Super-Powered Comics: Diamond Destinations for March 2010

I have wasted not an ounce of time this month and can proudly say I have brought my monthly Previews recap to you literally a day after its release. Here are the new and continuing superhero series I find most notable, as well as some of the zanier item you might come across. As always, your comments are welcome.

p. 56: Ghost 12” Action Figure: A beautifully sculpted figure, but I can’t really say I see a lot of demand for a comic character Dark Horse hasn’t even published for the better part of ten years. Especially with a $100 price tag.

p. 73: DC Universe Legacies 1 (of 10): This is Len Wein’s new take on the History of the DCU aiding in the first issue by Andy and Joe Kubert. The art is sure to stun, but Wein’s writing left me flat recently on Human Target and Justice League of America. This could be really hit or miss.

p. 82: Mighty Crusaders Special 1: “The Red Circle” has been hit or miss so far. Sales haven’t been too good either. But DC is trying to push the line further with this special. I actually hope that we don’t get a Crusaders team out of this book. I think many of the reimaginings DC has created have been weak at best, and neither Inferno nor Hangman seem designed for super-team use. I hope this book succeeds and for $5 for 56 pages, it seems to be a pretty good deal.

p. 83: Legion of Super-Heroes 1: My only complaint with this issue as with the debut of the new Flash book is that they didn’t resume the old numbering. But Levitz made this team what they are today and if anyone can keep that spirit alive, it will be him. Yildiray Cinar is a great artist. His work on Noble Causes was nothing short of amazing. This book has the potential to launch him in to superstardom, much as the Legion did for Olivier Coipel several years ago.

p. 113: I, Zombie 1: I am still not sure what to make of this book. The story in last years House of Mystery Annual didn’t give much of a hint of the book’s direction. But with Mike Allred art for $1, no one should pass up the first issue of this!

p. 148: Shadowhawk 1: The dead have risen in the pages of Image United and it seems in the aftermath of that event, Paul Johnstone, the classic back-breaking Shadowhawk is back. The book promises to almost certainly have a dark tone as horror writer Dan Wickline and former Violent Messiahs artist Tone Rodriguez are the creative team. Steve Niles and creator Jim Valentino provide the back-up story. I would have preferred a full book from Valentino, but this book definitely has an interesting concept behind it. How it plays out will determine how long this new take on the character can survive.

p. 154: Astounding Wolf-Man 25: It is by no means the book to start reading the title with, but the adventures of Wolf-Man come to an end with this issue. Robert Kirkman and Jason Howard did some crazy things with this title, but I don’t think it ever reached the heights that most of Kirkman’s work can reach. Instead it just felt like Invincible-light. But even Invincible-light is better than many of the books on the stands. Goodbye, Wolf-Man. Let’s hope Kirkman & Howard’s next project can top you!

p. 172: Velocity 1: I am usually generous with Top Cow, but this book is a load of crap. Over two years after being selected for Pilot Season, over a year since Joe Casey and ChrisCross were unceremoniously dumped from the project while somewhere on issue two, Top Cow introduces the four issue limited series with the new creative team of Ron Marz and Kenneth Rocafort. While I like most of Marz’s Top Cow work, his previous Cyberforce work felt phoned-in. And I just cannot get behind the art style of Rocafort. He may be someone’s cup of tea, but he isn’t mine. And to make me just a little more grumpy, we included ChrisCross cover from the previous series as the variant. Classy, Top Cow. Classy. (FYI: When this comic was solicited fifteen months ago, the ChrisCross cover was the regular cover and the Rocafort was the variant. Glad to see they didn’t let them go to waste.)



p. M8: Astonishing X-Men: XenoGenesis 1 (of 5): The idea of running this book as a series of miniseries is a good one, but that isn’t the reason I posted this. I mostly wanted to show off the cover image by series artist Kaare Andrews. While the vagina-exposing costume of the White Queen seems a bit preposterous, I have much respect for the return of mohawked Storm. Bravo, Mr. Andrews. Bravo.

p. M34: Atlas 1: In case you haven’t heard (and if you are a comics fan I can’t imagine how you missed it), May begins the Heroic Age at Marvel. They have promoted a whole bunch of new titles for this month, but the one everyone really needs to buy is this one. Agents of Atlas was probably the greatest concept Marvel has released in the last five years, and the death of the last book still irks me. Now here is your chance to rectify that mistake. Go buy the new book, complete with new member 3-D Man! Finally everyone can experience the awesome.

