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According to this link, http://srbissette.com/?p=9077, former Thundercats and Silverhawks writer, Steve Perry, has been declared missing in his home state of Florida. He has a five year old son who is currently staying with his family and is safe. There have been some grizzly findings in this case including a severed arm found in his van and several other body parts found in a dumpster at a gas station two miles from his house. The authorities have avoided saying that they are investigating the matter as a homicide, but as a Magic 8 Ball has been known to say "Outlook not so good." Mr. Perry has been missing for over 10 days as of this writing and with the discovery of body parts and the arrest of his roommates things do not look good. He's had some medical problems with bladder cancer and was not the richest man in the world getting his medical care from Medicaid and financial support from the Hero Initiative for living expenses and food. The link above talks about the author's knowledge of Mr. Perry from the 1970's to the end of the 1980's. One of the things that stuck out to me in the stories in the above link is that not only did he help streamline the script approval process for the Thundercats comic, but he also could not afford to buy his young son at the time the action figures of the characters he helped create in both cartoons. That just saddens me to no end because I know what it is like to go through my younger years not having a lot of the cool toys to play with. He worked for the shows though and made up some of the characters in the shows so he should have been getting some kind of residuals, but the makers of the cartoon screwed him out of any payment for his character creations and did not even get access or approval of the toys of his creations.
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LOST? I'm still lost
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As everyone who has access to a television and an ABC affiliate knows, the six season old television show, Lost, had its series finale and I must say that that was a mind screw up there with DC's Final Crisis from last year. Nothing major about the show was explained while giving us a WTF non-ending up there with the television show St. Elsewhere. I'm sure there are fans out there that think the ending was the perfect way to go, but we were told that all would be revealed by the end of the season and guess what, we got no explanation about what the smoke monster was and why there was a Polar Bear on the island.
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Celebrity Comics?
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Bluewater Productions is a small comic company that has recently been producing comics of their own original characters as well as unauthorized biographical comic books of everyone from politicians to major music stars. There has been some controversy about them making these comics though because as someone says, they mostly do their fact checking on Wikipedia and as we all know that is sometimes less than accurate and contains some highly controversial information. There has also been talk of Bluewater not paying freelancers, and capitalizing on the success of others rather than hard work like Marvel and DC and other major companies in comics. Darren G. Davis says that these comics are getting more and older female fans into comic book stores that might not go there otherwise. Sure this might lead to some impulse buying for those people that want to buy something for their kids as well as themselves, but will it keep them coming back month after month?
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Hawkeye and Mockingbird are back
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One of my favorite characters in the Marvel Universe, Hawkeye, is getting a book along with his former wife, Mockingbird, who he is dating again. I have read a preview of some of the pages of their new book on the Newsarama web site and I must say that I like what I have read so far, although it seems a bit odd to have Mockingbird using guns rather than her staffs. She also uses her staff in the book, and it is good to see her using them. I just wonder if this means we'll get a HeroClix version of her in the Web of Spider-Man expansion coming soon. I just wonder if Marvel is going to be able to keep the momentum going with these two in the series or are they going to just cancel it after a year or two?
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Election Day Review
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I picked up the Amazing Spider-Man hardcover trade titled Election Day. Titan had it for 50% off and I needed the issues it covered so I grabbed it. It includes the issues in the Election Day arc as well as the Obama back up feature from issue 583 and a short back-up feature from some special issue they had that featured Lincoln. The Obama back up feature was very funny and did kind of give me a new perspective on Joe Biden and John McCain that I think the writers took some liberties with, but it made me laugh after a rather crappy day so it earned some bonus points for that. I skipped the Lincoln story because the art was not that good and it just did not grab me from the get go with the writing. I am glad I did not go out and spend money on the back issues for what this Hardcover covered. There was one entire issue dedicated to the backstory of Harry's girlfriend and her motives for doing what she did. If I wanted a blah-blah issue where nothing gets resolved I'll go back and try to read Final Crisis. I read Spider-Man comics for the non-stop witty banter and his taking out the bad guy. The other issues were good and resolved the Spider-Tracer killer storyline that had been running though the book up until the end of this arc. I did get confused about the whole Spider-Tracer killer thing because you had cops accusing other cops and I was not sure who was who because the art didn't try to differentiate between the cops who were good and the cops who were bad. Matt Murdock as the lawyer representing Spider-Man when he was captured was a good touch and it was worth it to see a bunch of supers dress-up and pretend to be Spider-Man just to prove a point in a case would be something a lawyer in the Marvel Universe might do to get his client's freedom. This one is worth a buy if you can find it in soft cover or on sale in hardcover.
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GI Joe 155 ½
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This was the Free Comic Book Day release I really wanted and I grabbed it as the first one off the shelves as soon as I got to Titan. I sat down and read it last night and it did not read as a continuation of GI Joe 155, but as a sort of zero issue for the new series they are releasing in July from IDW. This issue looks at things from a Cobra prospective. In fact the issue is entirely Cobra centered so if you don't like them then you should go ahead and skip this issue. It brings into play all the major players from the old series that were not dead or captured by the end of issue 155. It appears that Cobra has unleashed a smaller terrorist organization to try to take over some spots around the United States and have their manifesto read before they were all captured by the military (Not GI Joe). Cobra Commander also has a hand in the disbanding of GI Joe by having control of the Jugglers. The Jugglers were a bunch of high ranking Pentagon Mucky-Mucks who had oversight of the GI Joe program when it was in existence. It appears that the good Cobra Commander had his hand in the government pot when GI Joe was shut down and is keeping it that way. After calling back Billy, Baroness and Storm Shadow from getting some biological WMD's; Billy jumps Cobra Commander when they return. After some restraining Billy is placed into the Brainwave Scanner (which scared the crap out of me when I was a kid) and reprogrammed. There is something curious that shows up on the monitors as Billy is being reprogrammed and that is pictures of Dr. Venom, the original designer of the Brain Wave Scanner. After Billy is reprogrammed Dr. Mindbender (who I thought was dead in this continuity) approaches Destro and tells him that Dr. Venom had installed some sort of Trojan Horse into the software of the Brainwave Scanner and when they put Billy into it recently it had triggered the software. Destro says he will help Mindbender take care of the programming with M.A.R.S. help. The book ends with a giant to be continued when a phone rings in a house in New Springfield and a man is sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee. The phone rings and he picks it up and answers it to be greeted by the phrase "Wake up Sleepyhead!" He ten walks past his housekeeper who asks if something is wrong Congressman. He ignores her and walks to the back of his bedroom closet where we see a Crimson Guardsman uniform hanging on the wall and he says "I remember who I am." The last panel is kind of an establishing shot of a city with "Wake up Sleepyhead" printed in various spots around the panel. The art on this free book was outstanding and I hope they keep him on full time in the new book. He seems to capture the characters look rather well and harkens back to the second third of the original series looks wise. Everything is very refined and cleaned up. The art is hardly what you would expect for a free comic from a company like IDW. The only thing I do not like is the drawings of the Crimson Guardsmen in the book. They look more like the HISS Driver uniforms rather than Crimson Guard uniforms. Larry Hama slips us back into the comfortable storyline that was left off sixteen years ago. I think that is the great thing about having the person who wrote the comics a long time ago come back and continue the story he knows his characters and is not bogged down by having to rewrite continuity to fit with what other writers did. The soap opera storylines are all there and they even make references back to the original series when Baroness asks Destro if she's going back in the Brain Wave Scanner. I don't know if it is going to get people to buy it again at issue 156 starting in July, but I'm sorely tempted, but a $4 cover price is a bit much to ask.
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