Will Eisner and Jack Kirby

2017 was the centennial of two of comics' greatest, Will Eisner and Jack Kirby. So it seems only fitting that we close it off with this excerpt from The Dreamer, Eisner's semi-autobigraphical piece.

Jack Kirby got his start at the Eisner-Iger Studio, and while I am actually torn between which one of the two was the more influential artist (I think Kirby had more impact in the genres he handled, while Eisner had an impact on more genres in general), but I don't think it could be denied who the better businessman was (Eisner), and also who the more badass one was (Kirby).

In this excerpt, "Jack King" deals with some money launderers.

And just top cap 2017 off, here's a story Kirby himself told The Comics Journal:

I didn’t feel one way or another about it. I was only hoping that it would come out well enough to continue comics, that it wouldn’t damage comics in anyway, so I could continue working. I was a young man. I was still growing out of the East Side. The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it.

And to cap off 2017, here's Will, Jack, and Roz Kirby:

Happy New Year, Comics Cubers!

Korrasami Had Enough Buildup

Over on my personal Facebook page, I once asked the question, which cartoon will be remembered as more progressive: Avatar the Last Airbender or The Legend of Korra? I eventually conceded, due to the wording of my question, that The Legend of Korra is the answer.

Honestly, I get it. The last two minutes of Korra is the most blatantly and obviously progressive thing in either show. It meant so much to me that it singlehandedly broke my "Always just talk about comics or things that originated in comics" rule on the Cube. I'd offhandedly mentioned in the beginning of Season 3 that Korra and Asami had more chemistry than either of them had with the show's main dude, Mako, and when the series went full digital early in Season 4, I said that it would be the perfect opportunity to pull the trigger on Korrasami, the fandom's ship name for the two. I didn't think they'd actually do it.

They did, of course, and while critics of the show believe the development came out of nowhere, it was evident that they either had stopped watching the show in Season 4 or were looking at it purely from a heterosexual lens, meaning that they didn't believe someone could be anything other than straight unless it was very specifically mentioned. Korrasami was the natural sunset ending. It was brave. It was progressive.

It's also the only thing The Legend of Korra has over The Last Airbender.

Everything else in The Legend of Korra was started in The Last Airbender, which put Asian culture at the forefront in an American animated series. While this isn't unheard of, it's also the first one that explored many of them deeply and provided diversity in their representation. Aang is a Buddhist, both the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation incorporate different cultures. And it even goes beyond Asia, as Katara and Sokka from the Water Tribe are pretty clearly Inuit. The excellent Imaginary Worlds podcast by Eric Molinsky describes the world-building process as similar to what all fantasy novels do: take an existing culture and then rebuild the world based on those parameters. Whereas something like Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones does that with European culture, Avatar did it with Asian culture.

This type of racial diversity wasn't unheard of in 2005 when the show debuted, but it was very rare to see it treated with this type of nuance without a lack of stereotyping, with the minorities as the protagonists, and with diversity within the diversity. That's a huge step, and I doubt that a show remotely like The Legend of Korra, with its dark-skinned protagonist, would have been greenlit by Nickelodeon without Airbender paving the way.

Another thing: Korra had a female kickass protagonist, another occurrence that hadn't been super-common (it still isn't). Airbender's main character, was in fact, a male, but a lot of its most competent characters were girls. The most dangerous firebender in the course of the show was Azula, whose fire was so strong that it was blue; Katara was a fast learner of waterbending and Aang's teacher; Toph was probably the most adept bender of the entire show, even inventing metalbending; the best hand-to-hand fighters on the show were Suki and Ty Lee. By the end of the series, the team consisted of an even gender split.

