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Post by Cheswick on Mar 7, 2019 21:33:13 GMT -5
Interesting, because when I read the JLA 70s post concerning him, I thought, "Ahh, so that's Libra." What makes you think it's not the same character? That character was scattered to the cosmos in his Wein appearance. Perhaps there's an intervening story in which he reconstituted? He has the same schtick and costume. It is the same Libra. He returned in a story in Final Crisis Secret Files, written by Len Wein. The story also told his origin and revealed what happened to him between his returning and the events of Final Crisis.
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Post by Cheswick on Feb 11, 2019 22:40:56 GMT -5
A couple more Sci-Fi-influenced songs: "Listen to the Sirens" by Tubeway Army (Gary Numan) was inspired by Philip K. Dick's Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said and Joy Division's song "Atrocity Exhibition" was inspired by J.G. Ballard's collection of stories of the same name.
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Post by Cheswick on Dec 25, 2018 10:12:36 GMT -5
Grant Morrison tried to clean all this up recently with the Grand (Grant?) Unified Multiverse theory as expounded in the Multiversity event. Is that something people would be interested in seeing reviewed, or is it too recent and/or meta? I always enjoy your reviews and am interested in your opinion of The Multiversity issues.
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Post by Cheswick on Dec 17, 2018 21:05:02 GMT -5
By the way, will you be reviewing any of the JLA Annuals? No, simply because they are not part of the trade paperbacks I acquired, which I assume also means that Morrison was not involved. However, I will be including DC One Million, JLA: Earth 2, and Morrison's later run on JLA Classified. I am also starting my notations on Seven Soldiers and All-Star Superman, but I was planning those for their own threads, unless the forum's consensus is that it's JLA-ish enough that I should just put it all in this thread. I think Seven Soldiers and All-Star Superman are deserving of their own threads but, either way, the JLA Classified story definitely serves as an appropriate segue for Seven Soldiers.
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Post by Cheswick on Dec 14, 2018 9:39:21 GMT -5
I like the idea of Prometheus as the inverse-Batman. Morrison clearly drew inspiration from the '80s villain, The Wrath (from Batman Special #1),who had essentially the same origin: criminal parents killed by cops, leading to him carrying out acts of vengeance against law-enforcement officers.
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Post by Cheswick on Dec 7, 2018 20:23:57 GMT -5
While I won't say Morrison didn't have Jean Grey in mind* and there may be a bit of similarity, given that Jean had telekinesis, Tomorrow Woman is not really based on her, or any other Marvel Mutants. Tomorrow Woman is pretty much a shout-out to DC's Captain Comet. Like the Captain, Tomorrow Woman says she is a mutant with telekinetic powers. She claimed to be born ahead of her time, like Captain Comet, who was born 100,000 years ahead of his time. And her array of powers is far more in line with the Captain's than with any of Marvel's one-trick-power mutants. And to the best of my minimal X-Men knowledge, Jean's telekinesis was far more limited and straightforward than TW's. At least until she became Phoenix, which is a whole different ballpark by far. And Captain Comet first appeared in 1951, before the X-Men (1963 or thereabouts, I believe), or the Shooter-created mutant above (1976). * No one can ever say for sure what Morrison ever has in mind. Thank you. I wasn't familiar with Captain Comet, but after reading up on him, what you say makes perfect sense. Morrison always was more a DC guy, whereas my own experience naturally leads me to think of similar Marvel characters. Captain Comet had pretty much all the superpowers, from what I can tell; he was quite the proto-Mary Sue. Here he is in civilian guise, showing some strength, toughness, and TK in his first appearance (Strange Adventures #9, 1951), which was by Broome and Infantino. I couldn't find a reference to him being a mutant, but the bit about being "born ahead of my time" could not be more spot-on. It was in that same issue.
imgur.com/a/cR84viT
Morrison eventually wrote a version of Captain Comet during his New 52 run on Action Comics. It was one of my favorite parts of that run.
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Post by Cheswick on Dec 7, 2018 11:30:25 GMT -5
I didn't mind Electric Blue Superman.... I mean, we all knew it was temporary, I found it a fine change of pace. to this day I'm still surprised they didn't resolve it by giving the electric Blue powers to someone in the supporting cast. They actually did give the powers to someone else a few years later when, in the Superman comic, they gave them to a character named Sharon Vance.
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Post by Cheswick on Dec 1, 2018 23:06:00 GMT -5
During Matt Fraction's run on Uncanny X-Men, he used a character, Dr. Yuriko Takiguchi, who, at that point, had only ever appeared in the Godzilla book. That seems to imply the Godzilla stories are canon, even if they are never directly referenced.
Well sure, they have to be canon! Godzille meet Devil Dinosaur, who met Boom Boom, Sunspot, and Warlock from X-Men comics. Except I guess that Moon Boy is Moon Girl in the latest reboot. I thought taxidriver was suggesting that the Godzilla issues were no longer considered canon but, rather, stories that took place in an alternate universe.
