Feel free to use this to augment your G.I. Joe Club activities.
I realize this is a toy, but the “up to 1/4 of a mile” puffery is a tad underwhelming. You can probably switch that with “just beyond shouting distance” and not lose any accuracy. I had walkie talkies (though not this brand) as a kid, and they were little better than baby monitors with a camouflage paint job. Junk. Great for clandestine communiques with someone in the basement.
Still, this has better coverage than my cell phone provider. ZING.
Normally this manner of comics-based bondage is restricted (no pun intended) to Wonder Woman comics. Glad to see the Sentinel of the Spaceways getting in on the kinky action. No, a red ball is at no point shoved into his mouth, even if it would accessorize the leash and collar quite nicely. Nor is there any sex, though the fact that the Silver Surfer is the most nude of major Marvel heroes certainly doesn’t inhibit the S&M associations.
The is one of the umpteen Infinity Gauntlet crossover comics that Marvel published during that 1991 Thanos-centric event. We can mock the cross-pollinating cash grab that such a promotion represents, but it works — and worked. I can remember buying a Doctor Strange Infinity Gauntlet tie-in, and back in those days I wouldn’t have pissed on a Doctor Strange book to douse a fire. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in…
Many company-wide crossovers can be weak, and this one is no exception. Occurring in the overarching storyline as Earth’s heroes wage their futile battle against the Infinity Gem-augmented Mad Titan (issue #4), it’s nothing more than a dark reverie on the part of the Surfer, one that we don’t realize is a daydream until the last couple of pages. Yes, this comic takes the Bobby Ewing shower scene and filters it through the Power Cosmic. JUST WHAT YOU ALWAYS WANTED. A saving grace is that The Silver Surfer was the primary book in the lead up to TIG, and Thanos at least seems at home in these pages. Gauntlet nonsense doesn’t seem out of place. It’s not like him turning up in Dazzler, know what I mean?
A side note to these proceedings: While the normal SS creative team of scripter Ron Marz, penciller Ron Lim and inker Tom Christopher worked on this book, Gavin Curtis added an assist for Lim. Why? The book was published twice monthly at this time, Lim was also drafted into finishing TIG when George Perez backed out of that project, and Lim couldn’t clone himself. Those seem to be the most likely reasons. While the partnership here is odd, with the two pencillers divvying up pages in a haphazard, unpredictable manner, Lim was probably glad for all the help he could get. I picture him spinning on his ear like Curly Howard in a stress-induced tizzy.
On to the comic.
In this What Iffy Surfer dream (continuing a storyline from the previous issue), Thanos has conquered the universe and made the poor Mr. Radd his scribe (complete with leash and studded dog collar), in charge of writing the Book of Thanos (or something). The Thanos Dianetics, one supposes. Whatever you call it, the Infinity Gauntlet decoration on its cover is pretty nifty:
You want to know how to tell that you’re in a bleak, hellish future? Check the Statue of Liberty and see how she’s holding up, since she’s like an apocalyptic coalmine canary. See: Planet of the Apes, Day After Tomorrow, et cetera, et cetera. Here she’s been pruned, so we’re all up the creek:
I seem to remember an episode of G.I. Joe where there was an alternate universe where Cobra conquered the world, and the Statue of Liberty was replaced with the Baroness. Or maybe Cobra Commander in a dress. The precise details are a little fuzzy. Anyway, I like this better.
Thanos, now an unmatched deity and with his beloved Mistress Death at his side, can indulge his every whim. Have you ever wanted to see the Surfer as a court jester, a ballerina, a thespian reciting Shakespeare’s Sonnet #57, and a bowling pin juggling clown? THANOS CAN MAKE YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE:
The Surfer in slippers and a singlet. THANK YOU, COMIC BOOK.
As alluded to above, there’s no sex in this book. Nevertheless, there are some opportunities for kinkiness. It’s no stretch of the imagination to envision these panels, with Thanos stroking the bikini-clad Death’s cheek and tugging on the Surfer’s leash, evolving into a three-way:
“Hey. Radd. You want in on this?”
There’s more to this, but since it didn’t happen, who cares? And Adam Warlock soon snaps the Surfer out of his daydream, so he can, you know, help save the universe and all.
