Yearly Archives: 2013

Good morning! It's Sunday, and that means Open Critique Day.

Share your artwork in the comments section below. I, and anyone else who cares to, will offer our opinions on everything that gets posted during the day.

Please note that the forum rules apply here. That means no nudity, no profanity, no copyrighted characters or characters from copyrighted settings.

Gargoyles!

This week’s challenge is to create a kick a** gargoyle. Could be a traditional stone figure, a creature come to life, scary, funny…whatever you got!

You only get one entry so spread those creative wings and fly!

All entries must be in JPG or PNG form (BMPs are too big), posted to a publicly accessible website (like the HeroMachine forums, ImageShack, PhotoBucket, or whatever);

• Entries must be made as a comment or comments to this post, containing a link directly to the image and the character name;
• The image must be new and designed specifically for the Pop Quiz;
• Please name your files as [your name]-[character name].[file extension] before you upload it. So DiCicatriz, for instance, would save his “Bayou Belle” character image as DiCicatriz-BayouBelle.png.
• Please make the link go directly to the image (like this) and not to a hosting jump page (like this). See this post on how to get the direct link for most sites.

Contest closes Sunday, June 2 at 6:00pm eastern.

Comic book and superhero fans are a tough bunch. Few characters when brought to life on screen are as closely scrutinized, or widely criticized, as when an iconic comic book character makes the leap to the silver screen.

Let’s face it…there have been many disappointments.

As an ardent Bat-fan my life long goal is to slap Joel Schumacher as I repeatedly shout “Nipples? Nipples? Nipples? Ok, so it was actually the designer’s idea, but Joel had to approve it…and he did…otherwise no nipples.

But few costume designers have felt the wrath of comic book fans more than Louise Mingenbach.

Her credits include The Usual Suspects, Superman Returns, The Hangover and GI Joe: Retaliation. But in 2000 she enraged scores of X-Men fans when the first of the Bryan Singer series was released.

For decades fans thought they knew what the Xmen looked like. You know, blue, yellow, the mandatory X. But Mingenbach had a much different take on these beloved characters. Blue and yellow was replaced with black leather and the whole team took on a tougher, and some would argue much more adult, look.

I was one of a dozen or so stitchers hired for this film when it was filming in and around the GTA and Hamilton, Ontario. While I was aware of Xmen, I was at the time not what one would consider a fan, but I knew, or thought I knew, what we were going to be producing. While most of the stitchers just took the sketches and got on with it, another stitcher – Thomas – and I sat kind of dumb founded before getting down to work. Early on in the process we sat down for lunch.

”What are you working on?” he asked.

“Wolverine” I answered. “He looks like a really well dressed biker. What about you?”

“Storm. Kinda dominatrix-ish”

And the rest of the crew was equally dumb-founded. I did not think it was particularly bad...just different...and kind of lifeless.

Recently it was announced that Mingenbach will return to the X fold as costume designer when Singer directs X-Men: Days of Future Past which is slated to open in July 2014. While fans online praised the return of Singer, the return of Mingenbach was greeted with less…lets call it enthusiasm…and Singer knew it.

He recently Tweeted: “For those of you wondering… no leather suits.”

What are your thoughts? Did she get it right re-imagining these iconic characters? Do you prefer the look of X-Men: First Class? Bat-Nipples?  Which movies got it right? Which got it wrong?

Sound off!

Yup, I'm gonna talk about Aquaman this week. And, if you are a proper comics fan you'll understand why.

Now, I'm not a huge Aquaman fan, but I think that old Arthur Curry has taken quite a kicking over the years from pretty much anyone and everyone for being useless, his main power being he can 'talk to fish' (we'll get to that later) and his costume choices, but I think this is quite unfair. Alright the costume isn't great, but at least he never thought it was a good idea to walk around with his underwear on the outside as others of his generation of heroes have been wont to do. Of course we all know he doesn't talk to fish, he telepathically nudges them in the right direction, but ok, it is a lame power, until he gets a great white to eat you and anyway, he has lot more powers than that, he's super-strong, with super-reflexes, endurance, senses and healing (just like, if to a lesser extent than, a certain super-popular yellow clad short-arse only without the bad temper and metal claws). And as for him being useless........

Lets just count back what this guy has gone through over his time at DC comics. His people tried to kill him, only to switch from wanting him dead to wanting him to be king and back again like a yo-yo, yet he still protects them (like Batman, Spider-Man etc.), he was the first major superhero to get married (a full two years before Barry Allen tied the knot, 14 (or 32 depending on continuity) years before Superman, 24 years before Spider-Man and an infinity before Batman), his brother has tried to kill him and his parents are both dead (beat that Bruce Wayne), he has one of the greatest super-villains in Black Manta, his son has been murdered by his aforementioned arch-enemy, yet he's never fully taken his revenge, always upholding his principles. He's lost his hand and carried on fighting (Green Arrow decided he'd rather die than lose his hand) and of course he's died, been resurrected as a zombie black lantern, killed his former sidekick and tried to rip out his wife's heart before seeing her die in front of him as soon as he is returned to life and helping to resurrect her. And that's not to mention that HE, not Superman or Batman, was a founding member of the Justice League.

Personally, I blame Super Friends.

So, this week's question is a two parter. I've had my say, but what do you think of Aquaman, rubbish or not? And if not, who should take his place as the worst mainstream superhero? (I mean a hero that someone on the street may have heard of, not 3D Man or any other obscure Marvel character from the later 70's)