On DC's Looney Tunes variant covers

DC's full November solicitations should be along shortly, but while we wait I thought it would be worthwhile to spend some time looking at the publisher's plan for the variant cover theme of the month. Taking advantage of being owned by Warner Bros, they're importing Looney Tunes characters to appear alongside their superhero characters on 25 different comics (They've previously exploited such corporate synergy to do Mad magazine variants).

I'm hoping there's a solicitation for a trade collection of the 2000 mini-series Superman & Bugs Bunny, in which Mr. Mxyzptlk and The Do-Do (from 1938's Porky In Wackyland) use their apparently similar powers to merge the DCU with the Looney Tunes-iverse for the sake of mischief. I've only read the first half, so I'm still not sure how it ended, exactly (happily, I assume), but it's gotta be one of the few Justice League adventures from the popular, JLA period to never be collected in trade (um, that I know of).

Below are the covers, which you can also see and comment on here on DC's site; you'll note that each of the credits end with "and Warner Bros. Animation." I'm not sure exactly what that means in this context, but the various Looney Tune characters are all so on-model that there's not variation in their appearances from cover to cover, and, if the cover artists themselves did draw the characters, they did so with such fidelity that there's no evidence of personal style (The Tweety Bird who appears on the Darwyn Cooke cover just looks like Tweety Bird, rather than Darwyn Cooke's Tweety Bird, and so on). I've only listed the first credited artist, as I'm not certain who did what, so there are probably plenty of colorists and a few inkers whose names are included below, but the full credits are at DC's site.

So without further ado...

Action Comics #46 by Neil Edwards

Here's Bugs Bunny, an anthropomorphic rabbit and star of animated cartoons, posing with Superman, the humanoid star of a line representational-style comic books. Should the former really have a more realistic human anatomy than the latter?

Bugs is here show wearing his Super-Rabbit costume from the 1943 short, Super-Rabbit. He gains his Superman-like powers by eating a "super carrot," and must occasionally eat another when his powers begin to wane, which is awfully close to the origin of DC Comics' later anthropomorphic rabbit superhero, Captain Carrot (mots recently seen in Multiversity).

Beyond the fairly poor drawing of Superman, what really strikes me about this image is that how Bugs' costume was immediately familiar to me, even though I've only seen it in that one short subject during the dozens of times I've seen it, but Superman still looks "off" in his New 52 costume. I wonder how long it will take until I immediately, unconsciously accept that as the "real" Superman costume. I've lived with the original one (and it's occasional, temporary tweaks, like a black field behind the S-shield) for 38 years now. Will I need another 38 years with the New 2 costume, or will it never really replace the original in my mind, because the original was the first one I encountered, and thus had a deeper impression on me? (And, of course, it's never gone completely away; the "real" Superman costume actually shows up in another of these covers).

I wonder how long it took the kids who remember Superman's very first appearance in Action Comics (Vol. 1) #1 to get used to the change in his S-sheild, or did they just simply quit reading Superman comics when they aged out of them, and never gave it another thought...?

Aquaman #46 by Ivan Reis

The only example of Bugs Bunny cross-dressing among these variants, as he so often did in the cartoons, with the result of sexually confusing his opponents, usually Elmer Fudd. This is a pretty strong one conceptually, juxtaposing as it does the two "worlds" of the characters in a way that clashes strongly. Again, it's too bad that Aquaman's not wearing his regular costume (that's Aquaman in the water, by the way). During the "Divergence"/"DC You" initiative, he was one of many characters to get a new costume design, which, in his case seemed a little sudden, as he got a new costume in September of 2011 (although like Green Lantern Hal Jordan, Aquaman's New 52 redesign was minor enough to be barely noticeable).

I'm not sure what the redesign signifies, but I suspect it is to bring comic book Aquaman closer to movie Aquaman...or what we've seen of movie Aquaman so far. At any rate, it's a little too bad, as that Aquaman will only be about six months old when this sees print, and thus not as immediately recognizable as he would otherwise be were he wearing his orange, fish-scale shirt.

Batman #46 by Yannick Paquette

Conceptually perfect, this one shows a 100% typical Batman scene–the Dark Knight swooping down like a monstrous bat to ambush superstitious, cowardly criminals–simply swapping out modern Gotham thugs for a pair of Looney Tunes gangster characters. Both Batman and the gangsters are behaving exactly as they would naturally, but their juxtaposition makes the cover work. This one is fairly strong.

Batman Beyond #6 by Craig Rousseau

I'm not terribly fond of this one, which shows Batman Beyond Tim Drake teamed with Duck Dodgers (of the 24th-and-a-half century) fighting a villain that I suppose hails form the Batman Beyond TV cartoon (and who recently appeared in the new Batman Beyond comic), Inque. There's no real joke here, or even any strong juxtaposition based on any sort of symmetry (or thematic opposition) between the characters. They're just two future characters.

Batman/Superman #26 by Ryan Sook

This is probably my least favorite of them all. It took me a few seconds to "get" it, as it is simply a cover of an image from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns (an iconic-ish image, sure, but not the most iconic, or the second most iconic, or even third or fourth). In the original, it was Superman facing down Batman in his big, custom-made Superman-fighting armor. Here perennial rivals Sylvester and Tweety take their places, although their relationship isn't really analogous to that of Superman and Batman in most other stories (Sylvester is villain to Tweety's hero) and Tweety's not wearing big, chunky armor here.

Black Canary #6 by Pia Guerra

This is probably one of the better ones, offering an immediately evident juxtaposition joke that works with the characters...and even goes fairly deep into the Looney Tunes bench to pull up a particular version of Tweety Bird, the one from 1960's Hyde and Go Tweet, in which the little bird gets doused in Dr. Jekyll's formula (would that Dark Knight homage work better with this Tweety on it, I wonder...? No, it probably still wouldn't work right).

I particularly love the look on Foghorn Leghorn's face.

Catwoman #46 by Darwyn Cooke

This one is probably the best of them all. Cooke draws Catwoman in one of her most immediately recognizable costumes–the one he designed–holding a Tweety Bird who is in the middle of the delivering his catch phrase, which can be applied to her, while Selina gives the viewer a look showing her own personal feelings about meeting Tweety Bird.

Cyborg #5 by Cully Hamner

Not quite as strong as the Catwoman variant, but this one's pretty good. I think a desert setting for a background would make more sense than the strange high-tech background, which suggests Justice League HQ or STAR Labs, rather than the sort of place Wile E. Coyote usually gets his Acme-brand packages delivered to him.

Deathstroke #12 by Ryan Benjamin

That's a pretty inspired pairing, although the execution's lacking: Deathstroke in random falling action pose, Yosemite Sam in random flying action pose, generic urban background.

This is the first one to make me wonder about the wisdom of the comics and characters chosen. Is it weird to put a cartoon character on the cover of a comic called "Deathstroke"...? I mean, most of DC's superheroes area also cartoon characters (although I don't know if Deathstroke was ever called Deathstroke in a cartoon; I've never seen any of Young Justice, if he's in that, but I know in Teen Titans they just called him "Slade"). And unlike Batman and Superman and Wonder Woman and the rest of the DC character, Yosemite Sam doesn't have various versions of himself, some for kids and some for grown-ups, you know. Another of the more "adult" of the DC superhero titles, Harley Quinn, also gets a Looney Tunes variant, but it features a more obscure guest-star, and one less likely to be recognized than Yosemite Sam.

