Wednesday Comics

This is one huge honkin’ comic book. And it’s one really beautiful comic book too.

Wednesday Comics was an experiment by DC Comics featuring tabloid sized comic pages featuring some acclaimed writers and artists presenting stories of DC characters…iconic and not-so-iconic…one page at a time published weekly (on newsprint no less.)

It seems unlikely to be repeated…16 tabloid pages for 4 bucks is probably too high a hurdle for a lot of comic fans to get over…but it was a grand little adventure just the same.

This big (17+” x 11+”) hardcover collects all of the stories on better paper and it’s a gorgeous comic book. All of DC’s big guns…Superman (with beautiful art by Lee Bermejo), Batman (a fine noir romance that might have needed a bit more room to breathe) and , Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash…are represented alongside of lesser-known (to the general public at least) classic characters like Hawkman, Sgt. Rock, the Metal Men, Deadman, Adam Strange, Metamorpho the Element Man, and Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth.

The art is almost all wonderful and some of the stories are better than other. I was charmed by Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner’s whimsical Supergirl story featuring Krypto the Super Dog and Streaky the Super Cat (just go with it…:-), intrigued by Paul Pope’s pulp fiction re-imagining of the sci-fi hero Adam Strange, and engaged by the gritty WW2 Sgt. Rock story written by Adam Kubert and drawn by his legendary father Joe Kubert.

The rollicking Metamorpho adventure…by Neil Gaiman and Michael Allred…is also a great deal of fun as is the unlikely team-up of Catwoman and Etrigan the Demon by Walt Simonson and Brian Stelfreeze and Kyle Baker’s action-packed Hawkman story.

This book is pricey…it lists for $49.99…but it delivers in a big way. Wednesday Comics makes me happy and what more could you ask from a comic book than that?

Iron Man

Entertainment Weekly debuted this first full shot of the Iron Man armor from the movie due out next year. Robert Downey, Jr. stars as billionaire Tony Stark and his super-heroic alter ego Iron Man. Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrence Howard, and Jeff Bridges also star in the movie which is being directed by Jon Favreau.

Movies Adapted from Comic Books

With Spider-Man 3 coming out a good year for movies adapted from comic books gets a whole lot bigger (Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and 30 Days of Night also in the offing this year with Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, Wanted, and Batman: The Dark Knight due out next year.)

The list of the top grossing comic book adaptations will change, of course…in fact it already has changed this year with 300 (#7), Ghost Rider (#19), and TMNT (#37) all jumping into the top 40 since this year began.

As of this writing, the top 10 biggest grossing movies based on comics from 1978 to the present (according to Box Office Mojo) are:

1. Spider-Man
2. Spider-Man 2
3. Batman
4. Men in Black
5. X-Men: The Last Stand
6. X2: X-Men United
7. 300
8. Batman Begins
9. Superman Returns
10. Men in Black 2

Spidey 3 seems likely to push MIB 2 out of the top 10 in fairly short order (300 just displaced Batman Forever down to #11.)

Looks like a good time to be a comic book geek :-)

Captain America

We come not to bury Captain America but to praise him. The brief media firestorm over the “death” of the Star-Spangled Avenger reached its peak when Stephen Colbert did a funny riff on it near the top of the Colbert Report Thursday night.

The media went nuts for a bit (they’ve since moved on.) Speculators are already charging insanely-inflated prices on eBay (buyers being perhaps a bit foolish since Marvel overprinted the issue in question…Captain America #25…and savvy comic book shops should have a new supply next week...hopefully at or near cover price. Baring that Marvel has announced a second printing that will be out at the end of the month...which, as I think of it, will only make the speculators even more happy. In any case, comics hoarded this way will not be a viable longterm "investment" since the supply will end up far outstripping the demand in the long run...especially once the storyline has run its course.)

Personally I’ve been to this particular rodeo too many times to take it at all that seriously.

I've been a comic book fan long enough to know that the death of Captain America is not a permanent thing (unlike here in the real world, death in comics…like death on soap operas…is a decidedly transitional thing…”dead” characters regularly return to “life”…Superman, for example, “died” in similar burst of publicity and he’s back fighting the “never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way” and living happily with his wife Lois Lane…and comic book fans, being the avid “suspension of belief” folks that we are, gripe at bit and then go with the flow.)

