Author: Matthew Peterson

Or – “The More Things Change, The More They Aren’t Like They Used To Be Anymore…” There’s just something that’s irresistible about a cute, petite woman with a battleaxe big enough to dismember a diplodocus.  This sort of visual dichotomy is part of what makes Buffy the Vampire Slayer popular, at least to my mind…   She’s not an uber-buff American-Gladiators-type amazon warrior, (Not that there’s anything wrong with that…  Stop hitting me, Barda!), she’s just a woman, and a relatively small woman at that.  Sarah Michelle Gellar may be very slight, but this only serves to make Buffy’s superhuman agility and strength seem somehow more…

Or – “The Older I Get, The More I Miss The Old Legion…” With the recent return of the original Karate Kid (no, not Mr. Miyagi’s protegee Danny), Stephen mentioned that I was probably “frantically writing a post about Karate Kid in all his incarnations in the Legion of Superheroes.”  Well, I have to admit that until he mentioned it, it honestly hadn’t occurred to me.  After all, this is a Legionnaire we’re talking about, I said to myself.  In this, the machine age, there’s certainly a Wikipedia somewhere that’ll cover Mr. Armorr and do him justice.  “Wrong-ola,” says the…

Or – “I’ve Worked With People This Crazy, But Only In Local Television…” With this, I think I may be Salieri’s favorite person this weekend. Between yesterday’s Zombies and today’s Stone Killers, we’re better than a subscription service, with twice the snark. The cover of this issue features a cool shot of The Green Goblin and Bullseye in action, marred only marginally by the fact that Norman doesn’t suit up in this issue (indeed, hasn’t suited up yet in the series), and that Bullseye doesn’t appear anywhere in the pages, which brings up my current pet peeve of comics (now…

Or – “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, But They Apparently Do Wear Spandex…” There’s an image that takes on a whole new context Post-CW, doesn’t it? But this ain’t our dear Captain America, fellers an’ gals, this is the Earth-2149 version, one Colonel America, and he’s a whole different breed o’ cat. Our Captain America aims to keep innocents safe & unharmed; Colonel America just wants to make sure they’re tender & juicy. It’s a subtle difference, but I think you’ll agree it’s a meaningful one. Major Spoilers Head Ninja Stephen categorized this as a “Good, but fast read…” As…

Or – “Every Issue I Think It Can’t Get Worse… And Every Issue I’m Wrong.” The Legion’s situation can’t get worse, I mean, not the book. The book has been pretty consistently good, with moments of awesome and couple of peaks of Holy $#!+ mixed in here and there… With the Legion’s publishing history being what it is, I greet every issue with trepidation, wondering if this is the one that will tip the balance of the relaunch towards “Make them stop!” but there’s no sign of that, yet. Of course, it has been revealed that issue #30 will mark…

Or – “How NOT To Relaunch Your Core Franchises, Part Deux…” Regular Spoilerheads may recall me using the term “stunt-casting” in reference to certain recent books, notably Flash and Wonder Woman, but the term also applies to Marvel’s “Spider-Man & Black Cat,” “Daredevil: Target,” and to a lesser degree, the cover work of Michael Turner and Alex Ross. I use the term to describe a sales tactic where the selling point of a book is the CREATOR, and not the title/character/team itself. Sometimes it works, as seen by sales, but other times it doesn’t. In my mind, Flash and Wonder…

Or – “Apparently, I’ll Only Be Reviewing The Odd Issues Of This Title…” But, really, aren’t they all a little odd?  If you’re wondering what happened to my rundown of issue #2, well…  thereupon hangs a tale:  I decided after my lukewarm response to the first issue (compounded by the length of time between issues) not to recap the rest of Freshman II, a decision borne out by my overall feeling of “meh” when reading issue #2.  So, why am I doing it now?  Remember yesterday when I (jokingly) said I should recap something I didn’t like?  I went through the stack of…

Or – “The Little Azure Scarab That Could…” It may surprise some of our readers to know that Blue Beetle, chronologically speaking, is one of the oldest heroes extant, dating back to August of 1939, a little more than a year after Superman. This means that Beetle predates The Flash, Green Lantern, and Aquaman, and only trailed Batman into print by a month or two. BB had been printed by Fox Comics, Holyoke Publishing, Charlton Comics, and Americomics before being purchased by DC, and even had a relatively successful run as a radio character. Such was his popularity that, when…

Or – “Turner Can Barely Draw Humans, Who Thought He Could Draw Ben Grimm?” There have been a lot of interpretations of the Thing over the years, from Jack Kirby’s original lumpy monster, which then rocked up, and then Joe Sinnott drew the “separate eyebrow” Thing, and then John Byrne rounded him off and gave him a gorilla’s body. There’s a lot of precedent for making slight changes to the Thing. There is NO excuse, however, for drawing him with a separate steam-shovel jaw ala Robotman of the Doom Patrol, especially when the interior art isn’t going to represent it.…

Or – “Beware My Power… Making My Exes Go Crazy.” Perhaps more than any other concept, Green Lantern illustrates the kind of changes that have befallen the comics industry since it’s inception back in the Golden Age. The original Green Lantern was Alan Scott, a train engineer who found a magic langern, a quintessentially Golden Age origin. As the influence of Superman waxed and waned, G.L. Scott became first INSANELY powerful, then depowered, then eventually stopped appearing in HIS OWN BOOK (replaced by Streak the Wonder Dog) as superheroes lost their lustre. One of the first concepts revived in the…

Or – “How Do You Follow Up A Nigh-Perfect Issue?” X-Factor. The term can be used to refer to many things… It was an album by Iron Maiden, it’s the name of Simon Cowell’s internation version of ‘American Idol’ (“Dear Supreme Being: Respectfully, please get Sanjaya off my TV set. He makes my brain hurt, and not in a good way. I would never wish him harm, but the boy barely has the talent to have breakfast without injury. Save him from us all. Love, Matthew.”), it was the nom de guerre of an excrable wrestling tag team based mostly…

Or – “If They’re Really A Secret Six, Why Are They So High-Profile?” That look on Lady Blackhawk’s face, my friends, is known to scientists and students of non-verbal communication as the “Skunkeye” ( also called “Stinkeye”), and it is used to imply that the subject of your scrutiny is so suspicious as to actually reek of illegitimacy. It’s commonly seen in singles bars, at all-you-can-eat buffets, and on the face of David Letterman. “But, Matthew,” you’re asking, “why is Babs Gordon’s dark doppelganger, her nemesis from college, the wicked and abusive power-mongering manipulator Spy Smasher sitting alongside Zinda, Babs’…

Or – “He Wasn’t Always A Huge Tool. Once, He Was A Huge Tool With A Tom Selleck Haircut.” With all the verbal beatings heaped upon Senor Antonio Stark in recent weeks, I decided it was well past time to look at something that predates his characterization as a “futurist” (which seems to be synonymous with the characterization of Batman in the Morrison and Waid eras of JLA: the man paranoid enough to act in a manner completely contrary to heroism in the name of preparation), as well as a time when comics in general were simpler. The occasional would-be…

Or – “Behind The Curve Is Where I’ll Be…” Okay, so I admit it. I’ve been dragging my feet on recapping this title. I was of the opinion that I wasn’t going to cover it at all, until I managed to stay on my daily schedule long enough to actually exhaust what was in the review bag (though not buying last week’s comics due to budgeting catastrophe may have been in large part responsible, as well.) The honest truth is: I’m a big Frank Cho fan. I’m a conditional Brian Bendis fan (though I enjoy him better on his self-created…