Strange Visitation

The Big Day

2008-08-06T19:53:00.000-07:00

Today was the BIG day at work. This leadership contest that I have been working on for the past couple of weeks started today and finishes tomorrow. What a roller coaster ride. Basically my role was to develop one of the key PowerPoint presentations and to run all the video, music and power points for the rest of the show. The lead up to the show was an exercise in frustration.

But to back up some, if I had to list my strengths at work near the top would be my level head and ability to stay calm in a crisis. I’ve been told this many times and I think it is part of the reason I get asked to help with these things. Working on these presentations is usually really fun. After all, I get paid to stretch my creativity a little. Also, a lot of the other people that get tagged to work on these things are pretty fun.

The frustration comes into the equation when we need input on the presentations. Basically what these things are for is to celebrate the management team’s accomplishments from the past year. That means all six of the various areas at my work have to write up what those accomplishments are. Then those write ups are translated to a presentation, which is then reviewed by the same people who wrote them up and they inevitable have changes. All this would be fine if they could actually get the changes done in a timely manner. In past years, we made changes to these presentations as late as the break in the conference right before the presentations were supposed to be shown. This is all the more ironic since the upper management of our area has a nasty habit of expecting responses to thier emails with ridiculous timeframes (All too typical example - please survey your employees for interest in such and such. Response is required by noon tomorrow. ) This year we had the finals a few days in advance which was really nice. Getting them done by then was a battle. We actually never had a rehearsal that included a final script or had all the performers in it.

While I do have a somewhat calm demeanor, I am a bit of a control freak so not having everything rehearsed and planned out can drive me a little nuts. I guess I can’t deny my nature a momma’s boy Italian. You know how dramatic those can be. But I have learned how to keep it inside and try to stay calm when things go pear shaped. Going into today’s show, I felt really good about all four of the power points I had to show. The problem was there were actually five power points I was supposed to show. But for some reason, until about five minutes before it was supposed to be shown, I had forgotten all about this one power point. Now 5this power point that I did not even have on the computer was no ordinary power point. No my friends this was the power point for the director of our entire branch of the IRS. The big kahuna. And five minutes before he was going to start talking, I realized I did not have the power point. So in between trying to plan my new career as a clerk somewhere, I managed to get around the security measures on my boss’s computer to extract a copy of this power point and with a delay of about 20 minutes, we were back in business. I felt horrible because my boss was the organizer of the whole shebang and she is a friend of mine as well. I thought I had totally let her down. Luckily it seemed to be ok once we got it going. The crisis passed but I had aged about ten years in the process.

From there the rest of the show went off without a hitch. I even was totally surprised to win an award as the Most Appreciated Manager for my group. I have never actually won an award like that other that the usual B.S. awards when they give EVRYONE and award. Those are a lot like trophies for perfect attendance in gym class. Anyway it was nice and I got a huge round of applause.

The day was a roller coaster from beginning to end. Actually it started last night when I got some bad news about a friend of mine. Then I realized I had lost my worry crucifix. It must have fallen off of my chain sometime during the day. Then I could hardly sleep worrying about the power points (oblivious at that point to the missing one). Then the ups and downs of the actual conference. Then to top it off, when I got home, a friend of mine pulled into my driveway behind me. I was so burned out I was looking forward to an hour of staring at TV with my cat but since I had not seen this friend in so long, I ended up playing the Wii with him.

Here are a few pictures from today. I hope tomorrow is a little more balanced.

At this point I was desperate to get the dang power point loaded.

This is a look at some of the crowd. That's my friend George in the foreground.

This is a lousy picture of the award they gave me. Sweet!

The view from backstage during the big opening number.

My friend Gale working the registrations tables

All smiles after the presentations were done.

The Return

2008-04-08T21:40:00.000-07:00

My buddy Les Wallace came back to my work today. I spoke about his last visit a while back. He is a sort of management consultant type speaker. I really enjoy his presentations. I won’t get too into what he spoke about since it was all related to management and work performance. Not exactly Blog material. Back when I wrote my original entry about his visit, Les wrote me an email thanking me for mentioning him. I thought that was very classy though I doubt he got any new business from my readers. He was great as usual.

Well today he mentioned to my Boss that I have a blog. Actually he mentioned it a few times in his presentation so a lot of my co-workers asked me about it. Not that I keep things secret. I just keep my severely geeky hobbies on the down-low at work. It helps to maintain my image (whatever that is).

Actually on the geek ladder at work I am not quite at the top. I know a few folks who are REALLY into civil war recreations and a few others who do Renaissance Fairs. There are a lot of comic book geeks in my building but I think the king geek is a friend of mine who is a HUGE Space: 1999 fan. I remember how excite he was when as a birthday gift he got a scale replica of a Space: 1999 Eagle spaceship. So me and my love of Egyptology, Paleontology and comic books don’t seem so bad. Right? Please?

So now everyone knows I have a blog so I am giving out the URL to the blog. I hope to get some new readers! Please check out my podcast while you are here at strangerswithcomics.com.

Transfer

2008-02-03T10:08:00.000-08:00

Well I obviously have been finding it tough updating the blog with any regularity. Most of my hobby time is spent on reading and the podcast so as a compromise, I am essentially transferring the blog to the podcast web page. My buddy Gabe and Rob will be doing entries on there as well so if you check it our on a regular basis, you should find different content through the week.

Thanks to everyone for reading and remember to update your links to the podcast blog at:

Strangers With Comics

Strangers With Comics

2007-11-29T06:20:00.000-08:00

I promise to update the blog this weekend with some Longbox of Lovin but for now I want to share with you guys that I started a podcast with Rob and Gabe. We generally spit them ot once a week and though we have failed miserably to this point, we try to stay positive and relatively clean language wise.

Check it out at

Strangerwithcomics.com

or find us on the iTunes store.

Squid Hat!

2007-10-16T20:18:00.000-07:00

Halloween is approaching and at my house, we are getting ready for our annual costume party. My wife and Rob tend to get really passionate about these things and every year, our garage accumulates more and more decorations. It’s pretty fun. Every year the family picks a theme. One year we did The Prisoner, mainly because it is Frank’s favorite TV show. So Liz dressed up like a villager, complete with stripped blouse and groovy white tennis shoes. Frank was Number 6 of course. I started the night as Number 2, but like every episode of The Prisoner, as the night wore on, Rob, who started as like Number 16, moved up until he took over as Number 2. Fun times but if you don’t like The Prisoner, you probably have no idea what I am talking about.

The next year we did the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (The comic not the movie) Liz was Mina Harker, Rob was Dr. Jekyll, and I was Captain Nemo. I think Frank dressed like Malcolm McDowell from A Clockwork Orange that year. Fun Fun Fun.

Back in the day I came up with an idea for a High Priest of Cthulhu costume. I was telling my LCS friend Dave about this so I thought you might enjoy a long ramble about Renaissance Faire Politics and the Squid Hat.

My family and I used to be part of the Renaissance Fair Circuit here in California. In California, there are two kinds of Renaissance Fairs. The first is the professional or commercial fairs which are run for profit. These shows have paid performers, auditions, producers, the whole bit. If you ever see Robin Williams at a Ren Fair, he is probably at one of these because they tend to be huge week long events. Then there is the"small" faire circuit. These are smaller fairs put on by municipalities or non profit groups. Most of the performers are not paid. They do it for the fun. The circuit runs up and down the state all summer long.

We used to do about six faires a year with our group. Places like San Luis Obispo, Hanford, Modesto, Sacramento, Tulare and Fresno. When you are young this is a fun hobby. Basically you set up camp, interact with the crowds in your costume, and then have fun with your buddies when the faire closes. We stopped doing this because the lifestyle was getting too much for our older selves. We sort of retired about 5 years ago.

During my time doing fair, I was a member of the planning committee for the Hanford Ren Fair. If you think your average committee meeting is dull and boring, wait till you attend a Ren Fair Committee meeting. When you put “actors” in charge of a production, you are basically giving control freaks something to control and discuss at length. Never a good idea but you need volunteers since most local fairs don’t pay anyone to do this stuff. These meetings were just H. E. Double Hockey Sticks! Man, just try listening to a puffed up wanna be actor discuss what NEEDS to happen to make the show a success. So it was during one of these meetings that I started doodling on my pad and I came up with something.

Squid Hat! No idea where that came from. But I showed it to my friend who was also trying not to sleep and he thought it was funny. So I went home and decided to make my squid hat into a Halloween costume. The first squid hat was fun. I took it to Ren Faires. It was like a member of the family. It ended up getting a little ratty so I had to throw it away. This year I decided to make another one and a more elaborate costume to go along with it. This might make for an amusing Blog entry so I took pictures during the process.

Besides a sewing machine and scissors, here’s all you need.

About a yard and a half of squid colored felt. A square of Black and a square of White felt. A half a yard of clear plastic. Two big sheets of craft plastic (stiff). All this stuff can be bought at a good fabric store for under 10 dollars total.

You need a pattern so grab a piece of paper and take some measurements of your skull like this.

The fabric will need to be cut to a width equal to half of your measurement plus one inch. Here is a pattern you can copy.

So basically you want to fold your squid fabric in half and then trace the pattern. Freehand patterns rock! You want the fins to extend about three inches, and the total length should be about 14 inches. Cut out the pattern. You should have two squid shaped pieces of felt.

Next up is the eye. First cut a round circle out of the white felt square about 6 or 7 inches across. Next you want to cut an eye slit out of the black fabric. I think real squids have human type eyes but cat’s eyes are funnier. Cut a slightly smaller hole in one of the squid pieces.

Next up comes the crucial part of the design. The hat gets all of its charm from the bored expression in the eye. It’s as though the squid is tired of sucking your brains. So first you need to cut the clear plastic so it is large enough to completely cover the white disc. Finally you need to make the eyelid. Freehand draw a crescent piece of the squid fabric large enough to make an eyelid.

So all that’s left is assembly. Lay the white disc down on the table, arrange the eye slit in the center, and lay the clear plastic on top of it. Arrange the hole in the squid fabric over the eye. The hard part is sewing it all together. The plastic makes it all slippery but you can always rip out the stitches until you get it. Use pins to hold it in place.

When you finally have that bit done, lay the two halves face to face and sew a seam around the edge. Cut the stiff plastic to fit inside the hat. Turn it inside out and there you go! Squid hat!

You can add tentacles made from the left over fabric or wear it as is. Find some robes to compliment the hat and your Halloween is ready to rock!

Next time we make another visit to the Longbox of love.

Rock On!

2007-10-03T20:58:00.001-07:00

I saw this in the window of the theatre by my work and it made me smile.

Last night Black Sabbath rolled into Fresno. I am not ashamed to admit that I am a head banger from way back. Yes during the 80’s I was a heavy metal fool. Of course you can only go so far with the head banging in Fresno. Not too many tours come this way. Fresno is just not a big event town. That’s why we don’t have any pro sports teams and most headliners don’t schedule us though lately that has been changing.

