Big Audio Wednesday - The Big Supes/Batman Climax

In which Batman tracks 'em down and Superman catches 'em, finally. Once again, these recordings from 1945 depict early versions of Batman and Superman. Batman in particular is much different from his current portrayal--less obsessed, less capable, less ultra-ninja and more a regular guy with a cape and more guts than any normal guy should be allowed to possess.

(ETA: Robin gets a chance to shine, as well)

The Story So Far:

Lois Lane has been framed for the murder of a federal agent by Dr. Blythe's Confidence Gang. Clark Kent and Batman have figured out that the real murderess must be an almost exact double for Lois, and after searching through old records, have come across the name of Dorothy Zelinka. While Clark and Lois wait at the courthouse for the jury to hand down its verdict, Batman races out to track Miss Zelinka down.

Three Weeks to Go

So three weeks to go until the big debut. And frankly, I'm getting worried. Everything is going more smoothly this week compared to last--the penciling was faster (if not much better), the inking showed promise in places, the lettering and coloring are going more smoothly.

But the end result is disappointing. Not in the sense of, "I'm not as good as my favorite artist, so I quit," but in the way they translate to the final web image. When I transfer the word balloons from Inkscape (where they look awesome--Blambot makes great fonts for comic lettering) to GIMP for coloring, they come out dithered and fuzzy and hard to read. When I transfer the inked, scanned artwork to a new transparent layer in GIMP for coloring, it comes out jagged and fuzzy (and yes, GIMP is the common factor here, but I've used GIMP for years with better results, so I'm kinda' stumped at what the problem is). So I'm still experimenting to find the best way to a decent final product.

And in the meantime, the first couple weeks' worth of strips are going to sort of suck.

And while I know that lots of good webcomics sort of sucked when they first started (look at the first strips of Schlock Mercenary or No Need for Bushido, for instance, and compare them to the present), the competitions tougher now. You've got to be better coming out of the gate.

My one salvation is that I've been working on my storytelling skills for years, so while I'm flailing artistically, I hope the story feels reasonably solid from the first frames.

So mark your calendars: on Feb. 2, the first strip will go live and Hero Go Home will officially debut.

Although, seriously, you might wait until March to actually start reading it. By then, I hope to have worked out much of the initial suckiness.

Out of the Vault - MythAdventures

I'm gonna' ride this Foglio train till it falls apart, apparently.

So when I did my post on D'Arc Tangent, I mentioned that the format was inspired by Elfquest, from WaRP Graphics. Well, not too long after D'Arc Tangent faded away, Foglio was back in another book in the same WaRP-style format. It was MythAdventures, published by (of course) WaRP Graphics.

MythAdventures started off as an adaptation of Another Fine Myth, by Robert Asprin. Foglio wrote and penciled the adaptation, which was inked by new talent Tim Sale (who would later come to prominence on both Batman and for his work onf the TV series Heroes) and lettered by M. Lucie Chin.

The story concerns a young magician's apprentice named Skeeve, whose teacher is killed moments after summoning a fearsome demon. It turns out that the "demon" is actually a dimension-traveling magician named Aahz. Aahz (who has lost his magical powers in the summoning) takes on Skeeve as his apprentice, and together the two battle against the evil wizard who killed Skeeve's master in a plot to take over the dimensions.

The books are breezy fun, full of fast action, witty dialogue and truly awful puns. Foglio added a layer of cartoonish action in his adaptation. For instance, in this dialogue scene, Aahz pulls a Bugs Bunny-style costume change.



Some have taken issue with the liberties Foglio took with the story, but how boring would it have been to read a comic story that adapted everything word for word?

After 6 issues, MythAdventures changed format from magazine size to a regular-sized comic book. Foglio left the book after 8 issues, finishing the first novel adaptation. The art was then taken over by Jim Valentino. Valentino's art didn't have the same verve that Foglio's did, and the book faded away after four more issues. Years later, Valentino left his job at Marvel to become one of the founders of Image Comics, so he made out all right, although the rest of us suffered.

