Jane’s Recognition Guide to Inconspicuous Nazi Weaponry of the Fourth Reich

Hi, everybody! It's me, Jane Wiedlin, pixiesque pop star, all-in-good-fun fetish model, cartoon voice actor, alien Starfleet communications officer, comic book creator (it's coming, I promise, one of these days!) and most important, friend of Bully, the little stuffed bull who's fun to hug and cuddle! That's why I was happy to step in and guest-write a post on his popular blog when he called me on his speed-dial and squeaked "Help, Miss Jane!" For that little fluffy guy, I'd do anything.

You've seen some of the very fashionable and flair-filled hats I wear up there in the paragraph above. But what you may not know about me is my intense and incisive interest and expertise in military history, most specifically the military history of Earth-616! When I'm not on tour or hanging out on a jet runway with my best friends, I like to relax with the latest Marvel comic book or a classic graphic novel (from your local comic book shop, of course! I, Jane Wiedlin, am not only anti-fur, I'm also vehemently anti-Scans_Daily!). On my free time I enjoy cataloguing and writing detailed histories of the high-grade military weaponry of Marvel-Earth, the Jane's Recognition Guides, which you may have seen in your local bookstore or displayed at a sales booth at one of the many comic book conventions I enjoy attending every year.

Tonight Bully thought you might enjoy taking an advance peek at my upcoming newest book in the series:



Jane's Recognition Guide to Inconspicuous Nazi Weaponry of the Fourth Reich features all the most subtle and secret stealth technology of mad Nazi scientists in their quest to resurrect their evil rule on Earth (616)! Wanna peek along with me at some of the great examples? Sure you do!


First up: You can sure tell that Thoom the Big Evil Nazi Robot is a baddie, can't you? Well, for one, the big swastika on the chest, but don't miss the giant metal claws of fire-belching or the super-aerating cleats on his big metal boots. He's evil! Still, you can't help but adore those simply delightful little booties, can you?

All panels are from Tales of Suspense #72-74 (December 1965-February 1966), script by Stan Lee, layouts by Jack Kirby, finishes and inks by George Tuska, letters by Sam Rosen and Artie Simek


This super-science Nazi robot has been programmed with over one thousand intricate battle moves, plus he can also do the Hokey Pokey!



Sadly, the giant stompy robot cannot accurately catch a Frisbee. Another triumph for the secret Wham-O scientists working for S.H.I.E.L.D.!*





Another infamous Nazi war machine you'll encounter in these pages is the sinister and death-dealing Giant Flying Manta Ray! How can you know this usually-peaceful denizen of the deep is evil? Well, duh, check it out...swastika decals again. (And those things are really hard to get on without ripping them.) Also, every Manta Ray also includes an exact scale model of the University of Alabama's Bryant-Denny Stadium, the Pride of the Crimson Tide! I'm guessing those Nazi big-brains at ConHitlerCo are a little obsessed with electric football. That game never worked...the little guys always just wandered around at random while the whole thing buzzed. That is evil!



What's more, the Giant Manta Ray and the Big Nazi Robot are specially built to connect together using the science of Mega Bloks, the evil bastard cousin of Lego! Also, apparently, magnetism, because, as Diet Smith has told me more than once, the nation that controls magnetism controls the universe! Then, he soared off in his flying garbage can. Half the time I have no idea what that guy is on about.



You think they were evil before? Ha! That's like Charlotte Caffey thinking that she's the youngest one of the Go-Go's! No, together, they're twice as powerful, like some evil issue of Marvel Two-in-One starring, I dunno, Doctor Doom and Typeface! That's pretty evil, even by Nazi scientist standards.



Special S.H.I.E.L.D. pencillers are immediately summoned to draw detailed blueprints of the Nazi war machines:



As if that's not thrilling enough, Jane's Recognition Guide to Inconspicuous Nazi Weaponry of the Fourth Reich will also feature the monstrous, Geneva-Convention-shattering debut of...the Giant Flying Metal Skull of 1960s Character Actor Walter Matthau!



For a triple threat, these three titanic terrors of the Teutonic throngs combine, not unlike Voltron, to form one giant and incredibly inconspicuous Nazi war machine! One that looks like a massively-shoulder-padded macro-encephalitic dwarf, but a war machine nevertheless!



Still, like all the machinery of mayhem you'll find in Jane's Recognition Guide to Inconspicuous Nazi Weaponry of the Fourth Reich—the Fuhrer's Flying Fortress of Fear, Das Dethbüs, the Bombastic Biergarten and the Himmlernberg—this particular Nazi no-good-nik has an Achilles heel that you'll learn how to exploit, right in the pages of my book!