Back in the day, THE place to see shows was Selland Arena.

I remember seeing Iron Maiden there. What a great time. Of course the pickings were slim so I also had to see Def Leppard there. Surprisingly I enjoyed the Def Lep show even though I was never into the pop metal bands. I also saw YES and INXS at the arena. Of course this was about 20 years ago.

These days, I am almost 40 and the last concert I went to was about six years ago at the much smaller Warnor’s Theatre. The band was Tesla.

So it was with great pleasure that I found out that Black Sabbath was coming to town. Well a version of Black Sabbath anyway. Technically the band is called Heaven and Hell and features the classic line up from the Mob Rules era of Black Sabbath. Something about Black Sabbath being associated with Ozzy Osbourne in the line up as opposed to Ronnie James Dio. I didn’t care because I love me some Sabbath and I did not want to miss the chance to see Tony Iommi live.

I also took the chance to get some bonding time with son number two, Frank. I talked about Rob earlier. Frank is younger and while Rob shares a lot of tastes with his Mom, Frank likes some of the music of my youth and he tagged along with me. Yay!

Actually the first thing we noticed when we got to the arena was that a LOT of us old guys were dragging their kids along to the show. Check this out.

This guy brought his wife and three little kids along. How cool is that? Especially when the little kids were wearing their tiny Black Sabbath T-Shirts. As we entered the arena, the theme was repeated over and over. A lot of times, whenever we saw a young boy walking past us, close behind would inevitably be an older version of the boy in the form of his dad. I guess a lot of guys my age had the same idea I did. We get to see some Sabbath and include the younger generation.

The show was good. There were three bands on the bill and the first was Queensryche. There was a time when Queensryche was my favorite band but they kind of went the Metalica route and started slowing done and getting tamer after the Empire Album. I had seen them once before and they put on a good show again playing sings from most of their albums. Next up was Alice Cooper. Gawd I hate Alice Cooper but his show started off very strong with three rockers, including No More Mr. Nice Guy and 18. Then the crap started with Alice and his theatrics. So Lame! In this phase of the show, Alice witnesses a satanic baby being born so he takes it upon himself to kill the baby. For killing the baby he is hung by a rope mid-stage. Looked just so silly. Bad acting and worse effects. How exactly did he manage to get by doing this for 30 years?

Heaven and Hell took the stage at last and Frank and I were in Sabbath ecstasy. It was exactly what you want mood-wise from a Sabbath concert. Long heavy songs with cool lighting effects. Totally rocked. Of course the big downside was that they only played songs from the three Black Sabbath albums that they recorded with Ronnie James Dio. No “Iron Man’, no “Paranoid”, no “War Pigs” and especially, no “Black Sabbath”. Oh well. Maybe when they pull thorough California with Ozzy.

This was easily the tamest concert I ever went to. The first time I saw Iron Maiden (with opening act The Vinnie Vincent Invasion no less) we almost got into a knife fight with some stoners on the arena floor. For this concert, the worst behavior I saw was a guy openly smoking a joint in the restroom filled with about 30 men.

Next up:It's Halloween so I show you how to make a squid hat.

Who Wants to be a Geek?

2007-09-12T21:07:00.000-07:00

Who Want’s to Be a Superhero? Such a polarizing show among comic geeks. It appears either you think the show is a fun silly take on the reality show genre, or you think it is so dumb you wouldn’t watch it if someone paid you. Today on Strange Visitations, I want to talk about geekdom and the deeper meaning that it has for a lot of us, especially yours truly.

I happen to love Who Wants to Be a Superhero? I love the ridiculous challenges. I love the terrible acting. I love the hammy Stan Lee. I really love the weird logic used in eliminations. Most of all I love the contestants. These are truly my people. At least the ones left at the end are. How much of a comic book geek do you have to be to get dressed up in some really BAD costumes, and then humiliate yourself on the Sci-Fi channel doing silly stunts and being lectured by the 20 foot tall talking head of Stan Lee? You have to be a real geek.

This season, I was rooting for Hyperstrike. Besides the fact that he really “got” the joke, I love how he hated his new costume but quickly realized he had to say he loved it. He just seemed to be laughing along with me through the show.

I was happy with Defuser winning the contest, mainly because I did not care so much for American Maid…er…Hygena. She cried way too much. Unless you are Superman in a DC event book, there’s no crying in comic books.

During the next to last episode, the winner was probably decided during Stan Lee’s interviews with the contestants. It was at this point I realized that no matter how much I liked Hyperstrike, his story was just not the compelling tale that the show seems to love. Remember the three finalists from last year? Major Victory wanted to prove to his daughter that her daddy was a hero. Fat Momma wanted to show people that chubby people can succeed, thrive and be heroes. And the winner, Feedback, had the gripping story of feeling unloved by his father and turning to comic books, in particular Marvel books, for a father figure and someone to look up to. I found all three tales very powerful. This year’s three finalists were different. Hyperstrike basically said he really enjoyed being a superhero and it was a reaction to being picked on as a child. Hygena talked about how she had lost a baby and in that process, lost a lot of her self-confidence. Being on the show made her see her own value. Finally, Defuser talked about how he wished the superheroes in the comics he read as a child could come to life and help his sister come back from a dangerous lifestyle. Again powerful.

What I see in these interviews that for many of us geek types, be it comics, video games, paintball, airsoft, Renaissance Fairs, whatever, for many of us, some geek activity filled some kind of void at a young age and now, as adults, it stays with us, even if circumstances have gotten better. In pondering this, I realized I was really pondering my own life.

I freely admit that I am a geek. I love comic books, I collect Superman memorabilia, I collect The Simpson’s junk, and I have way too many DVD’s. You can’t hurt my feelings by calling me a geek. Not when the geek side of me was what helped me get through my early life.

When I was a young lad, growing up in the seventies, I lived in a big Italian family. I had two older sisters, a stay at home mom, and my father was the guy who wore a suit and went off to work every weekday, and took his kids to the zoo or to the city on weekends. Things began to change when Mom and Dad separated. Suddenly, Mom had to raise three kids on her own. Mom was a German immigrant. She learned English when she came here but for most of her adult life, she did not have a job other than raising us kids. So suddenly she had to find work and keep us together. She did that. My Mom was a remarkable woman. Some sacrifices had to be made on all our parts. Mainly we couldn’t have all the great new toys and clothes every year but one thing I did have was my comic books. Mom loved to let me read and she would always find money to buy me a comic book or two each week. This was before the direct market so I got my comic books from a magazine rack. Also the number of titles was somewhat small so it was easy to pick what to read.

Early on, I was a DC guy. I loved Superman and the JLA. Especially when Superman was in that month’s issue of the JLA. As far as Marvel goes, I did read Marvel Team-Up and The Fantastic Four, but I somehow missed the Spiderman phase. Oh well.

A lot of times, when Mom had to work, she would have to take me along since my sisters had school or work and she could not afford a sitter. She mainly worked in places like Diners and Bowling Alleys where if a kid was well behaved, it was ok for them to hang out. So on those days, we’d stop at the drug store and Mom would buy me a comic book. Just one. They generally cost about 40 cents back then. So we would go to her work, I would find someplace to sit, and I was off to Superman’s world.

I devoured my comic books. I could read that one book four or five times on that day. Sometimes I’d break out some paper and trace some of the images from the book. For a chubby ten year old whose family was falling to pieces, comic books were a safe place to visit. My buddy Superman understood me. Superman never lies. He never forgets to call you. He never takes your sister on trips while leaving you behind.

He never left me. If I needed Superman, there he was, in my stack of comic books.

It was not until years later that I understood that this is where my love of the genre springs from. As an adult, I have tracked down most of those books my Mom bought me back in the day and I treasure them still. Talk to me a bout the JLA versus the Construct and I may tear up a little.

Mention of Doctor Destiny and the Key may cause me to get misty.

Try and bag on Superman or the kooky satellite era JLA and you can expect an argument. It has that kind of meaning to me.

So I embrace my inner geek and I encourage anyone reading to do the same. Why fight it? Having Wolverine, the Punisher, Spiderman, Batman or Superman with you on this journey through adulthood is really not a bad thing. In fact, it’s pretty cool.

Peace out.

AntiFanboy

2007-09-08T18:51:00.000-07:00

I was trying to wrap my brain around how to write about my favorite podcast but it took frustration with my day job to show me the way.

AntiFanboy is a podcast about comic books. Every week they sit around and pick their favorite books, argue about comics stuff, and do some really funny and smart comedy routines. I seriously enjoy this podcast. But it is not for everyone. They do cuss quite a bit and you will occasional hear someone call someone else “gay”. But if you get past that, or if you like that sort of stuff, these are some smart guys who have a real passion for comics. I have spoken to most of them on Skype and the AntiFanboys are not racist or mean or gay bashers. They are just young and passionate.

Jon Suarez is the ringmaster and we seem to share a love for Superman and Strangers in Paradise. He doesn’t get on board my Aquaman love train but that's forgivable. Steve Oteri (the sixth funniest man in podcasting) is the go to guy for song parodies, spontaneous riffs on comic characters, and absurd humor. Devon Kopek is the Marvel guy who, when he gets a word in edgewise, is very articulate and weathers the DC fanatic attacks from the other three. Chris Galanti will one day be an evil genius and he is definitely thinking about comics on a higher level than most of us mortals. That and he is the film freak of the group.

For the full AntiFanboy effect, I recommend going here:

Ghoulstock

...and downloading Episode 22. In this episode, not only do we hear some great opinions on Civil War and 52, but right in the middle is the funniest segment I ever heard on a podcast involving pro-wrestler Dean Malenko and a mystery date. Lots of cussing to boot! Yahoo!

I guess the reason I wanted to write about the AntiFanboys is that they have really gotten me back into comics. I would say that in anticipation of their weekly episodes, I burn through my comics that week to be sure I have read whatever they are reviewing. Also, they have reminded me of when I was in college and my friends and I sat around and talked comics, movies, heavy metal music and pro-wrestling. Good times.

Next we return to my long box of love.

The Longbox of Love (Part IV)

2007-09-04T21:42:00.000-07:00

I am running out of longboxes so this week I am including some more recent stuff from the Longbox of Love.

Local is hard to categorize. You pick up a given issue and not much happens. But like a lot of great fiction, something is going on under the surface. Local is the story of a very damaged but very real family that is coming to grips with their own flaws. It may sound dry but I find it totally gripping and crushingly real. I highly recommend it.

Also on the recent side is Manhunter. You might not know this but Manhunter is sort of The Punisher meets She-Hulk. But not funny like She-Hulk at all. But by day the main character is a tough as nails attorney (in one arc she defends Wonder Woman for killing Max Lord) and by night she is a tough as nails vigilante who kills a bad guy in her first adventure. Mark Andreko has created a great fully realized character who is battling her own demons while fighting for her child (she is a divorced Mom). A book that is fast paced and thoughtful all at once.

