It’s the last episode of this round of Friday Night Fights, and our instructions are to bring the pain in as few panels as possible. Dangit, I’m not going to be able to do that — I don’t have anything I can think of that’s just a single-panel fight, but here’s the closest thing I can dredge up.

From November 2011’s Alpha Flight #4 by Greg Pak, Fred Van Lente, and Dale Eaglesham: Here’s Heather Hudson, the Guardian, going a bit overboard in a family dispute with her cousin.

Wow. That’s probably the least polite Canadian ever.

Dial H #2

Nelson Jent is busy experimenting with the phone booth that turns him into different bizarre superheroes. The Human Virus, the Shamanticore, Pelican Army, Hole Punch, Double Bluff, Rancid Ninja, Skeet — but he always has to turn back into overweight schlub Nelson Jent, and Nelson Jent feels utterly powerless to protect his friend Darren, still stuck in the hospital. He raids one of the criminal syndicate’s targets after turning himself into the digital superhero Control-Alt-Delete, but gets ambushed by the meta who hurt him in the previous issue — he has trouble remembering which powers he possesses with each new body. Meanwhile, the syndicate’s boss, Ex Nihilo, plans to release his own Big Bad, never realizing until too late that his supposed minion was far smarter and more powerful than he was. Will Nelson’s newest persona, the Iron Snail, stand a chance against the deadly Squid?

Verdict: Thumbs up. So very, very strange characters — and vast numbers of them, too, which makes it even more fun. Seriously, the great pleasure in this is how spectacularly surreal it all is. I need more comics like this in my life.

Morning Glories #19

Well, shallow, cynical Zoe is really an enthusiastic murderer, specializing in stabbing seemingly random classmates to death. But nerdy Hunter saw her last killing, so now he’s on the target list, and we get treated to Hunter running for his life, while flashing back on his own mother’s slow death from cancer. So what’s going to be the twist on Zoe’s murder spree? Or will there be one at all?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Harrowing stuff — like a combination of the tensest parts of a slasher movie and the weirdest parts of a conspiracy thriller. Man, would I like to see some answers sometime soon, ya know?

B.P.R.D.: Hell on Earth – The Transformation of J.H. O’Donnell

J.H. O’Donnell has been a background character in the BPRD books for a while — a brain-fried occult specialist who’s probably a bit crazier than anyone working for the organization should be. How’d he get that way? We get a flashback to O’Donnell’s trip to catalog the library of a recently-deceased necromancer in 1987. He had Hellboy along for protection, but once he finds the secret entrance to the necromancer’s real library, he finds himself being followed by the greatest occultists in history — all of them dead, all of them very dangerous. And he can’t even count on much help from Hellboy, who has to battle a bull-headed demon in the sub-basement. And once the occultists show O’Donnell their secret faces and whisper their secret spells in his ears, it’s pretty much all over for him…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Wonderfully creepy and weird, with outstandingly moody art from Max Fiumara and colors by Dave Stewart. This is just a one-shot, but it’s the perfect kind of eerie horror that Mike Mignola does so well.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Here’s a really cool interview with Amanda Conner, one of my favorite artists.
• Boggle the Owl loves you and wants you to be happy.
• This is hilarious and unspeakably evil — so evil, I kinda hesitate to link it, but here it is anyway.
• Would you like to learn all there is to know about defenestration?

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, Ray Bradbury has died.

What this boiled down to, personally, is that yesterday was not a very good day for me.

Ray Bradbury has been my favorite writer for as long as I can remember. I don’t know that he was every considered a very hip writer — I’ve worked at too many jobs where I mentioned his name to coworkers and got a lot of blank stares in reply. But I know that he’s pretty solidly beloved by science fiction writers, fantasy writers, horror writers, just about every writer under the sun. I’ve loved the stuffing out of him since I was a little kid. I never got to meet him, I never exchanged mail with him, but I always thought of him as a personal friend — it always amazed me that everything he wrote felt like it had been written with me in mind. And more than likely, most of his other readers felt the same way. That’s an amazing gift.

