HAVE FAITH FEARLESS ONES! WE'RE BACK!

ITEM! Sorry for the liltin’ lull between posts, pilgrims! Ol’ Smiley’s huge backlog of proffered projects, prolific scripts, and pointedly looming deadlines finally caught up with me. What finally got my attention was when a Disney lawyer suggested that if I didn’t get my in arrears rear-end in gear soon, I was gonna have to start giving back the up-front money! Yeesh! So — long story not-so-short, I had to load up on some St. John’s Wort, sequester myself in Casa De Lee, and churn out the next generation of literary greatness for several studios all at once.

But we’re back on track here in Soapboxland, with some exciting new comics, comedy and contests that’ll come winging their way straight to you any day now! And maybe I can even talk Shooter into guest posting a little more often. Where were yah when I needed yah, Jim? How much time can it take to script the same comic you’ve been writing since you were 15? Meantime, here’s a little something to tide you Faithful Ones over... Iron Man and his Dubious Compatriot discussing who had the biggest non-sequel opening for a super hero flick. Enjoy! 

Excelsior!

Smiley

TOP 10 BEST JACK KIRBY COMICS

The Shooter here with my own contribution to the Jack Kirby 91st birthday celebration and thanks to the Smilin’ One for letting me play in his Soapbox. Rather than belabor the obvious, gentle readers, I’ve chosen to share with you my personal favorites: The Top 10 Best Jack Kirby Comics. I know, it’s like choosing your favorite Beatles song or your favorite Van Gogh. Or deciding which of my runs on The Legion of Superheroes is best. While you may disagree with some of my choices, we can all agree that the King gave us some of the very best graphic storytelling the world has ever seen. Even in collaboration (to one degree or another) with the likes of Joe Simon, Stan Lee and even Arthur C. Clarke, Jack’s storytelling sensibilities were always what made a Kirby comic great. Inventive as he was, creative as he was, artistically gifted as he was, Jack was always first and foremost a fantastic storyteller. And so, without further ado...

Top 10 Best Jack Kirby Comics

10. Kamandi #16 “The Gift”

9. Marvel Treasury Edition: 2001 A Space Odyssey

8. Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos #6 “The Fangs of the Fox”

7. Captain America #1

6. Thor #159 “The Answer At Last!”

5. Mister Miracle #9 “Himon!”

4. Fantastic Four #51 “This Man... This Monster”

3. Streetwise “Street Code”

2. Boys Ranch #3 “Mother Delilah”

1. New Gods #7 “The Pact”

Take Care,

Shooter

AND I SAW THE SKRULL BENEATH THE SKIN...

J.S. "Elliot" here subbing for the Smilin’ One today. And it seems that it’s that time of the month once again. Amid the near-constant onslaught of ancillary tie-ins, one-shots, and special issues surrounding Marvel’s summer crossover event, Secret Invasion, comes an actual issue of the Mother-of-all-Skrull books. And I have to say... finally... in Secret Invasion #5 we get some actual plot development. It's almost as if  Brian Michael Bendis has been listening to the reader feedback. I'm sure if you, me, or Newsarama asked, he’d maintain that he's had this all planned out in advance since second grade in 1974. Either way, things actually start to pick up nicely in this issue.

*SPOILER ALERT* For example, after being introduced so dramatically to the story last issue as he rode to the rescue of a group of heroes fighting off the Skrulls in New York, Nick Fury finally gets down to real business this issue and... wait for it... watches some cable TV. No, I’m not kidding you. But that dramatic development aside, some real shape-changing waste matter finally hits the air redistribution system. S.W.O.R.D. director Abigail Brand single-handedly flushes an entire ship-full of Skrulls out the airlock and rescues Reed Richards. Jarvis the Gentlesman’s Gentleskrull get’s his metamorphic backside handed to him by SHIELD. It takes Reed Richards all of about five seconds to sort out the four-issue mess that’s been taking place in the Savage Land. And Hawkeye gets a real mad on. Like I said, for the most part very nicely done. This is how a summer crossover event is supposed to read. According to my calculations, by Secret Invasion #5 we’re finally about up to about the same point that I was by page 10 of issue #2 of Secret Wars, but that’s decompressed storytelling for you. If Mr. Bendis can keep amping up the pace as he did in this issue, at least this series will make a wonderful 60 minute read later on when it’s released as a trade paperback. And who knows? Maybe that was the Secret Invasion plan all along...

