At Least His Name Hasn't Ruined His Self Esteem*

My sister declared this the weirdest thing she's seen "in a while." Take that how you will.



I love how apparently Coach Crime knows when crooks are near random phones. (I wasn't watching quite closely enough to know if there's an actual explanation, but it seems dubious.)

Fun facts:

The main characters are voiced by Peter Cullen (many versions of Optimus Prime) and Frank Welker (has voiced characters in almost every cartoon ever, but in context the most relevant are the Megatron voices he did). (Additional fun fact: The spellcheck knows "Cullen" but not "Welker.")

This originally aired as part of a block called The Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Show.

The dog's name is Yukk!, in the words of Wikipedia's article "formally stylized with an exclamation point."

I stumbled across this, by the way, because I was looking at an entry on the Ben 10 wiki about an alien with a loosely similar gag to Yukk!'s.

*I mention this because he compares himself to Robert Redford. Dude's pretty comfortable with himself.

-Signing off.

Trailers Come Out Too Early

Okay, this is short but neat. (On the other hand, how much of this movie is going to appear in the trailers?)



The really great thing, though? Somebody on YouTube with the username "Tony Stark" commented that he needed to add more seats to the armor.

-Signing off.

And Then One Day the Tick Had a Mustache

It is possible that The Tick is not the best cartoon ever.



However, I find it rather unlikely.

Especially since that mustache turned out to be a body-hopping, follicle-invading parasitic Cold War bioweapon.

-Signing off.

Galactus Totally Walked Into That One

This video seems to be controversial amongst the comic book crowd because (as the title says) Ghost Rider "pwns" Galactus.



They say that there should be no way that the penance stare should work on Galactus; he's "too big" to feel guilt blah blah whatever.

Me, I've always interpreted the penance stare as inflicting pain proportionate to the evils its victims have committed. Galactus might find planets without sapient life less satisfying, but he could still preferentially go after them; instead, he seems to preferentially go after inhabited worlds. When you eat planets on a more-often-than-yearly basis, that choice in cuisine is pretty darned evil.

I find it perfectly legitimate-it's like Ghost Rider is the paper to Galactus's figurative rock. Just because Galactus has a big, heavily armored (once again, figuratively speaking) mind doesn't mean he can shrug off a demon-powered guy who specializes in that kind of punch, especially since he's pretty badly weakened in this scene (he's both hungry and recovering from food poisoning).

Not to mention it's satisfying seeing the big goof take one to the chin like that.

-Signing off.

Whoops, No Time To Blog

I ended up with a rather unexpected obligation today, so I'm afraid this is all you're getting.

Remember those NHL Guardian guys? This guy is one of them, just so you know.

I wonder if anything ever happened with that...

-Signing off.

Golden Age Moment of the Day (75)

From Smash Comics #26 (you could find it here if you're interested)...

Remember, kids, Bozo the Robot/Iron Man: Guy who hits people really hard such that they accidentally die. He's no killer./sarcasm>

-Signing off.

Other NHL Guardians Who Are Completely Nuts

A few weeks ago, Chris Sims commented on the characters from the NHL's hockey team-themed superheroes (official bios for the characters here).

Not to knock on Sims, but I think he missed a few. (A bit late to point it out, I guess, but hey, no reason not to.)

The Capital

The guy who is associated with Washington, D.C. is "half bald eagle," whatever the heck that means, can fly and has incredible vision, is a shapeshifter, and can emit an immensely powerful sonic scream that causes him to turn bright red.

Just like any other Washington politician, see?

The King

This guy? Protects Hollywood from movie-related crimes. Seriously, in his little PDF story comic, he keeps a guy who calls himself "Hitchcock" from stealing the Academy Awards. No, really.

The Senator

The Senator, who rounds out the Guardians' governmental personage lineup, is credited as being great at motivating his allies and destroying his enemies' hope. He also has telekinesis (not mentioned in his bio but shown/mentioned in his story) and the power to neutralize enemy superpowers, and supposedly was once an actual gladiator. I'm not even sure how that could be any crazier.

The (Jersey) Devil

Then we have this guy, who is supposedly descended from the legendary cryptid called the Jersey Devil. He also "doesn't so much defeat his opponents... as completely annihilates them."

Dude. That's how it could be crazier.

The Predator

Predator is described as having "adamantium" fangs (seriously), can devour any matter or energy, can vomit up consumed matter and energy in the form of a "slightly radioactive slime," and can also disrupt electronics with his screams (once again not mentioned in his bio, but shown in his story). So he's got the powers of Matter-Eater Lad (with a disgusting bonus), G1 Frenzy, and has Wolverine claws in his mouth.

I'm not even sure what more I could say about that.

-Signing off.

