Showing posts sorted by relevance for query golden age moment. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query golden age moment. Sort by date Show all posts

Monday, February 15, 2010

Golden Age Moment of the Day (20)

You know, it's kinda funny.

I'm sure that there are all kinds of funny things I could say about this panel (from Airboy #5, Vol. 8) to compare the giant plane in it to the Titanic, or to joke about its miraculous ability to fly in space with its propellers, but for some reason...

...all that's coming to me are oblique references to Birdie's orientation.

And the fact that I totally should have put up last week's Golden Age Moment today instead.

Ah, well.

-Signing off.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Golden Age Moment of the Day (37)

There's nothing quite like Golden Age villains, such as the Lynx, from Clue Comics (v1 #2)...

And there's nothing quite like Golden Age villainy, either... (Granted, it was pretty illegal to do what he was doing [selling steel that should have gone to the war effort to private citizens and businesses], but is it pure evil? In fact, the hero of the feature Lynx appeared in, Zippo, had a huge tendency to fight villains who were breaking patriotism laws... Hm...)

-Signing off.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Golden Age Moment of the Day (61)

From the Bald Eagle feature of Air Fighters #4, volume 2...

I present the Statue of Hitler...y.

Hitlerty? Nazi...y?

Something.

And if you're wondering what kind of daft Golden Age comic book madness this image is involved in, well, it's relatively tame: Nazis in a zeppelin showed up and dumped this hollow statue over top the Statue of Liberty.

Yes, really.

And, oh yeah, it's made entirely of dynamite so that it can't be safely removed.

Yes, really.

-Signing off.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Golden Age Moment of the Day (29)

Fact: The armor most commonly associated with knights in popular culture is called plate armor.

Fact: There is also a type of armor called mail or chain mail.

Fact: They are not and can not be the same thing.

(There were mixed suits of armor, but the two are fundamentally different things. Plate armor was much heavier and more effective at protection-there are stories of armored men falling off their horses and getting mobbed by poorly armed peasants, and being attacked for hours at a time, but still escaping unhurt-while mail allowed much greater flexibility. Mixed suits often protected inflexible areas with heavier armor while covering joints with mail for flexibility.

...

Yes, I am a huge historical weapons nerd, why do you ask?)

That doesn't stop people from calling a "famous" suit of plate armor the "Black Mail" in this Iron Ace story (from Air Fighters v. 2, #8), though.

Oh, yes, and they put a remote control robot inside it, and supposedly this ancient suit of armor "cannot be destroyed because of the way that it is constructed!"

(SPOILER: This was, shall we say, an exaggeration.)

Gotta love those Golden Age comic book writers.

-Signing off.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Golden Age Moment of the Day (21)

A lot of Golden Age superheroes had pretty lousy names (*cough* Whizzer *hack*). But few had it as bad as this guy:

Zippo.

Not only did Zippo have a singularly dorky name (the only cool thing that was ever called "Zippo" was a tank), he also probably had issues with a certain more famous product.

You can't see it here, but the wheels on his feet actually look suspiciously like a Zippo thumbwheel, too.

You just can't make this stuff up.

-Signing off.

Monday, May 9, 2011

Golden Age Moment of the Day (73)

From Military Comics #4 (find it at Golden Age Comics yadda yadda) in the Blue Tracer feature...

...apparently, our hero isn't too worried about wanton slaughter of helpless prisoners..

(Spoiler: That's not actually what happens.)

-Signing off.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Golden Age Moment of the Day (51)

From Air Fighters #6, we finally see what's been going on in the last few Golden Age Moments...

A "mammoth, invisible flying bag." I seriously don't think I could top that description of an invisible airship if I took hours of thinking about nothing else.

At least one more from this story next week.

-Signing off.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Golden Age Moment of the Day (42)

A lot of Golden Age heroes were kind of... well, jerks, to be frank.

The Green Lama, on the other hand, is a refreshingly nice guy.

During the war, he was willing to do anything for the troops.

Sorry if that made you think bad thoughts.

-Signing off.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Golden Age Moment of the Day (76)

From some roughly Golden Age Sherlock Holmes comic book (which you can find a bit back here, but which I didn't bother reading any of until today)...