This interlude is memorable only for its goofiness. I liked The Infinity Gauntlet. I loved The Silver Surfer during the Lim run, as he sure knew how to draw a shining nude metal man, and was a worthy successor to the character’s Kirby/Buscema past (though you can tell he’s a tad rushed here). But I remember finding these issues an insulting waste of time — like what I imagine people felt with that Bobby/Dallas/dream debacle. And I don’t blame Marz/Lim et al for any of it. They’re given an assignment: Fill up two issues with material, but it can have absolutely no bearing on the events in the six issue mini. But it has to be related to the mini, so we can put that little Nabisco triangle at the top right corner of the cover. Under those restrictions, an extended dream sequence is just about the only thing you can do. Or maybe have the Surfer play cards with Adam Warlock while he waits to make his run at the Gauntlet. The choices are slim, that’s the point.
So thanks, boys. Thanks for giving us the Surfer as gimp. In a bit of kismet, this is the 666th post here on the blog. I think Surfer bondage makes it hellish enough, don’t you?
Neal Adams’ Ms. Mystic, with her big honkin’ Voltron-esque psi-sword, says don’t pollute – Ms. Mystic #1
So if Ms. Mystic is a defender of the Earth, and she’s also created, written and drawn by Neal Adams, does that mean that she’s a defender of the Expanding Earth? Just wondering.
Ms. Mystic (who had her debut as a backup in an issue of Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers), is one of the many Adams properties that had brief lives during the 1980s, whether at Pacific Comics or Adams’ own Continuity Comics. This makes her distant kin to the singularly awful Skateman, which is no recommendation whatsoever. But, you can’t choose your relatives (just ask any U.S. President, including Barack Obama), so it behooves everyone to go in with as clean a mindset as possible. DO NOT HOLD OUR HEROINE’S TEMPORAL PROXIMITY TO SKATEMAN AGAINST HER.
Without further ado, a few words about her, her comic and the work of the guy who wrote and drew it.
Ms. Mystic is an eco-comic of sorts, with environmental themes that would make every tree-hugger among us happy — Rachel Carson and Woodsy would both be proud. This book, the first entry in Ms. Mystic’s ongoing series, has a crack team of government-sponsored nature do-gooders trying to track down the unknown source of devastating wilderness pollution. How bad is the pollution? Bird-falling-like-a-stone and puking Bambi bad:
What, no puppy with huge doleful eyes (and open sores) was available?
It’s not long before Ms. Mystic, with her floor-length white hair, fairy antennae and bodysuit, arrives to help out and arouse the male populace. I’ve made no secret of my lack of enthusiasm when it comes to Adams’ art. Just one of those cases of different strokes for different folks. But I do recognize his profound gift with a pen and pencil and the wonders he can work with simple lines. You know, like with Ms. Mystic (who has an Aquaman-like connection to Mother Nature to go along with her mental powers and requisite flying ability) squaring off against a giant unicycle of doom:
Nice. I’m not blind to that. But you also have trademark Adams angles like this, which give you a nice look up an old dude’s nostrils:
While I was reading this comic it finally clicked for me why I just can’t get into Adams’ work: He’s the William Shatner of artists. You know the Kevin Pollack impersonation of Shatner? The overacting? The pauses? The jerking of the head? The flailing of the body? Shatner was a handsome guy and all, but his gesticulations — and all the rest — could sometimes be a bit much. Something similar goes on with Adams. He can do great stuff, but then he breaks out needless, overkill perspective like the scan above and you just want to yell EASY BIG FELLA. It’s his version of “Spock…There’s… some sort of…life here!” I get that he broke with the rather staid page layouts of 1960s. But a lot of what he does strikes me as an overreaction.
Again, different strokes.
Since this is a first issue, we have to get a recounting of Ms. Mystic’s senses-shattering origin. It involves sepia tones, witchiness and a Salem, Massachusetts stake-burning :
And then she was released from her nude hibernation when the Environmental Avengers or whatever deployed some psionic weapon. Mazel. (By the way, I don’t want the government to have psionic weapons. Nor do I want do-gooder hippies to have them. Here government-employed hippies have them. Head for the hills.)
Ms. Mystic saves the day, and the ultimate battle with the polluter (of course) involves a muscley guy with no shirt and superpowers. And at this point, if you’re like me, you too want to remove your ESSENTIAL body from your MINERAL body and inject yourself into another Ms. Mystic-free dimension.
