Whatcha readin', Ben?

In this panel from Fantastic Four #134, Ben Grimm shows off his good taste in reading material, courtesy of a comic book cover cleverly statted into the artwork:


Sadly, although The Thing is still an eager comic book fan, Worlds Unknown is no longer being published. So, what would Ben Grimm be reading today, hmm? I wonder...



Or maybe he's lookin' at...

What do you think Ben is reading?


Photoshop hints: Resize your comic book cover down to 146 pixels wide at 72 dpi, and tilt it 11.5 degrees to the left. Increase the size of the canvas around the comic book cover. Copy the panel image above to Photoshop. Select the white area in the FF panel with your magic wand, choose menu select and menu item inverse, copy, and paste onto the comic book cover canvas.

Hey, this is my one thousandth post on the blog! Thanks for the continuing fun, folks!

Heroes. Icons. Advertising shills.

Ad printed in Marvel Comics dated July 1983 (this one was in Fantastic Four #256)



Ad printed in Marvel Comics dated August 1981 (this one was in Fantastic Four #232)



Ad printed in Marvel Comics dated August 1980 (this one was in Fantastic Four #221)



Ad printed in Marvel Comics dated December 1980 (this one was in Fantastic Four #225)

An Afternoon with Jeff Smith

Sundays around the Bully household are usually a pretty simple affair. Sleep until ten, get up, make Eggo waffles, watch cartoons, take a nap or two...it's all pretty casual on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Unless, of course, there's an expedition to be made and someone exciting to see, in which case I'm bounding out of bed at dawn and tugging on my sweater, eager and ready to get out into the world. What could make Bully so excitable on a quiet Sunday? Why, an appearance by Bone creator Jeff Smith at Symphony Space in Manhattan, as part of the popular Thalia Kid's Club series in the theater with the greatest name in the universe: The Leonard Nimoy Thalia! It's the logical place to have an event.




This very special Sunday begins not with Eggos but with brunch out at Cousin John's in Park Slope, Brooklyn. I'm having Eggs Benedict Arnold. Don't turn your back on them!



My good pal Randi was very sweet and shared her pamcakes with me. PAMCAKES! Yet another reason why Randi has great taste: she can pick a crackerjack breakfast item. Do not pour me on the pamcakes, Randi!:



I didn't take any photos of the Jeff Smith stage event at the Nimoy Thalia, but he put on a fantastic show. It was mainly geared towards kids, and there were a few hundred pre-teens and their parents in the audience, many of them clutching well-worn and frequently-read copies of the various volumes of Bone. Jeff was introduced and interviewed on stage by Matthew Cody (author of the upcoming young adult superhero adventure Powerless). Narrating a slide show of artwork, Jeff explained his influences (introducing the kids to Carl Barks's Uncle Scrooge and C. C. Beck's Captain Marvel), showed off pages from his childhood Bone comics, and explained how he designs and draws covers by showing several sketches in progress for the Scholastic Bone series and why he and the designers picked the final versions they did for excitement and drama.

Jeff then had all the kids in the audience draw a character on a supplied sheet of paper. His only instruction: "make your character either happy or angry." He then showed off a few dozen of the kids' drawings on the big screen and asked each one of the young artists to talk about their character and what was going on in the drawing. I was impressed by the skill and range of these young artists (me, I can barely hold a crayon! Well, it's more difficult with hooves). A huge number of them drew their own original creations, and some even broke up their paper into comic panels with action and story sequence. Jeff was full of praise for their work, pointing out some of the visual shorthand older comics fans take for granted: speed lines, furrowed eyebrows to express anger, posture as a function of strength or action—these kids had the fundamentals, and all were eager and excited to talk to the crowd about their creations. I especially liked one kid who had designed a character named "Grandpa" and his various alter-egos, including "Baby Grandpa." I would so buy a comic book named "Baby Grandpa."

A Q&A session finished up the stage show, with only one rule: "kids can ask questions, adults can't." Excellent rule, as the kids came up with great questions about where Jeff got his ideas, where the Bones' names came from (Fone Bone? From Don Martin's frequently Fonebone characters), and why the stupid, stupid rat creatures have trimmed ears and tails. Jeff was fantastic with the kids: encouraging, funny, and patient.

The event then moved to the Symphony Space café, where Jeff signed books and talked with the kids for about another hour and a half, the line snaking around the seating area and up the stairs. I patiently stood in line to meet Jeff, and the wait went by fast, thanks to spending time chatting with the delightful Randi:



I love Randi! She is so nice to me. Thanks for taking me to see Jeff Smith, Randi!



