Extra!! Extra!! Seigel Family Regains Rights to Man of Steel

A federal judge in Los Angeles this week has ruled that the heirs of Jerome Seigel, one of the creators of our beloved Superman, have the right to claim a share of the United States copyright on the Superman character.

The New York Times has the story here, and you can be sure that Newsarama will have more of the details as they become available, particularly as to how this news may impact the Metropolis Marvel.

Thanks to Lili for the heads-up!!

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I'll be back with a new post real soon!!

Please Stand By

Thought I'd share a bit of bat-love with you in lieu of a few posts. Tonight's fine art comes courtesy Klaus Janson and Lynn Varley of 1986's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. How is that over 20 years old?

I'm afraid I must ask you to stand by, though. Our furnace/boiler's been possessed by Satan or Neron or summat, and leaking fuel oil ($) onto the floor. We've been catching it in buckets, but the fumes have been terrific. My computer, BTW, is right beside the door to the furnace room/death pit.

It seems repairs have taken nicely, but exorcism or some sort of cleansing ritual may still be required. So forgive me if I pass on huffing/posting while we sort out the rest.

Back soon.

Oh, but meanwhile... tonight I found a great new snack at the grocery...and while I'm receiving no remuneration or other compensation from DC or Betty Crocker or anyone else, I thought I'd share my findings here: Batman Fruit Flavored Snacks!

I saw the name and hey, you know Batman's a name you can trust.

They're actually pretty darned tasty, too. The green Joker's are quite limey, the little purple Batmen are grape, the Batmobile's a cherry red...and well, I'm not sure what flavor the white bats are...hard to say so far.

The other shapes/colors weren't in my first pack, which are conveniently sized for the pouches of your utility belt.

All the News

What's that, you say? You're a little tired from "losing" an hour of time this weekend, and as you wait for the end of the afternoon in the office, you need something comics-related to read online? You'll find a thing or two at The New York Times today.

First up is the article, Batman's Burden, in which director Christopher Nolan discusses the challenge of keeping the Dark Knight fresh in the movies and also of honoring the memory of Heath Ledger's last performance, as the Joker, in this summer's forthcoming blockbuster.

When you're finished with that, you might want to surf over to the New York Times bookpage for a review of the new book The Ten Cent Plague, which chronicles the early comic companies implosion through the Wertham and MacCarthy scares of the 50s.

A Friendly Reminder

Don't make your Sunday any stranger than normal...

...be sure to set your clocks ahead one hour before you go to bed tonight!

But just for additional perspective, this Wall Street Journal article makes Daylight Savings Time sound like it really is some sort of criminal plot by Chronos or the Clock King.

Sleep fast, Spring is coming!

Progress

Today I got to spend some time finishing off the painting project in my bedroom. Sure, the trim still remains for a nice fresh coat of white paint, but there'll be time for that another day.

But now I have finished The Stars, which means that I'm finally able to start putting up shelves to display things properly...meaning one teenzy-tiny step toward getting Greg's life less cluttered. Weee....



Now...if I wanted to round out my Justice League figures, I guess it would feel more complete with Flash, Black Canary, Green Arrow, and Hawkman. Bonuses for Martian Manhunter, Red Tornado and Aquaman.

While we're at it, how could it be the League without some Zatanna...or the Atom...or Firestorm...or Hawkwoman?

And why stop with the League. I do like the look of the Batwoman and Diana Prince figures I've seen recently...

AUGH...

Flash Seen In Harwich

Just wanted to report a possible sighting of Wally West, AKA, The Flash, on Route 39 in Harwich, MA, around 5:40 p.m. this evening. I'll have to scan the police reports later and see if anything unusual was going on.

Further Proof

Okay, remember this moment from Infinite Crisis, when some of the heroes witnessed the rebirth of the Multiverse at Alex Luthor's cosmic hands way back in 2006?

Well, compare it to this image, captured by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope in 2007.

I'm just saying, is all.

Super Heroes Anonymous

This weekend, a group of self-styled superheroes gathered in Times Square for a clean-up mission in the city streets. The New York Times has the skinny.

Then and Now

First, another random discovery while making sense of the Collection: Freedom Fighters #5, cover dated December 1976. I don't think I bought this one off the racks, tho certainly the prominent display of Wonder Woman (hey, big surprise: she wasn't really dead!) suggests that as a possibility. I think rather this was one of a collection of issues I received in a trade with someone who preferred the Marvel issues in my collection which didn't really interest me.

In any case, it's a dramatic cover, but the story inside is a little wanting. Bob Rozakis gets the writing credits, and I really "knew" him better from his Answer Man column in the back of DC titles later in the seventies. You could write him your queries about continuity and such and he'd be glad to set you as straight as was possible. Of course, in those pre-Crisis days, the "imaginary story" possibility was thrown around a lot.

And it's interesting that he was writing the Freedom Fighters in light of that, because there seems to be a little bit of a continuity wonk going on here. It's hard to be sure exactly on which Earth (yes, there were many back then...)this story takes place...though the presence of Wonder Woman suggests Earth One or Two...probably One, owing to some minimal visual cues in the interior artwork of Ramona Fradon which suggest more present-day than historical context.

But since I've only got the single issue, I can't be sure where the story was supposed to be set. After all, by then, the Freedom Fighters would long ago have migrated to Earth X from Earth 2 to fight the Nazis...but I don't believe there ever was a Wonder Woman on that Earth, so perhaps they came to Earth 1...or maybe it was just a big goof. Whatevs, this was exactly the sort of compound confusion the Crisis was designed to fix.

