The Henry Cavill-Zack Snyder Superman Suit

Well, there they are, at last. Some clearer-- though not better-- photos of Henry Cavill cavorting in character as Superman, the first and greatest superhero of them all. I haven't checked out everyone else's opinions on the Superman suit for the upcoming Man of Steel movie because I don't want mine diluted or influenced in any way. Here we go!

I don't hate it. In fact, I like it better than the one Superman's going to be sporting in the funnybooks from now on. But I can't really say I'm in love with it, either.

The photo from the MTV Splash Page site where Cavill is walking towards a couple of other actors portraying what I assume are villains makes him look fairly ridiculous, probably because crew members are standing around him in civilian duds and the scene appears to be staged in a strip mall parking lot where one of the stores is being renovated. Not very heroic or godlike. Just a dude in a rubber suit, possibly going to grab a pack of smokes out of his Ford Fiesta while entertaining at a children's party in a Chuck E. Cheese.

Then there's the capeless one, the one where Cavill is air-punching. It affords a better look at some of the suit's detailing. The little markings around his hips. What are they supposed to be? Kryptonian athletic wear branding? Kal-Adidas? K-Nike? I kind of like it without the cape, though. If you're going to change the traditional look, why not go all the way and really change it? I have the feeling he'll be wearing the cape for filming, though. No point in wearing it during blocking or all the other between-scenes stuff they have to do for huge movies. And small ones, as well.

These photos really don't do it justice. They look so crappy, so poorly light-balanced and composed, I might have taken them. We haven't seen the suit in motion, we haven't seen how Zack Snyder is going to frame these shots, or how they'll light them and we haven't seen how Cavill is going to carry himself as Superman. The body language and film photography will go a long way towards determining whether or not this suit helps Superman fly, or becomes his kryptonite necklace.

There you have it. The great traditionalist doesn't hate the new suit and suggests they could have taken it further. Surprised? I know I am. I'm going to be interested to read a few blogs about the suit now. It will be a while before I can catch up with you guys, though. The Snyder factor more than likely means I'll be giving this flick a miss in the theaters and catching it on cable a couple of years. And then I'll update you on whether or not this suit really works.

I have to leave you now. No hard feelings. We all have our little faults. Mine's in California. Oh, but before I go...

The Daily Mail site has some shots where someone-- possibly connected to these "MDCU" people-- has used a little Adobe Photoshop to add color and a badly rendered cape to these photos, plus the red pants. It amazes me how obsessed with Superman's red pants these sites are. Superman goes commando. Superman's underwear. Superman's Junk Protection (as if he needs any). What's wrong with these people? Why no love for the spit-curl? That's missing, too!

Happy Birthday Jack Kirby!

Jack Kirby would have been 94 today. What a tremendous creative force he was. In Japan, Tezuka Osamu is rightfully known as the "god of comics," but in America, that distinction has to belong to Jack Kirby. With a little difference. I'd guess practically everyone in Japan knows of Tezuka, but most non-comic readers in the US wouldn't recognize Kirby's name and couldn't tell you who he was. He didn't sell himself or make himself a brand. He just imagined and dreamed and put his characters out there in hundreds of books.

The general public does at least know the Incredible Hulk (co-created with Stan Lee). And quite a few met Captain America (co-created with Joe Simon) this summer. Other Kirby creations are obscure to outsiders-- Kamandi, Orion, Mister Miracle. Some are vaguely familiar-- the Thing, Silver Surfer. Whether or not his name is known, his influence is out there in pop culture through the sheer number of characters and concepts he invented by himself or in collaboration with others. Inescapable!

So to those of us who bleed in four colors, Kirby was, is and will always be the King. Enjoy a piece of chocolate cake in his honor today.

Kid Flash is powerless against the alligatorid crocodylian

When your superpower is running extremely fast, you should stick to solid ground-- concrete, turf, asphalt, the Bonneville Salt Flats. Sure, several members of the Flash family have run across the surface of various bodies of water. I assume. That certainly seems like something they would do, doesn't it? Therefore, they must have done it in some comic past. Even so, you need a running start to build up enough speed.

And you need that speed to avoid caimans. They like nothing better than to clamp down on the leg of a brightly-attired teen superhero and drag him or her down into the water, then go into a death roll until their prey drowns and they can devour it at their leisure.

