Random Crap

2010 has come and gone and we are all working on a brand new year full of possibilities. I hope everyone's holidays went well and that you got what you wanted for whatever holiday you celebrate. I'm going to start off with something that went unnoticed in the comics press recently because it was announced not too long before Thanksgiving here in America.

"Man up and act like you got a pair!" - Dr. Cox to J.D. on "Scrubs"

This link at the Bleeding Cool web site has all the background in the Jack Kirby heirs versus Marvel/Disney lawsuits. It appears that even though the Kirby family had served copyright termination papers to Marvel right around the time of the Marvel and Walt Disney merger, Marvel filed a notice in early January 2010 to make the Kirby family's notices of termination invalid. The whole thing that mucks up Marvel's case is the Copyright Act of 1976 that boils down to the person who sold their rights of a creation (art, writings and other things) to another company can terminate the rights of the deal at any time. The article linked above has all the sordid details of all that went on last year between the two parties and includes the text of the November 22nd ruling. I think it is time in this new year that Marvel Comics grows a pair and relinquishes the control of the Jack Kirby creations back to the Kirby family and then move on. They need to return the 60 pages of Kirby art that Marvel has in its possession to the heirs and pay back a share of any and all monies they made from the X-Men, Iron Man, and Spider-Man movies and maybe work out putting in a credit in a future DVD/Blu-Ray release of the movies acknowledging Jack Kirby had a hand in the creation of what you see on your screen.

Personal Note

On a more personal note, I picked up some coverless (some have partial covers) Marvel comics from the 1960's and 1970's at a sale my local comic store was having. I know they aren't going to be worth much, but I opened the bags and looked at them and they were amazing. I've always wanted to own a comic from back in the 1960's because it would be older than I am and I really wanted to see what kind of advertising they had in those books. In today's comics they seem to have full color ads for anything from television shows, kids shoes and backpacks to other comic series put out by that company. Back in the 1960's they had ads for things you could mail away for like X-Ray Glasses (they never worked), and an art correspondence school. What's a correspondence school you might ask? Before we had the luxury of the internet and taking classes online, you had to actually send and receive your assignments through the mail to learn something like Creative Writing if you did not have a college or university in your town. Now it seems all you get in the mail is stuff from E-Bay/Amazon, bills or stuff you don't want from politicians during election season. Anyway, getting back to what I was saying; most of the issues I had picked up at the sale were Jack Kirby and Stan Lee creations. Things just seemed so much simpler back then. Artists did not need computer coloring and inking to make a comic stand out. It was the stories that were told and drawn that sucked people in; not that it was written by some hot writer and drawn by some hot new artist. Maybe that is just my nostalgia factor kicking in, but they hold a special place in my heart.

Okay Bleeding Cool, this is a bit of a stretch

This link at the Bleeding Cool web site shows a series of back and forth pictures that feature the lovely country singer Taylor Swift and Zatanna of DC Comics fame. They say that the artist for the cover of that issue stole the whole thing with Taylor Swift's making a heart with her hands. They even show the cover in question and it looks nothing like what Taylor is doing in the first picture. Zatanna is shuffling a deck of playing cards on the cover and her hands are all wrong to be making the heart. The other picture at the bottom from the cover of Entertainment Weekly's Entertainers of the Year for 2010 was a pretty spot on pose I could see Zatanna in (and I might have somewhere). I'm going to say if they need a blonde young lady to play Zatanna's sister in a movie then I nominate Taylor Swift. Anything to see more of the lovely Taylor Swift out there is good with me.

Good Lord!

I neglected to mention this in my December 2010 article, but is Blizzard out of its mind? The reason I bring this up is because I installed the first three World of Warcraft games on my desktop and then started a download. Since these copies of the games are from 2 years ago, I had to download patches to the game to get ready for the Cataclysm expansion that came out early last month. Little did I know that these patches were 6 GB total. My computer said the estimate was only 4-6 hours so I left it alone and came back four hours later and saw it had only downloaded a whopping 6% of the patches, and now it was fluxing between 20 and 30 hours to be complete. I decided to leave it downloading while I went to bed for the night and came back the next morning to see that it had only gotten 25% of the patches in something like 16 hours. It was at this point that I asked myself, out loud, "What the hell Blizzard?" Here I am perfectly willing to shell out $15 a month to play the game and the download is so large that it would take the better part of two days of straight downloading just to get all of the patches. My younger brother asked me an important question, he asked if it was worth all the headaches of tying up one computer for that long just to get patches for the game. I sat and chewed on that for about thirty minutes and then canceled the download and uninstalled the stuff I had installed so far. I decided that if this month I still have the drive to play, then I would go ahead and pay for the next expansion disk and install it along with the others so I don't have to go through it again.

Bleeding Cool has gone Porn Crazy

It seems like since the release of the latest installment of the Batman franchise, 'The Dark Knight,' two years ago there has been a booming industry of Porno movies that feature super heroes getting it on. The latest entry is the Justice League XXX. Whenever these movies are released or news about them is released then the web site Bleeding Cool is all over it, and frankly I'm getting a little tired of the whole concept. Can't DC do something about using their trademarked characters in something like a porn movie that is being done for profit and without permission? I'm all for making pornography because there are people out there that like that sort of thing, but it seems like every web site that even has a vague relationship with comics and movies will mention them. I know comic books have gone from a kid thing to an adult thing now that my generation is an adult, but the last thing I want to see is an article talking about how Batman or Superman banged Wonder Woman in a movie.

