Elseworlds Eroticism #1

 

Hello ladies, gentlemen, and people of ambiguous gender identity. I'm sure you know about the very popular and beloved ongoing series What If Wednesday, but did you know that DC Comics ALSO had their own out of continuity stories? Well I'm guessing if you are a comic fan you probably did, but this is for anyone who might not know. Since I felt like adding DC content what better idea then to make my own Elseworlds series... so welcome to Elseworlds Eroticism... What, I wanted alteration damnit. So let's get on with this!

Holy hot bananas, Batman! This Elseworlds, Batman/Houdini: The Devil's Workshop (1993) is fucking awesome! It's written by Howard Chaykin and John Francis Moore with beautiful painted art from Mark Chiarello whom I've only heard of thanks to this book and now want to read every story he wrote. This story puts Batman and his cast of characters into the early 19th century, where he teams up with Harry Houdini. There are a lot of neat touches here that make sense with when the story takes place, Alfred is a freed slave who works for Bruce Wayne as his butler (at least its hinted at), Vicki Vale is a suffragette working for the right for women to vote. Stuff like that. Makes the whole world feel more full and well researched. Anyway, Batman teams up with Harry Houdini and they fight VAMPIRES which is cool as hell, and yes of course a version of the Joker (called Jack Schadenfreude, naturally). If you have problem with some Jewish slurs being used I'd probably not read this one but if you can look past that this one comes Highly Recommended.

Our second Elseworlds for this week is, Batman: In Darkest Knight (1994), written by Mike W Barr and drawn by Jerry Bingham (probably known better for Batman: Son of the Demon) is a fun mashup of both Batman and Green Lantern. It starts with Batman doing the "HOW CAN I MAKE THEM FEAR ME!!!?" thing and BLAM Abin Sur just smashes down into Batman's backyard and he becomes the Green BatLantern and then the Green BatLantern just smashes the shit outta The Red Hood so that he never becomes The Joker! Then the Guardians of the Universe (those blue up their own ass motherfuckers) tell him he has to fight SINESTRO and he does beating his ass into jelly and taking away his dictatorship. Sinestro is then sent to the Anti Matter Universe Qward to stay FOREVER! Of course, forever is like 12 seconds, Sinestro is given his yellow ring and escapes! He turns Catwoman into Star Sapphire and Harvey Dent into Binary Star and fucking KILLS THE SHIT out of Gordon! He also takes Joe Chills mind into his but I'll get back to that. He tells the blue fuckers to eat shit and they freak the fuck out and send 4 Lanterns down to take him down WHILE giving Superman, Wonder Woman and Flash, Green Lantern rings because why the hell not and during the fight FUCKING ALFRED DIES. Holy shit, Mike W Barr just killin people left and right. The Guardians then decide to stay back. He has a back and forth with the Green Justice League and then goes into space to kick the shit outta Sinestro and his gang. Oh and Sinestro wears a purple jacket because the colorist was like Fuck it I'mma do this.  This does have some problems. I thought the fact that Joe Chill and Sinestro are in the same mind kinda interesting and it doesnt do much with it and I think I would have liked to see a mini series of this instead, let some of the ideas breathe more. So I'll put this in the fun but flawed catergory and give it a Recommend. Oh and this gets big ups for giving Bill Finger a dedication at the end and being like "Fucking hell DC give the man credit for his part in Batman you shits" just a lot classier than that.

John Byrne is many things, a comics superstar turned angry old man. Yep. I'm not going to get into any of that stuff right now, but during the 1980s John Byrne was on the top of the comics world. X-Men, Fantastic Four, Superman. All really great stuff with great art. John Byrne kinda went off the rails during the 1990s and made some pretty bad stuff, but Batman/Captain America (1997) is totally not on the list of stuff he did that wasn't very good in the 1990s and in is in fact a lot of fun. You get to see the two heroes fight in the Second World War against Joker and the Red Skull (and when Joker finds out that he's working for a nazi a very funny scene happens. Even the Joker thinks nazis can go fuck themselves) The art is still pretty good but in one of the scenes Bucky looks like a dwarf and not a teenager. Still its fun to see all the random characters interact and even have Sgt Rock in it! I give this a Highly Recommended. Lots of fun.

Well, next time maybe I'll talk about some non Batman Elseworlds. Or Maybe I'll just stick with Batman. Who knows? I'll probably do this more than once a week as I'm not kept to a Wednesday schedule. I might even change that too. Who knows? THE SHADOW KNOWS. BUMBUMBUM... uh okay I'm out.

Weird Comic Book Stuff #1

 

It's time for YET another comics article. Yes, I like these because I like comic books and they are easy and fun to talk about. This will be a series of articles about weird shit within comic books, weird villains, heroes, stories, writers, artists. Just the stuff that makes you go "what the jumping jesus hell were they thinking?" so expect a LOT of stories from Bob Haney and Bob Kanigher to show up here because they practically made a career at doing weird shit.

