Really, Batman? Really? You can’t pull out tiny stakes that are hammered into SAND? The ones at your feet are hammered into WET SAND, and you still are struggling with them? Really? Is this really a credible threat to you?

Didn’t think so. Get with it, Batman.

DAD: Hey Luke, that’s a pretty far out get up.

LUKE: Huh. Yeah. See, it combines my awesome kilt with this awesome Batman mask.

DAD: No, no, I see that. But why? Batman doesn’t wear a kilt.

LUKE: Huh. No. But he wears a cape, and that’s sort of like a kilt.

DAD: Nope, other than the fact that it’s a section of fabric, the two are not similar. Why did you think something so dumb?

LUKE: Huh. Ok, the truth is that I wanted to go as Batman but I wanted to involve my Druid/Wiccan heritage too.

DAD: Druids and Wiccans? What the hell are you talking about? You’re Roman Catholic, like me and your mom.

LUKE: Huh. No way, Dad. I’m really the eleventh incarnation of a Scottish warlock. My real name’s Grimstorm.

DAD: Druids and Wiccans don’t wear kilts, Luke. They wear robes.

LUKE: Huh, nuh uh! When you’re from Scotland, like Grimstorm is, you wear a kilt!

DAD: Does this have anything to do with those new friends you made at the Ren Faire?

LUKE: Huh. Uh…no.

DAD: …Luke…

LUKE: Huh…Uh, shut up! My friends know the truth about me and Grimstorm! They’re all in touch with nature and past lives! And I’m…I’m a Scottish Druid.

DAD: And why Batman, Luke? Why are you combining the kilt with Batman?

LUKE: Huh. I had the costume from last Halloween, when I worked at Suncost Video.

DAD: Luke, we need to talk. Your grades are slipping, I’ve gotten a few calls from your teachers. And for someone who spends all his time at the Renaissance Faire, your History grade is really low.

LUKE: Huh. It’s not my fault. The History books don’t talk about the real stuff that happened back then, like mud beggars and Highlanders and wenches singing ribald songs. If I could teach that class, things would be different.

DAD: I…I have to rethink your college savings, son.

I picked up some amazing commissions this weekend at the Big Apple Comic Con, a testament to the caliber of artist the con is attracting. I apologize for the picture quality, my digital camera isn’t that good at taking close-up photos of art.

Here’s a fantastic one from Sean Chen (Iron Man, Salvation Run).

Here’s one from John Cebollero (colorist for numerous books, inker for Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight).

I got one from Mini Marvels artist/writer Chris Giarrusso. I’ve wanted to get a Mad Hatter done in the Mini Marvel style since seeing him do commissions at the Baltimore Comic Con.

The first sketch I have in color is from former New Warriors/Night Thrasher artist Guy Dorian. This one took some time, and I’m happy for the extra effort.

One of my favorite creators was at the con with his wife and daughter, and he gave a quick inked sketch of the Hatter. The signature reads “Evan Dorkin needs to pencil more”. Check out his “Milk & Cheese” and “Dork”, collections out now!

Longtime Marvel artist Alan Kupperberg (who also did work for National Lampoon, which is awesome) and I talked over the incarnations of the Hatter for a bit, and he gave me this great sketch. When I picked it up he told me that when he was done he kicked himself for not putting Batman’s head rolling out of the cowl.

And finally, you can’t go wrong with current superstar Rags Morales (Identity Crisis).

But then there’s stuff that makes you wonder, “what the hell were we thinking?” And that’s what this blog is about today. The ten things at this weekend’s Big Apple Comic Con in NYC that were just plain…odd.

10. Lil’ Marilyn Manson
For starters, I like Marilyn Manson, and the album that this came from, Golden Age of Grotesque, is probably his best. However, it’s Marilyn Manson. The man who Christian groups have protested since the early 90’s. The man who even Trent Reznor stopped hanging out with because he was too weird. And yet, he’s a cute little walking toy. Please do not leave this toy with children.