p. 232-233: Green Hornet Strikes 1 and Kato Origins 1: Hi, Dynamite, nice to see you today. I have something to tell you for the sake of honesty. You may be producing too many Green Hornet titles. With these two books, the total comes up to five. And honestly, we all know Kato does not need two books. Now let’s get it under control, especially since you seem to think they are all worth $4. (They’re not.) Thanks for your time, see you later.

p. 242: Wild Cards: The Hard Call 6: Damn it, it may be over a year later, at a new publisher, and a $1 more expensive, but I have much respect for Dynamite when they made sure they got this book out. I dreaded the thought that I would have to get a collected edition just to read this, so despite my mockery of your Green Hornet obsession above, thank you, Dynamite Entertainment.

p. 277: Tales of the TMNT 70: This right here is it. The end of TMNT as we know it. The final issue of Mirage’s book takes us back to the time of the epic “Return to New York” storyline. The issue is totally standalone, so I highly recommend everyone go out and buy it, just to celebrate the decades of Turtle action Mirage has given us.

p. 292: WWE Heroes 3: Did WWE not learn when Benoit died that having a death storyline in a world where death comes far too often isn’t so hot an idea? Apparently not from the look of this cover.

p. 319: May looks to be a good month for super-powered fiction with two new titles, the steampunk hero of George Mann’s Ghost of Manhattan and Chelsea M. Campbell’s super-villain fueled Rise of Renegade X. So be sure to flip to the Book section and give these titles a once over.

p. 380: Tru Blood Soda: Proof that there is such a thing as too many marketing tie-ins. And it’s only $6 a bottle!

Website Transfer

I am in the process of transferring all the files and databases from one server to the other. This will probably result in some downtime (no more than a day or two I would guess, although if my old server continues to vanish it may be longer). Unfortunately, we made some errors in the first attempt and have to switch nameservers back around which adds several hours.

I hope to have the sites back up and running by Friday.

Again all my apologies to our fans. We will have the problem remedied ASAP.

Thank you.

Another quick note on the websites I run

Yeah, they are down again. It should be fixed within a week as I am currently researching other hosting services. I’m sorry for the inconvenience. It sucks as much (if not more) for me too.

Super-Powered Comics: Return of Superman

Adventures of Superman 400 ended the “Funeral For a Friend” storyline and introduced the four new Supermen that would take over each Superman title for the next several months.

The Return of Superman opens with these four stories followed by the characters’s first issues in chronological order. We meet the Last Son of Krypton, an energy being that is recovering from the loss of his corporeal form, given new form by the Fortress of Solitude’s robots. The Man of Steel is John Henry Irons, an African American engineer in a suit of powered armor that may be a “walk-in spirit” of the original Superman. There is “The Kid” (don’t call him Superboy!), an apparent clone of Superman. And the Man of Tomorrow, a Kryptonian with cybernetic parts.

Lois takes an ongoing supporting role in each story as she struggles to uncover the identities of the mystery Supermen. Each remind her of Clark, and each have a reason for not recalling all their history. The cyborg seems to have a hidden agenda as well, while the Last Son has gained an energy blast he uses for murderous purposes (much to the delight of a guest starring Guy Gardner). The Kid fights a variety of new villains while under the exclusive coverage of WGBS and reporter Tana Moon. And the Man of Steel spends much of his time trying to get an old weapon design off the streets and stop the arms dealer known as the White Rabbit.

The four separate threads do not stay separate long. Within a couple months, Coast City (home of Green Lantern) is destroyed. The disaster slowly brings all the Supermen towards it and the remains of Warworld (now known as Engine City). Mongul stands ready for action in the city, but the true horror is the identity of his ally, none other than the cyborg, secretly a former human, Hank Henshaw.

Henshaw uses his new powers and the Engine City to dupe much of the world in to believing the Last Son of Krypton has gone bad. And while all this is happening, someone else awakes in the Fortress of Solitude....

And we will leave it at that.

“The Reign of the Supermen” does an excellent job of what it sets out to do: expand the city and sphere of Superman. Steel and Superboy would receive spin-offs after its completion. It redefined the level of destruction allowed in a DC comic. It irrevocably changed the life of Green Lantern Hal Jordan (or so we thought before the release of Green Lantern: Rebirth). It even gave Superman longer hair (although it’s hardly the mullet that it gets called quite a lot of the time. Long hair on a men does not equal a mullet, folks.)

