Features

Our Monday feature continues as we move from Spider-Man’s debut to the debut of his own comic. We take a look at how things have changed, what tropes were started in this first issue, and ask who in the world is Peter Palmer? https://youtu.be/hXS6GcO2eCk Images used in the video: ASM 1 - Aunt May ASM 1 - Breaking the Fourth Wall ASM 1 - Chameleon ASM 1 Cover ASM 1 - Featured Image ASM 1 - Lampshade Hanging FF and Antman ASM 1 - Paid by Check ASM 1 - Peter Palmer ASM 1 - Spider-Menace ASM 1 - Spider-Physics Amazing Spider-Man #1 written by Stan Lee with art by Steve Ditko and lettering by Johnny Dee ...

Thanks to a college student complaining about reading Y: The Last Man and Perseopolis when he thought he’d be reading innocent comics like Batman, people have been collecting inappropriate Batman panels - mostly from the Golden and Silver Ages. So, here’s a weekly feature that’ll go from now until I run out of images. Batman marries Batwoman

note on all the image scans: they are correct manga-style so they are read right to left Spend enough time doing critical readings of media and you come across the assertion that all media tells you about the culture it was written in. Sometimes, as in contemporary media, this is easy to tease out. Other times, as with science fiction, it’s by extrapolation. So I thought it might be interesting to re-read Love Hina, by Ken Akamatsu, as a way to to understand Japanese culture. Part One can be found here. Story We’re so close to the end, but Akamatsu wants to stall quite a bit. So we mostly get a rehash of previous ideas with a few new twists. Twist number one: FINALLY Naru’s affections for Keitaro have stuck. In fact, the spend so much time with PDA that it continually distracts Motoko from her studies. She also comes to terms with her latent desire for Keitaro. Once again her older sister is in town and so once again it’s time for zany deceptions. In this case, her sister thinks she’s gotten into Tokyo U, but she’s a ronin. Akamatsu has laid low both of the girls who thought they were so much better than ronin Keitaro. Another twist is that this time Motoko decides she’s going to break up Keitaro and Naru.

Welcome to a new video feature appearing Mondays in which we take a look at Spider-Man starting from the very beginning. [video webm="/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Friendly%20Neighborhood%20Spider-Pow%201%20-%20Amazing%20Fantasy%2015.webm" mp4="/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Friendly%20Neighborhood%20Spider-Pow%201%20-%20Amazing%20Fantasy%2015.mp4" ogv="/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Friendly%20Neighborhood%20Spider-Pow%201%20-%20Amazing%20Fantasy%2015.ogv"] Images used in the video: Atomic Energy Cover Page Flash Thompson Long Underwear Characters Parker Can't Dance Pete Talking to Himself Pete Thought Bubble The Science Hall Uncle Ben is Already Dead With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility If the above video doesn’t load because the server is loaded, here’s the youtube upload: ...

Reading Sex Criminals Vol 1, one almost feels like Fraction and Zdarsky never expected to be able to get away with this comic. It’s almost even neatly wrapped up by the end in the sense of one of those stories that leaves more questions unanswered than answered. In fact, Suzie makes fun of this in the first page of Volume 2. Viewed from another perspective, the story that is the basis of Sex Criminals is so insane (even though, as I noted last time, contains a great many wonderful metaphors), that Fraction and Zdarsky were forced to cram lots of story in those first five issues in order to keep readers from giving up on the bizarre concept. In contrast, this volume seems to be the creative team stopping to catch its breath; It’s not a bad thing. The story begins with Jon and Suzzie deciding they are done with robbing banks and will try and save the library in a normal way. Then it’s time for personal growth for Jon and Suzie as well as the return of Rachel and the introduction of Robert Rainbow.

Back in January I wrote about Kevin Smith’s take on The Green Hornet. In February I wrote about Mark Waid’s first two Green Hornet volumes. Although it’s not unheard of with the Big Two, it’s certainly much more rare to have the freedom to interpret characters as you wish. Take a character as iconic as Spider-Man. Until Miles Morales (nearly 50 years into the character’s history), Spider-Man was always Peter Parker. Nearly every aspect of his character is immutable. In fact, that’s one of the reasons his marriage was dissolved - he didn’t have the old Parker luck with women. Yet, because Dynamite is working with licensed properties a few volumes at a time, each writer gets a lot more leeway in how they can interpret the character (with only the licensor typically making any objections).

When I was doing my undergraduate degree, we were just getting cell phones that could take sub-megapixel images. There was no video in most phones, and those that did shot videos that would show the size of a postage stamp on today’s monitors. Some of my friends and colleagues who were of African descent would talk about how black people got higher prison sentences for weed possession in the USA than whites. When I heard this, from my position of privilege in which I’d only once ever had to deal with racism (I’m ethnically Hispanic, but racially white), it was hard to have sympathy. Yeah, it was profoundly unfair that the same crime did not get the same punishment, but it’s not like weed was legal back then. You knew what you were getting into if you chose to do something illegal. It’d be like getting mad for going to jail for stealing something.

A few weeks ago as I was doing laps in the pool, my brain started wandering to comics and how I’d been so frustrated with DC Comics’ New 52 as the months passed and the Bat-Family timeline, in particular, became more and more of a mess. I became consumed with an idea and I was convinced I’d written about it here on Comic POW! I searched through the archives and couldn’t find it. I asked my wife and she remembered me telling her about it. But it was not on my personal blog either. So rather than wonder if Dan Didio had somehow read my blog, I have to wonder if he plucked my idea from the ether.

Here at Comic POW! because we’re not obsessed with reviews and are, instead, looking at greater themes within the works, we’re able to revisit older stories along with the newer stories. So this blog post kicks off a series focusing on Bill Willingham’s Fables. There has been a huge resurgence in interest in the stories of the Brothers Grimm. On one side we have Disney revisiting their animated films as live action films (as well as others leading to two Snow White films in one year). On the other side we have TV shows like Once Upon a Time and Grimm. But before the ABC show thought of what it would be like to have characters from our fables among us in the real world, Bill Willingham was telling a similar story nearly fifteen years ago.

As always, I’m covering Baltimore Comic-Con! So here’s a roundup of the news so far! Some of the announced guests include: Don Rosa at Baltimore Comic-Con 2012 Steve Conley, who you may know from JLA-Z from DC Comics, Star Trek: Year Four from IDW, and Michael Chabon’s Amazing Adventures of the Escapist from Dark Horse Comics or his self-published Bloop Don Rosa: after Carl Barks, probably the most famous people to work on Duck Tales . ...