Okay, okay, I know what you're thinking. You're saying, "But Fraze, what I really want to know is, did Foglio hitchcock in this one?"

Did he ever. While the book is bursting with little in-jokes and cameos--including a Lawgiver Robot from Buck Godot, along with Buck himself, Godzilla and the elves from Elfquest (to name a few)--Phil and Dixie and little Growf the dragon are featured in a subplot that runs across two issues during a visit to the Bazaar at Deva.

Lessons Learned So Far

The learning curve has been steep, but progress continues on the webcomic. I've done the first weeks' worth of strips, and while they're not very good, they show promise.

Meanwhile, I've got a logo made and I've spent a few hours playing around with CSS stylesheets trying to find a look I like. I'm getting close to being satisfied with that. After I've got the look and feel down, I'll start working on content. I'm penciling the second week's strips now.

Back to work.

Big Audio Wednesday - Damn, This Superman Story Is Long

Okay here are the next three chapters of the Superman/Batman team-up, "Dr. Blythe's Confidence Gang." I included three chapters rather than two because there were an odd number of chapters left, and if I didn't include the third here, there would be no Batman in the team-up this week.

The story so far: Lois Lane is a dead ringer for Dixie Lamarr, a member of Dr. Blythe's confidence gang. Dixie was seen killing a federal agent, so Dr. Blythe put an elaborate plan in motion to frame Lois. And right now, the plan is succeeding. Lois is under arrest for murder, as Clark Kent and Batman search for evidence to clear her (click the widgets for streaming play in browser or right-click to download).



Next week: the thrilling conclusion.

Webcomic Progress Report

So things are starting to take shape now. I got a suspiciously awesome deal on webhosting space, so I now have a domain to use for the comic (and if the comic doesn't work out, I'll at least put up all the Digger stories so far and maybe serialize a novel or something). I bought a graphics pad for input, although it's hard getting used to. I've figured out what my first storyline is going to be (Digger's Big Con, the prequel to Hero Go Home that I was working on for a while), and I've spent several hours working on the first page.

Two big problems so far. First, I made a lot of notes on Digger's Big Con, but I stored them on a mind-mapping software site called maps.kayuda.com, which is no longer active. So all that work is lost, though most of it is in my head still. Second, I have been working for days on this thing and have so far finished three panels. That's it--three. And they're not even great panels (the third one is pretty good, though).

So that's discouraging. But on the other hand, much of the time spent is in learning how to do a bunch of stuff I've never done before, so I can only get better. And I am determined to have something up on the site come Feb. 1. I may not be ready to start the strip then, but I'll have something.

And between now and then, I'll probably give you some updates and teasers.

Stay tuned. Things are going to get a lot more interesting in the next few weeks (I hope).

Out of the Vault - Dynamo Joe #8

Since I've been on the Foglio kick, and was planning to revisit Dynamo Joe sooner or later anyway, I decided to just go ahead and do it this week.

Dynamo Joe was a giant-robo adventure inspired mainly by the Mobile Suit Gundam series. In the far future, the human race is part of a confederation with the alien Tavitans and the Imperium, a spin-off of humanity who are all descended from a single immortal ancestor. They battle the Mellenares, a race of telepathic alien microorganisms with a hive mind, who can link together to form monstrous creatures.

Joe's adventures, plotted and drawn by Doug Rice and scripted by John Ostrander, first appeared as a back-up feature in the series Mars by Mark Wheatley and Marc Hempel. The back-up was apparently popular enough that Joe was brought back as a feature in the First Adventures anthology series before getting his own four-issue limited series in 1986.

The next year, Joe became a regular series with issue 5 (continuing the numbering from the limited series). The one major change--Ostrander was no longer scripting the book. Phil Foglio was (Rice was credited with "Special Thanks" in one of Foglio's Buck Godot stories before he started writing Joe, so there was apparently a history there).

