Well, it’s not quite on the scale that your average monster insects in comics or ’50s sci-fi movies are, but this bug is still awfully big…

A fearsome fossil claw discovered in Germany belonged to the biggest bug ever known, scientists announced Tuesday.

“We have known for some time that the fossil record yields monster millipedes, supersized scorpions, colossal cockroaches, and jumbo dragonflies,” he added. “But we never realized, until now, just how big some of these ancient creepy-crawlies were.”

“This is an amazing discovery,” Braddy said.

The find shows that arthropods — animals such as insects, spiders, and crabs, which have hard external skeletons, jointed limbs, and segmented bodies — once grew much larger than previously thought, said paleobiologist Simon Braddy of the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom.

The size of a large crocodile, the 390-million-year-old sea scorpion was the top predator of its day, slicing up fish and cannibalizing its own kind in coastal swamp waters, fossil experts say.

Jaekelopterus rhenaniae measured some 8.2 feet (2.5 meters) long, scientists estimate, based on the length of its 18-inch (46-centimeter), spiked claw.

That’s over eight feet long, people. Almost as tall as I am! It all just goes to prove: giant underwater prehistoric lobster-scorpions are bad news and should be stomped on as often as possible, preferably while screaming shrilly.

Happy Turkey Day, folks. Hope you all get your fill of turkey and dressing, football, and all the other wonderful Thanksgiving stuff. Our family is having one of our “We can’t all be together, but we’re still eating with family” Thanksgivings — my folks are eating with my sister and her husband, my grandmother’s eating with my aunt and her mother, and I’ll be hanging out at my brother’s house. We’ll be eating pizza, because we ain’t gonna eat no 20-pound turkey.

And if you’ve got the fortune of having plenty to eat and having friends and family, spare a thought for those who don’t have your benefits. There are way too many of them out there, ya know. The poor may always be with us, but that doesn’t mean we should get complacent or satisfied with that fact.

No, we’re not talking about the turkey you’re gonna be shoving down your gullet tomorrow — we’re talking comics with light-hearted themes and comics that are wallowing in the bleak and horrific side of things. Let’s go with the light stuff first…

Captain Carrot and the Final Ark #2

Frogzilla’s back, and the Zoo Crew’s best chance of beating him lies with… Alley-Kat-Abra?! But isn’t she in prison for murder? Turns out that the evil wizard Feline Faust created an evil doppelganger of Alley, and she did all the bad stuff while the real Alley was trapped in a prison dimension. Umm, yes, sounds likely, ya think? Once Frogzilla is turned back into J. Fenimore Frog, the Zoo Crew head for the ocean depths to track the undersea terrorist Salamandroid. Unfortunately, it’s a trap, and the team is attacked by Starro the Conqueror’s face-hugging starfish. On top of that, Vicuna Pacos is revealed as the mad environmentalist immortal Rash Al Paca, and he has plans to flood the entire planet!

Verdict: Thumbs up. The art is wonderful, the puns are wonderful, the jokes are funny, and I’m still pretty happy with the story — though I gotta admit I’m worried about the conclusion next issue. This is a “Countdown” tie-in, and all the “Countdown” comics seem to be designed to be depressing and horrible. I hope this series bucks the trend.

Now for the dark stuff…

B.P.R.D.: Killing Ground #4

Okay, this one’s got more shocks than a toaster in a bathtub. Brace yerself, kids.

A bomb has blown up in Ben Daimo’s room, and the mysterious man who’s been stalking the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense’s compound… well, he stands there and lets Abe Sapien shoot a hole through his chest. What the heck did he want? We don’t have time to find out, because Daimo comes out of the bombed-out firestorm that used to be his quarters… and he’s turned into a nine-foot-tall ravening monster!

Liz Sherman goes catatonic while the sinister mastermind in her head tells her stories of armageddons. The Daimonster starts tearing soldiers apart until Johann Straus, wearing his superstrong body, shows up to beat the stuffing out of it. Unfortunately, the monster manages to rip Johann’s throat out. His body’s dying, but he’s really just a spirit inside of a body — his ectoplasm emerges and — wait a minute, that’s not Johann Strauss! That’s… Lobster Johnson! Then he runs into the infirmary and shoots Liz!

You are probably now asking yourself, “What is this amazing spicy sandwich I’m eating? What is this sammich with a kick like a mule and all the sweet, confusing joy in the universe crammed inside?” My friends, that is one of Mike Mignola’s signature OMGWTFBBQ sandwiches, and your taste buds will never be the same again.

Verdict: Thumbs up. No, I have no earthly idea what the heck was going on. But holy moley, what a ride! Is this Mike Mignola’s best year ever? And one more issue of this storyline to go? Do not miss out on this one, folks.

