Cover Story - Top 12 Shazam Comic Covers

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So, there’s a new superhero film at the box office and that means a new dive into the annals of comic book history.  This week has given us a look at the first ever feature film debut of Shazam! the world’s mightiest mortal and one time biggest thing on the planet.  Despite his years worth of lawsuits and problems with using his own name Shazam has done fairly well for himself in comics with a number of popular series and appearances to his name but I’ll be focusing specifically on the ‘90s comic The Power of Shazam, by Jerry Ordway.  

This was the last time Shazam enjoyed an actual ongoing title and it features some truly beautiful cover work from Ordway with these lovely painted covers.  It’s one of those really enjoyable ‘90s comics that’s earnest and fun and is constantly forgotten when bitter comic nerds try to rewrite the decade as nothing but grungy anti-heroes.  But enough bashing at the try-hard vanguard of faux tastemakers, let’s dig into this series and get the cover story on the top 12 Power of Shazam covers. 

Panel Vision - Art of the Prank

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It’s April Fool’s Day, which usually means a day of disbelieving anything you see on the Internet but I’ve elected to celebrate the holiday a different way.  Rather than a fake review I’m looking back at one of my favorite super villains of all time through the lens of one of his few starring roles: Oswald Loomis- The Prankster.  Created in 1942 by Jerry Siegel and John Sikela, Prankster is one of the few non-powered villains in Superman’s rogues gallery and a proud member of the joke-themed villain cadre alongside the likes of The Trickster and the Joker. 

He’s been through a number of iterations, starting off as a cartoonishly fat character who’d go after Superman using deadly practical jokes and gags.  He also got somewhat re-imagined for the New 52 era but neither of those are the Prankster I’ve chosen to focus on today.  No, instead I’ll be looking at the Prankster of Superman #660 from 2007, written by Kurt Busiek with art by Mike Manley and Bret Belvins, color by Lee Loughridge, and letters by Rob Leigh. 

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.

Cover Story - Top 10 Sabrina Covers

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I swear, at some point I’m just going to have to transition this blog into something that talks about comic book adaptations and nothing else.  It’s honestly kind of startling the explosion in comic book adaptations we’ve gotten over the last 5 years, even beyond the confines of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Case in point, today’s Cover Story will be looking at the top 10 covers featuring Sabrina, the Teenage Witch.  Most folks now probably know Sabrina from her ‘90s TV sitcom or the newly premiering Netflix series The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina but she actually has a long and storied career in the pages of Archie Comics.  

While rarely counted alongside the likes of DC, Marvel, and Image Archie Comics has absolutely dominated the non-superhero side of comic books since it set about imposing industry standards to kill its competition in that field (this is comic books people, there are no clean hands.)  While Archie and the rest of the Riverdale gang are their flagship crew they’ve also enjoyed a smattering of other long-lived successes, with Sabrina being core among them so let’s take a look at her top 10 comic covers.

Eternal Character Roster Revealed

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So, we’ve finally gotten a bit of an update on Marvel’s still happening Eternals movie.  Specifically, we know the film will be about the clash between the Eternals and their ancient enemies the Deviants and that Marvel will be aiming for colorblind casting, which is a pretty major positive.  We’ve also received a character breakdown of who to expect in the new film, though they’re basically just names at this point.  

However, there are some very surprising names on this list and some really out of left field descriptions worth digging into along with the more pedestrian choices for an Eternals movie.  What’s more, this seems as good a place as any to dive into the basics of the Eternals’ core characters.  So, let’s breakdown The Eternals character list.

Panel Vision - Foolkiller (2017)

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Happy April Fools everyone, if there can really be such a thing.  I’ve elected to celebrate this most ignominious holiday by delving deep into the “fool” part of the name with a look at one of my favorite superhero G-listers: Foolkiller.  Created in 1974 in the pages of Man-Thing by the incomparable Steve Gerber, Foolkiller is one of the many bizarre no-name characters that tend to pepper the lower tiers of the Marvel echelon.  He’s best described as a more comedic version of the Punisher, largely because Steve Gerber was one of the premiere funnymen of ‘70s Marvel comics (he invented Howard the Duck, after all.) 