Good Lord Hollywood

It appears that after several false starts with the on-line system for tickets to San Diego Comic Con in 2011 they managed to get the system tested with a dry run of 1000 tickets for sale. It sold out in one minute. Now I don't know if these were actual comic fans or just Hollywood types that want to come down there to see and be seen. I miss the days back early in the 2000's where you still had to buy tickets the old fashioned way with a form and everything and you had to mail a check or give them a credit card number on the form to get your tickets. Now you have to have the best internet connection with a fast computer and excellent timing to get on the site so you can get tickets. I never got to go to San Diego Comic Con when I had the chance to with my Intrepid Editor's family back then, but I barely had the time off at my job saved up to take two weeks off. Personally this is why I'm glad that we have a good bunch of people in this town that can get a convention with some good guests and have it in a good sized place. Believe me I would love to go to San Diego at some point in my life (maybe in about 7 years or so when I am 40 and Hollywood has moved on from Comic Movies), but if tickets are that hard to come by, then I'll pass and just try to go to other conventions.

HeroClix DC 75th

NECA/WizKids latest expansion for their HeroClix game came out in the middle of last month and I really am not impressed. First, to coincide with the latest DC Comics year long universe shattering event, they included all the White Lanterns that were not included in their Brightest Day starter set and they made them chase rares. They also included an assortment of the different Lanterns from the other colors as well. Granted there was only one Black Lantern in this set (Scar) and the previous three were in another set as chase rares. The group that gets the most help was the Green Lantern Corps that include all four GL's of this sector of the universe. There were only two Sinestro Corps in the set and one of them was Sinestro himself that really needed to be made because you can't get the Crisis expansion version of him without shelling out $60 or more on e-bay. The other one for the Sinestro Corps was Mongul. The other corps either got one or two other members to go with the versions that they made in the Blackest Night starter. There's Larfleeze for the orange lanterns, Atrocitus for the Red Lanterns, Saint Walker and Ganthet for the Blue Lanterns, Indigo-1 for the Indigo Tribe and these are just the rares for the Lanterns. There's a few in the common and uncommon slots as well, but those are going to be the ones that everyone wants to get. (Especially Larfleeze according to some other boards I go to). The LE's in the set are okay, not as good as the ones in Web of Spider-Man, but I really cannot compare them because one set is Marvel and one set is DC. I already got the LE I wanted out of this set from E-Bay for under $10 with shipping. That one is Gleek to go with the Wonder Twins that are in the set. I can use Gleek in my all animal group along with Howard the Duck and other Marvel staples. It probably won't win any tournaments, but I like to play them in casual games. I'll also at some point have to get all for versions of Beast Boy to use that is similar in game mechanics to the alter ego ability that was first introduced in the Brave and the Bold expansion earlier this year. The other ones in the expansion are those that harken back to the early days of DC Comics when Batman used guns, Wonder Woman rode a horse and Superman could not fly. All of the ones mentioned above are super rare so you'll have to buy at least a case to get one or two of them. There's another drawback to this expansion in that I have seen on several message boards that people who buy sealed cases and the two bricks they get in the case are exactly the same right down to the White Lantern. Granted with random collation this is bound to happen, but it seems to be happening more than usual with this set.

Marvel's latest mega event

On December 21st Marvel announced it's mega crossover event for this year and it's called 'Fear Itself' According to the announcement "...There is a secret at the heart of the Marvel Universe that will change the way Marvel heroes look at each other and once free will effect everything for hundreds of years." Starting in April 2011 there will be seven issues of the main title that will hopefully take it to the end of the year, but depending on who is working on the art or story, it might take a bit longer. Is anyone else other than me sick of mega crossover events? Yes I understand they keep fan interest in books, but wasn't Secret Invasion from a few years ago in this same kind of vein where things will change in the Marvel Universe forever and tear the internet in half? It used to be that comics just did self contained stories that might have occasionally branched out into other books, but if you wanted to know what was going on in Iron Man then you read Iron Man and did not have to go to three other books to get the whole story. The only real drawback to this is that the price point of the book will be $3.99 and all the crossover books will more than likely be at the same price point. DC is not even close to getting through with their latest event book, Brightest Day, that even though they are publishing the book every two weeks it's still going to take twelve months to finish. People sometimes wonder when I am buying the books I do each week why I'm not getting the latest event book. I tell them that because I got burned out on Final Crisis from DC and Secret Invasion from Marvel that I'm not getting event books from either company until they take a break from them for at least one year.

Looks like IDW may have another reader

Looking at the solicits for IDW in March 2011 it looks like they may have won me over as a reader. With their relaunch of "GI Joe a Real American Hero"picking up where the Marvel series left off," I'm kind of curious to see where they went with it. With original series writer Larry Hama doing the writing and GI Joe art staple Herb Trimpe doing covers then you can pretty much do no wrong in my mind. I was initially reluctant to get the book because of the $3.99 cover price that all comics by IDW have, but I can scrape up the $4 a month to get the book each month.

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