At last I got up to the table and got to meet the Great Man himself. He was very cheerful as I chatted with him for a moment. I believe I was the only stuffed bull he's had come out to one of his signings.



Even though he'd already signed a bajillion books so far that afternoon, he kindly signed my big Bone phone book and sketched me a quick drawing of Fone Bone and Ted the Bug. Thanks, Jeff!



When we came out of the Leonard Nimoy Thalia it was starting to snow! I was glad I'd worn my warm winter fleece hoodie:



Snowflakes were as big as canned hams by the time we reached the subway entrance. Quick, into the subway before we get turned into snowmen! And snowbulls. And snowrandis.



Coming in from the snow on a cold Sunday afternoon, there's no better treat than a steaming mug of hot chocolate with mini-marshmallows:



In fact, the only thing better than just a mug of hot cocoa is reading Bone while you sip it! Thanks for a great fun day, Jeff Smith!


Read Jeff Smith's blog entry on the event at Boneville.com

A Wodehouse a Week #42: Ice in the Bedroom

It's frigid as a penguin's icebox outside, so what better time to crack open the frosty and refreshing goodness of Ice in the Bedroom (1961), by P. G. Icehouse...I mean Wodehouse. Thing is, that ice in the title is not the type you drop in your Coca-Cola. You can't get ice in your Coke in the UK! No, that's "ice" as in "jewels"...and you know that in a Wodehouse book someone's out to steal those jewels. Rest assured, we're not going to see a Mission: Impossible-style heist, especially since the criminals are our old friends Soapy and Dolly Molloy, confidence tricksters and burglars, who we've seen before in Pearls, Girls, and Monty Bodkin (and who appear in other Wodehouse novels I've not gotten to yet). To make the Wodehouseverse hang even tighter together, the action takes place in London suburb Valley Fields, setting of Big Money and Something Fishy, and the hero is Freddie Widgeon, Bertie Wooster's Drones club comrade. See how it all hangs together? Brilliant, that Wodehouse.

Freddie's fallen in love with Sally Foster. Hey, our second Sally of the month! (Perhaps February is Sally Month here at A Wodehouse a Week!) Sally is, of course, like all Wodehouse heroines worthy of the name Sally, bright and clever. So what, we might wonder, would she want with Freddie? Especially when she finds out he's a bit of a flirt-about-town:

'I suppose if all the girls Freddie Widgeon has been in love with were placed end to end—not that one could do it, of course—they would reach from Piccadilly Circus to Hyde Park Corner. Further than that, probably, because some of them were pretty tall.'

Wodehouse doesn't do the math...so let's us do it, shall we?:



Ignoring the fact that Piccadilly is one way moving towards Piccadilly Circus, It's 1.6 miles from Piccadilly Circus to Hyde Park Corner. That's 8,448 feet. Assuming the average London beauty is about 5'5" (taller if she went to St Edmund's Church of England Girls' School and Sports College), that means Freddie has been pitching woo at approximately...(tapping nervously at my pocket calculator and checking my results carefully)...Golly! Fifteen hundred sixty girls! Freddie, you cad!

She works as secretary for romance writer Leila Yorke, my favorite character of the novel. Despite her output, Leila is no lyrical romantic soul (like Bingo Little's wife Rosie M. Banks); there's nothing sappy about the author of the sentimental classics Sweet Jennie Dean and Cupid, the Archer. Quite the reverse, in fact:

There was a frown on Leila Yorke's brow, as if she had temporarily suspended the thinking of lovely thoughts and had turned to others of an inferior grade.

'You look peeved," said Sally, noticing this.

'I'm feeling peeved,' said Miss Yorke. 'What was that bell I heard?'

'That was the County starting to call. A Mr Cornelius. I don't know who he is.'

'He's the house agent. Keeps rabbits.'

'Oh, does he? Well, he likes to be neighbourly, so he brought you the Sunday papers.'

'Bless him. Just what I wanted.'

'And thirty-two of your books, to be autographed.'

'Curse him. May his rabbits get myx-whatever-it-is.'

'And he wants you to give a little talk to his literary society which meets every second Tuesday.'

'Oh, hell!'

'Keep calm. I got you out of it. I told him you were thinking out a new novel.'

Leila Yorke snorted bitterly.