Golden Age Extended Moment of the Day (63)

The most famous character from Fantastic Comics was probably Stardust (I've mentioned him a few times in the past), and in this story from #7, it's demonstrated why:

Because he and his enemies followed a truly special kind of logic.

For the record, while it would be very bad for the world to stop rotating (the H.G. Wells story The Man Who Could Work Miracles has a depiction with at least limited realism in it, though the means through which rotation was stopped didn't even bother with realism, which is just as well), it wouldn't be the sudden cessation of gravity.

Which you should probably be at least vaguely, intuitively aware of, or at least figure out from looking up gravity on Wikipedia.

-Signing off.

Somebody Hire This Guy

A few months ago, I found a video and linked it because it was awesome. A description of the video in question, in case you're nuts and don't want to look at it, is that it took really old movie footage and created an homage to something a bit less old.

Anyways, here you go. If you're a comic book nerd, you may not want to watch this at work, because you'll probably exclaim, laugh, or something.



And for the less comic-book savvy, there are also a few annotations in this video.



Once again: Somebody hire this guy.

(Also, The Other Son. For those of you on that trip.)

-Signing off.

Golden Age Moment of the Day (9)

(How did I get the number wrong on this?)

You know a villain's an idiot when...

...he tries to defeat an opponent who made his reputation on being bulletproof just by using extra guns.

The stupid part? Iron Ace (the other pilot) treats the other plane almost as if it's a legitimate threat. Keep in mind Iron Ace's plane can withstand mid-air collisions without taking a scratch.

-Signing off.

Rickshaw Time

Sometimes you see things that you never realized you wanted to see. For instance...



A guy dressed as a superhero pulling a rickshaw and doing acrobatics. While pulling the rickshaw.

-Signing off.

Golden Age Moment of the Day (3)

Fact: Not only is Stardust more or less invulnerable to everything...

...he also feels the need to trick his enemies into thinking he might occasionally be vulnerable.

That's a mean guy right there.

-Signing off.

Stardust, the Strangest Hero of the Golden Age

And that's sayin' something, let me tell you.

As I have attempted to demonstrate, the Golden Age was a very strange time for comics. Output and popularity were both tremendous (as this was before the spread of television, it was the most popular medium in America), and demand for stories was probably pretty high.

Which might explain why some were just so danged strange.

See, in the Golden Age, there were basically four kinds of "hero" characters. (I will use male pronouns only for the convenience of simplicity; do remember that most comic heroes were men anyway, those that weren't usually intended to be eye candy for a somewhat older audience.)

The "normal" hero was just a "regular joe" who through luck, toughness, and resourcefulness (all of which the "normal" hero had in spades, making this character less of a regular joe than you'd think), would bludgeon or reason his way through scraps to the end of the story.

The "gadget" hero had some kind of gimmicky ability or abilities given by one or more special devices that he or a (usually deceased) relative or friend had created.

The "powered" hero explicitly had one or more vaguely-to-well-defined abilities that put him above normal people, such as explicitly superhuman strength.

The last variety of hero is the "god" hero, or as I'm going to call the group, "super wizards." Why "super wizards?"

Because Stardust, the subject of this post, was called "Stardust the Super Wizard," and he was most definitely one of this archetype, perhaps the most extreme example. It's very evocative, and it makes clear the characteristic possessed by most of this type of hero-they used magic in really spectacular and over-the-top ways, and their foes didn't stand a chance. (Ironically, Stardust's powers came from the sorcery of super science instead of "actual" magic.)

Here's an example, in the form of a few panels from the very first Stardust story:

(FYI, Fletcher Hanks, the creator of Stardust, wasn't much of an artist. His "style," if one can call it that, is unmistakable-utterly bizarre faces and anatomy accompanied by rather Seussian architecture and incredible flatness. Not to insult the man-I just think he wasn't a very practiced artist. Does some weird stuff in his work, though.)

I kinda like the guy's reaction-I almost wonder if it was intended to be funny, because the rest of it seems to be taking itself way too seriously...

No duh.

The really strange thing about Stardust, though? Unlike most of the super wizard heroes, Stardust does not treat his foes with kid gloves.

It's kind of like what would happen if Superman and the Punisher had their minds swapped or something.

You know how some people complain "Why doesn't *insert insanely powerful character's name here* just kill 'em all?" Stardust might be these people's ideal hero.

I mean, this is about as gentle as he gets:

Suspending people in the air and making them stare at skeletons. (That's some weird secret ray there.)

Rip-the-Blood (yes, that's some guy's name) has a more typical fate. He plots...

...launches an attack...

...and fails. And then...

...Stardust throws him off a cliff for good measure.

Of course, then there's one of the most spectacular villain killings I've ever seen: Thrown to a giant tsunami, and then disintegrated.