Taken as a whole, the series is pretty good space opera. The aliens are formidable. The stories range from small encounters to huge battles. The extended cast works pretty well together. It was a competent book all around, but it never jumped the spark gap from "This is fun," to "I gotta' have this book and tell all my friends about it!"

In issue 8, though, something unusual happened. Phil Foglio did some guest art. Here's the story.

Pomru, Joe's Tavitan co-pilot, has been making some highly unauthorized changes to Joe, including an experimental "absolute zero super-cooled computer" (don't ask me how a computer can process data at absolute zero, m'kay? The tech is all standard manga-magic). He goes out for a test flight, but something goes wrong. There's an explosion that opens a hole in Joe's hull, allowing a cloud of Mellenares inside.

Once inside the Mellenares read Pomru's thoughts to determine what form they should take. As Pomru is thinking, "I'm my own worst enemy" at the time, the Mellenares form a green gremlin whose shape mimics Pomru's. And the battle is on.





That's Foglio drawing the alien, finally getting to indulge in a little of his own cartoony style in an issue dedicated to Bob Clampett. In the end, after a series of slapstick encounters straight out of old cartoons, Pomru manages to defeat his telepathic enemy and succeeds in accomplishing what no one in the entire war has managed to do--take an enemy prisoner.

Ironically, although Joe's increasing popularity took him from back-up feature to anthology feature to limited series to regular series, he didn't last very long as a monthly book. The series was canceled after 15 issues (and as I discovered on New Year's Day, my run ends at issue 14--AAARRRGGGHHHH!!!). Part of it may have been due to Rice's difficulty in meeting a monthly schedule; Joe ran a back-up feature for several issues, cutting the lead story to 16 pages, and still needed Ben Dunn to do fill-in pencils for a couple of issues.

But for those of us who'd caught the anime bug and couldn't get our fill of the real thing (since anime and manga were still slow in coming here back in those days--kids today don't know how good they have it, consarn it!), Dynamo Joe was a fun jolt of giant robot action.

And now I've got to hunt through some back-issue bins for #15.

Happy New Year

Went to a party with friends last night. Small group, but lots of fun. Slept late today, did some Vaulting (more Foglio coming Saturday), cooked up some sausage and onions and listened to some old radio (the Fat Man--he weighed 247 whole pounds, about the same as an average NFL player in 2006 and around 70 pounds lighter than an average offensive lineman).

I'm still working on the webcomic idea. It seems relatively simple on the surface, but in order to do it right, there's a whole range of things that have to be taken into consideration: not just the plethora of things that concern any piece of writing--plot, character, pacing, structure, dialogue--but also artistic considerations--character design, graphic design, logo design, typography, inking, color--and determining what compromises have to made in each in order to establish an efficient workflow that allows you to meet deadlines. In addition, there's website hosting and design and how to monetize it--donation box, advertising, merchandising, subscriptions?

Part of me wants to take time to work all this out before deciding to quit. Another part wants to jump in, get some feedback, spend the money to set up the site and see if it works. If I make money, fine, If I don't, well, it's tuition paid toward learning how to make things better next time.

Big Audio Wednesday - Superman/Batman Continued

Continuing the "Dr. Blythe's Confidence Gang" storyline featuring the first existing team-up of Superman and Batman on the radio (as I explained in probably too much detail here, there was an earlier team-up that appears to be lost, or at least, it's not among the episodes on Internet Archive).

The story so far: Batman and Clark Kent, investigating the disappearance of Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and Dick Grayson from an amusement park, chased a mysterious figure into a hall of mirrors, where Batman fell into a deep, flooded pit containing the two missing boys. They were on the verge of drowning in the cold water when they were rescued by Superman. Shortly afterward, they learned that Lois was being held in police headquarters for murder.

And now... (click the widgets for streaming play in browser or right-click to download)



Oh, and if you're curious about the military insignia buttons advertised on the show, click on the pic for a larger view of the complete set.

For Realz

I read about guys like this recently, but can't remember if I linked it. Anyway, here's an article from Rolling Stone about real-life costumed "heroes." When I was a kid, I would have thought this was the coolest thing ever.

