Au Revoir!

Apologies it's been a bit quiet round here the last week or so - been preparing for a holiday and sorting out work before I go; I'm off to France for a week so will blog once more when I get back . . . after I've caught up with two weeks worth of comics!

In the meantime, I still need some help on this post!

Friday Night Fight - Armageddon Outta Here!

Last week's Friday Night Fight here at Crisis On Earth Prime featured a scene from Invasion! Wondering what to use in this week's post, I just found myself thinking about other crossovers from around that time and, as you would expect, immediately thought of Armageddon 2001.

But that would be too obvious, I said to myself, so instead I plunged headlong and fearlessly into it's sequel: Armageddon: The Alien Agenda!

Trapped millions of years in the past, Captain Atom and Monarch battle each other, arguing over who should be wearing the Monarch suit . . . or at least they should have been.

Metal skin or not, though, that's gotta hurt. Do you think the Captain thought about the times he battled Monarch after waking up in Bludhaven wearing the same style suit? Do you think he should have?

No time for metaphysical questions, though, as the pair of them are about to be flattened by a bunch of dinosaurs!

Who could save them now? Bahlactus!

Bring Out Your Dead!

The rise of the Black Lanterns promises to be one hell of a story with dead heroes returning, armed with black power rings.

But who is coming back? In the last post I mentioned that according to Dan DiDio "many, many, many" former heroes would be rising from their graves and, while looking for something else entirely, I stumbled across this list of dead comic book characters on Wikipedia.

Here's a couple of my guesses as to who's coming back:

Abin and Amon Sur - Geoff Johns is the architect behind this story and the chance to have the father and son, friend and enemy battling Hal Jordan has to be too good to pass up.

Bombshell - a Johns creation, she was just wasted with her appearance in Teen Titans which amounted to little more than "Hey, I'm a Titan! Hey, I'm a turncoat! Hey, I'm dead!"

Captain Boomerang - another chance for Johns to write a Flash Rogue? An undead Flash Rogue? Like he's going to pass that up.

Ch'p - c'mon! A zombie power ring wearing squirrel? Who wouldn't want to read about that?

Doctors Midnight and Mid-Nite - yep, that's right, I'm going for the whole Beth Chapel/Charles McNider team up; with his penchant for legacy characters and love of the originals, Johns has just got to throw these two into the mix - they're already used to using darkness so why not?

Kobra - insane leader of a huge cult ready to die at his very word? Why not!

Max Lord - just so he can confront Wonder Woman!

Mr Terrific - another original character whose legacy is carried on by a character in a Johns-written book.

Professor Zoom/Reverse Flash - another Flash Rogue that Johns must want to get his hands on.

Superboy - because not even lawyers can keep a good zombie down!

I Read The News Today, Oh Boy

Here's a couple of things I picked up from the Newsarama report of the Seattle DC Nation panel:

"[Dan Didio was] Asked if there were any plans for Monarch to appear again, the answer was again no."

So no more Monarch? That whole appearance in Countdown, the building an army, Countdown Arena, battling Superman-Prime, having his containment suit ripped open and the destruction of Earth-51's universe in Countdown To Final Crisis #13? All that and no sight of the man behind it all?

I swear, the events of Countdown are going to be forgotten before the end of Final Crisis.

"How many Black Lanterns will be established dead characters? Many, many, many. How many of those will be former Heroes? Again, many, many, many. This got a huge response from the audience."

Now that's kinda cool! Who doesn't like a huge power ring wearing zombie hero battling the good guys?!

"There will be more Who's Who in the future, according to Didio"

Excellent news! I love me some Who's Who!

Need A Little Help

Over at my Annotated Infinite Crisis site, someone got in touch to say that I'd missed something.

Infinite Crisis #2, page 9, panel 2 shows Calculator surrounded by a variety of screens, all of which show members of the Society. Somehow the faces on those screens had slipped past me when I was annotating the series so I need to get them identified, but am having a bit of trouble.

In the top left (slightly hidden by the speech bubble) is what appears to be Dr Psycho; the main screens from left to right show Psycho Pirate; Luthor; Ultivac and Mr Poseidon (the robot and a small man on his shoulder); and Sivana; bottom left shows a blond man with goggles and another who has been identified as Chronos; going round the desk, the next screen shows Bug and Byte; the last shows a smiling man; and bottom right Colonel Computron.

If anyone here can name those I'm missing, either post a comment or mail me at jigsawmen [at] googlemail [dot] com and let me know what you've got.

Friday Night Fights - Invasion!

Hard to believe I've posted nothing all week; my only excuse consists of four initials and a Roman numeral: GTA IV.

Still, there's always time for a bit of violence and to celebrate the release of the paperback of Invasion!, here's Mr Miracle side-kick and JLI liaison Oberon fighting a bunch of Khunds:

But those Khunds are tiny! Miniaturised in a teleportation snafu, the 3' 7" (I checked Who's Who!) Oberon finally gets to be the big man! At least for a second or two . . .

Thanks to a spare Blue Beetle flash gun, though, he's able to win out!

Oberon saves the day in his own (ahem) small way, though Bahlactus could have taken the entire Invasion! force single handed!

I promise to get back into the swing of posts this week; after all, I was probably the only (mostly) DC-centric blog not to discuss DC Universe #0! For the record, I really enjoyed it despite it having bugger all to do with Countdown To Final Crisis.

Friday Night Fights - Meanwhile, On Earth-Two

Not only am I stuck in the 1980's at the moment, what with my habit of digging through old issues of Justice League Of America and Power Girl, but for this week's Friday Night Fight, I'm stuck on Earth-Two as well, in the company of the All-Star Squadron!

But wait a moment - that's Steel hitting Johnny Quick?! A hero beating on another hero?! What is this, their first ever meeting with the obligatory fight before realisation dawns?

Hang on - he just struck a woman! In 1942! What a cad!

Ah, there's the answer - he's been brainwashed and hypnotised, Manchurian Candidate* style, by that Nazi bounder, Baron Blitzkrieg!

But if Robotman can't stop him, who can? Why, Bahlactus, of course!



* I mean the original with Frank Sinatra, by the way.