Jack Kirby Had A Unique Vision Of The Future...

Hey if the 'World That's Coming' includes a chick who is also a TV, I am so there!

COUNT DRACULACOCKBLOCKER

War Machine, Awesome? Who Knew?

I had planned to do an 'Only a Mother Could Love' post today but while catching up on all of the Secret Invasion hoopla that went on in the Marvel Universe a few months ago I stumbled across Iron Man:Director Of Shield #33 and was bowled over. Now I'm not normally a James 'War Machine' Rhodes fan, especially when he hogs the limelight in what is supposed to be an Iron Man book, but this particular issue was undeniably awesome.

For a start it had some quality artwork. I think this is the first time I've ever seen Sean Chen's art but judging by this issue he's someone I should keep an eye out for in the future. In this issue he gets to flex his artistic muscles drawing everything from Tony Stark and the Avengers in the Savage Land to James Rhodes funky, cybernetic face to massive Skrull invasion fleets. However I was most impressed with his ability to make War Machine's grey, normally dull-as-dishwater, second rate Iron Man armour look bitchin':
Being a Secret Invasion tie-in issue this issue is a little light on Skrulls. It's got a lot of Skrull ships but not to many of the lil green fellows themselves - which is a shame because Skrulls, as any avid Marvel reader will tell you, are awesome!

However one Skrull does get a bit of face-time here and just to make up for the lack of his emerald bretheren he decides to show up in the most ridiculous costume he can find. I mean as if the Nova-style bucket hat wasn't enough, who told him the big glowing nipple lamps were a good idea? Then to top it all off he adds a big flowing purple cape. I mean I know they're aliens and all but come on, hasn't advanced Skrull technology managed to invent these guys some mirrors?
I hate to be the fashion police here but his cape matches the Hulk's pants for crying out loud. How could his mommy let him leave the house like this:
Shockingly the fantastic art and fashionally-challenged alien invaders were not the most awesome thing about this issue. Oh no my friends, that accolade goes to Christos' Gage's cliffhanger ending. An ending so cool that it could've co-starred Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox and still won an Oscar!

So Rhodey and the last remaining Stark employee Suzi Endo are trapped aboard Tony Stark's secret, satellite hideaway surrounded by a thousand Skrull ships itching to reduce them to atoms. Luckily there is one hope left - y'see good old Tony Stark (the Batman of the Marvel Universe) has planned for just such an eventuality and built in a special function to his secret satellite.

So Rhodey plugs himself into the satellite's control systems and gets his Autobot on...Dude turns the whole freaking satellite into a giant suit of Iron Man armour! Can you believe it? Now if that's not a steaming bowl of hot delicous awesome then I don't know what is.

Michael Bay wishes he'd thought of that.

One minor complaint though - I don't think James Rhodes should tell people to 'Recognise', It's much too Jay-Z. Unless of course he's prepared to go the whole hog and form a hip-hop group with Luck Cage and the Hypno-Hustler. In that case you'd have me at hello.

Word to your mother.

How To Flirt The Spider-man Way...

Splurt!! The old "here's web in yer eye" technique

Hey, dude married a supermodel so he must know what he's talking about!

(Today's social networking seminar comes to you from the pages of Web Of Spider-man #75 wherein there is an almost reunion of Spider-man and his Amazing Friends. Also Spidey gets smashed in the nuts by a seven foot tall ballerina. Good times!)

Embarrassing Moments In Super-Villainy #1

Foliage 1, Scorpion 0

Is it any wonder Mac jumped at the chance to be Venom instead?

(This cringeworthy delight was served up courtesy of Amazing Spider-man #343 wherein Spidey lets the Black Cat get whaled on by six, count 'em, six super-villains while he gets his science nerd on in the other room. What a guy! It's no wonder his wife devil-divorced his sorry ass!)

The Fantastic Four Are Awesome....

But what is it about the Fantastic Four that makes them awesome?

It's quite simple really. The Fantastic Four are the most self-contained and versatile property in all of comics. You've got all of the comic-book melodrama and characterisation wrapped up within the four main characters all of whom are on the team and can be lifted wholesale and plonked down into any fantastical situation your fevered little imagination can whip up.

