Sunday, July 08, 2007

Welcome to HIGH CONCEPT WEEK

Welcome to High Concept Week here at Dave's Long Box.

As implied, during High Concept Week we'll be looking at comic books that are based on fantastic, pithy, marketable, easy-to-grasp, clever ideas. Wikipedia defines high concept thusly: "The plot of a high concept movie is easily understood by audiences, and can often be described in a sentence or two, and succinctly summarized by the movie's title."

Let's be clear before we begin: high concept does not always mean high quality. It just means the film, book, or comic is built around a wicked awesome idea. As always, execution is everything regardless of how good the idea is.

For instance, here are some high concept movies IMHO. You can clearly see it's a mixed bag:

  • Jaws
  • Independence Day
  • Home Alone
  • Cellular
  • E.T. The Extra Testicle
  • Snakes on a Plane
  • Die Hard
  • Crank
  • The Pacifier
  • The Dirty Dozen
  • Jurassic Park
  • The Terminator
  • Bruce Almighty
  • What Women Want
  • Raiders of the Lost Ark
  • Armageddon

You get the picture. Some of those movies suck total ass, but they're based on a solid hook, a universal appealing and easily understood idea.

You may disagree with whether or not the comics I feature during High Concept Week really are high concept, for the line between cliche and great idea is blurry and squishy and smells of cheese. High Concept Week is go!

NSFW Audio!

(By the way, having a little stuffed animal host your blog is high concept.)

Friday, July 06, 2007

Friday Night Fights: Get ready For An Armored Ass Kicking

I decided now would be a good time to join all the Cool Kids and participate in Friday Night Fights, hosted by Bahlactus, the man with the coolest damn blog logo I've ever seen in my life.

Here's a scene from Iron Man #163 where the Armored Avenger humiliates a lame villain while beating the crap out of him. The dude in that black armor is probably having a flashback to the time in high school when that jock slapped him around in front of gym class and made him cry.

Iron Man = Mean.

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Happy Fourth of July from the staff here at Dave's Long Box!


It's July 4th, 2007 - Independence Day, America's Birthday, the day our forefathers gave The Finger to the British monarchy. It's the day when Americans of all walks of life drink beer, barbeque, and set off a shitload of fireworks. And before the day is over, some poor dogs will have their heads blown off chasing fireworks. Sorry to throw that in there, but it's true.

The U.S.A. is a complex, multi-faceted society full of glorious and confounding contradictions. It's too easy to smear America as the global bully or romanticize America as the beacon of hope. We're both of those at the same time. America is the City on the Hill and Abu Ghiraib. We're the liberators of Europe and the ravagers of Hiroshima. We brought the world the telephone and the Internet, but also the atomic bomb and trash culture. We are the land of opportunity and the great Melting Pot of immigrants around the world, but we are the land of small pox blankets and slavery. We are humanitarians and invaders, scientists and pornographers, philosophers and fools.

The Twenty-First Century is a challenging time for the United States (and everybody else in the world) to say the least. The Fourth of July always finds me a little contemplative of what it means to be an American, this year more so than usual. I really do love my country and what it has traditionally stood for - equality, justice, liberty - but I'd have to be an idiot not to recognize when my country has fallen short of these ideals. Above all this remains the land of possibility and hope, and that's what many of us cling to: the possibility of change and the hope for a better tommorrow.

For everybody.


Wow, sappy. OK, you can turn off the Copeland music now.

How about a collection of the most patriotic posts from Dave's Long Box? Why not?
I'm out. To all my American friends, have a safe and happy Fourth, and keep those dogs away from the M-80s!

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

VOODOO - ZEALOT: SKIN TRADE Image Comics, 1995

This is a terrible, terrible comic book.

Truly awful comics like Skin Trade are rare, because they require a perfect combination of uninspired story, incomprehensible art, and lax production values. They are something more than the sum of its crappy parts; they are somehow transcendent in their shittiness, so hideously awful that they are almost beautiful.