And even in all the bad things, the books never fail to be what they should be, a fun superheroic adventure. Something a lot of the modern crossover events could learn a lot from. Recommended.

Super-Powered Comics: World Without a Superman

Say what you will about the Death of Superman storyline, but never say DC was afraid to take chances with it. For two straight months after the Man of Steel’s death, his titles continued with Superman as little more than a corpse. The trade calls this World Without Superman but I prefer the title on the black cover copy included with the issues: “Funeral For a Friend”.

While his actual death limited the number of other DC characters that came in to play, now we get to see the rest of the universe share their feelings about Superman. At the time, Superman was still a bit of a loner in the post-Crisis DC universe. It was only a little less than a year since he even joined the JLA. But “Funeral For a Friend” made it quite clear that Superman still held a vitally important place in the DCU.

At the same time, the book also covers how the normal people of Metropolis and beyond respond to Superman’s death. We have Cadmus and its battle to take Superman’s body. We have the beginnings of a strong relationship between Clark’s parents and his fiancee Lois Lane. Jimmy Olsen consoles a young boy named Rich who Superman saved from the rampaging monster. Lex Luthor (still under the disguise of the friendly, caring Lex Luthor II) grow in rage at his inability to kill Superman. We have the return of Jose Delgado to his costumed identity as Gangbuster.

Over nine issues, we cover every aspect of how Superman’s death would effect the world. While the saga does slow down in places, it does an excellent job of establishing how important Superman was and how dangerous the DCU could become without its greatest hero.

Of course, Superman would soon return. Four times over.

Super-Powered Comics: Death of Superman

A note before we get started: Take the Helm’s sister sites are now back online. Sorry for the inconvenience, folks!

The death of Superman goes down in history as one of the greatest marketing events in comic history. At the time, the media didn’t know how to respond to such a story. Despite what just about ever comic fan knew, tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of people thought Superman would soon be gone for good. This drove sales of the Doomsday issues to epic levels. It would be about six months before the one true Superman returned, but in the process the four creative teams of the Superman titles made a unique sprawling epic out of the story.

Sure, the marketing of the comic left a lot of bad taste in a lot of people’s mouth. And subsequent attempts to replicate the concept (Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, Spider-Man and the Clone Saga, and even Knightfall/Knightquest) proved to not be as good. But those series failed where Superman’s saga succeeded. Why? You could give any number of reasons, but I will say good planning. Superman’s death and return had a clear beginning, middle, and end. The follow-ups failed (or at least ridiculously delayed) to give the readers the closure they wanted for the concept.

The saga is collected in three trades and I will cover each in turn. It begins with the aptly title The Death of Superman. No title could get more to the point. DC created a character that became synonymous with nineties storytelling in the form of Doomsday. The near-mindless killing machine possessed no origin, no reason for its actions, and no reason to exist beyond being the vehicle of Superman’s demise. Or so it seemed to much later, when his creator Dan Jurgens finally revealed his origins.

But that’s another story. This is about Superman’s death. Over six issues of the Superman titles and one of Justice League America, Superman and his allies in the League battle the oncoming monster. This League, the post-Giffen team, consisted of Guy Gardner, Fire, Ice, Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, former Superman villain Maxima, and the exercise in nineties character naming, Bloodwynd (secretly a messed up in the head Martian Manhunter). Despite a decent level of power, the team didn’t work so well together. In the face of Doomsday’s power, they fell with relative ease.

Barring occasional aid by Guardian and Dubbilex of the Cadmus Project, Superman faces the monster alone. And Doomsday seems obsessed with making his way to Metropolis.

This leads to the final few chapters of the story as Superman and Doomsday spar again and again in a cross country battle. The fight ends in a ravaged Metropolis. In the end, Superman barely pulls out a victory over the beast, but at the cost of his own life.

The story is simple and pretty straight forward. At the time, fans hated how Doomsday just appeared to facilitate Superman’s death. I suspect they wanted background on the character and a reason for Superman to die at Doomsday’s hand. But those really aren’t important yet. There would be plenty of time later for long time fans to learn the origins of Doomsday.

The goal was Superman’s death. And in the true tradition of comics, that was just the beginning.

A Quick Note on Metahuman Press, Evolution Comics, and Arc

Currently all my sites are down for unknown reasons. I am trying to get in touch with the server company but as yet have been unsuccessful. Hopefully we will be back online soon.

