Random Crap

How Long Before DC Retcons This?

Issue 900 of Action Comics that came out the last week of April had probably the biggest thing that will tear the internet in half. It appears that Superman has renounced his American Citizenship. How is Superman even an American citizen? He was not even born on this planet and all of a sudden he has American Citizenship that he can renounce. This comes in a story where they use the actual country of Iran and the protests there in a story rather than making up a country name, and then when Superman gets involved there's an international incident that when he returns to the states he gets a talking to where he tells the U.S. government that he is going to the UN and is going to formally renounce his citizenship. Really, are sales so low that you have to resort to some sort of shock comics stunt that may drive readers to the book temporarily and then go away again when the shock goes away? It's crap like this that makes me glad that I don't pick up DC comics anymore. I may buy them for family members, but I personally gave up on DC a long time ago. It seems like Dan Didio as editor is just going for the shock and really doesn't care about the story or characters anymore. Either that or the writer managed to sneak this past the editing board and got it published. It's not like something like that happened before with curse words getting through in scripts.

Something that Touched Me I was doing some surfing just now and came across this link about the Dwayne McDuffie remembrance panel at Wonder Con from two weekends ago. It seems to be more of a transcript with just a little bit of description. I never met Mr. McDuffie but his work has me thinking about everything that man did. He has written things that got me to thinking about African-American characters and how if they are written right then they can go beyond the stereotype that was set by the writers of Marvel's Luke Cage Hero for Hire in the 1970's that extended into the Power Man and Iron Fist book in the 1980's. Now Luke Cage is the leader of the Thunderbolts and he knows no fear about Man-Thing. Reading some of the text from the panel I got a bit teary. The men in the panel never had a cross thing to say about the man and that is somewhat a tribute to how much of a good person Dwayne was. I like to think that he is up there in heaven watching everything that is going on and is smiling.

A Link to What Might Have Been

If you are like me, you are kind of curious about what might have been for some of your favorite toy lines that you might buy for yourself or your kids. I came across Link 1 Link 2 Link 3 It turns out that just in time for the gaming convention season; WizKids is getting together the other three Horsemen of Apocalypse in mini form as give aways at the big two conventions this year. All I have to say is, "Way to go WizKids! NOT!" Not only have you already screwed up things with this latest Marvel expansion by making the likes of Cable, and the Uncanny X-Force versions of Archangel, Psylocke and Deadpool LE's that you can only get at tournaments, but now you have the rest of the Four Horsemen only available at conventions until you decide how to give them out to the rest of us common folk. This from a company that cannot get its act together and get a replacement program going for all the mini's that have been screwed up in DC 75th and Giant Sized X-Men. They are able to get bunch of other things going, like a Star Trek ship based game, but cannot get something to help all those people out there that might have a Storm mini on a Rogue base or something else that should have been caught in quality control. People wonder why I am considering going back to Warhammer 40K. At least when I lay out the cash for mini's of that game, I know what I am getting and am not going to be jacked around and have mini's with missing arms, bases that are nigh impossible to turn and extremely fragile sculpts. Sure those fragile sculpts may look good, but when players and collectors can't even pull them out of the booster without having a hand break off the miniature then it is time to rethink how to do things. Overall, it is beginning to look like that WizKids is only worried about getting cool minis in the hands of the most hardcore players and those of us out there that are just casual players that might want some of these mini's are SOL.

Bits and Pieces

Earlier this month, Bleeding Cool had this article saying that at Wonder Con over the previous weekend comics and fiction writer, Peter David, walked around the con dressed as the Green Hornet. All I have to say about that is; genius. Peter David is one of those rare people I got to meet when Wizard World was being held in Arlington, Texas back a few years ago. I got his autograph on a comic he had written that I pulled out of a $1.00 box at the con earlier in the day. The next day I took some things that my older brother wanted autographed by him and as he was doing it, I just stood there dumbfounded. Here's this guy that has written many things that people liked and I had no idea who he was. I guess I was expecting some larger than life person who can crank out things like nobody's business. Thinking about it now, he was the writer and not the artist. Artists are the ones who get all the attention at conventions because you can go up to them and get them to do a sketch in your sketchbook for $40 and you can have something to treasure forever. What is a writer going to do for you to remember you met them. Crank out some random script pages for you to go home and have famed? I guess writers have their own groupies in a way because there are those readers out there that read comics for the story while others go for the art. I personally straddle a line where I like both, but have to give the edge to the artist. I also learned that Pixar is going to delay the release of the Monster's Inc. prequel from November 2, 2012 to June 21, 2013. Also they released the logo to the movie and here it is:     I like that they kept the Monster's part of the logo the same as the original Monster's Inc. movie logo and they went with the traditional university font with the white outline around the black letters. I know this font has a name, but darned if I can find it. I like how in this movie they are planning to go back in time and to a prequel rather than a sequel because they tied up the loose ends of the first movie in a nice little bow by the end of it and it really did not need a sequel. Also the Comic Book Resources web site had this article about how Patrick Dempsey is currently 'Lobbying' to be Marvel Comic's Dr. Strange in either a movie or television show about the character. Frankly I don't see it. Everyone is saying that he needs to be Dr. Strange, and there was a rumor at San Diego Comic Con a few years ago that he had been hired to play Dr. Strange. I can kind of see it in the face a little bit, and the character he plays on Grey's Anatomy is a surgeon and Dr. Strange is supposed to be a surgeon, but other than that that is where the similarities stop. As for making it a television show I can kind of see it with some of the budgets that these shows have and the things they can do now with computer generated special effects means they can do them on the less expensive side, but still you don't want them to look cheesy.

Help Out a Great Comics Artist and Get Something Good out of it.

Famed comics artist and all around great guy, Gene Colan's final works are being auctioned off by long time Colan friend Clifford Meth to pay for Mr. Colan's medical costs as he is very ill. This Link from Bleeding Cool has a list of some of the things that are being sold and there is some good stuff on there. Most of them are just Essentials and Marvel Masterworks, but they are well worth the price that you could pay. There is also an option of you getting their choice of some original artwork produced by Mr. Colan from either Archie, Silverblade or Harrowers comics for $160 for three or four pages as well as one page of each for $140. That sounds like a good deal to me for original artwork. If I had the cash I would be all over the Archie pages. If you want to know the current status of everything that is being auctioned off then you can go to the Gene Colan blog and take a look at the updated prices. Take a look and bid on something.

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