Simply apply one (1) Captain Lemonhead supplied with blowtorch!



It's shoddy craftnaziship like that which ensures Hitler, his successors, his evil clone or his army of undead Nazi vampire werewolf women will never succeed in their war against humanity, except in the literature of Harry Turtledove.



So this is Jane Wiedlin saying goodnight America and all the ships at sea, and rush out to your nearest bookstore (if it's a Borders, you better really rush) and buy Jane's Recognition Guide to Inconspicuous Nazi Weaponry of the Fourth Reich! Also, buy bonds where you work or bank!

*Sometimes Huge Industrial Enemies Leave Divots.

365 Days with Ben Grimm: Day 104

Panel from Marvel Adventures Fantastic Four #28 (November 2007), script by Fred van Lente, art by Cory Hamscher, colors by Lee Loughridge, letters by Dave Sharpe

A Sense of Entitlement

Entitlement. It's all the rage in fandom. We all know how a character should be written and what kind of adventures he should be having, and by gosh by golly, we're going to let everyone know. We're going to tell all the folks who work at the local comic book store, whether they want to hear or not, and if they're going to gossip about our plans to wrest Batman from the sinister palms of Grant Morrison and finally write him right, well, that's the price we pay. We've got the entitlement to post comments on the Internet, to write blogs about it, to post screeds on comic book discussion boards, and blast it, if things don't change, that's the last time we ever buy Marvel/DC comics again! (We're serious this time!)

So you might think that true fanboy entitlement is a recent development that arose when AOL started distributing those shiny silver coasters to every man, woman, child and stuffed bull on the planet Earth and we all hunkered down to peer at our computer screens to interconnect with the rest of fandom. For truly, how could a real sense of outraged entitlement take place until we could be part of the global World Wide Web? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh?

For the answer to that question, let's set the Time Toaster for the year 1962, the very dawn of the Marvel Age, and flip open the pages of Fantastic Four #3...careful! Put on the white cotton gloves first!...to the letters page, to see this friendly compliment from Stan 'n' The Gang to all their faithful readers. Ever the enthusiastic figurehead, Stan gallantly compliments the readers, telling them they're "a cut above average":



...before a friendly, Marvel-Yellow box tells us that Fantastic Four has proved so popular right out of the gate that old Willie Lumpkin is getting lumbago bringing all that fan mail to the Bullpen, and Stan (or, more probably, Flo Steinberg) simply doesn't have the time to answer each letter personally. If they did, why, there wouldn't be enough hours in the day to create The World's Greatest Comic Magazine, would there? Sounds reasonable to me, doesn't it? Sounds reasonable to you too, I bet. Sounds reasonable to everyone...or so you'd think!

Two issues later in the letters column of FF #5, enter Mister William J. Marcolongo, with what I do believe is the First Example of Entitlement of the Marvel Age:



In the words of the Smilin' One, sheesh! The editorial reply is humorous and polite enough, but even during these early glory days of what would become one of the great comic book empires of the twentieth century, Stan has just had his first—but by no means his last—run-in with the great fanboy plague known as entitlement.

(Later that day, of course, Stan sent Kirby down to Philadelphia, where Jack beat the little whiner up and took his lunch money. Haw!)

365 Days with Ben Grimm: Day 103

Ad featured in Avengers #31 (August 1966)

Say, what's that say up there on Ben Grimm's rump, huh?

Easter Night Post-Chocolate Binge Cartoon: Bye-Bye Bunny in "Trippin' Bunnies"

Bye-Bye Bunny "Trippin' Bunnies" (2001), directed by David Cowles

Ten of a Kind: Basaball bin berry berry good to comics

(More Ten of a Kind here.)

365 Days with Ben Grimm: Day 102

Panel from Man-Thing v. 1 #21 (September 1975), script by Steve Gerber, pencils by Jim Mooney, inks by Jim Mooney, colors by Janice Cohen, letters by Joe Rosen

Today in Comics History, Easter: Easter Morning Cartoon: Super Chicken in "The Easter Bunny"

Super Chicken: "The Easter Bunny" (1967), starring the voices of Bill Scott and Paul Frees, and produced by Jay Ward and Bill Scott

