent Green Lantern/Silver Surfer writer Ron Marz—one of the two writers of the upcoming DC Versus Marvel series—was laying the groundwork for that event comic when he penned this one, or to what extent a story in which the DC and Marvel Universes are separate realities just seemed obvious and natural to him in the story he was telling here.

Obviously, there was some degree of foreshadowing of the next year's big crossover in Green Lantern/Silver Surfer, though, as Marz devotes three panels on the last page of Unholy Alliances to a mysterious cardboard box on a New York City street which starts to emanate strange light—which would have meant nothing to that book's readers at the time, but, after having read DC Versus Marvel, it's clear bit of foreshadowing. The scene includes a line of portentous narration, of the sort readers would have been trained to know promised a sequel or continuation of some sort. 

"Still," Green Lantern Kyle Rayner thinks to himself. "Just between us... ...I'm glad it's over."

(So obvious is the connection between Unholy Alliances and DC Versus Marvel that DC, who published this omnibus, included an ad for the still upcoming DC Versus Marvel: The Amalgam Age Omnibus, which contains DC Versus Marvel, directly after the last page of this Surfer/GL crossover.)

Given the cosmic nature of the various characters involved in Unholy Alliances, it seems an easy enough one to deal with the DC Universe-and-Marvel Universe-as-separate-dimensions concept; these are characters who regularly travel through time, space and other dimensions, ones who have been involved in battles to re-write their respective realities in the past (And quite recent past, for some of the DC characters featured herein).

One interesting aspect of Marz's exploration of the concept in this script, and its basis for DC Versus Marvel, is that the later story would establish a new character, jointly owned by both DC and Marvel, whose superpower was the ability to traverse between the two universes and thus provide an ongoing means for future crossovers. 

However, while some future crossovers took advantage of that and acknowledged the Two Universes premise, others just ignored it completely and continued with the original idea of just having the publishers' characters already extant in the same universe. (Wikipedia's page on the DC Multiverse lists a "Crossover Earth" or an "Earth-7642" where the DC/Marvel comics take place, giving them their own universe separate from either the main DC Universe or Marvel Universe. That is, of course, another option for those who are concerned with such things, I guess.) 

Marz's suitability for writing this particular project went far beyond the fact that he was going to be co-writing DC Versus Marvel, though. He was, at the time, the regular writer of DC's Green Lantern and Marvel's Silver Surfer, so the publishers could have hardly asked for a more ideal writer for the crossover. 

The rest of the creative team consisted of pencil artist Darryl Banks, Marz's partner on Green Lantern (and Kyle Rayner's co-creator) and veteran inker Terry Austin.

Somewhere out in deep space, The Silver Surfer comes across a caped figure standing atop a destroyed planet as corpses float about him. When the Surfer confronts the stranger, we see that it is Hank Henshaw, the Cyborg Superman of "Reign of the Supermen," now in his red and black look. He introduces himself simply as "Cyborg," and the pair immediately fight, letterer Chris Eliopoulos providing a big "BRAKKADOOM!" that dwarfs the battling figures in the panel where they clash. 

Meanwhile, on Earth, the style of narration boxes shifts to let us know we are now hearing freelance artist Kyle Rayner's thoughts as he works at his drafting table on a logo design, only to be forced to change into Green Lantern when Marvel character Terrax appears to pick a fight with him, mentioning his desire to conquer "This universe."

Both fights are broken up when new players appear. 

In space, it's Parallax, the identity Hal Jordan took after going mad during the Marz-written "Emerald Twilight," here rather fresh off his plot to destroy and remake the DC Universe in the pages of the previous year's Zero Hour. And on earth, it's Thanos, wearing his classic costume and sitting on a flying chair. The two newcomers rather quickly dispatch of the secondary bad guys. 

Marz will jump back and forth between the two settings regularly, building a neatly organized parallel narrative. After some conversation, it's made clear that Cyborg and Parallax have come to the Silver Surfer's reality (the latter chasing the former), and that Thanos (and Terrax) had similarly come to Green Lantern's reality, through a rift between the dimensions. 

Parallax convinces the Silver Surfer to lend him part of his power cosmic, giving him the might he needs to complete his mission of restoring the destroyed Coast City, although he starts by restoring to life the dead planet and its inhabitants from the first page.

And Thanos convinces Kyle that he has constructed a super-weapon to stop Hal Jordan, who he claims threatens both universes. In order to operate the weapon, though, he needs Kyle to journey with him to the center of the universe, put his arm in an elaborate machine, and use his ring to channel the "almost limitless ambient energies of Oa", which Kyle had recently destroyed during a fight with Hal. It was Oa's destruction that apparently created the rift between the two universes in the first place. (Thanos being Thanos, however, he really just wants to use all that energy to destroy existence, a plot he reveals to Kyle just as soon as he gets what he wants from him.)