I mean, wow. Talk about style.

And take what happens to "Wolf-Eye." Wolf-Eye has his own built-in super science powers...

(Gotta love the transition between the second and third panels there.) ...but is utterly helpless before Stardust.

Now, Stardust, that's really just insulting.

In all seriousness? I don't know why I'm investing this much energy in Stardust, but he's got some kind of really weird appeal.

He's just ugly, though. Man.

-Signing off.

Teen Rangers With Robots

Chances are, if you lived through the '90s in the English-speaking world, you have some small notion of what the term "Power Rangers" refers to. Originating with a '70s era Japanese live action series which spawned a series of sequels that are now produced on a yearly basis, Power Rangers involves pretty much the same thing, recycling Japanese footage and blending it (sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much) with footage from an American (or Australian, or New Zealander) studio. A team of usually young individuals ("teenagers with attitude," in the infamous parlance of the first episode) works to defeat evil with flashy costumes and weapons, martial arts, and obscenely big robots.

Far be it from me to try to summarize it here, or even at my other blog, which is dedicated to the subject (and which I need to update more often... sigh). Google it for yourself if you want information. (I'll point out that Joe Rovang has a really nice fansite. Not for neophytes, but, y'know...)

Anyway, the matter of Golden Age comic books, and coincidences.

We join Jackie Law and the Boy Rangers. (How do you get a name like Jackie Law? I had a professor at college named J. Justice, but seriously...)

Jackie Law and his Boy Rangers are a gang of kids who beat up criminals, in the same tradition as lots of child-endangerment schemes. Er... Never mind. The point is, they fight gangsters and even Nazi spies, and they're better at it than adults. What.

Other than those things, you might wonder what they have in common with Power Rangers. Observe.

These kids investigate some gunshots and stuff, and end up catching the dying breaths of some inventor guy, who was shot by Nazi spies.

They come back again later after the police have left, wondering what kind of invention the guy was talking about. And so do the Nazi spies, including Luger, whose head luckily provides them with the information they need.

How fortunate, eh?

So what's the invention?

Guess.

If you saw it coming, it's because I telegraph like a Morse code master.

Anyway, they destroy some Nazi tanks that somehow get smuggled into the country...

Of course, anybody could do that with a proper giant robot. Let's see 'em give the robot to the military so some trained professionals can-

Never mind. Do you think that's foreshadowing there?

If you don't, well, no offense but you're slow.

So they're hunting a crime boss named Khron for no apparent reason. And when they meet him, he's got a lever.

Tip: Don't stand still when a crook is holding a lever. Because this might happen.

Of course, it begs the question "Why don't you just stand up, you morons?!"

But they don't, and they get out of the robot and become captives, while Khron takes the robot and steals hard workers' salaries.

Tip: If you've got a giant tank-smashing robot, don't think small...

Also, watch out for construction vehicles.

What.

So, what next?

They never use Loco again, that's what.

Seriously.

-Signing off.

More "Whattaheck" Moments In Comics

Apparently, this is Golden Age Insane and Inane Comic Book week, or something...

Let's start off slowly.

Of course, "slowly" in the Golden Age means something rather different than what it means today...

So what we have here is either a giant Nazi Tyrannosaurus Rex that talks to itself, or a giant Nazi robot disguised as a giant T. Rex. (FYI, in case you're wondering, yes it is a robot, and it's actually piloted by one of the rare recurring villains of the public domain Golden Age, the Crane.)

So, whose efforts to frustrate Hitler do we have to thank-er, blame-for this monstrosity? Boy King (and his giant).

It's fairly unlikely you've heard of them, so here's a quick summary: Boy King is the king of a little country called "Swisslakia" (i.e. in the bizarre fictional universe it usurped Switzerland, which FYI was common practice in the Golden Age, as nobody cared about Switzerland, it not being in the war and all-no offense intended to the Swiss) which has just been rolled over by the Nazis despite its neutrality and its relatively useless strategic position. But Swisslakia's kings have a secret-thousands of years ago, Nostradamus (who lived hundreds of years ago) built a giant and put it under Swisslakia, for a future king to awaken when a tyrant threatened Swisslakia. Long story short-the royal family was killed except for Boy King, Boy King wakes up giant and sticks the survivors of the invasion in boats ("We've always been a tiny country," he says), and then goes to America.

He wants to use the giant as a weapon against the Nazis, which sounds like a pretty good idea, as the giant owned a Nazi fleet so thoroughly that most of its ships were captured intact. But when he makes the offer to the military, they claim that Nazi howitzers will find the giant an easy, vulnerable target. I tend to think that any military man would have a better idea of military power than that-a battleship's guns dwarf the vast majority of land-based artillery emplacements, and the giant took such ships with ease. But I digress.

