You're Going to Die VI

If you’re just tuning in, our goal is to write our own Choose Your Own Adventure where every choice is twofold, with one leading to further adventure and the other to a gruesome death. Here were our choices from last week:

Oh, you’re going to tell daddy over my dead body! You spring into action, grabbing a handful of those cheap office pens, just in case you need to throw stuff at him. You begin to notice your age as you pant towards the brat, but you’ll be damned if that stops you! You whip a pen at him, missing completely (unless you were actually aiming at Sue with the lazy eye from accounting, but you know you weren’t).

He looks back to see if that was you, makes an obscene gesture, and picks up the pace. If you don’t do something soon, you’ll have to listen to your boss lecture you for 15 minutes about conducting yourself in the office! 15 friggin minutes!!! You take every pen in hand, and throw them with all your might. Nailed him!

He turns around again, probably to make some stupid remark, when he runs right past his dad’s office, and down a stairwell. You hear him make a large amount of shrieks and shrills, as any annoying child is prone to do when they’re making a big deal out of some broken bones. Oh wait, this is bad! Now he’s going to tell his dad you made him fall! Unless he broke his mouth. Can you break a mouth? You’re not sure, but you bet that kid just found out.

Do you:
A – Check on the poor boy with the possibly broken mouth?
B – Beat him to his dad, and make up a story about him screwing around?

Such unchecked violence! At this rate we could be on cable. We had some great entries, seriously well written. I loved the Zombie approach from borntobealoser, but since we did such an adventure with "Zombocalypse Now", I thought we should try something different. Thus, we're going with logosgal's!

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"My Humiliation" is a weird name for a bull

(From "Baffling Mysteries" number 9, 1952.)

Phantom of the 52

Phantom of the 52

By: Andrew Hines

For as long as I can remember, the Phantom Stranger has been the greatest mystery of the DCU. Who is he? Where does he come from? How does he know so much about the DC(n)U? Is he really as neutral as he claims to be or is he a villain biding his time? These were actual questions from my 10 year old brain the first time I saw him in Adventures of Superman #548, "A Stranger Stalks Metropolis."  Unfortunately this was during the height of the "electric Superman" period where DC was all into the digital age and then some. This issue reminds us of how well Public Domain characters can be utilized for comics.

Co-publisher, Dan Didio has given life to The Phantom Stranger. He begins without even using the character's name though still telling us exactly who we're dealing with through some awesome writing. With time, I can see him being a truly integral part of the DCnU. It's a great intro issue and I hope to see Didio do more in there future. I'll admit, I don't typically follow Didio's work as much as I do other writers', so this is a treat. I think he did a good job with a pretty obscure character, given that he has more creative wiggle room. Of course, being one of the top bosses doesn't hurt.

Brent Anderson's pencils combined with the inks and colors from Scott Hanna and Jeremy Cox, respectively, gave us some decent art to go with a good story. There are good scenes and decent effects. Most notably, the thing that really caught my eye was Anderson's decision to literally draw outside the lines. Several pages show effects that reach beyond the edge of the panels and flow across the page. For a title such as this, it's a great decision. The panel layout works as well, as there are places, such as pages 8, 24 and 25 where the panels, or lack thereof work best for the visual layout.

In all, it's a good issue that deserves a "B". I don't want to set the bar too high on an origin story and make the rest of the run look bad. If you want to know more about the classic character, go to the character's page at http://www.comicvine.com/phantom-stranger/29-3298/.

Comic Book Events: Do We Need Them?

Comic Book Events: Do We need Them?

In the last 10 years there seem to have been very few events worthy of actually being events. Blackest Night is the latest big event to really make a lasting mark on a comic book universe. Furthermore, it's the only one that I believe fans don't hate outright for taking over the comics. I'm not even bothering with Avengers vs X-Men, since it just seems to be filler for Marvel at this point. The House of Ideas is running out of them, clearly. Speaking of which, House of M seems to have been swept under the rug. Only Messiah War, Age of Apocalypse and the full Phoenix Saga have had a truly lasting impact on the Marvel Universe.