I’ve been trying to remember what my first Ray Bradbury story was, and I’m pretty sure it was “The Homecoming,” which was the last story in a book called “Alfred Hitchcock’s Monster Museum” that I read when I was a kid. And really, “The Homecoming” is very nearly my favorite of Bradbury’s stories — it’s about a normal kid who lives in a family of monsters and his sadness that he’ll never really be part of them. It’s a lyrical story, like so many of his other stories. It’s beautiful and poetic, funny and creepy. It’s a valentine for all of us who grew up identifying with the monsters and counting down the days to Halloween. And it’s also intensely sad. The last few hundred words are about the saddest you’ll read.

My favorite of his novels is doubtlessly “Dandelion Wine,” which is absolutely one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read. Its description of a Midwestern summer is so perfect that for years I’d re-read it every winter — I needed a dose of that Bradbury summer to get me through the cold months. But now is a good time to read it, too. Read it through the summer, go for walks in the woods, enjoy your ice cream and new sneakers. Ray Bradbury’s summer is something that should never end.

Ray got kinda weirdly political in the past few years, but I could never bring myself to hold it against him. He gave me “The Homecoming” and “Dandelion Wine” and “Something Wicked This Way Comes” and “The Martian Chronicles” and “There Shall Come Soft Rains” and “Kaleidoscope” and “The Halloween Tree” and “The Small Assassin” and “A Sound of Thunder” and “The Toynbee Convector” and “The Pedestrian” and “The Fog Horn” and “Zen in the Art of Writing” and “Hail and Farewell” and “Last Rites” and “The Murderer” and “The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair” and “The Anthem Runners” and “Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed” and more and more and more and more. I can forgive almost anything for someone who’s given me so much.

I haven’t been the only person to note that the chronicler of Mars died just after the transit of Venus. I can’t have been the only one to wonder that he died just before a summer like the one he wrote about in his Green Town stories. I’m certainly not the only person who’s remembering his glorious tale about how a carnival performer called Mr. Electrico inspired him by jolting him with electricity and shouting at him to “Live forever!” Because he will. I know it. You know it.

Thank you, Ray, for everything you’ve done for us. Thank you for being our friend. Thank you for living forever.

Superman versus the Ku Klux Klan by Rick Bowers

I picked up this book a few weeks back, and I wasn’t expecting a lot — I know Scholastic Books publishes a lot of good stuff now, but when I grew up, it was strictly for kids’ books — and not particularly good kids’ books either. But I ended up liking what I read here.

This is basically a history book, with its initial focus on the history of Superman, from the early youths of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, through their initial failures in the comics biz, to the unstoppable success of the Man of Steel, and clear through the way Siegel and Shuster got screwed out of their rights to the character. There’s quite a lot of info about the years when “The Adventures of Superman” was one of the most successful programs on the radio, earning millions of dollars for his advertisers and enthralling legions of fans, both kids and adults.

The book’s other focus is a fairly detailed and warts-and-all history of the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi organizations, and hate groups in 19th and early 20th centuries. And a lot of this is stuff that was definitely never taught to me when I was in school, mainly because textbooks have always seemed to put more emphasis on teaching kids the national legends instead of the actual facts. There were times when the KKK and pro-Nazi groups had a lot of political power — and a lot of times when they were mostly devoted to fleecing their members of every dime they could get. And a lot of the time, there were a vast number of people, ranging from everyday citizens to federal officers to Southern newspaper editors, who hated the stuffing out of the Klan.

And it all comes together after World War II when the advertising execs for Kelloggs — who also managed the Superman radio show — decided they wanted to try pointing the power of Superman at the nation’s social ills, particularly racism and intolerance. And what was interesting to me was that the radio producers didn’t just bang out some scripts for Superman to fight some Nazis — they did intense research on how to educate children about racism, and they interviewed people about what the Klan was like behind the white hoods. One of their interviewees was a man named Stetson Kennedy, a publicity-hungry Southerner with a serious mad-on against the Klan — he heroically infiltrated the organization while simultaneously campaigning publicly against it.

