If this is Keith Giffen’s adorable, zany Ambush Bug:

Then is this Ambush Bug on drugs?

Maybe Ambush Bug after not getting a good night’s sleep? Too much Ambien?

Close.

Actually that’s “Bedbug”, a throwaway villain from the Topps version of “Jack Kirby’s Silver Star”. He’s bursting through the wall there with “Slammazon”, Gasbag, and a couple of other equally insane characters. And yes, it’s ever bit as awesome as it sounds. Sometimes it’s not a knockoff, it’s an archetype. And as I learned from Joseph Campbell, archetypes is cool.

I should note before starting this review that Rob Rogers, the author of “Devil’s Cape” (the recent release from Wizards of the Coast’s Discovery line), is a friend of mine. Plus, he used my last name for one of the companies briefly mentioned in the background, which clearly is the mark of a genius. Or perhaps just someone who knows that Hebert is one of the most common surnames in the book’s setting of Louisiana, take your pick.

Now that I’m fully disclosed (in violation of several restraining orders, let me add), here’s your short-version review:

This book is awesome.

And I don’t mean in the “Guy Gardner was an awesome Green Lantern” kind of not-really-that-awesome, but “Batman kicking the crap out of Superman in Dark Knight Returns” awesome. In other words, it’s really, really good. What I do with HeroMachine is to help bring super-heroes to life visually. Rob Rogers does the same thing with “Devil’s Cape” using nothing but words, and yet his characters pulse just as vividly in my mind as anything I’ve ever drawn. This is a hugely satisfying, truly mature, profoundly good book, which just happens to revolve around the lives of super-powered individuals. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Read on for a much more complete (and much longer) bout of gushing.

(more…)

From the pages of “Jack Kirby’s Secret City” comes the ferocious General Ordiz and his … tape recorder?

Seriously, his shtick is that has a tape recorder strapped to his chest with a long wired microphone thingie in his hand. At least I sure hope that’s a microphone, because the other thing it looks like, well, it’s not really appropriate for a family-oriented blog. It would, however, be very scary to see one wielded by your opponent.

I don’t have any issues of the saga wherein General Ordiz takes any sort of direct action, but I’ll bet his trademark Witty Repartee is something like “Any last words?” right before he beats the snot out of his enemy with his club/microphone/deviant toy.

(Image ©1993, Jack Kirby.)

This may be the greatest bad super of all time. Or the baddest great super, I can’t decide.

How can you not love a giant, inflatable guy named “Gasbag” whose power is to belch out various noxious clouds, accompanied by an explosive FRAAAPPP? I mean, we’re all either working alongside or related to someone exactly like this; let’s just be thankful the real life versions don’t actually wear spandex, or they wouldn’t be the only ones hurling at supersonic velocities.

I wouldn’t call this a “bad super costume” necessarily (although I do wonder why her boots are different sizes and how in the name of all that’s spandex her breasts don’t come flying out of those metal plate cups), but I am posting it here because I love her name so much.

Slammazon. It just rolls off the tongue, dripping with promise of strong-woman, face-punching, metal-armed awesomeosity. No outfit could measure up to a name that great, so I give Kirby a pass on this one — she looks good, but according to the laws of physics (or meteorology, I can never remember which) it’s literally impossible to design a uniform as glorious as that moniker.

The gigantic pink “SHBOOM” accompanying her entrance is spot-on, though, the only way it could be better is if instead of “SHBOOM” it said (in the same font and color) “SLAMMAZON!”. Because a name that good deserves to be both a character and a sound effect.