And another thing is this: Airbender is just the better show. It starts off as good, gets to very good at the end of the first season, and officially crosses into "great" with the eighth episode of the second season. Before the series even ends, it's already one of the greatest and most important works of fiction in history. Korra doesn't start out great. It seemed to me that they decided to make Korra the exact opposite of Aang, meaning she was more like Airbender's secondary protagonist, Zuko: hotheaded, prone to making the wrong decisions, subject to failure, but learning. But where Zuko was a secondary character that you could be patient with because you had the actual main character to pay attention to, Korra carried the show on her own, and her failures and frustrations were ours.

So out of 52 episodes, it is frustrating that Korra didn't really come into her own until the last few. My favorite episode of Legend of Korra is "Beyond the Wilds," which takes place four episodes prior to the series finale, which is where Korra learns to live with all of the baggage that she's been saddled with. Coincidentally, my favorite Last Airbender episode is "The Firebending Masters," which takes place four episodes prior to the series finale, if you count the series finale as one episode. It's also the one where Zuko learns to live with all the baggage he's been saddled with and how to control his anger. The principle of living with what you've done/what's been done to you and continuing to move forward resonates with me.

One of the side effects of this ending, the feeling that Korra was only really coming into her own at the end, is that it makes the end of the story look like the beginning. As far as I'm concerned, the story of Korra is only getting started when the cartoon ends. And that includes her relationship with Asami, and the self-discovery that it comes with.

Korra and Asami getting together was criticized for coming out of nowhere, but that's not so. Upon watching the first season with someone, she immediately commented that Asami seemed to be hitting on Korra as early as the first half of the first season. By the third season, the two of them had ditched the leading man of the series, Mako, and formed a bond that was independent of any men. By the end of the third season, with Korra in a wheelchair, Asami says to her, "I want you to know that I'm here for you. If you ever want to talk — or anything," as she holds her hand. If either of them had been a guy, there would have been no question about what was happening.

In the second episode of the fourth season, "Korra Alone," which depicts the three missing years between seasons 3 and 4, we see that Asami volunteered to accompany Korra to the Southern Water Tribe to help her heal, and, more importantly, that the two of them wrote to each other in secret, not telling any of their friends.

There are other signs, but these combined highlight it enough for me. The only reason I was still apprehensive about it happening was because it was on Nickelodeon, and there was no way this would fly in a kids' cartoon, right? But the moment it went full digital, all bets were off. They still couldn't explicitly say it, but why did they have to?

Every LGBTQ person I know who came out of the closet when I already knew them had no build-up. They either didn't want to say it, or they didn't realize they were until such time that they admitted it to themselves. Why should fiction be any different? Korrasami gets flak for using the same-sex ending for shock value; to me it felt more organic than Aang and Katara (Zutara 4eva!), but if they had done episodes about how they came to terms with their sexuality and feelings for each other, I'm certain it also would have gotten flak for being too preachy.

And as I've said, the ending felt more like a beginning, which is where The Legend of Korra: Turf Wars comes in. Picking up where the series leaves off, this series by co-creator Michael Dante DiMartino and artist Irene Koh sets the two girls up in the Spirit World.

That's beautiful.

It's actually here that they have their first kiss and only then do they talk about their feelings for each other. And with Korra back in full force, it's only here that we see her being proactive about bringing balance to the world, instead of just reacting to the latest threat. Korra uses her powers to help out the people who have been displaced by Kuvira and also deal with a new threat, while at the same time trying to keep the spirits happy.

So Korrasami had enough buildup — I think if you were open to the possibility of it happening at all, you'd see that. And maybe the fact that even the characters themselves seem surprised indicate that it's a discovery for them as well. Sometimes things just happen — that's especially true of relationships and how they start.

That's a big part of what makes me collect Turf Wars, while simultaneously leaving the Last Airbender comics okay for me not to own. Whereas the entirety of Last Airbender felt complete, the ending of Korra was a cliffhanger, and I can't wait to see where it goes from here.

Quite frankly, I expect it's gonna be better than the show as a whole.