Vault Extra - Foglio/Hitchcock

This won't be news to anyone who follows Phil Foglio's career, but Foglio, like Hitchcock, inserts himself (to be exact, a very specific caricature of himself) into pretty much every series he draws.

Remember yesterday when I mentioned his first strip, What's New with Phil and Dixie? Well, the Phil of the title was Foglio himself, explicitly referred to by last name on more than one occasion (as in the sample panel here). This strip ran in Dragon magazine in 1981.

Notice the very specific outfit he's wearing here: white turtleneck sweater and bowler hat. Now look at the following panels from:

D'Arc Tangent, 1982...


Buck Godot, Zap Gun For Hire, 1986 (sorry about the crappy scan, but I didn't want to destroy my trade paperback to scan part of one page) (ETA: Buck Godot's continuing adventures can be read online here)...


and Girl Genius, 2006.



I haven't dug my XXXenophile issues out of the Vault yet, so I have no idea if Phil appears in those or not. It probably doesn't matter to anyone but me, anyway, but I find it amusing.

Out of the Vault - D'Arc Tangent

So since I've been reading Girl Genius lately, I decided to devote this week's Vault visit to an earlier Foglio work, the one-shot D'Arc Tangent.

D'Arc Tangent #1 was published in 1982 by ffantasy ffactory, a company formed by Phil Foglio and Freff (hence the doubled 'f's in the name). Following the example of Elfquest, it was an independent comic, black-and-white on magazine-size newsprint with a quarterly release schedule (in theory, anyway).

Foglio by that time had already made a name for himself among sf fandom as a fan artist, and among gamer geeks (like me) for a strip in Dragon Magazine called What's New with Phil & Dixie (available on the web here). Connor Freff Cochran had also published as both a writer and illustrator (you can see sample pages from issue 2 on Freff's site).

Between the two of them (with the help of SF author Melissa Ann Singer as publisher), they concocted an ambitious tale of star-spanning romance. In the first issue, we were introduced to a huge interstellar empire, a mysterious would-be conqueror, an enormous city built on an ancient artifact that dwarfs Ringworld, a grieving alien widow, and a medieval French nobleman whose personality is imprinted upon a robot, which in turn begins to develop an emotional bond with the widow.

The story was planned to run 16 issues.

It lasted one.

It wasn't a problem with either the art or the story; though neither were perfect, they were solid, with the promise of great improvement over the full run of the tale. It wasn't necessarily a problem of low sales or of the implosion of the black-and-white market that doomed so many other small-press B&W books in those days.

Nope, Foglio and Freff simply split up due to creative differences.

What creative differences, you might ask? Well, here's a clue. When the editorial page in the first issue features one creator screaming at the other to finish the damn book already, you can assume that there's friction in the partnership.

Looking at a sample of the book in question might help explain a bit more. Here's a portion of a typical page below. It appears that penciling duties were split between the two. Foglio obviously drew the shorter Frenchman, as well as the unmasked robot, while Freff appears to have penciled the taller Frenchman and the alien babe Avari T. But from the editorial cartoon, it seems that Freff was doing all the inking, and just look at the inks on this page: lots of cross-hatching, multiple flavors of zip, and a hell of a lot of black. Now multiply that through the entire book, and you can see why they had trouble making a deadline.



All that work was not wasted, however. The next year, Foglio drew a rather long science-fiction tale featuring Buck Godot, Zap Gun for Hire (released in 1986 through Starblaze Books), and the character of the Pistol Packin' Polaris Packrat featured a very familiar profile.

Big Audio Wednesday - Dimension X-Mas

Interrupting the Superman/Batman team-up to present the Christmas Eve broadcast of Dimension X from 1950, 58 years ago tonight. After a special Christmas message from President Truman, the program presents a dramatization of "The Green Hills of Earth" by Robert Heinlein. (Warning: lots of singing in this one)



Superman and Batman will be back soon.

Wasted Day (Not Really)

As part of my contemplation of a possible Digger webcomic, I decided to look at some successful webcomics to see how they do things. Which led me to Girl Genius by Phil and Kaja Foglio.

