Earthquake in Japan...

I'm sure you're aware of this already so I won't go into details. As you know, I lived in Japan for almost 6 years, so I have a lot of friends there. Here are some suggestions by CNN of ways you can help.

"Batmania 3"

Haha! Another catastropiece. This is a quick sketch derived from yet another Alex Toth piece, but the crap on his left lat is part of a leg drawing I was working on before I got the bright idea to desecrate Batman again. I'm going to keep trying until I get this inking thing right, dammit!

"Batmania 2"

This one is made up of a lot of Alex Toth swipes, plus a completely silly Batman inspired by the J.G. Jones cover to DC's First Wave #5. Remember when Batman used a gun and shot all the bad guys? I don't either, but I'm pretty sure he used to do that back in the 1940s.

That Batgirl is based on a Black Canary pose by Toth, but I've rendered the body into nothing more than a black blob. Pretty disappointing. But that bizarre Jughead figure with the incorrect nose dominates this image. I like him. He looks like he's got problems-- his left arm is a twisted, emaciated twig-like thing ending in a large, misshapen hand-- but he seems pretty cheerful so I'm not too worried about him. I admire the way he labels himself "Bughead," in deference to the Archie Comics people who would probably be heartbroken if he went around claiming to be the real Jughead Jones.

I call it "Batmania 1"

Yet another sketchbook page, this one with a vaguely Alex Toth-ian feel. This is probably because I crooked that Batman figure on the left from a Toth drawing, and also the silhouetted airplane way over on the right. How did Alex Toth do those gorgeous twiligty skies?

Gilbert Hernandez knows.

When I saw it, I just had to have it!

No, no. I'm rich, but I'm not this rich-- rich enough to pay $1.1 million for a near-mint copy of Amazing Fantasy #15, the first appearance of Spider-Man (before he was amazing). You just know this guy is going to read it sitting on the toilet, with the covers rolled back. He'll probably lick his fingers while turns the pages, too. After he's finished doing his stinky business, he'll just toss the comic into the brass magazine rack along with his wife's Cosmopolitans and Food Network Magazines, plus some battered Times from two or three years ago.

The most valuable comics I ever owned were X-Men (when they were "All-New, All-Different," but before they went and turned all uncanny on us) numbers 94, 95, 96, 97, 98 and 100, plus the first and second issues of Conan the Barbarian. I once bought Cerebus #5 for a quarter at a flea market, then traded it for the first issue of DC's The New Teen Titans-- which, if I'm remembering correctly, was much more popular than X-Men at the time. The cover of which I managed to dot with a sticky piece of a Chewy Sweettart. So if you have a The New Teen Titans #1 with a tiny pink speck on the cover, it's from candy. And it's mine! And I want it back!

How much did I pay for that broken run of early X-Men? I believe it was around 15 bucks, plus the use of my left-handed fielder's glove during PE. This was before we had any idea you might sell a comic book and become fabulously wealthy and live in a gilded palace. Not long after my friend and I completed this transaction, I saw a Mile High Comics ad-- and X-Men #94 was going for $60! That seemed insane. How was it even possible? It wasn't even the first issue! Let's just say my friend was a little... unhappy... when I told him the news. You'd think he'd have shared my joy; after all, if it hadn't been for him, I'd have never known what a Wolverine or Nightcrawler was.

Learning they were approximately as valuable as uranium didn't stop me from taking those X-Men comics to school and passing them around during study hall. Or reading them dozens of times. Eventually a couple of comic book shops opened in our town and I learned you were supposed to seal your comics in vinyl sleeves and store them in acid-free "long boxes." By then I was addicted to comic books and justified my illness to my parents by telling them comics were "valuable collector's items." I learned how wrong I was when I got sick of them and tried to sell them at a comic book show. Apparently, my "key issues" weren't in very good condition. I could trade them for more comics-- yuck-- or sell the entire longbox for about $100. There went a complete John Byrne run on Fantastic Four, almost all my X-Men (except, strangely enough, a few issues from the "Dark Phoenix" era, which I still have hidden away) and close to 100 issues of Amazing Spider-Man including #252.

What do I have left of my first comic book collection? Well, a few odd issues of Cerebus, some New Mutants, Kitchen Sink's The Spirit reprints... and that's about it. During the comic boom of the early 90s I added a lot of Valiant titles and overpaid for New Mutants #87, only to watch it steadily decline as Cable-fever burned itself out through massive print runs and the realization that these stupid things aren't even scarce! I even have X-Force #1, and all the premiere issues of those Image titles you used to hear so much about.

One day, a million idiots will simultaneously attempt to sell their pristine copies of New Mutants #87 and the resulting letdown will cause a miniature existential black hole which will suck the last remaining hope of comic book riches right out of their souls.

She dances while dreaming of Batgirl and Conan

Shove over, Alex Ross! The Conan face is a goof on Doug Wheatley's impressive painted cover to Conan: Road of Kings #1 from Dark Horse. This series brings industry elder statesman Roy Thomas back to the character he scripted for about 10,000 issues during the early part of the 20th century when comic book writers wrote millions of pages Monday through Friday, then pitched both ends of a weekend double-header for the price of a steak dinner and a clean cot in the boiler room (they had to supply their own lightbulbs). Wheatley's Conan is wild-eyed and snarling; my Conan just ripped a fart he isn't entirely convinced left his loincloth unsoiled.

