CBI Archive
Snark Free Corner for 7/31
Monday, July 31st, 2006 at 4:03 PM EST
Updated: Monday, August 7th, 2006 at 9:31 PM EST
Welcome to the latest installment of your breath of snark free air!
Enjoy!
HOW TO MAKE COOL COMIC WORDS
This is something that the cool science fiction comic writers like Arnold Drake realized, and what current writers like Grant Morrison and Joe Casey know….and now YOU can, too!!!
How to make cool comic words.
The first step is to find a normal word that you want to use. Better to use big words, but you can use small words, if you’d like.
A good example is, say, transformer.
Normal, standard word, right?
Okay, here is the trick.
You pick ANOTHER word, a word more identified with comics, and add that to the BEGINNING of the word (normally with a hyphen, but not always).
Cosmic-transformer!!
Space-transformer!!
Infinity-transformer!!
See how easy it is?
So now you know how to make comic words.
Like when Superman wants to listen in on something, he doesn’t use his hearing…he uses his SUPER-hearing!
In the Guardians of the Galaxy, Charlie-27 was not in the militia, he was in the SPACE-militia.
Thanos didn’t go around picking up special gems, he picked up INFINITY gems.
Galactus wouldn’t mind a nullifier, but when shown the ULTIMATE nullifier, THEN he was worried.
Class dismissed!!
COVER HOMAGE
One cool point to the person who tells me what cover this Aquaman cover is homaging (thanks to Laura for the heads up).
It’s a tricky one!
SNARK FREE THEME DAY
Today’s theme is “EVERYTHING YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW WAS WRONG!!!”
1. Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing - This may be one of the most famous “everything you thought you knew was wrong” story. Moore revealed to the reader that instead of scientist Alec Holland BECOMING Swamp Thing, Swamp Thing was actually a collection of plants that BELIEVED that it was Alec Holland.
Pretty trippy, eh?
2. Mopee.
Yes, Mopee.
Mopee was the REAL cause of the lightning that hit Barry Allen. He was like the Bat-Mite.
Check it out in Flash #167.
3. Hal Jordan was lobotomized by Abin Sur.
In Peter David’s Action Comics Weekly Green Lantern run, he asked the question, “Wouldn’t someone literally without fear be kinda nuts?”
So David revealed that what Abin Sur’s ring did was search out for the CLOSEST to fearless people he could find, and then he used the ring to MAKE Hal Jordan fearless.
4. Captain America has more reworked origins that anyone I can think of. Two (since debunked) reworkings were that he had a secret family (including a brother who died at Pearl Harbor), which was brought up by Steve Gerber, and more recently, John Ney Reiber posited that perhaps the whole “frozen in ice” story was staged by the government.
5. Recently, Spider-Man had his origin reworked that perhaps it was not the radiation that made the spider transfer powers to Peter Parker, but rather, that the spider ITSELF had powers that it transferred to Peter.
Or not.
But probably.
But not definitely.
6. Writer Bill Mantlo introduced the concept that the Hulk existed in Bruce Banner’s subconscious well before the explosion, and it was the explosion that just allowed the Hulk to take over Banner’s personality.
Can anyone name me some more?
SNARK FREE CHALLENGE
If Captain America and Iron Man were forced to have a baking competition, who would bake the better cake?
NOTE: No rum cakes allowed for Iron Man.
WHO IS IT?
No one got this one when I used it on Snark Free Water a few weeks ago, so let’s see if you folks can get it!
Remember! Who is it and on what number clue you guessed it!
1. This creator has done work for Oni Press.
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2. This creator has also done work for Beckett Comics.
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3. Most of this creator’s work has been as an artist.
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4. This artist pencilled a book written by Sean McKeever.
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5. This artist has a creator-owned title coming out from Image Comics.
Who is it?
Well, that’s it for this installment of Snark Free Corner. Hope you had fun!
13 Comments
Bill Reed
July 31, 2006 at 4:54 pm
Tony Stark’s cake might win, because it would be sponsored by the government and have a missile-launcher built into it. Captain America would be disqualified because he would bake a pie instead of a cake. But the pie would be delicious. And apple.
Evan Waters
July 31, 2006 at 5:08 pm
Does Iron Man have to wear the costume throughout the competition? Because I’m not sure he can eat through that thing, which rules out taste tests.
Greg Burgas
July 31, 2006 at 5:59 pm
I’m going to say Jeff Amano. But it could be Mike Hawthorne. They’re the only Beckett guys I know, and I could have sworn Amano was doing something for Oni as well. But I’m not too bright.
That blowfish thing on the Aquaman cover scares the hell out of me, by the way.
DanLarkin
July 31, 2006 at 6:23 pm
While preparing to bake his cake, Cap would begin reminiscing about a wonderful cake that he and Bucky shared before Zemo strapped them to that plane during the War. He collapses in tears. “Why, Bucky? Why did you have to die? Oh, Bucky!”
