I’ll be sharing an overdue post on Star Trek here in the next few months, phasers crossed.
Meantime, I have this. I was moved to scan, crop, and file it away three years ago while reading a bunch of old DC horror comics, and now I guess I know why. Yes, Strange New Worlds had already launched, but — although not exactly ripped from the screen — the panel didn’t quite seem to resonate with anything until this past week’s episode. I won’t explain since that feels unnecessary if you’ve seen it and obnoxious if you haven’t yet and want to. Spoilers are fine in the comments, however, as I would love someone to at least headcanon away the pink dress.
Panel from “The Mask of Medusa” in The Unexpected #218 © 1981 DC Comics. Script:
Robert Kanigher. Pencils, Inks: Vic Catan. Colors: Jerry Serpe. Letters: Unknown.
Related: Mr. Pope Hail • Arch-Ray Vision • Ozy Ozy Ozy
You don’t really have to sell me on a book called The Art of Jerry Ordway.
I mean, Jerry himself being part of it’s sorta key, but otherwise there’s very little that could dissuade me from plunking down my actual or virtual cash despite my own and the world’s travails of the day. On which more in a few moments.
While I’m dealing with stuff that’s backing up posts in the pipeline, I figured I’d put
the soup can on display as I plug the Zoop campaign for Mark Waid & Barry Kitson’s Empire.
The effort has been funded, so you should be assured of receiving it if you pledge. Choose from a digital copy; the hardcover itself, collecting Empire’s original eight-issue story as begun under the Gorilla imprint and finished at DC, with lots of bonus material; and a slipcased edition.
I’d wager that most of you visiting don’t remember the first live-action Spider-Man
on screen.
Clearly, based on the image above, I don’t mean Tobey Maguire. Or Nicholas Hammond, who starred as Peter Parker over 12 episodes of The Amazing Spider-Man on CBS starting in 1978, spun out of a TV movie the year before — or even the stuntman inside the costume for most of that show, Fred Waugh. Or, for that matter, Shinji Tōdō; he led Toei's スパイダーマン [Supaidāman], a very loose adaptation of the Marvel character, which aired in Japan during roughly the same span as its American counterpart.
No, I’m talking about Danny Seagren.
I’m happy to report that the digital library of Peanuts books offered at Humble Bundle to mark Fantagraphics’ 50th birthday was extended.
Click on that link now — as long as it’s not yet 2 p.m. ET on April 23rd, 2026. I’ll be here when you get back. [Update #1: The campaign seems to have a rolling deadline, although that could easily change.] [Update #2: It has closed.]
I heard about this incredible deal a few weeks ago but neglected my note to self until
it was nearly too late. The sale had been set to run through yesterday. However, at this writing, you can still pay $25 or more and receive downloadable PDFs of a virtual passel of Peanuts tomes including all 26 volumes of Fantagraphics’ expertly designed The Complete ’Peanuts’, its 10 recolored ‘Peanuts’ Every Sunday editions, and various themed collections, which have a total listed retail value of $1,041. Smaller bundles of
4 or 8 items start at only $5.
Charles Schulz was quietly philanthropic and, per the Humble Bundle way, a little bit
of each purchase goes to a charity he supported, Canine Companions. Even if you own all these books in physical form — or simply all the ones you care to — I’m guessing you won’t have to think hard to imagine somebody you love who’d appreciate being gifted the whole bunch, and it’s fine if that somebody is you.
Mere weeks after rewatching 1941’s The Adventures of Captain Marvel as part
of the personal film festival I’d assembled for my 50th birthday, which I’ve neglected to dig into here for literal ages now, I was surprised and delighted to see its Billy Batson pop up on a 1974 episode of Shazam!
The CBS show was a staple of Saturday mornings during my childhood, as I noted in April of this year (and long before that). I’m hoping to write about the Republic serial at greater length the near future, but I first checked it out in high school — on a set of VHS tapes from West Coast Video — having read praise for it in Comics Buyer’s Guide; on both viewings, it lived up to its reputation as one of the finest of its kind. Even if Frank Coghlan Jr.’s Billy and Tom Tyler’s Captain Marvel don’t perfectly mirror their comic-book inspiration any more than do their Filmation counterparts — the serial gives us sparks and smoke in place of magic lightning, although it does have the ancient wizard himself rather than six Immortal Elders — we get some genuinely thrilling superheroics for the era.
With an infinite multiverse I guess it’d be inevitable that somewhere out there (Earth-F, perhaps?) Quentin Tarantino is Superman.
I’m among those who saw the early trailer for and the new extended look at James Gunn’s upcoming Superman and wondered just why so much time was spent on a bloodied, battered Man of Steel.
Of course, I thrilled at the brief glimpses of him being heroic — flying with purpose
and protecting a child. And I get wanting to showcase Krypto; I do have concerns about the film, but not that shaggy fella beyond my perennial problem buying even the most impressive CGI.
I’ve mentioned before on the blog — 15 years ago, granted — how much I loved Shazam!, Filmation’s live-action series based on the original Captain Marvel that aired Saturday mornings on CBS in the mid ’70s.
