Panels from New X-Men #122 (March 2002), script by Grant Morrison; pencils by Frank Quitely; inks by Tim Townsend, Rich Perrotta and Sandu Florea; colors by HiFi Design, letters by Saida Temofonte
Saturday, May 15, 2010
365 Days with Hank McCoy, Day 135
Panels from New X-Men #122 (March 2002), script by Grant Morrison; pencils by Frank Quitely; inks by Tim Townsend, Rich Perrotta and Sandu Florea; colors by HiFi Design, letters by Saida Temofonte
Saturday Morning Cartoon: Feed the Kitty
Merrie Melodies: Marc Antony and Pussyfoot in "Feed the Kitty" (1953), directed by Chuck Jones
Friday, May 14, 2010
365 Days with Hank McCoy, Day 134
Panels from Avengers #160 (June 1977), script by Jim Shooter, pencils by George Perez, inks by Pablo Marcos, colors by Roger Slifer and David Anthony Kraft, letters by Denise Wohl
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Top Ten Other People The Sentry Has...um, you know.
10. Karen Page
9. Nightcat
8. Gwyneth Paltrow
7. Princess Diana
6. Trouble-era May Reilly and Mary Parker
5. Numinus
4. Motormouth
3. Maggie Chascarrillo
2. Squirrel Girl
1. Collected Marvel Fandom
365 Days with Hank McCoy, Day 133
Panel from [Uncanny] X-Men #6 (July 1964), script by Stan Lee, pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Chic Stone, letters by Sam Rosen
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
365 Days with Hank McCoy, Day 132
Panel from Marvel Team-Up #38 (October 1975), script by Bill Mantlo, layouts by Sal Buscema, figures finished and inked by Mike Esposito, backgrounds finished and inked by Dave Hunt, colors by Janice Cohen, letters by Karen Mantlo
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Prince Namor, Journalism Student
In journalism, the Five Ws is a concept in news style, research, and in police investigations that are regarded as basics in information-gathering. It is a formula for getting the "full" story on something. The maxim of the Five Ws (and one H) is that for a report to be considered complete it must answer a checklist of six questions, each of which comprises an interrogative word.—Wikipedia
Who?
What?
Why?
Where?
How?
Maybe another Who!
And another What...oh, wait a minute, this really turns out to be just another Who.
Why?
And...Lucille?
365 Days with Hank McCoy, Day 131
Splash page of Amazing Adventures #12 (May 1972), script and colors by Steve Englehart, pencils by Tom Sutton, inks by Mike Ploog, letters by Artie Simek
Monday, May 10, 2010
Monday Night Murals: Now you're falling when you should've scaled back
Tonight: not merely a mural that's a triptych, but three mural triptychs! (A ninetych?) And it all starts with this OH NOES EVERYBODYS DEAD teaser image from late-1987's Marvel comics:
Which only goes to prove: even in death, nobody likes being near Rahne Sinclair.
Whatever it looks like, this isn't the 1986 Mutant Massacre. Nor is it that popular miniseries Punisher/X-Men: Guess Who Gets Shot. No, this is "The Fall of the Mutants", and man, I'd say they've done more than just fall down there. Have a nice trip, Wolverine? See you next fall, Warlock? Falling down on the job, Cyclops? Hey Marvel Girl, did you...eh, I'm not gonna do the whole group of 'em. And I'm not going to sum up the story (but here's Uncanny X-Net's well-done summary of the whole mutant-maimin' mayhem). All you have to know is this: triptych murals off the starboard bough, cap'n!:
Page from Marvel Age #59 (February 1988)
Now that Kyle Baker's such a huge star, isn't it fun to see where he got his sta...hey, wait a minute! For once that joke actually works! Anyway, here's at least one sign that Marvel knew its fans were interested in unusual and quirky cover design: a news story in Marvel Age specifically devoted to the fact that each of the three X-series would feature a mural of three covers during the Fall of the Mutants event. (And despite what it says right there, I'm pretty sure these were never released as posters.)
