Now kids, you say the weekend’s got here, and you feel you just can’t get it started without some sort of random and moderately senseless violence? I got good news for ya — you’ve come to the right place. ‘Round here, the weekend’s reserved for… FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Tonight’s battle comes from November 2007’s Blue Beetle #19 by John Rogers, Keith Giffen, David Baldeon, and Steve Bird, as Beetle brings Giganta down to earth with a few amazingly accurate punches to her nervous system’s pressure points:

And for our musical selection for tonight, I tried to figure out what on earth kinda song you’d pick to accompany a fight with a woman who can grow as tall as she wants, and I decided to go with this song by Storm Large. (And that link is probably not safe for work AT ALL… and the funniest thing you’re going to see or hear this entire weekend. Y’all have been warned.)

My List o’ Fantastic Links is getting increasingly large and unruly, which means it’s time for y’all to get ready for a whole bunch of wonderful links to click on! Huzzah, it’s the true meaning of Christmas!

• First, an announcement: This Saturday, August 8th, Awesome Books at 3009A 34th Street here in Lubbock will host local author Sherrie Spychaj for a book signing from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sherrie’s book is called “Staying Safe: Helping Victims of Abuse,” and it’s full of information that could save your life or the life of someone you know. Come on down and check it out.
• “Weird Al” Yankovic’s new song is a tribute to the Baddest Man in Showbiz.
• Who here doesn’t love awesome dinosaurs? Right, y’all need to read “Let Us Now Praise Awesome Dinosaurs” by Leonard Richardson, who is also awesome.
• Project Rooftop has the winners in their latest contest to redesign Wolverine’s costume.
• Hey, wanna see Daredevil strip down to his skivvies? Sure ya do!
• The most addictive site on the ‘net? Other than “Hero Sandwich”? It’s TV Tropes. Just surf through a few of their categories, and you may never be able to escape.
• And finally, the best Rickroll in history.

There, that should destroy any chance you’ve got to have a productive workday…

All Winners Comics 70th Anniversary Special #1

If you’d told me a few months ago that I’d be grooving this hard on a bunch of comics commemorating Marvel’s Golden Age, I’da laughed in your face. The Golden Age of comics — mostly centering around World War II — is something that requires a lot of nostalgia to get into, ’cause if you read the original comics from that era, they’re often not that good. But without the Golden Age, you wouldn’t have had any comics at all, and for that alone, it deserves respect. But I’ve always been more interested in DC’s Golden Age, mostly because DC does such a good job of promoting their Golden Age characters through the “Justice Society” series. Marvel? What’s there to know but Captain America, Bucky, the Human Torch, and Namor, right?

Well, wrong. This series of specials has been absolutely amazing — some of the best writing and artwork to come out of Marvel in ages, along with some of the best stories from the real Golden Age, too. If you haven’t picked them up yet, go get to it.

As for this story, we start out shortly after the end of World War II, with the All Winners Squad taking on Future Man and Madame Death. Captain America makes a careless error that leaves Future Man’s time ship falling through time, though the heroes escape safely. Waitaminute, wasn’t Cap frozen in ice at the end of the war? Yes, this is a guy named Jeff Mace who is a replacement Captain America — and he doesn’t feel he’s earned the right to take Cap’s place yet. There’s also some additional soap-opera drama — Miss America is pretending she and Cap are dating to get the media talking, which is making her real boyfriend, the Whizzer (snicker!) jealous. But a night out on the town soon devolves into an attack by undead soldiers — and when a zombie Captain America appears and says that he’ll return to life if the replacement Cap dies, what’s going to happen then?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Wonderful plotting, dialogue, characterization, and artwork. The soap opera elements inject several months’ worth of drama into only a few pages, and the surprise villain was perfect for the story.

Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam! #6

Dr. Sivana has escaped from prison, but Captain Marvel doesn’t have time to track him down — there’s a Bigfoot terrorizing the area. Wait, that’s no Bigfoot, that’s King Kull, timelost barbarian warrior with a magic gun that turns wood into metal. But Kull may be as strong as Cap, and he’s definitely a more experienced fighter, plus his gun leads to some very rough moments for the Big Red Cheese. Is there a way for Cap to prevail?

Verdict: Thumbs up. This story is again written by Art Baltazar and Franco, who are best known for their work on “Tiny Titans” and “Patrick the Wolf Boy,” while artwork is provided by Stephen DeStafano. At first, I thought DeStefano’s art was extremely weird for this book, but the more the story continued, the more I liked it — it’s like a combination of ’60s underground art and retro Golden Age cartooning. It ends up being very appealing and perfect for a character like Captain Marvel.

Tiny Titans #18

It all starts quietly enough with a coffee spill in the hallway. Principal Slade calls in the school’s janitor — well, actually, Sidekick Elementary doesn’t have a janitor. Instead, he calls for… Lunch Lady Darkseid!

And he designates the dark god as Janitor for the Day. Which Darkseid is entirely down with, as long as he gets a nice jacket. And because Darkseid is such a control freak, he uses his “authority” to stick Robin in detention. After that, Kroc shows up and busts out the light bulb, creating… the Blackest Night.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s a pretty light issue this time, but anything with Lunch Lady Darkseid is a winner for me. Maybe they should give him his own series…

Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes #13

The Sensational She-Hulk pays a visit to Avengers Mansion to visit Spider-Man and Tigra. Shulkie and Tigra convince Spidey to join them for a shopping trip/picnic in the park, but the fun gets derailed by a superpowered bulldog running amok in the city. A bunch of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents soon appear to reveal what’s going on — the bulldog is actually an L.M.D. (Life Model Decoy — err, Doggie), an advanced robot that has been co-opted by the Hulk’s enemy, the Leader, so he can steal data from the super-spy agency. While the heroes join the search, they soon find themselves under attack from hostile robotic pigeons, police horses, and pelicans before the Leader and his giant killer robot make their own appearance.

Verdict: Another thumbs up. Outstanding dialogue and characterization on display here. The entire story is very fun and funny — and like nearly all of Marvel’s all-ages comics, it works great for both kids and adults. Go pick it up!

Perhaps you’ve heard of Marvel’s “Super Hero Squad” line of toys, and maybe you haven’t. It’s not a bad concept — a bunch of cartoony, kid-friendly action figures where the superheroes are free of comic book angst. They’ve had a comic or two about the characters, and there are plans to turn it into a cartoon series and even an MMO. The worst thing you can say about it is that it caused the cancellation of Chris Giarrusso’s impossibly cool “Mini Marvels” comic strips.

Anyway, one of my new co-workers got to go to Comic-Con in San Diego a couple weeks ago and came back with a stack of comic freebies that she left in our break room with an invitation for all of us to take anything we thought looked interesting. One of the few things to catch my eye was a poster featuring a ton of the Super Hero Squad characters.

(And I’ll apologize in advance for the wonky quality of my scans here — it was no easy feat to get a full-sized poster properly positioned on a scanner, and some of the images also suffer from some bleed-through from the images that were on the back of the poster.)

The main thing you notice about all these Super Hero Squad characters is that they’re all extremely adorable and cute, with big happy eyes and friendly smiles. This is bit jarring on characters like Wolverine and the Silver Surfer, who aren’t known for running around and grinning. But probably the cutest character they have is Hank “Beast” McCoy:

Holy spaghetti, that’s so cute, my teeth have already rotted right out of my skull. Is this the fabled missing link between comic books and lolcats?

OMG SO CUTE!

But you wanna know what the freakiest thing about this is? The villains are just as happy and friendly and smiley as the heroes. For instance, there’s the Vulture and the Green Goblin.

Now the Goblin is one of the few Super Hero Squad characters who looks even slightly threatening, ’cause that smile legitimately brings the crazy. Still, even for a demented killer, he looks really cute and adorable. And check out the Vulture — in the comics, he’s a dour, bald, elderly man. Here, he’s young, smiling, happy, and handsome. He looks like Charlie Brown when he’s having a good day. Definitely not the typical look for him.