The Complete Clone Saga 8: Players & Pawns and Amazing Spider-Man 400

Spectacular Spider-Man 222 starts the 2 part “Players and Pawns”. We get a bunch of mystery builders in this one with Kaine confronting Jackal and the Scrier, Kaine confronting Peter, and Jackal confronting the Scarlet Spider but no real forward saga momentum. This would become a recurring theme during parts of the Clone Saga as villain-of-the-month plots creep in heavily.

Web of Spider-Man 123 concludes “Players and Pawns” and the fights from the last issue while releasing a third Peter Parker (shown briefly in the previous chapter) on the world. Between this and the annoying imp-like clone sidekick the Jackal has, this issue proves rather atrocious. Thankfully the Terry Kavanagh-written disaster (which may be a redundancy after looking back at much of Kavanagh’s writing career) would soon be mercifully put out of its (and our) misery.

These two issues lead in to the first big turning point of the Clone Saga: Amazing Spider-Man 400 (which comes complete with embossed cover). The issue puts its primary focus on none other than Aunt May. While we do get the revelation that Aunt May isn’t an idiot, she has known that Peter is Spidey for quite some time. But when we get to the story’s end and Aunt May’s death, we get the first big insult of the clone saga. Peter is gone when she dies, leaving the Spider-clone to fill in at her bedside. After thirty years of history, Peter Parker can’t even show up for the death. It serves as a prime example of the bad storytelling that would quickly turn off fans for months and years to come. After the funeral, things get even worse, as Peter is arrested for murder. Ben introduces himself to Mary Jane as the issue ends.

Issue 400 does come with two back-ups. The first is by DeMatteis, Romita Jr., and Romita. (Is this the first time Romita inked Romita Jr?) “The Parker Legacy” picks up directly after the events of Amazing Spider-Man 149 and tells the tale of Ben Reilly’s life. The second back-up is by DeMatteis, scripter Stan Lee, and the art team of Tom Grummett and Al Milgrom. This may be Grummett’s first Marvel work. I don’t know if it is Milgrom’s inks or just an attempt to ape Bagley, but his usually fantastic art looks horrible here. The story is basically a retelling of why Peter never told Aunt May, a story which serves little purpose in this issue. It feels mostly like an add-on just to get Stan Lee’s name in the solicitation copy.

Next time we move in to the post-May era with “Aftershocks”.

Out For Vengeance 9 Notes

This chapter starts the build-up to our first year bang-up with issue twelve that will in turn set up the big bad to finally reveal himself later in the year. I think this one came together quite nicely with a few good character points.

Gasman, sadly enough, took more time to name than a lot of characters so far. I wanted a character with a gas gun, but it took me hours before the mildly painful name came to me.

Having only recently revived Rulah, Jungle Goddess in the pages of Timeline, I have brought back another jungle girl in this chapter with Rima. Rima is a rather unique South American jungle character. In the public domain for some years, she first appeared in W.H. Hudson’s 1904 novel Green Mansions. (Read it here.) DC Comics gave her a book in the seventies and will soon revive their version in the pages of First Wave, but I thought my more mystic take would be fun for this chapter of Out For Vengeance.

After writing this, I really wanted my own combat spider monkey. Anyone else?

Super-Powered Comics: Dark Avengers Assemble

Thanks once again to the fine folks at my local library, I have had the chance to check out the beginning of Marvel’s “Dark Reign” from its focal point, Dark Avengers. Specifically the trade of the first six issues, titled “Assembled”.

The first issue is spent just assembling the new team. In case you haven’t heard, the Dark Avengers are sort of a reverse Thunderbolts, a bunch of criminals dressed up as heroes but still distinctly evil. Two members of Iron Man’s Mighty Avengers hold over, the war god Ares and the Sentry, a character too messed up in the head to go anywhere else. In addition, we have Spider-Man (really the Venom symbiote wearing Mac Gargan), Hawkeye (the assassin Bullseye), Ms. Marvel (former Thunderbolt Moonstone), Captain Marvel (Noh-Varr, the former Marvel Boy), and Wolverine (Logan’s son Daken). Led by new head of HAMMER Norman Osborn in his guise as the Iron Patriot, they are the new generation of Avengers.