The stunt generated momentary media buzz (with outlets as diverse as the venerable New York Times and the aforementioned Colbert Report taking note) and kudos to the folks at Marvel Comics for that. Me, I just hope that there are some interesting stories coming out of all of this.

And Captain America? He’ll be fine…at some point in the relatively near future the "death" will be reversed and he’ll take up his shield and get back out there fighting the good fight again.

So rest in peace, Cap…and we’ll see you later, dude.

Heroes

Hiro Nakamura is a drone in a faceless Japanese company but he aspires to more than just a face in a homogenous crowd. Hiro is a pop culture geek (his breathless exclamations are peppered with references to Star Trek and the X-Men…though my personal geek has to point out that his reference to X-Men #143 is incorrect…Hiro references the character Kitty Pryde from that issue but he misinterprets her powers in the process…but I guess that’s neither here nor there to non-geeks) who wants to be a super-hero and he believes that he does indeed have superhuman powers. And, indeed, he does.

Hiro is one of the titular heroes of this intriguing new series. As is the vogue for network dramas these days, Heroes is a serial with, as a matter of course, plotlines twisting and turning within in the context of a larger picture that we’re not privy to as yet (though reports have it that a super-powered serial killer is going to be the adversary in the first season.) A seemingly unconnected group of people are discovering they have super-powers (teleportation, flight, invulnerability, etc.) without knowing how or why.

The one person who seems to know why…an Indian scientist…is killed by a conspiracy of some sort (what serialized thriller would be complete without a shadowy conspiracy?) and his research is taken up by his son, Mohinder, who finds himself on the run from the same conspiracy and taking a job as a New York cabbie while he does so.

The threads of some of the characters’ individual plotlines are already being drawn together. Mohinder, for example, is spooked by a creepy conspiracy guy who turns out to be the stepfather of Claire, a Texas teenager who has discovered that injuries to her body head themselves miraculously.

Peter, an easygoing nurse who believes he can fly (and the brother of Nathan, an ambitious candidate for Congress who dismisses his brother’s fanciful beliefs), has a crush on Simone, the daughter of one of his terminal patients, who in turn is the girlfriend of Isaac, a tortured artist and drug addict who appears to have the power to see the future (a power channeled through his paintings.) Isaac, in a drug-addled stupor, hints that there is some tragedy that the would-be heroes must stop. (Peter also crosses paths with Mohinder when he takes a ride in his taxi.)

Niki, a stripper on the run from the mob with her son (who himself seems to be extraordinarily intelligent), sees visions of a doppelganger in mirrors and other reflective surfaces…a doppelganger who, apparently, can manifest violently (as evidenced by the killing of two mob goons who tracked Niki down.)

(The pilot episode does not introduce us to Matt, a Los Angeles policeman who thinks that he can hear other people’s thoughts, or to D.L., an inmate who can apparently pass through solid walls…which, my inner geek coming out again, is Kitty Pryde’s power.)

It’s an intriguing start...Heroes (Monday nights on NBC with Friday repeats on the SciFi Channel) may indeed turn out to be worth the season-long investment serialized stories require providing it has the staying power of some serials (Lost, 24, Prison Break) and not the frustrating ratings weakness of others (Surface, Threshold, etc., etc.)

The 50 Greatest Pop Culture Sidekicks

Entertainment Weekly loves to make lists…which is cool with me because, for some reason, I’ve had a fondness for making lists since I was a child (I used to make my own weekly Top 40 list of singles and then tape a show counting them down like I was some half-baked Casey Kasem…it’s a good thing those tapes are long lost…)

Their current list, like all of the others, is subject to debate…which is a big part of the fun, of course. Their current list is “The 50 Greatest Pop Culture Sidekicks of All Time”. The top 10:

1) Ed McMahon (Johnny Carson’s jovial yes man on The Tonight Show)

2)

Robin the Boy Wonder (Batman’s partner-in-crimefighting)

3)

George Constanza (Jerry’s conniving, sadsack best guy pal on Seinfeld)