The stories didn't cross over, but simply followed a simultaneous path of events through hardship, downfall and resurrection (in some books more literally than others), themes which also parallel the three covers of each series. For X-ample, here's the flagship of the mutant line (Remember when there were only three mutant series? Hah! Me neither!)—Uncanny X-Men!
Covers of Uncanny X-Men #225-227 (January-March 1988), art by Marc Silvestri and Dan Green
(Click picture to Fred Dukes-size)
The X-Men mural is probably my least favorite of the three: except for a few stray lightning bolts, there really isn't any connectivity to the thing. Far be it for this little stuffed bull to call Marc Silvestri a big cheatypants, but
Oh, what the heck. CHEATYPANTS!!!
But, you gotta love 80s Dazzler's oh-so-casual pose on the cover of #225. "Yeah, my teammates are fighting for their lives, but how do I look? Cool?" She wears her sunglasses at night, I bet. Also, the middle cover proves that Colossus has bones in his organic metal form. And also that Storm has the femurs of Kate Moss.
Let's mosey over on to the kids' table and check out how theLi'l Rascals New Mutants are handling all this mutant-falling:
Covers of New Mutants #59-61 (January-March 1988), art by
Bret Blevins and Terry Austin
(Click picture to New Mutants Special Edition Karma-size)
Hey looks, kids, early appearance of Bird Boy. Now that he's so popular, isn't it fun to see where he got his start? (See, that's how you do that joke.) As far as I can tell, this is all the New Mutants' wacky adventures on the Island of Dr. Moreau, starting with them fighting a Basil Wolverton EC creature to the day at the beach where Dani Moonstar buried her friends in the sand and then got sand in her eye, and then, they all got new costumes and flew off while a giant squid waved at them—I dunno, your guess is as good as mine. Oh! And Doug Ramsey dies. Maybe I oughta read these issues someday.
But my favorite of the three triptychs is this one from X-Factor:
Covers of X-Factor #24-26 (January-March 1988), art by
Walt Simsonson
(Click picture to Apocla-size)
Hoo boy, now that's one of my favorite murals of all time from one of the X-books! It didn't hurt that this was the middle of an amazingly strong run on X-Factor with art by Walt Simsonson and scripts by Louise Simonson (possibly related? Must investigate further). I love this run a lot—if you did, too, check out Weezie's current-day X-Factor Forever, which continues the unfinished plots she had for the team. Sadly it's without Walt's artwork, but maybe he can be coaxed into an annual or two.
That Simonson artwork is great, and my image-linking is a crooked, so let's see it again in this black-and-white version printed in Modern Masters: Walter Simonson. As usual, make with the clickety-click to biggedy-big:
Anyway, at the end of this Fallin' Mutants event-o-rama, the X-Men were presumed dead, invisible to electronic devices (which made it really hard to get into supermarkets), and living in Australia, where they had their secret headquarters in the larger-on-the-inside pouch of some magic kangaroo or something. The New Mutants, seeimgly ecstaic that they're rid of Doug "Of course I can speak Bocce!" Ramsey, took their first step into the larger world of being taken over by Rob Liefeld and kicking off the 1990s with really big guns and a lot of little pouches, and X-Factor became so popular that they got a Manhattan parade which was attended by the New Fantastic Four and Dr. Doom. They also got nifty new costumes—and now here I'm not being mocking: I think these new uniforms featured in all their colorful glory on X-Factor #26 were the best these characters had had before or until Grant Morrison raided their closets and threw out all the spandex.
So there you go: "Fall of the Mutants," the X-Men event so momentous it not only requires three murals to cover it, but also its own trading card:
Which only goes to prove: even in death, nobody likes being near Rahne Sinclair.
