Category: Marvel
Phototracing and Lightboxes: Real Comic Book Art?
I’ve been questioning some of the ways comic book artists are doing their “artwork” these days. Lets face it art has changed quite a bit from back when comic books were printed on newsprint and cost a mere sixty cents. Today our comic books cost four bucks and are full of computerized gloss. Hell I’m not even sure what they are printed on is actually real paper. But it got me thinking a lot on just how comic book art is produced these days for the bigger companies out there. It turns out a lot of artist out there are phototracing, meaning gathering photos online, shot from a digital camera or even other artists actual artwork, uploading them onto the computer or light box and tracing them, adding costumes different hair etc.
It seems this trend has a small debate forming on what exactly is real art in comic books these days? Is it real art when Alex Maleev uses a light box to do all of his city back grounds or David Mack tracing pictures of his characters? Or when an artist simply takes some celebrity photos and traces over them giving the characters their likeness? To me I’m a little disappointed to hear that this trend is becoming even more popular these days. I guess you don’t have to spend much time with perspective if you’re merely tracing a photo.
I guess the “Artist” these days has maybe actually become the inker? Don’t get me wrong there’s still good degree of skill and talent needed to make a trace job look real good. People have been photo referencing for years but tracing to me just doesn’t really make the cut. I love for a comic book to look good, heck if the comic has shitty generic artwork (as most do these days is seems) I flat out just won’t buy it.
Art is very important to me when dropping 4 bones a pop on a comic book these days the art and story better be top notch. What do you think? Do you care how the artwork was made in your comic book? Here’s a great video from IFanboy on the great debate of phototracing!
Comic Book Cover of the Week: Wolverine Vs. The Vermin!
You just can’t judge a book by it’s cover, that’s certainly the truth for the 2001 Wolverine annual! Yeah I love this cover, it’s super spooky and it’s got Wolverine finally squaring off against another crazed berserker, one of my all time fav villains- The Vermin!! What we have here is a comic that I honestly really couldn’t finish simply because the interior artwork just sucks so damn bad! Back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s you sometimes got some really shitty comics with terrible art and awful stories to match! Anyway this one has a dynamite cover by J.H. Williams that always makes me try and read the actual comic book with the same outcome…you can most likely find this one in the 25 cent bin!
The New Marvel Movie Spider-man and the Great Race Debate!
So the controversy continues to grow around Spider-man and his introduction into the Marvel Universe films-now what we’re hearing is that Spider-man may not be the skinny white dude he’s been in the comic books for, well ever…We’re being tempted with him being African American instead and that he may not even be Peter Parker in this movie universe. Instead we hear he may take on the Miles Morales Ultimate universe persona of the character. So I’ve been thinking what’s the motivation behind mixing things up?
Well first it seems to me that the Marvel Universe films are lacking some awesome black characters. I personally don’t think they need to make any changes to Spider-man. In fact I just want to see Marvel take the character and do it right, showing Sony how to do Spidey the Marvel way. And can we PLEASE get a true representation of the damn Green Goblin already? Pleeeez?!! I do think it’d be great to get some more characters in the mix of different races focused on-so don’t change Spider-man just give us some cool existing characters of the Marvel universe. Let’s see now, we already have Black Panther in the works, we’re getting Luke Cage and possibly the Falcon donning the Captain America duds after the upcoming third movie. If they really want to bring a little more besides a bunch of white dude superheroes bouncing around all over the place here are just a few ideas:
It’s time to bring back Blade-Give Snipes his role back! He doesn’t always need to fighting Vampires either!
A Brother Voodoo movie would be fucking awesome. Case closed. Better than Doctor Strange.
Bring the Bill Foster Goliath into the Avengers! They already fucked up the Hank Pym character, so have Foster take the role again!
Yeah a Deathlok movie would be pretty damn awesome…nuff said!
Bring Jim Rhodes in to take over for Tony Stark as he did way back in the 80’s. He was Iron man for well over two years!
Can we please get a hyper-action superhuman kung fu extravaganza with some Shang Chi on the big screen already?!!
I think it’s a big mistake to put Miles Morales in place of Peter Parker at least at first. Spider-man isn’t broken(besides in the Sony movies), he doesn’t need to be changed. If he is well so be it, maybe it’ll be an awesome movie regardless I’ll be there to check it out either way. But the fact of the matter is that I’m a comic book fan, I want to see Parker, the original Spider-man. I hope to see him first don the suit, then when his time is up feel free to put Miles into the role of the legendary webslinger. In the mean time let’s choose some great superheroes to come to life who deserve a shot, ones that us comic fans spent years following.. what do you think?!