9. Pink Panther Keys and Cash
Say nothing of the strangeness inherent in paying real money to get fake money, this little darling is one of the few examples of a moderately successful cartoon becoming a completely useless toy: a pink wallet. Any boy who bought this toy (or whose confused parents bought it for him) was instantly ridiculed and kicked off the football team. Plus it’s made of remarkably flimsy plastic so the whole thing would crack and fall apart after about a day. This is truly, teh suk.

8. Hulk toy
Among all of the unlicensed stuff being sold, this unlabeled Hulk toy (no poseable limbs and feet somehow stuck into a pitcher’s mound) stood out to me. Mostly because it looks like Ernest Borgnine. MCHALE SMASH!

7. Boyfriend 64
Despite the title, it’s not a catalog of boyfriends you could purchase in 1964. Yet, since it was located on a table with porn magazines, it had other connotations. Imagine my disappointment when I opened the book (it’s a hardcover book, not a magazine) and found pictures of all your favorite flashes in the pan from 1964, badly colored with watercolor! No exposed genitals at all! I can’t imagine this lasting longer than one year thought, and not because of the deceptive title that probably ruined the evening of many pervy purchasers. Who was going to wait for another year to buy a hardcover book of pop stars?

6. Random Pay Phone
Sure, you can put down $20K on a single comic book (Detective Comics 31 as one booth was selling) or $15K on a page of Frank Miller art, but why spend cash on things that make sense when there’s perfectly bizarre stuff that has nothing to do with comics to buy? Like this broken payphone that someone was selling.

5. Seinfeld Bloopers
Make no mistake, kids. This is a DVD of Seinfeld bloopers. The same things you can find as special features on any regular Seinfeld DVD. Just compiled onto one DVD. Save yourself the expense of purchasing three seasons of Seinfeld just for the bonus material and just purchase some grainy second/third-generation bootleg!

4. Stuffed Riddler
When you think of “cuddly”, I’m sure that “Batman villain” is not one of the first thousand things that comes to mind. Yet for some licensor, this made perfect sense. “Kids love the Riddler, so they must want to sleep with him too!” And isn’t that was kids really would prefer over bears and puppies and raccoons? (I had a stuffed raccoon) A man in a suit with no pupils? Yep, hook my child up with a stuffed man in a suit and have him start off down that long road to a soulless corporate job early! Or clue-based crime.

3. Sting foam things
For the foam finger on the left, he looks like an Archie character. On the right…let’s just say that there’s one pro wrestler in this picture who might be a little hopped up on goofballs. I’m sure he was overjoyed when he looked out from the ring and saw these staring back at him, with his (apparent) trademark “lazy eye yet still ramped on crack cocaine” look. This is one of those things you sign off on BEFORE it’s produced.

2. Spider-Man Gumball Machine
This just screams “WE DIDN’T TRY!” It’s a gumball machine, straight out of any candy store, with a Spider-Man figure stuck to the top of it. And that’s IT. The designs on the machine itself have nothing to do with Spider-Man, they’re the same abstract, art deco antique designs you’d find on any gumball machine. There’s no effort to match the colors or designs of the character. It’s just a figure stuck to a gumball machine. For $15. Perfect for your friends who have an enormous love of gum and a passing fancy for Spider-Man.

1. The Twins of Dracula lobby card
The joke is obvious. The TWINS of Dracula! And she’s topless! Twins!
To hammer this joke even farther, the ace salesman who was peddling this merchandise told me that “for $5, you can see the titties.” I told him that I didn’t need $5 to see titties, as this was New York, and he shrugged. But get it? TWINS of Dracula! Ho ho!

And, as a bonus, I took a creative picture of a comic called “The Man In Black Called Fate”.

I like to think of it as “Johnny Cash, the later years.”

According to this Variety story, the Turkish town of “Batman” is suing Warner Brothers and director Chris Nolan for the use of the name “Batman” in their film The Dark Knight.

