“And, of course, I just had to repay his generosity by…dating him…”
Whatever lie gets you through the self-loathing, honey.
– from DC 100 Page Super Spectacular #5 (1971)
Monthly Archives: July 2006
Kid Power!
The Arisia relationship makes a lot more sense now.
– from Green Lantern #70 (v2, July 1969)
Tags: Green Lantern
Hal Jordan’s Threesome
One of the many “3-Fer” hits to Hal Jordan’s head that appear in the Green Lantern series. There are almost too many to count.
Guy Gardner went insane and violent after getting just one telepathic smack in the head by Sinestro. Going by that, a big yellow space bug was hardly necessary to make Hal become Parallax as he has received more than enough brain damage over the years that it’s amazing he hasn’t turned into the Anti-Monitor.
– Part of the Hal Jordan Head Injury Project, from Green Lantern #65 (v2, December 1968).
The Hal Jordan Head Injury Project
In celebration of the anniversary of one year of blogging on Lady, That’s My Skull, I have just started the Hal Jordan Head Injury Project. I have accepted the calling of documenting and posting all the head traumas Hal has received in his career as an intergalactic status quo enforcer (I’m not including the full-body hits that cause the Emerald Crusader to take a nap, just the hits to the brain both physical and mental). This is a heck of a project because Hal was portrayed by creative teams as kind of a bull-in-the-china shop frat boy for about 40 years. I don’t know if anyone else has taken on a task of this magnitude or done something similar but I won’t quit even if they did. I’ll keep it up as long as my scanner holds out*. As far as I’m concerned, you can never have enough images of Hal Jordan taking one in the brain pan floating around.
As of this posting I’m only up to issue #38 of the 1960’s series of Green Lantern and there are more THWACKS! than you can shake a stick at. That’s a lot of dead brain cells. For Hal, I mean.
A big old hat tip to the Absorbascon’s own Scipio, who sparked the idea and started it all.
* If anyone wants to contribute to this historic archive then please feel free to email it to me or provide a link. Thanks to those real friends, internet friends and others that have already worked on some of the panels for me. This is my hobby but any assist will be appreciated and you will get a credit as a contributor. All I ask is that the image be in color (unless the original source was b/w and that you provide some basic info like the title of the book and issue number of where the image came from). The b/w collections are okay….but some panels, like the lamp scene from Showcase #22, work better in color.
Tags: Green Lantern, Hal Jordan Head Injury Project
Leave it to Hal Jordan
…to make it hard for us to love him.
– from Green Lantern #33 (v2, December 1964)
Tags: Green Lantern, Leave it to…
Leave it to Oliver Queen
…to invent the Pearl Necklace Arrow.
– from Lois Lane #29 (November 1961)
Tags: Green Arrow, Lois Lane, Leave it to…
Contest? What contest…Oops!
I can’t believe I forgot all about the Caption The Meme Contest. Well, I mean I can believe it, because I did. I delayed administering to the contest for a few weeks because of my work schedule. It flips around daily from day shift to night shift. I’m also a slow runner (more of a shuffler, really) and those darn Marshall’s run so very, very fast. So the result being I was exhausted, and then it slipped my mind. I only remembered it now because I saw a butt-load of lurker-hits going to that page over the last few days.
Since I am a lizard-bug of my word, I am prepared to give up my mint copy of the Heritage Watch comic book Wrath of the Phantom Army to the winner.
It was too hard for me to choose the winning entry from the posts and e-mails because they were all so funny, witty and some of these people were friends. So I showed them to a few non-participating friends in the comic-geek and non-comic geek sphere and they voted for the one they liked the best.
And here is the winning entry for the dead meme contest…
Congrats, So-Called Austin Mayor!Your comic book is on it’s way! Those who did not win have my thanks for participating and need to STFU because it’s an honor just to be nominated.
Boogie Emerald Nights
I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but the last few years of increasing awareness of how women characters are portrayed in comic books has yielded changes that I believe were an unintended consequence for the audience. The wide spread protests, snark and educational essays in blogs and forums have, ironically, actually caused the problems of the exploitation of gender to become worse.
Instead of writers and artists toning down the cheescake and soft porn in regards to women, they have instead increased the hyper-sexualization of the male characters in order to make all things equal.
Case in point, Alan Scott…
Cripes.
Guess the shoe is on the other foot now, so to speak.
The Best Comic Book Ad EVER EVER EVER!
“Simba, my friend…What! You’re not Simba!”
What long-time comic fan doesn’t remember the classic line from the 1975 comic book advertisement Tarzan Discovers the Land of the Prehistoric Animals drawn by Joe Kubert for Pom Poms candy and Aurora’s model kits?
The ad ran for several months in various comic books of 1975 -1976 as a tie-in from Nabisco and the long-time comic book ad standby, the hobby company Aurora, pushing a series of mail-order Prehistoric Animals model kits. This particular copy was found inWorld’s Finest Comics #234 (December 1975) and is permanently burned into my brain, taking up precious memory space I can ill afford to squander on ancient pop media. But it is worth it for the Kubert!
As far as ads go, it is a truly memorable one due to the art and subject matter. The ad is unique in that it is a small and self-contained story of Tarzan, who falls through a time-hole and is stranded for a short time in a land where extinct dinosaurs and mammals coexist. This ad is so complete it is very nearly a comic book back-up story in itself! It has great layouts and pacing by a Kubert who was, as usual, putting in a talented and professional effort. In the first panel Kubert draws Tarzan as exhausted from his unexpected journey, traumatized and possibly injured by events he can not comprehend. Tarzan encounters a big cat he mistakenly believes a friend and Kubert shows how devastated Tarzan is, who narrowly escapes with his life. Then in a following scene Kubert shows the reader that an important survival lesson was learned as thereafter, Tarzan warily avoids the big predators and lives long enough to make his way home. You can also see how Kubert worked to make the static poses of the models appear dynamic and exciting.
Click the ad for dino-sized picture and enjoy!
As a funny* aside, Tarzan’s dialog was a short-lived meme among San Diego comic book geeks way back when.
Eat the Kuberty goodness!
* Not “funny-ha-ha”, but “funny-you-had-to-be-there”. For instance, if you and a friend were confronted by an aggressive stray dog in an alley, Tarzan’s dialog is what you would say in all mock-seriousness to the dog right before running away as fast as you could.
Bad, Brad Meltzer! Bad!
Would the Diana I know from the comics of the 60’s to today really dismiss Red Tornado’s sacrifice so out of hand and with such cruelty? I do not think so.
– Panel from Justice League of America #0 (September 2006)The only way I could believe that Diana was so human-centric was only if she knew what none of the others did; that Reddy was not at all sentient, but rather was just an incredibly complex machine that mimicked being self-aware, tiny metaphysical tornado elemental soul notwithstanding.
So this is either Meltzer bulldozing ahead with mischaracterization or a retcon that shows a more hardened, practical warrior princess.
No cookie for Brad!
Lady, That's My Skull 