Misc.

In Wednesday's post about the week's new comics, I mentioned page 16 of Batman Unseen as a perfect example of both writer Dough Moench's and artist Kelley Jones' particular strengths, and how they work well together.

I tried to explain it in words, but a pictures worth a thousand of 'em, and this page is composed of a half dozen little pictures.

It's a scene in which two gunmen try desperately to shoot down and kill an invisible man that they know is somewhere in the room, before he can kill them. Obviously, a pretty challenging scene to communicate, but they do a hell of a job of it through extremely specific sound effects and Jones' background patterns in key panels. The explanatory line "He caught it!" seems superfluous.

Here's a scan of the page:
And I just love that last panel.


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I've seen the above image, the cover to Eastman and Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1, a couple of times over the course of the last few days, accompanying stories about Nickelodean's purchase of the TMNT (A move which I'm afraid I don't have much of anything to say at this point. I'm not sure exactly what it means, and while it seems unfortunate from a symbolic standpoint, I don't actually know how it will impact the turtles comics. I hope it won't interfere with any collections of the clasic material; I'm looking forward to reprints of plenty of issues in trade form still).

That image is, what, 25 years old now? I've probably seen it off and on over the course of the last 20 years or so. And yet I never noticed until just this morning that Donatello, the turtle on the far right holding a staff, is also carrying a sword on his back.

I don't know why this blows my mind exactly, but it does...particularly because that sword must have been perched on Donatello's shell there for decades and for some reason I never noticed.


This cover image, for September's Blackest Night #3, is much, much younger, and has only been around since around June or so, when DC would have first solicited the issue. I didn't notice until just yesterday, when I was looking for a Blackest Night cover image for a post on Blog@, but there are little Lantern Corps symbols floating around in Firestorm's hair/flame thing. Neat.


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Red Sonja looks awfully comfortable for someone wearing a metal top and sitting on a stone chair, doesn't she?


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Here's Marvel Editor-in-Cheif Joe Quesada talking to Kiel Phegley about Marvel's upcoming event series Siege:

I personally feel that the big events are an important part of our publishing arsenal, but if we keep tapping that vein, it would eventually be a tool we wouldn't be able to use any more because it would wear out its welcome.

I love that sentence. Is it even possible to work any more metaphors into it?


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Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine had a post recently dedicated to has got to be one of the most horrifying comics stories ever published by a Gaines: "Peter and Pinky in Meat Land." It's the charming tale of a little boy who is visited by a magic elf that tells him about the origin of cooked meat (a Chinese boy discovers the charred bodies of his dead pigs after a barn fire and notices that they taste delicious), and then transports the boy to an actual slaughterhouse, so he can see where meat comes from (i.e. slaughtered animals).

The story was published in a 1947 issue of Tiny Tots. I assume every tiny tot who read it grew up to be a vegetarian because holy shit you guys. This is the most fucked up comics story I've ever read, and I'm pretty sure its not even trying to be fucked up..