Who'd Like A Cocktail? #234

Captain K'Rot regrets his career choice

Monday Memories #18 - Legion #58

Each Monday this year I'll be taking a look back at a random comic, prestige format issue, graphic novel or collection of reprints from amongst my 3,000 or so comics that date from 1962 to 2003 - I figured anything in the last ten years would be too recent to hark back to.

The comics are chosen completely at random and apart from a four week lead-in period, even I don't know what I'll be looking at in the weeks to come!

Who'd Like A Cocktail? #204

Garth Ennis's indictment of the superhero genre

Green Lantern Movie

The negative press was never going to stop me watching this - hell, I sat through Star Wars: Episodes I and II and managed to live to tell the tale.

For the record, before you get worried, Green Lantern is no Phantom Menace which is something to be thankful for.

On the whole I enjoyed it; I'd hoped to come out shrieking with joy but that wasn't to be, but neither was I hanging my head in shame thinking they'd killed a franchise at their first attempt.

There's a lot to cram into this and, in some ways, it felt a little rushed. The opening voice over concerning who the Corps and the Guardians are is handled well, however, and you have to expect a truncated version rather than the decades-long history in the comics.

Reynolds is pretty good as Jordan. Sure he's a little goofy at times but, as he tells the Guardians, he's only human. One review I read made mention of how scared Reynolds's Jordan is despite a Green Lantern being without fear; that reviewer obviously missed the whole "ability to overcome fear" scene with Blake Lively's spot-on Carol Ferris. This Jordan isn't fearless but once he embraces and accepts his fear he's able to act and grow into the role.

Monday Memes #20

I've said before that I really like the old Soviet style propaganda artwork and when applied to comics it seems to work just as well.

I love the Green Lantern Corps cover with Kilowog embracing the Soviet ideal when the Cold War was still going on!

Perusing Previews - May 2011

If I wear a T-shirt with a design on it these days, it's mostly either a DC related image or something from the excellent Last Exit to Nowhere site. However, I'm kinda tempted by the Boba Fett T-shirt here:

Though I have to admit to being slightly baffled by the Vader Gonna' Knock You Out! shirt . . .

Please Don't Be Crap. Please?

Kilowog looks absolutely superb in this new poster for the forthcoming Green Lantern movie.

I think a little part of me may die if it turns out to be rubbish.

Green Lantern Movie - Straight To The Red Lanterns?!

Seriously, folks - everything I know about Heroclix I got from The Absorbascon or Wikipedia. It's not something I can ever see myself getting involved in but when I saw an article about Green Lantern merchandise based around the forthcoming film, I figured I'd take a look at it.

The merchandise, that is - not Heroclix.

Yep, GL Heroclix figures from "the most anticipated movie of the summer!"

So we've got Abin Sur, Kilowog, Hal Jordan (of course), Sinestro, one of the Guardians and Tomar-Re . . . who looks a bit . . . odd . . .

Holy crap! Look at that logo! It's red - he's a Red Lantern I tells ya! Sure, the logo's a little off but it's clearly RED! People thought the GL movie was going to be Jordan's origin story and maybe Sinestro's turn to evil but no! If these Heroclix figures are anything to go by - and they should be because the packaging states:

they're dumping all that origin nonsense and tying in with this summers War of The Lanterns!

Wow, I'd heard they were doing some re-shoots but I didn't think it would be this dramatic.

I can't wait for the movie now!

Please note - sarcasm doesn't translate well in the written form.

Who'd Like A Cocktail? #113

Oh, Guy Gardner . . . you charmer.

Who'd Like A Cocktail? #99

That's a president I'd vote for!

As I was away last weekend, you lucky people get a double sized edition of Who'd Like A Cocktail, the posts where I just babble away in bullet points about my comic books.