Finally in the recent category there is this total gem of a book. Adventures in Service is a Mini-Comic created by Chicagoan Matt Fagan. I am not really into mini-comics but I found this book so delightful, I hope more people check it out. It is a collection of short episodes about two super powered Butlers (yes butlers as in Man Servants) and their adventures against crime and in love. You can get in touch with the author and check out his other work HERE

I suppose I do not have to say much about DK2. I hated it. I think Frank Miller has been on a downward slide ever since. Probably his last really good book was Sin City: To Hell and Back. I think the only reason I hang onto these back issues is when I go to throw them away, I remember how much I paid for them and toss it back into the box in disgust.

I already discussed how much I love the Animal Man. During the late Eighties/Early Nineties, DC put out a bunch of series like Secret Origins. It was sort of a retro wave but really really crappy. Every now and again a gem sprung up and lookie here, Grant Morrison! Since this was done by the Animal Man book team, this issue fits right in with the main book.

Speaking of Grant...wasn't his run on X-Men great! One day I will do my full X-Men rant but for now, know that when I was a lad, X-Men was the best superhero book out there. Somehow it all went to utter crap and never rally came back from that place until Morrison took the reigns. Of course as soon as he left it went back to crapville. Morrison focused on the X-Men as a school for outcasts and a really dysfunctional family. To me, that is the best angle to take when writing the X-Men. I think this run was better even than the really good Astonishing X-Men run by Josh Whedon.

So they make a Wanted movie based on a comic book which featured characters based on the appearance of Enimen and Halley Barry, then they cast James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie? Ok, whatever. I never cared for books that focused on bad guys unless they got their comeuppance in the end. Wanted is all about bad guys. Bad Guys vs. Bad Guys. I guess I like it because the dialogue is snappy and the art is really gorgeous. JG Jones is a great interior artist. I wish he would do less covers and get back on a regular book.

Being a child of the 70's, I love the anthology comics. I so miss them but to their credit, both DC and Marvel still attempt to put one out regularly every few years. No one buys them. These Holiday specials were always fun. To me they were sort of yearbooks that captured where the DCU was that year. Look at the ornament and you can see Kyle in his weird GL mask, Wally as the Flash, and Batman with his old school logo.

I know I have already talked about Supreme but my love for this book knows no bounds. If Alan Moore and Chris Sprouse had been able to continue their run, Supreme might be up there with Superman, Aquaman and Captain America among my favorite Superheros.

Cerebus is going to be the subject of an upcoming entry here on Strange Visitations but I love this little ditty I found. The Cerebus Jam features Cerebus interacting with Popeye (yes Popeye as in Olive Oil) and the Spirit. It sounds wierd and it is but totally fun at the same time. Track it down on Ebay. While you are at it, track down the Todd Macfarlane Spawn issue which featured Cerebus.

New Effin Frontier! When this book came out, it was very under the radar. Darwyn Cook was not an A-Lister yet and DC had some other JLA mega events going on. But eventually, everyone recognized the enormity of what was accomplished in this book. It is very close in theme to "The Golden Age" graphic novel about the JSA in that both books tell a tale of the end of the age of innocence for Superheros as they move into the modern age. This is a dense read that, like Watchmen, gets better with subsequent reads. I must get the absolute edition one day. A gorgeous and engaging read.

This book rocks! Why? It features one of the few modern instances where Superman is unleashed. No holding back, fists flying, put the beatdown on Darkseid kind of action. Best part? Even though it is loaded with action, in the end, Superman beats Darkseid with a trick. I love when Superman beats his opponents with his brains.

One of the great things about writing these is that I get to dig out all these great old comics that I have not read in years and enjoy them all over again. During the early 00's, Batman mini's were everywhere. Batman seems to go through these waves every few years. Death and the Maidens is THE definitive Ra's al Ghul story. Greg Rucka writes the most interesting and detailed backstory for both Ra's and Talia. The art is by Klaus Jansen and while many people do not care for that school of art (Which includes older Frank Miller and Howard Chaykin), because the story takes several turns for the creepy, the art totally works here. Basically this is a tale of the downfall of the demons head. Along the way we learn all about Talia and Bruce Wayne literally confronts his ghosts. One of the best Batman stories out there.

Speaking of reprints...

I love them! I found this little gem at Wonderland. I sure miss the goofy superhero stories of the silver age. Look how ridiculous these stories look! I know these days people appreciate a more "realistic" story but for me, the days when Superman could move a planet or when Superboy could restart a burnt out star with a gigantic match were gold. Since I don't want to leave you hanging, here is how Superboy deals with his monster:

The magic of headpieces.

I have said before that I have a lot of Fantastic Four. This issue is particularly good and it is unusual in that the Fantastic Four are hardly in it. This is the issue where Galactus is about to die from hunger because he foolishly made a vow not to eat worlds with thriving populations of life. Amazing John Byrne art.

When I was a child and I saw this book being advertised, it confused me. The Worlds Greatest Flying Heroes? Huh? Shining Knight? It seemed to me that a lot of flyer's were missing. Years later I actually bought the book and finally saw the back cover:

Oh!. Well that's better. Of course this issue being at the end of the Silver Age, Wonder Woman still couldn't fly so she is not on the cover.

Is there anything better than a Superman imaginary story? Ok sure there is but they are definitely up there in the fun factor.

Word!

When writers get blocked!

Ok well that's enough of that. Thanks for reading. What's in YOUR longbox?

2007-08-25T21:48:00.000-07:00

Before I get back to the Longbox of Love, I thought I’d collect some thoughts on what we’ve discussed so far.

First off I felt like a TOTAL dweeb when I listened to the Comic Book Queers episode 43 (here) and the feat5ured guest was Robert Rodi. It was at that moment I made the connection that Mr. Rodi wrote two of my all time favorite books from my Longbox, Codename: Knockout and The Crossovers! I guess he is officially one of my favorite writers, as long as I ignore Identity Disc. Unfortunately, despite the tendency of Vertigo to trade everything, Codename: Knockout has not been traded or at least it is not available in trade right now. The Crossovers apparently are in limbo with Crossgen going bankrupt. I perused my LCS today for back issues and The Crossovers don’t look to be that common in the bins. I did find some Codename: Knockout though. Anyway, if you run across either at a con, grab them. I promise you they are fun and satisfying reads. Also I now need to get some of Rodi’s novels. Check out his site here.

The Batman: No Man’s Land stories have all been traded though I don’t think they are currently in print. DC is pretty good about rotating things back in print so keep your eyes open. I know that big event crossovers generally suck but this was different.

All of the Fantastic Four I have is available in trades, and a lot of it is in hardcover. Weird how the FF are such a red-headed stepchild to Marvel yet there is so much in the after-market for them. The John Byrne run can be found in dollar bins. To me, those were the tail end of Byrnes great art period, plus the stories were just right. Grab them!

Remember when EBay was a good source for cheapo comics? Not so much anymore huh? These days, Dollar Bins at conventions seem to be the best places to find back issues. At least once you wade through the 100 copies of The Brigade or some crap like that.

In other news, my LCS had their 18^th birthday today! Hurray Heroes! They served birthday cake and punch and there was a squad of Stormtrooper's doing something. Those were some short chubby Stormtrooper’s. Dave (personable owner operator) had 18 percent of anything in the store so I snagged Essential Nova and some T-Shirts for Rob and Liz (Nothing cool for Frank though)

I am almost embarrassed to say that when I was a kid, besides Marvel Team Up and Marvel two in one, the ONLY Marvel I bought were Nova and Dazzler. I got into both mainly because I stumbled upon issue one of both series and ended up collecting for a couple years. They both got cancelled. But Nova and Dazzler will always have a special place in my heart. Looking back I know in my head they are terrible but through my childhood glasses they totally rock. I’m reluctant to pick up the new Nova series because I am scared it will be like messing with my childhood. I wish I still had my original issues.

Two things in comics that are bugging me have to do with DC. First of all, the new creative team on Supergirl is already being replaced. Sigh. How sad. That run really had some potential. I don’t know why Superman has all these rules for how he is portrayed in comics, yet Supergirl can be a teenage sex kitten. Frustrating. The other book I worry about is Robin. I was worried when I heard Adam Beechen was leaving. But now they say Fabian Nicieza is taking over. Uh oh. Worried! Nicieza is an ok writer but for me, he will always be associated with the horrible X-titles and the Marvel explosion of crap that immediately followed Heroes Reborn.

Ok I got off track there but let me hook up the old scanner and get to talking Longboxes…of love…

Leadership and Podcasts...

2007-08-16T21:47:00.001-07:00

I work for the IRS. I actually work the area that levies bank accounts and wages. We’re the people who send you the letters asking where your taxes are. I love my job. No seriously I do. A misconception about what the IRS does is that we go after the little guy. A discussion about the Earned Income Credit audits might end up with that resolution, but overall, in my part of the IRS, if you fail to file or pay your taxes, and you are honest with us about why and how you can get caught up, we will work with you and you won’t face any nasty levies or undo penalties. Try and cheat and hell yes we will come after you. Back in they day when I worked cases I did it. We decided some joker was just stalling and was never going to pay so I levied his bank and garnished his wages.

These days, I am a manager so I do not work cases anymore. But I still love what I do. Well as I briefly talk about in my profile, part of my job involves a yearly event we call the Leadership Conference. Basically all 140 or so managers who work in my building get together and celebrate the accomplishments of the past year. While we are at it, we hopefully get fired up for the coming year. The conference is a lot of hard work to organize.

Of course since we are the IRS, the event is not well financed. Basically HQ pays for the location but the rest is largely paid for out of whatever funds we can squeeze from our local budgets or straight out of the pockets of upper management. This means that most everything from designing the printed materials to making the decorations is done with a budget of zero. Where I come in is with the multimedia presentations.

I am no expert with making videos or PowerPoint’s, but I have some knowledge of creating presentations and I work for free. So in the weeks leading up to the conference, I work with the other managers making presentations that celebrate the work they have done and when the actual conference comes, I work the multimedia displays and the soundboard.

This year was quite frustrating as I had to deal with a TON of PowerPoint issues. What a lot of people don’t understand is that when you make a PowerPoint on your own computer, when you copy that presentation to the computer we use at the show, none of your music or fonts will be there. Not unless you get there ahead of time and install everything and adjust the file references in your PowerPoint. So half of the presentations we had were not fully functioning 24 hours before the show. Big headache since fixing them ate up hours of my time and basically eliminated any rehearsal time we may have had to run through the entire show before the big day. Very Frustrating!

Anyway, the main speaker at this year’s conference was a guy named Les Wallace.