What to make of it. The environmental advocacy in the script, while heartfelt, is leaden and, dare I say, overbearing. While it’s certainly more entertaining than Adams’ Expanding Earth manifestos, which make the Unabomber’s tirades seem lean, compact and to the point by comparison, it’s not so great. There’s nothing in this first issue that would make me want to read a second, and all that’s lacking is some soporific Al Gore droning and you’d be in an eco-coma. It’s heavy-handed, like those earnest young Greenpeace people who accost you with clipboards and DON’T YOU WANT TO SAVE THE EARTH guilt trips while you’re just trying to schlep your way to the subway. (“I’m about to ride the subway WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME?”)
But I can recognize that Adams-philes will love the art, and even I, an Adams apostate, can recognize some of the quality within.
And this leagues better than Skateman. So there’s that.
Ms. Mystic had issues published sporadically over the years, but not many of them. You wouldn’t run out of fingers and toes tallying the total. There was also some litigation between Adams and a person who claimed co-creator status for the character (the suit didn’t make it very far). I’m not sure I would have made such a claim, and that’s the final verdict.
If the black and white Spy vs. Spy is growing stale for you, perhaps the Game Boy Color can help
Taking your regular one page Spy against Spy Mad shenanigans and putting them in color seems a bridge too far, no? Like colorizing the Kansas scenes in The Wizard of Oz.
Some prime acreage on old nuclear testing sites could have been yours for mere pennies a day
I’m no land baron, but I can’t imagine these New Mexico wastelands could have had much in the way of development potential. “Come stare at our new tumbleweed!” This came from the unreleased Wally Wood Heroes, Inc. book discussed here a couple of days ago, and there are a lot of anonymous grunts can be thankful they weren’t snookered out of their miniscule savings.
(Note: I have a sneaking suspicion that the desolate and quite possibly irradiated Mesa Hills may be where Andy lost his dog.)
Charlton Heston’s jaw and David Niven’s moustache against the Boxer Rebellion. PITY THE CHINESE. – 55 Days at Peking
I normally have higher condition standards for the comics I buy. Chasing some imaginary future resale value that will never materialize, I suppose. But there are times when something passes under your fingers and you can’t resist, no matter what regimen you’re trying to stick to. And Charlton Heston teaming with David Niven to hold out in hostile territory against a remorseless enemy? Are you kidding me? A no brainer, even if the front and back covers look like they’ve been through several stages of the Jiffy Express treatment.
55 Days at Peking is right in that sweet groove of young fantasy translated into adult cinema. Boys always dream about holding out against impossible numbers, a valiant last stand that — of course — isn’t really a last stand at all, because resolution and courage triumph over anything. It can be aliens, foreigners, monsters, whatever. Build your fort and then defend it to the (theoretical) death, that’s all that maters. And when you’re grown up you can transfer your fantasy to a larger cinematic environ. Zulu might be the classic of this genre, with a young Michael Caine defending an African fort against wave after wave of eponymous attackers, but 55 Days holds up. The star wattage involved — Heston, Niven and Ava Gardner — is hard to match. (We could all probably do without the European actors in chintzy Chinese makeup, though. Seriously, they’d make more convincing Asians if they had pulled the skin at their temples for the whole runtime.)
If you’re unfamiliar, 55 Days a fictionalized account of the actual Battle of Peking in 1900. With the Boxer Rebellion raging beyond the walls of the assorted ambassadorial compounds, our main characters are left to fend for themselves as a corrupt Imperial government tries to ride the anti-foreigner wave and eject (or kill) the assorted legations. You know, shove their spheres of influence right up their assorted keisters. It takes all the guile and pluck that the colonial powers can muster for them to hold out until deliverance arrives.
The comic doesn’t precisely ape the beats of the film (example: there’s a lot more comeuppance for the bad guys in the comic), but it’s faithful. Here are Heston’s and Niven’s characters (an American Marine officer and the British ambassador, respectively) trying to reason with the Dowager Empress Tzu-Hsi and her corrupt minion (artwork by Mike Sekowsky):
One feature here that tempers the uncomfortable “white men against the evil non-whites” nonsense that infects so many films like this (and comics like Hopalong Cassidy and Davy Crockett) is that a large part of the drama revolves around a motley crew of foreigners trying to get along, with Yanks, Russkies, Limeys, Frogs, the Boche and Japs all jockeying for position and authority during the siege:
Cooperation between rivals in the face of daunting, lethal odds is a theme of both the film and the comic, one that’s driven into our skulls a final time in the latter’s last panel:
Two World Wars and countless lesser bloodbaths later, I think it’s safe to that NOTHING was started with this valiant fictional stand.