And what they came up with were a couple of storyarcs that infuriated the KKK and the rest of the nation’s racists. And that by itself is a pretty awesome victory.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s well-written, it’s detailed, it’s entertaining, and it’s filled with really interesting characters, including Siegel, Shuster, Stetson Kennedy, radio producer Robert Maxwell, education consultant Josette Frank, and even several of the Klan’s leaders, who generally come across as either charismatic lunatics or craven greedheads.

There were a couple of things that I knew already, being a longtime comic fan — but it was still nice to see them pointed out in a book designed for younger readers who probably aren’t as familiar with the history of Superman. The first was that in Superman’s earliest appearances, he was a very, very political guy — and he definitely came across as a liberal, since most of his opponents were greedy politicians, crooks, and factory owners who were making things hard for the common man. The second reminder — there were a huge number of Jewish people who had a hand in Superman’s success, including Siegel, Shuster, their publishers, and even their radio producer — no wonder they were so interested in putting the smackdown on the nation’s hatemongers!

I was pretty impressed that this book didn’t sugar-coat very much. These days, you read the newspapers and watch the news shows, and they’re absolutely devoted to never saying whether any group is right or wrong. If they mention the Klan these days, they definitely never say that they’re evil racist scumbags — that wouldn’t be properly Broderian or moderate — and they might offend some lunatic on hate radio. Rick Bowers really doesn’t do things that way — Superman’s the good guy, the Klan are the bad guys, and that’s really all there is to it. He also doesn’t mince many words about how Siegel and Shuster got mistreated after DC got its claws on Superman, and that’s pretty refreshing, too.

So there’s Superman versus the Ku Klux Klan by Rick Bowers. I liked it — go pick it up.

Batman Annual #1

While it may have the “Night of the Owls” banner on the cover, this comic has very little to do with that crossover. Most of our focus here is on Mr. Freeze, starting from his childhood and his mother’s accident on an icy lake, through his young adulthood as a cryo-scientist in the employ of Bruce Wayne, and through his most recent escape from Arkham Asylum as he makes his plans for revenge on Wayne for stealing his beloved Nora from him. And we get an unexpected twist on Freeze’s backstory before the end of the tale…

Verdict: Thumbs up. This is getting a little controversy because it futzes about a little with Freeze’s tragic origin created by Paul Dini in the Batman animated series. As good as that is, I still didn’t have a problem with the origin and backstory being altered, mainly because I didn’t feel like it was a bad alteration. As far as Freeze is concerned, his old origin is still true — the rest of us are the ones who now see him as a bit crazier than before. And it’s something that gives us a better reason why no one ever let Freeze revive Nora — something that always seemed needlessly cruel. So I enjoyed it, and it gets a thumbs-up, and that’s all there is to it.

American Vampire #27

Calvin Poole, one of the very small number of American vampires — and the only African-American — has stumbled into a small pack of werewolf-like vampires in a small town in the Deep South. He makes a very narrow escape when some sympathetic locals help him out, and the Vassals of the Morning Star give him some tips on how to wipe out this new crop of vamps. But does Calvin alone have any chance against an entrenched pack of powerful vampires?

Verdict: Thumbs up. A nice, short storyarc with excellent writing, good art, and some nice conflicts and mysteries. Hope we get to see plenty more of Calvin as the series goes on.

Today’s Cool Links:

• DC has announced that the rebooted version of Alan Scott is gay. (shrug) Seems okay to me. If anything, the fact that so few people think this is a big deal proves that the bigots have lost the war.
• Celebrities play Munchkin. Makes me wish more folks around here played games.
• Batman and his chocolate milk made me laugh out loud.

Superman Family Adventures #1

Huzzah! Art Baltazar and Franco are making comics again!