And so that's where the subtitle comes from, as both heroes rather naively decide to ally themselves with cosmic supervillains from the opposite universe, each of the title characters being rather easily talked into taking part in their schemes. 

And the Surfer is also pretty easily manipulated into fighting Kyle, but I guess seeing him standing side-by-side with Thanos is enough to convince the Surfer that Kyle's a bad guy.

This leads to a pretty awesome double-page splash, in which Banks and Austin draw the two heroes posed in opposition to one another, in a poster-quality image. 

Thanos tells Parallax that he's harnessed all that energy "in order to destroy everything that exists." Hal, eyes glowing with the power cosmic, responds, "And I finally have enough power to recreate it. Our goals, it would seem, are at odds."

And so they fight too, so spectacularly that it catches the Surfer's attention and he and Kyle are able to put aside their differences and intervene, ultimately putting all of the vast energies that have gone to Thanos and Parallax back where they belong and sealing the rift.

"Perhaps we'll meet again," The Surfer says over his shoulder as he heads towards the closing rift, while Kyle responds, "Meet again? Oh yeah, like that's really gonna happen." Another nod to the upcoming DC Versus Marvel on Marz's part? 

Now, if you're wondering who would win in a fight between Green Lantern Kyle Rayner and the Silver Surfer, well, the four panels devoted to their fight following that double-page splash here are pretty inconclusive, but,—spoiler alert!—they would be forced into combat with one another in the pages of DC Versus Marvel, and the Surfer would be victorious. Theirs was one of the fights that was determined by writers Marz and Peter David and not by fan vote, as the more high-profile matchups were. 

So yes, Kyle Rayner would end up meeting the Surfer again rather soon after the events of their crossover.

So too will we, as it turns out that the Surfer is one of the stars of the very next DC/Marvel collaboration.

Next: 1996's Silver Surfer/Superman #1...not DC Versus Marvel, which was technically the next DC/Marvel crossover, preceding Silver Surfer/Superman. As it's collected in a different omnibus, the DC Versus Marvel: The Amalgam Age Omnibus, we'll get to that after we finish reviewing all of the contents of the DC Versus Marvel Omnibus and start in on the second omnibus. 

DC Versus Marvel Omnibus Pt. 8: Darkseid vs. Galactus: The Hunger #1

As we saw with the first generation of DC/Marvel collaborations, those published between 1976 and 1982, the emphasis was on stories featuring the respective companies' most popular characters...as it should be. It makes the most sense, as such stories were likely to attract the most readers, to generate the most media coverage and to have the greatest chance of pulling in lapsed or new comics readers.

The 1995 publication of Darkseid vs Galactus: The Hunger is another instance in which I wish there was an introduction explaining the thinking behind the book, as it was most decidedly not a crossover featuring the publishers' most popular characters.

In fact, while Darkseid and Galactus had at that point long been recurring presences in their respective fictional universes, from 1970 and 1966 respectively, neither had ever had their own comic book—not even a miniseries or one-shot (Galactus would get a mini in 1999 in the form of Galactus the Devourer, while Darkseid would get one-shots in 1998 and 2017).

Who, exactly, was this book for...?

I suppose the obvious answer is that it was for hardcore comics fans, who would of course know that both cosmic characters are among the most feared villains in their universes, and that both were the creation of Jack Kirby. Galactus appeared during Kirby's seminal run on the Fantastic Four with Stan Lee (with whom he shares a creator credit for the character), while Darkseid was introduced in an issue of Kirby's run on Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen and became a major figure in Kirby's "Fourth World" suite of books before eventually being adopted as a DCU-wide villain. 

Another guess? Maybe John Byrne pitched the book, and neither publisher was inclined to turn down an offer from a relatively popular creator of Byrne's caliber, one who had created foundational stories for both of them?

And make no mistake, this is a Byrne book, as he handles both the script and the art, the only other credit being for colorist Rick Taylor (No letterer is credited, so I'm not sure if that means that Byrne handled that himself too, or if they just left the credit off of the title page for some reason.)

Now I had missed all of the work that Byrne is best known for, his late '70s and 1980s work on The Uncanny X-Men, The Fantastic Four, The Sensational She-Hulk and the post-Crisis reboot of the Superman line. I could probably count on one hand the number of Byrne books I've read (Wait, let's test that out: Man of Steel #3, Legends, Batman: The Many Deaths of the Batman, JLA arc "The Tenth Circle" and Genesis...Yep, that's only one hand!). 

So his presence here wasn't something that particularly excited me the way it might have readers a decade or so older than me; I mean, I skipped it when it was originally released in 1995, and, like the X-Men/Titans crossover discussed previously, I wasn't really looking forward to reading it here.