Huseyin Kalkan, the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party mayor of Batman, has accused “The Dark Knight” producers of using the city’s name without permission.

“There is only one Batman in the world,” Kalkan said. “The American producers used the name of our city without informing us.”

The article goes on to say that this is most likely a ploy to get some money, and that the mayor is trying to find some documentation that the town existed before Batman’s creation in 1939. My thought on this is that if the mayor can’t find proof of when his town existed, then 1) the mayor is a moron, 2) the town is a backwoods loser town that doesn’t know when it was founded. But wait, there’s more from mayor Dogpatch!

The mayor is prepping a series of charges against Nolan and Warner Bros., which owns the right to the Batman character, including placing the blame for a number of unsolved murders and a high female suicide rate on the psychological impact that the film’s success has had on the city’s inhabitants.

Blaming a movie for unsolved murders and female suicides? Are they going to blame the movie for bewitching cattle to produce less milk and cursing the stableboy so he cannot speak without a lisp? Although I have no proof other than my fertile imagination, I suspect that the town is suing for some ridiculous sum of $550, which will make everyone rich beyond their wildest dreams. Either that or a few head of cattle. Or a few magic rubies from the crown of the skeleton king.

Thing is, this is the first they’re complaining about this, when the film stands to do 1 billion in profits. Not when the Batman TV show came out, not when the films Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Batman and Robin, or Batman Begins were released, films that included the name “Batman” in the title, unlike The Dark Knight. Not even when Turkish filmmakers released their own bastardized version, Yarasa Adam: Betmen.

Sorry, Turkey, you guys have failed. I have often admired Turkey, owning an original poster for the Woody Allen film Sleeper in Turkish, with painted artwork unique to Turkey. And a good friend of mine, comic artist Nadir Balan is from Turkey and he turned out alright. But suing Warner Brothers? Enjoy walking back to the village with your asses burned off.

GI Joe may be returning big time.

“But Ethan!” you cry, “GI Joe’s been around for a long time and they keep making hit toys and comics and there’s this movie and everything! And we really like whining!” And you’re right on all counts. But now IDW publishing is doing something that I think has been overdue for a while: they’re restarting the GI Joe franchise.

GI Joe #0 came out yesterday and costs only $1, so you don’t have much of an excuse to not buying it (unless you live somewhere where literacy is outlawed - I’M LOOKING AT YOU, KANSAS). It’s three short tales to set up the three new Joe series, GI Joe proper, GI Joe: Origins, and GI Joe: COBRA, each done by the artists and writers of their respective series. The goal is to reboot the franchise, starting at the early days when the Joes and COBRA were still unaware of each other, leading into how the Joes were recruited, and possibly the same with COBRA (the short COBRA story in #0 has Chuckles infiltrating the organization).

And normally, I don’t give a rat’s ass about GI Joe. I adored the show as a kid but lost track of it right before the animated movie. Now there’s been so many changes to the teams and the storylines and whatnot that I couldn’t be bother with it. Especially when everything from the 1980’s until now was all considered part of the same story. And because they released figures that looked like this:

But this new start looks very, very promising. All three stories had great writing and amazing art and after each teaser I found myself saying, “I want to read more of this! This will make me happy!” I haven’t kept up with any Joe continuity, but at this point I don’t have to! It’s all new! It’s perfect for me, despite breaking some of my major rules:

1) I don’t like war comics/movies/stories/shadowplays/flipbooks, etc.
2) I don’t like series that start out with an enormous cast of characters
3) I don’t like jumping onto a series that has an extremely rabid fanbase stretching back two decades
4) I generally stay away from books based on toy lines (see also “Centurions”. Dear God, why do I even have that issue bagged and boarded? I got it in a sampler pack.)

But for the first time since little 7-year old Ethan purchased his first GI Joe figure, I’m excited about picking up more GI Joe stuff. The issue #0 was that good. And I recommend it highly to anyone who’s intrigued by GI Joe but has been on the fence about learning more at you local library.

