Geriatric Jay Rules The Waves...

The recent return of Barry 'The Flash' Allen to the DC Universe has sparked a lot of controversy about just who is the better Flash. Some people love Barry and applaud the return of the one true Flash. Others claim Wally West took the mantle of the Flash to new levels of greatness.

I say if your favorite Flash has never fought alongside the Justice Society of America against the mind-bending menace of the Key you should shut your damn piehole:

Dude has a head shaped like a keyhole and a giant key shaped machine gun!

Bow to Geriatric Jay Garrick - king of the Flashes!

While you're at it turn down your hippety hoppity music, pull up your damn pants and get the hell off my lawn!

(Today's blatant ageism comes from those pesky meddling kids at Flash v1 #129 wherein Jay Garrick takes a bit of time out of his mission, to save his entire planet from burning to death in radioactive fire, to punch out a guy in a clown suit who was stealing rocks with a fishing pole.)

BETTER ANGELS is Go!!!

Hello there loyal YouAreComic readers. I'm sure you'll be as thrilled as me to learn that the very first YouAreComic webcomic has launched (as of Tuesday actually).

Here's a sneaky peek:


Now head on over to http://betterangels.thecomicseries.com to check out the rest of the first 3 page installment - then come back every first Tuesday of every month for 3 more pages.

Comments, comments, comments...we are comment-hounds. So be sure to leave us one letting us know what you think.

Nuff Said.

Big News...

One week from today YouAreComic will be launching it's very first webcomic: BETTER ANGELS. It's got scripts by yours truly and art from the ultra talented Jordan Kroeger.

Stay tuned for more details as the big day looms.

Nuff Said.

Scarred For Life...

Okay so there I was catching up on some back issues of B.M. Bendis and Mike Deodato's awesome Dark Avengers series. It's been great. It's got Bullseye being crazy and badass, Ares kicking ass with a big freaking axe and even Daken actually being interesing. Wonderful stuff.

This one had the Molecule Man (good old Owie, my favorite lil guy from Secret Wars I and II and a bunch of great old FF issues) - I was loving it.

Then BAM! Sentry gets exploded! We're treated to yellow-lycra clad blood & guts flying everywhere:

Eeeeewwwww!

I was a little shocked and grossed out by that, but hey - this is a book about bad guys doing bad things what did I expect?

I shook if off and moved on. Then BAM! Sentry pops back to life and explodes poor lil Owie right back before anyone even got the chance to wash the Sentry chunks out of their hair!

Owwwwiiiieeee!!

Okay, now all this unpleasantness had made me uncomfortable and depressed but I figured what more could possibly go wrong, I'll just press on, only a few more pages to go....

...then BAM!

Naked Norman!!

No amount of scrubbing your eyeballs will help people - some things once seen can never been unseen.

Just think, according to J. Michael Straczynski Gwen Stacy hit that! What was she thinking?

Mike & Brian, my eyes will never forgive you!

(Today's deep seated emotional trauma were caused by Dark Avengers #12 in which lovable little Owie 'Molecule Man' Reece takes a break from exploding Avengers to use his universe-altering, molecule-controlling powers to strip search Norman Osborn's right hand chica Victora Hand. Sleaze, sleaze, sleaze! No more HBO for you Mr. Bendis!)

Junk?

Look Power Girl is from Krypton okay. So your referring to your reproductive organs with classy euphemisms in your pick-up lines isn't impressing anybody:


Oh you mean your 'Frank and Beans'? Thanks, It's so much clearer now.

PS: I was tempted to title this post 'Power Girl Doesn't Know Dick' but luckily for the impressionable kiddies in the audience I relented.

(Today's potty mouth was brought to you by the highly enjoyable Power Girl #14 by Judd Winnick & Sami Basri. In this issue we learn that the turn ons of bald, purple brain sucking alien robots include green lycra biker shorts, punching and swearing. Turns offs? Well..um...having no junk I guess.)

Why's It So Hard To Make Godzilla Look Good?

Why is that most Godzilla comic books suck? I don't get it. I mean surely the awesomeness is baked right into the concept! He's giant lizard who every so often likes to eat a city, swat a giant, prehistoric moth or slam dunk all over Sir Charles Barkley. You'd think making a great comic out of that would be wee buns...but history has proven otherwise.

In fact the only Godzilla comic that I can think of that could cut the mustard was Marvel's late 70s early 80s series. You know the one where S.H.I.E.L.D. built a giant, red, samaurai robot and then let a little kid use it fight Godzilla in San Francisco?