She curses, she's a hard drinker, she wants to write an important and bleak urban novel—Leila Yorke is the Mickey Spillane of Wodehouse. I picture her played by Elaine Stritch. Despite her hard edges, she's not instrumental in playing Cupid to Freddie and Sally, but is the subject of a love story herself as her ex-husband Joe, the snake charmer, slithers lovingly back into her life.

I'm always delight when Wodehouse gets off a jolly poke at publishing, and the caustic but charming Leila Yorke is his mouthpiece to simplify the publishing process to its bare skeleton.

'...I shut myself up in my room and wrote my first novel. It was Heather o' the Hills. Ever read it?'

'Of course.'

'Pure slush, but it was taken by Popgood and Grooly, and didn't do too badly, and they sent the sheets over to Singleton Brothers in New York, who turn out books like sausages and don't' care how bad they are, so long as they run to eighty thousand words. They chucked it into the sausage machine and twiddled the handle and darned if it wasn't one if the biggest sellers they had that season. What's known as a sleeper.'

Ladies and gentlemen, take it from me, a little stuffed bull who gets to help out at a New York publisher: that's the entire publishing business boiled to down its bare essentials.

What's this all got to do with ice, you ask? Well, the Molloys have stolen an armful of jewelry from the wife of Oofy Prosser (Freddie's rich fellow Drone). How rich is he? So rich he even has a car registered in the United States, as I discovered recently walking down the street:


But I digress. Soap and Dolly have stashed in jewels in the Valley Fields house Lelia Yorke is leasing (at the suggestion of Freddie), so the devious married criminals will stop at nothing to get into the house by hook or by...aptly...crook. Soapy poses as a fan of Leila's novels (foiled when she recognizes him as selling her some worthless silver mine stock earlier); they have dozens of cats and dogs and snakes delivered to the house in hopes of chasing her out, and Dolly impersonates a reporter to interview Leila, thwarted when she has to duck out of the house into the pouring rain to avoid discovery by the visiting Mrs. Oofy P. Dolly of course runs into Freddie's house next door, soaked to the skin, and of course the overwhelmed but gracious Freddie's going to offer Dolly a pair of his pajamas while her clothes dry, and of course he's going to offer to bandage her scraped knee, and of course Sally's going to walk in on this suggestive scene...but I never pictured it as this saucy, sexy book cover:


Golly. This cheeky Pan paperback edition makes it seem like an segment from the infamous British sex farce Confessions of a Window Cleaner, which I, being a little stuffed bull, can't watch. But you can.) Somehow I don't think this is quite what P. G. Wodehouse had in mind. Maybe if he'd been N. C. 17. Wodehouse.



My copy of Ice in the Bedroom, a Coronet mass market paperback picked up during my first-ever visit to the UK, is much less suggestive and much more fanciful: a slightly gormless Freddie and a perky pretty Sally (and a couple escaped suburban rabbits) pose in front of the wardrobe on which is stashed a king's ransom in Oofyjewels. You'll need quite a bit of ready cash yourself to pick up the out of print Ice: there's no current edition available in either the US or UK, which is a pity, actually—it's one of Wodehouse's more charming later non-series comedy-romances, and the character of Leila Yorke is a fiery dynamo that spices up the whimsy. It's my favorite (so far) of the Valley Fields suburban novels, which only goes to show: Wodehouse doesn't have to limit himself to city or country to be in top form. It's as fresh today as it was in the early 1960s when it was first published. Even if some editions appear to be adverts for Knickerbox:


A Wodehouse a Week Index.

Mystery Science Monday: Here Comes the Circus!

"Here Comes the Circus" (1946), MSTed version from Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode #522 (1993)

Ten of a Kind: Hey Tweety, where you goin' with that gun in your hand?

(More Ten of a Kind here.)

A Wodehouse a Week #41: The Adventures of Sally

Sally Nicholas has just inherited a truckload of money. (Well, $25,000, which was a truckload back in 1922, when money was larger and trucks were tinier.) You think that would solve all her problems, doncha? Doncha? Well, think again, bucky!

