Comic Book Resources

I’m guessing the theme is impersonation. “Lightning Lad” is really Proty, “Sun Boy” is really a one-shot villain, and “Reflecto” is really Superboy.

Re: the Snark Free Challenge, I’m thinking it all depends on the individual writer/artist/director. I mean, I’m sure there have been comics where people could see the red beams, but I’m just as certain that a bunch of comics and TV episodes have shown him using his heat vision while still dressed as Clark, without anybody seeing anything.

There are episodes of ‘Lois & Clark’, for example, where Lois is standing right next to Clark when he uses his heat vision, and she doesn’t react at all.

4. During the Twelve storyline, Professor Xavier needed to know that all the X-Men were themselves, and not Skrulls (as it had turned out that Wolverine was a Skrull at the time). So he devised a plan that forced all the X-Men to fight against each other and ultimately kill each other off, just to make sure no one was a Skrull.

Every so often I forget just exactly how shitty the X-Men comics of that era were. And then I am reminded.

SEAN

I’d say that people don’t see red blasts from Superman’s eyes. If they see anything, it should be the way the heat vision power is depicted in ‘Smallville,’ where the heated air has the warped look of hot air.

(A few episodes ago, there was one seemingly random instance on ‘Smallville’ where they showed red beams from Clark’s eyes. It seemed like a bizarre FX flub, but later in the episode, it turned out that Lana was watching him. Hence, the red beam effect was so that Lana could actually *see* something.)

Even if you treat his vision like a laser, you ordinarily can’t see a laser’s path, either.

cover theme game: Oh I got it! They’re all really skrulls! What, no? God I hate that X-Men storyline.

There are plenty of energy-projecting superbeings in comics, so I guess that throws out the physics arguments about “Nobody can make energy beams come out of their eyes!”

But from a practical standpoint, I prefer it being pyrokenesis. I just worry about bugs, birds, and the occasional stray flying hero getting between Superman and his target. Oops, Hawkgirl go boom!!!

On the “villain appearing to win,” the JLA Despero battle was the first thing I thought of. But your first one made me think of the end of WATCHMEN, and Adrien’s conversation with Jon, which makes you wonder if anyone really won…

Do all these stories feature the return of a Legionnaire who was previously thought dead?

Wasn’t there an episode of the Superfriends, I think during the Legion of Doom season, where the bad guys ‘won,’ only it was a trick (maybe using robots)? I know that this had the effect of *completely* dominating how I played with my Micronauts for a year or so thereafter. Baron Karza would swoop in and destroy everything. Then I’d spend 30 minutes putting everything back together (oh, the joys of interchangeable parts!), and have Space Commander go, “no, we just fooled you into thinking you were triumphant!” Then the Micronauts would kick his ass. Good times, good times!

For the Theme time, I’d nominate the ending of the Armageddon storyline of Spawn where God and the Devil think they have killed Spawn by incinerating him, when in fact they have been stranded alone on a desolate ruined earth while Spawn and The Mother recreate the world and cut it off from Heaven and Hell.

Also, Hellblazer, the end of Garth Ennis’s “Rake at the Gates of Hell” arc, where Ellie masquerades as Astra so that she can stab the First of the Fallen in the heart as he gloats about his apparent total victory over John. Then again, a lot of Hellblazer storylines have John manipulating his enemies into a position where they think they can triumph, only to turn it around through his schemes at the last second.

Is Superman’s heat vision a blast of heat from his eyes, or does it just make stuff hot by looking at it? Basically, the question is, “Do people see red blasts emitted from Superman’s eyes?”

It was explicitly established in the Byrne years that the beams are invisible. I think it was later (explicitly) amended that they may become visible at very, very high intensity.

But essentially, Superman’s broadcasting focused infrared light (i.e., heat) which is not a part of the visible spectrum. It makes some degree of sense, then, that cranking up the intensity might create visible beams, if higher intensity heat vision bleeds over into the visible end of the spectrum.

But I think “Smallville”’s really got it right on this count, with the warbly air effects to denote the heat beams. If you were firing a beam of intense heat at something, that’s more what you’d expect to see.

I will say right now that the all-time-best “villain sure looks like they’ve won right up until the last second” storyline was the big finale of Jim Starlin’s Dreadstar saga, specifically issues 18-27. One disaster follows another and our heroes gradually lose everything– or do they? The last-minute reversal is absolutely brilliant. Has there ever been a more satisfying 31-issue storyline in a comic book with such a flawless, systematic progression from start to finish?

I almost feel guilty for this one, but I needs me some Cool Points! How else will I ever know I’m cool?

The cover is homaging JC Leyendecker, I believe. I believe this because I looked it up when the book came out…

Oh, and poor, doomed Proty has secretly replaced Saturn Girl, not Lightning Lad. (and the coffee, needless to say, has been secretly replaced with Folger’s Crystals.)