Never do we really get an explanation of why Norman decided to go this route. He may have had to work for it, but other Marvel books clearly show that he could have formed a team of less famous but more stable (and manageable) actual heroes. He could probably still keep Moonstone and Daken around with little or no trouble and avoid the high probability of Venom or Bullseye going crazy. But clearly the concept is more important than the reasoning, as we quickly move on to the team’s first (secret) mission: to save Doctor Doom from a crazed Morgan Le Fey.

Now as far as I know the last time we saw Morgan was in the first few issues of Kurt Busiek’s Avengers relaunch in the late nineties. That story gave us a near pitch perfect story starring every Avenger on the roster facing an epic time-warping threat. Here we get some demons and an unkillable woman hellbent on Doom’s destruction. She does a lot of damage, the Avengers kill her repeatedly, and a few issues are wasted on what is basically an extended fight with the team’s own idiocy. I suppose this is supposed to show the team’s inability to work together, but all it shows me is that anyone who bought this wasted $12 for these three issues.

Issue five is straight forward Bendis at work. Norman goes on television for an interview about his history as the Green Goblin and the identity of his Avengers. The other team members interact, mostly like twelve year old schoolboys, with the exception of Noh-Varr and Moonstone, who retreat to her bedroom. Noh-Varr learns that the other “heroes” are really villains and leaves.

Issue six closes the trade with the Sentry murdering an entire legion of Atlantean dissidents. We get another brief meeting of Osborn’s Cabal and hints that Osborn’s Green Goblin persona is pushing for control once again.

Writer Brian Michale Bendis likes his decompression, but I have to say that I would feel gypped if I spent $4 an issue for this at their LCS. Even with my library grab, I feel like I am not getting as much story as this trade should have. The story here seems pointless and far from the flagship of an entire line of titles. If this was my only view of Dark Reign, I would say “:No thanks”. Even though Mike Deodato produces art far and away better than anything he has done before, this book still falls flat on its face. Not Recommended.

Super-Powered Web: Axe Cop

Who is Axe Cop?

He is a police officer ... with an AXE!

Along with his constantly recruited team of intrepid adventurers of various size, shape, and powers, Axe Cop fights the evil of such villains as Uni-Baby, Psydrozon, and Telescope Gun Cop. Yes, an evil cop with a telescope gun!

I am sure to the untrained reader this may seem silly. Well, probably to the trained reader as well. But that’s pretty much the point. Axe Cop is silly fun. And it’s awesomeness owes everything to a five year old.

Inspired by the craziness his younger brother Malachai Nicholle creates when he sees him, artist Ethan Nicolle decided to take his stories and put them on a comic page. The result is a crazy wide even the fevered imaginations of the strangest comic fan would never create.

Marvel at the transformations of Flute Cop to Dinosaur Soldier and beyond!

Need help? That means it’s time to recruit the talents of Sockarang, Leaf-Man, or even A Wrestler!

I can tell you still have questions. That’s okay. You can just go and Ask Axe Cop!

No, I cannot really sum up in any really connotative way what makes Axe Cop so great. But he truly is one of the best blasts of fun ever given us by the power of the web. The only complaint I can give is that there isn’t more Axe Cop to love.

Everyone should go check him out today. Or he will bring his flying dinosaur with machine gun arms to get you.

Super-Powered Fiction(?): Official Chuck Norris Fact Book

In the last decade, the internet created its own tongue in cheek superhero in the form of one Chuck Norris. Now Chuck himself has decided to collect 101 of his favorite facts in The Official Chuck Norris Fact Book.

Now this being Chuck, each and every super-fact is followed with an anecdote from Chuck’s life. Many cover his thoughts on life, others cover his history both good and bad, while still others cover his beliefs in God, politics, and celebrity.

Anyone knowledgeable about Chuck knows he is a conservative Christian, but the fact book never beats this fact over your head. He gives you his views, but he doesn’t spend time attacking those that disagree with him. It’s quite refreshing actually.

And, usually, he keeps it fun. I think that is the most important thing when you remember that the joy of a book like this is the hilarious superhuman facts about the life of Chuck Norris.

Because after all, “Superman wears Chuck Norris pajamas to bed at night.” Recommended.

