Super HeroiHOT #11: Vampirella

In celebration of Halloween, I’ve decided to do a special SuperHeroiHOT edition featuring everyone’s favorite scantily-clad, alien, demon, vampire girl: Vampirella!

Visual Tropes in “Barack the Barbarian”

Here’s a bit of a COMM 200 assignment I’m working on right now.  Keep in mind that the audience for this short piece is my professor(s) and other COMM students who may not know that much about comic books. Either way, I figured people might find it interesting:

 

Although the selected piece isn’t a direct political cartoon like one seen in the newspaper and instead from a comic book, the individual frame from the story can still be considered containing tropes especially when isolated from the whole comic.  The most obvious trope within this frame is hyperbole.  The comic takes modern day figures and instead imagines them in a barbaric time.  Plus, Sarah Palin’s womanly features such as breasts, hips, and flat stomach are enhanced and John McCain’s indecisiveness (shown in the text bubble), and short staunchness are also exaggerated. Irony is also employed since Palin’s sharpness in speech debate as a weapon is replaced with an arrow which could also be considered somewhat of a synecdoche.  The effect on the reader/viewer that the frame may have would possibly be humor because of Sarah Palin dominating over McCain despite McCain having the higher standing.

 

This cartoon is actually the cover to Barack the Barbarian #2 where Barack fights against “the screeching enchantress” Ann Coulter.  Alliteration can obviously be seen in the title of “Barack the Barbarian” and the text before it of “Righteous Retribution.”  Once again, hyperbole is employed in the comic to suggest that a small framed woman can carry a giant sword and the American President dresses up in wooly underwear slinging around axes.  Possibly, the text on the cover may be an apostrophe since the text is addressing readers of almost terror comics (from the 50s) instead of the political pundits that may find the comic funny.  Irony is also common in this cover because the cover is constructed like a crime or terror comic of the 50s while positioning modern day figures on the cover in an even older, barbaric setting.  The weapons of each character may also stand as a metonymy for the respective character with Coulter’s sharp sword being associated with her quick stabs at people in politics.

A-Team movie: First Look… how does it compare visually?

My sister and I have always been big fans of the A-Team… so, they’ve now released a promo photograph for the upcoming (remake) movie that updates the film to modern day.

Sort of Interview with Dan Berger, and the sale of the TMNT property to Nickelodeon

In case you haven’t heard (or, to some of my friends, care) the TMNT property has been sold to Nickelodeon for roughly $60 million.  Well, every month I send to fanmail@ninjaturtles.com my reviews, and Dan Berger who manages the site politely links to the blog (netting in 222 views on this blog yesterday alone) if my reviews are positive (which consistently are).  There are also some responses to my reactions on my review of Tales of the TMNT #63, and Dan Berger’s writing of Marlin.  Anyway, since I was at the source of a lot of info, I couldn’t resist asking Dan some questions through e-mail, and here are some of his replies:

Donatello: The Brain Thief #2

 

It was a little disgusting how long it took me to find a photo of this cover… especially for it to turn out too small, but fairly enlightening in terms of 1.) how little fan base there seems to be for the TMNT when compared to something that has many fewer interesting stories like… I don’t know, Batman or Spiderman.  and 2.) a thumbnail picture of me appeared on the second page of every google search… weird.

Nevertheless, this miniseries is quickly turning into one of the best of the year.

Click to read the review.

Tales of the TMNT #63

The new issue of Mirage’s flagship title came out this week, and boy was it an adventerous ride of strange creatures and Oz.  Check out the review… trust me, it’s damn good.

Savior 28′s History with Captain America

While perusing the archives of one of my favorite blogs/ongoing updating thing of all “Comic Book Legends Revealed” by Brian Cronin, I found this interesting one under the #94 archive… now, doesn’t this sound, for you Savior 28 fans, a little familiar/the precursor to the current story we love.  I’m glad to know the origins of Savior 28 in Captain America and recognize all of the changes/similarities the original story and final product have in common.  Here’s the whole segment from Brian Cronin:

“COMIC URBAN LEGEND: J. M. DeMatteis planned to kill Captain America during his run on the title.

STATUS: True

Reader Garrie Burr asked me this one just last week, which was quite topical considering the death of Captain America in last week’s Captain America #25. Burr asked:

I cannot recall where I saw this, but I remember that the end of DeMatteis’ long run on Captain America was supposed to wind up with Steve Rogers dead and a new character taking up the Red-White-and-Blue. An urban legend?

