♆ The Macho Response ♆: Um, Why Is Everyone Talking About Spiderman?

♆ The Macho Response ♆: Um, Why Is Everyone Talking About Spiderman?

Webcomic updated

Webcomic has just been updated with some new pages. The preview of the story (the full story is 200 pages long) of Book 1 is at an end, remaining pages to be put up will be out of any particular order.

John Ridgway on the Comics Code and American comicbooks then and now...

Source: The Comics Journal (see previous post for link or sidebar of blog roll links)

RIDGWAY: The Comics Code was brought in by the comic companies themselves, to circumvent the possibility of legislation being brought in to enforce standards to protect children. The American comic scene is built around characters suitable for children. By all means produce comics for a mature market — but is that what is being produced? And is that with the loss of the comics suitable for children? What is “mature”? Sex, violence and swearing only means that it should be kept out of the hands of children — but I, for one, do not class those elements as indications of maturity. There are very few American comics that have any indication of any real depth of feeling or any emotional content other than anger expressed as violence. Any finer human qualities are ignored as being not macho, and it this emphasis that is dangerous as it is teaching that finer human values are weaknesses and are to be ignored.

There are vast differences between the American comic scene and the European scene. Basically, the Americans think in terms of mass production, marketing and product. The Europeans think in terms of an art form, craft and individuality. If you are familiar with how the brain works, you will see that this is the difference between left-brain and right-brain thinking.

The American companies own their characters. Creators are just workers employed to produce stories built around those characters.  If times are good, why risk reducing profits by publishing something completely new that may lose money? If times are hard, they haven’t the money to try anything new. The Americans think in terms of monthly product — largely throwaway. The collections, the trade paperbacks and graphic novels are merely a means of extending the sales of those monthly items — just as DVDs are a means of increasing profits on a cinema film.

In Europe, there are few regular comics — stories are produced as albums and the characters are largely creator-owned. This leads to an expression of individuality, and a care and love for the creator’s own creation like it is their own child. This has resulted in an immensely wide variety of carefully crafted stories published across all Europe. A French creation (like Tintin or Asterix ) will be taken up by various publishers, publishing in their own language. It will stand alongside a science-fiction album from Spain, or a Western from Italy. To a far greater extent than in America, it is the creators’ craft that determines the popularity of the creation. The arrival of a new album is an eagerly awaited event, rather than a monthly ritual. — like going to see the latest Indiana Jones film compared with watching the latest episode of Coronation Street.

David Roberston: An Interview with John Ridgway (Part One of Two) « The Comics Journal

David Roberston: An Interview with John Ridgway (Part One of Two) « The Comics Journal

CLICK

Flying Tiger Comics Movie Night 1!

For the first movie night we watched Aliens versus Predators Requiem.

Let's make this brief.

It's Critters, with better Critters and instead of the faceblobs it has a soldier Predator. Instead of its own ending it has the ending from the second Resident Evil film.

Missed opportunity: having the crook ask the soldier woman her name only to be told it's Ripley. Helen Ripley. Or something.

Tgirl Rex

Homeworld:
Earth-FT1

Family: 
None known but various possibly fictional relatives are referred to, usually during Tgirl Rex's fights.

Background:
Tgirl Rex, aka Lura High, is a transgendered female. After he initial surgery went catastrophically wrong, she underwent experimental treatments at the clinic of a mad scientist masquerading as a sexual reassignment specialist. In actuality the scientist proved to be the supervillain Doctor K.I.L.L., experimenting with hormonal and transgenic treatments to create superpowered criminals.

Lura was injected by Doctor K.I.L.L. with a mixture of sexual modification chemicals and dinosaur DNA. The resultant effects created Tgirl Rex - a 7'6" transexual with superpowers.

Although basically just looking for love, Tgirl Rex is not above stealing to supplement her lifestyle and so she is definitely a "villain". However, she sees herself as a cross between Han Solo and Princess Leia- a loveable rogue princess, not a murderous psychopath. That would be Doctor K.I.L.L.

Known Power and Abilities:




Claws
Resembling false nails, Tgirl Rex has naturally growing talons similar to those of a dinosaur predator species. The claws are far stronger than acrylic nails, and are able to shred wood and plastic and penetrate soft metals. Steel is too tough for the claws to cut through.


Climbing
Tgirl Rex can scale walls, hang from the ceiling and scale sheer surfaces much like a gecko.


Saurian Battle Rage

When injured in combat there is a better than average chance that Tgirl Rex will be consumed with blood lust and become completely berzerk for the remaining duration of the battle.

Toughness
Tgirl Rex resists physical damage to a far greater degree than a normal human. Small arms fire thuds into her skin and muscle leaving bruises. High powered rifles penetrate her body but do not prove immediately fatal. Cannon fire and high explosives have the capacity to kill Tgirl Rex.

It's all Stan Lee's fault!

The New Age cults of life, death and lost civilisations, not to mention the tidal wave of channelling / walk-ins and the rest of the John Keel insanity is traceable in many cases to one man:

Stan Lee.

Just as Arneson and Gygax with their Dungeons and Dragons game were the inspiration and catalyst for entire genres of computer games and film, so was Stan Lee's original Marvel Universe, aided and abetted by Jack Kirby and his own cabbalistic tendencies, the inspiration for a lot of the popular culture acceptance of Atlantis, Lemuria, UFOs, government conspiracies and the rest.

Stan Lee didn't invent or formulate most of the stuff he wrote into his comics, in fact his prodigious reading of all flavours of publication let him synthesize a lot of strange strands- and it all came together in the Marvel Universe.

Bosch Fawstin: ProPiganda: Drawing the Line Against Jihad (special package deal below)

Bosch Fawstin: ProPiganda: Drawing the Line Against Jihad (special package deal below)

Blogs Associated To Dwayne McDuffie

Blogs Associated To Dwayne McDuffie

The Amalgam Age of Comics: The Fatal Five and The Fantastic Four

The Amalgam Age of Comics: The Fatal Five and The Fantastic Four

Superman fan film

The Worlds of the Twin

The Worlds of the Twin concept began back in the days of the Golden RPG, as the more or less typical and standard "point of divergence" parallel universes conceit, codified into a strict classification system of Earths, Telluses, Mondases, Marses, Barsooms, and so on, based on what the basic world in focus was. For example it is pointless to say "Earth-BGT-991" when the entire focus of the action is Mars, and likely to stay that way.

The Worlds of the Twin name is based on the concept that each wave particle in "our" "universe" has a phantom counterpart - a twin - in the ghost realm. As far back as 1980 I was writing stories where in addition to the prima materia physical world there was an anti-matter realm, a mirror realm and an i-squared realm- a realm whose "charge" is neither positive nor negative, and also not neutral- but rather its charge is i. It never really led anywhere in terms of story telling other than some interesting background effects.

