Four Color Forum

Thor #1

If it feels like every new Thor launch is scripted by Jason Aaron, that’s because this is the sixth time the prolific writer has had his name attached to one thundering #1 or another. And while the Jane Foster/Thor arc (itself witness to two premiere issues) with Russell Dauterman will forever hold a special place in my heart, there’s reason to believe that for this week’s “Fresh Start” Thor #1, Aaron has saved the best for last.

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“Likely the last,” Jason? Tough to hear, and as much as we’d like for you to be to Thor what Dan Slott was to Spider-Man (or maybe you already are?), we know about all good things and such. But if your final act is going to kick off with art by the fantastic Mike del Mundo and feature back-up tales by the equally incomparable Christian Ward, you won’t hear anyone complaining. Continue reading Thor #1 →

Four Color Forum

The Immortal Hulk #1

The Hulk has always been a character that I’ve been iffy on. While I’ve enjoyed the acclaimed runs from Peter David and Greg Pak, they never fully got me onboard with the character. The truly horrifying nature of being turned into a rage-filled monster never hit home with me with in those runs.

Enter Al Ewing. I don’t know why I’ve never seen Hulk tackled from a horror perspective. It seems like the most obvious connection in the world, and that is exactly what Ewing manages to do with his debut issue on The Immortal Hulk. The sense of looming dread that hangs over this book feels more in line with an EC Comic than a traditional Marvel book. The Hulk truly feels like a scary otherworldly force that is here to judge humankind. He’s not just a dumb big brute but rather the best authority on the evils of the everyday person.

Continue reading The Immortal Hulk #1 →

Holy Bee of Ephesus

“Finest Kind” — The Holy Bee’s Martini Recipe

Holy Bee of Ephesus

“The martini felt cool and clean…I had never tasted anything so cool and clean. They made me feel civilized.”  — Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

A couple of years back, I posted a recipe for my absolute favorite cocktail: the (double) old-fashioned. That is my drink for the end of the evening, my nightcap, the libation that sends the Holy Bee off to dreamland. But what about the opposite end of the evening? My just-getting-home, pre-dinner, five o’clock opener to cocktail hour is often the martini, which is soon celebrating its own day — National Martini Day on June 19th.

As long as there are bar snobs, there will be arguments over how to make a proper martini. Brand of gin, amount of vermouth, use of the shaker, garnishes, and just about any other finicky minutiae can be endlessly debated regarding this very simple beverage by the type of…

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Four Color Forum

Man of Steel #1

Yeah, I get it. Former Marvel Golden Boy jumps ship for the competition and his first major contribution is a limited series on the industry’s most iconic figure.

John Byrne rose to prominence at Marvel during the 80’s, first as part of the Uncanny X-Men revival alongside Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum (as well as a run on Avengers that made me a lifelong fan), and then writing and illustrating a seminal run on flagship title The Fantastic Four. His high-profile departure for DC began with a post-Crisis reboot of Superman in 1986’s Man of Steel limited series. Three decades later, and another major contributor to Marvel’s pantheon, Brian Michael Bendis, makes his celebrated DC debut (minus a few teaser short stories) in a Superman mini titled, of course, Man of Steel.

Byrne’s Man of Steel #1 (1986)

I’ll admit to not having paid attention to press leading up to this series and, as a result, this obvious correlation to Byrne’s DC tenure didn’t dawn on me until I had picked up this new book. And I think it’s a bad move.

Is the goal to strike a parallel to prior reboots? Or is DC trying to draw attention to the fact that Bendis, like Byrne, was essentially lured away from the competition to work on a high-profile series, a snarky gloat immortalized in publication history? If it’s the former, then it seems like this series title would have made more sense as part of their recent Rebirth initiative. But if it’s the latter, then it seems like a childish ploy, particularly given the fact that Byrne ended up returning to Marvel after just a few years. It would also undermine the sentiment of virtually every comic book fan, DC and Marvel alike, who applauds Bendis’s move, seeing it as an opportunity for the tapped-out creator to refresh his own psyche and get back to writing compelling comic book stories once again. Maybe that’s the real meaning behind the title! Brian Michael Bendis is getting the reboot — he’s the Man of Steel! But… probably not. It’s more than likely just a wink and a nod.

