Comic Book Resources

Barda’s bust appeared in the two-parter in Action Comics 592 and 593. There’s nothing like Apokaliptan pornography.

The Long Halloween has to be the least-deserving comic to get the Absolute treatment. I mean, I enjoyed Loeb and Sale’s three Halloween one-shots which predated this, but TLH was way too much of a good thing, and I was pretty bored by the middle of the series. (I’m also not a real big fan of Sale’s art.)

On a sillier note, you ask if anyone’s seen Big Barda in a bikini. Why yes. But that might not count, it not actually being a comic book and all. The other likely candidate I can think of is from Action Comics #592-593, in which she and Superman are mind-controlled by a nasty alien named Sleez, but I no longer own copies of those issues so I can’t check to be sure.

Re: the two versions of Captain Marvel;

I seem to recall Smith and DC announcing this project as far back as 2003 (a Google search turned up a 2/24/03 Wizard five-questions-thing with Smith where it’s brought up) as a “when it’s done, we’ll put it out” kind of thing. I can’t imagine them canning a high-profile project like this when they decided to let Winnick shit on the Marvel Family.

Bard also appeared in a bikin an one of the Justice league international annuals, number 2 I believe

The Long Halloween has to be the least-deserving comic to get the Absolute treatment.

Wow. Less deserving than Danger Girl?

I feel like I saw Barda wear something similar in the original Mister Miracle series, as a casual type of thing, but I can’t be sure.

The last Batman franchise failed because of a hack director. I’m sick of the fanboy whining about more than one villian failing. Raimi won’t let us down.

The last Batman franchise failed because of a hack director. I’m sick of the fanboy whining about more than one villian failing. Raimi won’t let us down.

AMEN, brother! Those Batman movies because it was a bad writer and director, end of story. Do you think the people behind the Batman and Robin movie would suddenly have done an exquisite movie if they only focused on one villain? Doubt it.

I mean to say “Those Batman movies sucked” in my last post. Forgot the word “sucked.” Oops.

Absolute Hush was a lamer choice than The Long Halloween too. But I have to say I’ll be completely passing on AB: TLH.

Also, having just finally read the Big Barda/Superman porno issue, I can say you see her bikini then, but I’d like to forget that story ever happened, thanks.

Bah, beaten to the punch. Stupid time zones!!

It was indeed JLI annual 2, from 1988. The story - JLI have barbecue, Joker turns up in a tank - is a classic.

The one time I could’ve used my entire collection of JLI for something useful and I blew it. I bet lordbuff is really Dan Didio in disguise. I’ll get you, Didio! See if I don’t!

/ shakes fist

My gut tells me that the reason Halloween is getting Absolute treatment is because Heroes is a big hit on NBC. Therefore, DC’s hoping to cash in on its stock of Loeb & Sale material.

WASTELAND #7 is a stand-alone story, yeah. A good place to jump on board? Definitely - no prior knowledge of the story required (It’ll help, but not strictly necessary

Avert & T. are right about those Batman movies, the nipples on the suits didn’t help either.

Kyle Baker never impressed you? Have you given ‘The Cowboy Wally Show’ a try? I laughed out loud with that one.

Thanks for the info, Antony!

As for the overabundance of villains in superhero movies, it’s not absolutely a recipe for disaster, and the final two Batman movies were awful because of other factors, but it makes me nervous. There’s far more potential for disaster than if they focused more on one or at least two villains. I’m just basing my reaction on the trailer, which looks a little all over the place. It could be the greatest thing ever put on celluloid for all I know.

I’ve heard good things about The Cowboy Wally Show. Maybe it will sway me to Baker’s side!

And I was thinking of the Justice League Annual, but Action works too. We’ll see if Cronin will be magnanimous and hand them out!

“The preview art on the next couple of pages shows Dr. Doom showing up. Really. Victor von Doom, the ruler of Latveria? Really? Do the editors at Marvel (or the writers) even know anything about Dr. Doom?”