Every comic geek knows the story: in the Dark Nineties, all the hot artists defected from the Big Two and founded Image Comics, a company that focused its energy on producing pretty books on slick paper. Artwork was the main focus of those Image books. To say that good writing was of secondary importance would be an understatement. Image produced a bunch of good looking books with no soul. Sales were good. The Big Two tried to emulate the success of those Image books, and as a result the entire comic book industry slowly spiraled into the toilet like big, nutty logs of poo.

Yes. Like poo.

Eventually the guys at Image wised up and started hiring decent writers, and the company today has a much more diverse and adventurous portfolio of titles. The white-hot volcano of the go-go Nineties has gone dormant, and Image has become a more mature and well-balanced company today.

But things were pretty grim there for a while. During the mid-Nineties, Image could no longer maintain a consistent level of quality and fans got the worst of both worlds: crappy art and crappy stories. As long as it was on nice paper and was computer colored, they’d print the damn things. Editorial standards were low and quality control seemed non-existent.

Too harsh? I offer Voodoo/Zealot: Skin Trade, a one-shot Boob War book starring two bimbo characters from the WildCATS series. I do not use the word “bimbo” lightly – these two characters are not exactly paragons of female dignity.

Don’t take my word for it, behold:

The story, by writer Steven T. Seagle, involves Voodoo and Zealot vacationing in a war-torn country and looking for Zealot's long-lost kid while posing in bikinis. I'm sure I could explain the plot in greater detail, but the book is practically incomprehensible because of the art.

All the conventions of sequential art that we take for granted are tossed out the proverbial window, and Seagle's story is completely undermined by pages that make absolutely no sense whatsoever. I don't know what happened to this book; I'm sure there's a nightmare story behind its creation. I've seen Michael Lopez's art in other circumstances and I like his stuff, but here... Wow. It looks like they brought in seven different inkers, got them drunk, and gave them two hours to finish the book before they rushed it off to the printer. It starts off OK, but quickly degenerates into pages of "narrative pin-ups" and baffling layouts. By the end of the book it looks like they were just grabbing people off the street and giving them pages to draw. It's ugly, amateurish stuff.

This is an entire page:


That looks like some kid's Dirty Pair fan art. The vast white spaces on the page really add to the sense of drama, don't you think?

I can't really blame writer Steven T. Seagle for this mess, partly because I loved Above the Law and the dude could break my shoulder with that aikido of his. (Boy, I bet he never gets tired of jokes like that.) Clearly Seagle wrote a legible story, but somewhere between his script and the printer something went horribly wrong.

There are entire sequences that make no sense. For instance, we're told that soldiers appear to menace our heroines in one scene, but we just have to believe the expository dialogue because the art doesn't make that clear at all. There are other sections of the book where Voodoo and Zealot just pose in their swimsuits while they slap some word balloons up on the page. There's nothing sequential about this art.

Skin Trade is definitely a Boob War comic, but it looks like Image got cold feet and started drawing swimsuits on all the half-naked ladies. Editorial swimwear: it's not just for DC and Marvel. Check out the last page, below:

Has Zealot suddenly become modest? Or perhaps she was originally drawn sans bikini, oui? And are those chicks going to make out or what? Mrowr!

Why didn't Image just have Lopez draw a bunch of Zealot and Voodoo pin-ups instead of trying to tell a story? The book is one big muddled mess, an awkward fusion of words and pictures that they slapped together and had the balls to charge $5.99 for.

And I bought it. I'm reminded of an Obi-Wan Kenobi quote about following fools.

I'm not sure if I'm giving The Pain Award to Skin Trade... or to me.

Friday, June 29, 2007

My Unsolicited Opinion of Live Free or Die Hard

So I saw Live Free or Die Hard last night, or Die Hard 4.0 as it is known in international markets. I think they should have called it Multiple Choice: A) Live Free, or B) Die Hard.