And maybe it doesn’t fucking matter in the slightest and I should move on to talking about whether or not I liked the book.

Continue reading Man of Steel #1 →

Four Color Forum

Black Panther #1

Another “Fresh Start” from the House of Ideas this week and, as with Aaron & McGuiness’s Avengers relaunch, the new Black Panther from Ta-Nehisi Coates and Daniel Acuña addresses teasers previewed in last fall’s Marvel Legacy one-shot. In this case, we had all been scratching our heads regarding that glimpse at a futuristic Panther planet somewhen and somewhere. It was just a single page, but it left us with a host of questions. The first issue of this arc, “The Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda,” answers plenty of them (right away, actually), and it raises quite a few more.

That preview page returns — the first page in this comic — this time with narration explaining that a small group of Wakandans left Earth some two thousand years ago to colonize a planet on the far reaches of the cosmos. Millennia later, these colonists’ warlike tendencies have put them at the center of an empire spanning five galaxies.

So that’s all pretty awesome. And a new mystery immediately comes into focus when T’Challa makes an appearance, with no memory of who he is or how he got there, working as one of the mind-wiped “Nameless” mining slaves. Also… Nakia! And M’Baku! And vague recollections of a certain silver-haired goddess who once shared the king’s bed.

Continue reading Black Panther #1 →

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Comic Book Trivia: Test Your Knowledge Part III

Another thrilling comic book trivia night touched down at San Francisco’s Mission: Comics and Art on May 15. Congratulations to the Anagraminals on their first victory, edging superstars New New Mutants by a mere half-point (Steve Ditko, Ben? Really?)

Now for a chance to test your knowledge. Partly for posterity, and partly to avoid doing a new comics post this week, here’s the quiz in its entirety. With this year’s Eisner Award nominees announced just a few days prior, we went with a theme…

Question #1
Since 1991, where have the comic book industry’s annual Eisner Awards been conferred?

Question #2
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje is the first actor to portray characters in both MCU and DCEU films. Name those two movies.

Question #3
For decades, the only creator receiving any credit for Batman was Bob Kane. But after a long crusade, this writer finally got his due, beginning with the opening credits of Batman vs. Superman.

Now, all Batman stories — in any medium — carry the credit: “Batman created by Bob Kane with whom ?

Question #4
Action Comics #869, published in 2008, was recalled and reprinted by DC because of an objectionable cover.

The original cover depicts Clark Kent and his father Jonathan doing what?

Question #5
In which comic series did Black Panther make his first appearance?

Continue reading Comic Book Trivia: Test Your Knowledge Part III →

Four Color Forum

Venom #1

Week two of Marvel’s fanfare-minimized “Fresh Start” continues with the release of Venom #1, by Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman. Everyone’s favorite symbiote has been riding a tidal wave of media buzz in recent months, primarily centered on the character’s 30th anniversary and the forthcoming movie. And while it’s a little difficult for me to understand Venom’s massive appeal (I admit I am equally dumbfounded as to why Deadpool is so popular), I can fully appreciate that an attention-grabbing title like this allows the publisher to attach first-rate talent to its series reboot. Case in point, rising star Cates, and the immensely talented Stegman.

For an absent reader like myself, I’m even more appreciative of the fact that this creative team is circling back to a few Venom fundamentals while still moving forward with their own unique addition to the symbiote mythos. After sojourns with Mac Gargan and Flash Thompson (and who knows who the hell else during that Venom, Inc. event), the original alien is back with Eddie Brock, and he has that “Lethal Protector” mindset that seems to align directly with Tom Hardy’s portrayal later this year. But what I really dig is the idea that Cates & Stegman have seemingly readdressed the enigma of the symbiote, and its connection to some sort of ancient evil, lurking for centuries. Everything about the recent Klyntar background revelations, whether from Guardians of the Galaxy or Venom: Space Knight just felt wholly uninspired and, frankly, seemed to detract from the mysterious nature of this character’s alien origins.

