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.

CW Announces Crisis on Earth-X Crossover

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I don’t think we really appreciate how genuinely good the CWniverse has actually turned out to be.  For a collection of series dramas with wildly variant budgets cooked up by the network that gave us One Tree Hill and 90210, the CWniverse is a staggeringly excellent achievement that I think will be looked back on the same way we remember Adam West’s Batman or Linda Carter’s Wonder Woman.  

It’s a great collection of adaptation that really understands that it’s the characterization and drama that have made superheroes so compelling for 80 years and counting, so it’s only fitting that they would do a wedding episode. 

Yes, this year’s crossover event between The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, and Arrow has been revealed as a wedding story about the marriage of Barry Allen and Iris West, the central romance on The Flash.  However, in the grand tradition of comic book weddings, this particular matrimony is to be interrupted by unwelcome visitors from the multiverse/CW Seed in the form of the Ray.  

Making his jump from animation to live action the Ray, CW’s first gay character, is set to appear in the wedding episode, hotly pursued by villain’s from Earth-X, a world where the Nazis won WW2 and Supergirl, Flash, and Green Arrow are all Nazi Supermen.  Let’s talk Crisis on Earth-X.

Filmland - Leprechaun Series

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Geek culture and St Patrick’s Day have never really been comfortable bedfellows.  I’m not sure why that is, holidays, in general, tend to fit the geek aesthetic shockingly well.  They’re all about strict color-coded palettes, they’ve got mascots and usually some degree of lore, but for whatever reason St. Patty’s has never found the home among the nerds that Christmas, Halloween, and others have secured.  

Maybe it’s the emphasis on raucous social interaction putting people off- I couldn’t say.  I will say that the one place where nerd culture and the ephemera of St. Patty’s- stereotypical Irish stuff, a handful of surface level Celtic folklore, four leaf clovers, and most importantly the holiday’s favorite mascot, combine is in the 1993 horror-comedy oddity Leprechaun. 

There was a time everybody had heard of this flick though I think its ubiquity has faded as the video store era has evaporated from memory.  However, there was an age when the Leprechaun franchise, a horror series based around the joke of having a little person dressed in a caricature of “Olde Irish” garb, was a powerful enough juggernaut to spawn five sequels and even a reboot, though we’ll get to that.  So, with St. Patty’s upon us once more let’s dive into that misbegotten era that was the ‘90s for a full look at the Leprechaun film series. 

Panel Vision - Master Men

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As I write this, it is the midst of December 2016- the dark times, as I presume future us will refer to the latter half of the 2010s.  In the middle of the long dark night of the nation’s soul comes a thoroughly ironic television event- season 2 of Amazon’s Man in the High Castle.  

The series is one of several prestige streaming shows produced in the wake of Netflix’ breakout success with original programming like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black.  High Castle, as it’s often shortened to, is an adaptation of a Philip K. Dick book of the same name from 1963 about an alternate history where the Axis won World War 2. 

These days “what if the Nazis won” is more colloquially known as “the 2016 election” so getting a whole TV show out of Nazi-ified Americana has decidedly lost its luster for the second season.  However, the event gives me a chance to dive into the comics backlog to once again talk about one of my favorite comics characters of all time: Uncle Sam.  Not only that, this is Uncle Sam’s latest adventure, going head-to-head with a Nazi version of the DCU in a tale aptly called…Master Men. 

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 15 Evil Empire Covers

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This Friday marks the premiere of The Purge: Election Year, the third installment in the shockingly profitable political horror/dystopian thriller/Slasher action film series.  Yes, The Purge wears many hats but the one most key to this article is that of political horror, which this latest installment seems to be getting back to in a big way.  

There was still a socio-economic angle to the excellent Purge: Anarchy but Election Year looks to be taking the “American nightmare” set-up full force with a ton of creepy, Slasher infused American iconography punctuating pretty much all the marketing for it.  All that nightmarish Americana got me thinking about Evil Empire, a fantastic comic from BOOM Studios about the rise of anarchic fascism in the US.  

It was a great comic and my number 10 pick for the 10 best comics of 2015, it also featured a ton of spectacular covers that we’re going to showcase today.  So, with that said, let’s dive into the shallow end and get the cover story on the top 15 Evil Empire comic covers.

Panel Vision - DC Multiverse Guide

Edited by Robert Beach

This week marks a major milestone for superhero adaptations. This is the week CW’s The Flash takes a trip to Earth-2. While the Earth-2 of TV is markedly different from that of the comics, I figured now would be a good time to pen my guide to the DC Multiverse. It’s pretty much confirmed Flash will be travelling the other realities of DC’s parallel Earths. 

