R.I.P Flo Steinberg

Yesterday, comic book publisher Flo Steinberg died of complications following a aneurysm of the brain and lung cancer. She was 78.

Now, a lot of people won't know who Flo Steinberg is and that is a shame. Not only was she the publisher of one of the first independant comics (Big Apple Comix) since the introduction of the Comics Code Authority and one of the leading women in the industry, her importance goes much deeper than that. She was a member of Marvel's famous Bullpen during the company's renascence during the 1960's. In fact, when she first started at the company, she was one of only two full time employees of the company alongside Stan Lee, too whom she served as secretary. She oversaw the creation of the actual Bullpen (comprising of legendary artists and writers such as Steve Ditko, Don Heck and, of course, Jack Kirby) and was also in charge of the responses to the Merry Marvel Marching Society fan club fan-mail, meaning she had the most interaction with fans out of anyone in the Marvel offices during the company's greatest period. Despite leaving Marvel in 1968 over a pay dispute, she returned to the Bullpen during the 1990's and was still working as a part-time proof-reader for Marvel up until earlier this year. She was so popular with the staff during her original stint with the company that she was nicknamed Fabulous Flo, in that most Marvel of fashions.

So, whilst she may be one of the more overlooked figures in the comics boom of the 1960's, we can at least remember her and her work at the time of her passing. Rest In Peace Flo Steinberg and our thoughts and prayers go out to your family at this painful time.

Character Design Challenge #331 – There is No “I” in Team!

So I am out of town from July 23rd until August 8th, so I decided to post a CDC that would run over a period of two weeks.

Your challenge is to design a superhero team of no fewer than four and no more than six characters. At least one member of the team must be female.

For submissions, either post a single image containing all the characters, or post individual images all as part of the same comment post. Do not divide up your entries on multiple comments.

Include your team’s name and a brief (brief Cliff!) description of each character’s role in the team.

Rules for posts, contests, and challenges: Original characters only, no copyrighted characters, no characters based on copyrighted characters, no characters based on RPG’s or other games. The characters must be your own design and not based on any character that might be copyrighted in any way. Please keep all submissions PG13. I have the right to delete any post that I believe crosses this line without warning. Only post characters that have been created solely using Hero Machine, and that you know for certain have never been entered in a contest before. If you aren’t certain, don’t enter it, because I’m not going to go back through all of the contests and check.

All entries must be in JPG or PNG form (BMPs are too big), posted to a publicly accessible website (like the HeroMachine :,ImageShackDeviantArt, or whatever - Please do not use Photobucket);

  • Entries must be made as a comment or comments to this post, containing a link directly to the image and the character name;
  • Please name your filesas [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).

This contest will close on Tuesday, August 8th at 9:00am Eastern

Character Design Challenge #330 – Wingin’ It! – Results

Wow! You folks really swung for the fences this week. Well done all!

Honourable mentions this week go to HerrD for this whimsical entry...

and to JR19759 for this moody young lady...

And in what I am sure is surprise to no one, this weeks win goes to...

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What Were They Thinking?: Superman-ly

You know, it's surprising that Superman doesn't turn up more often here on What Were They Thinking (the place where we take a look at all of the stupidest, most ill-advised things in comic book history). Maybe it's just because he's been in publication the longest of any character in the medium, or maybe it is simply because the writers and editors who create the book a required to be madder than that Batman villain who likes hats when they apply for the job, but the guy has been involved in some of the strangest/ stupidest storylines ever put to paper. The Man of Steel has been involved in porn, he started the whole "kill off a character for a few weeks" craze and he was turned into a centaur, then a woman and then had a polygomous relationship all in the same comic. But we've talked about all of that before. This week I want to focus on this stuff here:

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War for the Planet of the Apes Spoiler Free Review!

Hey everyone! As promised here is my review for the third installment of the Planet of the Apes prequels, War for the Planet of the Apes. As always, this review is spoiler-free so read on without fear! Let’s get to it, shall we?

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Make Captain America Great Again

Warning: The Following Is Meant For Parody And Should Not Be Taken Seriously. If You Are Offended By Anything You See Written In This Article Please Feel Free To Keep It To Yourself.

Marvel in somewhat of a crisis. Overall comic book prices are at an all time high and, in February, Marvel's sales hit an all time low, with only 1 of their titles breaking the 100k sales mark (that book being a Star Wars title, so not even a Marvel universe book, and was the start of a new series featuring Darth Maul, a popular character) and their flagship title (The Amazing Spider-Man) hitting only the 60k sales mark. To put that in comparison, when DC hit their record sales low, Batman was still hitting between 100-120k sales. And considering that Marvel have spent the best part of a decade alienating old fans and scaring away new fans, hitting a nadir last year with the reveal that Steven Rogers, the legendary Captain America, was actually a Nazi agent of Hydra. So, what can they do? Well, it's obvious they need a bold new strategy. Something that can Make Captain America Great Again. Well, I'm sure they could do worse than taking a leaf from the current Commander-In-Chief, The President Of The United States, Mr. Donald Trump. Because if anyone knows how to make anything "Great Again", it should be the man who made it his campaign slogan, right? So what advice would the POTUS give to Marvel? Well, I've had some ideas.

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Anime Talk: Summer Anime 2017 First Impression! ( Part 1 ??? )

Greetings everyone, on this addition of anime talk I am going to take a look at a number of Anime from the 2017 summer anime season and give you my initial impressions of the shows. For each of these anime listed below I have watched 3 full episodes and it will be those three episodes I will be basing my opinion on. Again these are just my initial impressions based on the very beginning of the series and there may or may not be a full review of these shows once the season concludes.

So lets get started shall we? ...   WARNING MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS CONTINUE READING AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Caption Contest #98 Result

Ok guys, last week I asked you all to come up with the best replacement dialogue for this panel:

As we didn't get too many entries this week, I'm not going to do a top 5, because it'd be too hard to decide who to leave out. Everyone did a very good job this week, but, in the end, there could only ever be one winner...

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Character Design Challenge #330 – Wingin’ It!

Your CDC this week is to create an original character of your choosing. Catch #1 is that you must include  pieces found in Items – Backplane – Wings as part of your design. Catch #2 is that you cannot use them as actual wings.

Please note than unlike previous CDCs which would close at 9 am the following Sunday, this challenge closes at 9 am eastern on Saturday, July 22.

Rules for posts, contests, and challenges: Original characters only, no copyrighted characters, no characters based on copyrighted characters, no characters based on RPG’s or other games. The characters must be your own design and not based on any character that might be copyrighted in any way. Please keep all submissions PG13: full or partial nudity is prohibited. I have the right to delete any post that I believe crosses this line without warning. Only post characters that have been created solely using Hero Machine, and that you know for certain have never been entered in a contest before. If you aren’t certain, don’t enter it, because I’m not going to go back through all of the contests and check.

All entries must be in JPG or PNG form (BMPs are too big), posted to a publicly accessible website (like the HeroMachine :,ImageShackDeviantArt, or whatever - Please do not use Photobucket);

  • Entries must be made as a comment or comments to this post, containing a link directly to the image and the character name;
  • Please name your filesas [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).

*Please Note*

This contest will close on Saturday, July 22nd at 9:00am Eastern.

 

 

 

Movie News Roundup!

Lots of movie news coming at us just in the last couple of days and there's been a lot to take in. Not really much introduction here, so let’s get right to it. The only other thing I’ll mention before we start is to expect a review for War for the Planet of the Apes sometime next week, as I’ll be seeing it Monday (tomorrow!).

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