Category: Comic Musings

All general posts relating to the comic book industry.

More Crappy Comics On WWE? Sign Me Up!

Apparently, Titan Publishing (the guys who publish various trade paperbacks) has inked a deal to do comic books based on WWE. You can read some of the press release here if you want.

I’m not too keen on the idea. I’ll admit that the run by Chaos Comics was actually pretty good (the highlight being a 10-issue miniseries on Undertaker, which I actually enjoyed for the most part – and a few other oneshots). But that was during a different time.

This time, I’m not sure. But hey, it can’t be all bad, right?

EDIT: PWPix has some previous pages of the first issue of WWE Heroes, which features medieval knights, demons, and Hell In A Cell… and a Royal Rumble. Looks promising? See for yourself.

An Incoherent Rambling About Spider-Man’s Brand New Day

There’s word that Spider-Man has undergone a change of late. Marvel has been proudly touting its Brand New Day storyline, which is supposed to introduce the first new status quo for its popular superhero. Now I haven’t been following comics in a good couple years, but I figure let’s jump in and see how Spidey’s been doing since he opened himself up to the world.

So I come back to comics, start reading this bold new vision that Marvel has released and what do I learn?

– Peter Parker and Mary-Jane are no longer married and are apparently on bad terms with each other. Apparently this happened due to a deal with Mephisto that he would save frail Aunt May for the existence of their marriage. Yeah, that alone is pretty stupid and totally against the Parker character. How many people close to Peter have died? Did he make a deal to bring back any of those characters? That’s just bullshit! Why don’t we make a deal that brings back Uncle Ben too? Or any of the other 500 characters that have died in the Spider-Man comics… oh wait.

– Harry Osborn is back from the dead, on good terms with Peter, and hates Spider-Man… Christ, are you fucking kidding me? Bad enough we brought back Norman Osborn for that Clone Saga years ago, but now we’re brining back Harry because of this whole Devil deal? Bullshit! Again, why not bring back Uncle Ben instead of Harry? And if Harry hates Spider-Man, shouldn’t he hate Peter too? After all, Peter came out of the closet and… oh wait just a minute there, King.

– Nobody knows who Spider-Man is anymore. Don’t worry, it’s still Peter Parker, but apparently the whole thing is reorganized so that the whole unmasking thing that was much publicized, debated, criticized, analysed, whatever… never happened. Why would you do this? This is a move I expect from the Distinguished Competitor, not fucking Marvel. Again… BULLSHIT! It’s almost like they’re trying to rewrite history.

– Ol’ Jonah suffers a heartattack and his rival buys the Bugle and renames it the DB. Yeah, really fucking original. The DB. Yeah… BULLSHIT!

– Spider-Man no longer has organic webshooters, but the old-school mechanical ones. Some people might be happy with this, but I actually preferred the organic shooters. After all, spiders don’t have mechanical shooters, but I digress.

– A new heroine called Jackpot appears… and you know it’s obviously Mary Jane because she has red hair and calls Spider-Man “Tiger”. Christ! And who the fuck is Menace? Another goblin-like foe? BULLSHIT!

How do you fuck up Spider-Man?! Please tell me! PLEASE!

Okay… I guess I should be asking myself if the books are any good.

Truth be told, the stories aren’t that bad. They do try to bring back some semblance of classic old-school Spider-Man, but apparently nobody clued in on the fact that Peter is still old. The art for these books are… mediocre at best. Don’t get me wrong it’s not terrible and it’s fairly decent, but it’s nothing that hasn’t been done before. Overall, it’s worth a quick look, but the whole rewriting of history just ruins the whole thing for me. Again, why do these things need to change? It simply doesn’t make any sense. It reeks of… BULLSHIT!

The Game Herpes… I Mean Heroes (Also, Smallville).

Went to a couple restaurants for Mother’s Day. Ate some really sweet grub in one and had nice coffee & cake in another. Good meals followed by several fifteen-minute sessions in the crapper. Nice.

Just about the only good thing about Father’s Day is that my dad doesn’t like going to restaurants, so we can order cheaper take-out that doesn’t induce a shitfest.

Anyway, some blurbs and stuff.