From those humble beginnings Foolkiller’s actually been re-imagined about 4 different times, once as a hardcore murder vigilante with a weird bondage gimp costume, once in the Marvel mature readers line MAX Comics, and once as part of Deadpool’s expansive entourage.  I’m going to focus today on the last of those three, the Greg Salinger Foolkiller, and his short-lived five-issue comic from 2016 written by Max Bemis, drawn by Dalibor Talajic, and colored by Miroslav Mrva. 

Cover Story - Top 10 Black Lightning Covers

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Another week another CW show to pay close attention to.  Seriously, as much as I love the expanding CWniverse I’m going to have start dedicating this entire blog to following their vast exploits now they’ve added a 5^th show to the lineup.  If you’re unfamiliar with the new series it’s called Black Lightning and revolves around Jefferson Pierce, a teacher, and father with electrical powers and a tendency to take on the establishment.  

Jefferson’s had a long and storied carrier in the comics from early solo comics to being a core part of the Batman team The Outsiders to his role as Secretary of Education for President Luthor all the way to being a member of the Justice League of America.  Given that lengthy time I’ve decided to celebrate his new series with a bit of a cross-section of Black Lightning’s work with a look back at the top 10 comic covers, he’s starred in.

Week of Review - X-Men: Monster Armor

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It is X-Men Week here on the Lido Shuffle, specifically because this is the week Fox’s new series The Gifted premieres.  Even though The Gifted is a Monday premiere I’ll be spending the whole week looking at the history of the X-Men on TV starting with the show that started it all: X-Men, the animated series.  Premiering in 1992, X-Men paved the way for a massively profitable decade of Marvel TV adaptations and set the precedent for the initial run of films that are beloved by people to this day.  

It’s also one of the most popular animated series ever made and more or less a direct transliteration of the comics so I don’t have a lot to say about the show proper, which is why this is an Extended Toy Box entry.  The X-Men animated series tie-in toy line lasted a staggering 7 years passing through a ton of variations and unique threads and today I’m spotlighting one of the coolest ones: Monster Armor.  

Cover Story - Top 10 Sentinels Covers

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This coming Monday marks the premiere of The Gifted, a new series from Fox tying into the X-Men mythos.  The X-Men have honestly kind of struggled for modern relevance, as the Avengers became Marvel’s moneymaking brand, which has always struck me as odd.  I mean, we live in an age of mass struggle by marginalized groups for basic human rights- that’s always been the X-Men’s greatest element.  It’s just hard to think that in an era of Black Lives Matter, the Refugee Crisis, the Mexican Border Wall, Muslim travel ban, ICE, and the struggle for Trans rights the X-Men can’t find a foothold.  

The Gifted looks to change that by zeroing in on the X-Men’s most topical bad guy- the Sentinels, basically a domestic anti-mutant drone army.  When they were created that particular idea sounded a lot more like science fiction than a real policy that’s probably just around the corner but regardless let’s dig into X-Men history to see why these big purple robots have always been so enduring. 

Meet the Mutants of The Gifted

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We’re mere days away from the premiere of Fox’s The Gifted series, the second live-action X-Men show to hit the airwaves after Legion and fourth overall after Generation X and Mutant X back in the ‘90s and 2000s respectively.  It’s a pretty big event, even if the show proper looks kind of far removed from the X-Men aesthetic and mythos and more grounded in the “hated and feared” narrative.  

I don’t mind them going that route- if ever there was a time for a show about government-sponsored violence and bigotry towards the marginalized it would be now.  Even so, I am intrigued by the collection of mutants they’ve cobbled together for the series an what it suggests about where things will be headed as the main heroes struggle to escape the Sentinels and find sanctuary from humanity.  With that in mind, let’s take a look at the mutants of The Gifted.

Panel Vision - Giant-Sized Man-Thing #4

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So, as I write this one of the big cultural deals of the moment is a new Netflix series called 13 Reasons Why.  It’s a teenage melodrama revolving around the suicide of a young woman and the collection of cassette tapes she left behind explaining her 13 reasons why.  It’s gotten quite a bit of controversy, mostly from groups of actual experts on suicide prevention who are mad that the show misrepresents the actual circumstances that can lead to suicide as well as prevents a graphic depiction of the act itself.  

