30.7.14

The Hundred Ninety-Eighth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

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The Spirit may not always have the best plans, but they're always innovatively-rendered.

23.7.14

The Hundred Ninety-Seventh Greatest Panel in the History of Comics


Not exactly a true mindbender, but for a non-spirit comic in 1943, this is pretty great.

16.7.14

The Hundred Ninety-Sixth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

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I'm a little confused here - was 'gremlin' not a well-known turn in 1943? Isn't this basically the perfect depiction of what a gremlin is/does?

Or did they throw 'saboteur' in there for the war connection?

11.7.14

Adventures in Fake Journalism: Seven Psychopaths

Late in wonderful film Seven Psychopaths, there's a fake newspaper - so let's take a look at it!

Actor Sought in Fifth 'Jack of Diamonds' Slaying
By James Ulberg
Staff Writer

HOLLYWOOD HILLS, CA - Authorities are searching for Billy Bickle, 39, as the primary suspect in the "Jack of Diamonds" killings that have plagued the Los Angeles Area in the past ten days.

9.7.14

The Hundred Ninety-Fifth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics


He was wearing a rubber mask on top of his glasses.

That's incredible.

8.7.14

Also, the JSA!

Remember when I was going on and on about what a Hypocrite Batman was for killing all those Man-Bats? Well it turns out that the Justice League wanted to get in on that action, massacring all of the bio-borgs they could in the movie JLA: War!

In order, that's Superman slicing people to death with eyebeams, Green Lantern shooting them with imaginary bullets, and, of course, Batman about to detonate the skull of a bio-borg.

And before you jump in and say 'but bio-borgs aren't human, it doesn't matter if someone kills them', remember that the JLA is made up of an alien, a god, a magic man, two powered humans, one rich human, and a human working for an intergalactic police organization. Are they really only about preserving Earthbound human life?

Let's not forget that one of the JLA members is a cyborg, his body used as raw building material to create a super-soldier of unimaginable power - which (spoiler alert) is the same origin as Darkseid's bio-borgs.

Does this mean it's peachy-keen to kill Cyborg, and no one should feel bad about doing so?

What is your morality, JLA, and why didn't helping out the Bio-Borgs even occur to you for one second? Do you think they like working for Darkseid? No one does. He's a terrible boss.

None of this would bother me in the least if five seconds later all of you didn't get so wishy-washy about killing Doctors Light and Psycho.

1.7.14

Animated Batman... Hypocrite?

While watching Son of Batman, I noted something strange. While the story followed the only broadest outline of Grant Morrison's intro to Damien (Batman Jr.) Wayne, the storytellers were careful to include Bruce's famous harping about how it's important not to kill anyone, ever. This would be less significant if Batman and his friends didn't kill a whole lot of people over the course of the story.

Let's take a look at Batman's reaction to being cornered by a group of Man-Bats who - and this is important to note - are just regular people (in this case assassins from the League of Shadows) given an entirely reversible serum that has temporarily transformed them into monsters. Here's Batman's play-



That's right - he blew them up with a terrifying powerful explosive, then crushed them under tons of steel and other debris.