...You guys? You moved Sherlock Holmes to America? And in the 1950s? (The characters are driving around in '50s era cars all the time.)

Eh, whatever, it's probably still better than the old black and white movie/episode/whatever the heck that had a cowgirl in it. (No, seriously. That happened.)

-Signing off.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Golden Age Moment of the Day (15)

You may have heard of Kid Eternity; he seems to be somewhat more famous than many of the Golden Age characters.

His power to summon historical and mythological characters gives him a most, um... unique way of dealing with thugs...

Oh, for-Paul Bunyan? That's like calling King Kong to deal with muggers, or Godzilla to get a cat out of the tree!

Also, note that Mr. Bunyan is holding those dudes in a very... um, weird sort of way.

-Signing off.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Golden Age Moment of the Day (53)

One last time from Air Fighters #6's Sky Wolf story...

As a quick recap, Parliament was stolen (yes, the whole thing) by Nazis in an invisible zeppelin. Yes.

Anyway, what happens to Parliament if a crazy Nazi blows up the zeppelin?

A truly improbable impossible occurrence-it lands completely unharmed. On its original foundation.

Just in case you were worried about the fate of a fictional version of Parliament in a completely inane Golden Age comic book story.

-Signing off.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Golden Age Moment(s) of the Day (38)

That's right, I decided to put up two panels.

Both are in sequence from Military Comics #1, original home of the Blackhawks comics, but this is from the Blue Tracer feature, which is considerably less famous and apparently not picked up by DC.

In the first panel, we have a guy misrepresenting the primary purpose of tanks, though the smashing into things is fun and useful. (Also, planes can dive just as well as submarines, just not in water-that linguistic usage is misleading.)

In the second, we see that this supposedly normal American engineer, who recently suffered a head injury and heat stroke, now feels the need to dress rather eccentrically.

In true Golden Age style, nobody every mentions that outfit again, by the way...

-Signing off.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Golden Age Moment of the Day (31)

Golden Age heroes are downright meanhearted. Take Airboy's exclamation (from his story in... Air Fighters v.1 #7, I think it was...) aimed at Youth Kultur, not-so-veiled reference to the Hitler Youth movement:

Of course, at least he wasn't calling a non-European-descent person a monkey. You see that, too.

Incidentally, Youth Kultur's plane had the ability to completely defy momentum by reversing direction in mid-flight (which was the cause of the above exclamation).

-Signing off.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Golden Age Moment(s) of the Day (39)

As these panels from Space Smith (from Fantastic Comics #7) demonstrate...

...there's nothing quite like Golden Age comic book monsters.

Well, maybe old video game monsters...

-Signing off.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Golden Age Moment of the Day (40)

From Space War #2 (Golden Age Comics blah blah free download blah blah)...

I kind of don't like the word "formless." It doesn't really mean anything useful. And most of those other words-"semi-transparent," "shimmering," "streaking," "utter darkness"-don't apply to those ships or are redundant/ridiculous in space.

They're spaceships, by the way...

-Signing off.

Monday, December 20, 2010

Golden Age Moment of the Day (59)

From Fantastic Comics #7's Samson story comes this moment.

... You know, she didn't actually ask "why did you just break down the door and smash that antique chair?" She asked what you did to her father.

Jerk.

-Signing off.

Monday, September 20, 2010

Golden Age Moment of the Day (46)

From Reptisaurus #1 (which I mislabeled as Reptisaurus #2 here because it was continuing from Reptilicus #1 in some kind of copyright boondoggle) comes this... insanely creepy moment related to several rather unsettling romantic plotlines:

Incidentally, the dude was named Clark Martin, and his ward/fiance was named Beverly Foster. At least they weren't Bruce Martin and Robin Foster.

To be fair, later on they deliberately played up the creepy to make the guy look evil...

What were they doing in a comic about a giant killer lizard? That's a good question. You see, Clark Martin was a big game hunter, and he was getting bored with traditional big game... (I don't need to take that statement any further, do I?)

-Signing off.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Real Superhero Adventures: Superman's Other Awkward Issue

I am in fact referring to the same issue mentioned very briefly here. I am dreadfully sorry for discussing the subject.