Comic Book Cover of the Week: Back Before The X-Men Sold Out…
There was a time back in the 1980’s that the X-men were the coolest thing in the entire world! They were like mutant misfit punk rockers and and growing up they were the unique team that you felt you were part of. Today the X-men are fuckin’ corporate whores with like a dozen different titles, huge blockbuster movies and cartoons. They’re still swell guys but they don’t have that dangerous charm to them that they did back in the eighties. They didn’t fit in and because of that they were cool. It was an era of the team that simply can’t be recaptured. They weren’t the Avengers, they were a tight knit family with a lot of problems that you could relate to especially as a teen. The main reasons why they were so awesome during this era was direct result of Chris Claremont and John Romita Jr. Here’s an awesome cover Romita did during that very special time and this one still to this day remains iconic to me and my eleven year old self. This was back when wolverine wasn’t a pretty boy, he was mean and dangerous!
8 Bit Video Game Madness: Guardians of the Galaxy and More Old School Comic book Video Games!!
Who doesn’t love an old school video game like Mega Man or Castlevania?!! Well this new little video by Cinefix recreates the Guardians of the Galaxy into an awesome old school video game straight out of the 1980’s! If this game would have been available back then I would have played thew shit out of this!
I’m really not much of a new school video gamer, I just don’t have the time to commit to anymore screentime, as in sitting in front of a tv screen, internet, phone but something like this I could really get behind check this out this would have been a classic!
Oh and while I’m in the old school comic book video game mood let’s not forget the awesome Sega Incredible Hulk game from 1994! Hot Damn do I need to play this one ASAP!! Look how awesome it was! In the opening you can see some classic hulk villains here like the Absorbing Man, Tyrannus, The Leader and The Rhino!!
Hel while we’re at it let’s not forget the classic Spider-man video game from 1991!! This one you can actually play as Haweye, Submariner and The Black Cat!! Daaaamn!!! I need to play this ASAP!!!
I guess we could say this one was slightly better than this one from Atari 2600!
And this one from 1989! But this one is still pretty cool if just for the fact it’s got Cap also!
And we got a great odd guest appearance in the Revenge of Shinobi from 1989-Spidey was a boss!!
Let’s also not forget the 1989 X-men video game Madness in Murderworld!
And yes there was a Howard the Duck video game from 1985….but …well yeah it sucked!!!
When Superheroes Trade Villains! Unexpected Awesome Super Battles!
I love a good superhero / super villain battle! We all love to see our favorite superheroes go head to head with their classic villains, who doesn’t love the classic battles of Lex Luthor and Superman?! Or The Hulk and The Abomination?! Or Batman and The Joker? Spider-man vs. The Green Goblin?! But let me tell you what I have always liked often times more than those classic battles are when a superhero ends up battling someone else’s classic villains. This just doesn’t happen nearly enough but when it does it’s always a great unexpected little piece of comic book history! So let’s look at a few of my favorites in this FIRST installment of “When Superheroes Trade Villains”!! This small list was actually a lot harder than I thought it’d be to comprise. I figured it’s be easier to find or recall classic villains fighting non traditional battles with superheroes they normally don’t come in direct contact with!
Thor #178: Thor vs. The Abomnination!!
We are all so used to seeing the Hulk and The Abomination go head to head but in Thor #178 we got to see Thor face off with the other big bad green gamma behemoth! Unfortunately this isn’t really the greatest battle or story we’ve ever seen, but hey it’s cool to see these two guys go at it a bit! The real bad guy here kinda turns out to be The Stranger who’s imprisoning creatures on his planet to do his bidding but hey I’ll take a Thor/Abomination beat down any day!
Captain America 259: Cap vs Doc Ock!
Yeah Doctor Octopus is notoriously known for his battles with everyone’s favorite web head but in Cap #259 we got see Captain America tangle with ol’ Otto! Doc Ock decides he’s gotta steal Cap’s trusty shield so he can study the metal it’s made from to make even stronger robotic arms-however Cap is totally NOT cool with this and this soon erupts into a unique battle with one of Spider-man’s most popular baddies!
Superman #9: Supes vs. The Joker!
Sooner or later The Joker was bound to get tired of Gotham and Batman! Superman #9 has one helluva awesome cover by John Byrne and the story inside is pretty fun as The Joker stops by Metropolis to make people go crazy with his deadly laughing gas and a robot superman with a nuclear bomb inside, thats when Superman steps onto the scene! He easily foils the Joker’s plan asking him why he came to Metropolis, Joker simply laughs and says “Ooh Superman…Why not?”