Wonder Woman #14

This is a series that has had a lot of problems. After they relaunched it last year, they started a new storyline that they weren’t able to finish — they actually started a new storyarc and delayed the last issue of the old one almost a year. After that, there were way too many months of novelist Jodi Picoult’s less-than-acceptable writing. But new writer Gail Simone has a lot of people entertaining high hopes that this title is going to get very good very quickly.

Plotwise, this issue sees Wonder Woman fighting off and then befriending a bunch of genetically engineered super-gorillas from Gorilla City, and then undertaking a mission in her secret identity as superspy Diana Prince to capture Gorilla Grodd for the Department of Metahuman Affairs — except it’s not Grodd, it’s Captain Nazi and a horde of his evil Nazi minions! You know what that means? It means next issue is going to feature a Guatemalan megaton of Nazi-stompage. Good times for us all!

This issue has several small moments that still come across as unusually cool. There’s Wonder Woman letting the rogue gorillas live in her apartment for a while, and one of them apologizing for the “flinging incident.” There’s also Agent Prince getting a surprise birthday party and getting stuck with a mouthful of birthday cake just as the boss wants to talk to her.

But the really interesting thing is the re-introduction of Etta Candy, one of Wondy’s oldest supporting cast members. Back in the ’40s, Etta was — not to mince words — fat. But she was loud and enthusiastic and funny and positive, and she kicked about nine kinds of ass every issue. This new version of Etta is Lt. Colonel Candy, an undercover government operative who’s looking for a good excuse to ruin Wondy’s life. And she’s not fat anymore. Frankly, I don’t think she even qualifies as overweight. Sure, she’s not the comic-book world’s ideal — but as she’s depicted here, if you met her in real life, you’d certainly classify her as a knockout. I’m not sure what I think of this new character yet. I may end up liking the character, but I really did kinda like the old chubby version of Etta.

Verdict: Thumbs up. I’m hoping this comic continues to stay good.

Booster Gold #4

Booster has just crashed Rip Hunter’s Time Sphere into a Cosmic Treadmill being driven by the Silver Age Flash and Kid Flash. Booster and Rip follow the trail of the renegade Time Sphere back to Central City, and they find themselves facing a former Time Master named Rex Hunter, along with an evil Skeets and the secret bad guy who is now wearing the Supernova uniform. The Flashes both vanished — they’ve stopped existing because they’ve gone back to the night that Barry Allen got his powers, and Supernova installed a lightning rod on his building to keep him from being struck by lightning. Can they save the Flashes, save the future, and stop the bad guys?

So far, every issue of this comic has surprised me with how good it is. I don’t know that my expectations for it have been low, but it does seem to be the kind of comic that stays below the radar. Half the people who should be reading this are probably passing it up because they can’t imagine a good comic with Booster Gold as the star. But all the time-travel shenanigans plus all the superhero action and banter are really producing some excellent stories. I think this is definitely one you should be reading.

Verdict: Thumbs up. And next issue’s gonna be one you’ll definitely want to read: Can Booster stop the Joker from paralyzing Barbara Gordon?

In the distant misty mists of prehistory, humanity was born with a burning thirst for both righteous violence and weekend maxxin’ and relaxxin’. But for millennia, none have known how to combine these twin desires. But now, we have the secret formula! We have… Friday Night Fights!

From “World War Hulk #5” by Greg Pak and John Romita, Jr., a series which was apparently designed with Friday Night Fights in mind: Hulk introduces the Sentry to his fist.

Umm, the Sentry really seems to be getting into the horrific and brutal Hulk-beating a bit too much. “Just once more”? Takes all kinds to make a world, but I just hope Hulk knows the safeword…

 

World War Hulk #5

It’s the last chapter of this series, as the mega-powerful Sentry shows up to try to take Hulk down. Completely spoiler-free review: There is a LOT of hitting.

Verdict: Thumbs up. There’s really no way they could’ve ended it with the big bang that ended every issue of this series, but I think it ended well. So many pure-action superhero epics end up devolving into plotless and characterization-less exercises in mindless brutality. This has been a high-quality and very exciting story all the way through.

 

Metal Men #4

Lots of stuff happens, both in the present and the past. The Proto-Metal Men defeat Chemo in the past, the current Metal Men have to deal with a new tendency to temporarily turn evil — or as they call it, turning into “radioactive werewolves.” On top of that, Lead has been transmuted into Gold and vice versa — so the old Gold is now a bit dumb and dull, while the old Lead is now a supergenius. The Missile Men make an appearance, though they’re now called the M-80s, Dr. Morrow is a robot imposter, and Dr. Magnus’ badass evil brother shows up.

Verdict: Well, I love the stuff with Lead, I mean Gold, I mean Lead… but the rest of it is confusing as heck. We’ve been told that this will start making sense soon, but if that’s the case, I wish they’d just published the full story all at once so I wouldn’t have to wait 30 days between chapters in the hopes that it’ll make sense. Thumbs down.