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Post by Cheswick on Dec 1, 2018 22:54:02 GMT -5
That is a good point. Godzilla was once part of the Marvel Universe, but I suspect he is elsewhere now. So I do understand what you mean. During Matt Fraction's run on Uncanny X-Men, he used a character, Dr. Yuriko Takiguchi, who, at that point, had only ever appeared in the Godzilla book. That seems to imply the Godzilla stories are canon, even if they are never directly referenced.
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Post by Cheswick on Dec 1, 2018 22:30:15 GMT -5
I was just noticing the similarity in appearance between the bum who adopts the animals and Wally Sage, the Grant Morrison stand-in character from Flex Mentallo. Morrison is an "animal man" in real life, apparently with numerous cats. Maybe it's just Quitely being Quitely, but he has shown himself a man capable of drawing very different faces on people when it's needed. I never noticed that. Thanks for pointing it out. I doubt it's a coincidence, but I wonder if it was Morrison's idea or if Quitely decided to do it, kind of like, in Planetary #7, when John Cassady drew the John Constantine stand-in transforming into Spider Jerusalem when the script had him transforming into King Mob.
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Post by Cheswick on Nov 21, 2018 5:32:19 GMT -5
I will never not love Marc Bolan of T Rex with a Man-Wolf comic And hey I made a playlist of around 50 super hero songs on youtube This might have been mentioned already but speaking of Bolan and TRex, Doctor Strange is referenced in Mambo Sun and the Silver Surfer gets a mention in the less known but still great Whatever Happened to the Teenage Dream. T-Rex also has a song called "The Avengers" but, beyond the title, there's nothing lyrically to indicate that it was inspired by the TV show or the comic.
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Post by Cheswick on Nov 20, 2018 20:19:45 GMT -5
I forgot about this song in my earlier post:
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Post by Cheswick on Nov 20, 2018 11:07:06 GMT -5
I think Bowie was an X-Men reader at some point, based on his use of the term "Homo Superior" in "Oh, You Pretty Things". Pete Shelley (of the Buzzcocks) also used the phrase in his solo song "Homo Sapien"
rberman- You probably already have these songs on your list but, just in case, here are some genre-related songs that came to mind after reading your post: "Frankenstein" by The Edgar Winter Group, The Jam's cover of the '60s TV Batman theme, "Bela Lugosi's Dead" by Bauhaus, and REM's cover of The Clique's "Superman". Also, Queen references Star Wars and Jaws in "Bicycle Race". edit: I just remembered "More Human Than Human" by Rob Zombie, with its title , and many of the lyrics coming from Blade Runner. edit 2: I can't believe I forgot "Can U Dig It?" by Pop Will Eat Itself. They pack more genre references into it than any other song I've ever heard (Bruce Wayne, Terminator, Furry Freak Brothers, Alan Moore, Marvel, DC, Bruce Lee, V for Vendetta, The Warriors, and probably a few I'm forgetting). "Nerd Girl" by MC Chris is also comic-reference-heavy.
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Post by Cheswick on Nov 10, 2018 9:55:08 GMT -5
Yeah, good review. I honestly believe Grant Morrison had a quite good idea for a Batman story. Likewise I really believe Dave McKean had a good idea for a Batman story. Sadly, it seems like both of them either didn't understand or ignored the others' idea and tried to work around e everything the other was doing. Aaaaand the end result is a huge mess. I blame Morrison's (supposedly) impenetrable Scottish accent. That reminds me of the (true) story of when he appeared at a convention in Italy and they had to get a translator for his translator, i.e. someone to repeat Morrison without the accent so the translator could understand it.
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Post by Cheswick on Nov 7, 2018 9:31:50 GMT -5
Phoenix: Warsong #1 (November 2006)The Story: Emma Frost has a nightmare in which, possessed by the Phoenix again, she consumes the world. She awakens with a notion that the Phoenix Force will return and mess with the three Stepford Cuckoos. Then the Phoenix Force arrives and does that very thing, as well as re-animating the corpses of deceased Cuckoos Esme (who died betraying Magneto) and Sophie (who died resisting Quentin Quire and was briefly reanimated in the Phoenix: Endsong series). My Two Cents: Greg Pak is continuing his Phoenix: Endsong story, as we see that the death of Jean Grey doesn’t mean beans about the end of Phoenix. (We already saw this in Valentino's Guardians of the Galaxy in which Phoenix is still alive and kicking in the far future.) Pak slips in a few pop culture references: Esme’s tombstone says, “With pride and squalor.” This inappropriate epitaph refers to the character Esme Squalor in the “Series of Unfortunate Events” children’s books. You may recall that Grant Morrison named the five Stepford Cuckoos (Sophie, Phoebe, Irma, Celeste, Esme) so that their initials referred to the Spice Girls. But Irma’s name was never mentioned during Grant Morrison’s run, and Pak decided to name her “Mindee” in this series. Later publications corrected her name back to Irma with some unnecessary exposition. We’ll go with “Mindee” in this discussion. It was actually Chuck Austen who gave her the name Mindee during his run on X-Men. Matt Fraction later revealed during his run on Uncanny X-Men that Mindee was, in fact, a nickname, and that Irma was her real name, setting things inline with Morrison's intentions.
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