And then there’s Venom.

See what they did to make him look less scary? They gave him flat teeth, not fangs. They didn’t do anything to his claws or to his always-disturbing tongue. He may be less scary, but dangit, if I was ages 3 and up, he’d still be more than scary enough. Honestly, I’m not sure there’s any good way to de-scarify Venom. Maybe put him in blonde wig and a pretty pink party dress and rename him “Paris.” But no, no, I’m newly terrified of Venom now. Great work there, Scott.

Oh, and who’s that I see behind Venom and the Rhino down there?

Hey, it’s that wholesome and cute serial killing alien symbiote monster Carnage! OMG SO ADORABLEZ!

And finally, anyone looking for an adorably cute Nazi war criminal?

Oh, Red Skull, how could we ever stay mad at you?

Justice Society of America #29

It’s the first issue written by “Fables” writer Bill Willingham. The JSA has a new mystery on its hands when an oversized black egg appears and turns out to be Obsidian, the HQ’s caretaker. There are a couple of new underaged members of the team — the naive All-American Kid and the arrogant King Chimera. And the entire team gets ambushed and beat down by a mega-team of bad guys pulled from all over the DC Universe, including Eclipso, Dr. Polaris, Mammoth, Major Force, and Blackbriar Thorn. But why are all of the villains refusing to attack Stargirl?

Verdict: Ehh, not sure. On one hand, I wanna give Bill Willingham a chance to get his sea-legs on this book. But something about it just rubs me the wrong way. And dangit, this has been a problem for Willingham in a lot of his non-“Fables” comics — “Shadowpact” started off pretty strong, then took a nosedive, and “DCU Decisions” was off-kilter from the start, which I initially chalked up to co-writer Judd Winick’s involvement. I hope this series isn’t going to bite as hard as those others, ’cause this comic has developed into one of DC’s flagship titles…

Wildstorm Universe #0

This one was free. Yay! Basically, after several reboots in the last few years, Wildstorm is going to reboot their primary superhero universe again. That’s about all there is for this one — a few pictures, a few text descriptions.

Verdict: Thumbs down. Too many reboots, guys. And after their last reboot — blowing up a large chunk of the planet and setting all their superhero hijinx in the post-apocalyptic remnants — that’s not really something that the planet is just gonna recover from, which appears to be what they’re planning to do here. And a somewhat unrelated point — why are the Gen-13 kids running around in black domino masks? That’s a look that just doesn’t work for that team.

Let’s make this short and sweet: Weekend! Huzzah! FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Tonight, we’re visiting 2007’s Empowered, Volume 1 by Adam Warren, as Empowered gets good and mad — as well as, for once, good and confident and and not tied-up and not nearly-nekkid — and unleashes all over a bunch of thugs threatening her boyfriend and earns a boatload of respect besides.

Adam Warren does action and cheesecake better than any other artist I know.

Tonight’s musical accompaniment seemed obvious enough. Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for Aretha Franklin!

Via Aaron Williams: Scientists have gone and created transparent aluminum. Or did they actually get it from a Scottish engineer who talked into his computer mouse?

Oxford scientists have created a transparent form of aluminium by bombarding the metal with the world’s most powerful soft X-ray laser. “Transparent aluminium” previously only existed in science fiction, featuring in the movie “Star Trek IV,” but the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion.

In the journal Nature Physics an international team, led by Oxford University scientists, report that a short pulse from the FLASH laser “knocked out” a core electron from every aluminium atom in a sample without disrupting the metal’s crystalline structure. This turned the aluminium nearly invisible to extreme ultraviolet radiation.