I've been hearing buzz about Girl Genius for quite awhile. The Foglios had a big booth at Worldcon where they seemed to sell out of Girl Genius collections and merchandise. Some of my fellow fans here in Tulsa also love it, but I've been reluctant to jump onboard because it's been running so long.

Well, I decided to take the plunge yesterday. Read the first couple of volumes last night and have spent all day today reading strips. I'm now about halfway through volume 6 and can't get it to load anymore. I think I killed their bandwidth.

Well, back to working on the T-shirt, I guess. I think I've got the background solved. Just needs a little tweaking and a logo. I tried drawing my own logo, but I suck as a letterer, and when I transferred it to Inkscape to try to edit it, something weird happened in the transfer. So I guess I'll try something with an existing font.

Out of the Vault - Dr. Spektor

In his legendary introduction to The Great Comic Book Heroes, Jules Feiffer wrote this about Fox Comics:

Fox had the best covers and the worst insides. The covers were rendered in a modified pulp style: well-drawn, exotically muscled, half-dressed heroes rescuing well-drawn, exotically muscled, half-dressed maidens.

When I was a kid, that torch had been passed to Gold Key/Whitman.

Okay, that may be a bit harsh. Gold Key actually put out some good comics, most notably their Disney-licensed stuff and Magnus, Robot Fighter. But in general, no company had a bigger disparity between their covers and interiors than Gold Key, except maybe Charlton, home of stiff-anatomy master Pat Boyette.

Gold Key (which also distributed its comics under the Whitman logo, don't ask me why) made most of its money from licensed properties, doing comic book adaptations of Disney characters and TV and movie adaptations like Lost in Space, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Dark Shadows. But they also had a few original characters, like the aforementioned Magnus, Robot Hunter and Turok, Son of Stone (whose name, at least, survives to this day as a video game character).

And then there was Dr. Spektor, or as the full title states, The Occult Files of Doctor Spektor. He was an occult investigator who battled monsters.

The sole issue I have is issue 10, published in 1974 (according to the indicia--the cover bears no number at all), the same year that Kolchak got his own TV series after two successful TV movies. I'm pretty sure I didn't buy this one, either. It either came in a multi-pack with something I did want (Whitman would often bundle three comics in a plastic pack to be sold together), or else it was bought for me.

When I was a kid, whenever we went on a trip, my step-mother would buy my step-brother and me a bunch of comics to read on the way. I don't think she even looked at them, just grabbed whatever happened to be on the spinner rack, because there would be this weird hodge-podge of Harvey kiddie comics and DC/Marvel superheroes, and Charlton romances. The Vault is riddled with baffling one-offs that I got this way.

Anyway, in the lead story of the issue, occult investigator Doctor Adam Spektor battles the rejuvenated mummy Ra-Ka-Tep in a sequel to a story from an earlier issue. The cover is your basic Gold Key painted cover, but the art inside isn't actually too bad. It's uncredited, but has a florid style that looks to be one of those Filipino guys who were all over the black-and-white books at Warren and Marvel, guys like Alfredo Alcala and Nestor Redondo and Tony DeZuniga and Alex Nino.

And yes, in fact, the miracle of the Internets tells me that the art for this issue was done by one Jesse Santos, whose early work looks really interesting.

In this story, written by Don Glut, Dr. Turhan, one of the few surviving members of the Sect of Anubis, resurrects Ra-Ka-Tep using a magic amulet. He brings the mummy to America and displays it in a museum in Dr. Spektor's hometown, knowing that this will lure the occult investigator to him. While they are visiting, Turhan overhears Spektor invite his psychic friend Elliott to a costume ball that he and his secretary/girlfriend Lakota (yes, she's an American Indian) will be attending.

Turhan's plan is simple: it is, in fact, the Batman secret identity ratonalization come to life. Since Dr. Spektor is too powerful, having defeated Ra-Ka-Tep previously, Turhan will take revenge on him by having the mummy capture Lakota for a human sacrifice.