(Shame, though, that Ray Thomas and the gang at All-Star Squadron worked so hard to tell that tale properly ten years later, only shortly before the Multiverse got the finger, making it all a little moot...)


Still, it was fun to find this issue so soon after having read the recent Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters miniseries trade. There's no doubt that the FF are in proper continuity now (tho thanks to the appetite of Mr. Mind/Evil Skeets, it sounds as though there are TWO sets of Freedom Fighters out there...)
and I surely enjoyed this series, and look forward to seeing where this group goes from here, now that they're getting another regular series and will be dealing with the seemingly ill-planned Amazons Attack aftermath.

The story in the mini gives Uncle Sam and the Gang (most of them killed in the opening pages of Infinite Crisis, to be re-invented here) some new relevance in our post-911, post-Bludhaven/Crisis world, as they join together to take on the dark forces of S.H.A.D.E. (Super Human Advance Defense Executive), a team of meta-humans authorized by the President of the US, who's now been replaced with some alien machine creature who's running the country into the ground. Oh, if only the troubles in the current Executive Office were so easily explained.

Still, it's a rollicking story through the fresh environments of New Earth, which for the purposes of this story have more similarities with our "real" world than we usually see. Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti have woven a tale to recreate these great heroes, in a way that manages to draw some sharp parallels to the troubles of this dimension that's entertaining, too. I have to admit I nearly stood up and cheered when the new Firebrand (he's okay, but he's no Danette Reilly!)says,

"The war is a big oil-sucking lie and people are dying by the truckload because of it. The whole world knows there were no warehouses packed with nuclear warheads, no underground vats of bio-toxins, no super-agents dropping from the sky like human bombs. Our nation is anesthetized and divided but somehow our leaders are not ashamed."

Yep, that pretty much sums it up, doesn't it? Sure I like my comics as Escapism the same as anyone, but its also nice to see some real world issues addressed from time to time, especially when we have so very many to spare. In fact, as we watch President Gonzo execute sacrifice innocent Americans in terrorist attacks to discredit meta-humans and begin to circle around the Constitution for the kill, having your president replaced by an alien/machine actually begins to seem one of the more reasonable explanations for the past six years in our world.

Daniel Acuna is the artist and his style seems to reflect well the dark and bright contrasts of this all-out fight to preserve the integrity of the United States.

New Earth Now

Oh, it's fun what you can find in the news! For example, this story in which scientists claim to have discovered the formation of a "new Earth". It so closely follows the theme of Real Life (so-called) becoming more like Comics (see my post of April 24th) that I have to believe that these astronomers and such are fans of DC.

What they mean, of course, is that they believe they have found the formation of a possible earth-like planet. But what if it did turn out to be a parallel of ours, just out of whack in the timeline. How bizarre the world is.

To be fair, though, I'm glad people are spending some time looking for other planets that might be like Earth out there. The way things are going, we may need to find a new one sometime soon. What if the "Great Disaster" is global warming?

More likely, I'm inclined to believe its got something to do with the recent revival of the Anti-Monitor, of all people. As always, I'm following the progress in my favorite titles via la Internet, lying in wait for the eventual release of the trades. And you know, Countdown is really starting to pick up the pace as far as the story goes...though it does seem to have spawned an almost unseemly amount of crossover/spin-offs.

I'm choosing to have some faith that eventually as this continues to unfold and mesh with other supposedly stand-alone stories like The Sinestro Corps War and such (for the record, I'm terribly sorry the Amazons Attacked. That does seem like a big gaffe. But sadly, not to be expected in the history of our Amazon's treatment at the hands of the comic creators of Man's World.)as it all builds toward the (oh, dare we hope...) Final Crisis in 2008.

Admittedly, this is a little on the gratuitous side...but I just love this Countdown cover art. (And I'm surprised Sally hasn't addressed it in more detail over at Green Lantern Butts, but then again, it might've been amongst the scans lost in the Great Housekeeping Disaster, too, so we shan't mention it again.)

Not only does it ensure that Kyle seems to have come out on the far side of Parallax okay, but its one of the great images of him. Of course, I'm also amused (as others online are, too) that everyone else seems to be checking out Kyle's goods in this particular shot.

Of the three onlookers, only Donna probably knows what she's really looking at...but doesn't Jason Todd seem kind of surprisingly interested? I'm just saying, it adds another layer of subtext/plot to this whole business of his crushing on Donna. I'm not sure it will do us any good to act surprised when one of the Dark Knight's former teen sidekicks turns out to be at least bisexual.

Of course, Bob's a monitor, so there's no telling what he's seen.

Signs

I know, it's been a little while. Sorry about that. That JLA post will come along shortly. Tonight, though, i just wanted to say that when you put the right random pieces of the puzzle together, life can be pretty surreal.

Today, a Serbian scientist announced his recent discovery of kryptonite, although he's decided to call it something else.


Which is probably because the astronomers who discovered this planet in 2005 didn't recognize it as Krypton, at least partly due to its not having exploded and sent its last son our way...yet.

Further proof of the return of the Multiverse.

UPDATING, 4/30/07:

Okay, and now this whole business is getting just a little creepy, now that they've discovered the Fortress of Solitude in Mexico.