Like most of the DC/Marvel crossovers of the '90s, it's just 48-pages long, and the plot and basic conflict are simple and straightforward. You might have even intuited it from the title alone. Galactus, the space-faring cosmic giant who sustains himself by draining all of the energy from planets and feeding off it, has set his sights on Apokolips, the home planet that tyrannical space god Darkseid rules with an iron fist.

(Of note is a special thank you included on the title page. After a nice dedication to Kirby, "who created his own universes when ours alone proved too small to contain him, " there's a special thanks given to a Marc Galinis McFinn, "who one day said to me 'Galactus tries to eat Apokolips...'")

Byrne opens with a four-page recounting of the origins of Apokolips and New Genesis and their respective New Gods and has those on New Genesis in great excitement of a coming threat, one to which the Source suggests Highfather respond to with this cryptic message: "Hide The World."

Something must be done to get New Genesis out of the path of Galactus, of course, or else why would he choose to attack Darkseid's Apokolips, when a much more appetizing alternative is right there?

This they do, so that when Galactus' herald the Silver Surfer streaks onto the scene, in a dramatic splash page, he heads straight for Apokolips, where he's immediately swarmed by scores of Parademons. They are no match for him, of course, and he sends out the signal to his master.

While Highfather waits from his now-hidden planet, he tells Orion of Galactus' origin story, and then the giant lands on Apokolips and begins to busy himself setting up his planet-draining apparatus. From here on out, it's basically just what the title says, Darkseid vs. Galactus, the former throwing his planet's various defenses against the invader in a vain attempt to stop him.

Meanwhile, hotheaded Orion, unable to take standing by and doing nothing for so long, dons his helmet and flies into action, tackling the Silver Surfer. This leads to a fight between the two, which manages to stretch out the page count a bit (as does Darkseid's recounting of the Surfer's origin; despite what seems like a relatively niche appeal, this book is really written with potential new readers in mind). 

The Surfer eventually overpowers his New God foe, blasting him with a bolt of the power cosmic ("Let the annoyance end now") that should have killed him...but when the Black Racer arrives to collect Orion, the Surfer delays him long enough that Orion's Mother Box is able to heal him. (Certainly there are Kirby fans out there that appreciated seeing the Silver Surfer and the Black Racer sharing a panel, right?)

So where does all this fighting end up...? Well, there can't really be a victor, and not just because this is an inter-company crossover, and thus neither side's character can really thoroughly, unequivocally vanquish the other. No, because of the stakes, victory for either combatant would mean the destruction of the other, and we can't have a comic where Darksied kills off Galactus any more than we can have one where Galactus destroys Apokolips...and, presumably, all those that live there.

The back cover copy frames the conflict as "an unstoppable force meets an immovable object," which sounds about right. So how to resolve it without stopping the force or moving the object?

Byrne has an exceptionally clever twist that essentially leads to a draw, the two title characters facing one another, acknowledging one another's similarities and then dropping their conflict, leaving the status quo of either unchanged.

It ends, in other words, as it must, but Byrne comes up with an interesting rationale for it doing so, one that fits in well with Kirby's creations.

None of these characters are really my personal cup of tea, despite their strengths and attributes. That is, I find they generally work when facing off against more relatable heroes, or when in stories with point-of-view characters that ground all the cosmic opera in something approaching the real world.

Here, Orion and the Silver Surfer are as close as we get to relatable heroes though, and both of them talk in the same overblown, purple dialogue that all the other characters do. This is not the fault of Byrne, of course. It's just who these characters are and how they have always been portrayed. 

I'm not a big fan of Byrne's art style either, although, to be fair, it is here completely focused on the otherworldly, so everything he draws is essentially a "cover" of a Kirby design, and there's no visual relief from that 20th Century futuristic look, nothing to contrast it with.

There is therefore little to grab onto here; you're either a fan of Kirby's creations as recreated by Byrne, or this story probably isn't for you.

That said, Byrne does a solid job of reintroducing all the players and concepts, so it's not beyond the realm of possibility that one could encounter this story and become a fan of Kirby's creations, and, thankfully, Byrne keeps the proceedings quite simple.

Not only in the basic nature of the conflict, but the storytelling. He doesn't get too deep into the histories and continuities of the various characters. The pages also feature relatively few panels each, and there are lots of splashes and big panels devoted to showcasing "moments" of import (The Surfer confronting Orion, Darkseid using the Omega Effect on Galactus, etc). It's a relatively quick, painless read.

What would happen if Galactus tried to devour Apokolips? This is Byrne's answer, in the form of a short but epic-feeling comic.

Next: 1995's Spider-Man and Batman #1

Meanwhile, at Robot 6...

Okay, so there were two new comic book-comic books I read this week that I didn't review here last night: All-New Ghost Rider #1 and Silver Surfer #1. I did not review them here, because I was going to review them at Robot 6, and now I have.

