An Ear -- in the Fireplace!

A librarian's life is not an easy one

2009-10-29T14:41:00.001-04:00

Let Me Re-Read It Alone A Few Times And Get Back To You

Apparently two library employees - it seems to be unclear whether they were assistants or professional librarians - in Nicholasville, Kentucky have been fired for denying a child access to material the pair considered pornographic.

That material? Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Personally, I don't remember any porn in that book, which suggests three possibilities: my aged mind can no longer remember what I've read, there was a distinct lack of explicit sexual content or it wasn't very good. I'd guess that would do for ranking them in descending order by likelihood, too, come to think of it.

Librarians Won't Give Child 'Porn' Book - [WTVQ]

via feedproxy.google.com

The original article says "a book from The League of Extraordinary Gentleman series". Tell me if any of these suppositions sound false:

It's in a library, so it's probably a collection, not an individual comic.

If it had been the first volume, the article would simply have said "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", not "a book from the series".

An explicit, realistic copulation between Allan Quatermain and Mina Murray is depicted in volume two.

That said, remember the two women were fired for taking it on themselves to decide that the 11-year-old shouldn't see this book. Library policy is that it's nobody's business but yours (and parents, in the case of a minor) what you read.

Posted via web from Dreaded Purple Master

Danger - Chipmunk at work

2009-10-11T17:43:00.001-04:00

via animationarchive.org

Yes, this is Ross Bagdasarian (stage name David Seville, composer of "Come On-a My House" and "Witch Doctor"), producing one of the many speed-shifted voices that went into his most lasting creations, Alvin and the Chipmunks. If you loved this show too, there's a brief history and gobs of images at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive.

Posted via web from Dreaded Purple Master

G20 protest

2009-09-28T11:41:00.002-04:00

via thedw.us

Anyone we know?

Posted via web from Dreaded Purple Master

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

2009-09-21T09:21:00.001-04:00

via smbc-comics.com

No, bad guys never die in comics, no matter how much they may deserve it. That kind of thing only happens to characters like Stephanie Brown (Spoiler / Robin / Batgirl).

Posted via web from Dreaded Purple Master

Preeeesenting the Invincible Iron Man!

2009-09-13T14:05:00.001-04:00

via flickr.com

And there's Supes chillin' in the background too. The next time someone asks "Why do people go to DragonCon?" show 'em this.

(Well, there's all those cosplay girls, too, as well as this really tight radio theatre group.)

Posted via web from Dreaded Purple Master

"Wow. That's awesome."

2009-09-10T12:25:00.001-04:00

I almost got a hernia in my reaction to this article. Not kidding. I'm in pain. But it's a good pain.

...I am absolutely thrilled that the buck now stops with a woman at DC Comics. I am overjoyed – nay, almost orgasmic – that certain men will now have to regard Diane Nelson as their boss. It is karma working on the most basic level. Let these men explain to Nelson, who has worked with one of the most famous female fantasy writers in the entire world*, how women don't have the natural aptitude to edit and create comic books. Let these men explain to her the employment and dismissal history of female editors in the DCU over the last ten years...

Wow! That's awesome.

via occasionalsuperheroine.blogspot.com

* Diane Nelson previously managed the Harry Potter franchise for Warner.

Posted via web from Dreaded Purple Master

Gooflactus

2009-09-01T17:53:00.001-04:00

from ApeLad via flickr.com

Explains a lot, doesn't it?

Posted via web from Dreaded Purple Master

BREAKING: Disney to Acquire Marvel for $4 Billion

2009-08-31T10:48:00.003-04:00

BREAKING: Disney to Acquire Marvel for $4 Billion: The Walt Disney Company has announced it will acquire Marvel Entertainment, Inc. in a stock and cash transaction worth 4 billion dollars.
What makes this deal huge, as far as content goes, is the fact that under the terms of the deal, Disney will acquire ownership of not only Marvel itself, but also over than 5,000 Marvel characters. Disney will now benefit from any movie or a game based on characters such as Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men and many others; extending its reach to the young male population it had somewhat neglected will definitely be good for the entertainment giant.

Now Disney and Warner each have their own pet comic book company. NBC-Universal already owns Walter Lantz Productions, but don't seem too interested in it. Viacom-CBS-Paramount has a spectacular collection of properties, but again, little apparent interest in comics.

Disney has proven they can sustain and exploit legacy characters. Wonder if Marvel will start handling Disney comics? Or if Disney will start producing Marvel-character movies?