Handsome Tom’s new podcast series has been going on for a while and I gotta say; for a test run, this doesn’t seem to bad. They don’t have much of a site at the moment, but what they do have is pretty damn entertaining for the most part, unlike Tom’s previous website of work, which is starting to lose its luster due to the unfunny and uninteresting stuff being brought in.

But that other site has something Tom doesn’t have: the Angry Video Game Nerd… but then to see him, I go to Gametrailers and… ugh. Check out the Game Heroes here. (2019 Update: Link No Longer Valid.)

In other news, word has it that Allison Mack, who starred in Smallville since its first episode, is considering leaving the show over money issues. This after it was announced that two other central cast members announced that they would leaving the show. You know, rather than having another season, maybe we should… oh, I don’t know… cancel it? I mean, it’s nice that we have a Superman series that is lasting this long, but really, it’s getting ridiculous having to introduce all these Superman characters and concepts… long before Clark Kent even dons the fucking tights!

Another source claims that to replace the departing Lex Luthor, Smallville will be bringing in Doomsday… oh, well that’s just great. What are they going to do now? Film the Death of Clark Kent and follow up with reign of the Clark Kents, featuring Eradicator Clark, Cyborg Clark, Steel Clark, and Supe… Er… Boy…….. um, never mind. Just screw it.

When? You Mean You Didn’t Know…?

At an undisclosed press junket, Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada sat before a bunch of random journalists and field questions.

“So, Joe,” one reporter asked. “Marvel has all these overblown event storylines coming up? When do you suppose Marvel will go back to normal stories not requiring extensive readings?”

“You mean when are our books going to suck again,” Quesada joked.

The quip got a bit of chuckle from the audience before another reporter spoke out. “You know it’s funny you’d say that because I kinda thought the books were already sucking since Civil War. Brand New Day? World War Hulk? Red Hulk? Another fucking Skrull storyline? What the hell, man? Whatever happened to the good old days of Marvel when you weren’t fucking with the status quo?”

The question raised some boos, and Quesada answered that “At the end of the day, what it means to me, is that our stuff is so compelling that you want to get it. My job and Dan’s job and all our jobs here are to make you want to buy everything we put out.”

“But that’s the thing,” another reporter asked. “Your stuff isn’t that compelling now. In fact, your stuff is so fucking boring and terrible that it’s not even worth pirating. How does that make you feel about producing shitty-ass stories charging people five bucks a pop to suffer through incredible stories such as Bucky as Captain America or Marvel Apes? Marvel Fucking Apes? Are you a fucking moron, man?!”

Fine. Fine. I’ll just give my money to DC.

Captain America? Dead? Are You F'n Drunk?!

Some press release or something. Got it off Trekweb which presumably came from some place else.

NEW YORK – Captain America has undertaken his last mission _ at least for now. The venerable superhero is killed in the issue of his namesake comic that hit stands Wednesday, the Daily News reported.

On the new edition’s pages, a sniper shoots down the shield-wielding hero as he leaves a courthouse, according to the newspaper.

It ends a long run for the stars-and-stripes-wearing character, created in 1941 to incarnate patriotic feeling during World War II. Over the years, an estimated 210 million copies of “Captain America” comic books, published by New York-based Marvel Entertainment Inc., have been sold in a total of 75 countries.

But resurrections are not unknown in the world of comics, and Marvel Entertainment editor in chief Joe Quesada said a Captain America comeback wasn’t impossible.

Still, the character’s death came as a blow to co-creator Joe Simon.

“We really need him now,” said Simon, 93, who worked with artist Jack Kirby to devise Captain America as a foe for Adolf Hitler.

According to the comic, the superhero was spawned when a scrawny arts student named Steve Rogers, ineligible for the army because of his poor health but eager to serve his country, agreed to a “Super Soldier Serum” injection. The substance made him a paragon of physical perfection, armed only with his shield, his strength, his smarts and a command of martial arts.

In the comic-book universe, death is not always final. But even if Captain America turns out to have met his end in print, he may not disappear entirely: Marvel has said it is developing a Captain America movie.

To this I say… if anyone truly believes that they’re going to kill off one of their most beloved characters for good, you are truly out of your fucking minds and deserve to get your heads blown off. I mean, come on.

