Happy Halloween!

Have some sexy spooktacular Satanna courtesy of Art Adams for your goodie bag. Speaking of goodies, that's not all...the first issue of Dracula the Unconquered is now available for buck! Having just read it myself, I can say it's well worth it. There's a giant raven ghost and everything. But if it's free treats of a more terrifying nature you're looking for...look no further than Emily Carroll's latest opus, MARGOT'S ROOM. A hint for readers: follow the lines of the poem and click the corresponding parts of the image.

Unconquered and Undead!

As you probably already know, I do love me some Dracula. And I love Dracula-centric comics even more! Thus, I am already, whatchamightcall 'biased' in regards to the title above. Still, as politics, religion and comics journalism prove, bias is no barrier to sharing! Thus, I give you a six page preview of the newest offering from Chris Sims, Steve Downer, Josh Krach and Action Age Comics...DRACULA THE UNCONQUERED!

And after the preview, why not give a listen to this interview with the writer hisownself over at the Geekin' Out podcast?

There's Awkward...

...And then there's awkward. Man up Hank. Return your homicidal death-machine of a son's hug like a real father.

Anyway, I apologize for the lack of posting lately. I've been busy with other things of late, as you can see. You should buy that, btw. The more books you buy, the more time I have to post pictures of the Thing in compromising positions. However, if you demand entertainment for no remuneration, why not stop by here and avail yourself of some of the horrible Halloween treats I've made easily available?

Who Knows What Evil Lurks On A Building Site?

(Click to embiggen)

Found via Comics Alliance. The artist is David Hitchcock, who, frankly, should be drawing a damn Shadow comic, with Francisco Francavilla on covers and back-ups. Or Doc Savage. I'm easy. Either one.

This is Probably My Favorite Panel of the Year...

From issue 2 of Demon Knights. Seriously, Vandal Savage is pretty much the best NuDC character going right now. Dude's just chowing down on them dinosaurs.

Friday Fin-Fang-Foom!

Awesome commission of everybody's favorite Foom by Dave Wachter. Do yourself a favor and visit his site here.

Reasons Why I Should Write The Thing, Part The Third

Or, 'The Return of Rocky Grimm...SPACE RANGER'.

For a time, back in the heyday of my ill-spent youth, the Thing wore a black unitard and wandered around the Beyonder-created Battleworld, getting into shenanigans. Those were good days, because they mostly involved the Thing punching aliens and Frankensteins and such.

Granted, by 'good days' I mean for the reader, because they were sh*tty days for Benjamin J. Grimm. Trapped (albeit by his own choice) on an alien world which existed only because he was there, Ben would bounce from one awkward situation to the next, facing foes that forced him to confront several unpleasant truths about himself.

And when there were no more truths to be had, when the Thing finally went home (to find his girlfriend (who was secretly a Skrull) married to his best friend (who wasn't a Skrull, but who was a douche) but that's another post entirely), Battleworld blew up. Or vanished. Or something. It was an ex-world, is what I'm saying, to misquote John Cleese.

But what if it wasn't? What if Battleworld, as close to being sentient as a planet could get without having a face plastered across its northern hemisphere, decided that it didn't feel like going anywhere? See, Battleworld was a place where ANYthing could happen. Thoughts and desires became reality to some degree, if they were focused strongly enough. So what would happen if a planet wished for a protector? A protector whose presence was necessary for Battleworld itself to exist?

A protector named...Rocky Grimm, Space Ranger. Created by Battleworld as a simulacrum of an idealized Ben Grimm, Rocky is the square-jawed, two-fisted hero the Thing always wanted to be. And with his consort, Tarianna of Leen at his side, Rocky battles the weird menaces that plague the peoples of the jigsaw world! Or, at least he did before he disappeared. Vanished. Leaving behind a populace without a hero, and a planet without a reason to exist.

Thus, Battleworld, panicked and acting on instinct, searches for the one man who can hold it together while it tries to find its prodigal son...the ever-lovin' blue-eyed Thing. Sound familiar? The Thing thinks so too, but while he's trying to puzzle it out, and trying to figure out how to escape the desperate clutches of the planetary intelligence, he's got to handle all the dangers and deviltry of a planet he thought long destroyed, while trying not to fall back in love with a woman who is, quite literally, his ideal mate.

Makes for a good second issue, I think...

REASONS WHY I SHOULD WRITE THE THING:

Part the First

Part the Second

Part the Third

Three Things About the New (?) 52

While I did not spend my hard-earned dosh on every single issue of the New 52, I did, in fact, read them all. For a given value of 'read', I mean. Seriously, I question the assigned monetary value of any form of reading material that takes me the length of a good sneeze to read. But that's probably a conversation for another time.

There have been many, MANY good reviews of DC's grand experiment, looking at the good and the bad of the new status quo (and isn't THAT a bit of an oxymoron?), and frankly, I don't feel like debating the artistic merits of Red Hood and the Outlaws (Hint: There are none). So this is less a critical look and more an op-ed, fair warning.

So, having read every issue, I find myself coming to several conclusions...first, aside from the looming copyright issues that necessitated a tweaking to the Superman mythos (and hence the reboot), there was no need for a line-wide restructuring. The books which seem to be acquiring the lion's share of critical praise (which does not equate to sales, mind) are, by and large, books which could have easily existed under the previous set-up. Indeed, some of them did...Batman didn't get rebooted, after all.

That last bit leads me to point the second. I understand the necessity of keeping a bit of the previous status quo in place (the best-sellers, natch), but it does make for a less than ideal jumping on point. If you're not going to start it ALL over, don't start ANY of it over. And certainly don't call it a gamble when it's more akin to popping a quarter in a slot machine.

Thing the third: You should probably buy All-Star Western. It's basically just the next issue of Gray and Palmiotti's Jonah Hex series, which was probably the best book no one was reading and features Hex just straight up wrecking shit in turn of the century Gotham City while hunting for a serial killer. How can you not want to read that?