Showing posts with label Curt Swan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Curt Swan. Show all posts

25 June 2020

It's 2020 - Do You Know Where Your Superman Is?

Well, 2020 sure ain't 20/20, eh? If anything, the times are the complete opposite of clear sight. And, hells - no wonder i can't find Superman. We live in a world where the inspiration for Lex Luthor (modern post-Crisis version) is president of the United States, and the man who was making the Superman movies is someone who doesn't believe in even the concept of Aspirational Heroes and thinks that anyone who does is an idiot.

The Odd thing is, this isn't the first time we've been stuck searching for Superman in 2020 while racist assholes run amuck. We did that 40 years ago...



Let's hope we can stop the racist villains in our world, too.

Superman 2020 did return for four more tales over the next 13 issues. 

And later in 2020, Superman & Lois get their own tv show again. I don't know exactly how that relates, but i'm looking forward to it.

page art by Curt Swan and Joe Staton from Superman #s 354 & 355 (1980)


21 June 2018

Easing Troubled Minds

No, of course i wasn't going to leave things like that.

The Kryptonoid kept Superman on the defensive through most of the next issue's story, until the penultimate page. In addition to featuring the turning point of the fight leading to our villain's defeat, that page also reveals the answer the question posed in the previous post - How did the Kryptonoid animate the lightpost?


Freaked out at the notion of bonding with his own destruction, he's down for the count in only 3 panels.

My guess of the eye-beams transmitting the microorganisms to enable control was correct, but i didn't think to specify having the beams generated by the X-17 robot.

Now you can sleep easy with the knowledge of how Kal-El prevailed.

page art by Curt Swan & Frank Chiaramonte, words by Martin Pasko, for Superman #329 (1978)

How To Bake A Super-Villain


Villains are often as much the stars of comic books as are the Heroes.
As in most forms of storytelling, the heroes are to a large extent defined by their villains. While easy enough to populate the book with generic thieves and politicians (or whatever sort of villainous type one might prefer to insert), trying to create a memorable villain can be a far more difficult feat.

And when your hero is Superman...  well, the complaints about the difficulty of writing villains for him are nearly as legendary as Kal-El himself these days. And understandably, especially back in the days when he could juggle planets while kissing Lois. Whatcha gonna do?

Well, let's jump back 40 years and see how Marty Pasko handled the problem. This morning we saw Clark using the telephone landline to his Fortress Of Solitude (of which Clarks seem to be so fond). The reason he was calling was to check with the computer on a bit of Kryptonian history. Like nearly all Kryptonian history, it involved his father, Jor-El.

Step One) Begin with a Kryptonian organism.

A friend of Jor-El named Ser-Ze had developed a type of commensal (sort of a non-parasitic symbiote) that could animate synthetic component and react to nerve stimuli...


Once again, however, that dreaded X factor pops up. They hadn't considered that living organisms, by nature, multiply. What happens when they grow past the material they were designed to inhabit?


It didn't go well, and soon they were faced with outright revolution and invasion from within...


In the aftermath, some remaining samples are discovered which, of course, means they're going straight into Jor-El's usual trashcan - outer space...


Decades later on Earth, since Jor-El shot most of his trash in the same direction that he launched his son...


Superman, in space dealing with the bus the Commensals rode in on, notices the Kryptonian origin of the piece that got away...


...and, as we well know, anything from Krypton gets a massive level-up upon entering Earth's biosphere...


The two collide, sending each flying in opposite directions and dropping Superman unconscious into the sea.

Step Two) Add one high-powered military officer with a bitter grudge against our hero.

The general in charge of the mission that was scrapped by Superman's mission in space (for the government), has shown a consistently hostile attitude toward the Man of Steel. Far more than one might think we'd see from just having his command undermined...


Step Three) Add one recovered & reprogrammed Superman robot.


Step Four) Combine Kryptonian Organisms and Superman Robot.


Step Five) Blend in Military Officer (Mix Well)


Step Six) Fold in Surprise Ingredient - an unexpected power.
(I know what my theory was as to how this power worked. Have you got one?)


Step Seven) Combine hatred of Superman with hatred of Jor-El for added spice. (Caution - may get too hot!)


There you have it - ready to serve.
But, we're all out of comic, so i guess we're done here, eh?

page art by Curt Swan and Frank Chiaramonte for Superman #328 (1978)

C.K. Phone Home

Sorry about yesterday. Spent all my words elsewhere. I'm sure i'll dig up some more for today.
But, first - a quick reminder of life in 1978 - 40 years ago, Superman had a land line* to his Fortress Of Solitude...



...and the president of Tri-State Bell had what even the President didn't have - Kal El's phone number!

panels by Curt Swan and Frank Chiaramonte from Superman #328 (1978)

===
*(For younger readers, a "Land Line" refers to an ancient practice wherein phone signals actually traveled along a physical wire. This required a "Phone Line" to be in place connecting both ends of the conversation. Whether strung along a series of poles or buried underground, it was referred to either way as a "land line".)  

24 July 2017

What phase is the moon?

NOTE: This post has been edited to conform to the blog's new status. Part has been moved to our Back Room with a link provided at the bottom.

At one point while growing up, we lived in a 'blue' county, so called because it was subject to old Blue Laws. Blue Laws was a term used to refer to attempts to legislate morality, usually by the highly unmoral seeking power or feeling guilty. On Sundays where we lived, the alcohol cabinets in the stores were chained shut, and bars closed. It was illegal to sell alcohol anywhere in the county on Sunday, so you tried to stock up friday or saturday, and hope your friends did, too, so they wouldn't drink you dry before Monday came around.
This was Blue Sunday.

In general, this worked out for most folks with only minor grousing about the situation. But for the hard drinkers, the young partiers who get cut off halfway through the weekend, it was ... well, agonizing - according to them. This led to savagely overdrinking and hard partying on Monday - the kind that leaves you waking up naked and not being able to identify the naked person(s) next to you.
This was Blue Monday.

And so we have a name for our latest feature:


Here we'll take a look at what we'll call 'Blue' comics & art for the sake of the feature.
Sometimes we'll look at various 'adult' comics from around the globe, other times we'll just look at the pretty pictures. Like today.
Here's a news flash - many artists often draw naked things. From learning experiences to expressions of passion to desperate need, the reasons vary widely. Some hide it, some flaunt it. Some do it for pleasure, some for attention, some only for money or to please others. Sometimes, it's the most obvious artists whose work is nearly erotica anyway, other times it's the last artist you might expect. (See our next Blue Monday for a potential example)

For our inaugural episode, let's not focus on any one artist - let's go with a theme. Superman Artists. I'm sure there's lots more out there. It's a new feature on a new blog, so no lengthy research is involved. Just 3x3 pics from 10 Superman Artists, ranging from Joe Shuster to Bruce Timm - the artists who brought us the first Superman, and the modern animated Superman. These are two of the most famous blue art creators among the comics pros - Joe Shuster due to publication of a book not long back calling attention to his fetish art, and Bruce Timm due to the publication of his own collection of paintings and drawings. I'm only using one example from each artist here, and zero context information for this quick review.

This post contains adult material and the remaining contents have been moved to The Other Voice Of ODD! - please follow this link to continue reading.