By the time of his novel The Adventures of Sally (1922, published in the US under the title Mostly Sally), Wodehouse was nearly a quarter-century into his writing career, but this book still has the trademark of his early work: a plot that's simpler and less intricate than his later novels (events tend to happen one after the other in a cause-and-effect momentum rather than the more complicated intertwined plots of later years that require a flow-chart, or Jeeves, to keep track of). Young, cheerful Sally uses her newfound fortune to help her friends at the boarding house and her brother, the earnest but pompous Fillmore. But she's not simply a pretty creature of charity: she also splashes out on a holiday to a French seaside resort, where she meets redheaded Lancelot "Ginger" Kemp. This being a Wodehouse novel, it's no surprise when on their second brief meeting Ginger can't let Sally go without asking her:

"I say..." Ginger Kemp turned bright scarlet and glared before him at the uniformed official, who was regarding their téte-a-téte with the indulgent eye of one who has been through this sort of thing himself. "I say, look here, will you marry me?"

Oh, bad luck for Ginger: Sally's engaged to self-absorbed playwright Gerald Foster, but just like in any Wodehouse book, while the course of true love may not run smooth at first, and in fact jumps around and does handsprings and somersaults for a while, the situation sorts itself out when Gerald runs off an marries diva Elsa Doland, the star of his play.

Much of the rest of the book is a comedy of manners in which the balance of power shifts swiftly from character to character. Fillmore loses all the money Sally gave him and is forced to take work as a stage manager, but Sally re-appears in his life just in time to fund him yet again (Sally never learns!) when he plans to buy out the play and put it on the road. Ginger turns up again (only slightly coincidentally). These are the days before Peter Gabriel and boomboxes, and Ginger saves his back from lifting a gramophone over his head under her window to play the latest Gershwin ditty, and instead woos Sally in the way of all the world's most romantic lovers: by stalking her in her boarding house room:

Sally turned restlessly, and, having turned remained for a long instant transfixed and rigid. She had seen something, and what she had seen was enough to surprise any girl in the privacy of her bedroom. From underneath the bed there peeped coyly forth an undeniably masculine shoe and six inches of a grey trouser-leg.

Sally bounded to the floor. She was a girl of courage, and she meant to probe this matter thoroughly.

"What are you doing under my bed?"

The question was a reasonable one, and evidently seemed to the intruder to deserve an answer. There was a muffled sneeze, and he began to crawl out.

The shoe came first. Then the legs. Then a sturdy body in a dusty coat. And finally there flashed on Sally's fascinated gaze a head of so nearly the maximum redness that it could only belong to one person in the world.

"Ginger!"

Mr. Lancelot Kemp, on all fours, blinked up at her.

"Oh, hullo!" he said.

The Adventures of Sally is a longish but rather straightforward light comedy romance, in many ways inspired by Wodehouse's early years in New York City and his travels around America following stage productions. It doesn't have the elegant complications of Wodehouse's later comedies but it's sharp, clever and funny; he proves his skill at writing a sassy and spunky heroine with whom we giggle at her delight and sniffle at her sorrows. Most of Wodehouse's heroines are much the same, and true, he never varied tremendously from the formula, but Sally has a handful of sparkling moments which leave you with no doubt who the star of the book truly is, like here:

She broke off and scrutinized Sally closely. "Say, what do you do with your skin?"

She spoke with solemn earnestness which made Sally laugh.

"What do I do with my skin? I just carry it around with me."

...and, here, where she pulls a trick of mind-reading that Sherlock Holmes himself would have been impressed with:

As Fillmore sat opposite Sally on the train, he radiated contentment and importance.

"Yes, do," said Sally, breaking a long silence.

Fillmore awoke from happy dreams.

"Eh?"

"I said 'Yes, do.' I think you owe it to your position."

"Do what?"

"Buy a fur coat. Wasn't that what you were meditating about?"

"Don't be a chump," said Fillmore, blushing nevertheless. It was true that once or twice during the past week he had toyed negligently, as Mr Bunbury would have said, with the notion, and why not? A fellow must keep warm.

"With an astrakhan collar," insisted Sally.

Happy endings all around, of course, in the best Hollywood tradition, even tho' Sally eventually whips through her money ($25,000 doesn't go as far as it used to, eh, Sally?). The moral of the story? Well, maybe that twenty-five thousand clams aren't as important as the love of a good ginger-haired man. Or, as it was said elegantly and rhythmically some forty-two years later by four different but equally creative and whimsical Englishmen:



I've got only one edition of The Adventures of Sally, a Penguin mass market paperback featuring an Ionicus illustration of pretty Sally and a curiously sunburnt Ginger at a nightclub. Really, poor lad looks like he's been out in the Australian Outback. Wanna get yourself a copy? You're in luck, chuck: as it's in the public domain now, it's just been reissued in paperback. You can get yourself a Sally, for much less than twenty-five thousand dollars, by clicking on the Amazon link to the right. See? Tell 'em Bully sent you, and if Sally gives you a sweet, sweet kiss for buying her book, please make sure you pass it onto me.