That was some loco shit – gruesome deaths, helicopters strafing, outrunning fireballs, hanging over great heights, jumping on moving objects, jumping off moving objects, shooting things to make them explode, head butting, speaking ill of the dead, helicopters flying in formation, PG-13 profanity, machine guns, a command center where people explain the plot, a Joint Strike Fighter piloted by the most bloodthirsty maniac in the Air Force, collapsing freeways, parkour, annoying meta references to the first three films, lots of broken glass, elevator shaft fu, and car crashes. Oh, the crashes. There are enough car crashes in Live Free or Die Hard to fill ten normal movies.

Darn it, I kinda liked it.

By the time the movie limps into the third act, it had built up so much momentum and good will that I temporarily suspended critical thinking and just enjoyed the whole F-35 vs Mack truck scene, even if it did deeply offend my intelligence. If you see the movie, you'll know what I mean. By the end of the film you will just be shaking your head and muttering, "No fucking way." And then you'll catch yourself and feel silly for applying logic and reason to this film.

There were a couple of things that bugged me about Live Free or Die Hard. Well, a lot of things, really, but let's just pick a few.


------
"Strap in, I'm going to bitch about something totally trivial..."
-----

First of all, it's not really a Die Hard movie. I mean, the central idea is there - cop in wrong place, right time foils the plans of a group of sophisticated terrorists who are not what they appear to be - but I felt like this could have been Random Mark Wahlberg Movie instead of the fourth chapter in the franchise. The John McClane in Die Hard felt like a real guy stuck in a shitty situation, but in this one he has transformed into a frickin' OMAC* who bends physics and audience disbelief at will. The American Everyman is long gone.

Strap in, I'm going to bitch about something totally trivial:

There's a scene in Live Free or Die Hard where McClane1000 runs out of bullets so he uses his onboard cyber-targeting system to precisely launch a cop car into a cooperatively motionless helicopter. Big explosion. Hey, I'm not spoiling anything, man, it was in the trailers.

Keep in mind, this movie takes place on the East Coast:


Look in the background. Wow, is there an exact replica of L.A.'s famous Bonaventure Hotel somewhere in D.C.? You know the building because it has been in 1 million and 6 films and TV shows:

Here's the thing: I don't actually recall seeing the Bonaventure in the film. They either cleverly avoided filming the building or they just did a little CGI voodoo on the backgrounds. I'll have to watch more carefully when the movie comes out on DVD. But let's say they did manage to keep the landmark hotel out of frame - why would you include a shot of said hotel in a photo in the official press kit? Newspapers and websites everywhere are running that shot of car + helicopter + Bonaventure Hotel. They couldn't have put some effort into their official press kit photos?

It reminds me of the remake of Dawn of the Dead. Man, I loved the first twenty minutes of that movie. When DoD V 2.0 came out, I remember reading a review and looking at one of the press kit photos of a horde of zombies doing the 100 meter dash. Let me see if I can find the photo I'm looking for...

Ah, here it is:


What's wrong with this picture? Yes, aside from "real zombies don't run," smart-ass.

Well, clearly the make-up people forgot to zombify the guy in the foreground's gut, because you can see a nice pink belly button that doesn't match the rest of zombie guy's body. Do I hold this against the filmmakers? No, but I can hold it against the guys that did publicity for the movie. Did nobody notice that? Nobody? I can't be the only guy in the world who noticed that guy's gut, and I'm just some dude. People actually got paid to select that picture as part of the press package.

Let's move on. There's another scene where the Thankless Expository Actors are flying around in helicopters over the Eastern Seaboard explaining the plot and I swear -and I could be wrong- I swear they are flying over Long Beach, CA. Am I wrong? I frequently am. Can somebody back me up on that?

I get tired of seeing movies half-assedly pass one distinctive location off for another. It's like every film that is shot in Vancouver, B.C.. I love Vancouver, it's one of my favorite cities, but please Hollywood, I beg of you - stop filming movies up there. Movies that are shot in Vancouver look like they were shot in Vancouver, and no place else. Remember Rumble in the Bronx? Filmed in Vancouver. Did anyone for even a moment actually think that was shot in New York City? What about the scene where Jackie Chan is hanging off the speeding hovercraft in "New York" with beautiful snow capped mountains in the background? Please, no more Vancouver movies unless the story actually takes place in Vancouver.