“What we have created is a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before,” said Professor Justin Wark of Oxford University’s Department of Physics, one of the authors of the paper. “Transparent aluminium is just the start. The physical properties of the matter we are creating are relevant to the conditions inside large planets, and we also hope that by studying it we can gain a greater understanding of what is going on during the creation of ‘miniature stars’ created by high-power laser implosions, which may one day allow the power of nuclear fusion to be harnessed here on Earth.”

The discovery was made possible with the development of a new source of radiation that is ten billion times brighter than any synchrotron in the world (such as the UK’s Diamond Light Source). The FLASH laser, based in Hamburg, Germany, produces extremely brief pulses of soft X-ray light, each of which is more powerful than the output of a power plant that provides electricity to a whole city.

What makes this story even neater is that, as cool as transparent aluminum may be, everything else about this experiment ended up being even cooler. New sources of radiation billions of times brighter than any synchotron on Earth? Pulses of X-rays more powerful than a power plant’s output? A step toward nuclear fusion? Gaining insight into the creation of stars? Holy guacamole, science is awesome!

Detective Comics #855

Batwoman confronts Alice, the looney-tunes new leader of the Church of Crime, gasses her in the hope of interrogating her, but gets slashed by a poisoned razor that Alice was holding in her mouth. She loses her wig and starts hallucinating about the night her mother was killed. Kate’s dad goes after her to help, but the Church of Crime has resources that could be much too strong for an injured crimefighter and her aging military dad. Meanwhile, in the second feature, the Question beats up some thugs and gets a lead on the kidnapped girl, heading to a large office building to meet up with someone named Chandless. But his security is a lot better than the thugs Renee took care of before.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Good, solid superheroey whoopass from beginning to end. Alice is a nicely disturbing weirdo — and it does seem appropriate that Batwoman would get her own version of the Joker as a nemesis.

Wonder Woman #34

Wondy gets a lead from Dr. T.O. Morrow on the murderous demigoddess Genocide’s whereabouts — an illegal metahuman fighting club in Japan. She enlists Black Canary’s aid to help her infiltrate the club, and Dinah decides to give herself and Wondy a super-makeover so they can disguise themselves as supervillains and sneak into the club. Masquerading as the Orphan Sisters, WW and BC have to fight a robot and a shapeshifter, and Diana unexpectedly manifests some new superpowers. But who’s the mastermind behind the club?

Verdict: Thumbs up, particularly for Black Canary’s dialogue and the hilarious makeover scene.

Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers #3

All the Pet Avengers — Lockjaw, Throg, Lockheed, Redwing, Hairball, Zabu, and Ms. Lion — end up deep underwater in the middle of the ocean. They’re rescued by Namor’s honor guard of sea turtles, who create air bubbles to keep the animals alive. While Hairball spends his time freaking out because he’s surrounded by water, the turtles take them to a pair of the Infinity Gems. But they awaken a gigant mutant whale of some sort, which swallows all of them. Luckily, Ms. Lion finds the gems. With just one gem remaining, Lockjaw teleports the group to the final location — the White House. But all the teleporting has tired Lockjaw out, and he passes out on the White House lawn. Forced to drag the extremely large Lockjaw into the White House and then up the stairs, all without being seen by White House security, the Pet Avengers finally find the final gem — on Bo Obama‘s new collar! Too bad they don’t have time to grab him before Thanos does!

Verdict: Thumbs up. Pretty good dialogue and funny situations — while the group sneaking into the White House is fairly contrived, the idea of a sabre-toothed tiger, a dragon, a hawk, a glowing cat, a yappy dog, and Frog Thor dragging a giant bulldog up a staircase does make an enjoyably silly image. Even the twist on all the presidential guest-star roles is amusing.

Marvel Adventures: The Avengers #38

The Mandarin has a plot to lure a group of the Avengers in with a bunch of kidnapped children and then use a power-stealing robot to, well, steal their powers. He’s pretty successful, except that he’s forgotten one little Avenger…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Lots of really cute things in this one, especially the Hulk in the petting zoo. The Mandarin is wonderfully charming and devious all at once, which is a vital quality in all the best villains.