Anything, Everything, or Nothing At All

[PowerBook Pete, the Mad Mod]

Leopard v Crocodile!

[Richard Willis]

So far California hasn't had to deal with hurricanes because hurricanes don't like cold water. The hurricanes that travel up Mexico's west coast will veer off into the open Pacific when they come to our cold water. I have been in a typhoon. Typhoons are hurricanes-by-another-name that originate off the Asian coast. On September 2, 1969, my base near the DMZ in South Vietnam was hit with Typhoon Doris.

We had just finished building a bunker from 8"x8" timbers and rocks. We sat out most of the typhoon inside that looking out. I saw the crumpled section of tin roof in the lower left picture rip off of a building, fly high in the air, and crash into the cross-piece of a telephone pole. It landed at the back door of the building we worked in. I don't have a picture of this, but the entire wooden roof of an under-construction hospital building was picked up. It landed intact between other buildings. The upper right picture shows the badly-damaged enlisted men's club. That's me standing in the picture wearing the self-winding watch that finally quit just a few years ago.

[Dave Palmer]

Some perspective on the size of the comic book industry.  On the radio today I heard that in the US we'll spend $3 billion on Halloween candy this year.  According to Comichron the 2021 comic book industry (graphic novels, comic books, digital) was just over $2 billion, up from $1.2 billion in 2020.  

We're just a blip in the economy.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

I think the term "comic book industry" is an oxymoron. I always say "comic book field." 

[Jeff of Earth-J]

Visual inspiration for Ultron?

Makino, “The Indestructible Antagonist!” from Captain Video #3.  who turned on an killed his creator.

[Luke Blanchard]

That's well-spotted. Roy Thomas put more homages into his comics than one realises. Yellowjacket, for example, was a homage to the Charlton character. Steel was renamed Commander Steel after a Canadian character.

Ultron's origin wasn't revealed for a while, but there's a panel in The Avengers #55 suggesting he has a particular grudge against Goliath. That was the second part of his first storyline,.

In #54 Thomas "revealed" the Cowl to be someone else, but I can believe that was a fake-out.

The Captain Video story has a parallel revelation to #55. I think that makes the connection certain.

Steranko's story about Captain America's secret identity and Madame Hydra has resemblances to lead story from Daredevil Comics #44: attempts on his Daredevil's life makes him regret having revealed his identity, he fakes his death as Bart Hill, there's a showdown involving a funeral home.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

"That's well-spotted."

In a 2010 issue of Back Issue magazine Thomas revealed he gave a copy of Captain Video #3 to John Buscema, so I'd say it's almost a sure thing.

"Roy Thomas put more homages into his comics than one realises."

In addition to those you mentioned, the look of the revamped Captain Marvel (specifically the "burst" on his chest) was inspired by Atoman.

[Luke Blanchard]

Jeff of Earth-J said:

In a 2010 issue of Back Issue magazine Thomas revealed he gave a copy of Captain Video #3 to John Buscema, so I'd say it's almost a sure thing.

The UN sequence and climax look like the inspirations for the climax of Avengers #68.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

So I'm poking around on the internet yesterday and I come across a review, written by an aging Gen Xer, of the most recent issue of a DC series I don't like and don't read. The reviewer said he doesn't usually call for writers to be fired, yet that was exactly what he was doing here. (I'm not sure who he expected to do the firing. The editor who hired hired her to write the story and who previously approved it? but I digress.) The offensive scene in question was metatextual in the sense that a character in the story had been assigned the role of reflecting the reviewer's own opinions. Not having a horse in this race, I found it funny.

But the reviewer took the position that the writer hated the readers. (I have never said that myself, but we used to have a guy here who said that a lot.) He also opined that any new writer should be required to read the entire series leading up to his or her run, and I do recall saying something along those lines in the long, long ago. Looking at this series (which has existed since the late '90s) objectively, the reality of the situation has become perfectly obvious to me. One of the new comics I bought just yesterday to a similar metatextual look at the history of a different comic book universe, but that one conformed with my own opinions rather than parodied them, so I was okay with it. The reality behind both comics, however, is the same.

[Richard Willis]

The offensive scene in question was metatextual in the sense that a character in the story had been assigned the role of reflecting the reviewer's own opinions. Not having a horse in this race, I found it funny.

Nobody fired Denny O'Neill or Steve Ditko for injecting their points of view into stories and we all survived. 

The reviewer needs to recognize that not agreeing with him is not an actionable crime.

[Richard Willis]

An indepth analysis of why The Exorcist (1973) still works.

The Article

[Randy Jackson]

Jack Kirby Cameo from the Incredible Hulk

[Richard Willis]

DC Movies: James Gunn, Peter Safran to Lead Film, TV Division – The...