Everyone say good-bye to Superman's red trunks. It is the end of an era.

Just look at those trunks, people. Those terrific, red trunks that were the source of so many people snickering.

After 73 years of freaking out the squares, come this evening, Superman is storing his underwear on the inside.

This here picture above is a "turn-around" by comics artist Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, a personal favorite of mine. They use these to show characters from all sides for reference for artists.
One aspect of the DC Relaunch is that Superman is getting a costume that won't be the source of jokes, thanks to those red undies.  It likely also is being done to combat the potential effects of a lawsuit by the Siegel estate, which could claim they own the original look of shorts and belt over blue.

As a reminder, as of midnight, Superman is supposed to look like this:

In time, I guess I'll get used to it, though I have a hard time believing it will be the permanent solution once a new regime comes to DC. And I really, really don't know how this works with their massive licensing group where most of DC's real money is made.

Anyway, we hate to think we cannot deal with change, so we're embracing the new uniform on our Man of Steel.  But we just can't quite let it go...

Adios to the Old DCU

This week we'll see the last of DC's continuity as its been for the last 25 years.

But let's raise a glass, shall we?

Here's to 25 years of recent continuity.

It was a mess, it didn't make sense a lot of the time, it included the personification of lousy fanboy behavior punching the walls of reality in a hissy fit and accidentally bringing Jason Todd back from the dead...  But if it weren't a totally screwed up timeline and it didn't drive us all crazy, it wouldn't be the DC Universe.

Signal Watch Watches: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Anyone who brings up the Planet of the Apes franchise around me is going to regret that slip of the tongue. I love the Apes. I love not just the premise of Cheston landing on a strange planet where Apes evolved and man did not (ahem, SPOILERS) but the twist ending that lets you know this was a Rod Serling Joint.

I love that there are four more Apes movies of varying quality with a bizarre and twisted time-travel logic to them. I love Roddy McDowell as Cornelius and Caesar, and Kim Hunter as Zira. I love Cheston as Cheston on a planet full of intelligent Apes. I love the fact that Beneath the Planet of the Apes stars James Franciscus, who is sort of a mini-Cheston AND Cheston.

I'm not old enough to have participated in the Apes phenomenon the first time around, and while I watched the movies as a kid (and liked them), it was in college that I became obsessed. Like all good sci-fi, it was a terrific inversion of our world and our way of looking at our fellow beings.

Today would be Jack Kirby's 94th Birthday

Did you enjoy the movie of Thor? Captain America? The Fantastic Four movies? The X-Men?

aw yeaaaah, Kirby!

What about Thundarr the Barbarian, the 1980's kid's cartoon?

All originated by Jack "King" Kirby. Today would be Kirby's 94th Birthday.

You can visit the online museum dedicated to Jack Kirby right now.

In the future, Kirby will suffer from the same rumors that plague Shakespeare today. How could one man come up with so many ideas? Produce such a volume of work? How could one man have contributed so much to the story-telling mythology of America and the World? He makes Hans Christian Andersen seem like a slacker.

Signal Watch Reads: Action Comics 904 (Final issue of the longest running series in American comics)

Action Comics 904
Reign of the Doomsdays Finale
writer - Paul Cornell
artist - Axel Gimènez (pp 1-16), Ronan Cliquet (pp 17-20)
colorist - Brad Anderson
letterer - Rob Leigh
cover - Kenneth Rocafort, variant cover - Jerry Ordway & Paul Mounts
associate editor - Will Moss, editor - Matt Idleson

Let us bid farewell to Volume 1 of the longest running comic in America. Action Comics has been in print since the spring of 1938, and yesterday saw the final issue of the first volume of the comic which created Superman, and therefore, maybe, superheroes, into existence. As much as I understand the need for DC to have a massive new effort to bring readers to their comics, part of me wishes that the only convincing strategy was a break in the numbering on Action. Its like congress suddenly deciding we're going to still have Uncle Sam, but now he's got a mustache instead of the chin slinky. Its just not the same.

I have been in a bad mood for days.

It's hot in Austin.

only the world weary face of Sterling Hayden can convey how much I am sick of this heat

"How hot?" you ask.