10 Awesome Moments from Grant Morrison's Justice League

Grant Morrison is the best guy to ever write the Justice League. I mean that. His JLA run is the best there is in terms of creativity and instilling a sense of wonder. Yes, Len Wein and Gerry Conway in the 70s and early 80s established what would really become the classic version of the Justice League, and all the tropes established therein, including my ever-beloved multiverse. And yes, JM DeMatteis and Keith Giffen turned everything upside down with their comedic take in Justice League International. And, yes, Geoff Johns has brought the Justice League to a new audience. And yes, okay, if you're counting the animated series, Justice League Unlimited is one of the greatest animated series of all time. But in terms of simply establishing the awesomeness of the Justice League, getting the essence of their characters in as few lines as possible, and having the most imaginative and creative use of their powers, no one tops Grant Morrison. So let's count down...

10 Awesome Moments from Grant Morrison's JLA

by Duy

This list isn't in order, and keep in mind that the run is 41 issues long. I am pulling mostly from the first half. Hell, three of these are from the same issue.

10. The Green Lantern of Krypton

The Key has captured the Justice League and placed them all in dreams. The dreams, mostly, are based on old Silver Age stories, modernized for contemporary readers. The Flash is in a world where everyone has superspeed and he has to be the glorfied traffic controller. Bruce Wayne is married to Catwoman, and Robin has taken his place. And Kal-El is on a Krypton that never exploded, and becomes the Green Lantern of Sector 2813.

9. Angels, Meet Diana

Asmodel and his rogue angels have invaded the Earth and the Justice League has to stop them. Zauriel, an angel who chose mortality for love, warns Wonder Woman that going into their ship and even touching anything in it will burn. Wonder Woman's answer? "Burns heal." And the angels were properly introduced to Diana.

8. You Will Surpass Him

In the Classic Era of the Justice League, whenever they needed a magic guest star, they'd turn to the universal plot device known as the Phantom Stranger. In the 90s, Grant Morrison thought, who'd be the best counterpart to the Phantom Stranger? The answer was the Sandman, the Lord of Dreams. One quick phone call to Neil Gaiman later, and he had permission to use him. Here's Daniel, the Lord of Dreams, telling Kyle Rayner that he will surpass Hal Jordan.

Look, this is an awesome moment, because Kyle Rayner is way better than Hal Jordan. He's a much more interesting character and a much better wielder of the power ring. That's another reason Morrison's run was the best: Kyle Rayner and Wally West were much better than Hal Jordan and Barry Allen, both individually and as a pair. The best Green Lantern and the best Flash.

7. I Brought the Justice League. That's a Plan.

Adam Strange enslaves the Justice League into helping him build a giant device that will help aliens invade Rann. However, this is all a feint, as he actually has them setting up the devices that will stop the aliens. Green Lantern comments that it was one hell of a gamble, and Adam's response was:

"If I'd contacted the Seven Soldiers of Victory, it would be a gamble. I brought the Justice League. That's a plan."

This entry is a bit of a cheat, since Mark Waid wrote this issue.

6. Nice Brain, Four Lobes

In an alternate future, Darkseid has taken over the world. With everyone down or out, the only two people left to fight him are Green Arrow and the Atom. And because of scientific know-how, they take him down.

5. Pull the Moon

In the late 90s, Superman was made of electricity, which is to say, he had electric powers. The Superman books weirdly didn't actually do much with these new powers, other than to establish that Superman is Superman regardless of what his powers are. But Grant Morrison, who had then scripted Superman pushing the moon, which was falling out of gravity, because it would be an iconic image. Denied this, he was forced to get creative.

Superman uses his electrical powers to give the moon poles that would repel itself from the Earth and put it back in orbit. What was scripted to be a simple iconic image became the best use of this short-lived powerset in our Man of Steel.

4. Shapeshift the Brain

Batman and the Martian Manhunter are in a maze created by the Joker's mind. With no logical pattern to follow, J'onn has an idea. If he can shapeshift his entire body, why couldn't he restructure his brain so that it was similar to the Joker's? Once done, the path is a straight line.