Whatever it looks like, this isn't the 1986 Mutant Massacre. Nor is it that popular miniseries Punisher/X-Men: Guess Who Gets Shot. No, this is "The Fall of the Mutants", and man, I'd say they've done more than just fall down there. Have a nice trip, Wolverine? See you next fall, Warlock? Falling down on the job, Cyclops? Hey Marvel Girl, did you...eh, I'm not gonna do the whole group of 'em. And I'm not going to sum up the story (but here's Uncanny X-Net's well-done summary of the whole mutant-maimin' mayhem). All you have to know is this: triptych murals off the starboard bough, cap'n!:
Page from Marvel Age #59 (February 1988)
Now that Kyle Baker's such a huge star, isn't it fun to see where he got his sta...hey, wait a minute! For once that joke actually works! Anyway, here's at least one sign that Marvel knew its fans were interested in unusual and quirky cover design: a news story in Marvel Age specifically devoted to the fact that each of the three X-series would feature a mural of three covers during the Fall of the Mutants event. (And despite what it says right there, I'm pretty sure these were never released as posters.)
The stories didn't cross over, but simply followed a simultaneous path of events through hardship, downfall and resurrection (in some books more literally than others), themes which also parallel the three covers of each series. For X-ample, here's the flagship of the mutant line (Remember when there were only three mutant series? Hah! Me neither!)—Uncanny X-Men!
(Click picture to Fred Dukes-size)
The X-Men mural is probably my least favorite of the three: except for a few stray lightning bolts, there really isn't any connectivity to the thing. Far be it for this little stuffed bull to call Marc Silvestri a big cheatypants, but
Oh, what the heck. CHEATYPANTS!!!
But, you gotta love 80s Dazzler's oh-so-casual pose on the cover of #225. "Yeah, my teammates are fighting for their lives, but how do I look? Cool?" She wears her sunglasses at night, I bet. Also, the middle cover proves that Colossus has bones in his organic metal form. And also that Storm has the femurs of Kate Moss.
Let's mosey over on to the kids' table and check out how the
(Click picture to New Mutants Special Edition Karma-size)
Hey looks, kids, early appearance of Bird Boy. Now that he's so popular, isn't it fun to see where he got his start? (See, that's how you do that joke.) As far as I can tell, this is all the New Mutants' wacky adventures on the Island of Dr. Moreau, starting with them fighting a Basil Wolverton EC creature to the day at the beach where Dani Moonstar buried her friends in the sand and then got sand in her eye, and then, they all got new costumes and flew off while a giant squid waved at them—I dunno, your guess is as good as mine. Oh! And Doug Ramsey dies. Maybe I oughta read these issues someday.
But my favorite of the three triptychs is this one from X-Factor:
(Click picture to Apocla-size)
Hoo boy, now that's one of my favorite murals of all time from one of the X-books! It didn't hurt that this was the middle of an amazingly strong run on X-Factor with art by Walt Simsonson and scripts by Louise Simonson (possibly related? Must investigate further). I love this run a lot—if you did, too, check out Weezie's current-day X-Factor Forever, which continues the unfinished plots she had for the team. Sadly it's without Walt's artwork, but maybe he can be coaxed into an annual or two.
That Simonson artwork is great, and my image-linking is a crooked, so let's see it again in this black-and-white version printed in Modern Masters: Walter Simonson. As usual, make with the clickety-click to biggedy-big:
Anyway, at the end of this Fallin' Mutants event-o-rama, the X-Men were presumed dead, invisible to electronic devices (which made it really hard to get into supermarkets), and living in Australia, where they had their secret headquarters in the larger-on-the-inside pouch of some magic kangaroo or something. The New Mutants, seeimgly ecstaic that they're rid of Doug "Of course I can speak Bocce!" Ramsey, took their first step into the larger world of being taken over by Rob Liefeld and kicking off the 1990s with really big guns and a lot of little pouches, and X-Factor became so popular that they got a Manhattan parade which was attended by the New Fantastic Four and Dr. Doom. They also got nifty new costumes—and now here I'm not being mocking: I think these new uniforms featured in all their colorful glory on X-Factor #26 were the best these characters had had before or until Grant Morrison raided their closets and threw out all the spandex.
So there you go: "Fall of the Mutants," the X-Men event so momentous it not only requires three murals to cover it, but also its own trading card:
365 Days with Hank McCoy, Day 130
Panel from the spoof backup in GeNext #5 (February 1997), script by Barry Dutter, art by Marie Severin
Sunday, May 09, 2010
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