So hot that somehow comics scribe Chris Roberson of Superman, Elric and Starborn fame somehow wound up on NPR Wednesday bitching about the heat in Austin.  And rightfully so.



Like, seriously. Its just ridiculously hot. I left Arizona partially because it was this hot all the time (only without the humidity, so I could feel my eyes boiling in the sockets in August)*.

I've realized I've just sort of been in a bad mood for a month because I can't step outside without feeling like I'm cooking in my own juices.  Also, I'm sort of mean on the best of days, so there's that.  But add 70 days or whatever the hell we're dealing with of 100+ days.   You know what?  You have your political debates about global warming.  Its too damn hot, scientifically.  By that, I mean, summer 2011 has been stupidly, morbidly hot.

Hayden knows this heat is just utter BS, but that's the hand we were dealt.  You just gotta live with it.

Maybe its coming back from a vacation and realizing that not only is the "summer" over and you've got nothing to show for it, but that work is getting back into the manic high gear of the fall.  And it still won't really cool down until October 1.

Anyway, I need to unclench a bit, I think.  There's nothing bad going on other than that I'm sick of the heat, and I haven't been swimming nearly enough this year.

I know I'm grumpy about unfinished business and projects.  I know there's movies I want to see.  I wish I had more money.  The cat keeps looking at me weird, and the universe may or may not be headed for a state of total entropy.  I don;t even care which it is, I just want for science to tell me which so I can PLAN AHEAD.

I am in a bad mood.

Hayden shouldn't have to tolerate this heat bunk, or the commies putting fluoride in the water supply

*and partially because of my disdain for Kokopellis as suburban decoration.

Frankenstein turns 80 (sort of)

According to website Frankensteinia (who I would think would know), today the movie Frankenstein turned 80 in that August 24th, 1931 marked the start of filming.

You kids today and your "Final Destinations".  In my day our monsters grunted and  wore sport coats, like gentlemen!

I don't know exactly when I finally watched Frankenstein.  It certainly was never on TV while I was growing up (black and white movies did poorly back then, thus the horrendous Turner colorization effort circa 1991), and I recall it just wasn't really around much of VHS that I ever saw at Blockbuster or wherever else I was renting movies.  Mostly I remember books around the house about monster movies, but who knows when I saw this at long last?  I do know I saw the Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein movie first when I was at a birthday party when I was very little (it was on 8mm.  Pre VHS, people).

Signal Watch Reads: Superboy 11 (final issue before the New 52)

Written by JEFF LEMIRE
Art by PIER GALLO, PETE WOODS and CAFU
Covers by KARL KERSCHL
editors - Wil Moss and Matt Idleson

Between Supergirl and Superboy, in the reshuffling that's beginning here in September, I'm definitely more sorry to see Superboy go. When the character was first introduced back in Reign of the Supermen, he was sort of "everything that's wrong with comics" as I felt it at the time. I wasn't sure why I, as a teenager (roughly the age Kon was supposed to be emulating) was supposed to like a character who I felt was a bit of a dipstick, a portrayal that I'd never shake until Geoff Johns got his hands on him in Teen Titans and just dropped the previous decade's worth of portrayal.

Comicsfans: Not every single "cute", "manga" or "fill-in-whatever" style take on DC Comics "needs to happen"

Not every damn cute picture of Supergirl and Batgirl as Manga characters would lead to a just unbelievably great comic.  Not every "ninja" Batman drawing is being robbed of achieving its full potential as anything other than that one, single, drawing.  Han Solo Superman or whatever is not "the perfect idea".

Comics have been caught in an echochamber of mashing two ideas together for the past ten years, and its old. 

I'm sorry.  Someone had to say it.

I'm going to get a cup of coffee.

Signal Watch Reads: (Here Comes) Daredevil 2

(Here Comes) Daredevil #2
writer - Mark Waid
penciler - Paolo Rivera
inker - Joe Rivera
color artist - Javier Rodriguez
letterer - VC's Joe Caramagna
asst. editor - Ellie Pyle
editor - Stephen Wacker

What? I'm looking at a MARVEL comic???? Everybody just breathe easy, and we'll get through this.