• BRIGHTEST DAY #10 - Firestorm gets some really bad news - he's the next Big Bang just waiting to happen. I wonder if Damage will be jealous when he hears about that. The new Aqualad makes his appearance culminating in a very tense stand-off between Aquaman and Black Manta that really makes me think Geoff Johns could carry off an Aquaman solo-series. All told, another good issue.
• DC UNIVERSE: LEGACIES #5 - they missed a great trick here, not having the original Crisis tie-in banner running across the cover! Of course, this being a post-Crisis depiction of Crisis on Infinite Earths, it isn't really a tie-in, but I'm nit-picking. Len Wein continues his stroll through the various ages of DC's history, stopping off at the big Crisis. This issue really is splendid, managing to focus on a normal family who observe some of the biggest DC events; sure it's been done before (Marvels is the obvious comparison) but that doesn't stop this being good. And hey, they got George Perez to do this issue as well!
• GREEN LANTERN CORPS #52 - the Alpha Lantern storyline comes to an end as Cyborg Superman is defeated once more (I'd like to say permanently this time, but we know that's not going to happen) and the Alpha's have their emotions restored.
• THE DARK TOWER: THE GUNSLINGER: THE JOURNEY BEGINS #5 - And so the journey that began a couple of years ago has come to the end of the bit where the journey begins. Or something.
• GREEN LANTERN: EMERALD WARRIORS #2 - Guy Gardner starts his top-secret mission and, no surprise, his friends Arisia and Kilowog tag along for the ride. There's not a great deal that happens this issue, to be honest, as it seems to be setting things up, introducing Zardor of Kralok and his mental powers, along with bringing Red Lantern Bleez back into things.
• THE BOYS: HIGHLAND LADDIE #2 - I love it when I'm right! Back in Cocktail #95, I wrote: "May I predict a hugely oversized adversary for Hughie, employed by the drug smugglers, who will also be quite humourous either in name and/or appearance?" and in this issue we meet the gigantic Wee Sarah. Still, Ennis's predictability doesn't prevent this being another top issue.
• JUSTICE LEAGUE: GENERATION LOST #10 -Warning! The cover of this issue is not reflected in the contents at all! Warning! Don't get me wrong - it's another cool cover, but at no point does a Year One style Batman hang around a JL International embassy building. The faux-JLI continue their attempt to find and foil Max Lord's plans and, just when it looks like Batman's figured out something's wrong, Lord's global mind-wipe kicks in again.
• JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #49 - this seems like a done-in-one just to bridge the gap between the end of last issue and a big 50th issue celebration. Trust me - introduce a mind-manipulator in the first few pages and you can guarantee anything that happens after that is all in someone's mind. And since when did Donna Troy swear so much?!
• POWER GIRL #16 - here we see the start of the fight which is going to dominate #18 featuring Power Girl's new nemesis, Divine. The rest of the issue's background on why she ends up in the Arctic in the first place. Having bashed Winick on this blog on more than one occasion, I have to admit to still liking this title; he's keeping it relatively light and the art's nice and clean so hopefully it's not going to go down the pan at any stage soon.
• PROJECT SUPERPOWERS: CHAPTER TWO #12 - all the heroes get together to beat the crap out of the Claw while the Death Defying 'Devil is outed as being the Devil himself! Well, maybe. The next issue solicit says that Chapter Three, out next year, will be the last one. Surely Dynamite aren't just going to roll this series up and put it away?
• ZATANNA #5 - another cracking issue of magical superheroics; this series just keeps on getting better. It's almost as much fun as the old Power Girl series was, just with more demons!

And what made me smile:

I had no intention of picking up Knight And Squire but after seeing the preview in the back of Justice League of America #49, I think I may!

Who'd Like A Cocktail? #77

Kilowog comes up with an interesting expletive in Green Lantern #52

• Black Terror #9 - Phil Hester obviously learnt his writing skills at the Kevin Smith School of Getting as Many Words as Possible On To The Page; this all seemed a little crammed in, especially at the start, with no real pay-off except the reveal that Black Terror's secret wish was . . . a ghostly flying pirate ship.
• Green Lantern #52 - Sinestro the White Lantern; John Stewart being cool and collected; Nekron suffering his first real loss; and on top of that, the reveal that Compassion is a many-tentacled thing.
• Justice League: The Rise of Arsenal #1 - come on, did we really need to see what Lian went through?
• Power Girl #10 - the circle is almost complete as Ultrahumanite returns to give Power Girl grief . . . in the body of Terra! "The banana and bad behaviour", "What have you done with Terra's brain?" . . . damn I'm going to miss this team when they go.
• The Stand: Soul Survivors #5 - the adaptation gets to the halfway point and the good guys are on the move.

And what made me smile:

Power Girl's team have a little dig at themselves!

So Should He Call You 'Wart?

Last week's issue of Green Lantern Corps contained a conversation between Lanterns Kilowog and John Stewart which contained a line that made me wince and remember something from years gone by.

In the midst of the battle with the Black Lanterns, Stewart and Kilowog discuss the approaching planet of Xanshi which Stewart has a history with and is determined to stop. And then this crops up:

Now I don't know where you're reading this from (probably America as most of my hits come from the States) but here in dear old Britain, the word "wog" has something of a history and nothing about it is good. From the Wikipedia article on the word:

"Wog in the UK is usually regarded as a racially offensive slang word referring to dark skinned, non-white people from Africa or Asia. It can be applied to any darker-skinned people, but is particularly applied to Afro-Caribbeans, as well as immigrants from the Indian subcontinent. Use of the word is discouraged in Britain, and most dictionaries refer to the word with the caution that it is derogatory and offensive."

Now I'm not for one second suggesting that either John Stewart or through him the writer Pete Tomasi is referring to Kilowog in a derogatory or offensive matter; in all likelihood it's a simple mistake: Tomasi simply contracted Kilowog's name without realising the implications.

It's a shame, though, as it certainly jarred with me.

Twenty years ago (dear god, have I been reading comics that long?!) the same situation cropped up in Justice League America #45 when Blue Beetle approached Kilowog with a crazy idea (they did that a lot back then) which Kilowog was initially reluctant to go through with. The whole thing started with this:

Back then, writers Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis used the same contraction and made it clear Kilowog wasn't in favour of it.

Shame Pete Tomasi hadn't read that issue.