While it did lack giant robots named after members of Boyzone, Godzilla #21 stands out for me as a particular good issue from that series. It's basically Doug Moench and Herb Trimpe doing a veritable masterclass on how to write a good Godzilla book.

Any comic-book creator worth his salt knows that you got to have a strong opening when writing any book. With Godzilla though you have to remember fans have seen this guy eat Tokyo and punch out King Kong. You want to dazzle them, you've got to come up with something bold and original...like say Godzilla being eaten by a tankful of blood-frenzied sharks while the Fantastic Four watch with gormless looks on thier faces:

I should also point out that Doug and Herb were hampered by the fact that they couldn't use any of the classic Godzilla characters like Rodan, Mothra or SpaceGodzilla thanks to Toho's insanely high license fees. Such restrictions would've crippled lesser creators.

Doug and Herb however used it as an excuse to plug in beloved Marvel characters and crazy made-up monsters at every wheel and turn. Who wants to see 'Zilla fight a giant radioactive moth for like the 90th time when instead they can see Aunt Petunia's favorite, ever-lovin', blue-eyed Thing tiger-uppercut Godzilla right the hell out of a tank of sharks.

Doug Moench don't play people. He may not have Godzilla locked in combat with the fearsome Mechani-Kong or wearing giant sneakers but there's no denying that that is pretty freaking awesome.

Doug's a forward thinking dude too. Involving the Fantastic Four also solves one of the fundamental problems of having Godzilla as your main character. You can't have Godzilla battle Spider-man in New York in #5 then in #6 have him in Latveria chowing down on Doctor Doom...how did he get there?

Such problems are no sweat for the FF's resident super-genius Reed Richards. You want to get Godzilla from A to B and you want to do it fast? Just strap his big ass to your pantent-pending 'Giant Lizard Roof Rack'.


That my friends is comic-book madness at it's wacky best. As far as I'm concerned you could've packed up shop and gone home right then. I mean we've already seen dinosaur versus sharks, dinosaur versus super-hero and dinosaur versus Reed Richard's cosmic tow package. Any one of those sounds like the plot of an awesome Sci-Fi Channel original movie.

But the guys don't stop there. Doug and Herb even manage to shoehorn a trip back in time into this issue courtesy of Doctor Doom's handy dandy time platform. Let's face it, if you send Godzilla back in time in the Marvel Universe there's only one thing people are going to want to see...

Devil Dinosaur Baby!!

I don't know about you but I love Devil Dinosaur and Moon Boy. A battle between those guys and Godzilla can only be awesome. Perhaps even more awesome than watching Godzilla recieving a lesson in giant-city-eating-lizard sportsmanship

That, my friends, is how you write a great Godzilla comic (when you haven't got the license to use an NBA All-Star or Godzilla Junior of course).

We salute you Doug and Herb. For it seems that only you have the comic-booking chops to make a story that includes dinosaurs, sharks, time travel, cosmic-ray-powered scientists and giant roof racks turn out awesome.

C'mon you other Godzilla writers, no more sucking. Don't make set Sir Charles on you.

Mary, Mary, Why You Bugging?

Okay Countdown, what the hell kind of world are you living in where sweet and innocent Mary Marvel knows what a furry is?


The mind boggles. Suddenly I'm all suspicous of Mary's brother Billy 'Captain Marvel' Batson's relationship with his talking tiger pal Talky Tawny.

Then I remembered that Mary herself had a fuzzy animal sidekick too - Hoppy the Marvel Bunny.

Oh God No! Not Hoppy! Say it isn't so! Damn you DC, why do you insist on corrupting our cherished childhood memories over and over!

Wait! Wait! Calm down. Get it together. Mary probably just saw it on that one episode of CSI. Yeah, sure, that makes sense. That's gotta be it.

Aaaaahhhh.

Thank you denial old friend, I feel so much better now.

(This deep psychological scar was caused by Countdown To Infinite Crisis #12. Elsewhere in this book our delicate sensibilities were offended by Jimmy Olsen's tawdry sexual encounter with an alien bug chick (not to mention the sight of him sauntering about in nothing but a towel). Then we were profoundly distubed by Piper having a heart to heart with the severed hand of his dead buddy the Trickster.)

Who Is Donna Troy?

With continuity almost as messed up as Hawkman, it's a question that has plagued DC writers since time immemorial.

Luckily Donna herself is here to clear the whole thing up:


Thanks Donna we appreciate you clearing that up, but stealing your tough-guy talk from Vinnie Jones?

Really Donna? Vinnie Jones? What were you thinking?