Super-Powered Comics: Diamond Destinations February

pg 63: Brightest Day #0: Probably the biggest news story of the month is this puppy. I don’t know what it will be about, but it is clearly a direct follow-up to Blackest Night, and that should make it a top seller.

pg 69: Batman: Arkham Asylum - Madness: This popped up out of nowhere, but I think the potential of a Sam Keith Arkham story is great. Unfortunately (especially for a barely advertised project) the solicitation copy gives little to no information about the story itself.

pg 70-71: Doc Savage #1 and The Spirit #1: The First Wave expands with two new ongoing series focused on its pulp heroes. Savage gets Paul Malmont, writer of The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril, a novel that turns pulp writers in to pulp heroes, with art by Howard Porter. Porter’s style seems tailor-made for Doc. Plus the $4 backup is assuaged by Avenger back-ups by Hard Case Crime author Jason Starr & Simon Dark’s Scott Hampton. At the same time, DC steals Richard Starkings’s favorite creators with Ladronn on covers and Moritat on interiors of a new Spirit book. And the editors wisely picked Xenozoic Tales writer Mark Schultz to bring the story. Each issue will steal a page from old Batman issues with an additional 8 page black and white backup. It should be interesting to see who DC finds to fill those slots past this month’s Denny O’Neil and Bill Sienkiewicz story. I am truly excited for these two, more so than even the FIrst Wave limited itself.

pg 99: DV8: Gods & Monsters #1: I won’t lie; I was an unrepentant fanboy of Warren Ellis’s DV8. The series fell apart after he left, but now the great Brian Wood (of Demo fame) brings the characters back in a new eight issue series. This has the potential of being a really solid new superhero book from Wildstorm, something the company has missed for months (outside Astro City of course).

pg. 139: Turf #1: I know next to nothing about British television host Jonathan Ross, but I can say his weird-crime period piece looks amazing. Tommy Lee Edwards is a hell of an artist and he is in perfect form with this release. I hope it proves to be as big a seller as it well should be.

pg. 148: Haunt #7: This issue finally resolves the sometimes hinky art provided by Ryan Ottley over Greg Capullo’s layouts. How do they manage it? They make Greg Capullo the new artist. Now I’m sure much of his superstar status has faded since the days he worked on Spawn, but I have been a fan of Capullo since Quasar. (Yeah, I am that old.) This should just take Haunt another step forward on its road to greatness.

pg. 170: Magdalena #1: Ron Marz has carved out quite the little universe for himself at Top Cow. His Witchblade and Angelus are good, solid stories and now he is continuing that tradition with Magdalena. I am a huge fan of the character, but sadly will probably be skipping this one despite all its pluses. Why? The $3.99 price tag.

Marvel pg. 13: You want to know the best way to get people to buy your one-shots? Solicit them without any information about their actual titles or creative teams. But hey, since they all say Siege, I’m sure they will still sell well.

Marvel pg. 15: Black Widow #1: It took a movie appearance in the upcoming Iron Man 2, but Black Widow finally has her own series! While i am not the biggest fan of artist Daniel Acuna, but writer Marjorie Liu is definitely one of the best new writers Marvel has. Plus, unlike so many other Marvel titles, for $4 the reader at least gets 40 pages of content.

Marvel pg. 37: Savage Axe of Ares: I was a big fan of Marvel’s magazines and I am happy to see they are continuing their black & white follow-ups to those mags this month. Ares seems to be a good fit for this kind of book. We will see what kind of stories we get from the writing team of the three stories in this one.

pg 218: Cold Space #1: Samuel L. Jackson in outer space. I’m not quite sure what to make of it, although the preview art makes it look like Mace Windu in Mass Effect. Again, the $4 price tag probably means I won’t be ordering this one myself.

pg 236: Green Hornet Year One: Matt Wagner on Green Hornet. Nuff said.

pg. 351: Mr. Potato Head: Kiss Collector Set: WTF? No seriously, I know Kiss loves merchandising, but is there actually any call whatsoever for Potato KISS? I find this rather disturbing.

pg. 279: Bayonetta Play Arts: Bayonetta Action Figure: Have you ever wanted to own the craziest costumed video game character in 9 1/4" plastic form? Well, now you can, thanks to this $40 import figure!

That wraps up another set of highlights! Be sure to add to your pull lists accordingly, folks!

Pulp Empire is up!

A couple weeks ago, I proudly announced the return of Pulp Empire. At the time, it was only a link to a simple submissions page. But not anymore! The full site can now be seen! We will see a few more simple revisions before the first story goes up on April 1st, but this is it.

It’s the ground floor of something new. Feel free to stay awhile.