However, being a massive geek, this format of gritty high school realism, post-mortem messages to the living, and deconstructing the performance grief mandated in the wake of a tragedy reminded me of one of the best forgotten comic stories of all time.  Coming to us from way back in 1975, it’s an extra-long comic story under the name of The Kid’s Night Out, courtesy of one of the greatest comic book authors of all time alongside his most underrated creation- Steve Gerber’s Man-Thing. 

Cover Story - Top 10 Iron Fist Covers

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So, let’s talk about Iron Fist.  By now you’ve probably heard at least a little about him from his new Netflix show and the stewing Online controversy over it.  I don’t want to get too bogged down in that particular conversation, largely because we’re here today to talk about comic covers.  

However, I am still looking at artwork revolving around a white savior trope with a lot of it steeped in Orientalism.  In that regard let me just say that Iron Fist as the great white hope has always been a bad character concept, even when it was widely considered okay back in the mid-'70s. 

What’s more, I’d dare argue that Iron Fist has always been brought down by the awkwardness of trying to fit an Asian pulp aesthetic into the superhero world, so much so that I was barely able to fill out this list of covers.  However, there are still good Iron Fist covers out there and some of the best ones actually manage to address this pretty well.  So, let’s dive into the 40 years of Iron Fist history to see the best of the middle ground. 

Cover Story - Top 8 Wolverine Covers

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And so the celebration of Wolverine’s latest film adaptation comes to a close in the only way it could: a dive into the comic book covers that have made him such an icon over the past 40 years or so.  

Curiously, however, despite being one of the handful of characters who could keep Marvel Comics afloat all by himself Wolverine’s cover offerings are a little less than robust.  

There are certainly some excellent entries and iconic additions but for the most part, Wolverine comics tend to filter through the same handful of shouting and stabbing poses ad nauseam.  Given that, this is going to be a shorter list but one with a greater eye towards history and iconography.  

After all, Wolverine is one the biggest characters in all of the comics, a franchise unto himself with a visual language steeped in a long history of unique genres and definitive visuals and we’re going to check out 8 of them right here. 

Panel Vision - Old Man Logan

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So, by now Logan is looking to be on track to be the biggest superhero hit of the season and the latest genuine home run for Fox’s X-Men franchise since last year’s Deadpool.  That makes sense- the film looks incredibly well conceived with a lot of excellent elements, and it’s basically just the most recent iteration of the trend of Mark Millar comics getting amazing adaptations.  

If you’re not aware of him, Mark Millar is a Scottish comics author whose been a major staple of the comic scene for the better part of the 2000s.  Millar’s one of the co-creators of Marvel’s very successful Ultimate Universe, which helped inspire the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and wrote the comics that gave us Wanted, Kick-Ass 1 & 2, Kingsmen: The Secret Service, and Captain America: Civil War. 

The one wrinkle about this success is that virtually all of those films changed a ton from the source material because the original comics aren’t really that great.  I already dedicated a whole article to how bad the original Civil War books are, and I could easily do the same for the rest.  You can already see that with Logan as it’s clearly shed nearly everything from Old Man Logan save for the old Wolverine concept.  However, this case is a bit of an exception because Old Man Logan is a great comic. 

Filmland - 8 Heroes Who Deserve the LEGO Treatment

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So, it’s now safe to assume that the LEGO Batman movie is a bona fide smash hit.  The animated spin-off to 2014’s breakout LEGO Movie has taken the world by storm with its brilliant, bighting, and irreverent parody of the brooding dark knight detective.  Coupled with a superb voice work from the rest of the cast and a script that gives us a shockingly fresh take on Batman by emphasizing the Bat Family as his strongest component, LEGO Batman has woken the world up to a whole new kind of superhero blockbuster.  

Given that Marvel is still the only name in the game producing quality superhero content I welcome our new world of animated, LEGO, superheroes, especially for beleaguered DC Comics who have yet to make a good live action superhero film during the 2010s.  Given that success and the innumerable mishandled or unattemptable superhero properties clogging up the pop cultural drain, I’ve come up with my list of 8 superhero franchises that deserve the LEGO treatment. 

