Comic Book Feeds

If you backed the Kickstarter, you've likely seen (or maybe will now) that you can download the expanded rulebook with the Public Domain characters. That book clocks in at 200 pages, so it's a pretty hefty book (about 150 drawings and almost 49,000 words)... and people are saying the nicest things about it there. I just engaged in a conversation where Aldo mentioned the enthusiasm he felt in the pages, and I started thinking about that idea... I joked about how the secret ingredient is love, but I wasn't really joking. I loved working on it.

And that got me to thinking about the research I did for my doctorate. I did a really deep study of the concept of grit - how we leverage passion and persistence in the pursuit of long-term goals. I found a number of things that were (to me) interesting, but the one salient to this conversation is the idea that we default to passion, but then we have persistence in place as the backup generator for when we run out of passion. We sometimes really want to work on that project, and sometimes we just do it because we know we should, and stuff has gotta get done. A gritty person is able to use both, and tends to finish what they start. People with less grit tend to run out of enthusiasm, and then cannot really find the motivation to follow through. 

But it hit me that for this project, I only ever worked on it when I was passionate to do so. I knew that the persistence was there, and I could always draw on it if I needed to, because I was determined to get this project done, but I knew (at least on a subconscious level) that I didn't want that mindset filtering into the work. Because I think I've realized something new about grit - you do your best work, your most creative and sincere, when you are leaning on the passion side of the equation. As soon as it's about a gut check to make your way through it, you're not as genuinely and deeply invested anymore. If you approach your work with any level of professionalism, it will still be of a certain quality, and you'll still be able to be proud of what you've accomplished, but it won't be quite as inspired. 

This is not the same as 'phoning it in'. That process leaves you feeling like you need to justify why it is markedly below your usual standard - I have had classes that I taught that were strong (most days, in my estimation), mediocre or worse (those phone it in days - not a lot, but enough that they count), and a handful of inspired days, where I wanted to keep teaching after the bell rang, and where some of the students maybe even wanted to keep going with the lesson. I'm ineffective or modestly effective on those phone it in days, highly effective most of the time, and highly effective +1 on those inspired days.

With teaching, I don't have the luxury of just not working on it for a few weeks if I don't feel all that enthused, but with Stalwart '85 I did - and I took it. There were days (and even weeks this summer), where I was brimming with inspiration; I woke up excited to work on it, and kept tinkering with it long after I was tired and should probably get to bed. This fall, several things got in the way of that - getting back to teaching, then the fall play, and then my diagnosis - that meant I went for weeks at a time without feeling genuinely inspired. So, I waited. I had Christmas break on my mind... if I got to Christmas break without the game finished, then I would start leaning on persistence and wrap it up. Luckily, it never came to that. I had a day of inspiration last week, and a few hours on a few days last week, and then a burst of inspiration this week that got me across the finish line. 

I am working on the commissions with the same philosophy. I have started every commission - if you haven't received yours yet, it is because I started to work on it, wasn't feeling it for whatever reason, and I set it aside. If I got yours done, it's because there was some synergy of time and space and a visual in my head and the need to get this done right now that all came together.

  

CELEBRITIES AND CLOSE FRIENDS AMONG THOSE TO REMEMBER THE LEGENDARY CREATOR THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA FANS FROM ACROSS THE WORLD ARE ENCOURAGED TO POST THEIR TRIBUTES TO STAN LEE SOCIAL MEDIA…

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NEW COMICS 4 THIS WEEK (12/25/24) *All comics will be rated on a scale from 1 to 10* Absolute Wonder Woman # 3 Action Comics # 1081 Amazing Spider-Man #…

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Females and felines. They go way back. But why that particular popular cultural association? Perhaps partly because both women and cats are often seen as graceful, beautiful, and somewhat mysterious.…

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My mission: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics Santa might have stuffed in a stocking that were published December 22, 1983.

Infinity, Inc. #1: The Thomases with Ordway/Machlan sort of revive the "Super Squad" concept of the mid-70s, in the sense that they give us a younger generation of Earth-Two characters, most of them legacies. Here they are in their own book after the backdoor pilot in the All-Star Squadron. Nuklon, Fury, Northwind, and Silver Scarab, crash a Christmas Eve meeting of the Justice Society of America and petition to be allowed membership. Before the JSA can render their opinion, Jade and Obsidian show up. After a brief scuffle (this is a late Bronze Age supers comic, after all), the Society members have discovered they have familial connections to the youths (though in the case of Jade and Obsidian, Green Lantern does know how) and decided that the newcomers are too inexperienced as yet. The kids leave in a huff. Minutes later, another party-crasher barges in: Brain Wave.
For someone that has been enjoying All-Star Squadron this was no doubt a promising start. For those that weren't, well, maybe the new characters had some allure. I have to say I have frequently appreciated legacy characters such as these without necessarily wanted to read their adventures.