After the completely unnecessary cancellation of “Tiny Titans,” the superstar all-ages creators are back with “Superman Family Adventures,” which focuses on Superman, Supergirl, Superboy, Krypto, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Perry White, and Lex Luthor. In fact, this first issue hits a vast number of very familiar story beats of the Man of Steel — Supes busts up a meteor, Perry White yells at Clark, Lois disses Clark, Perry yells at Jimmy, Luthor sends robots against the city.

But we get some interesting twists on the formula. They actually use the Rebooted versions of the heroes’ costumes — but with enough nods to the old uniforms that they don’t end up looking completely ridiculous. Specifically, Superman doesn’t wear armor. Jim Lee could learn something important from this. We get a new character, too — a superpowered mouse called Fuzzy. And on top of all that, Jimmy Olsen gets Perry White his coffee. All’s well that ends well!

Verdict: Thumbs up. A cute story amusingly told. As you’d expect from the folks who brought you “Tiny Titans,” the art is funny and smart, the characters are excellent, and the situations are often enjoyably goofball. It’s a great all-ages book, parents, so get your kids hooked on it now.

Snarked #8

The Cheshire Cat pays a visit to Queen Scarlett, Prince Rusty, Wilburforce J. Walrus (currently down in the dumps over losing the love of his life, a penguin), and Clyde McDunk to tell them that they’re close to Snark Island and to offer them some special glasses that will keep them from seeing the fierce Boojums (one look at them, and you vanish into thin air). Unfortunately, the Gryphon attacks and brings along a special whistle he uses to control… the Bandersnatch! While the frumious monster attacks the crew, the Gryphon goes after Scarlett and Rusty. Can the Walrus stop the Gryphon? Can the Carpenter defeat the Bandersnatch?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Lots of excellent action this time around. Yeah, the series still brings lots of funny moments, but this time, there’s even more action than normal. And just about everyone gets their moment to shine — some of ’em get more than one moment, which is entirely fine with me. Y’all go pick it up — and go track down the previous issues, too, okay?

Today’s Cool Links:

• Why didn’t anyone tell me there was a Twitter account for Atomic Robo’s Dr. Dinosaur? Did you all want me to miss out on the best crazy dinosaur genius in the world?
• Apparently, there’s going to be Olympic Quidditch this year.
• In more serious news, after watching this horrible, horrible video, I’ve decided we’ve hit the point where we don’t deserve to continue as a species. Let’s give the cockroaches their turn — they can’t be as screwed up as we are.

Dark Horse Presents #12

Alright, what do we got in this newest issue of Dark Horse’s anthology series? We’ve got an Aliens story by John Layman and Sam Kieth (with not too many xenomorphs, but we do get a hallucinatory teddy bear). We got “The Creep,” a story by John Arcudi and Jonathan Case about a private detective with a case of acromegaly, Carla Speed McNeil’s “Finder: Third World,” Steve Niles and Christopher Mitten’s “Criminal Macabre,” Evan Dorkin’s “House of Fun” (featuring the Eltingville Club), Dean Motter’s “Mister X,” Mike Baron and Steve Rude’s “Nexus: Bad Moon Rising,” Mike Russell’s very funny “Sabertooth Vampire,” and a bit of fiction by Harlan Ellison, with art by Richard Corben.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Lots of good stuff, nearly all of it running at very high quality. Standouts include Sam Kieth’s artwork in the “Aliens” chapter, the Eltingville Club getting humiliated during a zombie walk, the Ellison story, and as always, the newest chapter of “Finder” by Carla Speed McNeil.