The WHO IS IT? is Cary Nord, isn’t it?

He’s born outside of the States (Canada) and worked on Spiderman for a few issues, didn’t he?

Specifically, one of the plates from 1907’s Ancient Irish Sagas. Leyendecker was the guy who really popularized the fat, red-suited Santa and tiny baby New Year…

In the first cover, Saturn Girl is really Proty (the first Proty, that is).

In the second cover, Sun Boy is really a completely forgettable villain.

In the third cover (and apparently I’m the only person in the world who actually LIKED this Legion story), Reflecto is really the mind of Ultra Boy temporarily occupying the body of Superboy. (The body of Ultra Boy is currently in the dimension between Earth and Bgztl in the 20th century, because… oh, never mind.)

I always viewed Smallville’s take on heat vision as a blurry flame thrower like effect to reflect the fact that Clark was young and still getting a grasp on his powers and the heat stream was a crude first step (I haven’t seen the show in a whle but when they first premiered the heat vision–hillarious episode by the way, he had to thin about sex to crank it up at first–he couldn;t get it to fine laser effect, only jets of heat that set things on fire).

When he gets more experiance, he can then focus the heat to a full on Mongul “Burn.” laser effect or go for the subtle invisbile infared heat stab when he wants to be incognito.

(And, putting aside the whole “it’s a red line so the reader knows what’s happening plus comics are a visual medium so we just want stuff to look cool” real world argument, since Superman more often than not gets into fights that kcik up dust, smokem, and debris, wouldn’t that reveal the beams?)

It might be stretching and twisitng the theme it but in Astro City, the Junkman pulls of the perfect crime and gets away with it only to find that not getting the recognition for the crime was worse than getting caught.

He then goes and recreates his crime, screwing up on puropose so he gets caught and the original crime is pinned on him, finally getting him the notiriety he wanted.

Plus he set up an escape plan to get out of the trial so essentially he won and in doing so felt that he had lost and set out to lose in order to win what he really wanted and then set it up so that he could win a the end of a rial he knew he was going to lose.

Which all means that Kurt Busiek puts the sterling in Silver Age and can outwrite anyone else in the world.

re: tricking villains into thinking they’d won…

In FF Annual #2 from 1964, “The Final Victory of Doctor Doom” had Doom and Reed Richards in “berry juice” induced mental combat. The person with the “stronger mentality” could create illusions in the mind of the weaker, and Reed decided that convincing Doom that he’d won would make him leave them alone for a while. So he did that.

I think in Fantastic Four Annual #2 that Doctor Doom fought a psychic battle with Reed Richards, seemingly annihilating him once and for all…only for it to be revealed that Reed had won, tricking Doom into thinking he had won in order to get him out of their hair for at least a while.

Agh! Beaten by minutes!

In Giant-Size Avenger #4, Kang repeatecly travels back in time to capture Mantis and marry her, thus harnessing the powers of the Celestial Madonna as his own. Eventually he succeeds, only to discover that the bride he has taken is in fact the Space Phantom while Mantis is wed to a Cotati spirit.

Last issue of Book sof Magic v2 had something that fit the theme, as I recall.

WHO IS IT ? #4

Rafael Kayanan

Terry

I seem to recall that the end of the last book of Grant Morrison’s Zenith (Phase Four I think?) hinged on a similar trick - as the many-angled ones destroy the heroes, ravage the earth and set about dominating our entire universe, the viewpoint pulls back to show that they’ve been trapped in a crystal for like the last six episodes…

The Infinity War climaxes with the Magus taking the Infinity Gauntlet and seemingly controlling all of reality … until it is revealed that, in fact, he was given a fake-Reality Gem and Thanos still holds the real one (though it may not have yet been revealed that Thanos was in control of the Reality Gem at that time; I think they left it at “Whoever had it still has it”. I don’t remember when they finally said that Warlock had given it to Thanos.).

Is the Who Is it? Barry Windsor-Smith?

(I have no idea at some of the clues, so it is just a wild guess.)

Of course, there’s all the “John Harkness” Fantastic Fours: a lot of battles that were won by villains, most notably the fight between Doom and Kristoff that ended in the destruction of the world.

But…it was all a dream…

Poor Steve Englehart.

There was a teriffic issue of Detective Comics, written by Peter Milligan, where Bruce Wayne wakes up one day and discovers he isn’t Batman (or Alfred doesn’t know that he is, at least), there’s no Batcave beneath Wayne Manor, etc. Batman does exist, as it turns out, but it’s (apparently) someone else. But Wayne notices small things (like a piece of the Batmobile) that convinces him that he isn’t crazy. To cut to the chase, it turns out that his experience is the work of a psychic teenager who has used his abilities to invade Batman’s mind to determine his identity (which he does). The story ends with the teenager revealing Bruce’s secret to the world on a television talk show. Except it’s really just the kid’s imagination, as he lies in a coma, unable to reveal what he knows to anyone. Very trippy story that was considerably different than any other Bat books being published at the time, as I remember it.