Sekowsky, who’s most renowned for his Silver Age DC art, does a nice job with this book. The action scenes (with flames, rocket attacks and siege towers galore) are captured quite well, and while the likenesses of the actors aren’t precise, there are moments here and there where you catch a glimpse of familiar faces (even if Niven’s Sir Arthur Robinson often looks a bit like Hector Hammond). I love Heston’s stuff — no one could convey acute consternation quite like Chuck Heston, and one of my greatest cinematic thrills was watching a restored print of Ben-Hur at the sublime Uptown Theater in D.C. — and it’s a treat to see him rendered in comic form. Like with all his roles, no matter the context, you half expect him to belt out a YOU BLEW IT UP or IT’S PEOPLE at any moment, and Sekowsky’s art drags those expectations to the book. Kudos to him for that.
An enjoyable read. Even if your copy looks like it was put through the wringer.
Your 3 Musketeers candy bar gets Toy Storied. Or something.
When I was real little my father had this beat up yellow Toyota pickup truck, a jalopy that I liked to call “Old Yeller.” It was junk on wheels, an old wreck so riddled with rust there were parts of the floor flaking off, so that you could see bits of the road passing under your seat. I remember three major things (hey…) about it. One, my father used to let me ride in the back when we’d go to the town dump, where I’d thrill at the simple childish pleasure of hurling bags of garbage into that Sarlacc Pit of refuse (now that I think of it, perhaps the back was safer than the rust-holed front). Two, I cried when it was sold. Three, the cab was always littered with shiny silver 3 Musketeers wrappers. Like spent shell casings on a dietary battlefield.
This is a roundabout way of getting to the notion that I can’t see 3 Musketeers advertising and not think of that old truck, and tangentially that my father might not have savored those countless candy bars so much if they had been marketed by a cutesy campaign like this one (pulled from the 1999 Batman: Bullock’s Law profiled yesterday). Or maybe he would have. That fluffy filling, which you can feel disintegrating your teeth on impact, can overcome a lot of objections.
Move over, Dark Knight. Harvey Bullock’s rumpled trenchcoat is the new cape and cowl in Gotham. – Batman: Bullock’s Law
Harvey Bullock is a walking cliché. Created as a corrupt element within the Gotham City constabulary, a counterweight to Jim Gordon’s straight arrow, he’s evolved over the years into a character trope that we’ve seen roughly 7,395 times in literature and on screen. He’s a fat, doughnut-gobbling cop in desperate need of a shave and a clean, ironed shirt, a gumshoe who’s not all that Miranda friendly but one who’s ultimately a force for good in a city ravaged by crime. If you thought of him as a mashed-up Play-Doh ball of Dirty Harry, NYPD Blue‘s Sipowicz (minus the bare ass-cheeks, THANK GOD) and any other COP WHO DOESN’T PLAY BY THE RULES, you wouldn’t be wrong.
So he’s not all that original. But he’s rather interesting (clichés can be fun too), an alternative to the clean-cut authority of Commissioner Gordon, and he deserves more than this book. A late 1990s offering (smack dab in that post-Gotham City earthquake hazarai), it’s a mostly Batman-free romp pitting Bullock against the Black Mask and his gang of oddly disguised freaks. When Mr. Mask offers Bullock dirt on his criminal rivals in exchange for the good detective’s assistance in helping one of his goons beat a rap, our fat protagonist is forced to walk a moral and professional tightrope. Can he use the Black Mask’s info while staying (mostly) on the right side of the law? Will he go all the way and help this B-level villain in exchange for the inside info? If he double-crosses the guy, will he come out of this mess alive?
Sounds good. But it’s not. The story from Chuck Dixon is utterly predictable, and Flint Henry’s and Tom Palmer’s art that does nothing to help things out. The art is especially out of place, and falls squarely into that late-90s uber-cartoony style that seemed to be everywhere in comics at the close of the millennium.