Detective Comics #46 by Ben Caldwell

Daffy Duck, wearing his Duck Twacy hat from the 1945 short The Great Piggy Bank Robbery, closely investigates an issue of a Bastman comic that is from Japan for some reason. Above him loom prominent members of Batman's rouges' gallery, in an allusion to that particular short, in which Daffy is inspired by a Dick Tracy comic to dream himself as the famous "duck-tec-a-tive" and ultimately face a bizarre rogues' gallery of Dick Tracy villains (which have always been pretty bizarre; there's not a whole heck of a lot of space between the originals and the parodies.

It's a nice, straightforward piece, provided you don't think too long about it, but I'm perplexed by the fact that he's reading a Japanese comic. Anyway, it's nice to see Caldwell's versions of so many classic characters.

The Flash #46 by Francis Manapul

A clever (if obvious) idea, although the presentation could be stronger. I confess to being slightly surprised by the presence of Speedy Gonzalez; it's been quite a while since I've seen any of his cartoon appearances, but he doesn't seem like a character that aged very well.

Grayson #14 by Mikal Janin

Next to Cooke's Catwoman/Tweety Bird cover, this is probably the best, accomplishing a double allusion: To Dick Grayson's first appearance and to Porky Pig's penchant for smashing through the skin of a drum to deliver his catch phrase. It's a bit on the complicated side, maybe, but it works nicely.

Green Arrow #46 by Kevin Nowlan

This one I don't like at all. Pairing the Robin Hood-inspired Green Arrow with Daffy and Porky as they appeared in the 1958 Robin Hood Daffy is a pretty good idea, but, again, the execution is wanting. Nowlan (or whoever) just drops a giant Green Arrow in the background behind them, and he doesn't seem to be interacting with the character or the environment in any way at all.

Also, what's with that new costume. I have honestly lost track of how many costumes and redesigns Green Arrow has gone through in just four years.

Green Lantern #46 by Jorge Corona

While not a terribly exact homage to the cover of Green Lantern #49, moving Marvin The Martian further back into the image like that makes enough room for his dog K-9 in the background. This is one of the all-around stronger pieces, I think, homaging a particular image that should be familiar to many DC Comics readers (certainly those enough into comics enough to consider chasing variants), only using a Looney Tunes character whose presence makes logical sense.

Harley Quinn #22 by Amanda Conner

It seems quite appropriate that the one DC super-character who is practically a Looney Tune herself (her weapon of choice? A cartoonishly large mallet) is re-enacting a scene from a Bugs Bunny cartoon herself, here giving Gossamer a makeover (albeit a Harley-style one). The bunny slippers are a particularly nice touch.

Justice League #46 by Scott Williams

Well this is a random one...an assortment of Looney Tunes characters cosplaying as the Justice League, with no real logic as to who's who or why. I mean, Bugs is Superman, sure, and Daffy's a Green Lantern as he was during that one episode of the Duck Dodgers cartoon series, but "villains" like Wile E. Coyote, Sylvester and the Tasmanian Devil are in the Justice League along with the "good" characters.

Also, this has Lola Bunny in it, and man, I do not care for Lola Bunny one bit. If you haven't seen any Warner Bros, Looney Tunes cartoons post-Tiny Toons (lucky!), then she was created for the very weird Space Jam in 1996, specifically to be a love interest for Bugs and, more specifically still, to sell stuff to little girls.

JLA #46 by Howard Porter

To demonstrate the destructive power of the Tasmanian Devil, he's here shown tearing through the Justice League. I don't really care for Porter's staging, and I don't really get the cliff, but it's a pretty good use of all of the characters.

New Suicide Squad #14 by Bill Sienkiewicz

Huh. This is one of the worse ones, if only because it looks particularly slapped together. Sienkiewicz is unquetionably a good artist, but it looks like someone simply took a piece of art of his and Photoshopped some Looney Tunes related imagery around it.

Also, Sienkiewicz drew New 52 Deadshot, but pre-New 52 Harley. Huh.

Robin: Son of Batman #6 by Pat Gleason and Mick Gray

This one's a pretty nice companion piece to the the Catwoman cover, giving Sylvester a bird to replace the one that found itself in Catwoman's clutches.

I hope Granny gets there in time to stop Sylvester and Junior from opening that cage, or they're going to get the beating of all nine of their lives.

Sinestro #17 by Dan Pasonin

If there's a joke somewhere in this cover, I can't find it.

Starfire #6 by Emanuella Luppicino

The skunk who is always trying to kiss a cat that doesn't want to be kissed find himself trying to be kissed by a Tamaranian who he doesn't want to kiss.

Superman #46 by Ryan Sook

Sook drops The Crusher, from 1948's Rabbit Punch, into his version of the cover of Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali...interesting to note that Superman is in his old costume, and therefore looks like himself on this cover, as opposed to how he appears on the cover of Action Comics.

Superman/Wonder Woman #23 by Karl Kerschl

Superman and Wonder Woman meet Witch Hazel and...the scientist from Water, Water Every Hare...I think...? I like Kerschl's art, and am always happy to see it. Not much to this one though, and, obviously, there are certainly worse ones.

Teen Titans #14 by Joe Quinones

Well, the idea here seems to be to put a bunch of "teen" characters, but, um, I don't know if it really works. I never thought of Tweety as a kid before, I just assumed he was the same age as Sylvester.

Wonder Woman #46 by Terry Dodson

An homage to one of the better shorts, 1957's What's Opera, Doc?, this is one of the better ones, I think. It's...weird to see Wonder Woman looking like she's enjoying herself on the cover of a comic book, isn't it...?

Comic Shop Comics: August 12

All-Star Section Eight #3 (DC Comics) I was thinking about that old "you can't go home again" saying while reading this particular issue of Garth Ennis and John McCrea's kinda sorta Hitman revival, and I found myself trying to recall the last time I enjoyed a comic by a reunited creative team working on the title or character (or, here, milieu) that I know them best for as much as this. I think the DC Retroactive: Batman–The'90s special by Alan Grant and Norm Breyfogle was the last time, and as strong as that particular comic was, as much as it pushed by nostalgia button, it wasn't as strong as this book, which has ambitions beyond simple nostalgia, even if those ambitions aren't exactly...what's a good word here?...pure.

There are two major story threads in this particular issue, which is set entirely in Noonan's Sleazy Bar. The first involves J'onn J'onnz, The Martian Manhunter willingly, even happily joining Section Eight, thus completing leader Sixpack's designated roster requirements of eight heroes (Well, eight "heroes"). While the parodies of Batman and Green Lantern in the previous issues required them to be written out of character for the sake of the gags, Ennis and McCrea play J'onn almost completely straight. The fact that he's willing to join Section 8, and the fact that Sixpack is still unsure, thinking maybe he should hold out for a "real hero," is parody enough (Although there is a roundabout flatulence gag involving J'onn). Poor, poor J'onn: Screwed over by the New 52-boot and booted out of the Justice League, is this how far he's fallen?