Anyway, the whole point of that was I hate it when movies are sloppy about shit. I'm not losing sleep or anything, but it kind of bugs me because I feel like the filmmakers think audiences are too stupid to notice stuff like towering mountains in New York City and non-zombie bellies and the ubiquitous Bonaventure Hotel.

Oh, one last thing. The villain in Live Free or Die Hard looks like Ryan Seacrest. It was distracting. During one of the many tense walkie-talkie exchanges between McClanebot and Bad Guy, I kept expecting the guy to say, "I've got your daughter now, McClane. Seacrest OUT!"

So there you are. Not so much a review of the movie but just a lot of random, sloppily organized thoughts that pass as a review - which, considering the source material, is appropriate. Live Free or Die Hard is gloriously messy, fun entertainment. Go check it out, and come back and tell me what you thought of that crazy fucking jet vs semi scene.

Campbell out!

*O.M.A.C. = One Man Army Corps

I'm with Busey

I'd like to take a moment to wish myself a happy birthday:

DAVE: "Happy birthday, guy!"

Thanks, Dave. I also happen to share the same birthday as beloved actor Gary Busey, which would probably be terrifying if I knew more about numerology, astrology, or Bibilical prophecy. Happy birthday to Mr. Busey as well.

Shortly: an unsolicited review of the latest Die Hard film. (Because everyone gives a shit what I thought of it.)

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

GREEN ARROW #28 DC Comics, 1989

Two worlds! Two warriors! One beard!

Worlds and facial hair collide in the pages of Green Arrow #27-28 as two characters associated with writer/artist Mike Grell - Green Arrow and Grell's creation The Warlord - join forces for a Battle in Seattle! Throw in the Black Canary in full assault mode and you have yourself one macho, beardly comic.

Here's the story: Travis Morgan and his goatee are taking a break from the Inner World of Skartaris and are roaming the States on a sort of soul-searching/ass-kicking walkabout, like David Carradine in Kung Fu, only more violent and less englightened.

Morgan was born an raised in the States, but he sort of misses primeval, barbaric Skartaris. Sure, pterodactyls attacked you every five minutes or so, but the sun was always shining and loin cloths never went out of style. Ah, Skartaris...

Travis Morgan shows up in Seattle, where some armed criminal-types mistake him for Oliver Queen, aka Green Arrow. Honest mistake. He gets fed up with being attacked and tracks down Queen in the castle-like Seattle home he shares with his girlfriend, Dinah Lance, The Black Canary. (Wait a minute, isn't Black Canary blonde? Why does she have black hair and a Mia Farrow hairstyle? Dude, because she's not really blonde, she always wore a blonde wig. I can't believe I have to explain that to you. It's embarassing. Let's just keep this inside the parenthesis, okay?) Morgan rings the doorbell, Ollie answers, Morgan punches Ollie and yells at him...

Enter Dinah, annoyed. "What the hell is going on here?"

That's a good question, Dinah, but a better question you might ask would be, "What the hell am I wearing?" Did she lose a bet or something? Hey Dinah, Charlie Brown called and he wants his shirt back. That's not a good shade of Hideous Yellow on her, it doesn't go with her skin tone.


OK, so Travis Morgan starts with the sexist comments, starting a tiny fuse in Dinah's amygdala. Mr. Beard over there is about two seconds from getting his ass handed to him and he has no idea.

And then he says it. Or rather, he starts to say it:

Dinah doesn't even let him finish his sentence before she knocks the color out of him with a left cross. That's what I liked about Black Canary during the Grell Era of Green Arrow: she took no shit from anyone.