Now don’t drop the ball on this one, IDW. I’m trusting you.

In tribute to this great adoptive father, I’m putting up a Superman meme that I put together a few months ago. Here’s the blank:

What can you do with it? Put one together and post a link to it in the comments section! Here are a few of mine:

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And I promise, when my home computer gets fixed I’ll put up my Baltimore Comic Con photos! I hate not being able to update!

No one suspected him…

Oh no.

No no no no no no. Do not want.

What are you THINKING, 1990’s Marvel? Did you think Thor could walk with those legs? He’d chafe his dumplings down to nothing and then snap his shins like stale breadsticks. I have fairly large thighs, I admit it, but they stop touching each other well before they get to my knees. Does he have any skin at all on his legs? Because he’s showing interior thigh muscles that wouldn’t be visible unless he was flayed - and he’s wearing armor on top of it.

That isn’t a shirt. It can’t be. It can only be painted on, with definition like that, which means that before battle Thor has someone painting his chest blue and yellow. You think your job sucks?

Does he have wings? Who the hell has muscles that stick out like that from their back? Arms attach to the shoulder, not to the ribcage. And what arms they are! Looks like they’re being held on by a prayer.

And his chest is almost the same length across as the distance from his chin to his knees. This is bad. Way bad.

And if you do the thing where 1 head = 1 foot, Thor is 8 feet tall. His head is TINY. A little peanut-headed storm god.

So what does this add up to? In my esteemed opinion, the man is a giant who uses steroids like a fiend, shrunk his batch down to nothingness, and has malignant cancerous tumors under his arms. And he’s a comic book hero worthy of the 400th issue of a 482-issue comic book (?).

I need to lie down.

Which is why they got their own comic books.

Rock N’ Roll Comics were the products of Revolutionary Comics, a company who also put out unauthorized histories of baseball players and porn stars. The comics consisted of the history of the band up to that point, three full-page B&W pin-ups of the band member who died, and one or two short humor pieces, usually based around whatever big-haired, interchangeable band was featured that week. They were insanely positive of whoever they were featuring, setting up each awful metal band as the greatest thing to ever happen to music. Oh, there was a New Kids on the Block issue too.

But the one thing these all had in common? Amazingly bad art.

DEAR GOD LOOK AT STEVEN TYLER’S EYES

The art was on-par with the guy in your high school who’d turn in hand-drawn notebook sketches of Ozzy for art projects about the Impressionists. Saying it was amateur was a compliment. Despite this being a biographical comic, the artist that was hired (and uncredited, as far as the Comic Book Database can tell) just simply could not capture likenesses. It was just one more shovel of dirt onto the coffin of a comic that featured Guns N’ Roses every third issue.

I own some of these issues, I got them as a joke gift from a friend who found them for about 15 cents each and all of them are atrocious. Here are some highlights from my collection:

I hesitate in this public blog to use the word “mongoloid”, but damn, something is wrong with David Lee Roth’s eyes and that’s the closest thing I can use to describe it.

We won’t spend too much time on James Hetfield’s receding Klingon hairline and will instead focus on bassist Jason Newsted. What the hell was this artist on?

A comparison:

Jason’s turned into a hastily sketched “human” thing with uneven eyes and tiny forehead. If I saw this crawling out of a military lab, I’d order it shot then burned.

Say, like Bon Jovi?

Then you’d probably hate the unauthorized comic book starring this guy:

And that’s the COVER of this book. This is supposed to make people buy this comic. They’re supposed to recognize this guy. Try it for yourself. Copy and paste the picture into a word document and then show it to people in your office. See if they correctly guess who this is supposed to be in 10 tries or less.

But who can forget Motley Crue!?!

Obviously the artist could, since he drew people who look barely even human, let alone like Motley Crue. Also, breasts don’t work that way, butts definitely don’t work that way, and the girl on the lower right looks like she has fish ribs.