The mummy bursts into the costume ball, overpowers Spektor and Elliott, and carries away the rather underdressed Lakota.

The mummy carries Lakota to Turhan's secret hideout in an unfinished subway tunnel, where Lakota is hypnotized and dressed in a traditional costume or something, giving us another bit of fan service. Bless you, Jesse Santos.

But before the ceremony can be completed and Lakota killed, Doctor Spektor bursts in and uses an even more powerful amulet to counter the effects of Turhan's amulet, sending the mummy after Turhan instead. Once Turhan is dead, the mummy crushes Spektor's amulet and threatens to kill him and Lakota, when suddenly the police arrive.

They shoot the mummy with a hail of bullets, but bullets don't even slow down the undead. In a vaguely-sourced word balloon, someone (maybe Elliott) says:

Don't waste your ammunition! You'll have to use the flamethrower on that monster!

Notice that he doesn't say, "you'd need a flamethrower to hurt that monster," which is what I took him to be saying when I initially skimmed the dialogue. No, he says, "You'll have to use the flamethrower...," and in fact...


Dude, you do not want to rob a bank in that town. Those cops are serious.

Anyway, all's well in the end, followed by a nonsense backup feature with way too many words about the origins of the Dark Gods that Spektor apparently battled in another issue, and that's all.

One other thing I noticed, though, is the ads. Not just ads for the usual kid things, like the life-size monster ghost and "Make Money Selling Grit," and the 100 pc. Toy Soldier footlocker for $1.50, but ads for black light posters and iron-on T-shirt transfers (from Roach Studios, man), and this ad for cloth patches from Gandalf Products.

Keep in mind, this was 1974. Hippies had not yet faded completely from vogue. But though comics were increasing their readership among college students, they were still mainly aimed at kids. I never stopped and wondered back then, though, why they had a full-page ad pitching patches with the Playboy Bunny and the Budweiser logo, or proclaiming one's status as a member of the U.S.A. Drinking Team. The ad's nonsensical copy states, "Each groovy patch measures 3". Made to sell for much, much more."

I'm sure it made much more sense if you were high.

New T-Shirt Preview

So last week I mentioned that I was thinking about ideas for a new Digger website. One of the things I've been contemplating today, seeing as how I'm dipping a toe back into artwork again, is doing Digger as a webcomic. I come up with lots of ideas like this, and very few of them ever make it beyond the, "Wouldn't it be neat if...?" stage. But I'll probably play with it for awhile, knock out some test strips and see how I like them.

In the meantime, here's a look at the T-shirt design I mentioned earlier, based on "Double-Secret Weapon." It's still very much a work in progress, as I'm mainly not sure what to do with the background. What's there right now is a photo background of an actual food court. I spent about two hours tonight screwing around with it, trying different ways to make the background look cooler. Came up with something pretty decent-looking, although I still wasn't completely happy with it. And then Gimp crashed.

Hadn't saved, either.

So now I get a mulligan. But not tonight. Maybe tomorrow.

WTF Moment From the Vault - Liefeld

Okay, first, a note about my day. I've used this particular mechanical pencil (the actual name for it is a leadholder, I found out) for over 20 years, and it requires a special type of sharpener, called a lead pointer. And I lost mine a while back, so for the last few years, I've been using my pocket knife to sharpen the lead, which you might imagine isn't optimal. So I finally decided to bite the bullet and headed down to Hobby Lobby, braved the Christmas crowds and bought a new pointer for close to ten bucks.

Then when I got back, I became curious for some reason and looked up my leadholder (that sounds dirty, for some reason) on-line, and guess what I found out? It actually has a lead pointer built in. Huh. I've had this thing for over two decades and never knew that. Anyway, on to the subject of today's post...

As I was browsing the contents of the Vault (I need a way to shrink that phrase down, don't I--why don't I just say Vaulting?), I ran across a book I didn't know I had and don't believe I bought.

Why don't I believe I bought it?