Separated at Byrne-th Month, Week 2: A Treemendous Fight

Welcome back, my friends, to the fun that never ends...until April 26, at least. It's Week Two of the increasingly exciting Separated at Byrne-th Month!, celebrating, ceremonializing, and contemplating the many cover tributes, salutes, and parodies of that ol' Canucklehead himself, John Byrne! This week: in the midst of his sprawling saga returning Danny Rand to the Marvel Universe (without which we'd not have this, so we owe Byrne a debt of thanks for that), Mister Johnny B sneakily snuck in a homage to the iron one's second issue in Namor's twenty-second issue. (Holy Harvey Dent!) Sure, maybe it ain't easy being green, but clobber that photosynthetic parasite, Danny and Nammy! If giant man-eating plant monsters who won't...heh heh heh...won't leaf you alone are your kinda thing, then check this out!:

L: Iron Fist #2 (December 1975), art by Gil Kane and John Romita
R: Namor #22 (January 1992), art by John Byrne
(Click picture to Audrey II-size)

365 Days with Ben Grimm: Day 101

Panel from The Amazing Spider-Man Super Special (1995), script by David Michelinie, pencils by Dave Hoover, inks by Ralph Cabrera, colors by Tom Smith, letters by Bill Oakley

365 Days with Ben Grimm: Day 100

Segment from cover of Fantastic Four #100 (July 1970), art by Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott
(Click picture to see entire cover)

Bully Value Stamp #83

365 Days with Ben Grimm: Day 99

Panel from Strange Tales #127 (January 1962), script by Stan Lee, pencils by Dick Ayers, inks by Paul Reinman, letters by Artie Simek

Bully Value Stamp #10

365 Days with Ben Grimm: Day 98

Panels from Fantastic Four #2 (January 1962), script by Stan Lee, pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by George Klein, letters by John Duffy

Bully Value Stamp #77

365 Days with Ben Grimm: Day 97

Panels from Alpha Flight #94 (March 1991), script by Fabian Nicieza, pencils by Michael Bair, inks by Mike Manley, colors by Bob Sharen, letters by Janice Chiang

Bully Value Stamp #91

365 Days with Ben Grimm: Day 96

An unusual and very cool one today! Both Douglas Wolk (author of the ultra-cool Reading Comics and, perhaps more appropriate in this instance, author of the funktastic James Brown's Live at the Apollo) and Sean Howe both alerted me via email to boogie on over to the music blog Funky16Corners, most specifically this post where I discovered that not only is Benjamin J. Grimm an ace test pilot, clobberer, and all around good-guy, but he's also the owner and manager of his own record label:



In a word, whoa?!? As big a Ben Grimm fan as I am, I've never heard of or seen this record label before. There's not an awful lot specifically about the label that I can find online, but I I have discovered it's a reggae label out of jamaica that was headed up by Jah Thomas, who's certainly a big name in the reggae world. And who else to tell the world to rock, mon than the original rock man, Mister Grimm, Ben? Here's some other versions of the Grimm Ben record label I've discovered through the magic of the internet—lay your peepers on 'em, brothers and sisters in rhythm:






That last one? Found via eBay, through the courtesy of whom that very copy of "Happy People" is winging its way to me, because I can't help bidding on something unusual with Ben Grimm on it. Also, I like dancing to the ska rhythm, mon.

You can and should do the same by clicking back to that original post over at Funky16Corners that Douglas and Sean alerted me to and checking out the sweet soulful sound of the great, recently late Eddie Bo singing "Check Your Bucket." And don't forget to check out the comments for a little more history on the Grimm Ben record label! Because we all know about his careers as a jet pilot, astronaut, adventurer, wrassler and space ranger...but now you can add record producer to his CV!

Bully Value Stamp #45 (Collect 'Em All!)

Ten of a Kind: Mice love fishing...

...and so do little stuffed bulls! That's right, folks, I'm packing up my tackle box and my rod and reel and my flies and my Bass-0-Matic '76 and heading out for the river that runs through it to spend a delightful cold rainy week up to my hips in cold murky water and...

Naw, come to think of it, I'd rather take the week and head off to Norton Sales Conference, where I'm be learning all about great books coming soon from Norton and our fine distributed publishers, and taking excellent and pitch-worthy notes to help me sell 'em to my pals at Amazon.com. Plus, I get to go eat at fancy restaurants! Whoo hoo!

Anyway, while I'll be "gone fishin'" at sales conference all this week, you still get the benefit of Bully-content with daily "365 Days of Ben Grimm" updates, plus a special every-weekday surprise that will have you reaching for your scissors and your pot of paste. (Collect 'em all!) See you here back on Saturday for all the regular weekend regular content. As always, be good to yourself and others!





















(More Ten of a Kind here.)

365 Days with Ben Grimm: Day 95

Panel from Fantastic Four #543 (March 2007), script by Dwayne McDuffie, pencilled by Mike McKone, inked by Andy Lanning, colored by Paul Mounts, lettered by Rus Wooton