He is a really well known speaker with a penchant for helping group’s breakthrough whatever barriers they are having with achieving success. He is what they call a dynamic speaker. Les was a lot of fun. As the multimedia sound guy, I got to spend a lot of time next to him and we exchanged little quips and bantered throughout the conference. He seems like a fun, smart, funny guy.

Problem. At the IRS, we have a culture of non-discrimination and all managers are hyper aware of the need to not use bad language or make any inappropriate comments. Les was 99 percent into this. But he did let a few bad words slip. I mean just a few and nothing major. But sure enough, as we looked at the feedback left by the people at the conference, the one complaint people did have was about the verbal slip ups.

The message is that no matter how mind blowing the content of something is, if you frame it in a certain way, some people will tune you out and never get anything out of what you are saying.

Fresno, Fresno, oh how I love thee…

2007-08-08T11:25:00.000-07:00

How did I end up in this place and what do I really think about it?

I was actually born in Los Angeles to a poor family who gave put me up for adoption. My Mom and Dad adopted me through an agency, and when I was 6 months old, I became an East Coaster. At first we lived in Willingborough, New Jersey but Dad worked for US Steel as a lead project manager, so we ended up moving quite a bit. We lived in Jamaica New York, Levittown Pennsylvania and finally ended up in Coram New York (Out in Suffolk County on Long Island).

My Dad worked on at least one famous project to people who live in the NYC area.

When I was 12, my first job ever was working in a comic book shop. How amazing is that? Peaking career wise at 12.

Anyhow, by the time I was thirteen, my Dad had passed on and my Mom decided that we should visit my Sister, who, at the time, was married to a Navy man and lived in someplace called Lemoore California.

This was Christmas 1982. For some reason, I packed two suitcases. One full of clothes and one full of my most treasured comic books. Knowing my Mom, I had a creeping feeling that she secretly wanted to move there. By this time, I had been living in New York for 8 or 9 years and I had zero desire to move to that wacky California. But once I thought about it, I could see the obvious advantages; I mean this is CALIFORNIA right? Beaches everywhere and the weather is always nice. Also, like most New Yorkers, I was sure tired of shoveling snow in the winter. So maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

Well I learned very quickly that when people talk about California they really mean everything in California on the coast south of San Francisco. We flew into California via Fresno. The first thing I noticed from the airplane window was this:

Fog. Fresno was socked in. Lemoore is about 30 miles from Fresno and en route to Lemoore, I found out that in Fresno, there was a lot of this:

Rain. Fog and rain in the winters. At first I was ok with it since it sure beats snow, sleet, and ice. Of course then the summer came. The 110 degree summers. This was not the California I was promised! There were a lot of other things about the Central Valley that weirded me out:

Where are all the black people? When I went to school in New York, I would say one third of my class was Black, one third whitish, and one third Puerto Rican. My first class in Lemoore was entirely white except for a few Mexican kids. In my entire class there were 5 black kids. Fresno is more diverse than Lemoore. Fresno has large Asian and Mexican communities. Lemoore not so much. Homogenous. I also learned that Kings and Tulare counties were home to some large KKK branches. Yikes!

The schools have breezeways instead of hallways. I went to Longwood High School in New York. The school had a huge fence around it and we had security guards on premises. Also each teacher took a shift of hall patrol. At Lemoore High, the campus is totally open. The classrooms open to the outside and you walk across courtyards to get to your next class. You can also walk across the street to the little store or even hop in your car and drive to downtown for lunch. I felt so unsupervised!

People spit. I mean seriously. Lemoore is largely made of Navy personnel and farmers. The farmers spit. A lot. Even if they don’t chew tobacco (which a lot of them did) they spit. Little puddles everywhere. For a polite Italian Catholic boy, I was grossed out most of the day.

Lemoore High School had a paddling policy. Yes paddling. If you got in trouble, you could take detention, suspension of a whack across the ass with a wooden board. When I heard this I was totally amazed. In New York, if a teacher touched a kid and it was a huge scandal.

There once was a six car traffic jam on one of the main streets because tumbleweeds were blowing across the road.

So High School was a big change in culture for me. I was known as the city kid. I survived and went to the local community college. I graduated, got a job at the IRS, and moved to Fresno (long story short there but this is running long). Fresno is definitely an upgrade from Lemoore. As I said Fresno is much more culturally diverse. If you live in Los Angeles, San Francisco or any other major city, Fresno is always going to be Smallville. This despite the fact that Fresno is the 36^th largest City in the U.S without counting Clovis, Fresno’s attached little brother city. So Fresno is a larger city than Cleveland, Miami, Oakland, St. Louis, Pittsburg and Newark. We have no professional sports teams here. We for have a minor league Arena Football team though! Go Coyote’s!

Everything in Fresno revolves around the weather. Seriously. The summers here are murder. In New York the summer got hot for sure, but it occasionally rained. Here, sometime in May or June, the temperature goes over 100 degrees and stays there through September. Even at night, it sometimes does not go below 90. And no rain. Twenty years ago, Fresno had a rainy season that ran all winter. Not so much anymore. We have been in a drought for over a decade. So now, our winters are dry but bitter cold and foggy. In other words, Fresno weather is nothing like the California most people dream of. This tends to mean that people stay indoors a lot. There really are not a lot of outdoor geared attractions. We have a Zoo which is small. We have very few parks.

I know I have been sort of down on the Central Valley up to this point but seriously, I love Fresno. Sure the weather is a challenge. Sure there is a lot of backwards thinking individuals around here. We call Fresno a little bit of Oklahoma surrounded by California. Hell we have multiple rodeos.

But for me, Fresno is a great mix of small town coziness with a little big city attitude. The people are pretty friendly. The streets are easy to get around. The graffiti team keeps the place from getting too ghetto. We have Alan Autry for a mayor! Bubba!

He’s buddy with the governor so we get plenty of love from the Govenator.

The cost of living is the big draw for Fresno. The cost of living in the Los Angeles or the San Francisco area is just amazing. Rents for small apartments can be $1500. So a lot of people buy houses here in Fresno and commute the 180 miles every day to the big cities. It is actually cheaper than living in those cities. For 1500 you could rent a house here. Plus as you can see, it’s about three hours to Los Angeles or San Francisco, 4 hours to Lake Tahoe and about an hour to Yosemite. Great location! It makes it easy to plan a day trip for fun.

We only have one decent comic shop but at least it’s an awesome one.

So yes, this displaced New Yorker is living and loving his new hometown. Stop by for a spell but dress in layers! And bring a sports team of two please…

Jesse Custer: Man's Man

2007-08-01T22:03:00.001-07:00

This is the first in a new series about the manly men of comics. To get things started, let’s discuss one of my favorite books of all time.

Ah...Preacher. This was before Garth Ennis attained Godlike status in the fanboy world. This is also the pre any-gay-joke-is-a-funny-gay-joke Ennis. The one sentence describing Preacher would probably be

“A preacher from Texas becomes the host of a superpowerful spirit born of and angel and a devil, who goes on a quest to find God.” Like so many great works, any brief description does not do the series justice. Preacher features kick-ass action, rich character development, and an ending that is less about finding God than finding the value of friendship and love. Yes I said ending. Preacher has a run of almost 70 issues but eventually ended in an incredibly satisfying manner.

The main character is Jesse Custer. Despite being an actual preacher, he has some serious anger issues.

We find out more about why in later issue. One day when he is particularly not feeling the whole God thing, he is invested with a powerful spirit.

This spirit gives him a superpower. He can, at will, use the “Word of God” and compel anyone who hears it to do as he says. Sort of like a hyper version of Wonder Woman’s Golden Lasso. Suprisingly, despite having this power, Jesse Custer uses it very rarely. Jesse Custer is more about the fisticuffs than the word of God.

He can take it.

And he can dish it out.

You can also tell he is a badass by the company he keeps. Jesse’s best friend is a Vampire.

His girlfriend is tough as nails

His “Fairy Godfather” is John Wayne

And check out his rocking cigarette lighter

Jesse never met a brawl he didn’t like,

But he has a sensitive side. Take this scene.

Trust me, it is out of context here but it was easily one of the most poignant moments in the entire series. He is ordering his vampire buddy Cassidy to let go of him as he dangles from an airplane high above the Arizona desert, thus saving Cassidy but ensuring his own doom. (How he survives the fall is a really cool story in itself)

In the end, Jesse Custer proves you don’t need superpowers to be a badass. Just tenacity and a real enjoyment of the ultraviolence.

Jesse Custer: Mans Man Indeed!

Guest Blogger GPerez

2007-07-26T21:58:00.000-07:00

Tony's taking a week off so this week there will be a guest blogger.

Why is he forgotten??
By Gabriel Perez

Ok quick. Make a list of the best comic book authors of all time. Hell I’ll even give you a chance to write your top five just to give you a shot. Ok time is up I bet I can name some of your top five: Frank Miller, Neil Gaiman, Brian K. Vaughan, Garth Ennis Grant Morrison, Geoff Johns, Mark Waid. Hell, if you are old school I’ll even bet you may have put down Stan Lee, Dennis O’Neil. And the one person on top of everyone’s list is none other then one of modern comics’ greatest writers Alan Moore. But is he the greatest? Not that I am going to sit here and write about Alan Moore being a bad writer. in my opinion he has single handedly changed the industry to what it is today. But was he the first to do what he did? For all your work in making your top five list I bet there is one name that isn’t there that no one ever figured too put down. That one name being the name of Will Eisner. If you are pretty new to comics or you’re just not into the history it is save to say you may never have heard of that name. Well let me give you a little history on who Mr. Eisner is. He was born in Brooklyn…BROOKLYN!!!!! (Sorry it’s a Brooklyn thing), New York back in 1917. After finishing high school he got into the business due mainly to the advice of an old high school friend Bob Kane (…..FYI Kane created Batman).
During this time period comics where a new invention, which mostly featured reprints of comics strips from the new papers collected into one book. There was no original work being done until 1932 when two teenage boys created a character name Superman, this one event lead to the comic book that we know and love today. Up until 1939 Eisner was working with Jerry Iger on their own publishing company, until Eisner got an offer of a life time. Everett “Busy” Arnold offered him a job writing for Quality Comic. This job was writing a weekly 16 insert in the Sunday newspapers for the Des Moines Register, and Tribune Syndicated. Out of this agreement, The Spirit was born. Well that seems to be in end of the story about Will, but its not. The Spirit ran from June 2, 1940 until 1952. and unlike Jerry Siegel (creator of Superman) and other writers of his day Will owned the Spirit property along with anything created from the comic section from the newspaper, which was called the “The Spirit Section”. To think that the creators of some of the oldest, and most important characters in American history never saw a penny or were even given credit for their work until 1975. Not even Will being drafted into World War Two (1942-45) would stop the Spirit from being printed weekly every Sunday.
So let’s stop here for a second. Will along with his assassins wrote a weekly 16 page comic, every week (more or less no one is perfect) for 12 years. A new story with art work every week for 12 years and don’t forget The Spirit was one of only 3 features in that section that he did. There were still two other comics involved. Yeah, let that sit in your brain for a little. But The Spirit was only the start. During his time in the army he created a character for the army known as Joe Dope. Why would the army use Will Eisner to create a character for them? Will as strange as it is to imagine, even in the 1940s not everyone knew how to read books, let alone an army technical manual. Joe Dope was created to bridge the gap for those that didn’t know how to read or understood technical talk. As smart of a move as this looks this can’t be measured by sales or copies made, but in lives. Just imagine how useful one of his manuals would have been for someone trying to understand how to correctly load a machine gun, or how to fix the breaks of an army car.

