Want to know how many pictures of the Scarlet Skier there are on the internet?

Answer: not enough.

In honor of Tuesday's Snowpocalypse, which is affecting a good portion of the United States, here is the Scarlet Skier.

Bonus points for the dialogue in Spanish!

Dude really needs some nice fan art.

Booster Gold (and friends) "Cubee"

Well, I have my weekend planned out.

I'm making this:

Do not poke fun at the awesomeness of Cubee.  You know you want to print this out and make one, too.  My printer may be low on ink, it might cost me $15 per ink tank, but dammit, I'm going to squeeze out every drop so I can print out my Booster Gold cubee.

Then I'm going to print out a Blue Beetle cubee.  And sit them next to each other on my desk at work.

And then I'll make a Fire one.  And an Ice one.  And then Guy Gardner.  And then a Hal Jordan one so I can drop things on its head.  Oh the fun I will have!

Oh noes, Hal!  I dropped my stapler on you!  Oh noes, it happened again!

You can view the hundreds (thousands?) of Cubees that this guy, The Flying Dachshund, made on his DeviantArt account.

This post was all Frank's fault, by the way.

No comics this week!

Saturday is usually the day when my comics arrive, but Brightest Day #13 was the only comic on my pull list, and it wasn't worth the extra shipping cost to have it sent to me, so I figured I'd wait till next week.

It feels like I haven't read a good comic in a looooong time!  Espeically back issues.  Every older story that I'm currently interested in reading, like the original L.E.G.I.O.N. run, isn't available in trade paperback format, and I don't feel like hunting down single issues.

Oh, and there always this:

My sweet, wonderful Adam Strange comic that I've been waiting for since August looks like it will never see the light of day at this rate!  I need my rocket packs and ray guns fix, darnit!!

In other news, you probably won't be seeing much of me this month.  Like kalinara over at Pretty Fizzy Paradise, I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month (nanowrimo, for short) for my fourth year in a row.  As you can imagine, writing 50,000 words in 30 days is kinda a time drain.

Some good comics are coming out next week, so I can't wait until then!

Why do *you* read comics?

During my weekly existential crisis I was wondering: what's the main reason people read comics?  I haven't even come to an answers as to why I read them other than they're a fast read, and that can't be a good reason.  I like the pretty pictures, too, but that doesn't seem like a valid reason to like a medium, either.

There's just something inherently cool about comic book characters that I can't quite put my finger on.  Yet at the same time, I really don't think of too many stories or comic book plots as memorable or meaningful.  With a few exceptions, I can't think of any great quotes from comic books that I find particularly memorable like I do from movies (both comic-based and not) and TV shows.  I mean, I sit there and say the lines along with the actors every time I watch Seinfeld, but there aren't too many comics that I'll re-read to that point.

Two comics that pop into my mind when I think about them as an actual story in the "graphic novel" sense are The Long Halloween and Martian Manhunter: American Secrets.  Both made me invest in the plot and left me wanting to find out what happens, and both had characters whom I found had a depth to them and that might stand to lose something.  The other story that pops into my head in terms of character is any Justice League International story.  The plots of those JLI stories were entertaining, but it was the characters and how they related to each that I really enjoy.  And thinking about Silver Age stories, which are often lacking any sort of depth (or sense), they are just so imaginative that they become entertaining.

I'm scratching my head trying to figure out why I buy certain ongoing titles today.  Most stories are lacking meaningful characters whom I can relate to, and the plots are pretty formulaic.  So what's the point of reading them?  I've been reading R.E.B.E.L.S. since last summer for the sheer purpose of hoping to find a panel showing Adam Strange standing in the background.  For me, it's character that interests me and keeps me coming back, even if it's a cameo appearance.  I've since kept R.E.B.E.L.S. in the pull list becuase I find Vril Dox entertaining, and now I'll read it without an Adam Strange appearance.

What are your reasons for reading comics?

Talking Comics With the Uninitiated, Part 2

So a while back I had a conversation with my mother about Wonder Woman's new costume and how much she hated it.

I'm starting to get my Halloween costume together.  Two years ago I made a promise to someone (who's going as the Joker) that I'd be Harley Quinn, which left me kind of at a loss as to how to pull off a work-safe (a.k.a. not super-tight) Harley Quinn costume.  Lo and behold, I managed to pull it off by finding a jester costume to modify.  I have no sewing machine skills, so this is where my mother comes in.  She has no idea who Harley Quinn is.

I had been showing her various pictures of Harley to give her an idea of what she looked like, but I never explained to her who she was exactly.  Actually, I did, but she wasn't listening at the time.

Apparently my mother thought the costume was a part of her body or her skin something, and not like an actual suit.  I don't know what goes on in the heads of non-comics readers...

Mom:  Well, I don't know what all these superpowers do to people!

Me:  She doesn't have superpowers, Mom.  She's just a girl in a suit.

Mom:  Oh.  But what about the horns?

Me:  They're part of her costume!  She's got pigtails and stuff.

Mom:  Okay.  You still have to make the glasses yet, right?

Me:  They're not glasses!  That's a mask!

Mom:  Oh.

Me:  And she doesn't have superpowers.  She's just crazy.

Mom:  What?

Me:  She's nuts.  She's the Joker's sidekick.

Mom:  She's a villain?!  Wait, I thought she was a hero!