Perhaps not, and I agree that Doom wouldn’t bother attending the funeral of a minor villain (or even a major one, though perhaps he’d spare time to spit on the Red Skull’s grave.)

However, that said… I rather like the idea that Doom routinely sends Doombots to attend minor funerals, the way we send Vice Presidents to attend the funerals of less-important heads of state.

Like Jeremy, I recall Barda wearing a bikini in one of the Kirby Mister Miracles - not a swimsuit, but a two-piece garment similar to that used in the Hughes bust. I think it’s either issue 15 or 18 (I don’t have the comics with me to check), and I believe we first see Barda wearing it (in that issue) in a full-page splash with the “chapter” title “Big Barda!” So it goes way back. A couple of examples of Kirby drawing her in this outfit can be seen at http://www.twomorrows.com/kirby/articles/10roz.html and http://dreamers.com/dcsecretfiles/bigbarda.htm (I’m pretty sure that small drawing is by Kirby). And Bruce Timm has adopted this look for a number of Barda drawings: I can’t access the site directly from work, but if you enter “site:popcultureshock.com “big barda” ” in a Google Images search, it should turn up the drawings.

Long Halloween was a much better read than Hush (I find that Jeph Loeb’s collaborations with Tim Sale come across far better than anything else he does), but I suppose that’s not saying much.

Seriously, though: Absolute Hush? Absolute Danger Girl? What’s next, Absolute Prez: First Teen President?

‘The Cowboy Wally Show’ is very good, but my favourite Baker book is ‘Why I Hate Saturn’.

Kirby drew Barda’s bikini into a few things.

I think the FIRST time we saw Barda in her bikini was Mister Miracle #5, and it was the joke Kirby ended that story with… up until that point she’d been all armored and when she strode out in her bikini suddenly everyone was all, “whoa, the badass chick’s actually really hot.” The end. It was kind of funny and skeevy at the same time.

Greg H is right about the moment but is off by an issue, issue 4 ends with her in the bikini and issue 5 starts with her posing/stretching in it (as well as drawing a crowd).

Well, let’s not forget that Kirby visually modeled Barda on Lainie Kazan’s Playboy shoot.

“Raimi won’t let us down.”

I dunno, Darkman and The Quick And The Dead still haunt me at night.
(I’ll be let down anyway - I’ll be in the cinema thinking ‘dude, you didn’t care for the other two films, so why are you here? What do you hope for?’. And no, it’s not because they changed elements from the books, of for any reason really, I just didn’t enjoy them as films.
Oddly, the Ps2 game based on SpiderMan 2, is better than both the movie and the comic books).

“Thanks for the info, Antony!”

Greg, next column can you get him to appear and tell me when there will be a second trade to ‘Spooked’ from Oni?
I brought it thinking it was a one-off, but upon finishing, it still felt like there was more to come, and then I noticed a ‘1′ on the spine…. but then nothing else came.
If you get him back to answer that one, I’ll give you a cool point.

“I took a look at Onslaught Reborn #1 today (it’s out on Wednesday). Issue #4 is solicited on page 54 with an image from the first issue. Please, please, please don’t buy this comic. It’s kind of bizarre that the worst thing about the book is NOT the art, but the writing. And the art is pretty horrible, too. This has been your PSA of the day!”

Why are they expecting this to sell?
Heroes Reborn/Onslaught was a disaster.
You can talk all you want about sales at the time, but it directly preceded a major slump for Marvel.
As for a man who stopped buying Marvel around that time - it was this piece of crap (Onlsught/Reborn) that made me do it.
I didn’t buy another Marvel book until I heard Morrison/Casey/Milligan were hitting the x-books.

