Cover Story - Top 10 Silver Age Captain America Covers

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This Friday marks the premiere of Captain America: Civil War.  It’s a major event, the first Marvel film of 2016 and the launch of their 3^rd phase that will climax in the epic Infinity War two-parter.  What’s more, this is the first big, multi-hero Marvel film after Avengers: Age of Ultron, which was good but received a less than stellar reception from fans and at the box office, losing out to Jurassic World and Star Wars: Force Awakens in the year end wrap up.  There’s a lot riding on this but at the same time, Captain America has emerged to be the superhero of the 2010s, embodying the ideal of the superhero within the cultural zeitgeist in a way few others have. 

Chris Evans’ Captain America is right up there with Christopher Reeve’s Superman, Michael Keaton Batman, and Toby McGuire’s Spider-Man as the living symbol and ambassador of this whole genre.  Given that wait and circumstance, let’s celebrate this turn of events with another dive into the shallow end to get the Cover Story on the top 10 Silver Age Captain America covers.

Comics Rainbow - Lex Luthor

Well this has been a strange year for the Superman franchise.  On the one hand it enjoyed what has been easily the franchise’s best live action installment since Superman 2 in the form of CBS’ Supergirl.  On the other hand, it was struck a possible deathblow by the worst live action Superman entry of all time in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, a film so bad it killed any future plans for more Superman movies.  Given my maniacal obsession with topicality and the fact we’re still talking about Superman related things I figured I’d jump on board with a look at Superman’s greatest foe Lex Luthor. 

Lex Luthor is one of the most well-known and oldest super villains of all time, first being introduced in 1940 and working his way through numerous live action and animated adaptation.  In the 70 plus years of his time in the comics he’s gone through numerous changes and re-imaginings, some terrible, some brilliant, some meh and we’re going to dive in to get the full spectrum on all of them.  

Cover Story - Top 12 Twilight Zone Covers

Hello and welcome to Cover Story, diving as little into the world of comic books as possible.  Well it’s a new year and with a new year comes the annual Twilight Zone marathon.  In case you’ve never encountered it before, every year on New Year’s Eve and the Fourth of July the SciFi channel hosts a massive marathon of the sci-fi/horror/fantasy anthology TV series the Twilight Zone.  Given that just happened and there’s nothing else topical to base this week’s Cover Story on we’re taking a look at the Twilight Zone comics that were published alongside the original show back in the 1950s.  Given that comics of that era were all about weird stories and anthology storytelling the Twilight Zone was the perfect fit for a comic adaptation.  So, let’s dive into the shallow end and get the cover story on the top 12 Twilight Zone comic covers.

Panel Vision - Legend of the Hawkman

Previously on Panel Vision I discussed the 1989 comic Hawkworld, a dark, gritty reimagining of the Hawkman characters and mythos that was informed by the stylistic trends and affects of Judge Dredd, Bladerunner, and Soylent Green.  However, despite being critically well regarded and establishing a handful of still relevant things Hawkworld really didn’t leave that big a footprint on the comics landscape or Hawkman in particular.  It spawned an ongoing comic that lasted for a few years followed by a new Hawkman comic in 1993, which has been rightfully forgotten by all good and descent comic fans, and then that was it. 

By 1997, when DC made a major shift in writers and series spearheaded by Grant Morrison’s relaunched Justice League of America comic, Hawkman had more or less passed on from continuity and would stay there for about 4 years.  In 2001, Hawkman returned with a back to basics look and a strained attempt to combine all the most popular elements of his mythos at the time.  Though interesting that Hawkman is pretty inhospitable to new comers, which is a shame given how much he incorporated from the Silver Age character while elevating the material through modern writing sensibilities.  Thankfully, in 2000 there was an exceptional mini-series that did just that: Legend of the Hawkman.

Cover Story - Top 15 Wonder Woman Covers

Hello, and welcome to Cover Story: digging as little into comic books as we can.  In case you haven’t heard there’s a Wonder Woman in the works and we just got our first picture from it.  I’ll discuss the picture in more depth later down the line but for now I’ll just that I really like it and it’s actually got me excited for a DC film for a change.  It also got me thinking about Wonder Woman, one of the most underappreciated comic book heroes of all time.  Wonder Woman has an incredibly long and storied history, both in terms of inception and the actual content that informs her comics.  Just like fellow titans Batman and Superman, Wonder Woman’s comic was one of the few superhero books that never stopped running during the decline of superhero popularity.  That means she lasted through 2 whole decades of creativity and craziness, like the fanciful and unrestricted insanity that was the ‘40s or the blend of sci-fi and horror weirdness that was the ‘50s.  With all that in mind I’ll be focusing solely on her volume 1 comics from #1-#105, the issue where her origin was revamped for a new decade.  So, let’s dive into the shallow end and get the cover story on the top 15 Wonder Woman covers. 

Panel Vision - Top 25 Super-Jerk Covers

Edited by Robert Beach

Earlier this week, Frank Miller released one of his first illustrations in a long time. Miller’s suffered a great loss of physical mobility in recent years, so the fact that he’s recovered enough to draw again should be a pretty major event. Unfortunately, his newest piece of art was 1. Linked to the upcoming Dark Knight: Master Race and 2. Kind of terrible. It’s a picture of the Atom getting punched into Space by the ugliest Superman you’ve ever seen complete with comically massive fists and a visibly outlined dick. 

At this point, “Frank Miller does kind of awful thing” is hardly news, but in the midst of the Internet all having a good laugh about #SuperJunk, Kurt Busiek raised the interesting point that Superman’s ugliness on the cover was intentional. It was an interesting argument, and even though I don’t fully agree or think the intentionality of the image makes up for the hilariously poor artwork, it did get people talking and thinking. Specifically, it go me thinking about all the great covers of Superman being an asshole…so that’s what we’re doing today.

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/