Me: *facepalm*

Mom:  So she's a devil or something?

Me:  No!  She's cute!!!  See?  She's all like clingy and the Joker's all like, "Get off of me!"  It's funny!

Mom:  Okay, I guess she's kind of cute.

I then started asking my mother if she could take the headpiece apart and re-sew it back together because the black and red were on the wrong sides and she's like, "Does it REALLY matter?"  And of course I'm like, "YES."  Never offer to make anything for someone with OCD.  She is going to switch the sleeves around because they don't match at all, but I conceded the headpiece and the tunic, so it will be backwards, so I'll just have to pretend I'm Bizzarro-Harley or Left-Handed Harley or something.

You can just imagine how entertaining it will be when I take her to see the Green Lantern movie next summer.

Make Your Own Hawkgirl Mask...In Only An Hour!!

I was cruising the aisles of Joann Fabrics with the maternal unit today getting my Halloween plans in order.  I happened to see one of the little free project sheets sticking out from one of racks while looking at the in miscellaneous aisle in the back of the store:

Forget Bruce Wayne going back in time and being Cave Batman.  How about a Neolithic Hawkgirl?

And of course, when I saw this, I immediately flipped out and took one.  Incredulously, the instructions say "one hour" for the crafting time, which I find highly dubious.  I find it even more dubious that anyone would want to make this in the first place, even if it is cool-looking.  But I did find it interesting to know that you can sculpt leather just by soaking it in water and letting it dry.  You learn something new every day I guess, right?

Rivets?  Does anyone know how hard it is to rivet leather with hand tools?

So who's going to go make a Hawkgirl/man mask?  Come on...you know you want to!

I got nothin'

It seems like a pretty slow week, comics-wise, with nothing too major out on the shelves.  My Adam Strange Brave and the Bold is STILL running late, so I don't know when it'll be shipped to me.  Other than that, I have nothing new and exciting to report.  I envy bloggers who can riff about all sorts of topics under the sun and are gifted with a wellspring of inspiration which drives them to produce interesting posts day after day.  I, myself, on the other hand, just kinda sit there and look at the blank new post window hoping for something interesting to pop into my head.  I never was any good with coming up with original ideas.  I figure there's only so many analyses or "interesting" observations I can make about the comics world before I run out of the few ideas I already have.

So, I throw the ball to you, dear reader: is there any topic you'd like to see me talk about?  Or would you like my opinion on a certain topic?  Or just want to ask me anything?  Carte blanche.

I think I just spelled that wrong.

If I got stranded on a desert island that didn't have a comic shop...?

Aaron at Continued on Second Page Following offered up one of his desert island comic picks.  So of course that got me thinking about mine!

Did anyone ever see Lost, where one of the survivors finds a comic book in the plane after it crashes?  The unnamed comic book has a polar bear in it and people pushing a world-ending (or saving) button on a computer and it's in Spanish.  I didn't read comics when I first watched Lost, so I thought they made it up for the show.  Had I known then what I know now, I would've recognized Alan Scott and Jay Garrick, would've known that comics get translated into other languages, and wouldn't have thought polar bears in a comic book seemed weird.  (It was a real comic: Green Lantern/Flash: Faster Friends.)

Well, that comic wouldn't be my desert island pick as much as I like the Green Lantern mythos.  I don't think I could pick ONE comic as my desert island pick.  But I think I can narrow it down to a few:

Any trade paperback of Justice League International.  If I were stranded with no hope of rescue I'd want a laugh, you know?

Martian Manhunter: American Secrets.  Not only is it noir, not only does it feature my favorite hero, but it's a period piece with such a distinct tone and setting that it's so easy for me to escape into and make me forget my current surroundings.  It is quite possibly my favorite graphic novel, period.  And when the island polar bears and smoke monsters are wreaking havoc, I'd want to feel as far away from that as possible.

I stole this pick from your blog, Frank!

Adam Strange Archives, any volume.  With no hope of rescue, I'd like some upbeat escapist science fiction stories to keep me company.  Besides, it would help foster the dream that maybe a Zeta Beam could manifest itself and transport me away from all my island troubles.  Not only that the art is beautiful and colorful, and there's tigers with horns on their heads and giant city-destroying magnifying lenses.  Need I say more?

Oh, and I'd need a soundtrack to go with all those comics.  Elton John's Greatest Hits, anyone?  What, no one?  Well, I guess that's why they call it the blues.

It's been very, very quiet....

This past week has seemed kind of dull, comics-wise.  Nothing too exciting is going on...maybe it's the calm before the end-of-Blackest-Night storm?

As for my Silver Age silliness, I'm brainstorming ideas for the penultimate entry in A Guide For Writing the Rebooted Martian Manhunter.  I've got an idea for the last one, but it's that second-to-last one that's driving me up the wall.  And after I finish that countdown I won't have a clue what to write about next!

Hopefully something interesting will present itself soon.

Off to a wedding...

Can't blog today.  I have to go to a wedding.

Ugh.

I really, really dislike weddings, which involves having to deal with large groups of people, dancing, talking to people I don't know, and keeping sarcastic comments to myself.  This last one is really, really hard for me.

One wedding that I wouldn't mind going to?  This one:

Now wouldn't THAT be fun?  The fact that it appears as if some Rannian high priest is performing the ceremony is worth the price of admission alone.