I posed the question to the man himself, J.M. DeMatteis, and he offered me this extremely interesting story:

It’s true. My last year on the book was one long ongoing saga involving Captain America’s final battle with the Red Skull. It was to reach a turning point with a double-sized CAP #300 in which the Red Skull dies and Cap, after (at the time) forty-plus years of solving problems with his fists, begins to wonder if there’s another way to live his ideals and change the world. In the proposal I presented to my editor, the late, great Mark Gruenwald, Cap was, ultimately, going to disavow violence as a tool for change-essentially rejecting the entire superhero mindset-and start working for world peace. (Keep in mind that this was at the height of the Reagan “evil empire”/cold war period, so it was a pretty radical idea for its day.)

My plan was to have the world turn against Cap, his own country rejecting him as un-America, other world leaders shunning him: The only allies he was going to find in his quest for global change would be the Sub-Mariner and Doctor Doom. This was the period when Jack Monroe-aka Nomad, the Bucky of the 50′s-was Cap’s partner…and Jack, with his cold war mentality, would be manipulated by Cap’s enemies. In the climax, as Cap speaks at a rally of his few remaining supporters, Nomad (perched on a roof across the way) assassinates him. Only then, with Cap dead, would the world realize what they had. In tribute to Cap, all nations of the world would lay down their weapons for one hour. One hour of peace on Earth.

The plan was then to find Cap’s replacement. I toyed with the idea of Sam Wilson, the Falcon, becoming the new Cap

…but (as I recall-and, let’s face it, it’s been a while) I finally settled on Black Crow, a Native American character I’d used in the book, as the new Captain America.

Who better to represent America than one of the first Americans?

Gruenwald approved all this, I wrote the double-sized Cap #300, went ahead and plotted the next two or three stories in the arc; but editor-in-chief Jim Shooter, hearing what we were planning, shot the idea down. Jim said, essentially, that my idea violated Cap’s character, that Steve Rogers would never act like that.

Cap #300 was then cut down to a normal-sized issue and substantially rewritten, I think by Jim himself-or perhaps Gruenwald under Jim’s direction. (Which is why I used a fake name in the credits and quit the book.) At the time I was angry but, in retrospect, I totally understand Shooter’s POV. Jim-a brilliant editor and a guy who really helped me along in the early days of my career-was the custodian of the Marvel Universe: he had to protect the characters as he understood them. As noted, my idea was extremely radical for its day: I mean-Captain American involved in political controversy and then assassinated? How could anything like that every happen?

Just goes to show you how times change.

Ha!

Pretty darn interesting story, yes?”

I’m really glad that 9/11 was integrated into the story because I found that to be a figurehead of the brand new, renovated one, and the Reagan era becomes the Bush era that’s reflected in the story.

The Titilating Frustrations of Antivirus Pro 2009

So, part of the reason I haven’t been posting lately is: 1.) I’ve been pretty busy and 2.) I got a mega stupid malware problem on my main computer.

Now, here’s the fun of it all.  I go to all of these websites and teach myself how to remove things manually… I learn it, but then I can’t find any of the specified files that I need to remove.  Then, I discover that the damn thing is blocking my antimalware programs from working (malwarebyte’s antimalware).  So, I try renaming them and their file extensions to trick the rogue program from recognizing and blocking them.

Command Prompt, Safe Mode, Secret Passageway secrets into the labyrinth of my computer, I’ve tried them all.

I’m in a conundrum.  I spent well over 3 hours last night trying to fix this.  I’m obsessed with buying Nintendo DS games on Ebay… I can’t limit my comic book intake, and now I probably have to dish out over 100 dollars to fix this stupid malware problem.

I had a similar problem with malware in the same family as this one, but this one’s updated and recognizes all of the previous tricks I learned… Plus, it got in through the vundo trojan.

Anyway, it’s been frustrating, and has sort of discouraged me and put me in a bad mood from rating things (despite having a gigantic stack of things to rate).

So, I’ll get back to rating things, and if anyone has any last ditch efforts or new ideas to get rid of Antivirus Pro and it’s dozens of popups (including fake ones to porn sites I’d rather not experience), please contact me.

The Life and Times of Savior 28 #5

This issue is startling, amazing, beautiful, by far one of the best miniseries of the year… possibly the last 5 years.

Red Robin #5

The covers for this series have been incredibly great so far, but does the content inside continue the tradition?

Click to continue.