This is one of those brain-tickling clever moments that kept me coming back month after month.

3. Ready When You Are

Before Batman was unbearable and the poster child for "Would beat you as long as he had time to prepare" (essentially making him a Black Panther ripoff), Batman being one step ahead of the enemies was actually cool. With the world taken over by the Hyperclan and the superpowered members of the JLA captured, Batman figures out they're Martians and lures them into a trap.

Bonus points for Superman figuring it out moments later and busting out of his captivity, taking the Hyperclan's leader Protex down.

2. Superman Wrestles an Angel

Oh, y'know, just Superman wrestling an angel. No biggie.

1. The Punch Heard Around the World

My absolute favorite creative moment in the entire series. Fighting another speedster, Zum, Wally West pulls out a Flash fact: the closer something gets to the speed of light, the more mass it acquires. So Flash taps into the Speed Force, runs around the world in a straight line, and punches Zum in the punch heard around the world.

It's so awesome that Bruce Timm and company replicated this moment in Justice League Unlimited!

So okay, yeah, maybe Morrison's run didn't have the soap operatic elements or the character growth that you'd expect in other team books. But he wrote the best version of the greatest Green Lantern of all time, did more with Electric Superman than Superman's writers did, nailed everyone's characterization in moments and one-liners, made sure that every entrance was epic, and thought up ways to use their powers that were rooted in science and had never been used before. Grant Morrison is the greatest Justice League writer of all time. I rest my case.

Retrospective: Avengers Prime

With Thor: Ragnarok introducing Hela to the non-comic-book-reading world and Brian Michael Bendis jumping ship to DC Comics, it seems like a good time to have an...

Avengers Prime Retrospective

by Duy

The year is 2010. Five years removed from Civil War, a lot has happened. Iron Man took over all superhuman legal concerns, only to be deposed by Norman Osborn, the Green Goblin. Steve Rogers died as Captain America, only to be brought back and placed in charge once Osborn was forcibly removed from office. This came at the expense of Asgard, home of the Mighty Thor, now on Earth, now in ruins. Tony Stark and Steve Rogers are still at each other's throats, constantly disagreeing on fundamental issues, and Thor lays down the law.

This leads to an adventure where the three of them — Marvel's in-universe counterpart to DC's Trinity — being split up and taken to what seem to be three of the nine realms. From here on, the action moves really briskly, which is not something I normally say for a book written by Bendis.

Iron Man gets caught by ogres:

Steve quickly disposes of a bar full of dark elves, arming himself with a very familiar weapon:

And Thor has a surprise confrontation with the Enchantress:

Part of what makes this my favorite Bendis book is the artwork by the great Alan Davis. It's just so masterfully paced and the camera angles are so well considered that it gets the maximum effect of awe-inspiring danger. And it's rounded out nicely by colorist Javier Rodriguez, whose color palette lends the proper atmosphere to the work. Check out this spread, where our favorite Thunder God comes face to face with the villain of the piece.

As everyone knows by now, that's Hela, goddess of death, and the stakes are super-high for this one, as everyone eventually finds out they're in the land of the dead, kinda, where all the villains that Thor has killed over the years are coming back.

Beyond the high stakes, the series also has subtly affirming moments of characterization, as Steve and Tony try to repair their friendship. Here's a moment that's all-too-human.

By the end of it, Tony and Steve have made up.

I suppose this is my favorite Bendis story primarily because it's the most old-school he's ever done. I didn't really like what Bendis did to the Avengers, where he basically made everyone popular a member, including Spider-Man and Wolverine. It was absolutely the right move for the franchise and for the company in terms of getting new readers and increasing revenue, but it wasn't my Avengers. And that's okay. I had my Avengers. Let everyone else have theirs.

