Comics 2020!

 

I read a lot of comics this year! Probably a record, although 2017 came close:

I think last year I closed out my file at Happy Harbour, which resulted in an immense monthly savings- comics are expensive- and more of a focus on Marvel Unlimited. I still have a pile of floppies I need to read but for the most part I am doggedly trying to read every Marvel Universe comic ever. Just 50,000 more to go! So I will need to live another century, please. Most years I was pretty scattershot, reading a Fantastic Four here, an X-Men there, now an Amazing Spider-Man, and what about the Hulk what is he up to... but this year I decided to try and get all the comics synced up in time. That will be an ongoing project, as all the previous years' random issue-hopping left me with a bit of a mess. But I have Avengers, Iron Man and Captain America synced up in 1968:

Captain America actually started with issue #100, which was a name change from Strange Tales, I think. I didn't read too many of those. The early Lee/Kirby stuff is a little harder to read, stock plots and not much characterization, but later Thor stuff by Kirby sans Lee is absolutely amazing. He was definitely the King.

If this doesn't make your selfsoul happy, I dunno what will. I just read the first two TPBs of the new New Mutants comic, and that makes selfsoul happy too. The first volume is a Legion story, it was alright though I've never been a fan of Legion and his dumb hair. If he's so omipotent maybe he can get a better haircut. But the second volume is where writer Zeb Wells' lifeglow really starts to shine.

Digression. The New Mutants book of the 80s was one of the best for sure. Younger, more inexperienced, not-quite-ready-for-the-majors students of Xavier's, it was consistently well written by X-Men legend Chris Claremont and had a sizeable run by surreal artist Bill Sienkiewicz. Warlock was one of my favorites, though they all were, except maybe for Doug Ramsey, whose mutant power was understanding languages. Anyways, he met a violent end in a comic book that I missed, so I dunno how he died but he did. Warlock might have, too. They were best friends.

Okay. So Zeb Wells, in volume 2, decided to bring both Warlock and Doug back to the fold. Fair enough, happens all the time, with mixed results. But Zeb does it right. Not only does Doug come back in a convincing and kinda unique way, but his language power is revealed to be way more kick ass than Claremont or anyone in the world ever imagined.

Like I said, it made my selfsoul happy. Definitely going to read Volume 3: Fall of the New Mutants

Sometimes you just need to go to Cracked.com and read some of their lists- like this one- 5 Absurd Ways Comic Books Have Resurrected Dead Superheroes.

I actually bought some comics at Comic-con. Including this compendium of Man-Thing issues from the 70s. Reprinted in black and white but it's big as a phone book. I was scared it might be a little painful to read (after all, whatever knows fear burns at the touch of the Man-Thing) but it was so much fun. Lots of 70s cheese and really weird moments. See, M-T's swamp happens to be the Nexus of All Realities so that he would have something to do every month. One time the realities all sort of got mixed up and so a jar of peanut butter transmogrified into a barbarian warrior. Also Howard the Duck materialized and was killed off a few pages later when he fell of a stairway to heaven (Howard would later get his own series and become a minor 80s icon, they even made a movie which I thought was great when I was 12 but is widely considered to be among the worst movies ever made). Further up the stairway, a wizard gives M-T and buddies wings so they can fly away. The peanut butter barbarian asks the wizard why he didn't give Howard wings and the wizard says, I forgot! Not to mention that Howard, being a duck, should have wings. But doesn't.
In another issue, Man-thing fights ghost pirates in space!

Since Pallas doesn't quite sleep through the night it's my job to put her soother in if she wakes up before it's time to feed her. Sometimes I need to be "reminded" of my responsibilities. Last night before bed I was reading my Star Wars LegacyTPB ($5 at Calgary Expo!) which takes place 130 years after A New Hope. All the Dark Horse Star Wars comics come with this timeline that helps you make sense of when the story you're reading takes place- either a long time ago, a really long time ago, or not as long time ago, but still long. Anyways, this timeline musta got into my dreams since when Michelle woke me up to tell me to go put Pallas' soother in, I said, "You want me to fit her into the Ewoks movies? I think that's about the only place it would work . . . " As she has learned to do over the years, she just ignored me and put the soother in herself.
Anyways, you thought yesterday's picture was cute? Check these out:

Happy Free Comic Book Day!