Batman and the Outsiders #8: As Christmas nears in Gotham and the Outsiders train, Batman investigates the abduction of an infant. It's a strange case, since the only physical evidence (a fingerprint) points to the infant himself! Infants all over the city begin rapidly aging to old age, and the Phantom Stranger shows up to make cryptic statements. Geo-Force brings an expectancy couple with car trouble to the hospital, and their newborn reveals himself to be Tannarak (last seen in the backup written by Barr in Saga of the Swamp Thing #5), who has been stealing energy from the other infants. The Outsiders show up to watch Phantom Stranger defeat him and restore the other infants to normal. The family Geo-Force brought in have a second, miracle child, so we get a happy Christmas ending.

Green Lantern #174: Wein and Gibbons continue the story from last issue with Hal falling to his death, encased in yellow plastic. He uses the air he exhales to push out against the plastic with his power, breaking it at the last second. He traces Javelin to a junkyard, but there's just one of his weapons there, so Hal believes he's been given the slip. He find out Jason Bloch is behind this, still out for revenge on the Ferris family. 
After been given an accidental pep talk by Clay Kendall, Hal again tries to find Javelin and the stolen engine. He realizes that the villain's secret lair was right in front of him: under the junkyard. He gets defeats Javelin's goon and confronts the man himself. Just as Hal is about to claim victory, He sees the yellow rocket, powered by Ferris' solar engine, shooting off toward Ferris Aircraft. It's tricky redirecting the rocket and rescuing the engine as it's been painted yellow, but Hal figures it out.
Meanwhile in the Pacific, a drops some toxic waste into the water, causing the Shark to return to his mutated form.

Legion of Super-Heroes #309: Levitz, Giffen, and Mahlstedt have the Legion confront the Prophet in force, setting political considerations aside, but he seems more than a match for all of them, until Invisible Kid seems to notice a tell for the source of his power: his eyes are absorbing solar energy. Shadow Lass blocks his eyes with her power, allowing them to defeat him--but that only seems to open the way for Omen.
There's again a backup by Levitz/Giffen and Broderick/DeCarlo. Karate Kid and Princess Projectra have their beachside honeymoon interrupted by an attack by the would-be usurper, Prince Pharoxx. 

Sgt. Rock #385: The Kanigher/Redondo main story is a solo take for Jackie Johnson, Easy Company's only (ahistorical) black member. Jackie winds up helping liberate a French village being terrorized by the Germans. Next up is a grim tale of the storming of a beach where a hero finds an early death.  The final story is a reprint from 1972 by Kanigher and Thorne about two West Point rivals who meet in real battle during the Civil War and the place and limits of "honor."

Supergirl #17: Some thugs kidnap Dr. Metzner for the manuscript of an unpublished biography he's written about Jackson Burroughs, an international businessman with a criminal reputation. Since Linda Danvers has the manuscript, she's also a target. Burroughs later explains that Metzner has discovered he is working with two rival criminal gangs, and he doesn't want them to know that, so he gives Metzner the choice: revise the biography to hide this detail or be killed and he'll revise it. Supergirl trails Metzner and the thugs and has to fight Matrix-Prime who is working with Burroughs. She rescues her boss, captures Burroughs, and also comes up with a higher tech way to hide her identity instead of a brunette wig.
There is at least on panel in this issue where the art is really bad. Supergirl's hand is strangely elongated. In general, I think the Oksner inks over Infantino is more pleasing that Infantino's work in Flash, but that panel managed to get by them both. On another art related note, Supergirl adds a headband to her costume at the end of this issue. This was supposedly done to match the then-upcoming film, but the film wound up not using the headband after all.

Superman Special #2: This story by Bates and Kane bills itself as an "imaginary tale." It presents an alternate timeline branching from Action Comics #530 and in conflict with the debut of the "new look" Brainiac in Action Comics #544. It does make me wonder how this story came to be. Was it written before #544, but not completed until later, so rendered "imaginary?" Were they competing proposals for Kane's time and editorial liked them both? It just seems less likely to me that they commissioned a special imaginary story in 1983. 
Anyway, Brainiac escapes the certainly doom of #530 and arrives at a planet that ignorantly worships a computer made by their ancestors and sets himself up as it's oracle. Like Luthor he can't just let a good thing be, so he sets about demonizing Superman then lures the Man of Steel to the planet to spring a trap. A telepath among the people senses something is off and comes to believe Superman's story, helping him escape execution. Brainiac is defeated and the world is liberated.

