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Now I'll be disappointed if there isn't!

In other news, I've decided to become a seaman, and then retire. I figure that since every third story or something has Aquaman raising money for the "Retired Seaman's Fund", they must be pretty well off by now.

So, you know how everyone complains that contemporary comic stories are stretched out longer than necessary because the writers are writing for the TPBs? Well, interestingly enough, there's a kind of similar phenomena in Aquaman when he gets his own series in the early sixties. While it's probably fair to say that some of the eight-page Aquaman stories suffer a bit from an overly hasty resolution of the plot, once the writers are forced to fill up a whole "24-page novel", it starts to seem as though they're really padding in some cases to fill up twenty-four pages.

That said... Quisp rules.

So I've finished the Aquaman volume, and, again, I have to say it turned out to be a pleasant surprise! Not quite up in the top tier of fun super-hero comics, but pretty close. The only weakness is that the stories start to seem a bit repetitive after awhile.

I've now started reading Green Lantern, Volume 2.

Some cool things:

The villains. Hal has a pretty awesome Rogue's Gallery. Sonar has quickly risen to be one of my favorites.

I still find it fascinating that he keeps claiming that he wants to win Carol as Hal Jordan, but keeps dating her as Green Lantern. It's such a weird twist on the dynamic.

The Jordan family. I love the fact that Jim Jordan's fiancee suspects him of being Green Lantern. Are there any other cases of supporting cast members who are regularly suspected of being the secret identity of the protagonist in a super-hero series? I can't think of any.

Eryk, did you get the recently released Hawkman volume? Seems a bit thicker than the others (at least to me). Can't wait to start it.

Hawkman, LSH, and Supes Vol. 3 should be coming in the mail later this month.

I've still got HoM Vol. 2 to read after the GL vol.

It's a struggle to keep up with the rate they're releasing these things!

One would think that the lack of defined limits on what the Green Lantern's power ring can do would make the stories kind of annoying. Surprisingly, they don't. Oh, occassionally there's a scene where Hal has the power rings do something radically unexpected that kind of makes me roll my eyes, but there's not all that much of it.

The one thing that is kind of annoying is that there's a few too many times where both Hal and his villains do something along the lines of "Oh, I anticipated that you might defeat me, so I willed my power ring to kick your ass if I ever went down!"

But what I really love is that, despite the awesome power at his disposal, half the time Hal still ends up defeating the villain with a good right hook!

Okay, there's this kind of dorky villain called the Aerialist that completely irrationally blames the Ferris family for the death of his girlfriend and wants vengeance on him. Anyway, once Hal escape the mind control mask that the Aerialist puts on him to try to force him to destory the Ferris's, Hal kicks his ass. Now, he could easily have just disabled the guy with the ring, but, since the guy was threatening Carol, Hal decides that he really wants to just beat the guy up rather than just taking him down the easy way, so he fights him with just his fists. It's kind of like one of those Walker, Texas Ranger episodes where Chuck Norris throws his gun down and then beats up the villain.

Now, all of that would be kind of cool and interesting, except at the end, Hal delivers the guy to the police, and tells them that he really wasn't responsible for his actions, and that he'd probably be better put in a mental institution rather than a prison. So, basically, he just beat up the guy who wasn't responsible for his actions.

So I'm finished with Green Lantern!

It starts to get a bit far-fetched near the end, once GL start turning himself into a robot and stuff like that.

But there's this really groovy story where Hal's trying to hook up with this hot chick, just to prove that he's still got it after Carol keeps rejecting him, but she doesn't repsond to his advances. It turns out that she's actually a refugee from some planet that's ruled by large-crainiumed bald men who keep all of the people of the planet enslaved!

So... got the Legion Showcase and the Brave and the Bold one from Amazon today.

Is it me, or does it look like on the cover of the B&B one that Cobra is putting the moves on Batman?

Yeah, Copperhead is definitely a very hand-sy villain.

I've started reading HoM, Vol. 2, and I'm loving it!

I'm starting to pay a lot more attention to which writers wrote which stories, and I'm finding that I especially like the ones written by Jack Oleck. I'd never heard of him, but apparently he regularly wrote for EC back in the day. Which give me even more reason why I should check out those Archives when I get the chance...

You know... House of Mystery II may be even better than Hourse of Mystery I!

"What exactly makes a guy become an exterminator? Some men become exterminators because they like the good money and convenient hours. But Frank Alban was a different breed of exterminator... Frank Alban became an exterminator because he hated bugs!"

So begins what is probably the worst story in the volume.

Basically, this dude is obsessed with killing bugs, and is so good at it, it brings him fortune and fame! He enjoys the life of world travel (to places like Africa where he battles the dreaded tse-tse fly!) and hot chicks, before settling down with this one girl. But his obsession with killing bugs ruins the marriage! So we get a flashback to when he was a kid, and how he developed this obsession! It turns out his parents used to lock him in a room full of bugs whenever he misbehaved, or they just wanted some alone time or something.

So flashback to the present day, and our intrepid hero, presumably post-divorce, is visited by this cute chick who wants him to come exterminate her house, and then "celebrate" with her after he's done. Eager to score with this hot chick, Frank goes to her house, but can't find her, and, after exploring, gets caught in a giant spiderweb. And the chick he was going to have sex with turns out to be a giant spider with a womans head who is planning on eating him, which apparently he should've been able to guess based on the fact that her name was Mrs. Lactrodectus, the scientific name for a black widow.