(via Mashable)

The Great Price Increase of 1961

2009-08-25T22:38:00.001-04:00

For most of their history, comic books had been priced at a dime. Oh, there were Nickel Comics, and the annuals were generally priced at a quarter, but these were definitely exceptions to the rule. Not that there hadn't been inflation anyway; that dime bought you a 68-page mag in 1940, a 60-pager in 1944, a 52-pager in 1950, and a 36-page issue by the time the Silver Age started.

via sacomics.blogspot.com. Read the whole thing.

Posted via web from Dreaded Purple Master

xkcd - Tech Support Cheat Sheet

2009-08-25T17:29:00.002-04:00

via xkcd.com

Yes, it's true.

Posted via web from Dreaded Purple Master

Alex Mitchell: “Jazz Age Justice League”

2009-08-19T15:37:00.003-04:00

Surely DC has an Elseworlds to spare for this.

(Thanks to Google Reader, even a slug like me can keep his blog full ~~of other people's content~~ regularly.)

Obvious once you point it out

2009-08-17T09:43:00.003-04:00

Once Upon a Geek: Doctor Who recommendations for old school fans:

You may find this an odd suggestion at first, but I firmly believe that Gene Wilder (as he portrayed the role of Willy Wonka) would have made an outstanding Doctor Who. I realize he’s not British, but outside of that, he played the role perfectly. Next time you watch the 1971 version of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, watch Wilder’s portrayal closely. He is brilliant, bizarre, spontaneous, and full of enthusiasm. He’s very Doctor-ish.

"So much time and so little to do. Wait a minute. Strike that. Reverse it."

King of Crayons: The All New Adventures of Time Travelin' Heath Ledger.

2009-08-12T15:11:00.001-04:00

via kingocrayons.blogspot.com

Posted via web from Dreaded Purple Master

Actually, it was Virus X

2009-08-12T14:34:00.006-04:00

No, man, Kryptonian appendixes (appendices?) don't get appendicitis. They have powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal appendices.

Posted via web from Dreaded Purple Master

Fantasies are healthy, right?

2009-08-11T15:36:00.002-04:00

ADDENDUM: Well, actually, in Superman v2 #130, there was this Halloween party...

Posted via web from Dreaded Purple Master

But he's not natural-born

2009-07-25T11:22:00.001-04:00

"It was maybe corrupting her."

2009-07-16T10:48:00.003-04:00

From the Washington Post:

As [Supreme Court nominee Sonia] Sotomayor was growing up in a family in which no one had gone to college, people prodded her to excel.

"The females were expected to achieve more," said her younger brother, Juan Sotomayor. She loved comic books -- Archie, Casper, Richie Rich -- so much that, after her father died, her paternal grandmother and aunts once convened a family meeting with her mother. "They were concerned about the role of the comic books in my sister's life," recalled her brother, an allergist outside Syracuse, N.Y. "It was maybe corrupting her."

Okay, I can sort of see Richie Rich. God knows how many little tykes were driven into reactionary liberalism by Richie's conspicuous consumption.

Where else, indeed?

2009-05-24T13:19:00.003-04:00

Now wait just a wallopin' minute here.

Not six months ago the newspaper Spider-Man waved a magic web and brought the premise in sync with the comic-book Spider-Man and the newly-marriage-free Brand New Day. And now the newspaper version is "goin' rogue" and reverting back to the happily-married Pete and MJ?

Okay.

No, really, it's okay. I like 'em this way. "Brand New Day" was and is a bad idea.

(Good luck finding the Sundays online.)

Krona!

2009-04-14T19:56:00.002-04:00

Complete with Kirby Krackle!

Fantasies are healthy, right?

2009-04-07T19:49:00.000-04:00

Well, actually, in Superman v2 #130, there was this Halloween party...

Finally, someone who knows what a crisis is

2009-03-06T14:02:00.003-05:00

Okay, I already knew that the creators of Unshelved are fans. The Firefly/Serenity strips are what first attracted my attention to this charming webcomic in the first place. But I still have just a small fannish squee every time they drop another reference, even if it doesn't ultimately feed the day's punchline. Especially if it doesn't.

A "red skies" crossover

2009-03-04T12:13:00.006-05:00

The creators of eleven character-specific blogs have gotten together for a...

Of course, mine isn't a character-centric blog, it just sort-of looks like one, so I thought I'd leap onto the passing bandwagon and do what many editors did at the time: A crossover by the most generous definition of the term, where a character would look up and exclaim "Gosh, lookit that, the sky is red, wonder why."