The other thread involves Bueno Excellente, who fights evil with "the power of perversion," and the unseen "suitor" for Guts' affections heard but not seen last issue. Here we see him and, as expected, he ain't pretty. In fact, that whole thread is pretty disgusting, although what exactly transpires between Bueno Excellente and his rival is kept off-panel ("Bueno and this tapeworm guy are having a perve-off," The Grapplah says of their duel). To convey the full horror of it, McCrea only draws the look on J'onn's face when he sees it, and the reaction shot is framed by the most horrible string of sound effects I've ever seen in a comic book (There are 14 in all; two of the least disgusting in this context are probably "Envelop," "Cup" and "Inappropriately Touch").

What J'onn sees is enough to send him hurtling through the roof of Noonan's and up into outer space like a terrified comet.

I hate J'onn's New 52 redesign, particularly since DC seemed to have finally gotten to a pretty good place with him, design-wise, during Brightest Day, and while McCrea draws the new, dumb costume fairly well, he does weird things with J'onn's particularly weird-shaped head (I've never understood DC's need to keep tinkering with the shape of J'onn's head over the last decade or so).

Ennis writes two bravura scenes for McCrea, though. In the first the Justice League and many of their allies discuss the return of Section 8 on their satellite base. There's 18 heroes total, including Justice League Dark and a Doom Patrol (Do they exist in this form?), and there are some pretty fun bits in it. I particularly liked Hal referring to his one-time successor as "Karl Rayner," and Ennis's dialogue for Constantine:

In the other, Sixpack imagines Section Eight taking on (and taking down) about a dozen of the DC Universe's worst villains. If you've ever wanted to see Bizarro and Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man with dead dogs welded to their faces, well, DC has a comic for you...!

DC Comics: Bombshells #1 (DC) If Section Eight didn't come out this week, this would have been my favorite comic of the week. Instead, it's my second favorite, although this is one I would unreservedly recommend to just about anyone. Even if you're not terribly interested in DC's superheroines, Margeurite Sauvage's luminous art is worth the price of admission alone. I gushed reviewed this issue for Robot 6 this week, if you'd like to hear me talk about it in greater detail (and see some images from it).

Gotham Academy #9 (DC) Detective Club vs. a werewolf in gym shorts. This issue was much more coherent than the last few, which is a pretty good sign, and hopefully the beginning of a coherency trend. There was still a bit left to be desired in terms of storytelling, particularly in the timing department, and Hugo Strange seemed incredibly out of place here, but that may just be because I was so surprised. Repurposing Professor Milo and Bookworm as Gotham Academy faculty is one thing, but Strange is a pretty big fish in Batman's rogues gallery, and I guess I'm surprised that he showed up here, as I would have assumed he would have been one of the first villains the regular Batman writers would have wanted to use after the New 52-boot.

Providence #3 (Avatar Press) The Shadow Over Innsmouth issue, I guess. There was a lot in this one that felt like allusions and references that I should be catching, but wasn't. Is someone annotating this series online? I should note that even though I felt like I was missing stuff, it still works as is.

SpongeBob Comics #47 (United Plankton Pictures) The cover story, by Corey Barba, makes interesting use of texture, using digital art know-how to make the fishsticks, and the unfrozen cave-fish in particular, have that formerly frozen food breading texture. This issue seemed particularly stuffed, but that may have been because of the sheer number of shorter stories. There are eight stories in all, with Barba's cover story and Scott Roberts' story occupying 10 pages a piece and book-ending six super-short gag comics, ranging from one to two pages apiece.

Review: Wolverine & The X-Men Vol. 1: Tomorrow Never Learns

When first I read Wolverine & The X-Men #1–not the Wolverine & The X-Men #1 that Marvel released in 2011 upon launching the title, but the Wolverine & The X-Men #1 Marvel released in 2014 after re-launching the title because a new writer was taking over–I was struck by how pointless the endeavor seemed. In the previous volume of the series, which lasted 42 issues, writer Jason Aaron (and the various artists he worked with), told one, big completely complete story arc. He (and they) pushed the X-Men and Wolverine in a new-ish direction, re-establishing the idea of the original X-Men as teachers to new mutants (previously explored most thoroughly by Grant Morrison during his millennial run) while making Wolverine the reluctant headmaster of the newly re-christened Jean Grey School.

They introduced plenty of new characters, reinvented and repositioned plenty of old characters and invested all of those characters and the franchise with things it had been missing for way too long: A sense of fun, an aura of old-school superhero wonder, a spirit of adventure and plenty of post-modern Silver Age-style craziness...even zaniness. Job done. Aaron concluded his run, and went on to his next Wolverine-related book (Amazing X-Men, which launched as an Aaron-written showcase for Wolverine's squad of X-Men, the "real" X-Men in the five-headed hydra of the line*, but that book went off the rails after just one story arc).

So with the story of Wolverine & The X-Men already told, complete with much of its cast finding various resolutions, from leaving the stage in permanent-ish fashion or graduating, what exactly was there for a Wolverine & The X-Men title to do?

That first issue I read focused on perennial troublemaker Quentin Quire (a Morrison creation) angst-ing over his new role at the school as a teacher's assistant, given that he just graduated, while Wolverine is off doing Wolverine stuff and the Evan/Genesis (aka The Kid Who Might Grow Up To Be Apocalypse) conflict gets dragged out again. Writer Jason Latour included a few panels in which Beast literally phones-in a cameo to explain that he wouldn't be in the book, nor would most of the other X-Men, as Wolverine apparently approved leave for almost the entire faculty.

And indeed, the school would seem pretty deserted through this entire story arc (which accounts for one half of the 12-issue run of the Latour-written Wolverine & The X-Men). Wolverine, Storm, Doop and just-graduated Armor account for all of the X-Men in this book, with Quentin, Idie and Evan the students who play any real roles, although several other familiar faces from the previous run show up to fill out crowd scenes in the halls of the school and move scenes forward: Eye-Boy, Rockslide, Hellion, etc.

Yes, after I read that first issue, I was unconvinced there was any point to continuing to publish a Wolverine & The X-Men book (Marvel would agree not many months later, as they ended the book at issue #12 with Wolverine's death, replacing it with the even shorter-lived, school-based Spider-Man and The X-Men).

But after reading the first volume? Well, the book's existence no longer seemed pointless, and, in fact, I actually found myself feeling rather bad for Latour, who does a great job of writing these characters, particularly default main character Quentin Quire, and who seems to have gotten a fairly bum deal here, having to relaunch a new version of a very good, rather popular and acclaimed series, but with a greatly reduced cast and with various outside pressures informing what he could and couldn't do: This volume deals almost exclusively with fall-out from the time-travel shenanigans in "Battle of The Atom", and the upcoming second volume naturally deals with Wolverine's death, which was being telegraphed hard as far back as the first issue in this series.