There's no Aunt May in Queens or Lois Lane and her precious Daily Planet to keep these guys tethered to earth. These guys are their own supporting cast. Wherever they go all they take all of their soap-opera shenanigans along with them. So Sue could be bitching at Reed for forgetting her birthday while they battle Annihilus and Blaastar in the Negative Zone. Johnny might be teasing Ben about looking like past their sell-by-date pop rocks while they search for the Ultimate Nullifier on Galactus Worldship.

You name the settings, you name the genre, there is nowhere the magic of the Fantastic Four wont' work.

All of the best FF writers over the years have figured this out and used it to their advantage. From Stan and Jack all the way through to Mark Millar in Ultimate Fantastic Four.

By way of an example let's take a single issue of Mark Millar's Ultimate run. Say for example issue 21.

This issue wastes no time in proving my theory. Mark Millar loves his super-heroes but he also wants to write a comic-book about dinosaurs? No sweat, the FF have got you covered. You want to write about dinosaurs? Just zip Johnny and Ben 150 million years into the past on the very first page and Bob's your uncle. Hell you could have the Thing slugging a Tyrannosaurus Rex right in the chops by page two and nobody would blink an eye. It's just another day at the office for these guys.Of course you have to keep things moving. You can't have the FF hanging around in one place too long. Super-hero versus dinosaur battles don't take too long to get stale and boring especially in these jaded and cynical times.

Need something fresh and different for the FF to do to keep the audience hooked? How about stopping a gang of crooks staging a kidnapping to score some ransom money?

That might be okay for lesser super-hero books like Spider-man or Superman but this is the FF baby, round these parts we crank things up to eleven! Sure we can have terrorists but not ordinary terrorists, they've got to be time-hopping terrorists!

Of course they can stage a kidnapping but we can't have them 'napping some airheaded debutant whose dad has a few bucks. No! They've got to travel 200 million years into the past and snatch the first creature that ever crawled from the sea and hold it to ransom! Derailing evolution before it begins and wiping out 200 million years of human history has got to be worth a few quid hasn't it?


See what I'm saying. You'd be hard pressed to find sci-fi shenanigans more wacky or awesome than that anywhere other than a Fantastic Four book. Mixed in with the Grimm/Storm/Richards family dynamics we all know and love it makes quite the heady comic book brew.

Phew, that's a lot of funky sci-fi stuff to digest before we're even halfway through the issue. For the non-trekkies in the audience if the sci-fi onslaught keeps up like this things might start to get a little hard going.

Luckily this is an FF book. So we can completely shift genres at the drop of a hat. How about a little horror to cleanse the palette? Okey doke, how about we have Reed manipulated into opening a trans-dimensional portal to a neighbouring dimension by an older, parallel version of himself?

"That just sounds like more damned sci-fi to me!"

Oh, did I not mention that this parallel dimension is populated with zombies who have chowed down on the entirety of the human race and are now looking to move their snacking into a neighbouring dimension? No? Well it is. Oh yeah and the zombies....they're all superheroes:


Zombie Super-heroes, lord have mercy. That's the FF for you people. One minute they're Flash Gordoning about in wacky alien dimensions and Robert Patricking it up through time then the next their Ashing the hell out of world full of zombies with their boomsticks. All in the space of one issue! Imagine the awesomeness that could be packed into two issues - or even three - or *gasp* 48 years worth of issues.

Praise you Jack and Stan for blessing us all with the comic book gold that is the Fantastic Four.

Where would we all be without them?

Yes Kids, Dad has a personal life....

...but the less you know about it the better.

(Today's paternal monkey loving comes from Day Of Vengeance #4 wherein we learn that Detective Chimp started out in life as a wild, African monkey named Bobo with a thing for having his back scrubbed in swanky hotel bathrooms by moustachioed animal trainers.)

Last Night Hulk Watched 'Down To You' On DVD

Today he's got quite the celebrity crush:

I guess he's never seen 'Shes All That' then - yick!

(Today's spot of celebrity celebration comes from The Ultimates v1 #4 wherein Ultimate Samuel L - - I mean Nick Fury casts his fantasy Ultimate Avengers movie. Johnny Depp as Tony Stark? Lucy Liu as the Wasp? Woody Allen as Bruce Banner? I think we've finally solved the mystery of the moron who cast 'Showdown in Little Tokyo').