The Worlds of the Twin also served the function of listing every known roleplaying adventure or campaign run by a Golden RPG gamemaster, wherever they were. We had good comms back then with the fans and so it was quite easy to get them to post their campaign or adventure, and have it assigned a designation.

The Worlds of the Twin eventually numbered a couple of hundred campaigns, on top of which were the extra parallels created for each campaign. Since the Twin listings are omniversal we also included, under suitable green umbrellas, other comicbook worlds, especially when they were the ones inspiring our mainly adolescent audience. We also added in the worlds of the novels of Jonathan Nolan, and will no doubt continue this approach now there are several authors.

The Worlds of the Twin will be back in a big way in 2011, and we're working on an anthology graphic novel of same. :)

Webcomic - 20 pages will be added next week...

Another directly sequential 20 pages will be added next week.

Book 1 of JT Neslo is nearing completion, then there'll be a break whilst we work on a couple of other books, then Book 2 work will commence. The aim is to build up the releases so that there is a more or less steady supply of new books and material rather than spending an age making one book perfect but ten years late. :)

Nicholas Courtney: RIP

Nicholas Courtney, Brigadier from Doctor Who, dead.

Permission to fall out granted.

Living Between Wednesdays » Adscape: You Are Under the Spell of Ka-Bala

Living Between Wednesdays » Adscape: You Are Under the Spell of Ka-Bala

Dwayne McDuffie - dead at 48

Dwayne McDuffie was the writer of the Milestone Universe and its custodian. He also co-created Ben 10, and was a titan in the DC animation projects.

He had a trenchant wit, the patience of Job and the creativity of Jack Kirby. It's a shame that many of his initiatives were stifled or frustrated.

He died on 21 February 2011 of complications arising from surgery.

Dwayne McDuffie forums

Remembrance Thread

If you do a black character or a female character or an Asian character, then they aren't just that character. They represent that race or that sex, and they can't be interesting because everything they do has to represent an entire block of people. You know, Superman isn't all white people and neither is Lex Luthor. We knew we had to present a range of characters within each ethnic group, which means that we couldn't do just one book. We had to do a series of books and we had to present a view of the world that's wider than the world we've seen before.

The Hyperfenestral Windowman

Homeworld:
Earth-FT1 but see below

Family: 
Ex-Wife - Candice Alana Drune
Mother and Father - Ruth Heller nee Grafton, Gordon Heller


Background:
Alan Heller was born with a wild talent allowing him to shift probabilities and energies so that the local area around him becomes a "window area" - a zone of high strangeness where matter teleportation and interdimensional travel becomes safe to use without protection such as a spacesuit or radiation shielding. As he matured, Alan had several inexplicable experiences leading up to his final realisation of his wild talent and its effects. Adopting the superhero identity "Windowman" (due to the rectangular pane of energy that forms around him when he alters reality or teleports) Heller became a crimefighter when his then-wife Candice became embroiled in a seedy drug addiction and prostitution situation after running up a massive gambling debt. Although as Windowman he rescued her from her captors and prevented them retaliating, his wife then left him, blaming him for her gambling addiction as well as being too embarassed to remain around him.




Although Windowman obtained advanced warning of the 9/11 plot he was unable to stop it on the day of the strike due to a pitched battle with Savant Oid, one of his arch nemeses.



Subsequent to 9/11, Windowman attempted to enlist in the Marines, and when that failed he revealed his identity and powers to the Department of Homeland Security. He was put under consideration for the above top secret Longreach unit, but due to an inability to complete his clearance successfully, due to his relatives overseas connections, he was not approved to join the Longreach team.

He was more successful when he approached the Guardians of Justice, becoming a member of the team between 2003 and 2011. He left the team on his fiftieth birthday, following a period of soul searching brought on by the fact the rest of the team were then in their early to mid twenties.


Since leaving the Guardians he has adventured as a solo hero, generally keeping a low profile from his rural home in Nebraska despite spanning the entire globe and far beyond due to his powers. He has recently begun a relationship with the shapeshifting purple-skinned "alien princess" Yana of Venus.

Known Power and Abilities:

Teleportation
Windowman can teleport anywhere he has ever been before with a virtual certainty of safe travel, he can also teleport somewhere he has never been by first opening a "window" - a panel in thin air showing the nominated remote location. His ability to make these windows is limited, and it has happened fairly frequently that he used them to travel accidentally in time or to an unexpectedly different location to what has been shown.


Dimensional Teleportation
In addition, Windowman can dimensionally travel to the past or future, albeit to automatically parallel "diagonal" timespace points - his own act of travel acting to create an immediately forked parallel earth dimension.

Flux Shields (defensive use of Dimensional Teleportation)
Windowman can create a shield at will which puts a dimension flux between him and oncoming bullets, falling objects and enemies. Since Windowman attempts to use legal minimum force, despite the capacity for his flux shields to explode, shear into pieces or permanently banish living beings he avoids violence or harm to living beings whenever he can, even at risk of his own health.



Negative Feats: Lack of Education, Uninspired
Windowman did not finish college and is not especially intelligent, although he has great courage. His lack of education limits his abilities since he rarely has inspiration to use his incredible powers in particularly novel ways. Several of his enemies rely on his predictability.

Allen West (veteran officer) - round 1 KO on CAIR (islamist front)

Monster Island News: Scare The Crap Out Of Your Kids With Illustrations Of Creatures From Japanese Mythology

Monster Island News: Scare The Crap Out Of Your Kids With Illustrations Of Creatures From Japanese Mythology

Written By: Ken Hulsey
Source: Pink Tentacle

The Japanese have always loved monsters, and why not, their pop culture has been littered with them for decades and their mythology for centuries.

Today Japanese comic books, television series and movies are filled with all sorts of mysterious spectres and creatures.

It is easy to see where this fascination with strange and mysterious beasts comes from, once you dig deep into Japan's rich folklore. It too is filled with tales of demons, monsters and even visitors from other worlds.

These tales that have been passed down from generation to generation have had a profound effect on the Japanese, which today manifests itself in modern media and fuels the countries fascination with the strange and macabre.

Japanese art also reflects this fascination as well, ancient clay statues called, "Dogu" (Dogoo) are said to represent alien visitors to the island nation (see photo above) around 14,000 BC. Likewise, ancient drawings and paintings depict such unearthly visitors along with dragons, demons, and strange beasts of every size and shape imaginable.

In the early 1970s, Japanese illustrator Gojin Ishihara did some wonderful artwork for series of children's books entitled, “Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters” (1972), "Illustrated Book of Hell" (1975), "The Complete Book of Demons" (1974), "Illustrated Book of World Monsters" (1973), and "Mysteries of the World" (1970). These images, which range from the macabre to disturbingly graphic, would have never been deemed suitable for children in the western world.