That's what happens to Kid Flash, when just moments before he was hanging from one of the poles he was using to push the raft along. Kind of funny... before it turned into a scene from one of those Faces of Death videos.

But hey, guess what. This isn't the weirdest thing that happens in Teen Titans #42, "Slaves of the Emperor Bug" (1972). It seems TV shows about "picking," pawn shops and buying the contents of storage garages are all the rage these days. Those and programs about groups of jerks who work together in small businesses making things, tattooing each other and generally clowning around. Well, this isn't a recent phenomenon by any means because Wonder Girl was way into yard sales and flea markets before you were even born. In this story, Kid Flash tries to buy her a beetle-shaped brooch, but he's outbid by some nut named Johnny Carpetbag. Johnny's a local eccentric whose generosity is second only to his body odor in vastness. He gives the brooch to Wonder Girl and later that night, the jewelry starts talking to her and offering her visions of a golden-hued warrior in battle with a giant salamander.

The brooch demands Wonder Girl return it to its rightful place, which turns out to be a skull-shaped temple deep in the jungles of the Yucatan. The whole groovy gang heads down a river in a large raft. Kid Flash gets mauled by the caiman, Wonder Girl fights a jaguar and then a poisonous snake and our old pal Johnny Carpetbag arrives and turns out to be the minion of a giant beetle that wants to eat the Titans, but has "other plans" for Wonder Girl, who he asks to embrace him as his "warrior girl."

Yeah, we're going to have to talk about this one in greater detail sometime soon.

I finally tracked down that "The Kirk Cries Yipes!" bootleg by Jimi Hendrix

Even bold space explorers like Captain James T. Kirk experience moments of terror. Depicting one of these humanizes them for the readers. I'm just not convinced Kirk would yelp the word "Yipes!" even if a papier-mache Eiffel Tower threatened to crush him. This is a sequence from Gold Key's Star Trek #7, "The Voodoo Planet" (1970). The Enterprise crew encounters yet another space jerk, some deposed Earth ruler named Count Dressler, who has mastered the art of voodoo magic. Using his full-size replicas (which must have cost a fortune to build) and a laser beam-ray, Dressler destroys some of our most famous monuments before Kirk and Spock overcome psychosomatic pain to put an end to his idiotic revenge scheme.

The cover to this comic is awesome, by the way. It features a groovy psychedelic duotone Spock head in high-contrast magenta and purple containing some asymmetrically-cropped publicity photos of Kirk and McCoy all on a green background suitable for framing. I love the cut-out style type Gold Key used for the title, too. Far out, mannnnn!

It's easy to tell you're not in heaven...

Yeah, I don't think so either, Capt. Kirk. This is a page from the Gold Key Star Trek series, namely issue #9, "The Legacy of Lazarus." This particular story may or may not have been written by Len Wein, but the art is definitely by Alberto Giolitti or someone in his employ doing a fantastic Giolitti impression. How's that for clarification? Well, someone's responsible, dammit, and I hope we can get to the bottom of this the way Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the rest of the Enterprise crew solve the mystery after they beam down to a planet where the entire population appears to be made up of Earth history's greatest-- and worst-- figures.

How do they handle social engagements? I mean, I can't imagine Winston Churchill inviting Adolf Hitler to his dinner parties no matter what planet they're stuck on-- it's bad enough when they meet out on the street, as they no doubt do just off-panel on this page. Those are probably tense moments. Somehow, I think Hitler and Herman Goering there probably spend most of their days skulking around together, ostracized by the likes of Henry VIII and Cleopatra's personal assistants.

I love these goofy old comics. As I've related here before, these were difficult to find when I was growing up. Coming across one was always a treat. I'm not sure why Kirk and McCoy are wearing lime green shirts with black turtleneck collars, but it makes me happy. Disgraced historian Alexander Lazarus and his museum-quality replica people all turn out to be complete jerks in the end, but in what other comic can you find a blood-crazed Abraham Lincoln attacking people with what appears to be part of a kite frame or canvas-stretcher?

Dangerous Ladies Cass Cain Black Bat cosplay is awesome even in an unfinished state!

Thanks to Nathaniel, my source for all the best Cass Cain news, is this link to a video for some fantastic Black Bat cosplay. Yeah, that's how good cosplay is born. They did a Cass Batgirl at some point, too. All their costumes are eye-poppingly good. Comic accurate and well-portrayed. Cos-artists. That's what they are. Cos-ARTISTES.