The storyline is still remarkably complex, and lurches quite a bit, as new angles are introduced and then forgotten immediately. I forgave a great deal of the complexity on the basis that I just didn't remember the events of "Battle of The Atom" all that clearly, nor did I have the deep knowledge of X-Men lore to follow certain plot points until they were explained later (For example, when new [?] character Faithful John appears and beats the hell out of Wolverine saying he was trained by Askani Priests, I assumed that he was talking martial arts, not Phoenix worshippers from the future or...whatever). (After reading and writing about this, I checked Paul O'Brien's X-Axis for his take, and while he is probably the most expert writer-about-the-X-Men that I know of, he found he book ridiculously convoluted; you can read O'Brien's superior review here.)

So the basic plot, as far as I understood it, seems to be as follows. Something calling itself The Phoenix Corporation appears out of nowhere, it's teenage CEO Edan Younge making some very bold claims. This gets under the skin of both Quentin, already dealing with a bit of an identity crisis as he goes from bad kid in school to teaching assistant, who learned he'll be The Phoenix at some point in the future, and Wolverine, who thinks the corporation is disrespecting Jean's memory.

They both make a bee-line toward the Phoenix Corp's HQ (at which point the corporate angle is abandoned), and they are faced with powerful opponents. Younge plays head-games with Quentin, making him question his identity and destiny, while Faithful John–a powerful psychic from the future–beats up Wolverine and Storm and then heads for the school in an attempt to kill Evan before he can ever become Apocalypse.

What gradually emerges is that both Younge and Faithful John are agents of grown-up, Future Quentin, who manipulated them both to prevent Present Quentin from growing up to be Future Quentin, as Future Quentin killed Future Evan when Future Evan became Future Apocalypse, I guess...?

I want to say it's a simple idea communicated in a needlessly complicated fashion in order to make its revelations more dramatic, but then we are dealing with time travel paradoxes and since time travel in the Marvel Universe is supposedly "broken" and there's so much goddam time travel going on in the X-books these days that it's really a story we could do without...despite the fact that Latour has some interesting ideas to play with in terms of Evan and Quentin as characters coming of age, both with big, terrible destinies tied to big, broad forces within the X-Men mythology.

Latour also does a rather fine job of focusing on Quentin and Wolverine as parallel characters in many way. The nature of the conflict might naturally demand that Evan be paid the attention that goes to Wolverine, but, well, this book is called Wolverine & The X-Men, so Wolverine's really gotta be the, or at least a, star. In truth, the book could have been retitled Quentin Quire and Wolverine...And Some X-Men Too.

I can't say I followed the twists and turns of the plot, but I tend to give up really quickly on trying where X-Men history and, especially, X-Men time travel is involved. Latour is on much more solid footing when it comes to the scripting over the plotting, and he does a particularly strong job with Quentin's voice (in dialogue and narration) and Quentin's interactions with the other characters, particularly during a brief visit to Cyclops' school.

Latour also balances comedy with melodrama pretty well, particularly when it comes to Doop, who gets a two-page sequence at the beginning of the fifth issue that serves as the climax of the sort of things Doop gets up to between panels and pages.

I think the book would have worked far better were these issues #43-#48 of Wolverine & The X-Men, with Latour and artist Mahmud Asrar simply inheriting the title from Aaron and his artistic collaborators. I already knew all of these characters, and the set-up having read the previous 42  issues of the previous volume of the title, but Latour makes little to no effort to explain, well, anything.

The Phoneix Force is sort of defined, at least as Younge sees it, but there's no explanation given as to who any of the pre-existing characters are, who or what Apocalypse is, what's the deal with his Horsemen, what Bamfs are (and they are used extensively throughout as transportation and psychic thralls of a bad guy), why Wolverine can't heal, what the fuck Fantomex's "The World" is, who Fantomex is and on and on.

For the first story arc of a brand-new series, this sure read like the tenth story arc of a series already in-progress.

In addition to being a mess in terms of plot, it is a particularly unwelcoming and unforgiving mess for newcomers; this is not the X-Men book anyone should start with. That said, it's a fun mess, with some compelling ideas swirling around within it. And it's a smart mess, perhaps a sign of Latour's ambition exceeding his ability (or his ability within the confines of the X-Men franchise and unseen editorial constraints, if we want to give him the benefit of the doubt), as both his lead characters spot the plot holes, comment on the plot holes and continually reject the villains' stated motivations as excuses and lies they tell themselves.

Visually, the book is much stronger. Asrar manages all four of the first issues solo, and starts getting help on the last two, only the final issue of which looks messy and unlike his work. That's also about the point the book stops making sense anyway, though, so the changing, sloppier visuals aren't the detriment they might have otherwise been. He gets a lot less to work with in terms of cast and overall insane visuals compared to the folks who drew the previous run of a comic book with this title, but he designs and draws every character he's given extremely well. I could read Asrar art forever, I think.



*Just to review, if you need it: All-New X-Men featured the time-traveling, teenage original X-Men, who started out at the Jean Grey School under Wolverine, but later jumped ship for Cyclops' school for no logical reason; Uncanny X-Men featured Cyclops' rebel "New Xavier School" lead by a handful of his still-loyal allies and new, emerging teenage mutants; Uncanny Avengers featured the "Avengers Unity Squad" of half-mutant, half-non-mutant heroes, lead by Havok; X-Men was the random group of female X-Men based at the Jean Grey School that sometimes existed as a distinct team unit and sometimes didn't, depending on the writer and the story; and Amazing X-Men featured the the faculty of the Jean Grey School, regardless of gender: Wolverine, Storm, Beast and so on. There were, as always, plenty of ancillary books starring mutants and having X's in the titles, but these were the five that featured the actual X-Men, divided into roughly two camps of Team Cyclops and Team Wolverine.

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I can't be 100% sure without seeing them all side by side, but I'm fairly confident than the "animal variant" for the first issue of this series, featuring Wolverine as a cat, or a cat in Wolverine's costume, is the very best of all the animal variants.

I like this Arthur Adams variant cover a lot too, even if both Storm and Wolverine have some pretty ridiculous anatomies, and that the way their costumes are drawn make them look as if their costumes are painted on, rather than worn.

This one is of interest too because it features a couple of students who were featured in the previous, Jason Aaron-written run, but don't appear at all in the first volume of this Jason Latour-written run, namely Shark Girl, Brood and...whoever the girl with wings is. I forget.

I liked this cover a lot, too. I don't know that the contents necessarily reflected the cover, but it's a fine symbolic representation of the school weighing heavily on, and threatening to crush, Storm.

Comic Shop Comics: August 5

Age of Reptiles: Ancient Egyptians #3 (Dark Horse) Twenty-four more pages of gorgeously drawn dinosaur-on-dinosaur violence, courtesy of Ricardo Delgado. There are at least two "action" scenes in this issue, among several stand-offs; the first of which is one of the most brutal scenes I can remember reading in a comic book (one that made me think if I had my choice of dinosaurs to be chased by, maybe I'd prefer a large carnivore over a sauropod after all), and the other a surprisingly suspenseful battle between the book's Spinosaurus and a bunch of smaller dinosaurs that manage to make a real fight out of it based on their numbers alone.

