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?

Lex Luthor Bailout

Even Super-Villains need bailouts...

"Lex Luthor Bailout" with Jon Hamm from Jon Hamm

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 :-)

Pop Culture Auction

I guess this is where I’m supposed to write something pithy like “up, up, and away!” :-) A Superman costume worn by Christopher Reeve in 1978’s Superman: The Movie was sold at auction for a heroic $115,000.

Profiles in History, a memorbilia dealer, racked up more than $2,000,000 at its auction of more than 700 pop culture items this week which also featured a latex Alien costume designed by H.R. Giger for the original 1979 movie Alien ($126,500), a Winkie guard costume from The Wizard of Oz ($115,000), a gown worn by Marilyn Monroe in There’s No Business Like Show Business ($92,000), Val Kilmer’s Batman costume from Batman Forever ($63,250), Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine claws from X2: X-Men United ($40,250), and Stevie Wonder’s Grammy for Innervisions ($37,350).

Man, that’s a lotta greenbacks for a bunch of old stuff :-)

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.

Superman Returns

Okay, it was probably about 20-30 minutes too long (the denouement dragged on and on) and Lex Luthor’s master plan was a bit too, you’ll pardon the expression, “comic book-y” (but since he’s comic book super-villain I guess we should cut him a bit of slack on that one…) but, all in all, it was fun.

Superman Returns wasn’t quite the triumphant return to the movie theaters that Batman Begins was last year…but it had some spectacular effects (the bit with the plane was VERY cool), a fair amount of interesting character interaction (though the chemistry between Brandon Routh’s Superman and Kate Bosworth’s Lois Lane wasn’t nearly as compelling as that between Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder back in the day), and a charming sense of wonder (especially to folks like me who’ve been Superman fans since childhood.)

I could have done without the Christ analogies (overblown in the first movie…the ghost of Marlon Brando sonorously intoning about sending Earth his only son here as back then) but they’re ignored easily enough.

Kevin Spacey brought a sense of menace and malevolent whimsy to Luthor (Gene Hackman went for camp back in the original movies) and made for a reasonably credible opponent for the Man of Steel. Routh and Bosworth were fine…a bit bland but fine (though it was bit disconcerting that this movie takes place 5 years after the events of Superman II and yet both of them look much younger than the actors who played their characters in the earlier film)…but veterans Frank Langella, as Daily Planet editor Perry White, and Eva Marie Saint, as Superman’s mom Martha, was woefully underused (though Langella did get to use White’s catchphrase…”Great Caesar’s Ghost”…which tickled the fanboy in me anyway.)

Special kudos for dedicating the movie to Christopher and Dana Reeve. Very classy and appropriate.

A solid effort…I wasn’t completely blown away but I was entertained (and left with real hope and anticipation for a sequel.)

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 :-)

Superman Returns

This here is Brandon Routh, the new Man of Steel, whom you will believe can fly come June of 2006 when Superman Returns hits the big screen.

Not bad (the new belt buckle is a nice touch.)

The movie...which also features Kevin Spacey (as Lex Luthor), Kate Bosworth (Lois Lane), Frank Langella (Perry White), and Eva Marie Saint (Martha "Ma" Kent)...looks to rekindle the flames of the once-sizzling Superman movie franchise. I, of course, wish them well (and yeah, I'll be there next year, Junior Mints in hand and inner child unabashedly unfettered :-)

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