Add another vote for Why I Hate Saturn as Baker’s best work. For my tastes everything he’s done since then has been not quite as good as the last - until Plastic Man which was good. (I haven’t read Nat Turner yet)

Personally I like Darkman, loved The Quick and the Dead and think the Spider-Man films are the best superhero films of all time. (I have a theory that people who like westerns don’t like The Quick and the Dead and people who don’t like westerns do)

Dan

“(I have a theory that people who like westerns don’t like The Quick and the Dead and people who don’t like westerns do)”

Well I do love me a good Western, so perhaps your right.

I’d give Batman Begins or X-Men 2 as my vote for best superhero movie.
(It’d probably be Ghost World, American Splendour or Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra for best comic adaptation though)

One of the major reasons I didn’t like Batman Begins was the over-abundance of villains. I counted seven major ones.

Really, X-Men 2? What’s so great about that one (besides that at least it’s better that the first one)?
I’d have to say Sin City was a pretty good adaptation too.

I think the only thing I’m interested in from Dark Horse in February is Empowered, a manga-style graphic novel by Adam Warren. I love the torrent of sci-fi ideas that Warren throws into his writing, and his art is pretty good, too. On the other hand, the solicitation text abuses the term “bootylicious”, so take that into account too.

Yeah, I saw Empowered, and thought about mentioning it, but I couldn’t decide it if was going to be a serious parody of superheroes or fall into the trap of actually being a silly superhero story rather than a good parody. I’ll definitely take a look at it, but we’ll see if it’s something that is going to be worth it.

RE: Greg Land

http://unstablemolecules.blogspot.com/2006/11/in-defense-of-greg-land-and-by.html

…Something to consider?

Re Virgin Comics.

Isn’t this the final issue of 7 Brothers?

And ‘End of Story’ sounded kind of interesting. Samit Basu is the writer. He’s a young guy, a novelist published by Penguin, India, and is definately one to watch if you keep in mind Virgin’s mission of bringing Indian mythology to an international comics audience. Apparently, Basu (who also now writes Virgin’s ‘Devi’) is influenced by Terry Pratchett and Tolkien.

And Barda appeared in the bath in Kirby’s Mr Miracle (a page scripted by Mark Evanier, I understand).

That’s an excellent point, Anonymous, and I don’t deride the fact that Greg Land does it, just that he appears incapable of doing anything else. One of the guys at my comic book shop said they asked for a sketch from him at a convention and he had to drag out his big book o’ photographs. The guy didn’t want that, he wanted a free-hand sketch! Land used to be capable of that - his early work on that Nightwing mini-series was certainly interesting, but somewhere along the way he stopped doing that. His work, like I pointed out when I zipped through the latest issue of Wizard, has become sterile and cold. The artists who rely so heavily on photo-referencing - and I include Alex Ross in this - have a tendency to make their drawings so lifelike that it’s like looking at a wax museum, and it’s kind of creepy. I don’t doubt Greg Land’s talent, and I certainly couldn’t do what he does, but I wonder if he might be a better artist if he left the “sampling” behind occasionally.

Craig - yes, it’s the final issue of 7 Brothers.

Funky Green: The original plan was to do three volumes of SPOOKED, but shortly after vol. 1 came out Ross hit the ground running with Tokyopop and various other publishers trying to snap him up for truckloads of money (which, believe me, neither of us got for SPOOKED) and he’s been chockablock ever since. I’ve also been kept busy ever since doing various books that, y’know, actually sell

Now, I could probably squeeze a second book in there somewhere, but Ross couldn’t. And I’m not sure I want to do it without him. His art was such a big part of SPOOKED that I just can’t imagine it.

Basically, I hope that one day we can finish Emily’s story, but don’t hold your breath. If there’s still no sign of it happening in the future, I may write the rest of it as a novel or something…

Cool.
Well it’s not, it’s a shame, Spooked was really good, but I can’t begrudge you making a buck.

Thanks for the kind words, I really appreciate that. In the meantime, may I suggest Ross’ WET MOON series, and of course my own WASTELAND?

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