4) Chewbacca (Han Solo’s beastly best bud)

5) Ethel Mertz (Lucy Ricardo’s best friend and partner-in-crime)

6) Dr. Watson (Sherlock Holmes’ able friend and assistant)

7) Samwise Gamgee (Frodo Baggins’ faithful fellow adventurer in The Lord of the Rings)

8) Ed Norton (Ralph Kramden’s affably ditzy best friend on The Honeymooners)

9) Tattoo (Mr. Roarke’s plane-spotting major domo on Fantasy Island)

10) Dwight Schrute (Michael Scott’s craven sycophant on The Office)

Others who show up on the list are Donkey (Shrek), Robin Quivers (The Howard Stern Show), Gromit (Wallace’s long-suffering partner), Keith Richards (who would probably balk at being called Mick Jagger’s sidekick), Silent Bob, Barney Rubble, Superman’s pal Jimmy Olsen, and Don Quixote’s faithful aide Sancho Panza.

The list gives no love at all to worthy sidekicks like my main man Tonto (who saved the Lone Ranger’s ass more than once), Public Enemy’s irrepressible Flavor Flav (below- and yes his reality shows are embarrassing to all involved but that doesn’t detract from the…well…flavor…he brought to PE’s best records and live shows), and Pinky (The Brain’s delightfully daffy cohort in repeated attempts to take over the world…Pinky and The Brain are finally coming out with a long-overdue DVD set later this month…yay!!)

Supergirl

One of the things you just have to get used to if you read super-hero comics is the fact that, unlike here in the real world, "death" is very often an inconvenience rather than a permanent state (unless you're Bucky, Uncle Ben, or Captain Marvel...comic book fans will understand that comment...you non comic book fans don't worry about it, it's not that important.)

In 1985, Superman's first cousin, Kara Zor-El...better known as Supergirl...was given a dramatic, much-hyped send off in the pages of Crisis on Infinite Earths #7 (see above.) Wailing was heard throughout the land...vengeance was sworn...chests were pounded...there wasn't a dry eye in the place...

Since then a couple of other young ladies have taken up the mantle of Supergirl...one was protoplasmic artificial shape-changing lifeform from a dead universe who later became a flame-winged angel (hey, I wish I was making this up but I'm not...) and another was the time-traveling daughter of Clark Kent and Lois Lane from an alternate timeline (ibid.)...and the history of the fictional DC Comics Universe rolled along smoothly (well, not really...but the road between 1985 and 2005 is so convoluted that if I tried to explain it all of our heads would explode so I'll leave it be.)

20 years after Kara's heroic demise, this young lady is about the star in her own comic as the newest Supergirl:



Her name is, perhaps unsurprisingly, Kara Zor-El...and she is (apparently) Superman's first cousin, of course. Everything old is new again...especially in super-hero comics. Death be not proud...and, very often in comics, death be not permanent either...it's one of those things you just have to accept if you're going to be a comic book reader. So when Supergirl #1 comes out this summer, I'll buy it and probably enjoy it and not give it a second thought that this character "died" 20 years ago. We comic book fans are sometimes a strange lot :-)

All-Star Superman

Every few years or so, DC Comics lets someone take a crack at spiffing up the image of Superman...trying to make him "cool" (and, I guess, therefore somehow more relevant to modern comic book readers more enamored of "edgy" anti-heroes like Wolverine and The Punisher.) It never works.

Someone who dresses like Superman (in bold primary colors with an emblem instantly recognizable by almost everyone on the planet) and who stands for things like truth, justice, and always doing the right thing...someone who possesses world-shattering power and yet refuses to kill or to try to bend others to his will...someone like that will never be "cool". And I'm okay with that.

This summer, writer Grant Morrison and artist Frank Quitely, promise a new take on the Man of Steel...not one that tries to make him "cool" but one that embraces his iconic, inspirational, heroic, and utterly human ideals. All-Star Superman, which will be free of the decades of continuity of the other Superman comics (wherein, for example, Clark Kent and Lois Lane have been married for some years now), promises to be a welcoming place for both long-time fans and those who haven't picked up a Superman comic in years.

I'm looking forward to it.

Superman (c) 2005 DC Comics