Martian Vision: FREAK OUT -- The Funkiest Superhumans of the Silver Age (part 1)

Martian Vision: FREAK OUT -- The Funkiest Superhumans of the Silver Age (part 1)

Uber-Left Hate Organization, SPLC, Reviews Our Ground Zero Mosque Film - Atlas Shrugs

Uber-Left Hate Organization, SPLC, Reviews Our Ground Zero Mosque Film - Atlas Shrugs

The Hero Box | Let's Be Friends Again

The Hero Box | Let's Be Friends Again

Franklin Richards and Marvel Time

Franklin Richards and Marvel Time

continuity in comics

continuity in comics

[ The dark side (1) Continuity and nothing else ]

Continuity is also not supposed to become such an out of control, omnipresent, front-and-center, overwhelming element in a comic book that NOTHING new is ever done and no story ever seems to begin or end, but rather, all current plot developments grow out of past plot occurrences, constantly looping and feeding back into and on each other until it becomes virtually impossible to figure out exactly where certain characters came from, who they actually are, or where they're going.

This is especially a hazard in large team books, and almost guaranteed to happen under the auspices of a writer who combines certain dangerous attributes: namely, laziness, a lack of knowledge of how to do real, interesting, three dimensional characterization, and, last and most hazardous to actual story quality, popularity [because] editors don't tend to interfere with writers who sell well.

-from the article

And it could have written for either Batman Grant Morrison or Avengers Brian Bendis.

how the Big Fantastic Four story ended

how the Big Fantastic Four story ended

Marvel's continuity, and with it, its shared universe, ended twenty years ago. The link above leads to the full explanation as to what that grand story was, and how it was destroyed. It adds a whole new level of pain to the shit they crank out now, though, so be warned.

the death of the Marvel Universe

the death of the Marvel Universe

Flying Tiger team review of INCEPTION

This is an Imaginary Story... Aren't they all?

-Alan Moore

Weird factoid

The Doctor Who Season 4 Sontaran Stratagem and the Watchmen movie Manhattan Transfer had virtually the same sound effect.

Weird.

Sean Harrington: god among artists

Sean Harrington has just sent me the cover to book 2, and I would dearly love to show it here except that it would tip the ending of book 1 too badly.

Sean is a vast talent, and anyone not already buying his stuff should do so NOW!

My real worry is the contrast between the masterful covers and the much cruder (by design) internal art, but to cover that base we've put the exemplar art for the interior on the back cover of each book. Should reduce the Bolland / Truog shock :)

No disrespect meant to Truog either, but he was no Bolland and there's no two ways about that.

Hyborian History - Conanics 102, offered as an elective

http://therainer.blogspot.com/2007/09/hyborian-age-conan-barbarian.html

Based on Robert E. Howard's diffusionist theory of history. It has a lot to recommend it, it's really only fashion that wars against diffusionism, the evidence of both our own eyes and history itself would tend to show diffusionism is an excellent explanation for many a linguistic, mythopoeic or architectural coincidence.

ROM Spaceknight

http://cosmichombre.deviantart.com/art/ROM-Spaceknight-187255534?q=&qo=

In the Archie's Weird Mysteries cartoon at one point Jugghead utters paean to the hamburger- all that is good and right about the world, as he describes the food.

In many respects that's how I feel about the ROM comic. I was a precocious reader and read comics from roughly the age of three, but I gave them up as I grew up and it wasn't until a long time later I started reading them again. The comic that hooked me back in was ROM Spaceknight #6 of all things.

ROM was of course a licensed property, but at its core was a classic Marvel experience, ostensibly done in the classic Marvel way- up came the guest experiences by long forgotten characters, loose ends from old series were tied up, even the Hulk black and white magazine got explained in continuity and its characters added in.

Secret Invasion was of course nothing more than a verbose and lacuna-riddled "homage" shall I say to the Dire Wraith invasion of many years before. The Dire Wraith infiltration of Earth was a definitely horror-story type tale, with extreme cruelty and savagery shown by the wraiths and their subspecies, and the often shown no quarter given or taken Spaceknight vs Wraith battle was in its own way magnificent.

The later addition to the lore in the closing comics that the Wraiths were in fact a mutated form of Skrull - themselves the Deviant strain of an alien race, added the final binding Marvel touch.

Unfortunately since it was a licensed property ROM like the Shogun Warriors before it had to be shunted into the background and its core concepts tamed and elided. However, ROM is now a cult favourite. With sufficient imagination a new ROM comicbook could be created. It wou

Fletcher Prouty on Oil.

The Amalgam Age of Comics: Batman Vs. American Psycho

The Amalgam Age of Comics: Batman Vs. American Psycho: "Once again I've been inspired by The Brave and the Bold: The Lost Issues and done another Non-Amalgan, team-up pic. This time the Dark..."

Comics Make No Sense: Put THAT in Your Article Tuesday!

Comics Make No Sense: Put THAT in Your Article Tuesday!: "I don't recall exactly where I had previously seen it, but Detective #417 had a plot centered on the notion that if you could prove you..."

BPD DEFAMATION - "truth" and the internet. Part 4

What Do Cyberstalkers Do?

A cyberstalker will commonly hack into the victim’s email account in order to gain personal information. The stalker may change the victim’s password once he or she has obtained it, and may impersonate the victim in order to find out who the victim is communicating with online.
The cyberstalker may also create a web page or group on a social networking site in order to defame the victim. The stalker may publish malicious and false content in order to discredit the victim, and ruin his or her reputation. A cyberstalker seeking revenge may even put a virus on the victim’s computer.

Read more at Suite101: Cyberstalking http://www.suite101.com/content/cyberstalking-a286376#ixzz1E4zSCEZ7

Cyberstalking is now a Federal crime in Australia. Both the defamatory conduct and the more depraved types of online and RL stalking are specifically covered by the Criminal Code. They will in almost all cases also be covered by ACMA and the "Cybersmart" initiative. If you are harassed, visit ACMA at the Cybersmart portal or contact AFP High Tech Crime to make a complaint. The AFP will almost certainly also refer you to your local law enforcement. With sufficient persistence, even the laziest local Police will be forced to act, if only to shut the victim up. Sad that this is the way law enforcement works... But it's the reality.

It isn't 1990 any more, and we all live and work online. The BPD weirdo classes were amongst the first to take up the online world, but now that everyone coexists online it's time for the sociopathic and psychopathic element to be properly policed.