I pretty much made this article so I could show you the greatest goofy ass bad guy who ever existed in comic books. I will probably say that a LOT but fuck it, Tapping Tommy is amazing. He's a tap dancer 
(with killer tap dancing robots of course) who fought The Defenders (Defenders #30 I believe) and somehow got the better of them for a short time. The Defenders at that time had Dr. Strange, Valkyrie, Nighthawk, and a little guy named The Incredible Fucking Hulk, so it's already pretty hilarious how he wasnt beaten to tar in like one panel. Sadly, Tapping Tommy has not been seen in the last 45 years but if I ever somehow get a job at Marvel Comics you'll get your day Tommy!!!

This guy is also amazing. He's got the last name Weele, which kinda sounds like Wheel so of course in COMIC BOOK FASHION he decides to create a giant wheel to destroy the Rocket Racer and Spider-Man. I just had to include him in this one becuase I get the feeling Marv Wolfman who wrote the story just came up with his alter ego's name Jackson Weele first and just HAD to create something for him. Ridiculous and silly but oh so much fun. He even got more than one appearance and apparently his last appearance was in 2016. Wild. Sadly it was in a Deadpool book so I will never get to read it because Deadpool gives me the shits.

The last fellow we are going to talk about today is the Hypno Hustler and if you guessed he appeared in a comic book published during the 1970s give your self a Captain Fucking Obvious award because there's no other decade something this insane could come from. He's pretty much disco Ringmaster from Ringmaster and his Circus of Crime (don't worry I will talk about them) where as he uses his guitar to hypnotize people and would it surprise you if I told you Bill Mantlo also created Tapping Tommy?? Oddly enough, he actually made it out of the 1970s and had more appearances. YET MY POOR TOMMY GETS NOTHING.

I may have poked some fun at these guys but all of their origin stories were fun comics that I would recommend, Defenders  #30, Amazing Spider Man #182-183, and Spectacular Spider Man #28. All from the 1970s, a very fun and weird decade for comic books. Anyway, I'll catch you later moon doggies!!

Weekly Comic Discussion #2

 

That's right true believers! It's time for more discussion on some comics I bought! (these were actually published last week but I forgot to pick them up...) I still plan to review X of Swords but since that's gonna be done next week I'll save my thoughts to make a whole review on that by itself so let's see what's up with the comics I picked up this week.

Black Widow #3: Kelly Thompson is one of the best creative people at Marvel Comics right now and deserves more people taking a look at her work. And I want to kiss the beautiful art by Elena Casagrande and Jordie Bellaire (he did the cover and she does the interiors) The story so far is that Black Widow coming back to her apartment from spy stuff is abushed and it goes ahead three months, where she is now has a son and a fiancé and you know some big shit is up. This issue goes to show that one of the bad guys (Weeping Lion.... I don't know who that is) is now getting ready to send in some goons to kill Black Widow and all of the villains just want to leave her in the happy place where she is because they know she'd fuck their shit up if they fail at killing her or her new family. The art in this is fantastic. Just a CHEF'S KISS. The cool fight scenes and everything. I don't think I've seen Elena Casagrande's art before but give her all the comics. All of them.  This issue comes Recommended!

U.S.Agent #1: This one is done by long time writer Christopher Priest who has been working for Marvel Comics since he was a teenager in the late 1970s. He did work for Marvel, DC, and Valiant and I believe even is a preacher! What a life! This is a very fun little story involving the John Walker USAgent, I'm sure people are angry because I think John Walker was without an arm or a leg the last time people saw him but continuity is silly by my book. All comic stories are canon even the ones that contradict the other ones, and I think that was said by Grant Morrison so yeah. The most important thing is that this comic is fun and I do want to see where it goes. I enjoyed the interplay between the asian dude and USAgent, and I want to see how the story ends and I figure that's a good thing. We will see how this plays out hombres! This issue comes Recommended!

                                                              

