13 Days of D.C.F.I.S.-mas! Part 1

Who is this guy fighting Superman?


James Robinson knows. I know. And after this, so will you.

Hello and welcome to the 13 Days of D.C.F.I.S.-mas! Where we'll be dissecting DC First Issue Special.

You could say F.I.S. was the 1970s answer to Showcase. Or you could say it was Bizarro-Showcase. Whereas Showcase brought us the first appearances of the Silver Age Flash and Green Lantern, the Metal Men, Adam Strange, the Challengers, Enemy Ace, Bat Lash, and many other classic DC characters, First Issue Special gave us one character that was actually popular and a lot of one-hit wonders that only people like James Robinson or Gail Simone remember.

"Sounds like a flimsy premise to milk for 13 posts," you say.

"Bite me," I say. Let's begin with the guy pictured above? Who is he? Hercules in a hijab? Samson in a scarf? Conan in a keffiyeh?



It's ATLAS! No, not the titan Atlas from Wonder Woman. No, not the Atlas who puts the first "A" in "SHAZAM." Not Charles Atlas, who can make a man out of YOU (and who can sue you for creating Flex Mentallo). This is the other other other other Atlas. Is he legend or man? Man or monster? Floor wax or dessert topping?

Sword & sorcery is not a genre Jack Kirby really touched, apart from a few pin-ups in Marvel's Conan comics. This comic is Exhibit A of why he didn't do Sword & Sorcery. The King was not really firing on all cylinders here.. It's a pretty pedestrian story of vengeance seeking hero, evil overlord, weaselly sidekick, etc. What is notable about it is how accurately Kirby was able to predict the plot of the Schwarzenegger/Milius film "Conan the Barbarian" nearly a decade before it came out:



You can probably piece together the rest. The boy grows up into an impossibly muscled barbarian, swears to bring down a reptilian cult, befriends a wizened annoying old guy, etc. etc.:



If there had been a next issue, we would almost certainly have seen Atlas tied to the Tree of Woe and go on to kill several mighty warriors with Wile E. Coyote traps. CROM!

OK so where is he now?:Well, apart from some tantalizing cameos in "hypertime" when Karl Kesel was writing Superboy, and standing in the background of Kingdom Come (yeah, him and like 900 others), we never saw much of old Atlas. But James Robinson's bringing him back, just like he dredged up long-forgotten characters like Stalker or the Blue Starman.

But that's another story.

God of Thunder

By Odin's beard, I command thee to click!

An Open Frimshaz to Jim Shooter

Hi Jim! I think you're doing a sworvel job on this Legion of Super-Heroes bandsnee. Just really really flipple. Couldn't be more gronked.

There's just one florging thing.

Can ya tone down the fabbed-up lizzingo? I totally grilk that sometimes pranning some krindled color can establish a worzle, you know, make you really varg that you're in the 31st hoontz. And bandsnee has a fron tradition of it, from "drokk," to "feldercarb," to "sprock."

Unhooberantly, when you infrant a made-up vroz in every florging panel, it's sometimes inplisigent to frim-fram wovenheim what you're prizzling, ya grilk?

So in cranpludle, if we could just get a fnit less of the pseudo-quonchy future-teen plabblegap, I think we'd all mack-a-rinnie mone vowtie pazzotle, and vip spaw naddle bip kreessly. Frimps!

Oh and "Troob Vrix the Leeble!"

One Year to Midnight (Watchmen)

One Year to Midnight (Watchmen)

YES!!! It's happening folks and while it won't be perfect, you'd have to be a curmudgeon like Banana Oil to not love these images and how things are going.

This pics are from Director Zach Snyder's blog.

Stan Lee Collaborating on Manga

ICv2 News - Stan Lee Collaborating on Manga

Stan Lee Collaborating on Manga With 'Shaman King' Creator
March 04, 2008

According to the Muhyojo Website (via Anime News Network), Spider-Man and X-Men co-creator Stan Lee is collaborating on a new project for Shueisha with Shaman King creator Hiroyuki Takei (Shaman King is published in the U.S. by Viz Media).