I hope you made it down to your local comic book shop to get some freebies. We (my wife and daughter are getting all kinds of comic book events under their belts these days!) went down to Happy Harbor Volume 3 where the ladies of E-Ville Roller Derby were putting on a match as part of the festivities. Our good friend BeeBee Sting, dressed as Supergirl today, was there so we had to support her. And get free comics. Add in the first real nice sunny day of the year and it was pretty much a perfect day! Unfortunately, the super-villains won the game and have enslaved the Earth.




Also, some artists were there doing sketches for donations to the Food Bank. Fiona Staples drew me this sweet twi'lek:

OKay I know I sorta promised but the truth of the matter is that I have nothing- at least as far as hockey/mining analogies that aren't totally dumb. Though it would be fun to play some sort of hockey type of game with the heavy equipment. So on to something else.
Next week we will be going to the Calgary Comics Expo! The last comic con I went to was in 1989, I think, shortly after I moved to Edmonton. Todd McFarlane and Stan Lee were there! But I don't really remember that much about it. Hopefully this one will be more memorable. A lot has changed in 20 years. One interesting trend lately has been "covering" covers. In the same way musicians will cover favorite songs, artists who grew up on comics are covering their favorite covers. Incredible Hulk #340 is one of the classic covers of all time, and there have been a few takes on it, including some zombified versions. Here is the original, and then the zombie version that appeared in Marvel Zombies:


Personally I like Josh Medors' zombied-up version:



Shaun Ward has been doing a series of classic covers, including Hulk 340 and Spider-Man #1 (both McFarlanes):



And House of Duck posted 12 covers that he hopes to cover in his own cartoon style, so far he has one. You can do it!

Anybody who, like me, was an avid comic collector in the 80s will absolutely love this piece by VegetarianGoat of the New Mutants. Jonny, I am looking at you here.

The New Mutants by *VegetarianGoat on deviantART

The New Mutants were the junior class at Xavier's School, kind of the X-Men-in-training who were impatient to get out there and fight bad guys, so of course every issue had them getting out there and fighting bad guys when they should have been staying in their dorms studying.
Their Marvelpedia entry.

Here's some Oilers trivia that should even interest you non-fans, assuming there are any ;)
First, we start with this guy:



His name is Venom, and he is one of Spider-Man's arch-nemeses. I hope he is in the new movie but I haven't heard one way or the other. Venom doesn't care for Spider-Man.
Next we have this guy:



As the big logo says, this is Spawn. He made a deal with a devil to come back to life so he could see his wife, only he got screwed over a bit, so now he is an unwilling soldier in the battle between Heaven and Hell.
Finally, we give you this:



The Oilers alternate logo, a beautiful piece of art. All three of these icons were created by Todd McFarlane, an Alberta native (Calgary, sadly), comic book mogul, toy company founder, and part-owner of the Oilers. Or at least, he was until he was successfully sued by former NHLer Tony Twistelli for $15 million- I'm not really too sure where everything stands financially after all that mess. And for accuracy's sake, I should point out that he co-created Venom with David Michelinie, who wrote Spider-Man back when McFarlane was the artist. Cool, eh?
The Mighty Ducks logo, on the other hand, has something to do with Donald Duck and Emilio Estevez. Not quite as cool as slavering-tongued alien hybrids and hellspawns, but whatever.

Look out India, here comes the Spider-Man! Spider-Man is being reincarnated in India! Not merely ye olde familiar Spider-man translated into Hindi, Spidey will actually get a new, Indian identity. His name is Pavitr Prabhakar, and he will be a reinterpretation of the Spider-Man myth. The Green Goblin will be the nemesis, in the form of Rakshasa, an Indian demon. Which makes him much cooler than Green Goblin in the form of Willem Defoe in a Power Ranger costume.
Oh yeah, and in other Spidey related news I think there is a movie about the webslinger opening tomorrow. I, however, will be watching a movie set very near to India called Two Brothers.