Superman vs. Muhammad Ali Deluxe Edition: A Comic Review

Superman vs. Muhammad Ali Deluxe Edition
Publisher: DC
Script: Denny O’Neil
Pencils: Neal Adams
Inks: Dick Giordano and Terry Austin

This is the big one we were all waiting for! I remember seeing the tabloid-sized original at our mall's Waldenbooks way back in 1978 and, as a major fan of both Muhammad Ali and Superman, wanting desperately to buy it. But $2.50 was beyond my price range at the time and there was a question of just where to keep the damned thing. It was monstrous and wouldn't fit easily on any of our bookshelves. In time, I came to think I'd dreamed it all. Superman versus Muhammad Ali? Why would those two ever fight?

Here we are decades later and thanks to our perceived hunger for overblown hardcover "archival" reprints of beloved childhood stories, Superman once more floats like a butterfly while Muhammad Ali stings like a bee. Two pop culture icons take on aliens with the stupidest name—the Scrubb. From the planet Bodace. I was kind of hoping it would be the planet Bonaduce and the erstwhile Danny Partridge might make a guest appearance as Jimmy Olsen, but no such luck.

That disappointment aside, where else can you see Superman punch his mighty fists together to stop a tsunami caused by plasma missiles from outer space? Or Muhammad Ali explain the sweet science from jabs and uppercuts to rope-a-dope tactics to the Man of Steel, then use his famous psych-out pre-fight patter on a bunch of star warriors? Or Superman disguise himself as Bundini Brown before battling an entire armada of enemy starships?

This is an outlandish and at times extremely silly epic-- witness Superman sheepishly explaining to Muhammad Ali why the Fortress of Solitude is full of so much junk and Jimmy Olsen's laughable ringside commentary to a crowd that includes anthropomorphized chickens-- that breathlessly spans light years and features crowd scenes that would have blown Cecil B. DeMille’s mind and bankrupted George Lucas. Neal Adams dazzles with double-page layouts full of space freaks and bizarre interplanetary vistas, and his Muhammad Ali caricature is spot-on.

Preserved in his beautiful prime-- the book apparently was so late in hitting the stores Ali was actually slightly past it in reality-- and transformed into a comic book hero by Adams and inker Dick Giordano, Ali may be the only real life person who could go mano-a-mano with Superman (convenient red sun pocket universes or not); he was and remains that much a legend, a towering figure of the 20th century sports/pop culture scene along with Babe Ruth. I wouldn't be surprised to find this story somehow entering mythological status a couple of thousand years from now (when I'm very old) and Ali's become some sort of demi-god figure whose factual existence academics debate at good ol' Mars University's Classics Department. Okay, I'm stretching things, but not by much.

For his part, Denny O’Neil provides fevered captions with appropriately purplish prose and nails Ali’s distinctive speech patterns. Confronted by an armored green alien, Ali is definitely not nonplussed-- not that you'd expect him to be:

ALIEN: We intend to prove ourselves you superior by showing our standard-bearer is the greatest!
ALI: WHOA... Right there, Dog-face! I AM-- the Greatest! Man... They rank me with Joe Louis... Sugar Ray Robinson.. Ezzard Charles... Archie Moore... Rocky Marciano... Gene Tunney... Jack Dempsey! I ain't agreein' to fight... but if I did, I'd whup your man. I'd stomp him--

If you grew up with Ali on TV and at the movies, you can "hear" this dialogue in your head in the man's distinct cadence; Ali's working himself up and preparing to do some real ass whuppin'.



It seems to take place outside of regular DC continuity. There's no Justice League satellite to warn Superman of the alien armada; he has to fly up into space to look for himself. And while some sort of Athena being makes an appearance at the fight itself to observe (over at Marvel, Stan the Man would've given us the Watcher with appropriately lofty nonsense dialogue, no doubt), there's no sign of Batman or the Green Lantern Corps. It's almost as if Ali's powerful charisma crowded them right out of the universe. So if you're a hardcore geek who has to fit every story into some sort of overarching narrative-- well, you probably should seek psychological help. Here it helps to lighten up and enjoy the weird.

Why? Because there's a sense of the creative team just knocking themselves out (otherwise Ali might have done it for them) to produce something special, an event reminiscent of one of those “Battle of the Network Stars” specials or a Bob Hope holiday show with everyone in his Rolodex invited and then some. And because they manage to convey such a sense of fun, the book works both as a tribute to Ali and as a curious artifact of the 70s, the latter emphasized especially by the inclusion of Adams’s famous wraparound cover featuring such leisure suit era luminaries as Jimmy Carter, Pele, Sonny Bono, Johnny Carson, the entire Jackson 5 (man, they got some shitty seats!), a couple of Sweathogs from Welcome Back, Kotter and a young Ron Howard. If you look closely, you can make out a reunion of sorts for the Fab Four-- that's right; John, Paul, George and Ringo are there in the crowd. No sign of Linda or Yoko. You can also see a few famous faces with mustaches slapped on them because, as Jenette Kahn relates in her afterward, a few celebs balked at making a ringside appearance. And in what kind of world does George C. Scott turn down DC Comics only to be replaced by Kurt Vonnegut?

All this and a selection of Adams's surprisingly tight layout thumbnails. Just buy it and dig it, my babies.