Also at Robot 6 today, Tom Bondurant discusses Pandora and the more-confusing-than-ever cosmology of the DC Multiverse in the era of the New 52, while comparing and contrasting Forever Evil with the 2002 original graphic novel JLA/JSA: Virtue and Vice, which have a few things in common.

Pandora's fusing of the three universes—the DCU, the WildStorm Universe and the so-called Vertigo universe—annoyed me right from the start, as it didn't really make sense on a meta-level, not with what Pandora told The Flash (the argument could be made that the Vertigo imprint fractured the way the DC Universe was "meant" to be, but the WildStorm universe was never split from it), not with DC publishing history (There is no Vertigo Universe; the first crop of Vertigo characters were all from ongoing DC super-comics, and ever since, characters relatively regularly appeared on both sides of the imprint's border) and certainly not with what was going on, like, a month or two prior to Flashpoint (While the Doom Patrol and Animal Man were appearing regularly in the DCU for years since their Vertigo series ended, Swamp Thing and John Constantine had both been back for months as well).

Anyway, Bondurant's piece reminded me that, at the time of Flashpoint, there were 52 parallel dimensions in the DCU multiverse...one of which was the DCU ("New Earth") and one of which was the WildStorm Universe. If we go ahead and give DC the fact that there was a Vertigo Universe, then that would mean that Pandora fused three of the 52 universes, so now the multiverse would only have 50 universes, right?

But wait! The New 52 rejiggering didn't merely add to the DCU, it also subtracted—all of the Golden Age heroes, as well as a sizable chunk of the third generation of DC superheroes (Donna Troy, Aqualad, Flash II Wally West, Jade and Obsidian, etc) were banished from the new, fused DCU, many of them landing on a new Earth 2.

And that Earth 2 is a completely different Earth 2 than all the other, previous Earth 2s, just as the current Earth 3 is a brand-new version of Earth 3. So, I guess Pandora didn't just fuse three timelines, but she fused three timelines, subtracted large swathes of heroes and history from it, and rebooted at least two more timelines, creating or re-creating Earths 2 and 3...?

Jesus God this stuff is complicated. You would think that, by this point, DC would have learned that reboots only ever make things more complicated—it's just quicksand, and the more you struggle the faster you sink into it. (I suppose a pure reboot, one that did not involve the in-story justification of Flashpoint and Pandora could have avoided all of that, but I don't think anyone really wanted and "Ultimate" DC Universe...)

Virtue and Vice was a pretty great comic though; the DCU is a hell of a lot poorer without those characters in it today. And I liked the idea of an annual JSA/JLA Thanksgiving dinner, even if all we ever got out of it was that one great graphic novel and one great done-in-one issue of JSA in 2001.

Also also at Robot 6, there's a link to this very funny webcomic entitled "The Adventures of Business Cat." I liked it a lot.

Also also also at Robot 6, there's an image of Arthur Adams' cover for the upcoming Godzilla graphic novel tied to the upcoming Godzilla film. Is that the clearest look at the new Godzilla design so far...? I would assume so, as it wouldn't do to have an off-model Godzilla on the cover of the book. I like it; it looks an awful lot like the Godzilla Adams drew on his cover to IDW's ongoing Godzilla comic, but with smaller teeth and less separation between the head and neck. It's a pretty big departure from the previous Godzilla designs, but not as radical as the one in the last American Godzilla movie, which ought to make a lot of folks happy. Anyway, based on that one single image, it works for me.

I sure wish I knew what was up with the Godzilla comics license at the moment, though. I saw an IDW Godzilla comic—in which the title monster was battling the Frankensteins/Gargantuas!—on the new rack today. But the movie tie-in is being published by Legendary, and distributed through DC Comics...?

I hope IDW gets to hang on to the license; they've done some pretty great stuff with it (And their choices of artists have been much more inspired than those working on the Legendary graphic novel). And I'm actually really, really scared of a DC Comics Godzilla, for fear it would lead to a crossover with the DCU, and based on DC Universe Vs. Masters of The Universe, I have no desire to see the DCU do any sort of crossing-over with other franchises I like.

Unless I get to write it, I suppose. Speaking of which, I have a great idea for a DCU/Toho crossover! Superman, Godzilla? If you two are reading this, give me a call. The three of us should really sit down for a meeting.

Film Review: Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Okay, so this weekend's big comic book superhero movie— How was it?

Click on over to DoneWaiting.com for my review.

I'll say this much here: It's much better than the last Tim Story-directed Fantastic Four (mostly on account of the Silver Surfer's awesomeness), it's not quite as good a story as the Roger Corman-produced and unreleased Fantastic Four (which managed to get all of the characters better, particularly Dr. Doom, even if the cast was lame and the special effects even worse), and it's nowhere near as good as The Incredibles which, oddly enough, remains the best Fantastic Four movie ever made.

And Galactus? Well, he looked awesome, anyway.

What did you guys think?