Not very long ago it was incorporated into a dream of mine. An immortal Elder from the show appeared to me but (a) he looked more like Batman foe Maxie Zeus as drawn by the great Don Newton than Zeus himself or any of the other legendary figures making up the acronym that is Billy Batson’s magic word — yet still in the style used to illustrate those figures in the ethereal vision sequences in which they appeared, unmoving — and (2) he freaked me out by lifting his arms up instead of remaining static. I think he was giving me a mission that had something to do with cats.
Unlike most dreams, I could trace the components of this one quite clearly to stuff
from my waking life. It came as Matt Re’s look at the stretch of Batman and Detective Comics written by Gerry Conway, which ran throughout 2024 on his blog Not a Hoax! Not a Dream!, was drawing to a close; a fair number of those stories were penciled by Newton. And more germanely to the post I’m writing now, I’d begun playing the intro to Shazam! in an act of self-soothing on an almost daily basis to center myself before getting down to this or that task amidst my latest health crises and the general insanity of life.
I was digging into my copy of Comics for Ukraine — and so already keenly aware
of the compartmentalization we practice daily to appreciate art in the midst of tragedy or, more generally, simply live our lives even as they or the lives of others are under imminent threat — when reports came in from Israel of the horrifying assaults there
on Saturday.
The book, just recently arrived, was crowdfunded in June of last year through Zoop
to benefit the work done by Operation USA. Its subtitle is Sunflower Seeds after the curse directed at Russian soldiers by a bold Ukranian woman who told them to put seeds in their pockets so that when they die sunflowers will grow in their place on the land they attempted to occupy.
I’m very late in sharing the news that my pal Bully has resumed bringing joy to the masses at his blog Comics Oughta Be Fun!.
A couple of Januarys past — which might have been a Sandman issue — Bully, the
little stuffed bull who is a fuzzy, cuddly bane to oppressors of the righteous and vulnerable, returned after sadly but understandably closing up shop in June 2020. He continued to live out the message of his blog’s title on Twitter with the help of trusty human friend John DiBello, then made the world brighter for those of us who rarely venture there by firing up Fun! again, filling in posts from 2021 and forging ahead with his mission to chronicle every instance of, well, just what it says on the virtual tin, via the continuing feature Today in Comics History.
A very long time coming, I Have Issues has gone live.
Kind-of. I’m stretching the definition of “live” there. Right now all you get is a logo
and tag line, plus — maybe, depending on the results of my internal debate over whether it adds value or subtracts from the minimalist placeholder — a brief mission statement. But at least the URL works. I registered the domain a while ago now and have been planning the site for more than a decade.
When a friend demanded a complete version of my “Yoda Clone” lyrics back in 2019,
I replied that I’m a fan of Jorge Luis Borges — the magical-realist, postmodernist master known to reference and review books that didn’t actually exist.
Like many others throughout cyberspace, I enjoy creating images of merch for imaginary movies, etc. Just a snippet of and/or allusion to a work not fully realized can be as satisfying as, if not more satisfying than, making or experiencing the entire work itself. Plus, I simply don’t have enough mental bandwidth and time, so my choice is usually to cobble together either a little bit or nothing.
The problem comes when I get a brainstorm and then let what I’ve sketched out sit
for a while expecting that I’ll bring it to fruition. Lots of Top X lists and mashup ideas languish unfinished in virtual folders, some of whose inspirations have long since left the zeitgeist.
Here are three parody choruses that I doubt will ever go any further. You’ll note that one springboards from much older material than the others, comics I’ve been reading to follow another blog’s reviews — where the mantra in the panel depicted is alternately referred to as a chant and an oath. Moreover, it’s based on a much older song, and its tune has been used here before in my extra look at Lost’s “Nowhere Man” way back in 2010.
I was talking with a friend recently and this happened.
I didn’t know Tom Spurgeon, a longtime critic and lover of comics who passed
away last week at just 50. We met but once at a convention. I know his work, though, and I know a lot of other people in the comics world who did know him, admire him, care for him.
Spurgeon was editor of Fantagraphics’ The Comics Journal for several years before launching his website The Comics Reporter.
I saw Dark Phoenix this summer and, not for the first time, was amazed at how my reaction to a $200 million effects-laden event film with bankable stars reprising popular roles could be “That was it? Eh.”
No spoilers ahead.
DC Comics announced in June that its Vertigo imprint would be winding down
come the new year. Graeme McMillan wrote up the basics at The Hollywood Reporter.
Cover to Death: The High Cost of Living #1 © 1993 DC Comics.
Art: Dave McKean. Typography, Design: McKean; Richard Bruning.
Up now at my website The Comicologist is an article that I wrote on Thanos for the magazine ACE back in 2015.
Panels from The Infinity Gauntlet #1 © 1991 Marvel Comics. Pencils: George Pérez.
Inks: Josef Rubinstein & Tom Christopher. Colors: Christie Scheele & Ian Laughlin.
I’ve posted a version with images and one without, since the former is rather heavy on the graphics. That’s due in part to the article’s length, which in turn is a consequence of the breadth of the character’s publication history — or vice versa. You might want to wait to read it until after you see Avengers: Endgame if you’re not already familiar with the comics, although my guess is that any spoilers pertain more to last year’s Infinity War.