If Harvey Bullock is a cliché, I guess it’s no surprise that another of the oldest ones in the book is trotted out here. Hey, it wouldn’t be a story about a fat police detective without a department physical and a scolding doctor, right?:
Batman himself only shows up for a couple of pages (justifying the “Batman” portion of Batman: Bullock’s Law), to be a good angel on Bullock’s shoulder and to keep his portly ass in line:
YEAH I’M A COP I’M A GOOD COP!!! (Is Batman perched on a powerline or something? What’s with the streaks? Also, if Batman gives Gordon special pipe tobacco for Christmas, what does he get for Bullock? Pure cholesterol?)
Long story short, Bullock pulls through by the skin of his teeth. And THANK GOD that we get resolution to the professional Sword of Damocles that is his poor health:
Yes. Parking tickets. Thank you, story.
This isn’t as worthless as the wan Bullock simulacrum, Max Eckhardt, that showed up in the first Tim Burton Batman movie. (Remember him? The fat slug that Jack Nicholson plugged before he made his vat-dive?) But it’s pretty weak. The art isn’t my cup of tea — if it is for others, good. Enjoy and go in peace. But to me Bullock here looks more like Fred Flintstone: Detective. Or Ralph Kramden. Take your pick. Point is, it’s surprising that he at no point propelled a squad car with giant bare feet. That’s a problem, at least for me.
Wally Wood, Steve Ditko, boobs and a comic book that might be stolen goods – Heroes, Inc. Presents Cannon
There’s an interesting little side-story with this book, one that goes beyond the apparent preoccupation with breasts. Self-published in 1969 by Wally Wood for a military audience — to be sold in a PX instead of the regular newsstand spinner rack — Heroes, Inc. Presents Cannon was never released. For many years there were few of them on the market, the result of a (daring?) warehouse theft that procured about a thousand nice copies and released them into the comics-collecting community. This past decade another big Ark-sized crate of the comics was dumped on the market via auction, all in nice shape as well.
And all this means is that Wally Wood was about the only person on Earth to not turn a buck off the book.
(I’m not sure which lot my copy came from, though according to simple odds it was probably the second cache. But, like Morty Seinfeld with his Wizard/tip calculator, I prefer thinking that things in my possession are “hot.”)
Outside of the restrictive purview of the Comics Code, Wood could go a little wilder with the sex and violence here, though all the content in the three stories advertised on the cover is relatively tame, especially to the eyes of later jaded generations. It takes a hell of a lot more than cleavage to adequately titillate these eyes, know what I’m saying? But this was Wood’s own little playground, one where he could (theoretically, at least) capitalize 0n his Sally Forth readership with more aggressive fantasy themes. It was a forerunner of the creator-owned comics that would become so familiar in subsequent decades.
This target armed forces demographic can most readily be glimpsed in the advertisements. Assorted commemorative military rings and similar tchotchkes are hawked within, and you also have these simple but charming ads for the USO and good old savings bonds:
Yes, every Army grunt dreams of one day having his daughter serve him dainty little sandwiches. Whatever gets you through shitcan detail, I guess.
Here’s a feedback solicitation from the man behind the curtain himself, “Wallace” Wood:
Perhaps more letters would be answered if they were surrounded by bikini-clad babes. It’s a question worthy of careful scientific scrutiny, at the very least.
Enough preliminaries. The Wood artwork is the attraction here, not the backstory and whatnot. And in the “Cannon” feature he gets an assist on pencils from none other than Steve Ditko. THE MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN. It’s a partnership that we’ve looked at before (in the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents book Dynamo) here on the blog, and it’s one that works, in a word, WELL. Cannon as a hero is a monotone killing machine with a crew cut, but the talents of both Ditko and Wood can invest the action with a force that’s more than the proverbial sum of parts. Check out Ditko’s sequential design sense combined with Wood’s detail and bold shadows in this resplendent page:
(I’m reminded of the classic Golden Age Daredevil and Norman Maurer’s art. Not sure why — maybe the shadows and detail on the walls. The association is a tribute to both books and all the artists involved, though.)
Cannon, the only character in this book to have any sort of life beyond these pages, is a doubly brainwashed tool of the military who has no room in his one-track mind for romance (Chris Cooper in American Beauty would love this guy). How narrow is his focus? Not even another set of giant mammaries can pull him off course:
I wonder if Wood got Ditko’s pencils and found the chestular size wanting. “Let’s amp those melons up a bit. Into a nice, average E cup.”