Because a) it was an early Image book and I really didn't buy any early Image books, other than a couple copies of Spawn and 2) it was by Rob Liefeld and I don't think I ever purposely bought a Rob Liefeld book since the Hawk and Dove miniseries, and iii) it was still in its sealed polybag with collectors card inside, and if I buy something, I open it and read it. Always. As I've occasionally said, I'm not so much a comics collector as a comics accumulator.

But anyway, reading comics blogs had led me to this site which purports to list the 40 worst Rob Liefeld drawings of all time. And looking through that list, you see a lot of bloopers, but you know, every artist has his quirks and shortcuts and bad days. Even the greats like Kubert put together a bad panel or two.

So I decided to open the polybag and flip through the comic (Extreme Destroyer #1, January 1996, in case you're curious) just to see how bad it could be. And yeah, it was pretty bad. A plot centering around a Galactus rip-off come to Earth with his Firelord/Silver Surfer rip-off to "harvest" a crop of Earth's super-beings and yada-yada-yada, Kid Supreme takes two punches and runs away like a girl. Thirty-eight pages long, with fully thirty-five pages devoted almost exclusively to talking and posing, and that only because one of the two punches Kid Supreme takes is a double-page splash panel. And no, I didn't actually sit down and read all 38 pages; I'm not that much of a masochist (although I was enough of one to count all 38 pages).

But though there were some weak panels here and there, there was nothing outstandingly horrible about the art.

Until I got to the last page. And there, in an ad for a convention called the New York Comicbook Spectacular, was this illustration of Captain America.

WTF?

Looks like Cap's had some work done by a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon. I mean, look at those 45DD pecs. He could lay his People magazine flat on those to read while he runs on the treadmill in Avengers Mansion. Not to mention that I have no idea how his arm is supposed to be fitting under that shield.

I mean, I guess I could find a dozen more things to nit-pick about the drawing, but it mainly comes down to two things. Number one, this isn't some random minor panel he drew when he was having a bad day. This is an illustration chosen specifically to promote Liefeld's work to his audience.

And number two, let me just say again, look at that freakin' shelf in front of Cap's neck!

Big Audio Wednesday - More Superman and Batman

Sliding in under the wire after a hectic couple of days to present the next two chapters of "Dr. Blythe's Confidence Gang," a Batman/Superman team-up from 1945 on The Adventures of Superman radio series.

As I said last time, there's something I like about these adventures, in that they're not the Batman and Superman we know. By which I mean, they're not fully developed characters, with all the details and backstories, but they're also not as invulnerable. When Robin and Batman are stuck in a deviously simple deathtrap, you can sense real jeopardy in their voices. Even though you know there's no way they'll die, you can feel the pain, the human vulnerability, in a way you never do with today's iteration of the character.

Another thing I like: the way Bud Collyer's voice drops when he changes from Clark Kent to Superman. The Fleischer cartoons (also voiced by Collyer) featured the same gimmick, but usually only for a couple of words. On radio, Collyer would change his voice mid-sentence, and you could almost see his stature change and understand why people didn't immediately peg Kent as Superman (though not for lack of trying--almost every episode, he says something absent-minded that would give away his secret if anyone were actually paying attention to what he said, not that Batman is any better).

The story so far: Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and Dick Grayson have all disappeared at Playland amusement park. Clark Kent and Batman, along with an Irish cop (all radio cops were Irish) named Riley, searched the River of Horrors ride and discovered a secret passage. Following the passage to its end, they came out near the Hall of Mirrors and spotted the false publicity agent the boys described to them. Batman and Clark Kent rush into the Hall of Mirrors after the mysterious white-haired figure.

Chuck Rocks

So I'm watching Chuck's Christmas episode tonight (it's not available on Hulu yet, but I'll update with the link tomorrow ETA: Here it is) and it sets up this hostage crisis in the Buy More. And suddenly, we hear just a hint of "Ode to Joy" on the soundtrack, and I'm thinking, "Is this supposed to be some sort of shout-out to 'Die Hard,' what with the hostage crisis at Christmas and everything?"

