On Sunday night, my family carved our Halloween pumpkins for the front porch. My wife, Sara, created a cute ghost. Conner re-created the emblem of his favorite paintball company. Patrick and Jacob concocted scary faces.
Me? I not sure what happened. Temporary insanity, maybe?
A couple of weeks ago, The Bee and fresnobee.com offered up downloadable templates of politicians for pumpkin carving. Jeebus forgive me, but I couldn't pass 'em up. But since I usually freelance with my pumpkins designs, I had to something that would belay my guilt about using a stencil.
OK, I'll reveal my bias here and now: This video by Washington Post political columnist Dana Milbank is freakin' brilliant. What happens when a card-carrying MSM member shows up at a McCain/Palin rally with an "I need a hug" sign? Watch, then wonder: Would, say, our Bill McEwen get the same response at a rally in Fresno?
A big nose honk to Larry Harmon & his Bozo machine
Thanks to Larry Harmon, you could fill one of those circus clown cars with Bozos and never run out of bodies. He took a not-a-little-bit-creepy clown design with gelatin-mold hair and pumped it up until Bozo was much more than a single performer. He became a trademark, a mass-produced product of greasepaint and pale-blue satin.
Harmon, who died Thursday at age 83, made Bozo a large part of my childhood. Most afternoons after elementary school, I watched "Bozo's Big Top." The clown held court in a circus-like set filled with squealing kids. He carried a baton-like microphone, dragging the cord behind him. The children played games. He introduced cartoons. It was standard stuff for hosted cartoon shows of the '60s and '70s, but I loved it.
I didn't know then that the guy in the suit wasn't Harmon. But I probably did believe there was only one man who did the job. And I was so wrong. A savvy Harmon -- who did wear the suit many times, but more importantly bought the character's rights in the 1950s -- had long turned Bozo into a franchise. The clown I saw on TV was likely portrayed by Frank Avruch, who did a syndicated show out of Boston that Harmon produced.
Let's give 'em something to talk about. That's our creed at the Beehive, and talk you did. Whether it was about unsigned music artists that need a nudge or a Toyota TV ad that needs a clue, you responded. Loudly. We like that. So, as a tribute to all, here are the 10 most-commented-on Beehive posts of the year just gone. Feel free to, you know, comment.
Every four to six months, I spend parts of two to three days tending to the collection. The recently bought comics that I stash in my bedroom til there's no stash room left are brought to the garage, along with fresh bags, boards and adhesive tape.
The last Great Filing occurred last weekend. The boxes are still lined up on the floor. Lazy. Gotta store 'em this weekend so I can park the SUV inside.
There are 19 longboxes now. The boxes are numbered, and the comics are alphabetized (in a fashion; I mean, c'mon, does one file The New Avengers under New or Avengers? Does Astonishing come before Uncanny among the X-Men, or does one order them chronologically? The mind reels). Box #1 is truly the first; I've been toting it around for more than 20 years. It's mottled and bruised in shades of brown and gray. Duct tape shores up corners that were shredded by my cat Floyd, Bast rest his soul.
While the boxes are cracked open, I always pull out a series or two to re-read. This time, it was Hero, a DC title that put a dark twist on the cute-for-kids Dial H for Hero books of the 1960s.
That's how I deal with my funnybook habit. I'd like to hear from others. How do you stash away what you buy? And how big is that collection getting?
In keeping with the theme, this week's My Five is presented from the perspective of the books they'll join in the garage.
My Five: SKRACRACK! KRRAAAMM! (World War Hulk. Heh.)
OK, someone had a really, really good time with this.
I'm talking about World War Hulk #5 (Marvel), a slugfest/reckoning that wraps a massive company crossover. (But then it's never really over, is it, Bruce? No, it is not.)
So the basic deal here is that the Hulk has returned to Earth from the planet to where he was banished by Reed Richards, Tony Stark and others, all of whom thought they were doing mankind a big favor. On the other planet, Hulk became a benevolent emperor, took on a wife, had a kid. Then, of course, since Hulk is always a tragic figure, the nuclear core of the ship that brought him there went boom, and nearly everyone died. Hulk torqued off. Hulk figure out way back to Earth. Hulk teach lesson.
