Cover Story - Top 12 John Constantine Covers

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This is actually an article I was planning to do last October but that turned out to be a busy month.  That’s sort of the thing about Legends of Tomorrow, it’s a delight of a show with a ton of deep cut geeky heroes but it can be hard to keep up with how often they feature characters that could demand a whole number of articles, reviews, and lists.  Today we gather to celebrate John Constantine, everyone’s favorite blonde cockney street wizard and trench coat wearer.  

I joke but John is among a handful of mystical and urban fantasy characters at DC, and their adjacent imprint Vertigo Comics, who call themselves The Trench Coat Brigade, so just know that’s where we’re starting from with this dive into the top 12 Constantine comic covers.  I’ll be drawing from John’s first solo comic entitled Hellblazer, which began life as part of DC’s mature readers imprint Vertigo Comics and ended after 300 issues when they decided to import John to the main DC universe.  That’s a lot of titles to get through so let’s get down to it and get the cover story on the top 12 John Constantine comic covers.

Panel Vision - Uncle Sam

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It’s Fourth of July Weekend here in the US and, given my obsessive need for topicality, that means reviewing something American.  This Independence Day I’m going to be focusing on one of my all time favorite comics starring one of my all time favorite superheroes: Uncle Sam.  I’ve already covered Uncle Sam’s history on this program but if you need a refresher: Uncle Sam was a 1940s superhero version of the famous propaganda character.  He doesn’t really have an origin in the conventional sense, but rather just exists as a persistent embodiment of the American Spirit.

That’s a weird set-up for a superhero at the best of times so Sam’s always had an eclectic history in comics.  Case in point, in the late ‘90s, one of the most fertile times in DC Comics’ entire history, the people running DC decided to give Uncle Sam over to their newly formed imprint Vertigo Comics for a 2 issue prestige graphic novel.  The result is one of the most challenging and politically charged works to come out of superhero comics this side of Civil War or that one time it turned out Nixon was part of the Secret Empire. 

Cover Story - Top 13 Justice League Europe Covers

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For those not following current events, I write this Cover Story in the wake of the UK’s landmark bad decision to leave the European Union.  This isn’t a series about politics (though lord knows that’s never stopped me before) so I’m not going to devote this page to the plethora of ways in which this is a monumentally bad thing for everyone involved.  Instead, I’ve decided to focus on a nostalgic look back at happier times for Europe and for myself with one of my all time favorite comic books: Justice League Europe.

Running from 1989 to 1993, Justice League Europe is my exhibit A in my argument that ‘90s comics didn’t suck.  It was essentially a spin-off of the very popular 1987 comic Justice League International, an effort by authors Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis to bring the DCU into a more multicultural age.  This was the era when genuine comedy and flawed humanity were introduced to the DCU and it remains one of the most creative, fun, and enjoyable eras in the company’s history.  

Justice League Europe followed in those same footsteps, adopting the ingenuous and hilarious central gimmick of being the superhero team equivalent of Euro Disneyland.  It’s funny, it’s dramatic, it’s action packed, it’s Justice League Europe; and with that said, let’s dive into the shallow end and get the cover story on the top 13 covers.

Panel Vision - V for Vendetta, book vs film

So, it’s November 5^th, Guy Fawkes day, in which we Americans celebrate this holiday we’ve generally never heard of and don’t grasp the actual meaning behind by wearing a mask we saw in a movie adapted from a comic in 2006.  All of which is my very round about way of saying that I’m going to be talking about V for Vendetta today, specifically looking at the movie adaptation compared to the Alan Moore comic book that inspired it.  These two works loom large in popular and comic book culture as landmarks of the superhero genre and with good reason as they’re both very well made and enjoyable works.  

The graphic novel comes to us from comics’ legend Alan Moore as a sort of follow-up to the mass success he’d enjoyed with Watchmen a few years prior.  Meanwhile, the film adaptation comes to us from a screenplay by the excellent Wachowskis and starred Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving.  Both works are of excellent caliber even though their actual importance and deeper themes tend to be misinterpreted by their very large fan bases, a fact that’s actually quite impressive given how monumentally different both stories actually are.

Zack Snyder Bringing Watchmen to HBO?

One of the great struggles of the modern geek age has been DC Comics continued quest for mainstream interest and relevance.  This battle has been raging more or less continuously since 1986 when The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen hit stands and transformed the comics landscape forever.  Since then DC has been desperately working to claim permanent cultural dominance through movies, TV, games, and all manner of other methods. 

This has come with obvious ups and downs but recently they’ve hit something of a major snag.  While Marvel launches themselves forward with hip new comics that showcase diversity and accessibility DC has floundered in numerous reboots and branding initiatives along with some fairly bad film failures like Green Lantern and Man of Steel. 

The only place DC seems to be winning its cultural battle is on TV as Arrow and Flash have cemented themselves as major superhero hits alongside blossoming success like Gotham and Supergirl and upcoming shows like Lucifer, Preacher, and Legends of Tomorrow.  Even though Marvel has its own successful TV shows and Image has tested the television waters a number of times this is where DC has really planted its flag.  So, I guess it then makes sense that they would try and wed their new success to their old success, by which I mean of course a Watchmen TV show.

Astro City #27 Review

I take a look at the latest issue of Astro City in my review that Kurt Busiek doesn't want you to see (I assume he doesn't anyway, he tweeted about something about it I am told) check it out over on All-Comic.com http://all-comic.com/2015/astro-city-27/

Tet #1 Review

I discuss my love of sleazy stories with a social conscience as we take a look at the new IDW Vietnam comic entitled simply Tet, about a murder mystery set on the eve of the Tet Offensive, full review over at Front Towards Gamer

http://ftg.operationsupplydrop.org/2015/09/11/tet-1-review-comics/

Panel Vision - Killing Joke 30 Years Later

A couple weeks ago DC and Warner Brothers announced the latest in a long line of fairly good animated film projects would be an adaptation of Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke.  Since then actor Mark Hamill has voiced a lot of interest in the part of the Joker.  Hamill played the Joker in the insanely popular Batman animated series from the ‘90s as well as its subsequent Justice League, Batman Beyond, and Mask of the Phantasm follow-ups.  He was also the voice of the character for the monster hit video game series Batman Arkham, which enjoyed a very successful 4^th installment earlier this summer with Arkham Knight.  Now DC/WB have officially cast Hamill in the part, most likely in direct response to the net fan response Hamill’s comments garnered over coupled with how similar his work in Arkham Knight is to a lot of aspects of The Killing Joke.  The thing is a lot of people don’t see this as a positive, coming down hard on the decision though their issue seems more to be with the very fact that DC is making a Killing Joke movie at all.  

Panel Vision - Captain Britain: Crooked World

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Alan Moore is one of those unique authors in the realm of comics that most people are aware of without really experiencing his full volume of work.  Most folks know Moore for Watchmen, V for Vendetta, or The Killing Joke, maybe League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Marvelman if they’re particularly comic book minded.  I understand this impetus to an extent as the thin shaft of Moore’s work that’s widely known comes without the continuity baggage of his early work or the uncomfortable lewdness of his recent endeavors.  However this has left a ton of his great stuff unknown to a lot of readers, one such comic is his excellent Captain Britain stuff. 

In this review I’ll only be focusing on one key story that Moore wrote ‘Crooked World,’ but there are a ton of other great Captain Britain stories by him to check out.  Captain Britain- Crooked World just came to mind because a lot of its key elements have been popping up recently between Marvel’s Secret War comic, the recent Captain Britain and the Mighty Defenders mini-series, and the oncoming Captain America 3: Civil War.  All of these trends flow from the same source that is this comic.