Airboy #3 (Image Comics) One of the strangest comics of the year continues, as comic book writer James Robinson and comic book artist Greg Hinkle find themselves transported from the "real" world of Airboy #1-#2 to Airboy's world, where they see Nazi "steam-punk battlesuits"..."Like Mignola would draw!" They are lead to the secret headquarters of Airboy and his allies, where they meet the other strange super-aviator heroes of a comics age past, all of whom you see arranged on the cover.

It's really an unusual book, and not simply because of how Robinson is using the public domain characters to tell a meta-textual story, but in just how confessional and cathartic it seems for the writer himself. In earlier issues, he discussed at some length his problems writing at DC Comics lately and his worries over his career and marriage. Here he cries about his failed/failing marriage and, conflating the two during an emotional scene with the title character, answering the question of whether or not he's any good at writing with a tearful, "I used to be. I think, once upon a time. Nowadays, I don't know."

That scene is followed by one in which we seek much more of Valkyrie than anyone ever dared imagine they'd seen in a comic book, I imagine, despite how suggestively costumed she's always been.

Robinson (the real Robinson) took some heat last issue for his treatment of transsexual background characters in one scene, particularly Robinson (the comics avatar) using offensive slang to refer to them a few times, and a trans-panic scene that made sense to me as a reader in context (Airboy has the mind and cultural sensitivities of a 90-year-old man, after all), but I could see how it wouldn't sit well with others. I think it will be unfortunate if that scene keeps readers from the series as a whole, however. It's like nothing else on the stands right now, for good or ill I suppose, and it's a rare thing to find a Big Five comic that is as consistently surprising as this one.

Bat-Mite #3 (DC Comics) There have been four-to-five Robins since Bat-Mite debuted in 1959, but as far as I know, before this week, original Dick Grayson was the only Robin to have ever actually met Bat-Mite. If that is indeed the case, then Robin VI (or V) Damian Wayne became the second RObin to do so in this third issue of the Dan Jurgens-written, Corin Howell-drawn series about the magical, mischievous imp exiled into the modern DC Universe.

Jurgens seems to spend so much time on set-up in this issue that it really feels like this is the third issue of an ongoing series, rather than the half-way point of a miniseries. Bat-Mite gets a new home and new supporting cast, as well as a rationale for sticking with them, giving the book a bit more of a foundation than the premise introduced in the first issue, that Bat-Mite was going to "fix" DC superheroes until they are all as popular as Batman, who he claims responsibility for.

Perhaps the sales on that first issue were so good that DC is considering making this monthly, or maybe Jurgens is just laying the ground work for future Bat-Mite miniseries or appearances by the character.

The guest-star this issue is, of course, Robin. This Robin has even less time for Bat-Mite than Batman does, and the pair immediately come to blows, despite Bat-Mite rescuing Damian from a goofy death trap constructed by Gridlock, the mysterious, fairly lame villain introduced last issue. Next issue's guest-star appears on the last page of this issue: Jurgens creation Booster Gold.

I continue to enjoy the plotting more than the scripting with this series, as Jurgens isn't terribly funny, and the joke that finally makes the grim Damian bust out laughing at the end is the least funny of the many un-funny jokes. The scene's construction makes sense, of course, but its execution seemed incredibly forced, and rang false.

I've no complaints about the artwork, however, and perhaps the most exciting element of the book's guest star-per-issue format is it gives us the opportunity to see Howell draw so many different characters.

On the subject of light-hearted comedy comics tied to DC's major franchises, I should note with some small degree of alarm that Bizarro #3 was also originally scheduled to show up this week, and didn't.

We Stand On Guard #2 (Image) Ohhhhh, now it's starting to make sense! A critique of the current state of the American political-military-industrial complex and our wars in the Middle East, re-contextualized so that the people America is making war on are of the same race, same basic religious make-up and same basic cultural history, thus highlighting particular actions and behaviors free of the particulars of current, real-world conflicts. That's actually kind of brilliant. And there's also an invented racist term with which to slur Canadians! (I think it's invented; I've never heard anyone use it before, anyway).

That Brian K. Vaughan is one smart dude. The book also features fantastic detailed artwork by Steve Skroce, and a full-realized, lived-in near-future world that's a fairly amazing place just to hang out in and look around at.

These are the comic books that I have made.

The Ghost in the Bathroom is an 8.5 x 5.5-inch, black-and-white comic with 24 story pages, and it is an autobiographical comic about childhood fears. I have a short preview of it here.

Mothman Comics is an imaginatively entitled 8.5 x 5.5-inch, black-and-white(-and a little bit of red) comic with 23 story pages. It's a gag comic featuring short pieces extrapolated from real sightings of the title character. One such comic can be seen at the bottom of the post here.

My Pet Halfling is a 10.25 x 6.5, black-and-white, 25-page comic in which a character named Caleb and his roommates bring a halfling home from the pet shop and must then deal with the consequences of doing so. There is a short preview of that here.

Each is sold separately for the price of $3. To purchase any of them, you can send three $1 bills (that's $3, total) or a check or money order for $3 to Caleb Mozzocco, 7950 Mentor Avenue B102, Mentor, Ohio, 44060, along with your address and which book or books you would like, and I'll send you a copy or copies.

My thesaurus lists "ordinary," "usual" and "unimaginative" as antonyms for "Fantastic"

Is this really too much to ask?

I honestly wasn't planning on writing about the new Fantastic Four movie here, certainly not in a post devoted to it and it alone (as opposed to one of those super-long "Everything Else" posts I do every once in a while). Hell, I wasn't even sure I was going to see it, as the trailers for it didn't look...what's the word...interesting! They didn't look the least bit interesting, and usually a good trailer is all it will take to make me see a film. Like, I knew for a fact that Transformers: Age of Extinction would be pretty terrible, based on the fact that the three live-action films that preceded it in the franchise were pretty terrible, but dammit, that trailer put an image of a robot that can turn into a truck that I grew up with holding a sword and riding a giant, fire-breathing robot dinosaur, and how am I not going to see that on the big screen?

Fantastic Four, on the other hand, didn't have anything remotely interesting in its trailers. I guess I just gave the studio and filmmakers the benefit of the doubt, and assumed that was because whoever was in charge of marketing the film was trying to do some sort of low-key campaign, thinking (wrongly) that the target demographic would be tiring of superhero movies, and/or superhero movies based on Marvel Comics characters, seeing how this was going to be the third such film of the summer. I certainly didn't think it was simply a matter of there not being enough interesting imagery in the entire film to cobble together enough for a minute or two's worth of trailer.

I did go see the movie today though, and I did decide to write about it, but mostly just to get this weird feeling of irritated frustration and confusion out of my system, a feeling no doubt fed through some sort of negative feedback loop created by urgent whispers and then loud conversation with my lady friend who saw it with me, who was so incensed about a particular choice made during the pivotal scene of the film that she almost walked out after it happened (and probably would have, if I weren't closer to the aisle in our row).