A Wodehouse a Week Index.

Separated at Birth: Now who's got the most fun comic of the year?!?

L: Booster Gold #7 (August 1986), art by Dan Jurgens and Mike DeCarlo
R: Action Comics #594 (November 1987), art by John Byrne
(Click picture to dish-served-cold-size)

Saturday Morning Cartoon: The Merry Marvel Marching Society

The Merry Marvel Marching Society song, distributed on record to MMMS members in the 1960s,
video produced and edited by Matthew Hawes
More info about the MMMS

Fun Fifty of 2007: Part 5 of 5

Look! Fabulous stars and celebrities are arriving in their stretch limousines and stepping onto the plush red carpet to stroll into the amphitheater as we prepare for the Big Awards Night: The Top Ten of the Fun Fifty of 2007. Quick! Sidestep Joan Rivers before she makes fun of your outfit and avoid Isaac Mizrahi's wandering hands, duck away from Amy Winehouse before she collapses on you, and find your way to your seat. You may have to whack Jack Nicholson on the head if he's bobbing around in front of you, but look!: the lights are going down and the curtain is coming up, and here comes Billy Crystal soaring into the theater on a jet pack...oh my gosh look out Mister Crystal...oh, no! Oh no! He landed right on Miss Jolie! (Boing!) And Michael Douglas's hairpiece has burst into flames! Oh the humanity! Oh the humanity!

Um, so, while they're all sorting that out, let's duck quick to the café around the corner for a cup of tea and some hot buttered toast and do the rest of the Fun Fifty here, shall we? It's been a long a winding road that's brought us to this point in four parts (One • Two • Three • Four), but the end is near. In fact it's here:


#10: ALL STAR SUPERMAN Only four issues of the finest and funnest Superman comic came out this year, but I'll gladly trade four of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's comics for a truckload of most other creators'. All Star Superman (don't acronymize it!) has a modern spirit infused with the nanotechnology and quantum theory thinking that's a trademark of Morrison's works, while, like his work on Batman, at the same time it homages and salutes the joy and goofiness of the 1950s Superman stories without making them seem silly or outdated. It's like the Reeses Peanut Cup of comics: delicious, creamy nostalgia surrounded by a sweet savory twenty-first century shell. 2007's stories advanced the general meta-saga—the slow death of Superman—at the same time individual stories took front stage: the Bizarro World, new Kryptonians...but the stand-out of a fine year was #6's "Funeral in Smallville," bringing the concept of mortality home to Clark in a very personal way.


#9: THE SPIRIT Darwyn Cooke's year-long tenure on The Spirit is over, but I'm gonna look back on this run with extreme fondness. Cooke, J. Bone, and Dave Stewart clearly had a lot of love for Will Eisner's blue-masked mystery man and his extensive supporting cast (including the gorgeously re-realized Central City). With a great mix of humor and drama, the new Spirit has been brought up to modern times (including a street-wise but no-longer politically-incorrect Ebony). But there's still plenty of room to acknowledge the great stories of The Spirit's past, as Cooke has in a couple beautifully drawn and touchingly scripted Sand Sarif stories. Even #7 and #13's triple-storied anthology issues were a delight, which just goes to prove that The Spirit isn't simply a Cooke-only franchise. That said, while I'm very much looking forward to Aragonés, Evanier, and Ploog on the title, these first twelve issues will remain near and dear to my little satin heart for keeping the spirit of Eisner's great hero alive.


#8: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD I try not to have a sense of fan entitlement (it's not becoming in a little stuffed bull), but the revived Brave and the Bold was one comic I was definitely being a back-seat driver: it wouldn't work unless Batman was co-starring in every issue; it needed done-in-one stories rather than a continued saga; you can't mix Legion of Super-Heroes mythology with the Batman mythos. And boy, was I wrong! There's been dozens of team-up titles over the years and I have a weakness for 'em, but Brave and the Bold may just outfun 'em all in my book. (Yes, even Marvel Two-in-One!) The initial extended "Luck Lords" storyline brought in everyone from Batman to Green Lantern to Supergirl and the Legion, and the inclusion of these diverse heroes seemed organic and logical rather than haphazard and coincidental. Bonus points for introducing the merged Batman/Tharok (Batrok?), minus a couple points for the slightly skeevy attraction of Green Lantern towards the teenage Supergirl. If the second story arc is half as fun as the first, however, then this series might have a shot at outlasting the original B&B. Heck, they can even bring back Bat-Hulk if they do it right.