The issue itself is Larry Niven's essay here. Not the subject of the essay as much as the essay itself. Just to make that clear. I'm planning to tear apart the assumptions of Niven's essay. Nothing personal, I just want to tear it apart because it's not as clever as it makes itself out to be. (Granted, it's nearly forty years old, and is thus quite dated, but still.)

I'll address it point by point. (If you've never read it, you might consider skimming it.)

I. Superman can't be, um, attracted to human women.

Blatantly false. Blatantly. As we (i.e. the Internet-going populace) know, lots of people can, um, be attracted to mere images. A living creature that resembled the opposite sex of one's own species that closely would be more enticing, even if s/he shrieked hostile things in an alien tongue at your mere presence (indeed, for some this would be a plus).

And Kryptonian relation to humanity is questionable. Could be there, could be (but probably isn't) pure coincidence. But Kryptonians are hardly the only very humanlike aliens out there in DC, and we know that at least some of those can (probably) interbreed with both humans and Kryptonians. (We also know that as of ~3000 AD, Daxamites can interbreed with humans. Since Daxamites are only a half step away from being Kryptonian themselves...)

II. Superman would lose control of his body during... you know.

Oh-ho, and now Niven's contradicting himself. Earlier, he said that Kryptonians can't be compared to humans, and now he's saying they're just like humans? Foul! Foul!

At any rate, I tend to think that Superman has a lot of self control. I mean, during the time period Niven was writing in, Supes had "super ventriloquism" as an innate power because of uncanny self-control! No training, no nothing, yet he could still do something most people needed a combination of aptitude and training for!

III. Superman would lose control of his carnal urges during... you know.

I think I've already addressed this, haven't I?

IV. Superman's... climax... would be naturally lethal, with the force of a gunshot.

Bleah, Niven. Bleah.

I'm not inclined to think this is true, primarily because there's no evidence that Supes has abnormal blood pressure. Perhaps his heart is a bazillion times stronger than mine, but that doesn't mean it pumps his blood around harder. And the same may or may not be true of all bodily fluids. I'll leave it at that.

V. Kryptonian sperm will have all of Superman's powers.

What.

Okay, we know that, in the Silver Age, all Kryptonian animals had cells that gave them the same powers as Superman. That doesn't necessarily mean that individual cells of Kryptonian animals would have Superman's powers. Particularly, since sperm lack most organelles (the structures that allow most cells to function), I'm inclined to think that, while Supes' powers do originate on the cellular level, sperm cells would not have the necessary structures to grant them these powers.

Most of the consecutive points work on the supersperm assumption, so I'll skip ahead.

XI. Superfetus will kill the human mother.

Heh. Okay, this is not necessarily true either. In the Golden Age, little Clark Kent was strong from the moment he arrived on Earth. In the Silver Age, well, I'll assume it was fairly similar. In the modern post-Crisis etc. universe, it's generally agreed that it took a long time for Clark's powers to emerge-not until he had roughly hit puberty or after. Why does it make sense for Superfetus to harm the mother?

Also, it's clear that the modern penchant for magic red sunlight lamps cancelling out Superman's powers was not yet in vogue when this was written; otherwise it'd be very simple to answer this problem for even Silver Age Superfetus.

Also, I'm not even touching point XII. Superman's no Zeus. (Explanation for that remark here, if you don't know enough about Greek mythology.)

-Signing off.

Monday, September 28, 2009

Golden Age Moment of the Day (2)

Question: What does a scorpion look like?

Answer: Not like these things.

(Image from Fox Features' "Fantastic Comics" feature "The Golden Knight," which for reference also featured Stardust the Super Wizard.) What.

-Signing off.

Monday, May 31, 2010

Golden Age Moment of the Day (35)

From... some issue of Clue Comics or another... (one of the middlish ones; it's got Boy King's gangster twin brother Muggsy in it... Yes, really.) From Clue Comics comes this unique artifact...

A statue so disgusting even the Nazis didn't want to melt it down for their own use. (In case you can't read Boy King's description of it, he says "His 'goods' is the solid gold in this statue, which has only a thin bronze coat... King Eric the Gold's body is inside!! He had Swisslakia's gold melted---and poured over his body, so that the gold would be safe!!" Seriously.)

Eric the Gold totally puts a different implication into Golden Age comics, no?

-Signing off.