All Star Western #9

Jonah Hex and Amadeus Arkham have been captured by the August 7 terrorist group and are being sent to die on a boatload of innocent immigrants — but wait, it was all a ruse! Arkham let himself by captured by the police on purpose so he could mislead them about Hex’s plans. That gives the two of them time to foil the bombing plot while Nighthawk and Cinnamon beat the snot out of the August 7’s ringleaders. There’s a very brief cameo appearance of one of the Court of Owls’ Talon assassins — just so DC can stick a “Night of the Owls” banner on the cover — then we jump back to Gotham City so we can re-introduce one of my favorite characters from Jonah Hex’s supporting cast. All that plus the continued adventures of Nighthawk and Cinnamon as they hunt down the bandit who killed Cinnamon’s father.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Partly, I’m just amazed that Dr. Arkham managed to be of some use to the plot for once — whether he’ll get any more competent or go back to his usual screwup ways, I suppose we’ll have to find out. Everything else in this comic works well, with the exception of the from-out-of-nowhere Court of Owls silliness…

Today’s Cool Links:

• Someone please make this awesome Squirrel Girl comic/cartoon.
• Ty Templeton has some thoughts on gay superheroes.
• This strikes me as kinda amazingly anti-American. As Americans, we want more citizens to vote, not fewer.

Hero Comics 2012

So it’s Memorial Day — a day when we traditionally salute our military heroes. Instead, today let’s talk about some other heroes familiar to all of us comics readers. No, not superheroes — the creators of our comics.

I know we’ve talked several times about the Hero Initiative. They’re a not-for-profit charity that focuses on providing assistance to comic creators, artists, and writers who are having serious financial troubles, whether because of age, illness, or simply because of difficulty finding work. They’ll help pay medical expenses, rent, even help creators find paying work in the comics industry.

Much of the history of comics has been filled with sad stories about comics creators who didn’t get paid very much for the work they did, or who didn’t receive pensions or retirement benefits or health insurance because they were freelancers. In fact, that’s still a problem today — it’s not uncommon for for an active freelancer to have health issues and have serious trouble finding the money to pay for the treatment they or their families need. There are all kinds of things that can leave comics creators unable to work in the industry and facing hard times without a safety net. The Hero Initiative does what they can to make things better. They’ve taken up the cause of taking care of the heroes who helped create the hobby we all enjoy.

They’ll put out a benefit comic about once a year to raise funding and awareness — they tend to focus on a combination of stand-alone feature stories combined with shorter comics in which creators tell about how the Hero Initiative has helped them. So we get an “Elephantmen” story by Dave Sim and Richard Starkings, a story about the Red Star by Christian Gossett and Brennan Wagner, and the piece you’ll really want to pick this up for: a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles story by Kevin Eastman himself. Coupled with those are short autobiographical works by Tom Ziuko, Russ Heath, Alan Kupperberg, and Robert Washington — they’ve all gone through lean times and have been able to rely on assistance from Hero Initiative to get back on their feet.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Eastman’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles story is really entirely excellent, but I think the real stars here are the creators who tell their own stories about how Hero helped them keep a roof over their head and food on the table. Their stories do the heavy lifting to demonstrate all the good that the Hero Initiative does for the heroes who created comics for us. They’re a great cause — why not help them out by sending them a few bucks?

The Unwritten #37

Things have changed for our heroes and for the world — Pullman is dead, Tom Taylor and Richie Savoy are both famous, Lizzie Hexam is dead — and fiction is disappearing from the world. More people look on Tom as a messiah figure as he travels the world talking to fans, and the police are taking an interest. As Tom’s tour takes him to Australia, we get acquainted with police detective Sandra Patterson, who’s trying to track a string of disappearances linked to a cult of Tom Taylor worshipers. She goes undercover hoping to flush out the truth — but she’s quickly discovered, ejected, and beaten — and she misses the chance to witness the cult’s magic.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Few appearances of the comic’s stars, but the story moves forward fine on its own. It’s an intriguing concept, too — what happens to a world that finds itself unable to remember stories anymore? A combination of depression and madness — slow at first, but accelerating as time passes. It’ll be interesting to see where this is all going.

So Marvel has just announced that Northstar is about to get married — which means one of the Big Two has finally caught up to Archie Comics! But I’m glad for Northstar anyway, and as long as Marvel treats the marriage respectfully and not as a cheap event, I’ll be happy. And to recognize that Northstar is a fighter, not just a lover, we’re dedicating this edition of Friday Night Fights to him.

