I had the best comic-book-geek weekend. First I went to “StapleCon“, a convention here in central Texas for independent comic book publishers, where I met some outstanding talents working to make their dreams come true. It was as inspirational as it was costly, since of course I couldn’t resist buying one of everything. Plus, I got a lead on a new gig just in case this UGO thing doesn’t work out:

I also got a book signed by Mike Baron, which was pretty cool. But that wasn’t the end of my comic-buying adventure, my friends, oh no! For I still had money in my account, and there’s nothing more dangerous than a geek with disposable income. So after the convention, my friend and I headed to Half Price Books to trade in a huge stack of old sci-fi novels that had been gathering dust. I put my box on the counter, and spied from the corner of my eye a gigantic stack of comics being bagged by one of the Book Dudes.

“Excuse me,” I said politely, “but can those be purchased now or do I need to wait until you’ve processed them all?”

“You can look through the bagged ones, they’re in lots of ten for a dollar,” he said.

“A dollar apiece?” I replied, thinking that wasn’t a bad price, since on the top of one stack was a Number 1 issue of “Cadillacs and Dinosaurs”, one of my all time favorite comics.

“No, a dollar for the whole stack of ten,” he corrected me.

Blink. Hang on, ten for a dollar that’s … no, wait, don’t tell me … “Hey Dave,” I finally said to my math-major friend, “how much is that apiece?”

Voice heavy with despair for the future of our math-illiterate nation, he said “That’d be ten cents apiece, Einstein.”

My eyes goggled at the large stack already bagged, and the even larger stack still waiting to be processed. “I’ll take ‘em all!” I heard myself say.

“Even the ones I haven’t done yet?” the Book Dude said. At my nod, his face beamed. “You’re my new favorite customer!”

And so, awash in the glow of geek gone wild, I returned triumphantly to my home with this enormous box of comic books:

The “Bone” and “Concrete” collections didn’t come with it, those were separate. But still, that’s a big stack! Unfortunately my wife wasn’t quite as impressed with my geeky haul as I was. “Didn’t we just sell a ton of books to make more shelf space?” she asked shrewdly.

Instantly my brain went into husband overdrive. Superman can have his super-speed and ice-breath, I’ll take quick thinking any day of the week. It’s the one indispensable survival tool for any married man. “Yes, but these … aaaahh …. these are for … um … work! Yes, work, that’s it!”

“You mean the same way it’s for work when you stare at good looking women, so you can ‘draw the human form better’?”

“Exactly!”

So as you can see, I had a problem. A gigantic, enormous, profound, disturbingly massive stack of comic books that I need to figure out some sort of work-related use for. And so, starting tomorrow, I will be introducing a new feature here on the HeroMachine Blog — Mashup Mondays. Each week I will take one panel from each of the ten books in the randomly collected bags. I will try to assemble those panels into an order that almost seems like a story. It may suck, it may be funny, it may accidentally unlock the secrets of the multiverse, I don’t know. But it will definitely make it seem like those books are, in fact, needed for work, which is all this husband is really looking for at this point.

If I can take pride in one thing about this blog, it’s my documentation of the ability of comic book creators to find inspiration in the objects lying around their drawing tables, from Ramen to calculators. And also in showing how various characters are actually based on beer. And in my math skills, because that’s more than one thing, despite my opening sentence. I blame all the alcohol and Ramen on my desk.

Nonetheless, I think you’ll agree that “Captain Fear”:

is nothing more than the non-drunken brother of another, more famous Captain, who has been known to actually make people fearless in barrooms across this great nation:

Clones, twins, or just two guys who have the same tailor? I report, you decide!

(Captain Fear image and character ©1985, DC Comics, Inc. “Who’s Who” Volume 4. Captain Morgan image and character ©2007, Captain Morgan Rum Co.)

Just like a drummer can create a wide range of sounds by hitting different varieties of the same instrument with a stick, super-heroes can do the same by pounding on different parts of an enemy’s body with varying limbs. For instance, if you snap a demon’s spine with your hand, you get “Fwak-tchh”, but doing it with your foot gives you “Fruntsh”:

Making beautiful music like this isn’t as simple as it seems from the outside; you’ve got to know the acoustic properties of a whole slew of enemies’ body parts, and how they interact with your own arsenal of weapons. I’m pretty sure the characters in “Battle Tide II” (Deathstrike Headsmasher and Crushnuts Bootiewhooper, or something like that) had to take, like, at least a semester of music appreciation before they were allowed into Battle, much less Battle II.

(Images ©1993, Marvel Comics UK Ltd., “Battle Tide II”)

I like a villain who starts out cold and refreshing, and finishes smooth. A villain who looks great as-is, but even better with a slice of lime. A villain you can kick back on the beach watching the sun go down with while swaying in a hammock. A villain like Dos Equis (”That’s DOCTOR Double X to you, pal!”):

My favorite part of this beer-themed villain is that the actual Double X is an invisible energy being given life when the original Single X went nutso. Invisible friends? Check. Maniacal leer? Check. Insanity? Check. Yeah, this guy is definitely based on beer. Other super powers? Powerful projectile vomiting, devastatingly inappropriate remarks to nubile coeds, and the ability to crash on anyone’s couch at a moment’s notice.

(Character and image ©1985, DC Comics, Inc., from “Who’s Who” volume VI.)