I've read lots of criticism online about nearly every writer's handling of Black Canary*, but I think she's fared a lot better than Wonder Woman or Power Girl or yeesh, Supergirl. She seems to be handled with more consistency and (dare I say it?) respect by DC creators than most of her heroine peers, and I think the foundation of Black Canary's current Major Heroine status was laid by Mike Grell during his years writing Green Arrow.

Bear with me here. Since Grell wrote her, Dinah has consistently been portrayed as compassionate, proud, tough, vulnerable, and slyly funny by writers ranging from Gail Simone to Chuck Dixon to Geoff Johns. I think Black Canary is a great character because most DC writers really love writing her, and it shows.

I don't want to turn this into a defense of how DC has handled the character - that's an argument best left to others - but I've always liked Black Canary because of how DC has handled her. She's keen. 'Nuff said, pilgrim.

Anyway, the punching stops and they sort out who everyone is and why half of Seattle's underworld wants to kill Travis Morgan. It all comes down to that damn beard.


Hold it. If Ollie says that he and Travis are about the same age and Dinah says Travis doesn't look a day over fifty, does that mean Green Arrow is about fifty years old, too? Best not to dwell on such things.

Our three characters have some coffee and Morgan answers all their questions cryptically, with a wink to the audience. Since presumably the reader knows who Travis Morgan is, Grell doesn't have Dinah or Ollie ask some obvious questions of this strange man. It's a bit too precious and nostalgic for my tastes, but the fanboy in me did enjoy seeing the two characters interact, so I can't complain.

Their coffee chat is interrupted by a horde of the aforementioned armed criminal-types who attack Ollie and Dinah's pad in a John Woo style assault. Yes, like the rugby team that attacks the house in Woo's The Killer, these guys just blindly rush the house and jump through windows and knock over garbage cans and step on cats and generally just make great targets. Green Arrow and The Warlord hop up on the roof and pick off the bad guys with .44 Magnum Power and Very Sharp Arrows.

Bonus: In this issue Black Canary kicks ass in a big way. She kicks one dude in the nuts (pictured), kicks another guy upside the head, takes his gun, and starts blowing people away. You see kids, back in the Eighties Green Arrow was a "suggested for mature readers" title where Ollie and Dinah occasionally had to kill some motherfuckers. That's how we do it in Sea Town, kids.

The art team on this storyline was Dan Jurgens on pencils with none other than Dick Giordano on inks. I think the colors kinda suck, but what do I know? The lines are pretty.

Now, I have made fun of Dan Jurgens' art before - specifically the way he has drawn particular superhero fights. But here Jurgens adapted to Grell's sparse, cinematic style of storytelling and it works great. The big battle scene is told mostly in silent square panels with no sound effects and very little dialogue - a layout like that gives pencillers with poor composition and storytelling skills nowhere to hide. Fortunately Jurgens is more than up to the challenge and the angles and choices he uses are perfect. Giardano's a great inker, and together he and Jurgens create some panels that are positively Grell-ian. Still not a fan of the coloring, though.

In the end Morgan faces off against the mob boss who ordered the hit, who is attempting to flee the scene in his Christmas green sports car. Morgan has a Very Sharp Sword. The results are predictable, but beautiful regardless:

That's how you do it in Skartaris, son - with no shirt. Travis Morgan - he lives shirtless and free.

Green Arrow #28 is a high point of wry machismo in the series and I'm pleased that I dug this one out of a particularly hard to reach long box. Good times.

*Except Gail.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Shameless self-promotion: New Cracked article!


Yo, check it out: The 7 Most Underrated Movie Henchman, my latest article for the fine folks at Cracked.com. Included on my list are such unappreciated greats as Maximillian from The Black Hole and Snake Walker (above) from The Muppet Movie.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

It's Clean Underwear Tuesday!

It's Tuesday, and that can only mean two things:

  1. Clean underwear! Each Tuesday I pull out all the stops for the sake of odor and hygiene. It's a big hit with my co-workers.