Marvel Indigenous Voices #1:  I'm for peoples of all types and kinds getting to work at Marvel Comics. I don't like the creepy Comicsgate assholes that appear all over the twitter. I just can't come out and say something is perfect and amazing just because someone who wasn't white did it. I did actually pick up this issue and give it a fair shake unlike anyone in that terrible twitter hashtag movement Comicsgate who will yell at everything because their youtube daddies tell them too. And I'm not going to completely trash this comic either. First off the art by Jeffrey Veregge from the covers to the first two pages is awesome. I love that style and think he made The Watcher look cool as hell. I enjoyed the two page spread and everything. I even want to buy the other variant covers and that only happens when its Skottie Young or that Arthur Germ fellow. The rest of the art feels like it needs a bit more improvement. Twitter was laughing at a piece in the first story of Captain Marvel and yeah it's not good, BUT I did think several pieces within that story actually were pretty good. The first story I also felt probably needed more room to breathe. The second story was pretty good, it's got Dani Moonstar (one of my favorite mutants) and Wolfsbane (another one of my favorite mutants, what can I say I love the New Mutants!) and they have come looking for a mutant who can't control his powers yet and hurt the son of a sheriff. I also loved the ending with Wolfsbane being so happy over the teddy bear. Great stuff. The last story was honestly so forgettable that even after reading it not that long ago I can't remember anything about it except it had Silver Fox in it. I still Recommend this comic if only for the beautiful art but it is defiantly a mixed bag. Still I do see possibilities for these people to grow within the Marvel Universe and all that jazz. I certainly believe my first story for Marvel would be worse if I were given the chance but then again I'm the only person who wants to see a Tapping Tommy/Hypno Hustler team up.

And that's about it for the comics that aren't X-Men that I picked up this week. I might pick up some DC or some indie stuff next week because I don't want this to be come a Marvel heavy blog. 

Weekly Comic Discussion #1

 

That image isn't from a comic released this week but I don't think any of the comics I picked up this week were released this week, so it kinda works. Now welcome one and all to a thread where I discuss the comics or at least some of them that I picked up this week. I live on an island in Canada so sometimes comics distribution is all over the dang place. and by sometimes I mean all the damn time. So let's just discuss some stuff thats on the new comics racks... even if some of it might be old by now!

If I had to pick a favorite newer writer man of these stories involving space raccoons and trees then that man would be Al Ewing. The man clearly is having a lot of fun writing these stories and it comes through in the stories. This story is a murder mystery that involves fallout from the last marvel event, Empyre (And let me rant about Marvel events here... can you at least have the event have some fallout and stories dealing with it... if these are supposed to CHANGE EVERYTHING FOREVER you can't jjust go whoops lol lets forget about it after SUPER FARTS DESTROY THE UNIVERSE #6 written by David Warmington comes out so I actually approve of the story continuing in its own way. I don't approve of events taking 3 issues or more out of the stories I want to read and also taking like 5493589 parts to read, even if there have been events I've enjoyed in the past. You gotta fix this shit Marvel or I'll rip out whats left of my hair and send it to you. I PROMISE THIS) where the Kree and the Skrull became one thanks to the Kree/Skrull Young Avenger known as Teddy. They also fought those weirdo tree people from those bonkers ass Avengers comics from the 1970s. anyway the two empires emerged into one like when Teddy merges into Wiccan's butthole. lol i'm 12.Anyway this issue ends with setting up ANOTHER EVENT and I'll at least buy the issues that Guardians tie into because not having a single issue breaks my brain. I'd recommend buying the trade of this, all 8 issues have been really dingle darn good.

Well this is a part of the storyline Outlawed (or as I like to call it Civil War III: The Search for Ms. Marvel), which was clearly going to be somewhat of a mini event until Covid-19 happened and they had to not put out as many comic books as they do. Now it's just a normal sized storyline. Also The New Warriors comic that everyone in that stupid hashtag movement on Twitter Comicsgate shit their pants about, which makes me always want to read something because those idividuals are rock stupid. I really enjoy most of the new diverse legacy teen characters and thought this sounded fine, even if it really is just Teen Civil War but with less Mark Millar which is always a good thing (the only reason the Kick Ass and Kingsman movies were any good is that Matthew Vaughn cut out most of the stupid horseshit that Mark Millar loves) Anyway this story happens after Viv Vision explodes in Ms Marvel's school and they start a law called Kamala's law and that means you have to be 21 before you can be a superhero so you know the teen heroes aren't lie down and the set up in Champions #1 and #2 was very interesting and I think I'm gonna be seeing how this story ends.

I'm sure I will find some comic to read that I will end up yelling about, maybe I will buy Three Jokers written by a Geoff Johns who clearly doesn't care about writing comic books anymore because man the second I saw that I thought "wow that's a fucking stupid idea for a comic" but it will probably be on another slow week like this one. Also I will get the latest X-Men X Of Swords thing because Jonathan Hickman and Friends X-Men relaunch has been pretty great lately, but that will have an entire post related to it. Anyway, we will see what happens next week!

Re-reading comics!

 

Well as you can see it's time for another set of articles to be put up... I like comic books... a lot. They are fun to collect, fun to read, sometimes even fun to argue with other people with (but not too serious about) even the people behind them are fun to read about (and sometimes sad weirdos you don't want to spend any time with but that sometimes happens between the people behind your favorite things) Anyway, I've decided to re-read some stuff because I want to know what to prune from the old collection (and I have a whole hell of a lot of stuff) so expect a lot of interesting stuff being discussed in the next few days.

Up First will be Ms. Marvel Vol 1. The Kamala Khan version.