Daredevil #104: Murdok vs. Kraven The Hunter!
Yeah Kraven decides to fuck with someone else finally other than Spidey this time! Kraven really doesn’t have much of a beef with Daredevil but he’s hired to take him out! Whatta jerk doing it for the money huh?! Nope, get this, Kraven actually refuses the cash and does it simply for the thrill of the hunt! This leads Kraven to kidnap the Black Widow and ultimately face Daredevil in the San Francisco zoo because well you know….Kraven wants to feel like he’s in the muthafuckin’ jungle when he faces off with the Man Without Fear!
Transformers #3: Spider-man vs. Megatron?!
Yeah well back in the 1980’s Marvel had the rights to the Transformers. So in their limited series we find out in issue #3 that they exist in the same universe as the Marvel superheroes! This leads to Spider-man guesting in the third issue and taking on Megatron! Now this is a real superhero/ super villain mash up if I have ever seen one!!
So help me out here what are some other issues where Superheroes trade classic villains in an unlikely battle?!
Oh and here is a great animated classic Hulk episode “Tomb of the Unknown Hulk” where the Hulk squares off against Dock Ock!! I always though this was super cool as Ock was an unlikely villain for a full Hulk episode, this segment has their short but awesome battle in it’s finale!
Comic Book Cover of the Week- Puck the Pint Sized Powerhouse!
It’s no secret here – I love Alpha Flight! I love John Byrne too who’s the man behind the Canadian supergroup, heck I’d go as far as to say that he’s my favorite comic book artist of all time! So today I’m showcasing his amazing cover from Alpha Flight #5 way back from 1983. This one features a cool solo story with none other than Puck the coolest little superhero of all time and quite possibly hairier than Wolverine!! I’m so bummed that Marvel can’t seem to come up with a good ongoing series for the team. If you want a great run of comics to read check out John Byrnes run on the book (issues 1-28) you get great art and lots of drama and then some. This rad cover proves sometimes simplicity is the best approach!! I love how he’s jumping out of the price box-brilliant!
Comic Book Covers of the Week: 24 Crazy Christmas Comic Book Covers!!
Here’s some really rad Christmas themed comic book covers from yesteryear to get you into the holiday mood! Check out these 24 holiday comic book covers and have an awesome Christmas eve night! Ho Ho Ho!!
Comic Book Cover of the Week: Matt Murdock’s Crappy Christmas!!
I love digging up cool comic books that took place around Christmas time and Daredevil #229 fits that bill quite perfectly! This is an especially rad cover of a time when Matt Murdock went homeless on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen due to the Kingpin ruining his entire life. This has got to be one of the lowest points in the characters history as Murdock is down on his luck in this grim story arc written by Frank Miller before he turned into a crazy douche bag. This issue also has one of the most brutal fights between Murdock and the Kingpin as they go head to head in Fisk’s office. It’s bloody and Matt gets his ass kicked big time…damn I’m feeling as I type this the urge to read these issues again immediately! The cover is brilliantly drawn back in 1986 by one of my fav artists David Mazzucchelli and clearly shows how crappy Christmas was that particular year for Daredevil….
Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool…Again….Why Am I Supposed to be Excited About This?
The big news it seems is that Ryan Reynolds will be reprising his role as Deadpool again-Yipee! Wait, why am I supposed to be excited about this again?! Oh wait, my bad he already played the character…in the most disappointing superhero flick of all time!! Yep “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” makes Brett Ratner’s X-men 3: The Last Stand look like an Academy Award winner! Yeah that Wolverine movie was THAT bad. So now we get the news that Reynolds is going to get a second chance, and I believe everyone deserves a second chance but it leads me to the question: Has Ryan Reynolds ever starred in an actual good movie ever?!
Hey Deadpool-Quit reminding me that we made that movie together ok?!!
Well he did star in R.I.P.D. which I um actually had to turn off because it was so bad. He starred in Blade: Trinity which well I think I may have actually left the theater during way back in 2004. Wait he did star already as a superhero, yeah you remember The Green Lantern from 2011? Nope me neither.
He starred in the sorta Ok-ish Amityville Horror remake, I guess. I know he was in some crappy romantic comedies one where he wore a fat suit or something. I mean is there any movie where he’s actually at least funny? I don’t mean to be a total hater here, but I was less than impressed with that crappy short Deadpool test run in which for some reason Deadpool was a totally not funny, crappy, fully CG character with Reynold’s voice-so what gives? Can someone tell me what all the fuss and excitement is all about already?!
Universal Dork 