Luckily, this version of the Gamma Boy talks more intelligently than that, and his inherent compassion comes to the fore in this series. And yeah, we get a pretty satisfying ending to the whole thing.
Brandon asked last week what I thought about Countdown, DC's big crossover thingie. I replied that I don't like crossover events in general, though I copped to following 52 to the bitter end. But, man, the more I think about it, Brandon, the more irritating these crossover events seem.
The Big Two are the only ones who do it aggressively, and that's understandable. They have the widest array of titles, they have an entrenched fanbase who often will pick up a book out of habit, not out of quality.
Now, I'll give DC and Marvel credit: They throw some of their best talent at the centerpiece books (a la Civil War) to make it all seem worthwhile.
But honestly, y'all. Behind that, it's nothing but a hard-sell. Begging and pandering. Compelling us to plunk down for books we otherwise wouldn't touch. Sure, we can say no, and the Powers Who Is claim the titles still can be enjoyed on their own. But that's a crock. Inexplicable storylines and characters flit in and out of our favorite books. You can almost hear the writers of individual books yanking out fistfuls of hair as they struggle to fit their plots around the Big Event.
That's why I find myself drawn to second- and third-tier publishers like Dark Horse, Image, IDW and the like. Even with the Big Two, the off-the-main-universe imprints such as Vertigo and Marvel's Ultimate line are breaths of fresh air.
OK. Please share your thoughts about this. Meanwhile...Da Five...
My Five: 'Daredevil' delivers annual that doesn't suck
A little behind this week, so I'm going to dispense (mostly) with the intro and get right to the Five. But first, a question for y'all:
What was the first comic you read, evah? What do you remember about it?
I'll share my answer next week. Meanwhile. ...
Daredevil Annual #1 (Marvel): Well, lookee here -- an annual that doesn't taste like filler. Writer Ande Parks, from a story by Ed Brubaker, depowers the Horned One a bit by giving him a lingering flu (and, of course, Murdock can't rest long enough to tamp down the bug). Add to that vulnerability a powerful villian, just released from prison, who wants to go straight. Carlos LaMuerto, aka the Black Tarantula, goes to a certain blind lawyer for help staying on the straight and narrow. They both know about their alter egos, which in this case leads to a trust based on honor. What results is a well-weaved tale about temptation, compulsion and differing visions of justice. The art team is nothing to bark home about, but they don't get in the way of the tale.
Ultimate Power #8 (Marvel): I'm aboard to the bitter end of this dimension-spanning slugfest, just because Greg Land rocks and Jeph Loeb knows his way around smart-arse heroes like Spidey. But things get out of hand in this issue, as the appearance of doppelgangers of the Squadron Supreme pop in and generally slow everything down. Marvel Universe and the Ultiverse co-mingling? Yawn. Bring on Hulk...ah, there he is now, just in time for issue #9. Let the smashing begin. Next month.
Remember when Brian Michael Bendis took over the Avengers, killed Hawkeye and turned Wanda into a madwoman? Or how about when DC handed Superman over to John Byrne, who resurrected Ma and Pa Kent while making Superboy vanish?
Good times...good times.
Some of the best -- or at least most-talked-about -- moments in funnybooks occur when a writer steps in, takes over an established book and turns it tail over teakettle. A reboot.
I was in a reboot mood last weekend, when I pulled 10 copies of Doom Patrol from an archive bin at the Heroes shop. The issues -- from the mid-1980s -- were among the start of the book's Grant Morrison run. Morrison's imagination knows no bounds. Dude probably has electric eels swimming in his skull. The stuff is that weird.
Anyway, this vintage Morrison didn't disappoint. The pages were filled with Scissormen and Smoke Dogs and a sentient street named Danny. It was obvious that he took over this third-tier title because he knew fans wouldn't mind -- and might even cheer -- if he did his loony-tune dance all over it. He could never pull this stuff with, say, Green Lantern.
Some reboots define a writer's legacy. Many readers got their first taste of Alan Moore's brilliance when he turned Swamp Thing inside out.