  2. It's time for another lame space-filling picture post!

Here are a few Phantom covers that I have to post because I find their radness compelling. I found them at Cover Browser, my new favorite site ever. They have a metric assload of scanned covers and you will waste an entire afternoon at work looking at them. Check it out!


The Phantom dispatches a straw hat-wearing thug with a contemptuously casual over-the-shoulder shot while his pet wolf Devil eats the guy's crotch. OWNED!


The Phantom just wants to know where his order is. He paid for the two-day delivery and it's not there, and if you can't help him then The Phantom would like to speak to your supervisor.

Last Phantom cover, I promise. This one speaks for itself, I think.


High fivin' bear! I resisted the urge to put some LOLcats text on this image. They would have been along the lines of:


  • HAY DON LEEVE ME HANGN

  • OH NOES NAZI BAER

  • SIGN SEZ STOP PLEEZ

  • GUD BYE IL ALWAYZ LUV U

  • R MY ARMPITZ SMELLINS??

  • HELLOES 2 U!!! I M FRENDLY BEAR!!!

And finally, one of those dog alien guys from The Fifth Element. I loved those guys, they were the best part of the movie. I want a movie just about a pack of those guys getting in trouble and shooting things.

Monday, June 18, 2007

THE POWER COMPANY #1 DC Comics, 2002

The Power Company was an old-fashioned superhero comic book with a new twist – this group of bickering misfit heroes was drawn together not for the common good, but to get paid in full. The Power Company, who should not be confused with The Electric Company, were corporate professionals who provide “superhuman services” to wealthy clients.

I do not use the term “old fashioned” in a pejorative sense; Power Company reminded me of DC’s great team books like New Teen Titans and Batman and the Outsiders and – of course -- Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew. One of the great things about books like those listed is that they brought together heroes with radically different backgrounds and personalities. They’re colorful, shiny. Fun.

Another old fashioned trait of The Power Company was that it had the same creative team for the entire run – writer/creator Kurt Busiek and artist Tom Grummett. OK, think there might have been a fill-in storyline drawn by the awesome Stephen Sadowski in there somewhere, but stil, in today’s age of transient artists, when four issues is a long gig on a book, it was refreshing to see some consistency and persistence of creative vision.

So of course, that shit got cancelled.


I don’t think The Power Company hit the mark every time, but overall it was a straight-up solid superhero team book. Busiek, the Continuity Master, worked a couple of third-tier characters into the line-up (Bjork*, Manhunter) but staffed his team mostly with new characters, which is always a bit of a gamble. For whatever reason, the book didn’t click, and after a few years it was axed. From my perspective, DC gave it a marketing push and an opportunity to find an audience, which is more than what most books get in today’s market. These days I bet Power Company wouldn’t have made it four months before somebody in Accounting pulled the plug.

One of the things I enjoyed about The Power Company was the diversity of characters. I didn’t really care for Bjork or Striker Z (Gawdamn, what a name!) but at least they were a departure from the standard straight-white-guy as hero paradigm. The character I found most interesting was Skyrocket, a black woman in a star-spangled power suit. She has a bit of a stick up her ass in a Hal Jordan way, but I really liked Busiek’s idea of a principled, smart, ass-kicking woman in a low-rent suit of powered armor. Skyrocket is a great character and I think she could fit into the larger DC Universe nicely.

Plus: Manhunter.


I’m a fan of all incarnations of Manhunter – the Walt Simonson version, the scary red robot version, the masked bounty hunter version, and the current all-red version. When I was a kid I read this fantastic short story called "Gotterdamerung" with art by Simonson that got me hooked on this minor character. Does anybody remember that story? If memory serves, it was a back-up in Detective Comics and it featured Manhunter in full-on Seventies kung fu bad-ass mode fighting a bunch of assassins in a huge cathedral. That story just gripped my shit and made me a Manhunter fan for life.

Overall, I liked where Busiek was going with the series and appreciated the mix of DC Universe continuity and new characters. Plus - Haunted Tank! The book had a poll for what characters readers wanted to join the team, and they overwhelmingly voted for Haunted Tank. Busiek obligingly add the Haunted Tank into the mix, which I thought was incredibly cool of him.