It's actually kind of, well, fantastical to imagine that someone could make a bad Fantastic Four movie in the year 2015. I mean, not just a weak film, or a rough-around-the-edges film, or an uneven film, but just a wholly, actively, aggressively bad film that has so little resemblance to the source material that it is a complete failure of an adaptation (and, I should note, the film is a much worse adaptation than it is a film unto itself). The franchise is the Marvel franchise, the foundation of the entire Marvel Universe and character catalog...and the foundation of much of the comics industry and the shape and form of the superhero from the Silver Age moving forward. It's initial run was by maybe the greatest creative collaboration in comics history, Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, both in their respective creative peaks. The studio, its producers, script writers Simon Kinberg and Jeremy Slater and writer/director Josh Trank had access to 55 years worth of comic books, four animated television shows and two-to-three other live-action films to mine for inspiration, characters and plot points. You couldn't ask for more fertile ground for a comic book-based movie, this side of Superman and Batman.

I know that Marvel Comics has had some trouble selling the FF in recent years, and their one time first family has dropped from being the prime Marvel Comics franchises to one of their struggling ones, to the point that Marvel's not even publishing an FF comic at the time, but then, it's not like the filmmakers need to regularly trick 25,000 or more people into spending $4 a month on 20-pages of comics; they only need to sell about two hours of a live-action adaptation to an audience that has proven more than willing to buy tickets to see live-action films based on Marvel Comics characters as un-loved as Ant-Man (whose never even had his own monthly title that's lasted 12 issues) or as obscure as The Guardians of The Galaxy, a who's who team of footnote characters.

Seriously, how do you fuck up the Fantastic Four? You could probably narrow down the top 25 FF storylines of all time, pick one out of a hat, and film it with slightly polished dialogue, and you'd be golden.

They didn't do that. Instead, they seemed to borrow a little bit from the early issues of Ultimate Fantastic Four (the title characters being young, Sue Storm being a genius rather than just Reed Richards' love interest, the involvment of her and Johnny's father, inter-dimensional exploration replacing space-exploration), but then otherwise focus on a mostly-original take on an extended Fantastic Four origin story, making it as realistic, character-driven, dark and dour as possible–right down to the dim lighting. The silverest of Silver Age Marvel is awfully goddam gloomy.

This is the story of child-super genius Reed Richards (Miles Teller), who at age 12 or so invents a semi-operational teleportation device in his garage with the help of his little friend Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell), a poor kid from a bad home. He's recruited by Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) and Storm's daughter Sue (Kate Mara), an expert in pattern recognition, to join them at the Baxter Foundation. Together with anti-government bad boy super scientist Victor Von Doom (Toby B. Kebbel) and Storm's son Johnny (Michael B. Jordan), a brilliant engineer who would rather hand-build cars for street-racing, they develop a means for traveling to another dimension, referred to as "Earth 0" (not, I don't know, The Negative Zone).

Once they've perfected it and proved organic matter can travel to and from, poor Tim Blake Nelson (who sadly never got to play The Leader in The Incredible Hulk 2) wants to bring the U.S. government in. Victor fears losing his chance for glory (everyone knows the names of the guys who walked on the moon, but no one knows who built the rockets, he convincingly argues in one of the genuinely good bits of the script), and further fears if the government takes over, they'll find away to weaponize the technology.

And he's right! Outside of the saintly Dr. Storm, no one is more right more often than Doctor Doom in this movie. I think he's supposed to be the hero of it...?

The three boys get drunk and decide to get to the new dimension first, taking Ben along...because....because...just because? Sue, in the film's most perplexing creative choice, does not join the boys on their trip. She doesn't decline; she's just not even asked to go along.

Reed's decision to essentially hijack the device without permission from the government mirrors the comic book origin in that it features Reed going rogue and stealing the rocket ship to be first in space; the cost of his recklessness being that he bathes his friends in cosmic rays, which at least one of them resents him for.

In the first film they simply added Von Doom, so there were five of them. Different than the comics, sure, but it also ties the villain to the heroes' origin, something pretty damn common in superhero movies, if only because it streamlines them so much more (see The Kingpin killing Daredevil's dad in the Daredevil film, for example, or Jack Napier killing Bruce Wayne's parents before going on to become The Joker in Batman '89).

I can't think of any reason why they would subtract Sue and replace her with Doom in this film. Why would they choose to have 1/4th of the Fantastic Four left out of the Fantastic Four's origin story? And the fact that it is the female one who is is left out will probably be particularly galling to a lot of viewers, as so many superhero fans and film fans so scrutinize the various studios' general reluctance to use female characters in their films...including not having one headline a solo movie yet.

Instead, Sue gets her powers when the shuttle device returns in an explosion; she simply gets caught in the backlash of the explosion. This is the point where my friend became flabbergasted, and never quite recovered from her flabbergastation. (On the other hand, she never gets saddled with the moniker "Invisible Girl," but that's only because no one gets codenames; Johnny Storm refers to himself as the Human Torch and ben as "a thing" only at the end of the film, and then only joking so; likewise "Doctor Doom" is a comment Sue makes derisively of Victor when he's being negative, and he only refers to himself as Doom once).

Doom was, as I said, completely right, and the highe-ups do immediately try to weaponize the four, something that Ben and Johnny seem totally cool with, while only Reed and Sue have reservations...the former so much that he escapes the dark, military prison they're all being kept in. Then a year passes.

It's not until about the last 20 minutes of the film that any conflict actually arises, and that we see the four title characters using their powers, or even sharing scenes with one another. A return trip to "Earth 0" results in the discovery of a presumed dead Von Doom, who is unhappy with being "rescued," and decides to return to the other dimension, destroying the world in the process. Again, it's hard to argue with much of his logic–the United States military industrial complex are already using the disturbingly naked, oddly-voiced Grimm as a killing machine, and are about to send Johnny into the field to do the same. Their long-term plan is to figure out how to send more and more soldiers into the new dimension, where they too can be bathed in its strange energies and return with super-powers.

I went to the bathroom during one of the two action scenes in the film, one that was so brief that I apparently missed the entire thing in the time it took me to take a quick piss. I was there for the entirety of the latter one, where the film finally becomes a superhero movie, with the title characters fighting Doom to the death.

So what we have is a dark film that seemingly includes a few elements of the comics only very reluctantly. There's a "It's a clobbering time!" used once, and a "Flame on;" the latter quietly, embarrassedly spoken. There are super-powers, but only near the end of an interminably long origin story. No costumes. No codenames.

There's a nod toward teamwork in there at the end, but the characters' relationships, like their familiar characterizations, are non-existent. Reed and Sue flirt for about a minute of the film's entire run-time, and that's the extent of their romantic relationship. Johnny teases Ben once, in the last seconds of the film, and it's more of an insult than the kind of brotherly bickering the two usually engage in. Reed feels guilty for what he did to Ben, and Ben's not happy about having been turned into a rock monster with no genitals, but they never seem to resolve their issues.