Spider-woman: Violent Pyschopath

If you were a Marvel editor in the late 70s/early 80s and you were tasked with coming up with the adjective for the Spider-woman series a lot of possibilities might come to mind. 'The Sultry Spider-woman' could work or even 'The Slinky Spiderwoman' would be a good choice, even 'The Bitchin' Hairdo of the Spider-woman' would be perfectly valid. Adjectives that might not immediately spring to mind might be 'vicious', 'brutal', 'savage' or 'ass-kickingest'. Unless of course you had read Spider-woman #16.

You see in Spider-woman #16 the normally sleek, sophisticated and demure Miss Jessica Drew beats the ever-loving shit out of albino, vampire-looking, bad girl Nekra (remember Nekra? She used to date Marvel's best, baboon-based bad guy the Mandrill). I mean she really whomps that chick's ass like there's no tomorrow. That kind of savage beatdown is pretty shocking to see from someone who has trouble taking out the likes of Turner D. Century.

What exactly did Nekra do to inspire such extreme brutality? Well let's see:

First in her guise as entrepreneur Adrienne Hatros she gave a desperate for work Jessica Drew a job in her clinic.

She didn't fire Jessica despite her tendency to constantly show up late and instigate fistfights with Death Cultists in the middle of the office on busy workdays.

Then she gave her a free medical and invited her to a swanky cocktail party in her luxury manor home.

What a bitch right?

Okay, okay so maybe the fact that the cocktail party was a ruse to which Nekra showed up wearing a painted on outfit, proclaiming her love for Jessica before trying to tear out her throat had something to do with it.Before you jump on your judgey high horse, you need to understand something about Nekra.

Nekra loves hate.

That's right. She loves it the way regular people love puppies or sunrises or the smell of freshly cut grass. Hate gives her the tingles....as well as super-strength and invincibility.

Then along come this skank Spider-woman with her mind-warping pheromones giving people the chemically induced hots for her! Making Nekra feel all skeevy and cheap for get 'the feelings' for someone other than her one true love....hate. Personally I think it's totally understandable that she might want to strangle the slutty, toxic bitch that caused her to feel that way.

I mean really, what kind of woman uses her hypnotic musk to cause her boss to indulge in some half naked sexual harassment then gets all upset and serves the monumental ass-kicking of a lifetime when her boss tries to murder her for it?

I mean she slings the poor woman over a balcony then drops a hundred pound chandelier on her head for crying out loud! It's just not right!Luckily Nekra had the good sense to pop a pill before the fight that nullifies the effects of Spider-woman's mesmerising stench. So while all drugged up and full of hate Nekra is invincible and safe from Jessica's super-powered hissy fit.

Unfortunately for Nekra the Spider-woman is as cunning as she is violent. Once she learns that it is merely a pill keeping her from busting up foe apart like a nude piñata she conceives an ingenious plan to guarantee a blood soaked victory.

The plan?

Well it's as simple as it is psychotic. Just repeatedly slam your opponent's head into the marble floor until the medication wears off and your love-stink saps them of their hate and invincibility.I have to admit Jessica isn't all bad though. Having pulped Nekra's skull on the marble floor she finds herself wracked with remorse and in the end does the right thing. She calls an ambulance, changes back into her snazzy cocktail dress and blames the whole thing on burglars. Classy!

Aside from the horrific, unprovoked violence and the stupidity of Marvel Universe EMTs(how jaded are they that they don't wonder why one of the victims is a half naked, albino vampire while the other is dressed for the prom) this is one of my favorite issues from Marvel's original Spider-woman series.

I always thought Spider-woman was a totally under-rated series though. The stories, while sometimes a bit clunky, were always enjoyable and the art nine times out of ten was phenomenally good (I mean look at the gorgeous cover for this issue). I guess in the days before Wizard and Previews having savage violence and half-dressed albino chicks in your book didn't guarantee you sales.

Anyway Spider-woman #16. Mind-altering pheromones, cocktail dresses, skanky albino vampires in love and pulped skulls - you should check it out.

Nuff said.

Only A Mother Could Love: Marvel Knights - Punisher #4

First up I must apologise for neglecting my loyal readers. I have been M.I.A. from the land of blog for the past few weeks. The evil bosses at my real world job had me buried under a mountain of crappy work. Don't worry though nothing can keep me from yakking on about comics for long.

