IGN update; Dark Knight Rises trailer; NFL SuperPro and more!

- A few days ago I mentioned that FUBAR: Empire of the Rising Dead had been nominated by IGN.com for their "anthology of the year" award.  After tallying the votes, it seems that Rocketeer Adventures from IDW got the nod, and I can't say that it wasn't undeserving, as it was jam packed with top-tier talent.

It looks like FUBAR can grab a "People's Choice Award", however, with some feverish online voting, and as soon as I figure out how to, uh, do that, I will post a link here, and then demand that everyone vote for it.



- The Dark Knight Rises full trailer came out a few days ago, and BOY! does it look good.  I even made it on screen during the Heinz Field scenes, though you'd need a screen as big as a house and a magnifying glass to see me (i.e. I'm a blurry part of the faceless thousands).

One person who does get some good screen time, however, is current Pittsburgh Steeler and future Hall of Famer Hines Ward!  When the filming was taking place, I wondered to myself how much footage of (Super Bowl XL MVP) Ward would make the final cut.  It seems that the answer is "a lot".  Heck of a guy, that Hines Ward.

- Speaking of the NFL, friend of the blog Travis Sengaus drew this pinup of NFL SuperPro, making the character look much cooler than he really deserves.  SuperPro's 20th anniversary was this year, and the NFL Network even ran a short special about the character.

Travis drew a few pages for Image's Haunt #18 - check it out if you get the chance!

- Next we have a cover homage to the classic Fantastic Four #51...made out of yarn.  I have no idea in what context this should be taken.

- Lastly, a friend of mine, Eric Ross, recently started a blog all about mustaches.  As if that weren't enough reason to view it, Eric has posted a few things that might be familiar - Franks and Beans episode 7 (titled, wait for it, "Mustache") and the above Strange Tales clip by Jacob Chabot.  Check out "THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UPKEEP" here: http://justamoustache.tumblr.com/

- Oh, and happy 400th blog post for me.  Great.

(Very) Strange Tales

I think that Marvel's new indy-style anthology, Strange Tales (this has got to be at least the fourth time they've used the title) is something the bigger companies should emulate more often - lesser-known but nonetheless talented creators working on out-of-continuity stories featuring big-name characters. While it does seem like Marvel threw this compilation together from stories they just had lying around the office (The Incorrigible Hulk feature was supposed to see print in, I think, 2003), I still applaud the effort, which can produce such gems as Jacob Chabot's entry, "Lookin' Good, Mr. Grimm!"

Chabot is probably best known for his creator-owned The Mighty Skullboy Army, which I'm a huge fan of - Dark Horse published a digest sized collection after it appeared in their Strip Search publication (which, ahem, I was also a part of), though right now he's providing the artwork for Marvel's X-Babies miniseries. Yeah...X-Babies. I never quite got the point behind the concept, but I'll vouch for the artwork, at least.

In any case, one panel of the Fantastic Four send up caught my attention. As everyone knows, because I am so tremendously famous and wealthy as a result of it, I have an online webseries called Franks and Beans that is so hilarious you just might die after watching it. Or something. Anyway, one of the earlier episodes is titled "Mustache", which features me growing a mustache and saying the phrase "Hey, mustache buddy!" That's...basically the joke for the episode. It's also close to the phrase in this Strange Tales issue, but you can tell that they are quite distinctive as Chabot spells his phrase "moustache". Which, now that I think about it, might be even funnier.

The Human Torch is kind of a wimp.

Fanboy Comics, the local comic shop down my way, is currently having an "alphabet sale" - every week, titles that begin with certain letters of the alphabet are 50% off. Since I am a sucker, I've spent quite a few dollars at the shop filling holes in my collection - one which, I'm sure, will never be complete (that's the nature of it, I guess).

Last week was the week for letters Q, R, S and T, and I picked up four old issues of Strange Tales. I'm trying to pick up issues 101 through 134, which feature the Human Torch and eventually the Thing (following through on my Fantastic Four obsession).

These are early issues - early 1960s - which means two things: they can get a little expensive, and they can get a little silly. Case in point, issue #113, which has the Human Torch versus the forgettable villain the Plant Man (who, I believe, is still around in current issues).

Now, it's just a fact that a super hero's powers tend to vary depending on the challenge he or she faces - Superman will be juggling planets in one issue and struggling to defeat the Prankster in the next - and the Human Torch is a great example of this. He goes from burning his flame at "nova" strength - as hot as a star, I guess - to getting doused by a wayward fire hydrant.

Nowhere more is this evident than on the cover to Strange Tales #113, where we see the mighty Human Torch kept at bay by...dew. Come on, Johnny Storm. Come on.

Advertisements

I find that I have a love-hate relationship with advertisements in comics.  I realize that, from an economic standpoint, anyway, they are something of a necessary evil, but I'm looking at this from a strictly aesthetic standpoint.  A few years ago, Marvel had big, two-page ads for the Honda CR-V smack dab in the front of their books, which irked me to no end, and before that they had a string of books where the flow of pages was interrupted quite demonstratively by an ad spread.  But then I think about all of the back issues I buy, and how amusing the old 2"x3" ad clips for fake mustaches and 'miracle' weight gain are, and suddenly I embrace ads as a part of the fun in collecting - a cultural barometer even more accurate than seeing the Thing and the Human Torch in Beatle wigs on one of those old Strange Tales covers (at least I think it was ST) or JFK dressing up as Superman.  "If I can't trust the President of the United States with my secret identity, who can I trust?"

Now that we're almost two full issues into the production of Teddy and the Yeti, I'm starting to think about things like page layout and how I'm going to fill those non-story pages.  I'm sure I'll throw in some staples like a letters/editorial page, maybe some of those 'anatomy of a page' features, but I keep coming back to advertisements and how fun it'd be to see one of those in my book - almost like a validation that this is a "real" comic book.  I honestly don't know how I'd even approach someone about placing an ad in the book, and I especially don't know that anyone would be willing to fork over cash for an ad in an unknown quantity like T&Y.

Because I am a nostalgic collector at heart, I'll probably end up trying to give away some ad space to places like the Hero Initiative, a comic book charitable organization that has a real fancy logo.  That way, I get what I want - cool ads that make the book feel legitimate without disrupting the story flow.

Dibs on the back cover?  Line 'em up.