They also lack their typical characterization. Ben never emerges from quiet, brooding self-loathing to be the fun, funny character making the best of the bad hand he's dealt. Johnny has a chip on his shoulder regarding his father, but he doesn't seem particularly cocky, or funny, or likable. He doesn't even seem to have a relationship with his own sister.

Mostly, everyone's just pissy. Doom is the sole character to emerge with a personality, motivation and definable relationships with other characters. But, you know, he's the villain, the guy we're supposed to root against and be happy when we see him die.

Most unusual of all though, for a movie of any kind, is that there is no real conflict at all. I can't remember the last time I saw a film that was so much event without conflict. There's nothing driving the film, it just moves on from scene to scene with no real reason.

It's a very long, very tedious origin story for a group of characters that don't really need an origin–bathed by cosmic rays during a reckless bit of scientific exploration, super-genius Reed Richards and his friends are imbued with fantastic powers. The end. Bring on the bad guys. Instead, what should be the first act is all three acts, with a tacked-on superhero movie climax.

You know what I personally want from a Fantastic Four movie?

I want to see scientist, wizard and dictator Doctor Doom wearing a Man In The Iron Mask-style mask and suit of armor with a cape and hood (mini-dress optional), lounging in a medieval castle, drinking wine from an ornate chalice, attended to by Doombots and saying "Bah!" and calling himself "Doom" constantly.

I want to see mostly-naked, dripping wet weirdo hunk Namor trying to seduce Sue while sea monsters and whales with arms and legs ravage New York City.*

I want Mole Man and his army of giant underground monsters. I want a downright apocolyptic version of the Galactus story, with the sky on fire, a Watcher, the Surfer and a giant planning to eat the word. I want a motherfucking Fansticar. And Skrulls! Oh, how I want Skrulls! And I want catch-phrases galore: Flame on, flame off, declarations of clobbering time, I want to hear "Ever-lovin'" and "Aunt Petunia" and "blue-eyed boy."

Instead I got a gloomy sci-fi film adapting the first half of the first story arc of Ultimate Fantastic Four.

I guess they'll try re-rebooting in a few years, and maybe that time they'll get it right, and we'll finally be able to move ahead and get to the good stuff of The Fantastic Four, the stuff that makes the Fantastic Four the Fantastic Four.

Positives? There are a few. This Doom is better than last Doom, and I think the special effects on The Human Torch and Thing are both improved. The same goes for those regarding Mister Fantastic, at least when he's naked. Seeing his arms and legs stretch out, without stretchy material hiding the skin and musculature from the viewer, is really fucking freaky. The bit in the film where our heroes find themselves thrown back to Earth transformed, with Johnny seemingly nothing but a burning corpse and Ben thinking he's buried in rocks, was pretty damn scary.

And...um...wait...huh. Yeah, I can't think of anything else. The logo? I liked the logo. The actors are all fine, and the ones who seem most miscast–Teller as Reed Richards, Bell as Ben Grimm–fit the movie just fine, they just don't at all seem like the characters in any other iteration.

But then, isn't the point of film adaptations of other source material to transplant those stories and those characters into the medium? There have certainly been worse films based on superhero comics before, but it's difficult to think of worse adaptations.


*Yeah, yeah, yeah; I know. A different studio owns the rights to Namor at the moment.

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

As the film ends with the team struggling to think of a name for itself, I like to imagine this is what happens next.

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

I also like to imagine that this is what precisely went wrong behind the scenes:

Tom Spurgeon tweeted that image a while back. I haven't read that particular story, but the idea that perhaps an old foe financed and produced this new Fantastic Four film as a way to embarrass and discredit the Fantastic Four out of pure spite certainly makes more sense than the fact that the filmmakers just made this movie the way they did on purpose.

So what's the deal?

Does Carl "Crusher" Creel, aka The Absorbing Man, just really like wearing baggy black-and-white stripes, like, as a fashion choice? And does he also continue to wear a ball and chain around his ankle simply because he's grown so found of smacking superheroes upside the head with it? Or is he regularly incarcerated in what must be the last prison in America to outfit its inmates with horizontal black-and-white striped uniforms, instead of the now standard bright orange, and continues to use balls and chains?

By the way, the best part of that panel? The SHIELD agent with the head of an owl is the one who emphatically asks, "Who?"

(From 2014's SHIELD #6, written by Mark Waid and drawn by Paul Renaud)

Come on Grayson, you're better than that.

Making fun of Lex Luthor for being bald seems somewhat beneath you, Dick Grayson. You've been making fun of super-villains since you hit puberty, so I'd really expect better material at this point in your career of insulting your foes.

Yes, calling attention to Luthor's lack of hair  probably is a good way to get under Luthor's skin, as we all know he's quite sensitive about being bald–in fact, permanently losing his hair after Superboy blew it out while fighting a lab fire is the entire reason Luthor went into villainy in the first place and has had a 70+ year grudge against the Man of Steel.

But Mr. Clean?

The Hair Club For Men?

For shame, Grayson. I'm surprised you didn't throw out "curly," "cue ball" and "Kojak" while you were at it. Step up your game, Dick.

(From Grayson #11, written by Tim Seeley and Tom King, drawn by Mikel Janin and colored by Jeromy Cox)

On ESPN The Magazine's The Body Issue: Super Heroes Edition

If you're better-versed in sports and athletics than I am–and you would almost have to be–then you likely already know that ESPN The Magazine has been publishing an annual "The Body Issue" special since 2009. Meant as a kinda sorta rival to Sports Illustrated's annual "Swimsuit Issue," each issue of "The Body Issue" features dozens of carefully-posed, often quite arty photographs of athletes–men and women–in the nude, showing off the rather wide variety of bodies and body types produced by specialization in various sports.

There is certainly a prurient element to the imagery, despite the fact that genitals (and the women's nipples) are always covered, although the intent is clearly in generating celebratory admiration of athletes and their bodies, rather than masturbatory admiration. It's sort of the modern, glossy magazine equivalent of ancient Greek art.

I imagine these issues and images should be of interest to super-comics artists and aspiring super-comics artists, as each issue certainly shows what men and women in peak physical condition look like without their clothes on, while highlighting the fact that there are more than two types of bodies (male and female).

This year's issue should be of extra-interest to comics readers, however, as it apparently included a 13-page pull-out collaboration between ESPN and Marvel entitled The Body Issue: Super Heroes Edition. I didn't read the magazine (although I did see the images in this year's issue online), but my father saved the insert for me.

Under a cover featuring an apparently nude Hulk–Bruce Banner wasn't wearing his over-sized purple pants with the elastic waist-band at the time of this transformation–jumping out of an explosion, there's a completely unnecessary table of contents (it's only 13 pages!) and a one paragraph introduction. The rest of the pull-out is devoted to nine superhereos, all sans costume, drawn by different Marvel artists.

Each of these pages feature, in addition to the drawing and the name of the hero, a little circle showing the character in costume (complete with artist credit for that image) and a smaller circle listing the year of their debut (no one earlier than 1962, no one later than 1980), their power or powers in as few words as possible and the name of the artist responsible for the drawing filling most of the page. There is also a paragraph or so long quote from each of the artists, talking a little bit about drawing super-characters for Marvel.