I’ve loved comic books since I first learned to read, and part of what motivates me to keep working on HeroMachine is the hope that in some way I am helping to keep that same love alive in others. I believe comics as an artistic medium is the equal to any of the arts, from traditional paint on canvas to sculpture to written fiction. The combination of images and words juxtaposed in sequential order on the page is a powerful one, uniquely capable of bringing ideas to life. Of course the majority of what we in America enjoy in our version of comics is the boot-to-the-face, giant mutated apes fighting Nazis in zeppelins over the skies of New York variety, and I’m fine with that.

But the medium is capable of much more, capable of not only entertaining us but of serving as a vehicle for powerful events and emotions. I can’t count the number of people I’ve known who hated reading before they picked up their first comic book. I’m not ashamed to admit that comic books have shaped a lot of who I am and how I think; I still cherish an old “Captain America” issue where Cap talks about how the United States isn’t a piece of cloth or a symbol to wave around, it’s an ideal, a set of principles, and the people who are willing to hold to them no matter what.

So I was delighted to read this New York Times article about how a comic book about the Holocaust is helping a new generation of Germans open a dialog about that awful chapter in their (and our) history, enabling people to talk about it in a new, open way that was not possible before. Comics have the power to change hearts and minds, and it frustrates me sometimes that in America, they are still largely regarded as just “kid stuff”. Our regard for the medium has evolved tremendously since I was young — a lot of college courses now incorporate graphic novels — but I’d love to see them used seriously in all age groups, as in this example from Germany.

Not that I’m giving up my face-kicking giant mutant gorilla Nazi-fighting pulp any time soon, mind you, but there’s definitely room for both kinds of comics in our culture!

In the Marvel Universe, major companies sometimes contract with various super-powered individuals to represent them (i.e.Tony Stark and Iron Man). I think I found the guy on Hugh Heffner’s payroll:

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and bet that his name will eventually be revealed as “Richard Cranium”.

(Image and character ©1989, Marvel Comics, “The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, Update ‘89″.)

I hate feet. They’re ugly, they smell bad, and they’re poorly designed. The best you can say about feet is that at least they’re stuck way down at the end of our bodies so we don’t have to think about them very often. But even I don’t hate feet as much as Mister Sinister must, because he is wearing two sets of boots to cover them up:

I’m not a fan of flaring hip-boots on male characters in general, but maybe that’s just because I’m from Texas, where our boots end at mid-calf. But if you’re going to wear them, what in the name of all that’s good and right are you doing with yet another pair of flaring boots that end at your ankle? It’s just weird, and that’s saying something when you’re talking about a white-faced, lipstick-wearing, double-starred on head and chest guy with a cloak straight out of La Cage Aux Folles. Seriously, getting attacked by Mr. Sinister must feel like getting mugged by a half-exploded pinata. And that’s before he kicks your butt with all four boots.

(Image and character ©1989, Marvel Comics, “The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, Update ‘89″.)

One of the objectives for the HeroMachine Expansion was to provide a way to get the figure’s hands in different positions. It always bothered me that even when holding a gun, when you’d expect a trigger finger to be extended, the character still was shown with a fist. I also wanted you to be able to show the hands splayed, as if they were getting ready to throw firebolts or whatnot. To that end, I introduced a skin with no hands at all, so you could affix other items to the end of the forearm without having to worry about covering up the clenched fist that’s there by default on the body. It’s the last item in the “Skin-Expansion1″ set, and it looks like this:

To go along with this skin, the Right/Left Hand Expansion 1 sets also contain items that have hands integrated into them, so they look more natural. You’ll find a hand holding a pipe, some cards, a protester’s sign, a hand with the index finger in trigger position, and more. I put together an image that uses the “no hands” skin and two of the integrated hand-held items to give you an example of how they might work together:

Since the basic pose can’t change (too many items depend on its exact positioning), shifting the hands around is a good way to add a bit of life and differentiation to your character. If you find yourself with one of these integrated items in the right hand, but nothing in the left but a stump (or vice versa), you can also choose a glove that will do as a stand in if you prefer not to use the blank one provided in the expansion component set.

I actually met X-Files replacement Annabeth Gish once when she was in Texas working on the TV movie “True Women”. She seemed like a very nice lady, and I suspect she would not be pleased to know that in comics, her name is the sound a cyborg’s head makes as it’s punched off its neck by Brad Pitt (if he were a giant other-worldly Hulk rip-off):

I wonder what other celebrity last names are matched with shocking and inappropriate sound effects? Perhaps one day we will see OnomontoPOWia references like “JOLIE!” as an ill-fated henchman gets impaled. “CLOONIE!” might be the sound of a gigantic Nazi-style zeppelin meets Captain Death’s grenade launcher. I’m sure there are others, but for now I feel like I’ve been Gished and can’t think of what they might be.

(Image and character © 1993, Dale Keown.)

I don’t have anything bad to say about this costume, but I would pay cash money for his catch phrase to be “Watch out, boys, Mento the Fresh Maker is here!”

I hope Mento soon joins up with his villainous partners “Snicker the Satisfier”, muscle-bound “Altoid the Curiously Strong”, and the crazy-making mentalist “Almond Joy” (because sometimes you feel like a nut … ) at their secret lair, “The Candy Rack”.

(Image and character ©1985, DC Comics, Inc., “Who’s Who” Volume XV.)