(This bit of continuity-nerd snubbing come to you from the glorious mess that is Countdown To Final Crisis #15. This issue also features Kyle 'Green Lantern' Rayner explaining to Ray 'the Atom' Palmer about the evil machinations of Bob the Monitor...I'm not kidding...Bob.The.Monitor)

Who's The Man With The Master Plan?

A Pharaoh With a Motherf#@*ing Gun!

(Today's salute to hip hop heads of the 'G Funk' era comes to you courtesy of Cable #57 by Joe Casey & Ryan Benjamin. Also in this issue Cable takes Rama 'Kang the Conquerer' Tut down with a swift knee to the junk. The Avengers fought the guy for three issues straight. No-one thought of that?)

Loki & Spider-man are BFFs...

Amazing Spider-man #504 is a great little issue by J. Michael Straczynski and Fiona Avery featuring the always fantastic art of Spidey-master John Romita Jr. and Spider-inker extraordinaire Scott Hanna. It's like a comic-book buddy movie. Imagine Twins, or Tango & Cash or Red Heat except instead of Arnie & Danny DeVito/John Belushi or Sly & Kurt Russel you've got Spider-man and the Asgardian god of mischief. Add the fact that there's no Naked-Arnie-Turkish-Bath scene to suffer through and you've got a surefire box office smash.

Let's face it the downtrodden, wise-cracking, hard-luck case of the Marvel Universe and the bitterest, most bitchinest pointy helmet wearing of all the Gods of Asgard are probably the most bizarre mix since Dolph Lundgren and Brandon Lee in Showdown In Little Tokyo. Yet the guys get on like a house on fire in this issue.

I mean here, check out Pete introducing Loki to the splendor of the New York street style chilli dog. It's adorable:

Damn that mortal vendor, I said hold the pickle!

Now anyone who's been reading Marvel comics for any amount of time (or has caught the Thor* movie at a cinema near them) knows that Loki is not a guy you can trust, Even if he is your bestest chilli dog buddy.

So when the evil Sorceress Morwen shows up and tries to recruit Spidey as her own personal agent of chaos no-one is surprised when Loki swoops in and tries to snag the job for himself.

Luckily Loki is not one for company loyalty. So it's only a scant few panels later that he's double crossing Morwen, giving Spidey the old 'I'm your buddy again' nod and wink, then blasting seven shades of shit out of Morwen's magical booty with his badass Asgardian magic. John Romita Jnr can't half draw the hell out of a bolt-slinging Loki:

Geez, that Morwen's a tougher judge than the Hoff

Obviously being an Asgardian God born at the very beginning of time you have to forgive the Lokster for suffering a little bit of culture shock. It's little wonder that he finds Spider-man's tendency to casually refer to the venerable Tickster God of the Golden Realm as his 'pal' a tad annoying.
Back in Loki's day people knew the meaning of politeness and decorum. Y'know those days when horny Vikings would rape and pillage all the live long day. You wouldn't catch a grown man in red and blue, spider-themed pyjamas failing to call you 'Mr Loki' back then:

From now on you will address me as Lok Diddy

If nothing else this issue proves that Loki has gotten a bad rap. Underneath all that devil-horn hat wearing, kingdom usurping and attempted step-brothericide bluster is just an ordinary everyday stand-up dude.

It's his Asgardian hocus pocus (with some good old-fashioned Spider-man style thwippery thrown in for good measure) that seperates Morwen from the mortal soul she has forcibly inhabitted.

When it turns out that said soul belongs to Tess Black, one of Loki's many, many Midgardian offspring (Norse Gods are the masters of the art of deadbeat daddery) we're even treated to a beautiful, touching scene of Loki cradling his injured, but safe, mortal offspring in his arms. He's honestly relieved that she hasn't been shish-kebobed by powers beyond their mortal ken. I'm getting a little misty here just thinking about it.

It's a great little story. Chock full of God on Sorcerer on Spider-mortal ass-kickery, punctuated by wonderful little character moments. If I didn't already love Spider-man and Loki before reading this issue, by Odin's beard you can bet I did afterward.

PS: If you liked Loki chowing down on a chilli-dog on the first page, then you're gonna plotz at the E.T. reference they leave us with on the last:

Eliott!

*You better believe I caught the Thor movie this weekend. It's freaking awesome people. The Destroyer blowing shit up with his face, Thor smacking Frost Giants in the chops with Mjolnir, the Casket of Eternal Winters, Stan Lee, Volstagg eating, Fandral dashing, Hogun...um..grimming? Believe me loyal readers - it's Simonsontastic!