Cover Story - Top 10 Green Arrow Covers

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Another year and another season of Arrow dear readers, almost like clockwork.  This year, to celebrate the CW superhero show that started it all I’ve elected to bite the bullet and finally dig into the best covers Green Arrow ever appeared in the DCU.  For the sake of context I’m mostly going to be drawing from what’s known as “the Long Bow” era from the 1980s as I really like the visual design of it and don’t care for the New 52 or Silver Age Green Arrow stuff quite as much, though I reserve the right to return to this particular subject matter should those other eras produce something worth digging into in greater detail.  With that said, let’s take a look at everyone’s favorite emerald-clad Batman knock-off (that’s literally his origin) with the top 10 Green Arrow comic covers.

Cover Story - Top 10 Son of Satan Covers

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Another season of Lucifer is upon us, which means I’ve another excuse to dive deep into the well of comic book devils.  Last year I took a look at the original comic Lucifer is allegedly based on so this year let’s travel across the isle to Marvel in the 1970s for that was the last time Satan was really big in pop culture, or rather bigger than being a near globally recognized shorthand for evil would imply.  Son of Satan was one of many cheeky little comics published by Marvel in the mid-'70s as part of a break with the comics code, a self-imposed industry standard of what was considered suitable to be featured in publishing.  

At the time Marvel was still very much the scrappy new kid on the comics block so loudly declaring the comics code unnecessary were part of how they were cementing their cool image of “not your dad’s superhero company,” even if their books weren’t meant to appeal to slightly older children.  So, with all that said let’s dive into the shallow end and the get cover story on the son of Satan. 

Panel Vision - Medicine Soldiers

At the time of writing the US is paying witness to one of the most egregious miscarriages of justice and corruptions of the legal system we’ve seen in quite some time.  I’m referring of course to the native water protectors at Standing Rock facing down the corporate machinery and military police of the Dakota Access Pipeline.  

If you’re unfamiliar with the details, an oil pipeline was deemed too dangerous to go through the Dakota capital of Bismarck and so has been rerouted through native lands of the Sioux people against their will. 

Rather than just let a soulless corporation steal their land and poison their resources the Sioux have taken to non-violently blocking construction.  In response, authorities have responded with near deadly force- spraying protestors with freezing water and even shooting a woman’s arm off with rubber bullets.  

The whole thing is an absolute cluster and here are some links if you want to give support to the protesters, but we’re here to talk about comics.  Specifically, the entire situation reminded me of the comic that first got me interested in Native Rights, one of the best Batman stories of the modern era- Medicine Soldiers. 

Panel Vision - Fighting Fascism in "Black Terror"

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Edited by Robert Beach 

Well, here we are I suppose: thinking the unthinkable. In case you somehow missed it, Donald Trump is now the President-Elect of the United States. I say President-Elect because I, like most Americans, am still hopeful for some kind of pre-inauguration miracle like a devastating comet or the onset of war, but it’s not a high hope. The real question is shaping up to be “Where do we go from here” now that over half the nation gets to spend at least the next 2 years wondering or not they get to have a country tomorrow. 

Obviously, I’ve never shied away from focusing on politics in these reviews; it’s part of the societal texture through which we ingest media and claiming some “objectivity” to the state of the world is, at best, obstinate denial and, at worse, willfully misleading. What’s more, the whole reason we make art is to impose meaning and narrative onto the randomness that is life, to try and wring some measure of realization out of an all too indifferent universe. Art is how we make the world the way we’d like it to be. With that in mind, let’s talk about Black Terror.

1st Look at Arrow Season 5's New Heroes

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As Arrow barrels towards both us and what might well be its final season, the pressure is mounting for CW’s original superhero show to deliver something truly new and dynamic for its fifth season.  That pressure has been there for Arrow pretty much ever since its spin-off The Flash started pulling in a larger audience and revamped the entire superhero television tone in late 2014 but Arrow is really feeling the burn this year.  

After a magic-centric 4^th season didn’t really shake loose any new viewers, this new season features Green Arrow putting together a new team of vigilantes inspired by his deeds to protect Star City.  We’ve been getting the casting news all summer but now, thanks to some behind the scenes pics and a new trailer, we have our first new look at team Arrow 2.0.