So what does this ill-advised tactician suggest as an alternative?

Lumberjacking and mining.

I don't really see the sense in it myself, especially as it's boring in a comic, but fortunately, the approach of the Nazisaurus Rex gets things moving.

Are they eager for the giant's help now?

Yup. So eager they can't even talk like human beings.

C'mon, guys, it's time for the fight, isn't it?

Oh. Yes it is.

They fight in the ocean, like giant... things fighting in the ocean... for maximum drama.

This being the Golden Age, where half a dozen brief stories were generally crammed into each issue of a "comic magazine," this is probably going to be a short...

Oh no you din't! You cliffhangered me? (Also, you mispelled, and worse yet misused, the word Mastodon!)

Fortunately, it's sixty-odd years since this thing was published, I can download the next one and read it (public domain and all that) within five minutes of finishing it.

So how does the giant keep the Nazisaurus Rex from clamping on?

Wellll...

He kinda doesn't, because the cliffhanger had no bearing on the next story.

The only thing worse than a cliffhanger is a cliffhanger that has no direct bearing on what comes next, eh?

Almost makes me lose faith in the quality of Golden Age comics... Wait.

Tomorrow, I'll talk about another of "Clue Comics" features, which involves one of the craziest coincidences (in my humble opinion) of the Twentieth Century.

-Signing off.

The Comic Book Story of WWII

In Air Fighters Comics #4 (information to be found here), the Skywolf feature pits the heroes against a foe far deadlier than Hitler...

...Hitler's boss, a literal witch.

And she's decided she's sick of his bumbling and fumbling, so she's going to get a replacement.

Before very long, though, she kind of forgets about her Hitler clone, and decides she'd rather replace Hitler with a real warrior:

Genghis Khan. No joke.

And as she sends off Khan on some truly frivolous mission on a super-fast magic horse, she shows Hitler she's honest.

No political commentary intended, I'm sure.

Here's where things get really nuts, though. Genghis Khan goes to his ancient, suspiciously factory-like fortress to rejoin his army...

...a bunch of midget "dogboys" that ride on giant buzzards.

What.

So what kind of spectacular ending to this "epic" series of events could you expect, were you to do what I did and find and download this public domain comic off the Internet for free?

They blow up Genghis Khan in the very last panel.

Hm. A little anticlimactic.

-Signing off.

Golden Age Comic Moment of the Day (1)

Shinto Samurai...

...can't pronounce the name of his own profession-and by extension, his own name.

-Signing off.

Golden Age Comics Are Insane...

...often even in a good way.

Take Air Fighters Comics.
One of Air Fighters' regular features was Airboy, a story about a young orphan boy who takes a plane designed and built by a monk (inspired by a vision) and uses it to fight a one-boy battle against meanies of all sorts.

Air Fighters also has the first and most notable comic character called the Heap. Yes, this was his first appearance ever. Forget that loser from the Spawn comics, this guy is a terror.

The Heap is an unholy vampiric terror spawned from the remains of a WWI German fighter ace and the vegetation of a swamp. He also...

...um, loves hearing spoken German. (And before you ask, yes these two screenshots are from the very same story.)

Did I forget to mention that the Heap actually first showed up in somebody else's feature?

But who really cares? I mean, they're just some guys in special split planes who fight Nazis. Nothing exciting about that, is there? Though one of them is a big Polish mute guy who taps Morse code on his own head to communicate...

Then there's the Iron Ace, who oozes awesomeness. How awesome is he?

He defeats a bomber with a tractor. And he wears a suit of medieval armor while flying a fighter plane.

And that plane is pretty awesome itself. In fact, like a great bullet...

...er, never mind. What you don't get from looking at these panels? The plane normally resembles a normal one, but was modified by a crazy French scientist to have magic indestructible extending/retracting armor.

There's also Keen Detective Funnies.

The main thing that got my attention about Keen Detective Funnies? The Eye.

Who is the Eye, you may ask? Is he just some regular guy detective? Heck no.

He's a great fiery eye that flies in the sky.

Here's the thing about the Eye. He's omniscient and can be anywhere, which means that you'll never know when he's watching you...

(True fact: This involved a grave robbing story, in which somebody noticed a stolen grave-robbed ring. I do not lie. Not about crazy old comics, anyway.)

So you never know when the ol' Eye will just gracelessly barge in on your criminal activities without warning.

I am probably going to shout "This is your day of reckoning, Pickles!" and variants on said statement at people randomly for the rest of my life.

And the Eye apparently does this for no reason other than satisfaction in a job well done...

...or something like that, I guess...

All comics are public domain stuff. More information can be found at Public Domain Super Heroes, and free CBR files can be found at Golden Age Comics Downloads. (CBR information and downloads can be found here.)

-Signing off.