Take Care,

Shooter

ALWAYS BET ON THE DARK HORSE

Welcome back to The Hype Box. Guest columnist J.S. here, giving Sir Stan a much-needed day off to catch his breath after another megalithic media-circus feeding-frenzy, otherwise known as Comic Con San Diego. And guess what? There was one announcement that most of the industry hacks and flacks missed. In their headlong rush to congratulate DC Comics for absorbing yet another competitor’s superhero pantheon (the Archie and Milestone heroes in this case), they missed out on Dark Horse Comics’ announcement that they were bringing back some characters very near and dear to my heart: Doctor Solar and Magnus Robot Fighter. 

These Gold Key Comics heroes (who also once called a little ‘90s imprint named Valiant Comics home) will be appearing again later this year in all-new adventures published by Dark Horse. And just wait until you see what I have in store for these characters! I’ve already gotten the first year’s worth of plots and story arc worked out for both Solar and Magnus, and I’m ready to hand the first couple of scripts off to artists. The scale of these books is going to be so epic and mind-boggling that they’re going to make Secret Wars look like Secret Wars II. Which would be quite a feat, I'll grant you.

The only hold-up so far is that my agent is still waiting on the call from Dark Horse President Mike Richardson actually asking me to write these books — surely a mere formality at this point. And Barry Windsor-Smith hasn’t returned any of my calls as yet. But I assure you, gentle readers, that I’m poised and ready to create some truly great stories for Solar and Magnus... and if sales don’t start going up on Legion of Super-Heroes I may be ready sooner rather than later!

Take Care,

Shooter

SECRET INVASION VS. SECRET WARS: TO PLOT, OR NOT TO PLOT

Welcome to The Hype Box, and thanks to the Smilin’ One for allowing me this opportunity to both dip my toes into the blogosphere and to write publicly about the state of the art in comics today. My respect for the Man know no bounds, and as I once told Steve Englehart, in many ways Stan is the father of us all. Thanks, Stan. And without further ado, on with the show...

July brings us issue #4 of Joe Queseda’s and Brian Michael Bendis’ bastard summer crossover love-child, Secret Invasion. When the best thing you can say about this series is that at least it’s better than Final Crisis, you’ve still probably set reader expectations a little too high. I’m not even going to get into the ridiculous plot-holes that wouldn’t have even passed muster back in Stan’s day — he’s covered all of that quite well here and here and here. I’m going to compare and contrast it with the Gold Standard of all cross-over comics, my own Secret Wars. Let’s keep it simple and just start with this month cover, shall we? Secret Wars #4 (Aug. 1984) may not have been the best art directed cover in the history of comics (we were going for high-concept with the whole Molecule Man dropping a mountain on the Hulk and him holding it up), but you know what we didn’t do? We didn’t let the cover artist obscure so much of the title logo that you couldn’t even read it!

I'd critique Bendis’ plot... but there really isn’t one to critique, is there? If this story had been discussed with artist Leinil Francis Yu “Marvel Style,” the conversation would’ve gone something like, “In this ish we touch back on Reed — he’s still captured. We touch back on the exploded SWORD orbital HQ, which is still exploded. We touch back on the Super Skrull invasion of New York which Nick Fury showed up at with his forces last ish, and they still show up..." Well, you get the idea. It’s decompressed storytelling at it’s finest, and by decompressed storytelling I mean listless, lazy-ass storytelling that feigns realism with maudlin character moments as a substitute for actual plot development. There's about one-third of one issue’s worth of Secret Wars plot development stretched out over the course of the first four issues of Secret Invasion, with no sign of the pace picking up anytime soon. I swear reading this issue was like watching a Will Ferrel movie; it’s 15 minutes of my life I’m never getting back and I feel like my IQ just dropped 10 points.

And how exactly is a reader supposed to enjoy the torment of the heroes never knowing who’s a Skrull when even the readers aren’t given enough information to tell shape-changing head from shape-changing toe? That’s not creating suspense, Bendis, that’s called creating story confusion.

That’s enough for this blog, dear reader. Take my advice and don’t encourage these guys by giving them your hard-earned $3.99 a month. Save that money and after eight more months you can buy half a tank of gas with it and use that to drive to the comic shop and thumb through the trade paperback. You’ll get the whole story in about 3 minutes’ time, which is just about what it deserves.

Take Care,

Shooter