BPD DEFAMATION - "truth" and the internet. Part 3

http://abusesanctuary.blogspot.com/2006/06/cyberstalking-real-life-problem.html

BPD DEFAMATION - "truth" and the internet. Part 2

http://www.mental-health-matters.com/stalking/109-cyberstalking-how-far-does-qfreedom-of-speechq-go

The Brave and the Bold: The Lost Issues!: The Thing and Betty & Veronica

The Brave and the Bold: The Lost Issues!: The Thing and Betty & Veronica: "Another holiday-themed issue today. I have to give Archie Comics credit for being able to keep themselves in the headlines lately. For t..."

Tom Ziuko needs your help

http://ohdannyboy.blogspot.com/2011/01/tom-ziuko-needs-your-help-and-he-needs.html

Schmeesh. Abraca-Duh even.

Real Fan

February 9, 2011 at 2:12 am

I’ve read Spider-man off and on and for the past few years everytime I hear about Spider-man, i get depressed. Anyone whose read it knows what I’m talking about. I was shocked about the horrible stuff they put in the books, which can’t be undone. I was depressed at the quickie movie reboot that will be a disaster. Now, I’m depressed about this horrible thing. I want the old Spider-man b ack in the books. Not Heroic Age Brand New One More Day magic amnesica idiot boy!
This play is bizarre, but so is the book.

QFT

From the comments on Robot 6.

Giant-Size Geek: Crystal by Bruce Timm, with a Kirby pin-up

Giant-Size Geek: Crystal by Bruce Timm, with a Kirby pin-up: "A few characters by Timm always seem spot-on. Or maybe all the women he draws are just spot-on? In any case, he really nails th..."

http://flyingtigercomics.blogspot.com/2011/02/bpd-distortion-campaigns.html

Getting stalked online is no fun. Still, it could be worse- we could be pretending to be a charity to evade tax.

Digital Comics: time to kill the middlemen

Reading through an article recently which was pretty much 90% gaily spinning the middlemen position re: Diamond and digital comics, we were struck that back in the days of dinosaurs when the interweb was newish, Cafe Press and Lulu.com both let people buy digital versions of books (or comics) and the price was generally lower than a print version, for commonsense reasons.

Given the sophistication of modern browsing tools for example on mobile phones, why is there any necessity for "apps" at all, other than to spin money for middlemen? Middlemen in comics, just as in music, are a parasitic drain that impedes the traffic between consumer and creator. It's a payola inspired model and it has the worst aspects of old fashioned ...American... let's say, exploitative capitalism.

To read a digital comic, or any digital work, it isn't much more difficult than to buy it, download it, and open it- often in Adobe because so many "ebooks" are PDF format.

Leaving the format to one side, because it is increasingly irrelevant, the only real concern the larger comicbook players have in relation to digitial delivery seems to be how to screw the most money out of their remaining fans. The recent experiences a few people have described where prematurely released comics were deleted off their reading devices- a clear breach of privacy, an offence under Australian, if not American, law, and so on- shows that it isn't about putting digital versions of comics up for people at a nominal fee. It's about recreating the absurd Diamond / LCS monopoly again for the online era.

Fortunately such dreams of empire seem utterly doomed from the outset, but the fact that so much effort and self-expostulation is devoted to justifying the unjustifiable grab for monopolies indicates where Disney and Warner are focused- capturing and controlling a market and making it impossible for democractic digital to exist. The shills at most comics sites are of course complicit in this.

John Hutchinson still living the life less ordinary... And now he's found Synthia in the Gulf...

Project Wonderful 768x90 ad available

Directly under the banner for this blog is a good sized advert box from Project Wonderful. Anyone wanting to support us, or indeed anyone else wanting to advertise here, just click on the box and make a payment. The advert has no minimum meaning that under the whacky project wonderful system it can actually cost basically nothing to advertise. Bizarre, but true.

Big JT and Little JT... Strange meeting in the Swamp of Dreams... (page 131)

Spider-Man: what he was like before the indelible damage

When he had a million readers:

Turns out making him a hero with angst worked a lot better than making him a devil worshipper with the moral value of a Seinfeld character.

127 pages done

Actually it's more like 140 including the covers, inside covers, etc. :)

Homeward bound now.

Webcomic updated -=- Macula appears!

Webcomic updated!

The cliffhanger is the first appearance of Macula, Prince of Eyes, come to feed on the eyesight of the living!

The moral certainty of a child

"God protects the Good from the Bad."

Interesting comment

Between canceled titles and the $2.99 price point, my comic spending has dropped dramatically in the new year. Good for me, not so good for comic publishers, particularly DC and Marvel. I spend as much as ever on the other publishers, where most of the quality has gone.

The Comic Treadmill comments section

We here sincerely believe that this is exactly what is occurring. The sixth extinction of comicbooks is all about the end of the Age of Dinosaurs, not the end of comicbooks.

Spider-Man Performer: Old School :)

Everyone has a Captain Marvel

Every writer and every artist in comics has a Captain Marvel character. It would be tempting to say it's because it's this big cash cow and you gotta have one to print money and all that crap, but I don't think that's true.

I think Captain Marvel keeps popping into people's heads because he's a fantastic character, he generates a sense of wonder and play both of which are essential for our mental health, and he's very inspiring- taking us back to our own childhoods where all we needed was a lightning bolt of imagination and we could be Captain Marvel- or anything or anyone else we imagine or are inspired by.

There are a few lists of Captain Marvel analogues around on the web, a couple of the best ones are outside the comics industry per se.

Even perhaps unlikely characters such as Thor have the same basic power of transformation- blast of energy: change of form. An alter ego in a flash of light.

This flash of light, particularly if it's yellow, pink or green, is associated in real life with some terribly serious medical conditions including tumours, schizophrenia, dissociative personality disorder and more. It's interesting beyond the obvious points that Phillip K. Dick was one experiencer of the pink light. It didn't turn him into Captain Marvel.

And a further tangent- Captain Marvel Jr. was the absolute favourite character of Elvis Presley.

Fur-reaky.

Flying Tiger Comics philosophy

Got some positive feedback, got a little bit of more negative, but not craazzzyyy feedback.

One thing- we aim to complete and publish comics, graphic novels and magazines. To do that we feel we just have to march on and finish by our deadlines. Sometimes that's going to mean we reuse art, flip images, all that kind of stuff. Not all the time on every page, but in a way that's similar to older (and in fact some current) cartoons operate. If you have the art on file, in layers ready to use, in it goes. For two reasons.

The production reason is- one picture on one page is not going to make or break a comicbook. The other reason is that it suits the feel of the rough animation sketch style art for the current books.

For the art intensive and especially the pure art adult books we're doing, this isn't even an issue. It isn't being done for those books and the painted pages couldn't even work that way. But for our books where the story is actually, in our opinion, more important than pretty wetty art, and where the rough animation style is contextual - that is how it is going to be played.