But this was a rebuilding moment in a back-to-basics wave, and that's something we get all the time in comics after so many shakeups have happened. Sometimes it's called Rebirth. Sometimes it's Legacy. Sometimes it's Age of Heroes. But in these rebuilding moments, we return to the core of the characters. And this was it for these three, as Avengers. They would change again, not long after. Such is the way of serialized fiction.

I never bought any comics featuring these three immediately after Avengers Prime. I jumped onto Thor a couple of years later with Jason Aaron's run. I bought the Ed Brubaker Captain America run eventually. But no Avengers. My Avengers are gone, and the closest place for me to find them on a regular basis is actually the silver screen.

But for one brief shining moment, the core of my Avengers was back. It's my favorite story written by Brian Michael Bendis. It may actually be my favorite book drawn by Alan Davis. And it doesn't get talked about enough or recommended enough. So here I am, recommending it. If you love the Avengers, if you love the core three members of the Avengers, and if you want to see them headline a story, this is it.

On Weezie and Fabe: Creators of Cable and Deadpool

Rob Liefeld is easy to make fun of. The dude is known for lazy artwork, omitting details such as feet and more than a couple of facial expressions. But there's a reason he sticks to the style that he's had since 1990, and that reason is that back then, that style brought him money. With an established fan base, there's little incentive for him to improve because of critics' preferences. He's also a co-creator of Cable and Deadpool, making him one of the single most successful creators of all time. Seriously, can you name five people post-1970 who created not one, but two successful characters that have an established fan following, and be recognized for it?

But he didn't do it alone. Let's make sure we recognize Louise "Weezie" Simonson and Fabian Nicieza.

Louise Simonson and Fabian Nicieza: Credit Where It's Due

by Duy

Let's start with Deadpool, who debuted in The New Mutants #88, February 1991. This is a character that Rob Liefeld designed. Deadpool looks like this.

He gave this design to Fabian Nicieza, who reacted just like anyone who read comics in the 1980s would. One of the biggest comics of the previous decade was Marv Wolfman and George Perez's The New Teen Titans, a title that will forever be connected to the X-Men, and their biggest enemy was Deathstroke the Terminator. Who looks like this.

So Fabian basically told Rob, "This is Deathstroke from the Teen Titans," and then gave the new character the real name of Wade Wilson, as an inside joke referring to Deathstroke's real name being Slade Wilson. Nicieza then gave Deadpool the exact opposite personality as Deathstroke, making him a bantering loudmouth who loved puns (the logical extension of Spider-Man) as opposed to a superserious mercenary with a lot of pathos.

Deadpool is probably the biggest superhero character created after 1990 (the competition: Spawn, Harley Quinn [who wasn't created in comics], and... that's it. No, really.) and Rob Liefeld gets most of the credit for creating him. But what makes Deadpool special is his personality, and for that you should thank Fabian Nicieza. I've actually made the joke that Deadpool was really created by Fabian Nicieza and George Perez. It's really only a half-joke.

This post isn't meant to disparage Rob, however; he still brought these characters to life. In the case of Cable, who debuted 11 issues and 11 months earlier, Rob said in a 2009 interview:

I was given a directive to create a new leader for the New Mutants. There was no name, no description besides a 'man of action', the opposite of Xavier. I created the look, the name, much of the history of the character. After I named him Cable, Bob suggested Quinn and Louise had Commander X.

Walt Simonson gave a comprehensive recounting of it back in 1991 for and reposted it on his Facebook group here. You can read it in its entirety, but the whole point is that Cable was a collaborative creation, borne out of Bob Harras's desire to create a new leader for the New Mutants, Weezie's desire to have that new leader be "a kick-ass, take charge kind of guy who would treat the team as a squad of soldiers," and Rob Liefeld's designs for Stryfe. Stryfe was a villain whose design, Harras thought, would do well for a good guy.

The working title, as Rob pointed out above, was Commander X, but the name was never going to be final. Rob suggested "Cable" and Weezie, who has a reputation for making artists happy, agreed.