 

Titans East Special

Actually, I didn’t buy this one. The ending of this was telegraphed to just about everyone — they lined up a bunch of DC teenagers, including (ugh) Power Boy, Little Barda, the current Hawk and Dove, Lagoon Boy, Son of Vulcan, and Anima, and they just killed ’em all.

Why? I really don’t know. It’s not like the Titans haven’t had enough deaths in the past few years, what with losing Superboy, Kid Flash, Pantha, Wildebeest, Terra, and others. I think DC has a quota — “Must pointlessly kill X number of characters per week.”

One wonders if the people running DC right now are actually trying to destroy the company by killing off all their characters and simultaneously running off all their customers. Could someone please call Time-Warner Inc. and ask if they’ve checked in on their DC subsidiary lately? Maybe they’ll appoint a editor-in-chief who’s not crazy…

Yeah, I know it’s supposed to warm up later today. By this afternoon, it’ll be downright comfortable.

But for right now? First major cold snap Lubbock has had this winter? I think I should just go back to bed and try to stay warm, right?

Coulda been worse, I guess. It could’ve snowed. It’s weird how many Lubbock drivers have no clue how to drive on snowy or icy roads…

Astonishing X-Men #23

This one was sooooo cool.

Let’s review: Last issue, the X-Men were on the run, and a powerless Cyclops decided on a plan for him to lure the Breakworldians away on an escape pod so the rest of the team could escape. And the Breakworldians blow up his ship and kill him.

And in this issue, the Breakworldians bring him back to life just so they can torture him into revealing details of the X-Men’s Leviathan program. Wolverine and Armor are captured, while Beast, Emma Frost, Colossus, and Shadowcat make their own plans. And Cyclops reveals that the entire team knew all along that the Breakworldians were spying on them. What follows is this wonderful of last issue’s debate as the team prepares to send Cyclops off to his death — this time, however, with the added psionic thought-balloons as everyone telepathically makes their real plans. “Leviathan” is a hoax, designed solely to get Kruun, the Breakworldian leader, to bring Cyk back to life to interrogate him about the “doomsday device.”

Frustrated, Kruun says lies are humanity’s greatest weapon and demands to know what other lies Cyclops has told. Turns out that the “powerless” Cyclops isn’t powerless any more.

Verdict: Secret telepathic conversations, Kitty’s awful acting, and four pages devoted to a single optic blast make this a very solid thumbs up.

 

Special Forces #1

Kyle Baker must have one of the more varied resumes of any cartoonist out there, except for maybe Jack Cole. Baker does Warner Brothers-esque animation cartooning like “Plastic Man,” he does dead-serious superhero fare like “Truth: Red, White and Black,” and he does everything in between. And the guy’s got serious interests in politics, race, and social justice — hence the aforementioned “Red, White and Black,” hence “Birth of a Nation” with Aaron McGruder and Reginald Hudlin, hence his series on Nat Turner, leader of one of the most significant slave rebellions of the old South.

And then there’s this comic, which takes as one of its inspirations an incident in which an autistic teenager was recruited by the Army and then released from his enlistment contract when the scandal went public. So our story is about a recruitment officer who’s given an ultimatum — make his recruitment quota, or he ships out to Iraq. Desperate, he signs up a bunch of completely unfit losers but just barely misses quota, so he is assigned command of the soldiers he recruited. And as you’d expect, complete disaster ensues. Our two main characters here are Felony, a juvenile delinquent whose torn mini-T and short-shorts don’t seem to be standard military issue, and Zone, an autistic soldier who, despite his other difficulties, is the perfect soldier.

The cover makes this look like it’s a comedy, but it isn’t. Holy cow, is this ever one non-funny comic book. The first page features a closeup of a guy’s head exploding. And it doesn’t get any cleaner from there. The comic is jam-packed with blood, guts, death, cussing — and not fun stuff, not a bit of it. This isn’t some “War is All Glory, Salute for Uncle Sam” action movie — this is violent, chaotic, terrifying, depressing stuff. And the characters really do draw you into the action — these guys aren’t Sgt. Rock or Nick Fury or recruiting-poster supermen — they’re schlubs, like you and me and 90% of the civilian populace. Seeing action heroes get blown up by RPGs wouldn’t be as affecting as seeing truly ordinary people get dusted. ‘Cause that could be you or me. And the real soldiers, with the actual training, are going through this every single day over there.

Artistically, this is pretty great stuff. I quibble with the way Felony is depicted — she’s got eyes like dinner plates and cheekbones you could land a jet on — but man alive, can Baker ever draw action. The chopper crash is one of the most exciting and cinematic pieces of artwork I’ve ever seen, and the first and last pages really do pack a big punch.

Verdict: Thumbs up. This is harrowing stuff, but it’s really masterful storytelling.