Some reboots can redefine the industry. Chris Claremont took over a certain band mutants, introduced a few characters and ... well, that all turned out to be rather profitable.
This week's My Five includes a reboot of one of my favorite characters. The list also has three #1 issues, two of which play with established characters. Reboot-esque?
So what are your best or worst reboots? Which ones made your day or chapped your hide? Share.
This is a good enough time as any to wail the praises of one of favorite titles, evah. It's one of those common questions, right? "What's your top book of all time?" My quick answer would be that I don't have a No. 1. I have several. I'd imagine many comic readers are like that; your favorites are so varied that the playing field is uneven and the players difficult to compare.
So, on to Grimjack.
The main character was a mercenary with a strict honor code and a short fuse. He operated in a topsy-turned city called Cynosure, where all dimensions intersected (with some sliding in and out of phase). He also owned a bar, Munden's, that featured a perpetually plastered lizard named Bob. The Grinner, whose name was John Gaunt, had only one true friend, a street-talking scrapper named BlacJacMac.
Co-creator John Ostrander wrote the book with a bare-knuckle sensibility and a great feel for the fantastic. Cynosure, with all its twists and turns of tech and magic, was Ostrander's playground, and he treated it like one of the characters.
Artist and co-creator Tim Truman brought a gritty, heavy feel to the pages. He excelled at giving the leading man a world-weariness, but knew how to choreograph GrimJack's killer moves. The otherworldly and oppressive atmosphere of Cynosure came alive in Truman's hands. He eventually left the book, and other artists followed ably, but they never matched the original.
GrimJack ran for 81 issues, from 1984 to 1991. Ostrander moved on, mostly to jobs at DC, and GrimJack slipped into legal limbo as First Comics folded. After years of effort, Ostrander and Truman recently cleared the legal entanglements and regained control of their creation. Last year, a new, six-issue tale, "Killer Instinct," was published, with the original team in charge. How was that for me? To quote Bob the Lizard: "Thaaaaaank yooooooooou..."
Now, on to this week's My Five, starting with that beer ref in the headline.
Searching for a theme in this week's quintet and, well, I got nuthin'. Best I can scape up: two of the books have "black" in the title. Yet those books couldn't be more different. Black Summer is classic Warren Ellis -- paranoia, dark-ops tech speak, and super-types behaving badly. Black Adam is mainstream DC, though the title character is hardly heroic.
So...black. Hrm.
Onward.
Black Summer # 3 (Avatar): Dysfunctional characters ooze from every fold in Warren Ellis' brain. He loves this stuff, and it shows here. A member of a scientifically enhanced super-team decides the U.S. president is leading the country astray. So the (um) hero, John Horus, kills the prez, then announces the nation must start anew. But ... imagine ... the government doesn't agree with this strategy, so Horus and his estranged teammates are public enemies No. 1. Them's the basics, but Ellis keeps the throttle up. The teammates (and it's a loose term here) boil with mutual distrust. The action is visceral and the dialogue is raw. Artist Juan Jose Ryp knows how to portray ticked-off characters, flying blood and big booms. Kind of necessary here.
What a weird deal. One of the most brilliant and testy writers in comicdom has two titles starring his creations debut this week ... and Steve Gerber has nothing to do with either book.
Well, other than dreaming up Howard the Duck and Omega the Unknown in the first place.
Comics, like any other entertainment medium, can be enjoyed at various magnifications. You can focus on the product, easily enough. Or you can muse on the talent and creators and all the "making of" stories you absorbed before you read the book or watched the TV show or saw the movie.
I mean, Lindsay Lohan -- and I mean just the young woman on the screen -- did a good enough job in that "Herbie" movie. You could watch the flick and leave it at that. Or, bwa-hahaha, you could sit back, suck on an Icee and wonder how many scenes Lohan did thoroughly plowed.
So...Gerber. He's best known for Howard, but not just for the book's entertainment value, which was bountiful. Gerber engaged Marvel in a legal fight for the creator rights to the character. (In other words, he could take Howard to another publisher, and Marvel couldn't continue to put out a Howard book once Gerber departed.) He warred against the traditional work-for-hire approach for comic companies, which claim full rights to any character created under their logo. And he was among the first to do so.