Tom Grummett's art work was solid, professional, tight -- the usual. Grummett has a well-deserved reputation as a reliable workhorse who can crank out quality pages month after month - see what I mean about old fashioned? This guy has probably forgotten more about page layouts and transitions and drawing action scenes than most of these slow young whippersnapper prima donna artists will ever learn.

Jeez, listen to me - I sound like an old man, don't I?

Hey, if digging professional, well-crafted comic books makes me an old man, I guess I'll accept that. Now you damn kids stop hitting baseballs into my yard!

*Seriously, Icelandic pixie/pop star Bjork is one of the stars of the book. She wears this crazy swan dress and everything. Gets thrown into Phantom Zone in issue 3.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

G-8 and His Battle Aces

I stumbled across this excellent cover gallery of a pulp series called G-8 and His Battle Aces that ran from 1934 - 1944. I have never read a G-8 adventure but now I want to, if only to find out if they really fight zombies pilots or flying Viking ghosts or if the covers are just heavily metaphorical.

Go check it out.


My favorite:

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

THE UNCANNY X-MEN #268 Marvel Comics, 1990

This issue of Uncanny X-Men is probably memorable to a lot of comic readers my age for a few things: the Jim Lee art, the decades-spanning storyline stuffed with ninjas, guest stars Black Widow and Captain America, and the fact that this issue broke the title out of a long creative rut.

It was the first halfway decent X-Men comic we had seen in like, a year, and it proved that given the right elements (Wolverine/ninja/Jim Lee/babes) the X-Men could actually be… cool.

I say “cool” in a superficial sense, because the addition of superstar artist Jim Lee to the mutant books really just added a fresh sheen of glamour and style to the tired old X-Men template. Longtime writer Chris Claremont learned to cater to Jim Lee’s strength and over the course of their collaboration on the X-Men books, Lee got to draw Rogue in a jungle bikini, Nick Fury, helicarriers and super-submarines, dinosaurs, chic new villains, and just a lot of people striking tough poses while festooned with gear and ammo and pouches and knives and shit. Lee made the X-Men books a sexy high-tech militaristic fashion show and brought a certain action figure sensibility to the comic that endures to this day. The X-Men were hot again. The word that perfectly describes the Jim Lee Era on X-Men and all its early-Nineties goodness is “radical,” and I mean that in the colloquial sense, as in “tubular” or “wicked @wesome.”

So here’s the story: during one of the most meandering and unfocused periods of X-Men history, the team had been broken up and Uncanny X-Men followed all the different X-Men and minor characters doing their own things all over the world – for like, a year and a half. This particular issue features Wolverine, Psylocke, and (shudder) Jubilee with guest star The Black Widow in a ninja-packed adventure in the modern-day Orient while flashing back to an equally ninja-infested adventure in 1941 with young Captain America and young Logan (Wolverine). That’s all you need to know.

The three X-Men save The Black Widow from an army of ninja from Marvel's preeminent ninja sect, The Hand. They color The Black Widow's suit with zipatone for the entire issue, and it's a great effect. Plus, I'm a fan of the Widow's short-hair big-collar grey-suit look.

Man, there are a lot of ninjas in this book. You have to understand, back in 1990, we weren’t sick of ninjas yet, not by a long shot. Don't judge us, we were young.

So the story alternates every few pages between the Widow storyline and the 1941 storyline, when Captain America and Wolverine meet for the first time. I have to say, from a pure fanboy perspective, Jim Lee draws a fantastic Captain America.

Check that out over there, plunging into a bunch of ninja blades like a star-spangled bird of prey! CAAAW!!! He looks bad-ass, you have to admit.

Claremont's writing style is so distinctive that you never forget you're reading an X-Men book, even with the new paint job. Here's a typically wordy panel where Jubilee spies on Wolverine and Black Widow having sex:

I'm just joking, kids. They weren't having sex. Wolverine doesn't have a penis.