Hope that explains our position, it's from the chin, it's honest- that's how we're going about things.

Also it's blowing a gale and sheeting down with rain. Cyclone season: not nearly over it seems.

T.R.U.T.H. and D.I.S.B.E.L.I.E.F.

Gavin Pickman, Agent of T.R.U.T.H., and Ashlee "Skull" Smith, Agent of D.I.S.B.E.L.I.E.F. finally meet.

Gavin Pickman is faceless and other than hair tie and hatband is white head to foot, including what seems to be his skin. Ashlee Smith aka Skull is nude other than a trenchcoat, and usually brandishes a gun that she is only too happy to blast people down.

Once they finally meet and team up, they form a classic ultimate team up of fire and ice, violence and reason, faith and skepticism. The strange thing is, their opposite natures form a virtually indestructible bond...

Great Caesar's Ghost! Superman to Join Muslim Superhero Crew - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News

Great Caesar's Ghost! Superman to Join Muslim Superhero Crew - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News

Webcomic updated -=- Xantara makes her first appearance!

Read it HERE.

Mirror Universes

Mirror universes- the classic idea.

Basically you take your existing universe, you take your hero and you stick a beard on him, or if it's a her, you dress her up all badgirl sexy- cause 99% of the time the hero if she's a girl is all Christian Science Monitor and no sex.

Often a subset of Bizarro Universe, it is an Alternate Universe where Good and Evil characterisations are reversed, but is otherwise the same as the "real" universe - except where logically derived from this change in morality. As an example, in Bizarro World, the earth is a cube. In the mirror universe, the earth is a sphere, but The Captain has a cool eyepatch.

-TV Tropes

The most often adverted to Mirror Universe is the Star Trek one, of course- complete with bearded Spock. :)

Banned sexy Britney

Axe sexomercial

Lynx has been reading my mind again

Freerunner

Homeworld:
Earth-FT1

Family: 
Uncle - Mayhew
Mother and Father - deceased
Aunt - deceased

Background:
Pietro Kark is a gifted science teacher and part-time mountaineer. He was raised in Vietnam at the end of the Viet Nam war, at which time his parents were killed during the fall of Saigon. He grew up tough and became a traceur, a skill set he now uses to fight crime and stand up to illegitimate authority as the vigilante-activist Freerunner.

Known Power and Abilities:

Acrobatics and Gymnastics
Freerunner is superbly fit, extremely agile and frequently seems to demonstrate a kind of preternatural luck or danger sense that helps him avoid serious injury.

Physical Training and Fighting Ability
Freerunner is of Olympic level of fitness and is a devastating martial arts-trained hand to hand combatant. He favours backflips, kicks, leaping kicks and throws but when fighting hand to hand and if forced to he will rely on exploding punch, jiu-jitsu strike and kaisho techniques.

Note
This character was created in 2009, well before the recent Bat-debacle was released.

Comic sales for January are terrible. By which the comics commentariat essentially mean...

...that sales for January are terrible for Disney (Marvel) and Warner (DC). The big companies are in all sorts of strife with their comicbook sales, but really, so what? The books themselves have never looked prettier but the content would frequently be insulting to a retarded person, let alone the putative adult "sophisticated" audience they claim- which is really a dwindling audience of western middle class super-consumer types, totally disconnected from the broader world of comics.

Case in point- Archie comics. Year in, year out, there they are at the mainstream locations Marvel and DC have long since given up on, and as a consequence Archie's female audience numbers quite possible in the millions, certainly in the 100,000s, and its Sonic the Hedgehog and soon Rockman / Megaman titles are robust to the point of absurdity.

What really pisses me off to no end about the whining re: falling comic sales is that it is classic solipsism. The fat tubs of lard that consume DC and Marvel are pissing and moaning over falling sales etcetera- whilst many other types of comicbooks have in fact increased sales. Yes, I admit, I'm an indie myself so yes, I have an agenda. Like DC and Marvel don't? I would love to see DC and Marvel collapse, and I say that as someone who was once a rabid Marvelite. It isn't the same company at all any more, and likewise its characters are vile parodies of what they once were. Meanwhile over at Indyplanet there is a literal world of comics, of all conceivable types, crossing all cultures and interests. And the best of them are absolutely fantastic in terms of art, execution and finish. Marvel and DC are cranking out these insulting "stories" and fomenting endless ennui with their bottomless chumbucket of crossovers, whilst godlike artists and writers are marching into the future by the day.

So what if Disney and Warner take a bath on the comics operations? They'll never do anything genuinely creative anyway. They bought the comics companies to get the brands, which is all the characters have been since the 1990s. They have less soul than Dracula.

Well that turned into quite the rant. Time for some water and rain watching.

Website is up!

The official website is now up and running!

Kallo, kallay. :)

Themes

Themes in comicbooks are always hard to talk about without sounding like either a twat or a smug git, but I think it's important to acknowledge them when they're there.

JT Neslo is a book series where there are the obvious themes- youth, age, cycles, ages of man, god vs man, self discovery - but hopefully some of the more subtle themes I put in and weave with are also recognisable. One of the ones I am happiest with crept in entirely on its own with no intentional effort on my part (to begin with), namely nature versus "civilisation". I'm definitely with R.E. Howard when it comes to civilisation, but I love the interplay of natural world and artificial world constructs on the art page- I like the breaking of borders, the violation of comicbook layout rules and so on.

See also:
Conan vs Bambi

BPD Distortion Campaigns

As a victim of this sort of viciousness, it seems appropriate to put this article up.

BPD Distortion Campaigns

Written by: Rob

One of the classic behaviors of a person suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder is the vilification campaign. The target is the person against whom the perpetrator Borderline conducts the vilification.  The intent is to destroy the target’s reputation and thereby destroy the target’s relationships with family and friends, employers, co-workers, doctors, teachers, therapists, and others. The intent may even be to force the target to leave the community, put the target in prison, or even kill the target.  As with so many things involving Borderlines and their typical inability to understand or respect boundaries, there really are no limits. They will use basically any means available to them to cause damage to their target, including denigration, endless disparaging remarks, fabrication, false accusations, and even teaching others (including their children!) to lie on their behalf as part of their vilification campaign.