Gerber lost that fight, but the shock waves of his cause rumbled through the industry. Independent publishers began to allow -- even boast of -- creator-owned work. A handful of high-profile artists started Image Comics, which focused on creator ownership. In time, even Marvel and DC let down their guard for certain projects.
And Gerber moved on. He still writes wild stuff (Nevada is a little-known gem), but will always be known as the guy who dreamed up the duck who was Trapped in a World He Never Made.
And this week, Marvel rolls out Howard the Duck #1 and Omega the Unknown #1. Gerber is noted in the credits of each book as the characters' creator. But he has nothing to do with these projects, and I'm sure Marvel didn't call him for approval. They didn't have to. On Gerber's blog, he makes clear his distaste for the projects, though he notes he's made contact with the new Omega writer and made his peace with him.
OK, let's tighten the magnification. How are these books? Hmmm. One is a trippy, visually arresting book that leaves me thirsting for more. The other? Not so much.
This was going to have to be addressed eventually. I'm all too aware that my comic-book buying habits don't include a lot of titles from the Big Company That Makes the X-Men and Spider-Man Movies.
I don't Make Mine Marvel often, which runs against the grain of popular fandom. But it's not because I have a thing against the No. 1 publisher, or that I'm on some anti-Joe Quesada crusade. It's more about buying and reading habits formed over the years.
Let's recap.
I started with DC because that's what filled the spin racks in the mid-'60s. Marvel began filtering into my buys with a Spidey or Hulk here and there in the '70s. Then, in the '80s, I latched onto the Claremont/Byrne run on the X-Men. Then I was off to the University of Oregon and getting my first full taste of weekly buys from a comic shop. Byrne moved on to the Fantastic Four, and I inhaled that.
Then came the explosion of independent publishers like Eclipse and First. The offerings were spotty, but there were several home runs, and the variety outside the spandex genre was refreshing. One of my all-time favorite characters, Grimjack, came from the independents. It was during this time that I also developed a long relationship with DC's mature-content line, Vertigo.
Later, I followed Peter David's Hulk in the mid- to late '80s. More recently, I've enjoyed many of the Ultimates books, especially Mark Millar's over-the-top flagship title.
Lately, though? Crossovers bug me, so I admit to that being a strike against Marvel, which in recent months seemed to have either "Civil War," "The Initiative" or "World War Hulk" slapped atop every book. And the glut of X-Books...meh. Joss Whedon's work will always be attractive, though, so "Astonishing X-Men" often gets a buy.
Yeah, yeah...DC is going nuts with its own Big Event. And I have largely avoided the "52" and "Countdown" tie-ins. So even the DC stuff gets a critical look. I'm more consistently impressed with Dark Horse, which rarely ranks "product" ahead of "art" or "story." I like the diversity at Image, and the Wildstorm imprint is rather cool.
So, what's your take on Marvel, DC or crossovers? And are there Marvel titles I should pick up? Let me know.
She stood behind Dave's shoulder, clad in a yellow two-piece bathing suit and gawking at a genie in a glass bottle.
I recognized her immediately, and pointed out the young woman to Dave (Allread, owner of Heroes comics store here in Fresno).
Lois Lane. Just as I remembered her. Lois Lane #78, to be precise. Cover date August 1967. Carefully bagged and hanging on the store's wall.
I owned a copy of LL #78 when the issue was new. Thirty years ago, and I'm sure that, until Wednesday, I hadn't seen the book since then. Man. Elementary school. Sprawled across my Snoopy bedspread, reading the exploits of the Legion and Superman and Lois and Jimmy Olsen (Supes' pals had their own titles then).
Did I snatch up this blast from the past? No. It's price, while modest, strained my weekly comics bud. Still, what a fun little moment.
How about y'all? Are there comics you've stumbled across (or, bless you, still own) that stir memories of younger years, or of the start of your funny-book fever? Share.
My Five comics: Overrun by zombies! I said, zombies!