He continued doing this line of work until about the 1970s, until he had an idea for a longer storytelling format. He finished his first try at this format, but found it hard to sell the idea of a big comic to publisher. He tired to sell the idea of his book not as a comic but as a graphic novel. That is right ladies and gentlemen Will Eisner created the graphic novel and its story telling format. And with that the gentle writer started his career as a graphic novelist at the age of 61, when in 1978 Contract with God was printed. At the age of 61 when most people are retiring he was starting a new genre-one he worked on until his death in 2005, a few months after he finished his last book The Plot: the Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Not to undermine the great writers of today but Will was doing things 50 years ago that people think are break through today. I once read an article about Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta. how it was an example of his trade mark story telling in which he told the story though minor characters, and not the main characters. A style that he “ mastered and made famous”, this was also a style that Eisner mastered in his Spirit run some 40+ years earlier. He was also smarter then most of his fellow writers from that period because he was able to get the rights of his characters where most of the same writers from his time period didn’t get anything. Not only does this mean a lot of money for him and his family but it also means a whole lot of control. The rights to his characters he created are in the hands of his family, and trusted family friends. That is why it has taken so long to see a Spirit movie. Not because there is a fight within the family, but because every movie studio they when to always tried to make a Spirit movie that wasn’t the Spirit. I have everything from giving super powers to making him a spirit of vengeance. Creators never have rights other their properties. Ever wonder why after The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Alan Moore stopped writing for DC comics. Even a few days ago when the directer was announced for Y the Last Man, it was rumored that Brian K. Vaughan’s script wasn’t going to be used for the film. And when it is often said that someone wrote the book on a given subject or craft, well Will did write the book on it, well actually two books Comic and Sequential Art and Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative, which to this day are used to teach up and coming writers.
Like all statements that start off by someone saying “this is the greatest person to ever…” I understand that I am opening the door to people calling me wrong or stupid. But what I am aiming to do is to open the door to debate, and hopefully get more people out there reading his work. As sad as it would be in my mind for a comic book fan not to know who he is, I think that it is sadder if said fan has never read any of his work. Will Eisner is for the lack of a better term, the writer that time has forgotten. He fathered a library of more then 30 graphic novels and trade, and his Spirit Archives have reached volume 20 with 2 years left of comics to reprint. But he’s books never get talked about a lot. Keep this in mind the yearly awards for the comic book industry are called the Eisner’s not the Lee’s.

Once again I would like to thank Tony for letting me write this. Thanks Tony and have fun during your week off!

March 6, 1917- January 3, 2005

The Longbox of Love (Part III)

2007-07-16T20:51:00.001-07:00

I am back for another edition of the Longbox of Love. This wraps up box number 2. One longbox left plus my box of trades. Looking at what has been in these two, I can already see that longbox number 3 is going to be Superman heavy. I think at some point I will see which of these titles have been collected. I am hoping to turn you on to some good stuff here and it would probably be helpful if you knew what to buy. Ok on with the show.

Queen and Country. The biggest victim of 52. Greg Rucka has an amazing range. Queen and Country is still being published although it has been a while since the last issue came out. This is the ongoing story of a branch of the British Secret service. It is hard to summarize all the stuff that goes on in this book but I can say that it has spy action, politics, and great character stuff. This is a dense but satisfying title.

I have a lot of Wonder Woman. I started getting Wonder Woman right after John Byrne left the book. If you are familiar with the title, then you know I got me some crappy issues. This part of the run was not great but it was OK. I scanned it to show that once, Wonder Girl actually looked and dressed like a real young girl. Of course on this cover, Wonder Woman is about to spill out of her top. You take what you can get I guess.

This cover is wrong on so many levels. Wonder Woman looks so mannish. She looks like a man named Chyna.

For years there was this guy named Steve who worked at my local comic shop. He turned me on to so many great titles. After a while, we found that we both liked twisted books so he found me some gems. The Unfunnies is supposedly making a comeback in a few months. Imagine an old Hannah Barbara cartoon about crows, where the main character is into deviant sex, drinking, and hang out with the most politically incorrect crowd ever. Really funny but not in the Garth-Ennis-All-Gay-Jokes-Are-Funny way. I'm excited that it is coming back.

When I moved to California as a teen, the two books I hunted down every month were Legion of Superheroes and Who's Who in the DC Universe. I love lists and almanacs. I didn't care is the stats were sometimes wrong. I just love the encyclopedia format and reading about characters I had never known about before. I actually got into Atari Force because of this book. I love how Earth-2 Batman looks so jaunty on this cover. I can hear Adam West saying "To the Batmobile old chum!"

I love that Alan Moore is this great writer who has won acclaim for his comic book work in serious literary circles, yet he also cranks out the naughty and indulgent stuff. Voodoo was just awful but the art was great and there were some really creepy concepts tossed around. Of course any comic about a stripper has to be gold!

I loved Supergirl's costume during the slipper era. The little "S" on the one boobie was so preppy.

I'm glad I found this issue in my longbox so that anyone reading this can email me an explanation of what the hell is going on in this book. Seriously.

Anytime Perez draws the JLA it is going to be good. I love Perez's Hawkman. I think he misses working with Romeo Thangal because to me, his work was never better than when they worked together.

Dang I have a lot of Fantastic Four. I think I may have the entire Byrne run. I love a cover with some gravitas.

Speaking of Byrne, man what a good reboot. Even though Busiek is retconning a lot of what was written in this series, the Lex Luther Byrne created is still the rich and devious thug Byrne turned him into. I would say this was the last era that I enjoyed John Byrne's art in. He kind of got loose and dark after this.

Y the Last Man was the first Vertigo title that I got from issue one. Now that it is ending I will have bought every issue of an entire comic title as it came out which is a first for me. I tend to miss hot new titles when they come out. Y is a great story. It starts as a "Lost" style mystery, morphs into a sort of spy action drama, then comes around to being character piece with great relationship stuff. Despite the many drags the book has had, overall it is excellent.

X-Statix may have been my favorite Marvel title ever. It turned the genre on it's ear, poked fun at mutants, pop culture, and anything else that stuck the fancy of Peter Milligan. This was a spin-off mini series which was hilarious. I love how Milligan took the "Wolverine is everywhere" thing and ran with it. It is kind of odd seeing a byline with Millagan and Darwyn Cooke on it.

Man what a funny book. This is the guy who does Lenore I think. The book is just what the title says. A story of a cat with a really big head. It has a happy ending sort of...

I won't spoil the actual ending but it's funny in that dark Tim Burton sort of way.

For a while in the late 90's/early 00's, DC was cranking out the good stuff. Chase was sort of a predecessor to Checkmate. Chase was a government agent who's job it was to keep tabs on the Superpowered community. It featured a lot of snappy dialogue and some really cool takes on the DC canon of heroes. I miss this title...

Remember Heroes Reborn? Me neither but I bought all of them at the time. This really was not so bad at first. Jim Lee shows that as a writer, he is sure a great artist. He is no Fabian Nicieza but the art was cool. Lee can sure draw a cool Thing.

During a time when Superman was a weak group of titles, the best Superman book was Supreme. Supreme started out as just another crappy image character but when Alan Moore took over, it became on of my all time favorite titles. This was Moore's take on the Silver Age Superman with crazy Science Fiction stories and a super dog. Fun Fun Fun Fun Fun.

Speaking of Superman

That crazy Mike Allred. This book was about 5 inches wide. It was a cool looking book with a sort of nebulous story, but I love how DC took a chance with the format.

One of the more infamous issues of a comic in a while, this was supposedly the issue that pushed Mark Waid off of his excellent Captain America run. This story makes ZERO sense. I would have loved to have seen what Waid had originally written.

Knockout! This was so fun! A secret agent for hire she and her gay hair stylist/partner find intrigue and lots of booty in the world of high espionage. If you like light hearted books with gorgeous art, I totally recommend it. I hope this has been traded because it only ran about 12 issues.

What can I say. One of the best comics ever. Top Ten is the book that got my wife into comics. The world of Top Ten is so rich. You could write thousands of stories. Sadly this book was doomed when Alan Moore and DC got into a bitch slap fight over those damn Watchmen action figures. This book was BEYOND top of the stack for me. I would read it first after getting home from the comic shop, then stick it at the bottom of the stack to read it again. Gen Has was the artist and he stuck tons of easter eggs in many panels. I may have to do a blog entry on just his book someday.

Lets end this visit with some Thor. In this special issue, Thor is thrown back in time to the Trojan War where he basically enters the story any time Apollo was supposed to be in it according to Homer. It was a fun book. I was really into mythology as a kid so I totally dug it. Plus, we find out who was really behind the end of the Trojan War:

Oh Loki...Tsk Tsk Tsk.

That's all for now. Whats in YOUR longbox?

Most of the Teen Titans declare war on drugs!

2007-07-13T21:49:00.001-07:00

One day earlier this year I fired up my Zune (Don't judge me. I like my Zune) and listened to my regular crop of podcasts, I had only recently discovered the Comic Book Queers

http://www.comicbookqueers.com/index.php

I still was not sure I would keep it on my iTunes feed yet. This particular episode was called “Worst Comic Ever” Hilarious! Check it out here:

CBQ -Worst Comic Ever!

I love me some CBQ. Really funny and at the same time, witty and kind of poignant. I remember them talking about the Teen Titans drug awareness issue and I vaguely remembered the book. At the time I made a mental note to myself to look for it next time I ventured into Wonderland Comics. So flash forward to last week when I was working my Longbox of Love entry and while digging through Longbox number 2, look what I found:

I already owned this lil gem! Yay! So now that I hopefully have given due credit to CBQ for the idea, let’s take a closer look at this comic. The first three pages feature some glaring problems right from the get go. First of all there’s this:

Yes that’s right. This book was a collaboration between DC Comics, the Keebler Elves, and Nancy Reagan (who herself was known as the Dark Keebler Elf).
Second, something is wrong with this picture and I don’t mean Starfire’s cleavage is wrong:

Yes it’s the new leader of the Titans, The Protector! What happened to Robin? In comic terms he was probably off “training”. In reality, it all has to do with product endorsement contracts. As I remember, Nabisco had some sort of sponsorship deal with the Batman franchise and Robin could not be featured in something sponsored by Keebler. You know I never thought I would write a sentence dealing with the rivalries between cracker companies. Anyhow, no Robin. Instead we get the very closely modeled on Robin character, The Protector.