Useless Post For The Day

“I love writing this blog. You know why? Because none of you ever comments on it. I know you’re reading it. The hits register. You just have nothing to say.”

The above quote is from the recent issue of the new Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man comic series. And it sort of applies to this blog. Actually no. If you haven’t comment on any of my posts, it’s either because you do have nothing to say, you’re not reading, or because commenting is turned off.

The girl in the comic probably should have checked to see if her commenting function is active. Maybe she’d get more comments… Oh well.

Legend has it that a year consists of 365 days (mostly) and that if I had posted at least once a year, I’d be nailing more posts than I currently have. Of course, most of my posts would be probably be akin to something like this:

“Nothing interesting happened today.”

Then again, it’s only the morning… but there’s a reason I’m not updating a hi5 or myspace, which I do have but never use.

And I gotta go.

No More Archie On Fanfiction.Net

I tell you. Everytime I visit Fanfiction.Net in an attempt to read some awesome/awful stories or post some of my own, it absolutely amazes me as to what kind of strange stupidities I find there.

Now I’ve posting stories at FF.Net for roughly a couple years now, despite an earlier Bite posting saying I never would in spite of the fact that I had an account there for a year prior and having done nothing with it. (Still with me? Good.) I’ve seen my share of awkward moments and have been involved in some puzzling situations. I’ve even had a story removed for some stupid reasons. So there wasn’t anything that surprised me until I’ve read FF.Net’s policy this morning as I was about the first chapter of a new Castlevania story I started over the weekend. Nothing that I haven’t read before.

Then I saw the list of restricted works. For the uninitiated, there are a few authors who had expressly forbidden the postings of fanfics based on their works. Some of these names aren’t really familiar to me and the ones that are have written stories that I don’t particular care for. And in the case of one specific author who I shall not name, it’s personally not worth the effort to try and write a story based on lackluster novels that somehow made money and became best-sellers. But just as the list came to an end, I saw one puzzling entry into the list.

Archie Comics.

For some reason, Archie Comics expresses forbids the archiving of Archie fanfics. Actually, there is a small valid reason; Archie Comics and the properties they produce are family-based entertainment. If you go to their website and click on the Note to Parents section, you’ll find a detailed article about Archie Comics are clean fun and that’s the way they like. This probably stems to their wish to keep unclean Archie fanfics off a large public forum like FF.Net. Still, it seems overly protective. I mean, some of this stuff can’t be that bad, right?

And then I read Agony In Pink, a Power Rangers fanfic that, all gruesome depictions aside, isn’t terribly well-written.

Apparently, so did Archie.

(2019 Update: Reading this today is funny in hindsight, when you consider that the current crop of Archie comics are less family friendly and there’s also a Riverdale show that is anything but family friendly.)

Spider-Man Unlimited… meh.

So I liked the Spider-Man cartoon that’s on Fox. I think it does a good enough job of adapting some of the more popular comic stories onto the small screen with its own little continuity and it has a pretty catchy theme song. Almost as catchy as that classic Spidey tune from the old cartoon from the 60s or something.

The show ended on a cliffhanger, with Spider-Man and that Webb lady looking for Mary Jane in some other dimension or something… but rather than continue that angle, we got another Spider-Man cartoon… called Spider-Man Unlimited.

This Spider-Man featured Spider-Man going to another dimension – a Counter-Earth, if you will – and now he has to help some rebels fend off against some other villains while also having to deal with mutated versions of Venom and Carnage. Spidey also sports a new suit with a bunch of gadgets and… I’m not a fan. Spidey has had costume changes before, but this looks god-awful.

Spider-Man Unlimited is a good show on its own… good original storylines, decent animation, but it’s not the Spider-Man I know from reading the comics. While there are some familiar faces, they don’t always show their face, leaving our poor webhead to make friends with some new faces, who vaguely resemble some characters from the comics.

I’m not going to bash this cartoon because it doesn’t follow the roots of which it came from. It’s a good show, but it would have been a better show if Spidey ditched the hi-tech crap and stuck with his basic web shooters and proportionate spider strength.

Or at least came up with a better suit.