Meanwhile, Tony sends a servant to the bakery to pick up a cake, and wins the contest.
Steven
July 31, 2006 at 6:41 pm
Under “Everything You Thought You Knew Was Wrong,” it’s another Captain America one, but Kyle Baker’s The Truth was an awesome, and totally reasonable, reworking of his origin. That he wasn’t the first test subject, or even the second, but something like the 100th, and we never learned about the other… because they were black!
Wow, what a fantastic combination of the Tuskegee Airmen and the Tuskegee Experiment.
JR
July 31, 2006 at 7:20 pm
The Aquaman cover homage is tricky because it’s not his pose that’s homaged, rather it’s the other creatures that adorn the cover. All of whom seem slightly smaller than on their original Showcase #31 cover appearence.
JR
July 31, 2006 at 7:28 pm
Dan Jurgens also pulled the “everything you know is wrong” bit with Captain America’s origin, revealing another super soldier test subject prior to Steve Rogers called Protocide (or something like that). This was only a few years before the The Truth mini hit too, which is probably why we don’t see Protocide much anymore.
Somebody should do a list of Captain America retcons/reworkings, there seem to be quite a few of them.
DanLarkin
July 31, 2006 at 7:45 pm
Didn’t the Fabian Nicieza/Kevin Maguire 90s miniseries also reveal that Steve wasn’t the only test subject? I think there were three or four other guys who tried out with him, but only he took to the Super Soldier Formula.
Captain Britain’s origin changed from being a normal guy who chose a magic amulet to being the son of a man from Merlin’s Otherworld.
John Byrne’s run on West Coast Avengers revealed that “everything you thought you knew about the Vision/ Original Human Torch is wrong.”
The revelations that the Chief caused the Doom Patrol’s accidents fits the bill, I think.
And then there’s the Carlin/Jurgens Metal Men miniseries, but I don’t like to think about that one.
toothpick
July 31, 2006 at 8:48 pm
iron man’s got the cake on lock, but nothing is effing with Cap’s apple pie.
Kelson
July 31, 2006 at 9:08 pm
Is there some sort of cosmic convergence going on with Mopee or something? I encountered mentions of him on several boards last week, and finally decided it was time to write up an article. I posted it yesterday, and here he is again!
Bill Reed
July 31, 2006 at 9:48 pm
Hell, there was an issue of Ravage 2099 *entitled* “Everything You Know Is Wrong.”
Oh, I’m the only one who read Ravage? I see.
Jer
August 1, 2006 at 6:57 am
Iron Man would be totally lost in a kitchen. He might be able to find the cooking sherry, but that would be about it. He’d probably call up a bakery to order up a cake, but start macking on the order taker on the other end and forget that he was supposed to be in a competition.
Cap would of course bake an apple pie, from his mother’s old recipie, and it WOULD be delicious. But he’d follow the rules of the competition to the letter and also bake a cake - probably an apple crumb cake - and it would be okay. He’d win by default, since Iron Man would be in Paris, wooing the bakery clerk.
Ultimate Cap would just point at his forehead and scream “Do you think this A stands for SISSY?!?”, point out that cooking is woman’s work and demand a beer.
As far as “Everything you know is WRONG”: Demattias did a bit of one with Martian Manhunter’s origin in his 80’s miniseries (Dr. Erdel was still alive, there were a few others). The CLASSIC “Everything You Know Is Wrong” moment, though, is Grant Morrison’s reveal of the Chief’s nefarious plot at the end of his Doom Patrol run. Oh, and Morrison also did an “Everything You Know Is Wrong” in Animal Man, where he changed Buddy’s origin a few times, but I’m not sure that counts (since it was kind of a met-commentary on continuity malleability).
John Seavey
August 1, 2006 at 7:56 am
Power Girl got not one, but two “EYKIW!” moments…one, when she discovered she wasn’t really a Kryptonian, but actually the child of an Atlantean sorceress…and two, when she discovered that no, no actually she was a Kryptonian, from a long-erased parallel universe where blah blah multiverse blah blah Crisis blah blah fragment blah blah blah Earth-2 blah blah breasts. Sorry, tend to kind of focus on those after a while…
Firestorm learning that he was really an elemental creature probably counts, as does his learning that Professor Stein was supposed to be Firestorm and not him at all.
Ooh, here’s a good one; Superboy gets an email telling him he was actually cloned from Luthor! EYKIW! (Still boggles me that they revealed it like that. Just “Oh, hey, got an email telling me I’m a clone of Luthor.” “Let’s check–yep, you are!” “Bummer.”)
The all-time classic, though…”You’re really the clone! He’s really Peter Parker! No, wait. Kidding.”
Oh, and Cap would win. Iron Man wouldn’t know how to bake a cake if Kang mind-controlled him into it.