So I’ve put together a collection of Earth’s to watch out for and what you need to know about them should they pop up. This is also a pretty fundamental baseline for understanding why the DC multiverse exists and how all these parallel universes came to be in the first place. With that said, here’s your guide to the DC Multiverse. 

Panel Vision - DC Comic Pasts

So, Legends of Tomorrow is on the way and a big part of this show is going to be time travel.  How much time travel is involved is still a little unclear but we at least know a good chunk of the show will take place in the ‘70s and that Jonah Hex, a cowboy hero from America’s old west (1870-1880s) will play a role in the story.  Those are both pretty great ideas and they’ve got me thinking about the history of the DC Universe.  One of the weird things about comic book universes is that because of how much unregulated weirdness was popping around comics for so long they end up with super weird visions of history.

 Sometimes this is due to the mandate of setting, like how all of DC’s cowboy adventures had to happen in the old west even if they involved guys like El Diablo, a bank teller who was possessed by a spirit of vengeance.  Other times it’s the result of time travel nonsense or just the fact that some characters and places have just always existed.  As such I’m looking back at some of the craziest and most interesting points in DC Comics’ history, let’s dive in. 

Panel Vision - Blockbusters According to Comics 2015

The end of one year and beginning of a new one is a time of serious duality, a time to look back and reminisce while also dream of the future yet to come.  In that respect I’ve got my own blend of year appraisal and prognostication/wishful thinking for the year to come in the form of “Blockbusters According to Comics.”  This is where I look over some of the biggest hit films, TV, and trends of the past year and try and find the comic book property that could be adapted to fit well into that particular cresting wave.  Currently I’m limiting my suggestions to DC and Marvel properties but we’ll see, in the years to come maybe Image and Darkhorse and friends will have enough properties and clout to consider an adaptation.  Till then, here are the blockbusters according to comics. 

Panel Vision - Comic Book Presidents

In case you aren’t one of my American readers, and I know you exist thanks to blogger’s analytics page, we over here in the states are currently in the midst of a fairly crazy presidential election build up.  We haven’t started the primaries yet but they’re looming ever closer and it’s been a wild ride punctuated by a slew of hilariously awful Republican candidates and the still ludicrous convolution of the Democratic leads.  I’ve already released a number of articles capitalizing on this particular election cycle so here’s another one because if you think the real life candidates are insane…well you’re right but here are a bunch of completely weird and out there superheroes and villains who somehow managed to take the highest office in the land against the better judgment of the electorate and editors everywhere.

Panel Vision - History of Uncle Sam & The Freedom Fighters

Over this last weekend Amazon released an original blockbuster streaming series entitled Man in the High Castle, an adaptation of the Philip K. Dick story of the same name about an alternate history in which the Axis powers won World War 2.  I haven’t watched it yet but I’ve heard a lot of good things so far and I’m already a pretty big fan of alternate histories in general.  However, alternate histories are actually pretty rare outside of literature.  There are plenty of historical farces but as far as alternate futures crafted by changes in history that’s actually pretty rare and the ones there are usually come from comic books.  

Which leads us to today’s subject, the most enduring and popular alternate history in comic books, the world of Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters.  The heroes of an alternate timeline entitled Earth-10, Uncle Sam and his Freedom Fighters live in a world where President Roosevelt suffered a fatal heart attack at the height of World War 2 and the resulting instability cost the allies the war.  Now working in the underground Uncle Sam leads a small team of super heroes in a never-ending insurrection against the Axis Empire.  

Flash of Two Worlds Poster

Early in the year I reported that Jay Garrick, the original Golden Age Flash, would be coming to CW’s Flash show in its second season. At the time, this raised a lot of questions. It had been announced that Jay Garrick would be on the show but now word about his abilities or how he’d be portrayed.  The only thing we’d heard was that he would be playing an older mentor figure to Barry, filling the boots of Dr. Harrison Wells from season 1. Well, we have our first major confirmation that CW is planning way more than that with this amazing Flash of Two Worlds reveal poster.

As you can see from the poster, Jay Garrick will have super speed in his appearance on the Flash and even be sporting a costume drawn directly from his Golden Age depiction. This is pretty good news as it confirms that CW will be working with the classical costume design for most of the JSA as they slowly introduced them over the course of season 2, instead the New 52 costume redesigns. More importantly, this poster confirms that CW is planning to introduce Earth 2 this coming season.