The only time in probably the last 30 years that an event has been so sweeping and ended up completely re-shaping that company's universe as a whole was DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985). The Flash, Barry Allen died during the event and has probably been the only "real" death in comic book history, or at least the longest-lasting. It shaped the other characters relationships as he was the first to die and not come right back from it. (The fact that I'm primarily referencing DC events should come as no surprise.) Of course, he was brought back after 22 years in the events of Final Crisis (2008). Then, the biggest game-changing event in comics became Flashpoint, which the publishers ended up using as a segue into DC's New 52.

In my mind, unless it really does re-shape the universe the characters live in or leads to some larger story that does, we really don't need yearly events in comics. If we have to live through one, make it a Crisis on Infinite Earths or Phoenix Saga. We don't need to see another Civil War and then watch everything go back to normal a few months later.

With that said, what are your thoughts on comic events? Do you have a favorite (in any company) or one that you could live without?

 

"Feral" means "Big Hair"

Marvel can teach us many things about the wonderful world of being feral:

  1. Metal is out, because feral animals don't smelt.
  2. Claws come out from between the fingers, not from the tops of the hands, because that's how it happens in nature. To feral things.
  3. No clothing. I mean, when was the last time you saw a beaver in a yellow spandex costume? No, wait, don't answer that.
  4. Except for loin cloths. Loin cloths reek with feral-ness.
  5. Hair takes on the shape of whatever hat you would be wearing if you were not feral. Only more so. Thus we have the ten-gallon-hat shaped pit viper of the lower Colorado River Valley. It's both feral and an excellent rancher.
  6. Being feral means your lower teeth are enormous.
  7. Feral things drool. A lot.
  8. Going feral can turn your deltoids into mushroom caps. So don't do it, kids.

I think we can all be thankful that comics still has so much to teach us. Thank you, comics!

Note to DC Comics: Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons figured this out TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS AGO.

(via Steve Bunche.)

META: HM3 ads

I just updated the HeroMachine 3 app page to support Google Ads. It seems to work but the code is weirding me out, so if you see anything not behaving correctly, please let me know.

I believe I have it set up where if you go to the widescreen view, the ad disappears so you can see the entire canvas, and then it comes back when you return to the default. Again, if not, holler.

Movie Iron Man vs. Movie Batman. Who wins?

Our Versus poll today comes from Facebook commenter James Wickenden, and pits the two most iconic comic book movie characters against each other. Both are multi-billionaire inventor/crusaders who employ clever technological goodies in their fight against crime. So which would win in a head-to-head battle?

It's clear that the Iron Man armor employs a superior battery of weapons and defensive capabilities. It's essentially a one-man army corps. Batman's tech in the movies is effective, but lacks the raw firepower Stark Enterprises brings to bear. So from the standpoint of raw power, I give the edge to Iron Man.

Whenever we have a poll involving Batman, the conversation inevitably turns to "Will he have time to prepare", with the assumption being that if the answer is "yes", the result is "Batman wins". But the movie Batman doesn't seem to have the same supernatural ability as the comic book version -- he gets outthought and outfought by Bane up until the bitter end, while movie Stark seems to always be the one who's one step ahead of the game.

The caveat to that is that in the "Avengers" movie, Tony had to rely on Hawkeye's tactical abilities to swing the tide of combat. I think movie Batman would be at least equal to movie Hawkeye, so in combat tactical ability, I'd go with Bats.

For me, the tiebreaker comes down to the fact that Batman's girlfriend get killed, while Iron Man manages to hang on to Pepper Pots through three movies now. That's pretty good. So I'd vote for movie Iron Man if it were me, but I'm curious as to which way you'd go, and why. So please comment and tell us your thinking!

[polldaddy poll="6510336"]

META: I get spam

Maybe if you stopped associating with Nazis you'd be in a better mood.

I'm no witch and I'm pretty sure *I* can interpret it …

(From "Baffling Mysteries" number 9, 1952.)