Distortion Campaigns Not Limited to BPD Victims

People without BPD may practice vilification campaigns, also, but they are often tied to BPD or similar personality disorders, especially Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). The classic BPD book Stop Walking on Eggshells refers to these as distortion campaigns.  This choice of words emphasizes that the campaign employs lies, exaggerations, fictions, partial truths, and other reality distortion techiques.  As it is unusual for a Borderline engaging in a vilification campaign to not use distortions, we shall refer to these as distortion campaigns just as the authors of Stop Walking on Eggshells have done.
It’s a myth that only women have BPD. Older research suggested that about 75% of BPD cases occur in women and that about 2% of the population is affected. Newer research shows that the ratio is probably closer still, possibly nearly evenly split, and that as much as 6% of the population may suffer from it.
It can be very difficult to distinguish BPD from similar personality disorders, particular from NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder) as both tend to involve a lot of emotional abuse. Many believe that males are more likely to have NPD and females BPD. Other disagree. Psychology is a very subjective science. Gender bias in therapists and researchers often makes it even more subjective.
Please don’t assume if I use a gender-specific pronoun such as “he” or “she” that I mean the statement only applies to men or women. Writing in a gender-neutral manner in English can be awkward at times because the language lacks a truly gender-neutral third person pronoun for people that could replace the use of “he” and “she”. “It” just doesn’t sound right, and repetitively using “he or she” makes for some annoying reading.
Most of what I write here about distortion campaigns applies equally to men and women suffering from BPD or NPD or even a combination of the two as. Recent research shows that BPD and NPD are often present at the same time.

Distortion Campaign Does Not Intend to Help the Target

It’s critical to differentiate between a real distortion campaign and something that may look like one but is not.  For instance, Borderlines often have drug and substance abuse problems.  If a family member or friend of a Borderline tries to get help for the Borderline by discussing the problems with other family members and friends, this is not a distortion campaign.  It is based upon caring about the person and trying to discuss what is going wrong in order to get help. There is not intent to harm.  But a Borderline may have a very hard time distinguishing the intent of helping and lack of intent to harm.  Such a friend or family member may be accused by the Borderline of conducting a distortion campaign, even though this is not accurate.

Not All Borderlines Practice Distortion Campaigns

It’s important to note that not all Borderlines practice distortion campaigns. Some exhibit more “acting in” behaviors in which they hurt themselves, such as self-mutilation (often cutting), suicide attempts, and primarily self-destructive behaviors like substance abuse or binge eating. The Borderlines who practice distortion campaigns tend to exhibit “acting out” behaviors. They go after others with the intent of hurting them.

Typical Targets: Current or Former Family Members

Distortion campaigns are often done behind the scenes against people who are or were related or emotionally close to the perpetrator.  They may start months or years before the target is even aware of the campaign.  For instance, the breakup of a relationship is often connected to a distortion campaign against a former partner.  The campaign may have started a long time before the breakup, to give the Borderline “justification” regarding what she or he has done or is about to do to the target, be it having an affairs(s), kicking them out of a home, filing false domestic violence charges, running away with the children, stealing large quantities of joint money and property, or some other hostile actions. By the time the target is aware of the distortions, people around the Borderline may have been hearing for a long time that the target is some evil, horrible, cruel person as part of the distortion campaign.

Borderline Recruits Others to Lie and Distort

The BP (short for “Borderline Personality” or “Borderline Person”) is likely to make extreme false allegations, distortions, and varied lies to defame and harm her or his former partner and other targets. The BP is also likely to involve many other people in the distortion campaign. Many are passive participants who will listen and believe the BP’s lies. Others become actively involved in spreading them further. The target may find that there are dozens of people, many whom have never met him or her, who believe and repeat the lies of the BP.

Common Lies and Distortions

What lies do BPs tell? Often they revolve around false claims of partner abuse, child abuse, perverse sexual behaviors, drug and substance abuse, mental illness, and criminal conduct. BPs tend to pick false accusations that are difficult to disprove. Although we supposedly live in a society in which people are “innocent until proven guilty”, the reality is, that is not how people are treated. This is especially the case when accusations of sexual abuse, child abuse, and spousal abuse are involved. The victims of the distortion campaign often are treated as pariahs or even criminals, assumed to be guilty without any evidence whatsoever.
The perhaps surprising aspect of many of these defamatory statements is that they are not about the target at all. Often BPs are aware at some level that they themselves are doing these bad behaviors. So instead of taking responsibility for their own problems, they blame them on others. This behavior is known as “projection.”  (See Wikipedia: Psychological Projection)
For example, an emotionally and physically abusive BP female will falsely accuse her male partner of abuse. A typical example might be a distortion such as blaming him for an incident of physical abuse. She may tell others that her husband got mad at her, started yelling and screaming at her, and then slammed the door on her hand to break her finger. This might even be part of the truth. She’ll get a lot of sympathy, people will think bad things about her husband, and she gains allies. That is, so long as nobody hears the full truth before they’ve been effectively brainwashed by her.
The full truth might be that she was very angry at her husband.  She came at her husband with a knife while berating him loudly. (Reputable studies indicate that females use weapons to commit domestic violence more than males do.)  She might have been drunk, or maybe was just irate. (Borderlines often have substance abuse problems and nearly always have trouble controlling their emotions — it is sometimes called “Emotional Intensity Disorder.”)  He may have then yelled “Stay away from me!”, fled the room, and slammed the door behind him as he tried to get away. He was acting in self-defense trying to escape a bad situation the BP wife created. But she will reliably tell everybody that he screamed at her, slammed the door on her hand and broke her finger. She will portray it as a pattern of abuse by him, even though the real abuser is her. This is lying by partial truth and distortion. BPs excel at this. They are believed and seldom questioned because of their emotional intensity and conviction they exhibit while they repeat their lies.
Related to projections is the behavior known as “gaslighting” in which the Borderline tries to confuse a person into believing things that are not true. Often this is to create self-doubt in the victim. The target for this abuse can end up questioning his or her own sanity as the Borderline matter-of-factly relates “events” or “things said” that the target does not recall because they never occurred. You can read more about this behavior in our article Borderlines Can Make You Feel Insane Via “Gaslighting”. If you realize that the Borderline in your life is engaging in gaslighting against you, this is often a good clue that he or she is probably also capable of running a distortion campaign. After all, if they have you confused about your own experiences, they will likely have a much easier time misleading others to believe inaccurate negative misinformation about you.

Borderlines Have Trouble Knowing the Truth

BPs have trouble knowing what the truth is. This is due to a combination of problems. Sometimes they may experience cognitive dissociations in which they temporarily break from reality and may honestly experience reality completely differently from any observers, even video cameras will not agree with their version of reality.
Other times, it may simply be from their extensive pathological lying and avoidance of the truth. As a result, they may repeat their vilifying lies in varying inconsistent versions. The inconsistencies won’t be simply of opinions, they will be of even basic facts. They may have such trouble keeping their lies straight that they will come up with multiple versions of events, often growing in severity, over repeated tellings of their lies. Version one might be that somebody raised a hand to strike them, version two might be that somebody pushed them to the ground, version three might be that somebody tried to strangle them, and so forth. The reality might be that they slipped, fell and hurt themselves . But reality does not matter to Borderlines, what matters is the ability to convince other people to take their sides and to protect themselves from “threats” such as being alone or being held accountable for their actions.