The story starts out with the Titans breaking up a drug ring and Raven working her mojo (she was Emo before Emo was hot) to show some drug pusher what it feels like to be stoned. As if he didnt already know. We get a look at what the world looks like when you are stoned:

Yes that’s right, Robin becomes The Protector and Donna Troy is a Skrull.

From there we get a tale of the Titans trying to make a dent in the city’s drug lord action while meetig a few kids who admit to some drug use. These kids are friggin hardcore. The scans make it hard to read but this kid is on more meds than Elton John. I mean seriously, the drug use is a little over the top:

And perhaps saddest of all, a young Chris Farley admits:

Of course anytime drugs come up, Speedy is always ready to jump in the pity party. This time he brings his massive body fat caliper.

Taken out of context, this panel seems to take the book in a whole nother direction:

It goes on and on like this:

The story is pretty basic. It does go into how drug can lead to violence. Especially ironic when your name is "The Protector":

Not suprisingly there is a hammy happy ending to this tale, just like in real life!

The fun really kicks in after the story ends and Mr. Keebler presents a sort of anti-drug activity book:

It features such ditty's as "Let's pretend your Crack Mamma could afford to buy you stuff":

And an examination of how Paris Hilton got that way. You can guess what she put at the top of her list(hint: it ain't SMART):

My favorite section is this series of roleplaying sessions for the kids to try out.

Let's do some together and see if the message has sunk in shall we?

So after a few hours of drug-awareness fun, you and I have, by now, earned our diploma. Wonder if Nan will present it to us personally?

So kids there is your reward for staying drug free

And if you're lucky you can score a hand job like Victor:

The Longbox of Love (Part II)

2007-07-07T22:42:00.000-07:00

Continuing on with my series, The Longbox of love. This series is my look at what books I have held onto, instead of tossing or giving away. This time I found some real GEMS I forgot I had.

First up is:

Yes! When this came out, it became apparent very quickly that if you were not a fan of the JLA or the Avengers, this series was going to be a disappointment. But since I am a JLA junkie, I loved it! Every JLA or Avengers member EVER makes and appearance (Except for Artemis which was pointed out by the guys at Comic Geek Speak when they did their page by page footnotes). Gorgeous George Perez art. It's a book you can just stare at for long periods of time. I should get the hardcover.

Classic Legion of Superheroes. I am not sure why they can't just jump this fence here or why Element Lad can't just melt away the handcuffs, but it's all good because Superboy is on the scene!

This was one of the my favorite series ever! Bendis should write horror comics. I thought of this while skimming through these old issues of Alias. At times this book was really really creepy. The Purple Man story arc in particular was just nuts. This features the famous scene where The Purple Man makes Ant-Man order his ants to kill him (Ant Man). I think a lot of the creepiness gets lost in the trades because I remember the crazy suspense of waiting for the next issue of this book each month.

NYX came out of left field. At this time, Marvel was spitting out a lot of mutant mini series and most were just not that good. This one had some beautiful artwork by Josh Middleton. Unfortunately, despite starting off strong, this book really fell apart in the end. It didn't help that Joe Q was too busy to write the final issues and they took forever to come out. X-23 makes her first appearance here and it was really good.

Dial H for Hero! Back in the day this was a great series. DC put out a call for fans to submit ideas for new superheroes and they picked the best ones to appear in Dial H. The idea was that these two kids had stumbled onto these Hero Dials and they could dial up a new superhero personae when ever someone needed superheroic assistance. It was totally fun. Then in the earl 00's came this:

This was kind of a reinterpretation of the idea but not at all fun and clever. It was friggin good though! Man. I was so sad when it got cancelled. This incarnation featured the hero dial but the stories were gritty and kind of creepy at times. I wish they could finish up the story someday, maybe as a back-up feature in JSA.

Doom Patrol by Grant Morrison. When I first started reading this I had no idea what the hell was going on. I mean, c'mon, a supervillan group made up of DaDa existentialist art freaks? And the members of the Doom Patrol didn't seem to care for each other that much. Especially the Chief. Everyone hated him. Then Negative Man changed genders and became Rebis. Out of nowhere. Looking back I can see how awesome it all was. Morrison was truly making new boundaries for mainstream comics. It was weird but brilliant.

Chuck Austen. Ugh. He sure doesn't have a problem writing sex stories does he? This was a mess.

Remember when everyone was raising money for Africa famine relief? Me neither. But this was DC's effort. Marvel also had one called Heroes for Hope. That volume was better if only because it featured a Kitty Pride segment written by Stephen King. I think this started the notorious and disturbing trend of having Superman cry like a baby.

I got int Criminal Macabre by accident. I was looking for some 30 Days of Night back issues and I stumbled upon Steve Niles other great work. These stories are fun, action packed, and loaded with snappy dialogue. I am glad he still puts these out, especially since he's gone Hollywood now.

For a while, Image exploded with a BUNCH of good Superhero books. Out of this came Invincible, Capes, and Common Grounds. Only Invincible is still coming out. Common Grounds is a book about a coffee shop where superheroes and villains come to have a cup of joe and remember their past exploits. It had different characters each issue. It somehow managed to hit one out of the park almost every issue. Have they traded this yet? If so get it. You will not be disappointed.

Another Image idea was Gorilla Comics. This imprint was founded by George Perez, Mark Waid, Kurt Busiek, Tom Grummett, Mike Wieringo, Karl Kesel and Barry Kitson. It failed miserablby. One of their titles was Crimson Plague. This was apparently George Perez's hobby project which he had been doing on and off for years. It was not that great but it did have some nice artwork:

Also this book featured an interesting feature. If you gave a certain amount of money to one of George's charities, he would put your name somewhere in the book. For a larger amount he would draw you into the book as well. Not as cool as it sounds because it led to pages of people looking at lists of names. I would have liked to have seen more, if only for the great art.

The Crossovers was the first comic that my wife, Rob and I all liked. It was a cool concept. A family of four each had adventures in their own strange realities while keeping them secret for each other. For example, the Dad was a a Superman like superhero. The little boy was working with some aliens to prevent an invasion. The little girl was secretly a princess of another realm that was about to go to war with some orcs. This book was flat out fun.

Remember when there were four Superman books. I loved that time. Sure most of them were crapolla but I loves me some Superman. I scanned this one because I thought it was Michael Turner artwork that didn't look so terrible for a change.

Remember Amalgam? Me neither (that joke never gets old). Seriously I loved the Amalgam books. This one featured Gary Frank art which is always a plus. Diana looks a little mannish in that cover though. I love how Frank looks like Dolph Lundgren.

Heroes Anonymous still comes out every now and again. Bongo? This book is about people with super powers going to therapy for their many personal problems. This issue was awesome. The guy in the middle was a young hero called the Gay Avenger. He inherited the name from an older version of the hero, one who lived in a time when being called Gay did not automatically indicate your sexual orientation. So this guy is just struggling with people laughing at his name. He wonders if he is secretly a homophobe, if he should change his name, change his costume...just a good story. In the end he sticks with the name.

Part two is in the can! Yahoo! What's in your longbox?

The Most Ghetto Comic Shop

2007-07-02T22:05:00.001-07:00

It is so hard not to do a blog entry everyday! I have a whole mess of ideas to write about, including:

Longbox of Love parts 2-6 (sounds like a Pink Floyd song)

The Bathrooms of Fresno

I let Paris the cat pick new comics for me to read

What my wife is reading (which is mainly every zombie book out there)

Just how gay can Batman and Superman be?

Fresno – A little bit of Oklahoma surrounded by California

Geeks go to the rodeo!

Alas, because I tend to write really long articles I want to space them out so people have time to absorb. A quick thanks to my friends over at Antifanboy Podcast. They added me to their links page. I will probably do a dissertation on the Antifanboys in the near future, as well as an exploration of beaks, beards, online funnymen, and reacharounds from engineers.

Back to out regularly scheduled update. I have been debating the merits of writing this story of the worlds most ghetto comics shop for a while. I don’t like to think of myself as a mean person and I don’t know if this qualifies as mean (it probably does). Ultimately I decided that if Rob was up for it, we would go ahead and go John Stossel on the store in question.

Rob is my older stepson. Here he is with one of his heroes:

Two great things about Rob are 1) he is really good company, especially if you are a geek like I am and 2) He is usually up for anything that sounds fun. So before we attacked the main subject of this article, we did a dry run at our actual local comic shop. Heroes Comics in Fresno.

http://www.heroes-comics.com/

Unfortunately, Dave, the personable owner operator was not in that day so I didn’t get a chance to take his picture. Rob wanted to try taking some “stealth” pictures in Heroes before trying to snap the awesome eyesoredness that is the worlds most ghetto comic shop. Well the stealth part of the operation did not go so well in Heroes as Rob forgot to silence his camera phone. When he took a picture, everyone in the place heard this loud “cu-lick”. So we had bugs to work out before the next phase.

Heroes is a real class act. It is not the kind of comic shop that scares off the non-comic geek. It is clean and has no gaming tables (which I think are always a scary element to non-geeks). The staff is not socially awkward and the shop has a lot of cool stuff for sale besides comics.

Check out life sized Thor!

Lately I have been visiting this section a lot. Look for a discussion of the anooying brilliance of Cerebus in the near future.

Then there's this:

Is there really such a thing as ESSENTIAL Ghost Rider?

If you are living in a major city, Heroes is probably pretty not as comprehensive compared to what you have but for the central valley, there’s not too much to compare it to. So Rob and I snapped our pics and made some purchases (I got Volume 5 of Cerebus, Rob got some Horror Clix) It was back to our house and then onto the legendary Wonderland Comics.

I live in a part of Fresno known as the Tower District. It is named such due to the proximity of the Tower Theater, with its distinctive neon Tower.

This is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Fresno (our house was built in 1928) and is known as the hippie/artsy part of town. It is also known as the “Gay” part of town. We like it here because the crime is not so bad and the houses have charm. Plus the neighbors are nice.

Deep in the heart of the Tower District, nestled between Chase Flower shop (run by our friend Michael who actually officiated our wedding) and Repeat Performance, the Towers coolest thrift store, sits the legendary Wonderland Comics. Rockin sign!

Wonderland comics has a lot of things going for it.

1) It has a HUGE selection of bronze and steel age back issues. I mean seriously. Rows and rows.