Continue reading Venom #1 →

Four Color Forum

Avengers #1

Marvel’s Fresh Start initiative kicks off this week with a book seemingly “one million years in the making.” Jason Aaron and Ed McGuinness debut Avengers #1, and, for the first time since last fall’s Marvel Legacy one-shot, we are re-introduced to Earth’s Mightiest of one million B.C. We’ve been clamoring for more of these guys — a Mjolnir-wielding Odin, Agamotto, Ghost Rider atop a mastodon, and predecessors to the Iron Fist, Black Panther, Phoenix, and Starbrand — since that teaser by Aaron and Esad Ribić soooo many months ago. And although, at the time, I had promised that I’d catch myself up on Kirby’s Celestials, I apparently was too busy being distracted by behind-the-curtain Marvel drama to read any of The King’s Eternals saga. And I’m guessing Marvel was too busy screwing shit up to worry about it either; we still don’t have a decent collected edition, other than a long out-of-print omnibus that is scarce even among the price-gouging eBay resellers.

But one way or another, I’m going to make it happen. Because along with rumors of the Eternals joining the MCU, Aaron and McGuinness seem boldly intent on adding significantly to a carefully curated Marvel mythology that, after Kirby, has pretty much only been trusted to the likes of Roy Thomas and Neil Gaiman. And this first issue of Avengers definitely feels significant.

Continue reading Avengers #1 →

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The Hunt for Wolverine

Right around the end of Civil War II a number of us in the Institute’s comic book studies department wagered on which character Marvel would bring back to print first: The Hulk, Iron Man, Professor X, Logan, or Mr. Fantastic. Right away there was debate as to whether Tony Stark ever really left comics, what with his A.I. ghost still haunting the pages of Riri’s monthly; whether or not the Hulk samurai zombie in Uncanny Avengers constituted a return; and whether or not Reed & Sue’s disappearance at the end of the recent Secret Wars was anything more than an acknowledgement that they were written off because of the evil machinations of 20th Century Fox, and not a Beyonder-level Doctor Doom.

Less than two years later, four of the five are back (in one form or another), with the Fantastic Four set to re-emerge as part of Marvel’s fresh start later this summer. The point is, superheroes and supervillains never stay dead, and while the significance surrounding their extended sabbaticals from comics becomes less and less newsworthy, we’re increasingly more interested in how the storytellers choose to resurrect them. Honestly, these are the stories that seem far more compelling.

Case in point, Logan, the original Wolverine, is back in the Marvel U. And writer Charles Soule follows up his Death of Wolverine mini-series from 2014 with this week’s Hunt for Wolverine #1, part of a multi-series event that will occupy far more rack real estate in the coming months than his demise ever did.

Continue reading The Hunt for Wolverine →

Four Color Forum

Action Comics #1000

I had a copy of this comic on a side table in my living room this weekend and, when my brother took notice, he stopped in his tracks and scooped it up. “One thousand? Seriously? One thousand?”

We grew up in an era in which “landmark” designations still made an impression. I’ll never forget how excited I was to get my hands on Uncanny X-Men #200. I pinned and re-pinned that comic to my wall I don’t know how many times. Or the big 50th anniversary celebration of Batman that culminated in Detective Comics #600. That might have been the first time in my mercifully brief middle-school comics speculation career that I purchased a duplicate copy of a book. But nowadays, big round numbers mean very little, especially with rebirths and fresh starts and new number 1’s every fall.

But #1000… we all take notice of that. That number is on another level. My son once explained matter-of-factly that he could eat one thousand shelled edamame, to which his uncle retorted, “It’s impossible to eat one thousand of anything.”

The Romans never bothered coming up with a number greater than “M.”

My girlfriend, who, perhaps due to having grown up in Mexico, had been criminally inexperienced with baseball terminology (and thus at something of a disadvantage when we started communicating), recently learned what it means to “bat a thousand.” It’s unattainable perfection.

It’s hard to imagine a thousand of anything.

So it’s with proper reverence that I approach DC’s truly landmark 1000th issue of Action Comics, the comic that started it all. It’s a marvelous 80-page anthology with vignettes from an all-star lineup of superhero creative teams both past and present.

Continue reading Action Comics #1000 →