Trouble Recognizing Borderline Liars

Why don’t people see the BPs who conduct distortion campaigns as the liars they are? The reasons are many. Often BPs tell varying lies to different people who don’t “compare notes” and so don’t see what should be really obvious deception. Often the BP’s emotional intensity and ability to play on people’s emotions makes them master manipulators. People tend to “just believe” because the BP can come across as very charming, warm and friendly. Untrained, uncritical listeners are particularly susceptible at being duped by their lies. Eventually, they may believe the lies so completely that even when confronted with evidence such as writings, photographs, recordings, 3rd party versions of events, and other evidence, they will refuse to accept that they were duped into believing lies.
Even many mental health care professionals will fall for the distortion campaign for a while. They get sucked into false sympathy and emotional alignment with the BP rapidly. They fall for false stereotypes, such as “all men are abusers”, that BPs use to their advantage.
Many mental health care providers have not kept up to date on reliable psychological research that amply documents that “men are abusers, women are victims” is not the truth.  (See Women commit more than 70% of single-partner DV)  They may tend to be empathetic and take the statements of their patients at face value. Many of them also lack specialized training in recognizing and treating personality disorders. With the necessary training and skils, many of them can be easily suckered into believing the Borderline lies.

Adverse Impact on the Targets

What happens to people who are victims of BPD distortion campaigns? Here are some of the examples of the results:

1. They are alienated from their family and friends.
2. They lose contact with their children for months or even years.
3. They lose their jobs.
4. They spend tens of thousands of dollars or more fighting false accusations of the BP attacking them.
5. They have restraining orders placed upon them based upon false accusations.
6. They end up in jail or prison due to false accusations.
7. They develop severe mental illnesses, including depression, anxiety disorders, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and others.
8. Some commit suicide.

Distortion campaigns can destroy people’s lives, even becoming lethal. This is particularly the case when the people around the BP’s victim do not understand how Borderline Personality Disorder works. The victims of distortion campaigns need extensive support from others in order to survive such an experience without life-altering damage. Although an estimated 6% of the US population suffers from BPD, most people do not end up being targeted with a BPD distortion campaign. As a result, they have trouble understanding how severe, damaging, unrelenting, and widespread these campaigns can be. And many of the victims of distortion campaigns consequently are left without effective support systems and suffer far worse damage than might have been the case if their friends and family understood they are being victimized by a Borderline.

The distortion campaign also tends to damage many people around the BP.  Divorce situations in which the children are taught by a Borderline parent to hate the other parent based upon lies is very common.  This is also known as “parental alienation”.  (See Wikipedia: Parental Alienation)  Parental alienation can be so severe that it may permanently damage the relationship between the target parent and the children.  It is important to keep in mind that parental alienation is a form of emotional child abuse.  Borderlines or others who do this to children are child abusers.
The damage does not stop with the immediate family.  It tends to spill over into all relationships around the target as the target is accused of crimes, immoral and unethical behaviors, embarassing incidents, and so forth.  The siblings, parents, new spouse, friends, and employers of the target may all suffer serious damage from the distortion campaign.  The target may be unable to function normally, have insomnia and other sleep disorders, not be able to work normal hours or focus on work, and even feel afraid to been seen in public. This may be a time during which those around the target have to band together to help the target in safe settings.  However, by doing so, the target’s support system itself may become a new target for the BP.  It is not unusual for the BP to proceed to attack people the BP sees as helping the target.  They may endure distortion campaigns.  As a way to protect everybody, it may be useful to minimize knowledge that the BP obtains about the people around the target.  The target and those who support him or her may need to become very secretive about their lives in order to protect themselves from ever-widening and intensifying attack by the BP.

Borderlines Must Be Held Accountable

Borderlines did not chose to be mentally ill, but they must be held accountable for their actions. We must educate ourselves and others about Borderline Personality Disorder and act to keep people who suffer from BPD and similar mental health problems from harming others. It is in the best interests of everybody, victims of BPs, the BPs themselves, and all the people around them, for these people to be identified. Once identified, others can be protected from them and attempts can be made at getting them into effective treatment. Although today’s treatments may not cure many of them, they may learn to curb their destructive behaviors, hurt others less, and lead happier lives themselves. But that is not going to happen without awareness, identification, and willingness to tackle the problems posed by this mental illness.

Golden & Eternium: The Eternium Universe

Way back in 2003, I began developing a d20 compatible universe based on my own original writings from 1983 up to what was then the present day (2003). Essentially it was a comicbook style universe where pulp heroes like the Shadow and Doc Savage coexisted with iconic character types from later decades.

In essence it was similar to the Wold-Newton Universe, only without the same tiresomely repetitive attempts to make EVERYONE related- I allowed for several bloodlines at least.

I also wanted to cater to the darkening of the light that comics experienced and continue to experience.

Thus there came the RPG books GOLDEN, ETERNIUM, ZOMBIENOMICON and ZOMBIENOMICON II: GORDIAN WORLD. There were other tie-in books too- A Vintage From Atlantis was the first d20 piracy rulebook and sourcebook standalone, Monkey On Your Back catered to my personal taste for Planet of the Apes type adventures, and Red Drums was a very dark parallel world universe where the 1980s had Gerry Anderson style technology- and Martian animated zombies.

All in all it was quite successful, particularly judged from the standards of the amount of my material which was plagiarised- always the sincerest form of imitation.

Be that as it may, the lines were always there ready to be followed back into actual comicbook publishing and despite a few abortive starts that is what is finally occurring now. Of course the universes being published are very different again- but that's probably a good thing. :)

If we still have copies anywhere I will put up the timelines etc. from the game books.

James Tinthu "JT" Neslo

Homeworld:
Earth-FT1

Family: 
Father - Herge Andre Neslo;
Mother - Lucille Neslo nee Sullivan

Background:
Due to an as yet unexplained phenomenon JT Neslo has developed the ability to remember over 75 years of past history, by virtue of his apparent immortality- he has remained a teenager throughout that time and apparently those around him do not remember events that he seems to remember. He is thus apparently trapped within cycles of time where broadly similar events repeat endlessly to form a localised spacetime continuum or "continuity".

Known Power and Abilities:

Contacts

JT Neslo has over seventy years worth of contacts in several areas including mystical champions, teenage heroes, pop culture icons (of varying eras) and talking animals.