#7: BIFF-BAM-POW! What this world needs: more comics by Evan Dorkin. Biff-Bam-Pow! (don't forget the exclamation point!) is an anthology title by Dorkin and wife Sarah Dyer with more action, humor, and pure punching power per page than all other comics released in 2007 had in their entire run combined! (Note: hyperbole about level of punching power is for entertainment purposes only and not a legally-binding contract). It an all-ages comic that's perfectly appropriate for kids, but manly, yes, adults liked it too! Meet One Punch Goldberg, the fightin'-est girl around: she can lay out a brigade of monkeys with a single fist! (And I'm not using monkeys metaphorically...they really are monkeys!) If that's not enough, the ever-thrilling Kid Blastoff, plus a couple comedy-action reprint comics (that I hadn't seen before) round out BBP!, and the only disappointment is that the comic comes to an end and there was only one issue in 2007. More, Mister Dorkin, please!


#6: RATATOUILLE Not merely the finest animated movie of 2007—Ratatouille is quite simply one of the best movies, period, of the year. You may not like rats...you may certainly not like rats in your kitchen...but rats in a kitchen in a movie is cinema gold, and for the folks at Pixar, a way to chalk up another acclaimed success. But look beyond the million computer-generated hairs on the plump little body of Rémy the rat or the gorgeously-realized cityscape of Paris's alleys and rooftops and you'll find a story of love...love of food, love of your work, and love for a beautiful and spunky French chef (the quirky Collette, aptly voiced by Janeane Garofolo). In fact, it's the mix of human and animal characters that make Ratatouille more than just another Disney animal fable—to the little button eyes of this stuffed bull living among human, it's one of the first and one of the finest cartoons that have mixed the animal and human worlds without giving either species' story time short shrift. It may be that the CGI technology has finally reached the point where the human characters—charicactured tho' they may be—look as realistic within their world as the animal figures, but I think it's also because the script gives both its two- and four-legged heroes room to shine. Also, it taught me how to pronounce and spell the word "ratatouille," so it was educational as well.


#5: JACK OF FABLES Rogues and con men are always fun to read about (long as it's not your pocket they're pickin'...hey, hands off my Hello Kitty change purse!), which is why Jack of Fables overtook regular-flavored Fables on my fun list of 2007. After he was banished from Fabletown, I wondered exactly what sort of adventures Jack could possibly have. The short answer is: he's taking his act on the road, from that most famous of American destinations (Las Vegas) to his current extended road trip around mythological America, all in search of fame, fortune, gold, and a pretty girl. As the makers of The Han Solo Show will tell you, however, a rogue's nothing without his extended supporting cast, and Jack's got some of the finest: Gary the Pathetic Fallacy, sexy librarian (aren't they all?) Hillary, and certainly my role model when it comes to comic book heroes: Babe, the Tiny Blue Ox with a very rich fantasy life. While Fables itself seems to be heading towards an ending, Jack's still got plenty of road to travel, and I'm happy to tag along with him.


#4: DOCTOR WHO: THE TEN DOCTORS Nope, you didn't miss picking up this Doctor Who comic at your local Android's Dungeon: this is a fan-made webcomic that you'll find online here (click on the arrows in the upper right to progress through the pages) and you'll be transported into the dream of every Doctor Who fan: an extended, time-spanning adventure featuring not just one or three or five but all ten Doctors...their entire cast of companions (including several time-versions of some companions)...a rogue's gallery of the Doctor's Doctors' greatest villains from Cybermen to Daleks...and K-9, of course! Sure, this is fan fiction, but it's done with sincere love and knowledge of the characters and stories throughout Who-story. (If you're not sure who's who, so to speak, check out the comments below each page to get a gist of the characters). Rich Morris's expressive and fluid artwork deftly captures the Doctors' energy and idiosyncrasies, and it's fun to see Four teaming up with Seven, Eight taking control, and One and Ten, the first and the latest Doctor, have a conversation:



I'd love to see Morris's work fully inked and colored and lettered professionally (a few but not many finished pages are displayed on the site), but for the moment this story—eighty pages and growing—will bring even delight to even the most cynical Doctor Who fans. Rich Morris's ComixBlog Site.