While I was in the shop, I IM’ed my buddy Randal and asked him to name a comic, any comic, and I would see if I could find it. He selected the Wonder Man series from the late 80’s. As soon as he said it, I turned to the 50 cent box I was in front of and…

2) They have incredibly obscure merchandise. I picked up a Will Eisner book for my friend Gabe and Rob found a KULT Role playing game book that he has seen on EBay for over 40 bux.

3) They are laid back. No hard sell here.

But along with these pluses, are some serious drawbacks. First of all the place is a dump. Books litter the floors and most of the short boxes are out of order. It used to smell bad but they seem to have fixed that problem. Be warned that when you leaf through the comics, a dark and sticky film will slowly coat your hands and arms.

Another problem is the prices. When you select something to purchase, you have to take it to the counter where the guy behind the stack will look up the price in the OPG. He will then give you a quote. Near as I can tell, he takes the NM price and knocks little off of it, regardless of condition. For example, Wonderland had a fire a few years back and some of the back issues have smoke and water damage. Doesn’t matter. Prices still stand. I remember bringing him a burnt and wrinkly copy of an Aquaman issue of Adventure Comics from the seventies. He quoted me 6 bucks! I bought it anyway. Hey! Don’t Judge! It’s Aquaman dammit!

Lastly the staff is just plain creepy. I decided it would be crossing a journalistic line to show actual photos of the people who work there but let me describe. First up is the very friendly guy who is in charge of the action figures (they have an amazing assortment there). He is very nice but he comes on with a real hard sell. When Rob and I were there he tried too push some Star Trek TNG dolls on us. The prices were not that bad but Rob and I are not figure guys. Next up is the shops younger employee. Again he is real friendly, but he is real chatty and geeky, and well, I’ll just show you.

Yes he sleeps in a little bed in the back of the store. Not in a store room. This is in the back of the store, right behind the long boxes and in front of the role playing games.

Not sure why he needs this handy but…

The coupe-de-gras is the man behind the actual checkout counter. It’s more of a stack of crap with the owner behind it. Now the owner, I am not going to cap on the poor guy too much but he is a big guy who has a lot of years behind him. He does not have the best hygiene in the world which is kind of standard for a lot of geek shops (you should see the guys and Rob’s favorite air-soft shop), but this is just nasty:

Kind of the wall of Turin formed from the guys head leaning against the wall.

So yeah, because of the messiness of the place and the outrageous prices, I don’t make it a policy to shop there. In fact it had been over a year since Rob or I had gone even though the shop is literally a block away from the house. But on this trip, we found out that they had started the 50 cent boxes. Ugh! We actually left, went to the ATM (because of course all they take is cash) and ended up returning to purchase stacks of comics. How sad! Oh well. I got a gift for my buddy Jon and loads of classic books to make snarky remarks about in future blog entries. Thanks Wonderland!

The Longbox of Love

2007-06-29T21:30:00.001-07:00

Three comics posts in a row. I know I know. I'll do some Fresno stuff over the weekend. This is the first part of my multi-part series I call "The Longbox of Love"

A little background before we begin. I have been collecting comics for the better part of 30 years now, But I don't really collect. I read. I usually read my new books and then toss them or give them to someone else to read. The reason is simple. I don't want my house getting overrun with longboxes full of comics. I'd much rather have the space for DVD's, Books, and Superman paraphernalia. Aside from what has come out the last couple of weeks, the only comics I have are in 3 and half longboxes. These are comics that I really really liked and I re-read, or stuff that I thought was really good but that has not been collected into a trade yet. These boxes are mostly in order by title but not totally. I don't bag and board my comics so they are a little aged looking. I thought it might be interesting to take a look at what is in these boxes and talk a bit about why I still have these particular issues.

Right out of the gate is one of the classic titles from the Silver and Bronze age

My second favorite superhero, Aquaman is featured here. Over the years, many heroes have been featured in runs on Adventure. Whenever I find one in a quarter bin I snag it. None of these stories had any continuity so if you just needed a quick fix of Aquaman (and lets face it, who doesn't?) it totally lets you ride the dragon. It is amazing how many big names from the era worked on these books. I think this one was Jim Aparo. Neal Adams, Camine Infantino, Dick Dillon, all of them did time on Adventure.

Oh Animal Man how I love you so. My second favorite run of a comic book ever. Animal Man broke all the rules in terms of storytelling and subject matter. This storyline was about experimenting on animals. This was the first regular run on an American book for Grant Morrison and just wow! You could not read this book and not get invested in Buddy as a character. Looking through my issues here, I am reminded how Buddy hardly ever won any of his battles. I don't mean that he always got the crapolla knocked out of him, which happened a lot, but if he was trying to save some animals or stop some corporate evil, in the end, the bad guys seemed to always go on. This has been coming out in trades so I may unload my floppies.

I have a wide variety of Aquaman books. This one features his two main rivals, Black Manta and Ocean Master. I'm having a hard time thinking of another Aquaman villain. Hmm... Aquaman fought a lot of Aliens and rebel Atlantean's. He never had an A List rogues gallery like Batman or Flash. But he sure could ride the dolphins!

Arsenic Lullaby. Mmmm. This title still comes out every now and again. Definitely not for everyone. Even though this has been traded (I have the trade), I hang onto my floppies to show my friends. Without any sex or bad language, Arsenic Lullaby manages to be more offensive than anything written by Garth Ennis. Here is a tame sample:

Man. By the way, what you are seeing on that cover up there is a dumpster full of aborted fetuses. They were re-animated to do the bidding of a Voodoo Priest named Joe. He uses them to fetch his beer and ruin lives. Yes. Arsenic Lullaby.

Astro City! What a great book this used to be. This happens to be issue 1/2 which was the Astroverse version of Crisis on Infinite Earths. Astro City was amazing because it managed to tell two stories in every arc. There was always the surface story which was usually about classic superhero action like fighting aliens or beating up bank robbers.

But underneath were these really powerful themes and allusions. For example; for me, the greatest arc in Astro City was the one that revolved around The Confessor. The Confessor was a superhero that was secretly a vampire. Through the arc, the reader is slowly let in on his secrets and you follow him as he evades hero and villain alike while training his young ward, Altar Boy (Best Sidekick name EVAR). But while all this is going on, there is a secret alien invasion going on, one which ultimately is foiled by The Confessor. The story of the aliens is moved along by background noise from TV news casts and newspaper headlines. The theme is trust. Who can you trust? A vampire who poses as a hero or an alien invader posing as your friend? I'm not doing it justice but it's complex. Read the original run of Astro City.

I knew there was some Marvel stuff in here somewhere. If you are an Avengers fanboy, this series was written for you. An epic tale of the Avengers moving though the ages to defeat Immortus. Along the way we see virtually every avenger ever. We are also introduced to the new Captain Marvel who was so cool they gave him his own series soon after this ended. Gorgeous Carlos Pacheco art. Has this been collected? I would love this in an absolute just for the art.

Superman is hands down my favorite character in comics (my number two is showing up in the next part(notice I differentiate between fav superhero and fav character (notice my third parenthetical reference))) but I am amazed by how much Batman crap I have. I guess I like a good story, no matter who is in it. No Mans Land was an interesting event. The main event was that an earthquake hits Gotham and the damage is so bad, the government puts up a barricade and closes the city off from the rest of the country. DUMB! Next thing you know superheroes will be fighting over registration.

From this dumb idea sprang a few months of amazing stories. All four Batman books had standalone stories of heroes and normal people surviving within the walls of Gotham. Heartbreaking stories. Rucka was definitely on top of his game for this one. I think these have now been collected in trades.

This was the followup series to The Long Halloween. Loeb and Sale create magic when they are on their game. This was such a rich story. So much of this tale is focused on Gotham's crime families. There are long parts where Batman is not even in it. I won't get too into the story but if you like The Long Halloween, you must read this and Catwoman: When in Rome. Both focus on the aftermath of Long Halloween.

Loeb/Lee Batman was a let down story wise. But it sure was pretty! I think the nest part was that Batman and Catwoman finally hook up. This marks the first appearance of Wayne-Tech footwear. That alone indicates I should have it graded.

Brubaker on Catwoman was one of my all time favorite runs of a regular book. What is great about Brubaker is that he can step into a character with an established history, and write great stories within the framework of what is there. He is not like Judd Winnick who has to re-invent some major aspect of a character to write a story (usually involving someone dying of AIDS or coming back from the dead or both). Great dialogue and early in the run he, had Darwin Cooke on the art. I know most of these are traded now and I urge you to check them out.

I know in one of the my other boxes the original Birds of Prey mini's are in there. I loved Birds of Prey when it first came out. It was quite different from the book that is out these days. When BoP started, it was a series of three mini's written by Chuck Dixon and they had a much more James Bond feel to them. There was a lot less of the characterizations found in Simones current run. Basically it was a bunch of girls kicking ass, drawn by Gary Frank who never met a bikini he didn't like. Simone has taken the concept so much further but these early runs are just fun. Check em out.

Well this is half way through box one so I will take a break for now. What's in your longbox?

The Super Dictionary

2007-06-25T21:51:00.001-07:00

Today's entry is an expose on this fantastic book my wife got me at a flea market last year:

Yes it's the Super Dictionary! This book was written to help children develop vocabulary. It was published in 1978 and most of the art was by Joe Kubert, with some selections from everyone from Neal Adams to Joe Shuster. I loved this book right from the inside cover. Check:

I don't know what happened to Leon Stamps, but two things I can say for sure:

1) He got a real boost to his vocabulary from this book

2) His perceptions of DC superheroes was changed forever!

Here are a few samples to show the kind of craziness within this book.

First of all they present the cast of characters:

Some of the usual suspects are here but then, on page two, we get reminded of the 70's need to diversify everything:

I remember that for some reason, besides a Black or Asian superhero, there were always the American Indian hero tacked on. Not sure if that was appropriate but hey, Apache Chief rocked the house! Onto the definitions and their wacky illustrations.

There are lots of pages of superhero self-affirmation like Wonder Woman here:

Or Batman and the Boy Wonder here:

But there are a lot of superheros in weird situations. Insert your own Green Arrow joke here:

Also Wonder Woman answers all your questions about Amazonian PMS:

There is a lot of general goofiness images such as team Aquaman trying to convince some fish that despite their fishing utensils, they are in fact here to help the fish.

You had to know Donna Troy was gonna be trouble just from this image. Some Supergirl rage issues here obviously.

The book manages to foreshadow some important events in DC continuity. For example, The Killing Joke:

And Identity Crisis:

Also there is a nod to Shenmue:

Perhaps most disturbing are the many homoerotic images. That ain't no popin corn kemosabe!

Some Native American man love:

Also what the heck does Catwoman really intend to do to Robin? Holy Date Rape!

Finally we have Batman doing a Spider Man impersonation. Nothing like making remarks as you are about to get pounded with a ginormous yellow mallet:

I could go on because there are hundred of pages of images in this little gem. Maybe later on I will re-visit the Super Dictionary. But next up on the blog is a look at my Long box of LOVE!