Three-day weekends are a bugger. They push New Comics Day from Wednesday to Thursday. Totally throws off my circadian reading rhythms. I actually walked into Heroes on Wednesday last week, following Labor Day weekend, only to face knowing smirks from behind the counter as I saw the empty shelves where the new releases would be.
So. This week. All is as it should be. Kind of like the 24-hour effects of Red Kryptonite wearing off. Man. Those '60s Superman comics of the Julius Schwartz era were such a romp, filled with gimmickry and long exposition and Suspicious Lois and *gasp* and *choke.* Where are the homages to that goofy stuff? Kirby gets wonderful fan love with Godland, but those Supes books in which Clark winks at you in the last panel? Nilch.
Ah, well. Onward. Here's My Five from this week. Remember, I have a pulpit here, but not a soapbox. Please chime in with Your Five, or your thoughts about My Five or His/Her Five.
Fables #65 (Vertigo) Another favorite from my pull list. Writer Bill Willingham and artist Mark Buckingham paint on a broad canvas, using characters of fable, fairy tale and myth in a modern-day, PG-13 battle of good vs. evil. And, um, the Big Bad is Geppetto and one of most powerful good guys is the gingerbread-house witch from "Hansel and Gretel." In this issue, the witch rocks us with a new perspective on the grand tussle, and Flycatcher (the Frog Prince) leads a group of once-dead Fables (including Bluebeard and Shere Khan the tiger) on a royal quest. Stuff of legend, indeed.
Here's My Five Comics of the week. How about yours?
I'm unabashedly proud to say I've been reading comic books since Mom agreed to shell out 12 cents for a copy of Adventure Comics from the spinning rack at the Apple Valley mom-and-pop store. I was in first grade and could barely follow the words, but the pictures ... woof.
All those adventures of Superboy, Superman and the Legion have long since passed out of my hands. But they've been happily replaced by a few thousand bagged-and-boarded books currently in my garage.
So, enough with the resume. Let's talk comics.
Each week (usually on Thursday; New Comics Day was delayed this week because of the three-day weekend), I'll list here My Five -- the best of the newly purchased batch. The emphasis is on My; I'm not proclaiming these the Very Best Off the Comic Shop Shelf. My tastes, impeccable as they may be, aren't the same as yours. And that's OK. Really.
So, after reading My Five, please share Your Five. Come on. Bring it. We're proud comic-book fans, yeah? Let the inner (or outer) fanboy/girl shine through.
All right, then. Onward.
Y: The Last Man #58 (Vertigo): My favorite title. The undisputed champ, especially since Strangers in Paradise ended its run earlier this year. The book follows Yorick Brown, a goofball and amateur escape artist who becomes the last dude on the planet when something wipes out all the other male mammals. From the outset, writer Brian K. Vaughan had planned the title to run for 60 issues, so we're on the final stretch. And what a finishing kick, right in the soft places -- this issue had fans burning up the forum at Vaughan's BKV.TV site. Easily one of the most emotionally wrenching issues of the run. With two to go.
Esteemed Colleague Mike Osegueda says there were 7,000 and change at Wednesday's Selland waffle griddle parking lot. As one among the dehydrating masses, I can verify that estimate. And here's a guess of my own: Not counting the people running the booths and tents, there were roughly 27 people at the Warped Tour's Fresno stop who were 45 or older.
And I was one of them.
By and large, I was there to escort my son, a high school freshman. But I had fun. Really. How many times can you earn, with one ticket, the honor of listening to industrial Irish-reel rock (Flogging Molly!) and watching a six-piece all-girl Japanese ska combo (Oreskaband!), six Mexican wrestlers and countless flying elbows.
And just because I was surrounded by kids who think Springsteen is an nostalgia tour doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the procession of thrash metal. I did, though I enjoyed the moshing even more. Once I figured out I outweighed most of the moshers by 20 pounds or more, it was easy.
I'm unabashedly proud to say I've been reading comic books since Mom agreed to shell out 12 cents for a copy of Adventure Comics from the spinning rack at the Apple Valley mom-and-pop store. I was in first grade and could barely follow the words, but the pictures ... woof.
Esteemed Colleague Mike Osegueda says there were 7,000 and change at Wednesday's Selland