Swamp Thing #22: Moore and Bissette/Totleben spend this issue dealing with the fallout of last issue's bombshells. Swamp Thing, now knowing he is only a plant, has taken root in the swamp, ruminating on his life and quixotic search for a return to humanity, and is unresponsive to Abby and Matt. Woodrue performs experiments on him, hoping to connect to the Green through Swampy and eats one of his tubers. Eventually, he succeeds and is stripped of humanity and transformed into the Floronic Man.
This issue really cements that Moore is going someplace interesting with Swamp Thing. Even with last issues surprises, he could have returned to telling the same sort of horror stories the series was doing before. This is where makes it clear, I think, that his run is going to be special.

Thriller #5: Fleming's and von Eeden's approach storytelling continues to be confusing. We're introduced to Kane Creole who is (apparently) a famous Elvis-esque musician and also potentially a bank robber. He runs afoul of the Seven Seconds, and shoots Crackerjack with an anesthetic bullet, but for a moment Data thinks his friend is dead and pins Creole against a wall with his car. Marietta learns the truth about Angie and also uses the power of Malocchia's eyes to make Tony eat a lot of Italian food. Angie and Edward reconcile, and Angie fixes all of Dan's torn photographs.

Warlord #79: My brother and I bought this issue of the stands. I have always liked this Jurgens cover. I talked about the main story here. In the Barren Earth backup by Cohn and Randall, Jinal and her friends are transported to a slave market in a distant city. Their Harashashan allies show up ostensibly to purchase them, but actually just to set them free. They flee the city together with the cheated slavers on their tail.

New Talent Showcase #3: Sky Dogs is absent this issue and the Klein/Hampton Class of 2064 and theMargopoulos/Woch Forever Amber come to lackluster conclusions. I think 2064 is the better of the two, in that it pretty much ends in a way consistent with the story up until this point with our young heroes discovering the Free Earthers aren't really the bad guys, merely desperate to get a medical advancement that could help them. Chryse turns it over willing. And in the end, sidekick Tycho gets the girl instead of Pern.
Forever Amber detours into a "ripped from the headlines" condemnation of Agent Orange and government coverup and indifference after Amber finds her Dad and doesn't kill him after hearing his side of things.
The other two stories are oneshots. Sabatini and Day present a Medieval fantasy story of a king close to losing his throne thanks to a magical contract with another ruler because he doesn't have an heir, but in the midst of a siege, his queen gives birth to a son. Jacobs and Isherwood present the strange tale of Ticker Blood, a U.S. army soldier in prison in 1892 for supposedly going mad and massacring a town and his fellow soldiers. He's brought before a commanding officer who seems to believe his incredible story that it wasn't actually him that killed the town but monsters, and he had fled in terror, abandoning the others to their fates. He's given a chance to set things right and destroy the monsters who now have the semblance of the townsfolk, but when he thinks that is done, he wakes up back in his jail cell. We're left to wonder at the reality of what we have been told.

At our 87th Live show (courtesy of the East Meadow Public Library), Card Game Marker Joseph Munisteri joins Mark and Jenny Feldy as our guest.

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Title: Simon Says (Ashcan) Publisher: NBM Author/Artist: Jeffrey Brown Price: free Rating: 3 out of 5 stars Website: www.nbmpub.com Comments: This is a small short companion book to “Kids Are Still…

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Title: Conan: The Barbarian # 15 Publisher: Titan Comics Writer: Jim Zub Artist: Robert De La Torre Colorist: Diego Radriguez Letterer: Richard Starkings, Comicraft’s Tyler Smith Cover: Mahmud Asrar Variant…

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Bug Wars #1 Writer: Jason Aaron Artist: Mahmud Asrar Colorist: Matthew Wilson Letterer: Becca Carey Cover Date: February 2025 Rating: This week, I will review “Bug Wars #1” from Image…

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Christmas isn’t about some fat fella breaking into your home and leaving you wrapped goodies. It ain’t about reindeer and elves, either. And it ain’t about an animated snowman. Christmas…

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The first five years of my relationship with my wife–a converso–conversa?–were spent with her constantly apologizing for the awful things I say to people, and annually trying to get me…

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New York Comic Con took place recently, and one of the biggest news items released said that Vertigo was indeed coming back, this time called DC Vertigo! VERTIGO: THE RETURN!…

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