So the least I can do is link to the blogs that are doing this: The Aquaman Shrine ; Justice League Detroit; Speed Force; Being Carter Hall; the Doom Patrol; Plastic Man Platitudes; Dispatches from the Arrow Cave; I am the Phantom Stranger; Idol-Head of Diabolu; Mail it to Team-up; and the mastermind behind it all, Firestorm Fan.

Since they've all found their heroes on the spectacular Perez/Ross cover to the original hardbound edition of Crisis on Infinite Earths, I thought I would too. Forgive the resolution, but with 500-plus characters on the cover, well, they can't all be Superman. Poor Ralph didn't have a huge part in the story, either, as I recall. I would have found him sooner if he'd been wearing any other costume.

I always hated the half-and-half look.

To make matters worse, for the original hardback publication, the two Supermen were front and center on the dust jacket (well, if you published Superman, you'd probably do the same thing), which meant Ralph would have been on the inside front cover dust jacket flap.

Red skies at night, sailors delight; red skies at morning, sailors take warning; red skies at noon, EVERYBODY DIES.

A Cool Comic Book Moment

2009-01-25T22:34:00.004-05:00

Brian Cronin at Comics Should Be Good! has been examining the two part Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? all week. As a result, he has come up with four bona fide tearjerker moments courtesy of Alan Moore and Curt Swan.

I finally realized that he was never going to get to one of my own favorite moments from this story because it is not really a tearjerker moment (for all that Pete Ross has just been killed). It is, instead, as succinct a statement as one could ask of just how awesome Superman can be -- in fact, how awesome comics storytelling can be.

As he stands in the wreckage of the WGBS television studio, his secret identity revealed, his boyhood best friend dead in his arms, Superman finally speaks. "Toyman...Prankster...Let me ask you one question: Do you know what radio waves look like?"

The reply comes back through the toy Superman: "Huh? No! Why?" But the red-and-blue blur has already disappeared, headed toward the source of the criminals' transmission.

Before the pair can take another breath, Superman is there, bursting through the wall, announcing, "Because I do!"

The Treadmill Days of Christmas, day 12

2009-01-06T10:29:00.005-05:00

Whew. Whose idea was this again?

Day 12: The Fantastic Four

Early period: Fantastic Four #70, Jan 1968, by Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott. This issue (spoiler!) actually ends with this scene, and isn't resolved until the following issue. The big green guy is an android, an "ultimate weapon" prepared by the Mad Thinker (defeated an issue or two back) and accidentally activated.

Boy, I hate when that happens.

This issue also contains a full-page panel of Reed and Sue musing on the love they share and the child that will soon be theirs. You can see Sue's new miniskirted uniform on the cover: We never find out if those unstable molecules can stretch into a maternity uniform.

Later period: Fantastic Four #369, Oct 1992, by Paul Ryan. Everybody, but everybody, is in this issue, as Sue battles her evil side Malice on the astral plane. Those of you who thought the corruption of Mary Marvel was unprecedented should probably look this story up.

Well, this was actually a lot of fun. Maybe I should continue looking at random character's covers at odd intervals. After all, we didn't do Captain America, or Batman, or Daredevil, or Wonder Woman, or the X-men, or Green Lantern, or the Hulk, or Captain Marvel, or Doctor Strange, or Plastic Man, or Thor, or Elongated Man...

Oh, crap, that's twelve more days...

Previously: Days 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11.

The Treadmill Days of Christmas, day 11

2009-01-06T09:46:00.005-05:00

Day 11: The Flash

The story in Flash #90, Dec 1947, is really just an excuse for the Flash to play all nine positions in a baseball game. I keep meaning to dig this story up (it's reprinted in 80 Page Giant #4) to see what the other team had to say about it. Not to mention the league position.

I wanted to choose the first Elongated Man, of course, or "Land of the Golden Giants" (another sentimental favorite), but was there ever a more provocative cover than this one, from Flash #128, May 1962?

I don't remember if I was disappointed or relieved when we caught up with Barry and he was wearing street clothes. I mean, you've seen how tightly his uniform fits. No way does he wear a shirt and slacks under it.

Oh, well. If I'm prepared to accept the expanding-costume-in-the-ring thing, business-casual space travel is nothing.

Both of these covers, by the way, were pencilled by Carmine Infantino. Frank Giacoia inked "Nine Empty Uniforms", Joe Giella inked "Real-Gone Flash".

Previously: Days 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.