This story may not have sex, but it's got lots of foxy superheroines and lots of violence and lots of Claremontisms:


Is Wolverine shooting somebody with heat vision in that panel? That would be so cool.

So let's see - Jim Lee art, ninjas, zipatone costumes, Claremontian dialogue, Captain America... It was 1990. How could I not love this comic?

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

GUNTHERFEST '07



Hola hola.

Dave's Long Box is a grudging participant in Guntherfest '07 and is not responsible for any seizures, angst, or psychological damage the viewer may incur whilst watching the video.

I wouldn't describe the Gunther video as "safe for work" - it's not that the content is obscene, it's just that you'd look like an utter freak if the girl from accounting walks by when you're watching this at your desk. It's not worth it, dude.

Monday, June 11, 2007

FANTASTIC FOUR #243 Marvel Comics, 1982

Look at that. Look at that frickin' cover. The cover alone is worth the price of the comic - such is its awesomeness.

I refer of course to John Byrne's awesome cover to Fantastic Four #243, which is in itself an awesome, awesome comic book.


There, I just used up my annual allotment of the word "awesome" and it's only June. From this point forward I shall not use the word "awesome" in a colloquial way. Actually, from this point forward, because I just said "awesome" in the last sentence. Damn it! No more "@wesome" from now on. Starting now.

What is the comic about? Look at the frickin' cover, it's about a bunch of heroes attacking frickin' Galactus, the Eater of Earths! 'Nuff said, pilgrim!


In the comic, the Fantastic Four and friends do indeed battle Galactus, that giant purple planet eater who wanders the cosmos destroying random planets. John Byrne wrote and drew this intergalactic beat down wherein the FF and select Avengers battle a giant Galactus on the streets of New York City.

Oh, did I mention --?


NEW YORK CITY IS TOTALLY FLOATING IN SPACE!


I'm not even going to explain that, I'm just going to let you trip out.

There's a great fight between a severely weakened Galactus and all the heroes who were stuck in Manhattan when it went spacebound in a big way. Thor damn near takes Galactus's head clean off with a shot from that kooky hammer of his. Behold:



Even when he's not at the top of his game, Galactus is still more than a match for a handful of heroes. When shit goes wrong, sometime you gotta bring in Dr. Strange to fix things. Hey, it works for Brian Bendis! Ba-dum dum! Byrne draws a cool neo-Ditko version of Dr. Strange in this issue.

Anyway, the Sorceror Supreme steps up to bat and just takes Galactus out with a Dio salute:



After Reed and The Thing take out a staggered Galactus with a crazy slingshot move, Dr. Strange smugly explains that he cast a spell that showed Galactus his greatest fear and he lost his shit. What did Dr. Strange show Galactus that freaked him out so much? What is the greatest fear of the Chower of Worlds? The Borg? Sharks? Comets? Mine would be watching the 1993 season of Boy Meets World over and over and over while dingos endlessly eat my innards.

Of course, the heroes prevail over Galactus, but wait. He's sick. Maybe he's got a thorn in his paw or something that's been making him grouchy. Aww, he needs our help...

Save Galactus?!?!! Wha-HUH?!! That's 100% old school Reed Richards right there.
The classic model of Reed Richards (depicted here) is a personality based on relentless curiousity and moral absolutism - something we haven't seen a lot of in some recent appearances of the character like Civil War. Here, Reed sees it as his moral duty is to save Galactus, even if it is inconvenient or inexpedient - and it's a decision that will cost him. That's the Reed Richards I dig.

The great thing about this issue and Byrne's FF run in general is the affection/reverance Byrne has for the real classic Lee/Kirby comics. Plus, the art was tight. Growing up, Byrne's work during this period really defined superhero comics for me - I just ate his stuff up, and I think it holds up remarkably well today.

This comic has the versions of Reed Richards and John Byrne that I most dig - I can pretend that the other stuff doesn't exist as long as I have comics like Fantastic Four #243. Contented sigh.