So here is 1991’s Marvel Comics Presents #92 by Karl Bollers, Antonio Matias, and Joe Madureira putting the spotlight on the superspeedy Northstar and his fight against a gun-happy terrorist.

Wow, early Joe Madureira art looked not very much like classic-era Joe Madureira art. And holy schnooks, that’s one heck of a ponytail you’re sporting, Mr. Northstar!

Batman, Inc. #1

Grant Morrison’s “Batman, Inc.” series gets a brand new Number One, though as far as any of us can tell, the old “Batman, Inc.” storyline continues on the same course it was on before. Batman and Robin (Bruce and Damian Wayne this time) chase a goat-masked gunman into a slaughterhouse — and promptly find themselves in the middle of an ambush as more masked thugs attack. And by the end of the fight, it’s revealed that Leviathan, the shadowy global crime organization, has targeted Damian for assassination. While Leviathan works on cementing its hold over Gotham, all the heroes who seemingly died in the last issue — Batwing, the Outsiders, the Hood, Gaucho, and more — meet and reveal that they’re now part of Batman’s secret army. But can Batman save Robin from death? Or are there just too many assassins gunning for him?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Great writing by Morrison, great art by Chris Burnham. Lightning-fast action, outstanding twists and turns. Great dialogue for the squabbling Dynamic Duo. And it’s great that, with the pre-Reboot Outsiders we see here, this story is still set in the original, proper DC Universe.

And I’d be lying if I didn’t say that this panel was my very favorite in any comic in the last month:

And as others have noted, this definitely means that Grant Morrison was a fan of the “Tiny Titans” series.

So yeah, definitely adding this one to my pull list.

Justice League Dark #9

I didn’t enjoy the first issue of this, but I decided to give it another shot. Jeff Lemire is the comic’s new writer, and while I haven’t yet decided whether I like *all* his stuff, I’ve got enough good impressions of him to try this comic again.

So Steve Trevor, special liaison for the Justice League, calls on John Constantine with a special mission — find out what Felix Faust is up to and retrieve the magical item he’s using to empower himself, and in exchange, Constantine will get ten minutes in the Black Room — a secret repository for powerful magical items — to take whatever he can carry. So Constantine puts together a team — Zatanna, Andrew Bennett from “I, Vampire,” Deadman, and Black Orchid — and they go out to bust up Faust and his cult. But will the new “Justice League Dark” be ready for the item Felix Faust is hiding?

Verdict: Thumbs up. I’ll admit, I wasn’t expecting much from it, but it was far more entertaining, readable, and engaging than what I saw of the first issue of the series. I’m more than willing to pick up some future issues, so I think that’s enough for me to judge it a success.

The Amazing Spider-Man #686

Dr. Octopus’s satellites are going to burn the Earth to a cinder, and they’ve already started on Silver Sable’s homeland of Symkaria — but wait, it’s all an illusion created by the special effects wizardry of Mysterio! While the Chameleon masquerades as Doc Ock to battle the Wall-Crawler, the real Otto discovers the deceit and takes over Chameleon’s remote-control disguise so he can fight Spidey himself. Luckily, the suit is just a cheap imitation and can’t stand up ti Spidey, Silver Sable, and the Black Widow — and Spidey manages to make a deal with Mysterio to get him to join the good guys, at least temporarily. So the Sinister Six has been depleted down to just Doc Ock and the Rhino — unless Octavius has managed to acquire some new, unexpected minions…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Excellent story all around — writing, art, dialogue, humor, action, plot twists, and just overall braininess. There has not been a single bad issue of this storyarc, and that’s pretty impressive.

Today’s Cool Links:

• The loony One Million Mom group (which doesn’t include anywhere near one million mothers — just 47,000 homophobic, faux-Christian bigots) has already gotten its butt kicked by Ellen DeGeneres and Archie Andrews and is now going to get its butt whupped by Northstar and a DC hero to be named later.
• Greg Rucka keeps giving great interviews. Here he is talking about why he writes strong female characters.
• Snell digs up every jungle prince and princess he can find.