I mean... wtf?

They just don't train exterminators like they used to.

I'm still utterly puzzled over that story.

Have I somehow just missed the massive fortune and fame associated with the exterminator business? Do women really find being an exterminator extremely attractive, and I've just never realized that?

The thing is that it's radically out of place among the totally groovy stories that surround it. There's this cool Jack Oleck story in the same issue about this member of Marco Polo's party seeking the secret of immortality in China, with a really cool twist ending involving asbestos!

Anyway, now that I'm done with HoM, I'm probably going to read Hawkman next. Then there's this volume of weird sci fi stories featuring a bunch of kids from the future with weird names. I'm betting that one's just going to be completely lame.

Maybe that writer had a crush on his exterminator.

Well, I've started reading Hawkman, and, well... I don't know.

I've read the first three issues or so and the stories haven't really grabbed me. And the whole premise seems kind of flimsy. I kind of like the idea of them as space-anthropologists, here to study the primitive culture of Earth, but the notion that they're primarily here to study our "police methods" seems kind of goofy. I mean, wouldn't it make more sense for them to take on the identities of, I don't know, police officers in order to do that? And while I buy the notion that they don't want to use Thangarian weaponry for fear of upsetting the balance of power on Earth (though why that doesn't prohibit them from using their anti-gravity belts isn't clear), why don't they carry guns and nightsticks and tasers and such, like Earth police officers do?

Anyway, they also have these super-computer, the Absorbacon, that basically uploads all of the knowledge on Earth and then downloads it into their brain. It seems kind of inconsistent what that actually entails, though. It gives them basic Earth people knowledge, including the knowledge of all languages, and lets them know some really obscure stuff that the average Earth person would never know, but other obscure stuff they don't seem to know. Like they suddenly remember this really obscure magic spell because it was downloaded by the Absorbacon, but have to look up one of the words in an unabridged dictionary.

Their ability to talk to birds is a little weird as well. And they have these random super-senses that occasionally manifest themselves, like using super-smell to track things.

It's kind of weird that the whole series is billed as "Hawkman" when it stars both Hawkman and Hawkgirl. I mean, even Robin got billing. I do like the fact that it features of husband and wife tandem, and the grooviest character in the series is Mavis Trent, a shameless hussy of an archeologist who seems determined to not let the fact that Carter Hall is married interfere with her romantic intentions towards him.

Manhawks = One of the coolest comic book concepts ever.

So, the backstory is that crime was pretty much non-existent on Thanagar until a decade or so before the start of the Hawkman series, when the Manhawks invaded the planet. A bunch of bored Thanagarians began criminal sprees imitating the Manhawks after that. Given that fact, I suppose it kind of makes sense that they'd need to go to other planets to learn something about crimefighting!

You know... it makes me kind of proud that people from other planets come to our world to learn such advanced law enforcement techniques as stakeouts, fingerprinting, and lassoing crooks!

I'm starting to kind of dig the Shadow Thief as a villain.

And there were a lot of groovy covers during the Silver Age featuring gorillas. This has to be one of the best.

^^^ Hey I have that issue somewhere in my collection! Oh simpler times!

On a side-note - that's one of the covers that was re-done for the 'Julius Schwartz DC Comics Presents' event a few years ago.

Here's the link -

http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=215552&zoom=4

That's a pretty nice re-make!

I finished Hawkman. It's actually pretty cool. I thought it was better than the second volume of Green Lantern, and miles above the JLA volumes.

People always say that Hawkman has become overly convoluted since Crisis, but the Silver Age Hawkman was actaully pretty convoluted from the very beginning. I think part of it is that the basic idea of the Golden Age Hawkman was so incredibly cool, that they tried to keep as much of it as possible while adding in whole new levels via the new science fiction origin. So you've got the spaceman who's a police officer, you've got the archeologist stuff, you've got the "fights the crime of today with weapons of the past" stuff, you've got the husband and wife dynamic, you've got the absorbacon/spaceship and all the advanced Thanagarian technology, you've got the "master of the skies"/"talks to birds" element, etc. Most of the time all of that's pretty cool, but occasionally it feels like the title suffers from a lack of clear vision of what it's supposed to be, especially when they throw in random things like Hawkgirl joining the CIA to fight an internation criminal organization and such.

Anyway, the last story in the volume is one of the most interesting. It features the debut of a character called "The Shrike", who is basically a winged alien found as a baby and raised by Native Americans in Mexico. The Native Ameicans believe him to be a gift from one of their gods, and have him wreak vengeance on those who have oppressed them by stealing their native artifacts and stuff. Anyway, this brings him to the attention of Hawman and Hawkgirl, who figure out that he's really an alien, and the rest of the story comes to be about returning him to his homeworld and restoring him to his rightful place as ruler of the planet. The Native Americans are presented in a pretty bad light in the story, which kind of annoyed me. I think the character has a lot of potential to be re-imagined as a groovy Mexican hero.

Superman, Vol. 3 rocks!

Hercules and Samson!

Brainiac versus Congorilla!

Superman owes the U.S. Government back taxes!

LOL Back taxes for what?

For all the treasures he's collected over the years and coal he's squeezed into diamonds and such!

Even though he always uses it to support charity, some bureaucrat decides that 85% of it is still taxable!

And, in a completely bizarre scene, he tries to pay them with a check from Krypton!