Norman Osborn is one of the five people who go through the ritual of (something or other)…one gets power, one gets instant death, one gets insanity, one gets immortality, and the fifth gets, I dunno, a free coupon for the next ritual of something-or-other. Everyone gets their gift, Osborn gets power and goes and finally trounces Spider-Man once and for all, reveals his secret identity, and murders him in front of dozens of shocked onlookers…

And at the start of the next issue, we see him back at the site of the ritual, babbling incoherently about how he’s killed Spider-Man for good. Because he got the insanity, not the power.

A bit stretchy, but the Sandman. Doctor Destiny (with Morpheus’s jewel) and Morpheus retreat to the dream world, where the psycho breaks the jewel. Flash of light, no Morpheus, celebrating psycho. Pan back, to reveal that the Doctor is in fact dancing on the palm of a much more powerful Morpheus.

Re: when villains think they won but didn’t

The latest Marvel Team-Up series.
It ended with the return of Titannus, who’s being mind-controlled and is destroying a good chunk of U.S. real estate.

A bunch of “Secret Defenders” (assembled and led by Doctor Strange) show up and fight him, to no avail.

Then, it SEEMS to be that Titannus kills each and every one of them in grisly fashion, only for it to be a fake-out.
New character “Crusader” (who took over after “Freedom Ring” was killed) formed a reality-bubble around Titannus, making him think that he was killing all the heroes, when he was really just stuck in a sphere.

Pretty much a direct rip off of that Justice League story with Despero.

~P~
P-TOR

I’m amazed no one has said this…the cover is also homaging Wonder Woman #1, albeit via a pastiche of Leyendecker

I had Rafael Kayanan with #3. This week was great– I figured out the cover challenge, named the artist and came up with something for the cover homage. Most weeks I walk away from it empty handed.

The flat-plane composition of the Amazon Attacks cover (I can readily imagine it being carved as a bas-relief) reminds me of some of the friezes on the Parthenon depicting horsemen in battle (do a Google Image search on “Parthenon frieze” for examples), though it certainly differs in numerous ways. Then again, so does the Leyendecker example yo go re linked to. A Greek image of battle seems like a more appropriate inspiration for a depiction of fighting Amazons than an Irish one. That’s not to say yo go re is wrong - I’m just wondering if no one’s gotten the “correct answer” yet.

There was another X-Men from around the same era where Cerebro had become sentient and was trying to kill the X-Men by utilising the Xavier Protocols. Professor X bought time by fooling it into believing it had killed them all.

Damn, I’m remembering all over again why I didn’t bother picking up th X-titles during those years…

I’m just wondering if no one’s gotten the “correct answer” yet

Always a dicey thing, since the only time I can recall Cronin ever actually revealing the answer to any of his questions was when someone finally got the “they were all black” cover theme game.

But the reason I felt guilty about guessing Leyendecker was that he’s credited on the cover, which is how I managed to look him up the other day…

–yo
certifiable cheat

Why is that? Why does Brian never acknowledge whether or not anybody got it right? It make the whole process much less enjoyable/rewarding, doesn’t it?

[quote]Is Superman’s heat vision a blast of heat from his eyes, or does it just make stuff hot by looking at it? Basically, the question is, “Do people see red blasts emitted from Superman’s eyes?”[/quote]

Didn’t the first appearance of Superman’s heat vision give the explanation that it was “the heat of Superman’s X-Ray vision”?

Why is that? Why does Brian never acknowledge whether or not anybody got it right? It make the whole process much less enjoyable/rewarding, doesn’t it?

Well, I certainly think so, but who knows? I can’t speak to Brian’s motivations, but if I had to rationalize it, I’d say that he either 1) doesn’t want to discourage any late-comers by throwing up a big flashing banner announcing that the game is over, or B) wants people to keep guessing in case they come up with something cool he hadn’t thought of…

I announce all the winners in the Cool Points archive!

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2005/10/31/cool-points-archive/

Granted, I’m usually behind on listing all the winners.

You know, it looks like we all forgot Superman II

i’m pretty sure the disguised-legionnaire answer is the correct one, but it needs to be said anyway:

all three covers feature the legion of super-heroes!
also, all three show cosmic boy.

In the issue where Superman and Doomsday kill each other, Superman uses his heat vision at full poer about a foot from Doomsday. It was shown as red beam about a foot wide with slightly flaming edges.

Don’t know if that helps the beam vs. pyrokinetic argument, but it was a heck of a visual.

I’m in the beam camp, myself.