Category Archives: Randomosity

With many thanks to the ever-awesome Hammerknight, here are two more fun puzzles to help you while away your hangover tomorrow, and to prepare for the getting of your hangover today. Print them out and have fun! (As usual, click on each to get a larger, more printable version.)

And in super-small size so as to not spoil them, after the jump is your answer key.

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Hammerknight was kind enough to put together a nifty crossword puzzle to help you pass the time this holiday when family time crosses over from warm and endearing to homicide-inducing and you need to just get away for a few minutes. Print it for handy use later while pretending to gaze admiringly at the "Twisted Sister" sweat shirt your grandmother just gave you because she's so hip!

(Click for the larger, printable size.)

Here's your answer key, in unreadable small size so we don't spoil the challenge (click it for the viewable size):

Merry Christmas to all of you celebrating it today! And special holiday thanks to Hammerknight for taking the time to put this together for our collective amusement.

After the discovery of Bulletdog, aka Greatest Super Pet Ever, I started looking into what other super-hero comic book pets themed after their human companion have been handed down through the ages.

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If you get the chance, head on over to Comics Alliance to read Chris Sims' take-by-take breakdown of great early Nineties video of Stan Lee interviewing Rob Liefeld. Chris is a very funny writer and the whole article is a quick and amusing read. Choice bits include:

3:09 - We've got to admit, there's something utterly hypnotic about watching Rob Liefeld draw pouches and armbands on a guy, and it's only made better by the pure joy in his voice when he explains to Stan that they're full of explosive boomerangs.

5:04 - As Liefeld rushes to finish the drawing on Stan's deadline, Stan starts joking about how his suggestion to add spikes makes Cross a collaboration, and starts referring to him as "my character" and "our creation." He's laughing. Rob's laughing. Steve Ditko is gritting his teeth.

Chris also makes a very telling serious point, though:

0:25 - This is quite possibly the most mind-blowing moment of the video, as at this point, it comes out that the latest issue of "X-Force" had sold OVER FIVE MILLION COPIES. Just to give you an idea, Diamond Comic Distributors' best-selling comic for July 2009 was "Captain America Reborn" #1, which came in just under 200,000.

Comics were big, huge, ginormous, incredibly big business. Like the real estate market, some of that was artificially inflated by speculating investors buying many copies of each big issue, but still, the industry today is a fractured, tiny portion of what it was then. Five million copies of X-Force, folks, that's a lot of paper being pushed to the public.

You can view the video on YouTube if you like. Chris' regular site is "The Invincible Super-Blog" and is a daily must-read for me, the guy's a hoot.

The Onion AV Club has a great article up featuring their list of the most influential comics artists of all time. It's a great introduction to guys you younger folk might not have heard of, but who nonetheless have influenced the comics and cartoons you love. Even old-timers like me can learn from it, too.

Plus, you gotta love a guy who can put together a paragraph like this:

He had legions of fans, even though he couldn’t actually draw; when he—along with Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, and other controversial artists—helped form the creator-owned Image Comics in 1992, the world learned that he couldn’t write, either. Since then, it’s been revealed that he can’t do much of anything else. Still, there’s no denying that the guy owned the 1990s. It was a strange decade.

Three guesses who that's about, and the last two don't count. Anyway, check it out, it's a great article. And if you think someone was left off the list who ought to be included (Frank Miller, John Buscema, etc.) let 'er rip in the comments.

Yeah, it turns out I have no idea what "Friday Hero Dissection" means, which is what I am supposed to be doing today. So instead I am going to post this insanely cute picture of this kid who, let's be honest, could be any one of us when we were younger, and by younger I mean "at any time in the last six months":

One heck of a costume

Be prepared to set your Cuteness Deflector Shields to Ten if you click through to MyFirstFail.com, folks. You've been warned.

I gotta come up with something else to do on Fridays, I'm drawing a blank here. Suggestions welcome, consider this an open thread, yadda yadda yadda.

Matt Yglesias posted a link to this discussion over mutant economics at "Ecocomics", a blog I frankly never heard of before, and I got a good laugh out of it:

Tragically, most mutants use their powers to either save the world or terrorize it. At least this is the popular depiction in Marvel Comics. Imagine what Magneto could do if he worked in construction. For one thing, all of those New York City public works project would have their completion dates moved up from 2018 to roughly five minutes from now. But instead, he spends his time sinking Russian submarines and making asteroid bases to live in. For the love of God, the man has the power to build himself a high-tech home in space. He could repair the Hubbell telescope with no trouble whatsoever.

It's actually a really good thought experiment. I don't know how interesting a comic built along these lines would be to read -- intense labor union discussions with management about the impact of Bob the Mutant Builder on the new collective bargaining agreement aren't inherently visually appealing -- but the fact is that a) most people, mutant or otherwise, would rather live quiet lives of desperation rather than trying to either save or destroy the world, and b) mutie's gotta EAT, knowwhatImsayin? Your average non-Magneto mutant needs to put bread on the table and pay for custom Nikes to fit over his three-toed feet, and for that you need a J-O-B. Why flip burgers at McDonald's when you could instead use your heat-vision power to be the best welder in the state, with a salary to match?

Anyway, the column was that rare intersection of thoughtful and comics so I thought I'd share it with you all.

With a tip-o-the-hat to (of all things) Radley Balko's libertarian "The Agitator", here's a great list of other comic series you might like if you enjoyed "Watchmen".