Hey, comic book heads – y’wanna see a comic that can only be done on the web? Click Here!
And with that little slice of brilliance, we’re on for our latest edition of…
I hope everybody had a decent Memorial Day, and y’know, I’d been thinking – we haven’t even made it to the halfway point but we have already had ourselves quite a year, wouldn’t you say? As it stands, 2009 is already going to be remembered as the year that the first African American was sworn in as President of the United States, the year that the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice is all but set to be sworn in….
…aaaaand the year that the Cyclops/Wolverine/Jean Grey triangle took a turn for the creepy. Courtesy of UNCANNY X-MEN #510, folks – g’wan and get a closer look, on me:
Okay. This is not to say that the gravity of the situation is lost on me. I get why this is a big deal. The Sisterhood of Mutants, led by a resurrected Madeline Pryor, now has a means of raising the Phoenix, Jean Grey, the most powerful mutant telepath of her generation from the dead, and use her planet-destroying alien telekinetic hellfire as a weapon against our heroes. Bum-bum-BUMMMMMM, sure, great, been there, done that, have the t-shirt in a drawer somewhere. But with all that said, I can only picture Scott’s first line in the next issue: “Logan…why do you have a lock of my dead wife’s hair?”
And I’m sorry, even if our ol’ Canucklehead still has a problem with Scott pairing off with Emma Frost almost immediately after Jean died – I know I did, even though the only reason they’re together in the first place is because Jean used her powers to give her husband a little nudge in Emma’s direction from all the way in the White Hot Room of the M’Kraan Crystal, thankyouverymuch Grant Morrison – that should be the question on everybody’s lips right then…and not without a slight lip-curl of revulsion, either: Logan…why do you have a lock of his dead wife’s hair?
Sigh. Y’ever get the feeling that the folks running things at Marvel & DC are just about convinced that they’re going to be the ones at the helm when the comic book industry finally bites that Big One that we’ve all been claiming was going to happen for the last decade and change?
After preseverating over Aunt May and “Jay” Jonah Jameson Sr. for the past three or four columns, I thought I was done talking about NO GOOD REASON at least for a little bit, but it looks like we’ve got some more news in the web-slinger’s corner of things.
First off, it seems like we’re just not quite done with these two crazy kids…
…courtesy of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN* #594, we have the latest development in this subplot, in an otherwise unremarkable conclusion to the “Spider-Man: 24/7” storyline. And if it feels as though Spidey has been down this road before…well, yes he has – but we do have to acknowledge at least one minor difference:
Back in the day, Aunt May was able to score a much younger fiance – and thanks to Mark Waid and a declawed Comics Code Authority…
…now we know why.
Okay, folks – now I’m done with that image. Promise.
Although I will say this much – Jay’s proposal has my spider-sense tingling. I have this feeling that we’re going to learn what kind of person Jay is – let’s not forget, he left his wife and son, resulting in the warm and cuddly person we all know and love as J. Jonah Jameson – and heartbreak is going to be in Aunt May’s future in the next couple of months. But I guess we’ll see what happens.
Meanwhile, over in the Sunday Funnies, this happened:
Remember back in January when the news first broke that Spider-Man was being re-singled in the newspaper strip that I was stunned to learn was still in print in the first place? Well, looks like that experiment is over – Stan Lee decided to “bow to your letters” and reset Peter Parker and Mary Jane’s marriage! As much as I’d like to believe that people wrote to the strip in protest of this move, I’m gonna assume that Stan Lee woke up from a nap and remembered, “hey – I created these two!” But thank Stan for small favors all the same. I’d also like to believe that Marvel was paying attention to what happened here, but I’m guessing there’s only the slimmest of hopes that this move will have the same effect on Joe Quesada that it did on Jim Shooter twenty years ago. Ah well – the average Marvel editor-in-chief lasts about ten years, so at least there’s that to consider. *Checking watch* and wouldja look at that…
But here’s my favorite bit of Spider-news that I have to pass along this week:
Season One of THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN is coming to DVD on July 28th!
Quoting Superheroes-R-Us.com: The Spectacular Spider-Man Season 1 DVD set will contain all 13 episodes from the first season as well as two bonus features. Spider-Man Reanimated and Stylizing Spidey will offer behind the scenes looks at the making of the hit animated series.
Quoting Greg Manuel: Squeal…of…GLEE! *Ahem* Also, click on either picture to pre-order with Amazon.com.
According to the ad, we’ve got 299 minutes total on 2 discs – so in about two months we will finally have a full set of the best cartoon Marvel has ever made. I hope this gets some serious promoting in the pages of Marvel’s comics; it’s the least they can do for this series, considering they made the bonehead move to yank it from network television – with little to no promotion of their new home on Disney XD – meanwhile, WOLVERINE & THE X-MEN and IRON MAN: ARMORED ADVENTURES have been pimped to the hilt. Which is all well and nice, but I’m just sayin’ – if you’ve seen SPECTACULAR, you know the latter two simply don’t compare.
And that brings me to this next bit of news, this time from DC – following GREEN LANTERN: FIRST FLIGHT, the next DC straight-to-DVD project will be SUPERMAN/BATMAN: PUBLIC ENEMIES.
Quoting ROBOT 6: AICN that Warner Bros. Animation and DC Comics will follow this summer’s Green Lantern: First Flight with Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, based on the 2003-2004 comic-book storyline by Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness.
Superman/Batman will be the sixth in the series of direct-to-DVD DC Universe Original Animated Movies that began in 2007 with Superman: Doomsday. Bruce Timm reportedly is executive producer.
The official synopsis appears to follow the source material — the initial arc of the Superman/Batman comic series — pretty closely, with President Lex Luthor claiming that a Kryptonite asteroid heading toward Earth is part of a sinister plot by Superman. Luthor then offers a $1 billion bounty for the Man of Steel and his “partner in crime” Batman.
Superman/Batman: Public Enemies is expected to be released this fall.
The more I see of this trend, the more I love it – and there is no reason for it to ever go away, save for the desire of either Marvel or DC to do so. And in my opinion, the closer to the source material these animated videos are, the better!
The one thing that I have yet to see in any motion-picture adaptation of this comic book character or that, live action or animated, is a verbatim translation from page to screen. I do not believe it’s all that impossible – look at the British! y’think they screw around when it comes to adapting Sherlock Holmes? – so why not try and pull it off? So what if JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE NEW FRONTIER winds up not fitting as a feature-length movie – y’think the fans wouldn’t have bought it as a multi-part episodic miniseries anyway?
I mean, the audience is already there, so you don’t have to worry about the story making sense – because your demographic already knows it. And there’s no shortage of material, either; everybody has their favorite storylines that they wanna see – if I were to ask my readers, I bet all three of them could give you a good twenty to thirty each! Mr. Q could probably rattle off fifty all by himself – ain’t that right, Q?!
AND NOW, JUST CUZ I FEEL LIKE IT…
Special thanks to Chris “Drunkenwarmonkey” Cervantes for this’un – til next time everybody, I’m Greg Manuel and I’m just sayin’, is all…