DC may toss the character in the garbage, but the cosplay lives on...

Happy 50th Anniversary, Fantastic Four!

Hey Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben! I love you guys! No matter what Marvel does to you, you'll always be the First Family of Comics.

The Fantastic Four was not my favorite comic when I was a kid. I liked the Saturday morning cartoon versions, but it wasn't until my then-favorite artist, John Byrne, took over the magazine's writing and drawing that I started reading it. From what I remember of the letter pages, other readers felt Byrne recaptured the aura or specialness or mood of the Stan Lee-Jack Kirby era, and I wanted to know what that meant. If it meant stories about a group of people who obviously loved each other-- despite their occasional spats-- and household drama growing to cosmic proportions, along with a lot of creepy sci-fi-type menace, then I knew I had to somehow read those old issues.

But who had $1,500 to spend on a comic book? That was the going price for The Fantastic Four #1 at the time. I think. I bought a few cheap issues from late in Kirby's run as artist-- they looked dynamic and kind of slick, thanks to the Joe Sinnott ink polish, but the stories themselves didn't do a whole lot for me. They just seemed like the same tired stuff I was reading in other comics. Fist fights and villains in garish costumes. The hoary Marvel bombast courtesy Stan Lee: "If This Be Flatulence!" "By Arthropods Denied!" "If Thine Eye Offend Thee, Doctor Doom!" "A World Dies Screaming as Black Bolt Orders Pizza Pies!"

Marvel eventually reprinted the series in their Marvel Masterworks hardcovers-- which were also ridiculously expensive-- and then various other more affordable formats, so I was finally able to read the series from the beginning. The first few issues were crude, with rushed-looking art and clumsy stories. The characters were mere ciphers, barely more than stock types. The scientist, the girlfriend, the kid and the...

The Thing. That's what The Fantastic Four had going for it, right from the start. The Thing. Looks like a monster, has the broken heart of a man. And the stories began to improve. By issue #5-- the first appearance of longtime Marvel mainstay baddie Dr. Doom-- Stan the Man and Jolly Jack had gelled and the Marvel Era as we came to know it was born. Reed, Sue and Johnny became more believable as flawed individuals, their enemies original. From there things just got better and better. The book developed a tone unique among comics at the time, at least the ones I've read. I'm trying to avoid historical generalizations here, because I wasn't born until The Fantastic Four was almost seven years old and I'm hardly a historian.

But you know what I mean. The marriage of the superheroic with the supermundane. One minute Reed Richards would be espousing some idiotic theory with Sue Storm petulantly demanding he spend more time snuggling with her, the next the Thing and Johnny Storm would be tearing up the place with their interminable sibling warfare. And then and only then would the issue's menace appear. Dr. Doom again. An alien child. The Skrulls. The Impossible Man. Irving Forbush. Danny Kaye. The New York Mets.

Despite his having been an established pro since the 1930s, it was during this time Kirby's art took on its characteristic visual power and he became the Kirby we know and love today. By the time Chic Stone took over on inks, Kirby had established himself as the King of Comics. Then came Joe Sinnott and his more polished finish and you had the Marvel House Style, a visual lexicon that matched Stan Lee's endless hyping and hucksterism-- the kind of comedic self-aggrandizing style that's so much fun to parody. 1940s army slang mixed with beatnik expressions and Madison Avenue ad-man copy, the occasional foray into Shakespearian syntax. 'Nuff said, True Believers!

The ideas began to flow at a feverish pace. I can't even keep them in order! The Inhumans, The Watcher, Silver Surfer, Galactus, the Blue Area on the Moon. The Yancy Street Gang. Wyatt Wingfoot. Alicia Masters, the gentle, blind sculptor whose love for Ben Grimm made the poor guy's life even more beautifully tragic. It seemed like every issue of The Fantastic Four was in danger of exploding from the pressure of too many concepts and characters against the thin skin of the gray newsprint they were printed on. How could one slender comic book contain so much? Look out! IT'S GONNA BLOW!

And finally, it did. Lee and Kirby began repeating themselves and soon Kirby was off at DC creating a new universe. But let me tell ya, the first 51 or so issues of The Fantastic Four are pop art masterworks. The encapsulate a lot of the vibrancy of the 60s. Watching Lee and Kirby grow into their creative powers issue by issue is a lot like listening to the Beatles' recorded catalog from beginning to end. The comics are very much of their time and in that, they're timeless.