stevekenson: (batman)
The New Batman: Brave and the Bold cartoon series is rocking my world (I’ve been watching it off iTunes). It’s way more of a kid’s show partaking of the 1950s Batman than the old WB Batman animated series (and way more retro and “classic” than the newer The Batman series). It has just the right mix of four-color zany, classic animation style (ala Bill Finger’s Batman), and DC Comics geekery. Plus Batman’s “thought balloon” voice-over narration is awesome. If you’re a comics geek, you should totally see it.
stevekenson: (flaming)
[livejournal.com profile] gmskarka has challenged, and I must answer...

  1. “Batman! He’s just a man!” “The most dangerous man you’ll ever meet...”
  2. “Well, then I guess I’d just have to catch the bullet...”
  3. George Perez
  4. The New Teen Titans (Wolfman/Perez)
  5. “Who Is Donna Troy?” (even in spite of the stories that followed it)
  6. Marvels
  7. “Run me down, gentlemen? I don’t think so.”
  8. “SHAZAM!”
  9. “These ‘no-nonsense’ solutions of yours just don’t hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel.”
  10. “With great power also comes great responsibility.”
  11. “Pain? Pain is for lesser men.”
  12. The Flash’s costume ring.
  13. Anybody’s trophy room (JLA Watchtower, Batcave, Fortress of Solitude, what have you)
  14. 22,300 miles
  15. Flight rings (”They fly.”)
  16. “We have no powers, there are millions of them and there’s a child in there who needs us to save the world. Let’s go.”
  17. “In loudest din, or hush profound...” (the second greatest Green Lantern oath ever)
  18. Eating the Miracle Machine
  19. Alan Moore
  20. Promethea
  21. “This Man... This Monster!”
  22. X-Men/Alpha Flight (by Chris Claremont and Paul Smith)
  23. JLA/Avengers (by Kurt Busiek and George Perez)
  24. Squadron Supreme (up to and especially including Mark Gruenwald’s series)
  25. Mark Gruenwald’s last request
  26. Contest of Champions
  27. Cyclops vs. all of the X-Men (under Mastermind’s influence)
  28. “Face it, Tiger, you just hit the jackpot.”
  29. Phil Jiminez superceding George Perez as a Wonder Woman artist, something I thought couldn’t be done.
  30. “You’re no Barry Allen!”
  31. The Invisibles
  32. The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe
  33. Adamantium
  34. Atlantis (in all its many forms)
  35. The New Warriors (Fabian Nicieza and Mark Bagley)
  36. Thunderbolts (Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley – both series way better than I expected)
  37. Mark Bagley
  38. Kurt Busiek
  39. Astro City
  40. “Nobody forgets, nobody ever forgets.”
  41. JLA/JSA team-ups
  42. All-Star Squadron
  43. “The brain of the devil, in the body of a god.”
  44. Back-up stories
  45. Legion leader elections
  46. The West Coast Avengers
  47. “How did you know to be invulnerable?” “What power do you think I leave on all the time?”
  48. “No one rivals Doom! NO ONE!”
  49. SKREEEEEEEEEEEE
  50. “Sometimes when you fall, you fly.”

    Note that, although hard-pressed, I left the DC Universe animated series out of it.
stevekenson: (Default)
(Borrowed from [livejournal.com profile] gmskarka)

Entertainment Weekly has a feature where comics pros talk about the first comic book that hooked them.

Mine were actually two: an issue of Action Comics and one of Fantastic Four that I bought at a 7-Eleven in Las Vegas one summer. My family had moved there and, while my parents were house hunting, we lived in the Ponderosa Motel on the edge of the city. Not much for a bored ten year-old to do except watch TV... and read comic books.

I don’t recall the issue numbers offhand, and a quick Google image search didn’t turn up the covers, but I still remember them well. The Action Comics story was about Vandal Savage changing history so he ruled the world and Superman worked for him (surprisingly similar in concept to the “Savage Time” story for the Justice League animated series). The Fantastic Four story was intended to wrap-up the Shogun Warriors series, with the FF fighting “the Samurai Destroyer,” a big Japanese robot, in Tokyo.

Those two were the start of my perusing convenience store shelves for months to come, eventually discovering things like comic specialty stores existed and doing extra chores to earn money so my Dad would drive me down to one to buy my semi-weekly comics. I’ve still got those original two, along with the probably thousands of others in the boxes in my basement.
stevekenson: (Default)
Christopher and I saw Spider-Man 3 last night.

review behind the cut )
stevekenson: (flaming)
Marvel’s Civil War storyline has culminated in the death of Captain America (as a tortured allegory for 9/11 and its effect on the USA).

As a comics reader for decades all I can say is, “Yeah? And...?” It’s the same sort of promotional stunt as the much ballyhooed “Death of Superman” storyline (and all that followed it). Marvel certainly isn’t going to write-off a character/property as valuable as Captain-freakin’-America for very long.

Funny thing is, if Civil War were a self-contained “What If?” kind of story, I’d probably read it (and possibly even enjoy it) but as it is, it’s an attempt to substitute marketing and shock value for good storytelling and of no interest to me whatsoever.

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July 2011

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