Kirby 's Fantastic Four

2007-06-24T20:32:00.001-07:00

Ok onto some comics. I went and saw Fantastic Four 2 and I have to say I enjoyed it. I know fellow fanboys, I may lose my greek-cred card but I thought it was pretty fun. I don’t understand why I can separate my love and devotion to the original Fantastic Four material and those movies, yet I can’t watch Smallville because I just cannot separate the mythos from the show. I guess Superman is closer to my heart. Anyhow the Fantastic Four. The Fantastic Four were my very first comic book that I remember. My father bought me a lot of comics when I was a kid. I had a ton of Richy Rich comics, Star Trek Comics, and just a few Marvel’s, among them, Fantastic Four including Fantastic Four annual number 3. Actually, this was a reprint. A funny thing about the 70’s was that Marvel did a LOT of reprints during the decade. Heck for years the X-Men were nothing but reprints. So this was definitely a reprint. Man I loved that comic.

To tie all this to the movie, I thought I would expound on the greatness that was Jack Kirby while taking a look at the original appearances of Galactus and the Silver Surfer.

I am approaching 40 now. I’ve had to learn to be more tolerant of the younger generation’s likes and dislikes. For example, Star Wars. Most people will tell you that the original Star Wars is a classic and from a drama point of view, the new trilogy is not so much. But I realized that for a lot of my fellow fan boys, the young ones who are actually the target audience of the films, the new Star Wars films are THEIR Star Wars films. It’s their generation’s films and not mine. So I could go on a message board and get all fired up because someone thinks Darth Maul is a totally awesome character who would take Han Solo in a fight, or I could grin and nod. I usually choose the latter.

If you haven’t noticed, I can get off topic sometimes.

So Kirby. For a lot of younger comic fans, the mystique of Kirby is probably lost. After all, it is easy to say that a lot of his characters looked the same, everyone seemed to crouch on command, and man those lines are thick! All probably true. Check this out

However, the idea of a comic book cliché doesn’t apply to Kirby. Along with Steve Ditko and Joe Shuster, Kirby CREATED the clichés. So much of what we see in comic art today started here. There of course were MANY artists that were published before Kirby, but for my money, Kirby and Eisner were the innovators in storytelling. A Kirby story almost didn’t need words to be enjoyable. Check this out

As much as it is easy to say Kirby was a product of an older generation who has been surpassed by those who followed, I think Kirby has earned the title King. I think he'stimeless.

Two of Kirby’s greatest subjects were introduced in the pages of Fantastic Four #48. The Silver Surfer and his world-eating boss, Galactus.

(Btw there was not a cloud in sight) Kirby was never one to over use splash pages (I’m looking at you Ed Benes) but he still manages to create some scale with Galactus. Of course there was some weirdness in the art. For example, what the heck does Black Bolt have on his head here?

Also Elektra and Tony Stark, I mean the Skrulls look a little “ethnic” if you know what I mean.

The Thing sure was a badass.

I think The Watcher forgot his water pills. That or he just had a big sushi lunch.

Finally on page 20, the big guy arrives.

Gorgeous! What an awesome design Galactus has. Alien, sci-fi, huge, weird, just very cool. The next issue starts with another dose of Lee/Kirby goodness

“If This Be Doomsday” Such gravitas! You know Reed has been busy because he seriously needs a shave

Eventually, Galactus meets with Bendis, I mean The Watcher

The cover to the final part of the Galactus story has one cool image of the Silver Surfer. I don’t know why Johnny Storm going to school was so darn important that it warranted three exclamation points but oh well. The Surfer looks sweet!

How come the Surfer didn’t do THIS in the movie?

Thankfully the Kingpin shows up to save the day. I mean The Watcher (the Watcher jokes come fast and furious around here).

Using the ultimate thingy majiggy, Reed scares off Galactus. The amazing thing about this issue is that Galactus leaves Earth midway through the comic.

The rest of the issue is Johnny going to school, Ben getting emo over Alicia, and Black Bolt getting his shizzle on with his rocking headpiece.

Overall, a great story from one of the great teams in comic history. Galactus of course would return many times, most famously in the John Byrne run during the 80’s. But in these books, an era was captured. Crazy aliens, nutty plot devices, its all here. I encourage you to check out the Kirby collections that are out there.

Eyeballs can be a b**ch

2007-06-22T12:18:00.000-07:00

I need some love time with my scanner at so I can really kick this into high gear. I think I will start out with some Jack Kirby FF goodness. So for now, here is a slice of life update which is all about my eye.

I don’t know why but I have always had drama with my eyes. For years I was told I had to wear glasses because my astigmatism would not allow me to wear contacts. A few years back, geez must be like 6 or 7 now, my new eye doctor said I could. Not sure if the technology improved or if my eye doctor had improved. So that started the traumatic road to getting contacts. The first problem was that I have “Large Eyeballs”. When my eye doctor told me I thought, “You have got to be kidding”. Who the heck has large eyeballs? Seriously.

So I had to special order my lenses and of course, they cost extra. Once I stared wearing contacts, another problem arose. Actually it was one I should have thought of before. I was raised in New York/New Jersey where allergies are not that common. Since I moved to Fresno, where the air quality is about equal to a Chinese sweat shop chimney, I have had allergies that have been getting worse and worse as I get older. Before I started taking Claritin and Allegra, I would actually be totally incapacitated by allergies. I had non-stop running noses, stabbing sinus pain, and eye trouble. On a given day my eyes would either be pouring forth viscous tears all the time or be so dry you could polish a bowling ball if you held one up against it.

Contact lenses did not help. On teary days they sometimes floated right out of my eye, often clinging to my cheek. On dry days they just plain hurt and I had to insert a regular stream of drops. With the newer allergy medications, it kind of minimized he problems but I still had some teary days and some dry days. I learned to cope with this for the “convenience” of wearing contacts. All this bemused my wife who is constantly giving me guff about my eye problems.

Last New Years Eve, we got invited to a New Years Eve party at an old friend’s house which was nice because generally, we are the ones who always throw the parties. About halfway through the party, my left eye starts bugging me. It wasn’t too worried because in the prior weeks, I had suffered through a mild eye infection so I thought I would just need to get some more anti-biotic drops. The pain got worse and worse as the night wore on. We came home early and I slept for a bit. I woke in the middle of the night with severe eye pain.

How weird is that? I mean, if you are going to wake up with pain, you would think it would be like a leg cramp, or a stomach thing but no, this is my eye. I have to say, this was the worst pain I had experienced since I had broken my leg when I was 12. It was that bad. Of course it is 5 a.m. on New Years Day. So if I want to try and get some help, it means driving to the hospital emergency room. I tried to tough it out but I really could not see that well out of either eye and even blinking was killing me. So I hoped in my Saturn and drove the 8 miles to St. Agnes in the fog. It was foggy outside and my eyes were all fogged. Nice!

They basically told me I had a bad case of conjunctivitis which is an infection of the membranes around the eyeball. Pink Eye is actually conjunctivitis. So I got two prescriptions, an anti-biotic and Vicodin. They recommended I put the drops in every few hours and take enough pain killers to sleep. This was a holiday so even getting the medicine was a hassle as only one or two stores in Fresno had their pharmacies open that day.

I took my pain meds and basically slept for two days until I could get in to see a specialist at Eye-Q Vision. By now, the pain had dropped some but I could see NOTHING out of my right eye. My left eye, where the infection started, was doing ok. Well they gave me more antibiotic’s to use and I started seeing my eye doctor twice a week. I wish now I had taken a picture of my eye at its worst. It was a pink and white blob that looked all bumpy and distorted. Just gross.

It was during the second visit to the new doctor that things took a turn for the worse. He told my wife and me that once the infection is gone, the scarring might be so bad that I would not recover the sight in my right eye. I might have the 20/400 vision forever. He didn’t want to talk about it because he was focusing on curing the infection. The weeks went by and the eye started looking better. My vision came back some, but it was very much like looking at life in a steamed up mirror after a shower. I spent a lot of time with my right eye closed because it was so sensitive to light. That and having one eye send you blurry pictures gives you a headache as your brain tries to make it work with the clear images from your other eye.

By the end of January, I was declared infection free. However, as feared, the scarring on the cornea was quite bad still. It would be months before we would know if my vision would return or even if surgery would help matters. I saw my Eye doctor weekly, and then eventually, bi-weekly. My vision slowly came back but after February, it kind of plateaued. I could see ok but there was still a haze over everything I looked at through my right eye.

At the beginning of June, my doctor announced that as far as he could tell, the eye had gone as far as it was going to go. Surgery might improve it some but he doubted the haze would go away completely and I would still need corrective lenses when the surgery was done. Another option would be a cornea replacement, which he was not a fan of because of the need to constantly use drops. No, the best solution might be a hard contact lens.

My Dad wore hard lenses back in the seventies. These days no one wears them. I had zero understanding of why this might help me see better but I said goodbye to my doctor and was introduced to a new one, one who specialized in hard contacts. He explained to me why a hard contact lens might help.

Because my eye was so bumpy now with the scaring from the infection, the idea was to place a hard contact lens over all these bumps. Then hopefully, tears would come in behind the lens and fill in all the little valleys, essentially forming a new cornea out of glass and tears. That made sense. First order of business was something called a topography session. I sat in a chair while the assistant put this bowl like device with a million lights in it in front of me. This bowl would scan the eye and produce a topographic map of the cornea. You remember topographic maps right?

This is an example of “normal” eye topography.

The brighter the color, the more protruding the surface of the eye is. No one has a perfect sphere. Here is my troublemaker left eye.

It looked pretty normal considering I have had an astigmatism all my life so my left eye has never been close to a sphere. No problem there. Then they scanned my right eye.

Wow! Everyone in the place was amazed. The assistant passed my printout around the office. Doctors were amazed. No one had ever seen a scar in the shape of a perfect “S” before. Not on a cornea anyway. This was particularly ironic because my last name starts with S, and Superman is kind of a hobby of mine (you’ll see how bad in future posts). Everyone at work of course was like “WOW Superman!” It was all fun and games sure but we are looking at my friggin eye here folks. No not cool! That’s a bad scar. No one was sure if the hard contact lens would work or not because the shape was so weird.

Right now I am waiting for my custom made lens to come in so we can try it on to see if it helps my vision. As it is I can live with my vision as it is. According to my tests, my right eye is about 20/40. The problem is really the haze. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

2007-06-18T12:49:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my piece of the blogosphere. It is my intention to write about my skewed observations about a variety of topics, including:

1) Comic Books - Especially the crazy goodness of Old Comics
2) Geek Stuff - Self Explanatory
3) Movie Stuff - We are serious movie geeks in my house
4) Fresno - Weird and sucky things about living in California's Central Valley

So here goes.