And then the LAPD pull up outside, and who should be with them?

That's right: Sgt. Al Powell.

But since Chuck is nothing if not unafraid to go over the top, instead of then slamming us over the head with a dozen more "Die Hard" references, they throw in a reference to a completely different cool-ass movie. You see, the guy taking everybody hostage is named something like Nate Rhyerson, but everybody calls him "Ned." Bing! (Full disclosure: Ned 'Rhyerson' is not in fact played by Stephen Tobolowsky, but Sgt. Al Powell is played by Reginald Veljohnson)

Heroes wasn't bad as a finale to the "Villains" arc, and I hope like hell Sylar's really dead, cause I'm sick of the sight of him, but of course, we never saw the body, so he'll be back, dammit. He'll be back.

And I'm afraid we may have seen the last of My Own Worst Enemy, which is too bad, because I was having fun with it. It's problem is that as a spy drama, it's as unbelievable as Chuck, but not as funny, so it's harder to buy into. Sort of a TV version of "True Lies," but without Jamie Lee Curits and Eliza Dushku, more's the pity.

Vault Extra - Big Jim's P.A.C.K

So I was glancing through an issue of Fantastic Four cover-dated January 1976 (which means it came out in late 1975 sometime), and an ad caught my eye for Mattel's Big Jim toy line. I'll get to the ad eventually, but first, some background.

Big Jim was Mattel's answer to Hasbro's G.I. Joe action figures. First sold in 1972, during the final years of the Vietnam War, Mattel decided against making Jim any kind of soldier or adventurer. Instead, Big Jim was a sports-themed doll, with outfits available for all manner of sports, from baseball to football to karate.

When I was a kid, I actually preferred Big Jim to G.I. Joe. Big Jim was better sculpted and designed. G.I. Joe was a hideous creature, with his scarred face and grotesque scarecrow's body, barrel chest and skinny arms with bulbous joints and exposed metal screws. Joe's hands were arthritically contorted into painful shapes that only looked right when holding a weapon. Joe was the ultimate soldier.

But Big Jim (ironically named since he was 2 inches shorter than Joe) had a handsome Ken-doll face, a muscular sculpted torso and naturally proportioned limbs (more natural than Joe, anyway). His knee joints were cleverly designed to hide any connecting hardware, and his arms were covered with a soft plastic sheath that concealed a mechanism that made his biceps flex when you bent his arm.

Joe's grotesque veteran's body only looked right in uniform. Big Jim was explicitly designed to go shirtless, and in fact was sold wearing only a pair of gym shorts. After a hard day of throwing baseballs or breaking boards with his patented karate chop action, Big Jim could lounge around the locker room in his orange shorts, doing curls with a dumbbell and flexing for his shirtless buddies, Big Josh the lumberjack and Big Jeff the Australian and Big Jack the Black Guy and oh my God do I have to draw you a freaking map to where this leads? Jim was simply the Gayest Toy Ever.

Kids apparently thought so, anyway, because in no time at all, Mattel was retooling the line to make Jim more action-oriented. They introduced a line of spy gear and a bad guy in the form of Dr. Steel, a bald Asian with a metal hand and a dragon tattoo on his bare chest.

And in 1975 (only three years after his introduction), they retooled the line again. Shirtless buddies Josh and Jeff and Jack were gone, and the sports outfits were history. Now Big Jim was leader of an elite paramilitary squad called the P.A.C.K. That's the ad I mentioned at right. Other members were Warpath, the Whip, and Dr. Steel (who in a Heel-Face Turn worthy of Dragonball had gone from Jim's greatest enemy to his right-hand man). No longer a pretty Ken lookalike with a great throwing arm, Big Jim had now morphed into a Kirby hero (who else could have drawn that ad?).

Didn't help. Big Jim was never able to find his place in the world of action toys and faded out of the U.S. toy market in 1976, after only four years. He apparently hung on in Latin America into the early 80's, like the original Volkswagen Beetle, but is now long gone.