It's an all-around fun little package.

The heroes included are Ant-Man, Captain Marvel, Daredevil, Hulk, Iron Fist, Iron Man, Luke Cage, Medusa and She-Hulk. All are drawn in the nude, but, in the case of most of the men, they fade into white just above where the bas of the penis might begin. Two of the three women are shown from behind, from the small of the back-up; I think this may be the first I've ever seen She-Hulk and Captain Marvel Carol Danvers drawn without their breasts appearing in any way shape or form; not even a glance of side-boob, as the Internet calls it (And Shulkie is drawn by Frank Cho!).

The exceptions are The Hulk, whose whole body is visible save the part obscured by his huge hand and arm reaching toward the viewer (it's the same Jim Cheung drawn image that's on the cover of the insert, only minus the explosion background), Medusa, whose entire body head to toes is visible (but is wrapped from clavicles to crotch in her "Superstrong, prehensile hair"), Iron Man (who is drawn from the knees up, but in the act of assembling his armor around himself) and Ant-Man, who is seen from the thighs down, for some reason.

None of the heroes have any body hair at all, and Tony Stark and The Hulk both lack nipples.

I was at first a little disappointed by the fact that all of the heroes essentially have identical body types: Big and musclely, like body builders. With the exception of The Hulk, whose body is naturally exaggerated to cartoonish proportions. Daredevil and Iron Fist look slightly smaller in certain muscle groups than Luke Cage, but that's about it in terms of variety. I don't know what Carol Danvers' work out routine, but I was a little surprised at how cut Pichelli draws her, as she and She-Hulk have the same build in this.

I was also a bit disappointed at the relative lack of diversity in the characters, as here the term "people of color" apparently refers to the color green. There are more green people than brown people (and I was a bit curious about the inclusion of Iron Fist over Shang-Chi, especially when artist Russell Dauterman talked specifically about Bruce Lee as inspiration for his drawing of Danny Rand's physique).

There are plenty of men and women of different builds throughout the Marvel Universe, and it might have been nice to see a curvy Squirrel Girl or Volstagg in there, or a short and stocky (and hairy!) Wolverine or Puck, or characters who are slimmer of build like Spider-Man or Cyclops, or some characters of color other than green, some teenage characters (Kamala Khan's parents would never allow her to pose, but surely Robbie Reyes or some of the Young Avengers or Jean Grey students could), or a silver fox character like Doctor Strange or Mr. Fantastic. Let's see Namor, whose one costume is so skimpy he might as well be nude, some characters with fantastical bodies, like Nightcrawler or Beast or The Thing or Howard The Duck, let's see The Vision or Machine Man with their "skin" off.

Of course, it occurred to me rather quickly that the nine characters chosen had nothing to do with showing off a variety of body types, and more to do with corporate synergy and cross-media promotion.

Daredevil, Luke Cage and, I believe, Iron Fist have appeared in/will appear in the Netflix corner of the "Marvel Cinematic Universe" (K'un L'un gets mentioned in an episode of Daredevil, anyway). Ant-Man has a movie currently in theaters (Hell, it even says "See Ant-Man in theaters starting July 17" at the bottom of his page).

Hulk and Iron Man are both in Avengers: Age of Ultron, and while they probably could have filled this book or one two or three times as long just with Avengers that appeared in that movie, they decided against using Black Widow or The Falcon or Thor (curious, really, unless the idea was to promote heroes with upcoming film or TV projects, in addition to more current ones, achieving a sort of balance). Captain Marvel and Medusa have films announced, even if they are a long way off (Medusa will be appearing in Inhumans, not Medusa; her presence here is another indication of how hard Marvel is trying to promote the Inhumans as a brand these days). And as for She-Hulk...? Well, I don't know. Black Widow or The Wasp or The Scarlet Witch would have made more sense. Marvel doesn't exactly have many great female characters of the household name variety, particularly when you discount the X-Men franchise, so they may have just picked a woman with a more typical super hero physique.

Note that there are no X-Men, despite the wide variety of body-types that team has to offer, no Spider-Man and no Fantastic Four. The characters chosen had a lot to do with which ones Marvel Studios can exploit in other media, apparently.

Now, that disappointment on the same-ness waned after I actually started reading the quotes from the artists, as it quickly became evident that the point of this insert wasn't the same as that of "The Body Issue" proper; rather, this was simply a focused look at how artists draw superhero physiques, which is an equally valid (and, really, more interesting) way to go with it. After all, the characters aren't real, but the artists are.

The original pieces are drawn by Cheung, Cho, Dauterman, Mike Deodato, Greg Land, Emanuela Lupacchino, Alex Maleev, Sara Pichelli and Leinil Francis Yu. All are colored by either Jason Keith or Laura Martin, with the exception of Maleev's Daredevil, which he apparently colored himself. The other art that appears, the previously used images of the heroes in costume that appear in the little circles, are from Kaare Andrews (Iron Fist), Mark Brooks (Ant-Man), Cheung (She-Hulk), Cho (Hulk, Medusa), Greg Land (Luke Cage), Salvador Larocca (Iron Man), Ed McGunness (Captain Marvel) and Paolo Rivera (Daredevil).

It was, of course, dispiriting, if not depressing, to see Land included here. He draws Ant-Man, but he only draws a random pair of hairless human legs, posed between a few ant legs, framed by a magnifying glass. Ant-Man (apparently Scott Lang) is given huge quadraceps and calf muscles, as if he were a weight-lifter, which doesn't really track with Lang...or original Ant-Man Hank Pym, or Irredeemable Ant-Man Eric O'Grady. It does track with what Land says about his source material, which will sound like a wildly, laughable inaccurate statement to anyone who has read many–or any–Land comics and picked out the many celebrity likenesses of Hollywood actors and professional wrestlers, of catalog models and, as he's most often accused of using, porn stars, seemingly light-boxed onto the page (or whatever the computer age equivalent of a light box is).

"I always try to have the musculature of something that could possibly exist," Land is quoted as saying. "Even though everything looks extremely exaggerated, I still want him to look like he can move and be functional...If I need reference, I have old body-building magazines–guys like Frank Zane who have strong physiques but don't look exaggerated. I take their figures and translate them into something that can work in a comic book."

Huh. I admit I haven't read many Land comics of late, as I actively try to avoid his work, but I saw no evidence in his work from a few years ago. Maybe he just recently started drawing without reference–note the "if" in that sentence about reference–and, when he did, turning to old muscle magazines, instead of Google Image. I guess I could check Mighty Avengers to find out, but that would mean having to look at Land's art, and I've done more than enough of that in my life time, thank you.

Regardless, it was still a fun little package, one that perhaps gave some clues about how Marvel sees its characters at the moment, and how it would like the world to see them. I wouldn't mind Marvel Comics producing a similar package in the future, one that takes advantage of the whole Marvel Comics Universe, regardless of which studio owns the rights to which characters. It would be a fun way to highlight the diversity of body types within their increasingly diverse universe, and the importance of anatomy in comic work and could take the place of the old swimsuit specials.