The rest of the book is pure Wood. The Misfits story (inked by Ralph Reese) is just what it sounds like: a tale about oddball freaks working together blah blah blah. And Dragonella (co-scripted by Ron Whyte) seems to be nothing more than a breast delivery system garbed in a tattered, clingy red dress and living in a world of crappy magic:
Warning: Breasts in crystal ball may be smaller than they appear. Or larger. WHATEVER THEY’RE HUGE.
There was one other issue of Heroes, Inc. produced seven years later — one that didn’t rely on robberies and giant Heritage auctions to see the light of day — and that was it for this early, tentative foray into independent publishing. There’s not much else that can be said about this odd little relic, though for Wood aficionados it’s a must-have, I’m sure. In my brief, superficial reading about the book, I wasn’t able to come up with the reason for why the comic was never released. I’m assuming it was a deal falling through, events intervening, those sorts of things. If anyone out there knows the answer and pities me here wallowing in my ignorance, feel free to chime in with a comment. Sorry that I can’t surround this request with bikini chick drawings.
If you’ve ever read a 1960s comic book and flipped it over to look at the back side, there are real good odds that you’ve seen (Basset Hound-less) advertisements for the Famous Artists School. The alternating versions featured two of the founders of the school, the uber-renowned Norman Rockwell and the lesser-nowned Albert Dorne. The question for today is: Which one of these guys do you trust more? Who’d get more commission money if recruitment numbers were the basis of their pay package?
Up first is Rockwell:
The tie. The Mister Rogers sweater that screams KINDLY OLD GRANDFATHER. But behind every soft facade lies a dark secret.
Now Dorne:
The exposed proletarian forearms of Ernest Borgnine. Eyebrows like caterpillars.
Your choice. Pick your poison.
Ripley’s Believe It or Not! will gladly help you enslave your Sea-Monkeys and put them in a Happy Meal roadshow
Not that Sea-Monkeys aren’t gross and stupid and worthy of our everlasting loathing, but isn’t this a bit much? Or maybe it’s just right. Whatever.
Also, I have a hunch the “monsters” on the bottom might not be actual monsters (they look like underwater Madballs). Prepare to have your hopes dashed, kids.
If the cute and cuddly dancing penguins in Happy Feet make you want to puke, might I suggest this antidote – Samurai Penguin #1
What’s that? You’ve never thought of the adorable waddling denizens of the Southern Pole as solitary Japanese warriors? You’ve never considered that flightless birds — which gave such devious inspiration to Oswald Cobblepot — could be capable of grasping a sword, what with their utter lack of opposable thumbs?
Samurai Penguin is there to fill this unforeseen void. Written and drawn by co-creators Don Vado and Mark Buck (and published in 1986 by Slave Labor Graphics), it’s a winning depiction of Antarctic society, one where the guileless and care-free penguins are protected from assorted threats by an honor-bound caste of fighting birds in full Samurai regalia, as including the eponymous hero. And what a hero he is. Even penguin-hungry sharks are no match for righteous arrows fired by this taciturn champion:
(The penguins in the top panel look like they’d fit right in on a 1930s Nazi propaganda poster. Nazi Penguin.)
Every hero has to have a wise old mentor, one whose kindly words offer solace from the unrelenting challenges faced by SCREW IT LET ME SIMPLY REITERATE THAT THESE ARE PENGUIN SAMURAI:
I can’t say that this first issue offers much in the way of deep characterization, but I’m sure that wasn’t its aim. This is a light-hearted independent book and should be read as such. That said, I did enjoy seeing how sides were drawn in this frozen world. There’s sort of an Antarctic Masters of Evil formed in this premier issue, with a walrus with an eye-bisecting facial scar (of course) leading an unruly mob of gulls, seals and sharks that all have a bone to pick with this pain in the ass penguin:
This comic is roughly 1000x better than Reagan’s Raiders, and far better captures the sought-after independent vibe that that book whiffed on COMPLETELY. (For that matter, it’s also far less obtuse than the good-in-a-different-way Flaming Carrot.) Characters break the fourth wall a bit too much for my personal taste, but the art is clean and energetic and, yes, entertaining. You could do a lot worse than Samurai Penguin.