Physical Training and Fighting Ability
JT Neslo has spent the equivalent of forty nonconsecutive years in varsity level athletic training including wrestling, boxing, gymnastics, swimming and track & field. He is a highly capable western-style brawler, possesses a professional boxer's equivalent knockout punch and is highly resilient in terms of physical injury.

Spatio-Temporal Immunity
JT Neslo periodically undergoes a "continuity reset", an event where his local universe and its history resets itself. He retains all memories of previous histories as well as being sensitive to the changes to history the reset causes. As a side-effect of the resets, JT Neslo does not age. For all intents and purposes he is immortal.

You want maybe link to us, yes?

If you are in the mood to link to the blog, or the website when it's up, please use one of our patent pending gheyer than tanktops pink banners:

Flying Tiger website

The website will be up soon. The alternatives are either putting this blog on the website in a frame or just linking to/from. We're leaning towards linking to/from because of the sites linking to the blog and so that the blog will continue to show up properly in searches.

Anyway, look kids! Comics!

Whatever would John Keel have said??

Lord Dacre's ghost

August 18, 2010 - 08:58 — Mike Adam Sisman's sympathetic new biography of Hugh Trevor-Roper (Lord Dacre), the brilliant if acerbic historian, contains an unexpectedly fascinating passage on the great controversialist's declining years that sheds a ray of light on the way in which witnesses perceive ghosts.
In his late 80s, Sisman notes, Trevor-Roper was diagnosed with glaucoma and then developed a cataract. Soon afterwards, he began to suffer some alarming hallucinations: "He would look up from his desk and see the trees in leaf in mid-winter, or the landscape whizzing by as if he were aboard a train... Once, as he went to put out the dustbin, he found himself lost in a cemetery of dead machines, surrounded by rusting combine harvesters, lorries, cranes and derricks. Inside, the house grew an extra staircase." Other outlandish figments of the historian's imagination included gigantic trees and even a complete train at a platform at Didcot Station (which Trevor-Roper attempted to board).
All of this eventually led to a diagnosis of Charles Bonnet Syndrome –  a little-known condition, first described well over 200 years ago, in which those suffering from failing vision unconsciously compensate by dredging up memories with which to populate the fading landscape. Typically these vsions are what are known as "Lilliput hallucinations" (in which the hallucinated objects appear on a reduced scale), but as Trevor-Roper's own case shows, it's also possible to experience the opposite, and also extremely realistic visions of human figures, even within one's own home. An experience of the latter sort occurred to Trevor-Roper in 2002. As Sisman records:

He woke at three o'clock in the morning to find a woman beside his bed, statuesque and immobile. He tried to question her, but she did not reply, and slowly dissolved into the air. 'Now I know all about ghosts,' he said. 'I've seen one now and solved one of life's mysteries – and the rational world is restored.'

CBS is, of course, a pretty rare syndrome, and it would be wrong to suggest that, on its own, it can account for more than a tiny fraction of ghost sightings or other Fortean reports. Nonetheless, Trevor-Roper's encounters, and the equally outlandish experiences of other sufferers from CBS, tell us a good deal about the astonishing power of the human memory and the interplay between mind and senses. Perhaps a very similar mechanism accounts for at least a proportion of strange visual experiences; certainly, the Trevor-Roper case suggests that when such phenomena do occur, even the most intelligent and sceptical of witnesses might readily be taken in.
Lord Dacre himself agreed. "It's perfectly obvious to me," he told one interviewer, "that ghosts are created out of the rubbish of the brain, in the same way as are the hallucinations of CBS. Ghosts are a sub-Charles Bonnet Syndrome."
Source: Adam Sisman, Hugh Trevor-Roper: The Biography (London: Macmillan, 2010) pp.536-8

IndyPlanet Comics Reviews: Spying With FLARE

Spying With Lana is an excellent cheesecake comicbook series with added bonus actual funny comedy and good stories. In this comic, Lana crosses over, so to speak, with Flare, one of the long-surviving CHAMPIONS comicbook characters, whose tortuous backstory is briefly summarised in the back.

Sean Harrington combines CG backgrounds with his own airbrush style art for the main subjects, making the book beautiful to look at.

Lana books come in a cleaner version or a version containing nudity. I actually prefer the nudie versions because the art is that bit freer and it fits the whole vibe of the book.

This one is recommended!

Written and Illustrated by Sean Harrington

Standard Comic
Full Color
Page Count: 32

Price: US$4.50

POD



When an international crimelord kidnaps a scientist to build an invincible superweapon, it's up to Lana and Flare to stop him! But when one humorous mishap leads to another and another, will the sexy crimefighters be able to work together and put an end to his scheme before it's too late?

Lana. the sultry superspy of SPYING WITH LANA, and Flare, the sexy superheroine of Heroic Publishing's FLARE team up for the sexiest crossover ever!

Spying with Flare TM and © Sean Harrington.  All rights reserved

IndyPlanet Comics Reviews: The Squeeg

Created by David J Lieto
Adapted and Written by Greg Wright
Illustrated by Tom Grindberg

Standard Comic
Black & White
Page Count: 24
POD
Price US$3.00

A disillusioned amnsiac improbably gains superpowers and weilds magical squeegees as weapons to fiight  crime on the streets of Cincinnati.  But lurking beneath those streets is another who gained deadly powers and won't stop until Cincinnati is his.

Jake Green's life was turned upside down following the death of his fiance. Now living on the streets of Cincinnati, Jake is imbued with Superpowers and vows to protect the city he loves from evil of any kind.

The Squeeg is TM and © The Squeeg Superhero, LLC. All rights reserved.

IndyPlanet Comics Reviews: Amazing Golden Age Adventure Funnies #2

http://indyplanet.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=4685&osCsid=sgo40m25pg4uf73jf604jb67s7

Amazing Golden Age Adventure Funnies #2
 [6243_56524]

Price: US$7.99

This comicbook is a well executed reprint of public domain Golden Age (1940s) comicbook stories. Some of them have appeared elsewhere, others have had their public domain characters glommed by publishers for use in their own pet projects.


Due to the good execution of the formatting and standardised color, this comic presents the original stories well, and allows them to be enjoyed by comic fans today.


Although 7.99 for 52 pages is not amazing value, it certainly compares with the reprint-plus "new" "story" crapola from DC and Marvel.


Even if you aren't a fan of Golden Age craziness (yet) this is a nice comicbook and good aeroplane reading, or alternatively a fun gift for a child who might want to continue reading comics after this taste of the bizarre good old days!

Xantara makes her first appearance in the comic...

SmackJeeves - first chapter of JT NESLO is up as a webcomic!

Click on the small cover image on the right, and you will be taken to the SmackJeeves site for the webcomic version of JT NESLO The Eternal Teenager!

JT NESLO - THE ETERNAL TEENAGER front cover variant 1