#3: X-MEN: FIRST CLASS The best X-Men title being published today? Well, your mileage may vary. But don't let the complaints of anal fanboys that these stories "don't matter" because they "aren't in canon" keep you from picking up the most fun mutant-stuffed comic on the market. It's got the original X-Men of the Lee/Kirby issues, the light humor of the early Claremont/Cockrum run, and the "teen heroes" riff of the first few dozen New Mutants. There's a wonderful emphasis on learning experience for Cyclops, Angel, Beast, Iceman, and Marvel Girl in every issue: the discovery, so important to the theme of mutant comics, that hideous or monstrous does not equal villainous. At the same time the heroes are having a heck of a lot of fun (almost as much as we are): road trips, extra-curricular excursions, clever and inventive text page introductions and some of the natural teen dialogue without being over laden with quickly-outdated slang. The icing on this X-cake? Colleen Coover's occasional Marvel Girl backups are funny, charming, beautifully drawn and inventive. I don't care if canon tells us Jean and Wanda never hung out together—by golly, reading about them doing so seems right. And more important, fun.


#2: THE IMMORTAL IRON FIST P'raps the fact that it's been mostly divorced from the widespread super-upheavals of the past couple years (Civil, Hulk, and Skrull wars all cascading into one another) gives The Immortal Iron Fist its appeal and charm—stripped of the need for massive tight continuity with every other book in the line, Iron Fist is free to be an inventive globe-trotting adventure. Maybe it's just that deep down, Danny Rand was a heck of a character whose past has always been acknowledged but never deeply examined. Or it might be that this book features a high level of kicks to the face in every issue. Whatever! At the recommendation of Chris Sims, a man who knows kick-ass when he sees it, I picked up IIF in mid-story-stream but not only was I not lost, I rushed back to the store to grab as many of the back issues I could find. It has the same vibe I felt when I first read James Robinson's Starman: a legacy hero done right, even including periodic flashback tales that dovetail into the main narrative, but it's got its own vibe and energy, especially in the current storyline featuring an extreme fighting tournament against a cast of skilled warriors from competing mystic cities, while on the outside Luke Cage, Misty Knight, and Colleen Wing fight the Hydra hordes. It's that rarest of superhero comics: thoughtful and subtle, reverent of its past, but with amazing fight sequences. Kickassery. It does a comic good.


#1: BOOSTER GOLD 52's MVP makes the big leap to his second solo series. Like the first, it's got a gimmick, but this time it's custom-made for those of us who love comics: Booster is now the appointed guardian of the history timeline in the DC Universe. Like Doctor Sam Beckett, he travels back in time, putting right what once went wrong, hoping that his next leap will be the leap...to save his dearest friend. As a gimmick, it's dandy. What's even better is the execution: in the first six issues alone Booster zips from Green Lantern history to the Cosmic Treadmill-era Flash, from the old west of Jonah Hex to the hard-learned lessons of history and temporal causality when he tries to save Barbara Gordon from Alan Moore The Joker. And, a chance to undo one of the most misbegotten stories of recent years and reunite the Blue and the Gold? I'm with Booster all the way. Like the new Brave and the Bold, this series is a reward for those of us up on our iconic DCU history (but isn't inaccessible if you're not). In lesser hands, this might devolve into fan fiction, but the team of Geoff (Johns) and Jeff (Katz) clearly have a great love of the DCU, its varied characters and history highlights, and more important, a deft comic skill to give Booster some great quips without reducing him to a joke himself (a very thin line some writers trip over). There's a great joy in reading such a fun superhero comic—there's an even bigger joy when it's inventive and unique. I'm not certain how long the situation at the end of issue #6 will last, but for the moment, the return of a disappeared character made me grin and laugh with glee and excitement. That's the best kind of comic, I think—one that if it were a movie, you'd stand up and shout out "YEAH!" So..."YEAH, Booster Gold! YEAH!"


So! There ya go: fifty things that I found fun in 2007. That's five times better than most people's top ten lists. And if I didn't mention your favorite? Well, that's all well and good. There's plenty of fun things out there for everyone, and that's what makes it America, pal. Little pink houses for you and me. That's the most vital lesson I've learned from comics and other entertainment: all that's important is that you enjoy it. If you do, it's all well and good.

Unless you enjoyed World War III. Hoo boy, that was a stinker.

See ya next year, Fun Fifty!