The series only lasted eight issues. Perhaps there’s a Lone Wolf and Cub spinoff still spinning around out there in the ether. Lone Penguin and Chick or something. We can dream.
Recreate James Bond’s “The Spy Who Loved Me” ski escape with your winterized G.I. Joes
The above assemblage is certainly less intimidating than the standard solitary Green Beret model. I think it’s the mittens.
I suppose these old G.I. Joes and their snowshoes and skis were forerunners of Snow Job, the red-bearded Joe who was part of the first wave of 1980s figures. Incidentally, I always thought Snow Job was a rather unfortunate name, in that it could be easily corrupted into “Blowjob” in inter-Joe ribbing.
“They’re making models now where you don’t need any glue or paint. Right up your idiot alley.”
Curt “The Franchise” Swan teams with John “The Usurper” Byrne to craft a forgettable Superman one-shot – Superman: The Earth Stealers
There came a day when Curt Swan, the longtime Superman artist of record whose soft lines and earnest faces had defined the Man of Steel for decades, was shunted to the side. He didn’t disappear completely. He still had little stints with the character (who owed more to him than to anyone not named Siegel or Shuster), whether they were token centerfolds in a revamped Action Comics or what have you. But he was largely gone. He didn’t die or anything, but it was a smaller version of what it must have felt like when FDR passed at the start of his fourth term. People forgot what it was like to have any other President, and with Swan people forgot what it was like to have any other flagship Superman artist.
I liked what John Byrne did in his reinvention of Superman, and his reworking of the Kryptonian mythos stood the test of time down to the present. (Though I’m not certain what in God’s name is going on with the New 52 garbage. And I don’t care to find out.) I’m old enough to remember the switchover, but I was too young at the time to grasp the seismic shift that it represented. I could see the difference in my Supermans, but I couldn’t grasp the difference, if you catch my drift, much less imagine that anyone’s feathers might have been ruffled by the exchange.
Was it a smooth baton handoff? Were there hard feelings? Those were things outside a youngster’s purview, and they’re also things for another post at another time. Instead, I today I bring before you a brief glimpse at a comic — published in 1988, two years after Byrne revamped Kal-El with The Man of Steel — that brought together scripter Byrne and penciller Swan for a Superman tale. The new guard and the old. Disco and Big Bands. 3-D and Cinerama. Together at last. ONE NIGHT ONLY.
The Earth Stealers, with this dream tag team, could have been sublime. Or it could have been God-awful. Or it could have been middling.
I’m here to tell you that it’s middling.
It’s a simple story that owes much to Swan’s Silver Age heyday. Outlandish outer space shenanigans threaten Earth + Superman’s friends doubly imperilled by malicious villains = your money’s worth. You know the drill. But here it feels tired, as if the old formula has been laying out with the cap off for far too long and all the fizz has gone out of it. Like Byrne was trying to hard or something, or maybe a bit out of his element. It’s just. Not. All. That. Great.
What’s mildly interesting about The Earth Stealers is that, though Byrne handled none of the artistic chores in the book, the art nevertheless, thanks to Jerry Ordway’s inking, looks like a melding of the newer and older visual takes on Superman (Ordway was a big part of the post-Crisis revamp, and the artistic majordomo on the “new” Adventures of Superman). There’s a lot of Ordway in this Superman, but when you see him flying like in this scan, with a pose and perspective seen hundreds of times before, all you can think of is Swan:
I miss that.
There are moments where you really want to get into the action, and just sit back and enjoy the fusion of the old with the new. But the story gets in the way. It feels like something rushed out in a “just because” flurry. Plus, who wants to read a story where the primary alien antagonist looks like he should be eating haggis and puffing on bagpipes?:
I’ve busted Byrne’s balls on here before, but he’s a reliable comics talent, and I’ve liked reading far more of his output than I’ve hated. Swan I adore (whether Superman’s dealing with swords or hamburgers), and Ordway I have no issues with whatsoever. But this is a dud from all three of them. A missed opportunity, and something that can only be read for its minor importance in comics history as a unique artistic collaboration. Like when Elvis met the Beatles, but with pencil shavings and ink stains and outer space Scotsmen with jaundice.
Jared
blog into mystery 