So I found those comics I was talking about yesterday. And the story arc was actually started in a two-issue series called X-Men and Alpha Flight. Including them, I have all four still. Yay!
Now, you might be saying, "X-Men? I remember them from such movies as X-Men and X2. But Alpha Flight? What's that? Is it like Alpha Bits?"
Nope, Alpha Flight were Canada's very own team of superheroes. Not being totally up on current comics culture, I have no idea if they still exist or not, but they were never exactly popular, so I would be surprised if they do.
Keep in mind that the coolest of all superheroes is Canadian. Wolverine hails from here- where he fights in cage matches in the rough-and-tumble bars of Northern Alberta, according to the first movie. Hugh Jackman is actually Australian, but that's ok. At least he is still a Commonwealther.
The other Canucks aren't quite so kickass. Let's see, we have:
Guardian, and later his wife, Vindicator: They had a special suit that looked like the Canadian flag, sort of, and it enabled them to fly and be strong.
Aurora and Northstar, twins from Quebec. They say things like "Sacre-mere!" and can fly. Not really sure what else they can do, or if they are seperatists or not.
Puck. An acrobatic dwarf, but not really like Gimli, though he may be from Gimli, Manitoba. The only thing stereotypically Canadian about him is his name, which doesn't seem to have anything to do with anything.
Sasquatch: Long time readers of the Woods will know of the lingering fascination/ fear I have of sasquatches. But Walter Langkowski is not scary at all- he is a scientist, but when he needs to he can transform into some sort of orangey colored monster. A sasquatch, apparently.
Shaman, and his daughter Snowbird. Shaman is a medicine man, and I don't really know what Snowbird can do, since she spends all of the X-Men/Alpha Flight series sick and withering away because of something Loki was doing. The only medicine man I've ever met in real life was white, but they do still exist. But still, it seems kind of predictable. Oh well, at least they didn't all wear toques and live in igloos, and say things like "It's up to us to save the world, eh! So let's get oot and aboot and kick some hoser arse!"

Did you know the X-Men went to Asgard once? Probably more than once, actually, but I remember one time particularly. It was the first X-Men comic I had ever read, but it didn't make any sense to me since it was part 2 of a story, so all these unfamilair people were wandering around getting themselves out of the messes they had got into the issue before. But once I tracked down part 1, it became my favorite comic story ever- though a lot of that has to do with nostalgia, and the fact it had to do with Norse gods, even if it was the Marvelized version. I think I still have the issues in my collection, somewhere.
Here is a link that explains the story and has a picture. It's a Geocities page so if you don't have a popup blocker there might be havoc. But no dogs of war, or Garms, or Gronds, hopefully.

Mutants!
A problem has been plaguing me for years, ever since I read my first X-Men comic book as a kid. The problem: how to go about obtaining a mutation of my own. The X-Men all had pretty cool powers arise out of their mutations, so like all youngsters of my generation (X, naturally), I concluded that if I could just get my hands on a suitable mutagen I too could gain the ability to transform into living steel, or control the weather, or teleport, or have a healing factor. Heck I'd even take the mutant power of understanding all languages like that one guy had. Poor guy, kind of a bummer power to have in a world of superheroeas and villains, though it would sure be handy in real life. The tricky part, of course, was in obtaining a quantity of radioactive material. Polonium Oxide (PoO) and the like aren't that easy to get a hold of. It's not like you can just go out and buy some at the Radioactive Shack.
But today I am pleased to inform you that a company called Stratagene has apparently developed a serum of some sort that produces mutations! I'm not kidding- I discovered an ad for it in Science magazine today when I was researching something. The ad copy honestly said "Need mutations? GeneMorph. A new way to get unique mutations!" and there was a graphic of all these cool ants with impressive-looking new appendages like massive mandibles and wings and stuff. And that obviously doesn't show the new powers that are invisible, such as the ability to control the force of magnetism, or telepathy, or psychically manifesting an enemy's greatest nightmare. What? Still don't believe me? Check out the GeneMorph website then.
Ummm . . . I think you should try it first, and let me know how it goes.