Hey! I resemble that remark!!

I was so happy to see the letters column come back to DC.  I didn't care about losing the few pages to keep DC's price to 2.99, and the letters column was an added bonus.  "Wow!" thought I, "the return of the letters column is a symbolic gesture that DC wants to get in touch with their fans!!"

But did anyone take note of this particular letter?

So I guess becuase I'm a typical message board, twitter, or chat people-type person (Carl failed to mention blogs, but I'm assuming guilt by association here) that a.) I don't work b.) I don't enjoy reading comics.  Ooookay.  I don't know about you, but I definitely sit around the house all day eating a bag of Oreos whilst recklessly downloading illegal comics by the gigabyte.  And then I don't read them NOR do I enjoy them.  Then, for good measure, I kick a puppy.  No wonder DC can't trust my opinions.  They're the opinions of a puppy-kicking, lazy, unhappy, unproductive, misguided miscreant.  Gee, I never realized that about myself but now it all makes sense.  No wonder I'm a failure at life!

Thanks, DC for keeping my hopes up about your perception of me!

What next, is my dream of a flying car going to be dashed, too??

Silver Age John Jones Week, Day 2

1.  Why John Jones is here.

We all know how J'onn J'onzz came to be: he was accidentally brought to Earth by a teleportation machine created by Dr. Erdel, and after Erdel's subsequent death, was unable to return home.  A few details were tweaked a bit post-Crisis, but the main idea is the same.

So, stranded on Earth, what options did J'onn J'onzz have?  What was he to do with himself?  Well, he took in a few of the local Earth sights and noticed that our planet is a little bit behind his:

It was then that J'onn J'onzz decided to dedicate himself to his main task.  This is his "bat through the window"* moment:

And he decided to wear a hat.  There was much rejoicing.

So now we know J'onn's reason for being: J'onn chose to fight crime on Earth in the hopes that one day it will be obsolete.  Pretty much like Batman, he used an active decision to turn a setback into a raison d'être, and for both characters the choice easily could've been to indulge in more self-serving activities.

To look at his origin from behind the curtain, the character of John Jones, the Manhunter from Mars was created as a detective who used his Martian powers to solve crime.  He was a detective who happens to be an alien, not the other way around.

*Just in case anyone doesn't know to what I'm referring: a bat flew through Bruce Wayne's window, thus inspiring him to use a bat for his symbol.

Silver Age John Jones Week, Day 1

I'm on a John Jones kick again.  So I figured, why don't I make an event out of it?  Hopefully the week will culminate with something special, when it arrives in the mail.  (Squee!)

So, what do most of us know about Silver Age Martian Manhunter?  Well, it's not all ocean gold-mining and ice cream conjuring.  Yes, there definitely is a hefty dose of goofiness, but like to think of J'onn's original source material in the same way as I think of Richard Donner's original cut of Superman II before Richard Lester came along and added in the cheese: somewhere in there is a serious story waiting to come out.

I think it's only fair to take things at face value (with maybe a few side trips into out-of-context jokes), and I feel that J'onn's early days haven't seen their serious side represented enough on the internet.  (I'm guessing this is probably the case for most Silver Age characters.)  Hopefully I can straighten out some misconceptions, find a clearer focus of who the Silver Age J'onn J'onzz was and why he was created, and dig out some stories that a "modern" audience might appreciate.  If taken seriously, Silver Age John Jones has the potential to be a rich and meaningful character.  It's just that very few writers see him this way.

Maybe I'll need to expand this to two weeks.

For the sake of brevity, here's one panel to get things started.  If you thought my post from the other day about John Jones being a jerk was an anomaly, it's not.  Silver Age J'onn really liked to scare the crap out of people:

Tough love for criminals or just getting his kicks scaring the living daylights out of people?  You be the judge.

If Ted Kord comes back to life and gets a solo series, I want this guy drawing him

It's pretty rare when I find art so good that I'd actually print it out and hang it on my wall.  But this. is. gorgeous.

Everything works in this piece: the composition, the inking, the coloring, the perspective.  It all dovetails so nicely together, and I love to see this much skill applied so effortlessly to a piece of art.  It's the kind of piece that's done so well that the techniques become invisible and I can't even analyze it.  If I could understand a quarter of what's going on in this piece technique-wise, I'd be happy.

The icing on the cake?  It's a drawing of Ted Kord.

The artist is Miketron2000, the DeviantArt alias of Mike Norton.  The colors were provided by Keiran Oats.  Mr. Norton is currently doing the art for the new Young Justice series for DC, and his website is here.

The Question multi artist jam!

I found this at Comic Art Fans.  I'm trying to figure out if the owner went around to different artists and have them do a sketch, or if this was all Photoshopped in later.  (I'm pretty sure it's the former.)  If so, what a great idea!  Any of you going to any Cons should try this out.

Click to enlarge.  Your mind might be blown.  You've been warned!

The artists represented are: Norm Breyfogle, Dan Fraga, Doug Mahnke, Tom Lyle, Roderick Thorton, and Georges Jeanty.

When John Jones was younger...

Back in his Silver Age heyday, the stoic, gentle Martian of integrity we know and love today was a bit more snarky.  What's our Martian hero to do when he's wrongly imprisoned in jail?  Meditate and wait out the situation?  Reason with the guards?  Pfft.  Why do that when you can cause all sorts of trouble and make outrageous demands of your jailors?

I'm going to go steal a toilet made out of gold while I'm at it, too.  Be back in a jiffy!

And what about his servitude to the public?  His stoic, noble goal of protecting his adopted homeworld, of making sure its citizens can live a life free of worry?

When you got it, flaunt it, Jonesey.

Well, there goes that.  Don't worry, that lady will be fine when she gets wiped from history in the next Crisis.