Together they are creating an as yet unnamed story that will help to launch Shueisha's Jump Sq. II (Jump Square Second), which debuts in Japan on April 18th.

Jump Sq.II is a spin-off of the Jump Square manga anthology -- and the announcement of the Lee/Takei collaboration was made in the April issue of Jump Square, which was released on March 4th in Japan. While there have been manga adaptations of both Spider-Man and X-Men, this is the first time that Stan Lee has worked directly with a Japanese collaborator, though the exact nature of the collaboration is not known at this time.Ok, this is something

I'm very curious about this. We've seen the Stan Lee take on DC heroes before and that, by many accounts, was a train wreck. This can either be very cool or just too strange to properly and honestly critique.

Worst Black Heroes Ever! Mal Duncan

From Banana Oil: Circa 2005

Mal Duncan Mal "MAL!" Duncan: The Forgotten Teen Titan!

Long before Cyborg, Beast Boy or even Pantha, the Teen Titans hired their first person of color. The plucky sidekicks club first encountered him in Teen Titans #26, where he was confronting a street gang all by his lonesome in the tough neighborhood of "Hell's Corner," Anytown, USA. Impressed by his blackness and streetwiseness, the Titans invited him to join the team, despite the fact that he had no powers, no costume, and no superhero name.

{above: Mal displays his power of no-self-esteem-having} Mostly, Mal (superhero name: Mal) just stood by while the Titans did things, wearing an orange jumpsuit and occasionally providing much-needed exposition. Soon afterward the Titans adopted a hippie chick and an unfrozen caveman. By then Mal's duties had shifted to watching over headquarters, and he seriously considered changing his superhero name to The Janitor. The Teen Titans briefly returned from cancellation in 1977. By this time heroes like the Black Panther, Luke Cage, and Black Lightning had gained popularity, and this led DC to conclude that maybe Mal should be more of an actual superhero and less of a token black guy in a jumpsuit.

{above: Teen Titans #44, 1977...Mal's first try at being superheroic probably led to "Identity Crisis" #1-8} It was decided that Speedy, aka Roy Harper, would now be revealed as the nephew of one of DC's third-string golden agers: Jim Harper, aka The Guardian. For the flimsiest of reasons, i.e., Speedy somehow having the Guardian's old suit in his closet, Mal Duncan decided to embark on a career as the new Guardian. This career lasted one issue, as Julie Schwartz was reported to have said "what the fuck are you guys doing?" and so the time had come for yet another identity for Mal. In Teen Titans #45, someone claiming to be the archangel Gabriel gave Mal some sort of enchanted bugle, and so began the legend of Hornblower.

{above: Teen Titans #47, and note that Mal is always credited as "Mal!" on the covers. It's like they were ashamed to call him "Hornblower" or something} For the following year, Mal switched between the guises of Hornblower (until his horn was stolen; oddly, nobody tried very hard to find it again), The Guardian (now The Golden Guardian), and "Mal!" This led to very little confusion, since nobody was reading Teen Titans anyway, and the comic mercifully ended with #53, but not before Mal's girlfriend started dressing up as a giant bee. But that's another story.

{above: Mal, seen here as Herald, the post-Crisis version of Hornblower. Yes, someone at DC actually thought "Herald" would be a less embarrassing name} These days, Mal! only gets trotted out for anniversary issues and Titan weddings or funerals. But his years of exemplary service have made him a glorious asterisk in the annals of Titans history. There have been other lame black heroes, but no one was as lame as long and in as many different ways as Mal Duncan.

Star Wars Geeks: Rejoice!!!

ICv2 News - 'Star Wars: The Clone Wars' Movie


For those of you who really like to believe that there was no Episode 1-3 (I count myself and there was no Episode 6 either), here is a project you can get behind.

I hadn't heard anyone complaining about the Animated Clone Wars series and we all know that Jesus won't let people jack up epic cartoon anymore so this has to be a good thing.

Of course if it sucks then it means that Jesus took a day off because he's all wrapped up in Watchmen movie drama.

You guys better start prayin...