What better way to launch my triumphant comeback than by yakking about comics that only a mother could love? The concluding part of our look at the Saga of the Undead Punisher no less(that's Marvel Knights: Punisher #4 to any laymen out there).

Be warned though, I am about to spoilt the ending here. Of course I've spoiled parts one, two and three already so it's hardly surprising is it?

When last we checked in on Undead Frank he and his new best buddy, the private-school-boy-looking angel Gadriel, were at the mercy of series bad guy and KFC bargain bucket refugee Oliver. In fact that is the way things remain for the bulk of this issue! Frank and Gadriel stay trussed up and hanging from the rafters while Olly gets his super-villain on. I'm not kidding he bangs on and on for page after page about how great he is, how no-one can stop him and how generally awesome his master plan is!

In his defence though, his plan is pretty freaking awesome. I mean it's got everything a hell-spawned master plan should have. It's got suicides inducing imps, violent goons, picnic invasions - it's even got dudes eating their own skin!!

What do you know? Tastes like chicken.

All joking aside, I found Oliver's Batman TV show style monologue the most enjoyable part of this issue. It's got beautifully rendered flashbacks which tie up all of the dangling loose ends in a nice neat little bow.

We are finally treated to the stirring tale of Oliver's origin. We learn about his humble beginnings back in hell as an ambitious C-list demon entity. He tells us how hell's jealous A-listers took exception to him, booting him out for no good reason...well okay maybe it was for trying to kill them and conquer their realms all those times - big whoop! Doesn't mean they're not still jerks.

We get the lowdown on the O-man's exile to earth, shoe-horned into the body of a stillborn baby. That decision was sadly lacking in the acute foresight and meticulous planning those types of demonic bigwigs are normally known for as the baby in question grows up to be blood thirsty mob boss and Mick Fleetwood look-a-like Frank Costa.

It's Costa's mob connections, his knowledge of magical, demonic jiggery pokery and a brutal massacre at an idyllic picnic that allows Oliver to forge his human engine of destruction and renew his attempts to conquer hell. Of course the problem with forging human engines of destruction, especially bad tempered ones with a penchant for big guns, is that once they're done cutting a swath of destruction through your criminal empire - they generally come a-looking for you.

Avon Calling.

Turns out that this door kicking and bullet riddling that follows is just the masterstroke of Olly's big plan. Death simply frees him from his past-it's-prime, hippie drummer shaped prison and send him straight back to hell where he merrily returns to his old skin-eating, realm conquering ways.

Unfortunately just as the big O's tale is hitting it's stride Frank gets all pissed, breaks loose, pulls out his mystical uzis and all the promise of this last issue descends into a dodgy pastiche of Evil Dead 2.

Heavily armed, somewhat crazy protagonist - check.

Unstoppable demonic bad guys - check.

Accidental giant vortex which sucks everybody except our hero back to hell - check.

Now don't get me wrong I'm as big a Sam Raimi fan as the next guy but it doesn't have the laughing deer head, the evil, severed hand, the obligatory spade be-heading - hell there's not one chainsaw prosthetic in sight. Without those things and Bruce Campbell talking about his boomstick it's just your average mediocre 'deux ex machina' ending.

Klaatu Barradda Nikto

The slightly dissapointing ending didn't mar my enjoyment of the book too much though. Plot-wise Golden and Sniegoski's conclusion may have been a bit of a letdown but when it comes to cranking out awesome visuals for Bernie Wrightson and Jimmy Palmotti to bring to glorious, shining life they are on fire.

The gorgeous flashback scenes aside this issue is as packed with fantastic panels as issue three was. I mean there's even a shot of Frank getting tore into the bad guys with a mystical version of 'Ol Painless' from the first Predator movie.

I Ain't Got Time To Bleed

You know you've invested your money wisely when you find out the book you've just plunked down your three dollars for takes it's artillery cues from Jesse 'The Body' Ventura. If only the guys could have squeezed in Carl Weathers repeatedly exclaiming 'it's just a couple of guys running around out there' the book would have reached an unparalleled levels of awesomeness.

So there you have it the story of 'that time the Punisher was an undead killing machine for a while' and the reasons why I enjoyed it...even if no-one else did.

Be here is a few weeks time for another senses-shattering edition of 'Comics Only a Mother Could Love' featuring that issue of Alpha Flight where we find out the true cause of dwarfism.......being possessed by a giant Arabian ghost.