Volstagg...

...knows the benefits of a captive audience.

Wonder Dog Wednesday

Honorary nuthin'. Later, Rex would lead the tribe in a campaign of conquest and consolidation, leading to the eviction of the majority of the white settlers from the Western Territories. Despite initial resistance from Federal troops and rag-tag settler-militias, Rex's sound grip of modern guerrilla tactics and his thorough knowledge of the area, as well as his hardball political maneuvering via contacts in Washington led to the complete domination of the Western Territories within only a few months. WONDER-DOG!

The Sleeper...Well...Sleeps

A dramatic reenactment of my current physical state after a night chock full to bursting with insomnia, as performed by Benjamin J. Grimm:

Of course, I'm not actually asleep. If I was, I wouldn't be writing this, would I? No, instead I'm awake and busy.

Ben Grimm-Ladies Man of the Desert

A woman who knows how to haggle AND can pull off a pith helmet? She's a keeper, Ben.

Guy Davis and the Art of Monsters

CBR has a nice little interview with Guy Davis (of BPRD and Sandman Mystery Theater fame) on his process for creating wonderful grotesques like the one above. Worth checking out if you're into monsters or art, and really, who ain't?

Wonder Dog Wednesday

You'll take note, of course, that Rex intends to fight Cthulhu sans any sort of underwater gear. This is because Rex likes a fair fight. WONDER DOG!

Finally

Preview of Hulk issue #19 up over at CBR, which is where I stole this delightful image of what I hope will be an issue dedicated to Rulk getting the flaming (literally) snot beat out of him. I know that won't be the case, but damn that's a nice way to begin a comic, ain't it?

Yeah. Yeah. Fills me with the warm fuzzies, that does. Really just makes my damn day. Hit 'im again, Ben!

Meta-Marvel Metaphysics

So, who remembers this post from back in October? Nobody, I know. Go re-read it, it's pertinent. Now, go read this here, over at Comic Book Resources.
Done?
So. Was I right? At least in part? Is that what the latter says? Did-did I...successfully predict something? Am I psychic? Am-am I a ghost-whisperer?
More importantly, can I, in any way, take credit?
...
Yeah, I didn't think so either. And yeah, the idea that this was all a part of some overarching plan as opposed to a natural evolution of ongoing storylines based on plot points as they occur is probably a stretch. But come on! Isn't that funky?
...
No? Fine. Here. The Thing fighting giant vegetables. Enjoy.

Makin' Speeches, Tossin' Punches

"My fists speak volumes!" God bless Tom DeFalco. That man could purple some prose and put the 'bomb' in bombastic. Most people see DeFalco's term on FF as a creative nadir...re-hashed plots, cheap gimmicks, sub-standard storylines. And, in a certain sense, they'd be right. DeFalco writes like the geekiest geek alive. His villains chew the scenery like they're starving, his heroes never leave a word balloon without an exclamation point, and his plots rely too heavily on past continuity.
Basically, he's Geoff Johns before Geoff Johns was Geoff Johns. Or something to that effect. Jim Shooter without the gigantism, Erik Larsen without the sexual dynamism. Don't think about that last one too hard, it'll make you weep blood.
And if it doesn't, I don't want to know about it.
Anyway, I like DeFalco's writing. In an area populated by the self-conscious and the self-aware, DeFalco wrote pure crack pulp. Stupid, often maudlin stories of people hitting each other and alien babies and "Yer wife's a stinkin' Skrull!"
He gave the Invisible Woman's costume a cleavage window, which, while unintentionally hilarious, gave Wizard (who remembers Wizard?) several months worth of semi-relevant MILF jokes, for which we can all be thankful.
Then, he also created Code: BLUE.
God bless you, Tom DeFalco.

Wonder Dog Wednesday

Rex is going to beat that lion's ass and force the other two cats to watch. That's just how Rex rolls.
...
Literally, I mean. He's going to do it while balancing on that ball. Just because he can. WONDER DOG, chumps!

Make Fruit Pies, Not War

God help me, I love these things. The ads, not the fruit pies. No one loves the fruit pies, except possibly a robot lacking in taste buds. Such as the gentleman above.

Remembering Doc Savage

Pulpmaster General Jess Nevins has an interesting lecture up at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies website, should you care to take a dare to give it a listen. It's called "Those Who Cannot Remember Doc Savage Are Condemned To Repeat Him: The 20th Century Backlash Against Posthuman Bodybuilders" and is worth the half-hour of your day it costs to listen. I touched on quite a few of the same points in my senior thesis, "Cyclical Evolution: Myth and the Modern in Heroic Concepts", but Mr. Nevins says them much better than I did.
...
He has him a purty voice.
...
Look, just go listen, okay?

Aunt Who?

Whoof. Been a week or two since I managed to post anything here, so I decided to start the new year off small, by answering a question concerning a bit of Fantastic Four trivia that I myself have always been curious about. Namely, what, exactly, does Ben's 'Aunt Petunia' look like?





Answer-she's hot. Courtesy of John Byrne, way back when. You can tell it's Byrne because he's one of the few artists who, while understanding how clothes realistically hang on a human body (i.e. not everything is skintight), still has absolutely no idea what said clothing should look like.