I had a secret meeting in the basement of my brain

[stubbleupdate]

Last month Invincible Iron Man 500.1 came out and was ... an odd one. I found it a good introduction to a character that I already knew. I'm not sure how effective the story would have been for introducing new fans to where Tony Stark is now and how he got there. It's possibly worth reading my Drinking in LA post for a rundown of the use of alcohol in Fraction's IIM run.

Fraction said in an interview with John Siuntres that the hook for him in writing Iron Man was that Tony Stark was an alcoholic who didn't go to meetings. As he's taken Iron Man apart and put him back together, those meetings have played something of an important role

( My name's Tony and I'm an alcoholic )

I liked this because Fraction has a really good way of writing concisely and getting ideas across with an economy of words that just works.

However, I'm not sure that new readers would be able to understand all of the events and ideas being put across. It's still quite vague and would be more like a starter for reading up on Iron Man than a book to get you caught up on Iron Man's history. It's also not that good at pointing out which bits are in the distant past and which pieces are current and relevant to the ongoing story.

If you're an Iron Man reader, or a Fraction fan, I'd recommend it to you.

Weird Golden Age Patriotism - Yankee Doodle Jones. Just... Yankee Doodle Jones

[strannik01]

Welcome back to my on-again, off-again series about bizarre patriotically themed superheroes that emerged in the wake of the Shield's debut. We previously covered the super-patriot from the future and a very patriotic ghost entity thing. But nothing, and I do mean nothing is quite as weird as the subject of this post.

Before I posted these scans on the origin scans_daily, almost nobody knew who Yankee Doodle Jones was or just how weird his origin was. But ever since that post, I've seen him mentioned on a number of sites, and those references almost never fail to wonder what the hell were his creators smoking. I admit, it makes me feel oddly... proud.

In any case, the following story originally appeared in Yankee Comics #1. Writer unknown, art by Lou Fine.

( What do you get when you take three World War I veterans, a super-serum and Uncle Sam? (7 pages under the cut) )

Yankee Doodle Jones went on to appear in all subsequent issues of Yankee Comics (all four of them). Dandy appeared in a three-part text-story crossover where he met Yankee Comics' Yankee Boy and Johnny Rebel. And while their stories were reprinted a few times, they haven't been revived by anyone - at least as of this writing.

And, on an unrelated note - is anyone going to C2E2 this year? Since the convention is happening in my neck of the woods, I will be attending on Saturday. It would be nice to see at least some of the people behind the handles. I meant to ask about this weeks ago, but I kept forgetting...

Tune in next time to see a comic where just about everything is a product placement. I am not exaggerating.

Legion of Super-Viilains #1

[superboyprime]

Four pages...
( Death to the Immortal Worlds )

A little something from the Land of the Long White Cloud

[icon_uk]

...better known as New Zealand (The Maori name for the islands is Aotearoa, which translates as Ao = cloud, tea = white and roa = long)

In my efforts to find new material to showcase, I came across a copy of an old book I picked up a few years ago, Murray Ball's Footrot Flats.

( This isn't The Wiggles, that's for sure )

Knight and Squire #2

[whitesycamore]

Looking through the Knight and Squire tags, I noticed that so far there were no posts from issue 2. Since I thought it was a fun issue, I decided to change that. ( five pages from Knight and Squire 2 )

Flashpoint covers revealed

[icon_uk]

DCU Blog has published some preview covers from the forthcoming Flashpoint event.

I still have more or less zero interest in it as an event based on what I've read, but there are some interesting covers, that keep making me think of this as a variation on the Tangent Comics concept...

( Previews below... )