Cable was a mystery man and there wasn't much known about him. Later creators added more layers to him, and in the 1993 Cable ongoing series, in which neither Weezie nor Rob were involved, they decided to make him the time-traveling older version of Nathan Summers, Scott "Cyclops" Summers' son from his first marriage to Jean Grey–lookalike Madelyne Pryor, who was given up in 1991, because the X-Men are complicated and they hate me. Point is, that's a defining and vital aspect of Cable's character, and none of his creators had anything to do with it.

Rob Liefeld gets most of the credit for these two characters, and a part of that is just because Rob Liefeld is the most famous person in this whole equation. But if you love these characters, be sure to thank Fabian Nicieza and Louise Simonson. Besides bringing them to life and making sure they had personalities beyond your standard 90s badass, they're both very excellent — and very underrated — writers.

Friendly reminder that Fabian Nicieza also co-created Gambit and the New Warriors, and Weezie Simonson also co-created Apocalypse and Steel.

Ranking the Wednesday Comics

So a while back, my girlfriend gave me this for a special occasion.




Originally published in 2010, Wednesday Comics was a true DC Comics art project and was the brainchild of Mark Chiarello. Attempting to recapture the magic of early 20th century newspaper comics such as Little Nemo in Slumberland and Krazy Kat, it was published in newspaper format and came out weekly. This hardcover edition is oversized and on glossy paper, and is gorgeous.

There are 14 features in Wednesday Comics, and while many reviews of the material have come out since, I haven't really run into any reviews that have ranked these 14 features. So you know what? Let's spend the next few minutes...

Ranking the Wednesday Comics

by Duy

There are only 12 pages in each Wednesday Comics feature, and thus not a lot of room for exploration in terms of plot or story. There's a lot to be done in terms of characterization though. But at the end of the day, this is still a book that celebrates the art of comics, and so my judgments will by its very nature be based on how much each story maximizes the artistic potential of these oversized pages.

15. Teen Titans by Eddie Berganza and Sean Galloway

Even if Galloway's art worked for me without the usual black outlines, Teen Titans would be dead last because Eddie Berganza is Eddie Berganza and he shouldn't make any list.

But props to Galloway, who worked on Spectacular Spider-Man, still the best version of Spider-Man outside of the comics.

14. Batman by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso

This mystery by the 100 Bullets team never really comes together, especially when you consider that Batman's probably unethical attraction to dangerous women is played upon and never addressed head on. Still, good mood-setting stuff from Risso.


13. Demon/Catwoman by Walt Simonson and Brian Stelfreeze

This should really be called "The Demon, featuring Catwoman," since Selina Kyle spends most of the story under the spell of Morgaine Le Fay. Etrigan the Demon is really the hero here, but what I find most fun about it is that the entire story starts off with Selina going on a date with his alter ego Jason Blood, just to case his house for possible things to steal.

12. Green Lantern by Kurt Busiek and Joe Quinones

Serviceable story with fun art. Nothing to really write home about, I think, but it's pretty much the benchmark of what these things should be like, at the least.

11. Superman by John Arcudi and Lee Bermejo

The Superman arc is a fun one where Superman is forced to doubt himself and he has to go to Smallville to find his motivation again.

Points off for this, and I know it's personal preference, because Lee Bermejo's art just isn't the kind I think of when I think of these big newspaper-style comics. There's room for experimentation, of course, but something about it just didn't seem to fit.

10. Wonder Woman by Ben Caldwell

Talk about experimentation in Wednesday Comics, and this is it. Caldwell goes the exact opposite route of most everyone else and packs as many panels as possible in his strip, instead of going for money shots. Unfortunately, this led to some confusing panel flow and made it tough to read at points.

9. Supergirl by Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner

With Streaky the Supercat and Krypto the Superdog going frantic and wreaking havoc on the city, Supergirl has to find out what's going on. With a twist ending that will put a smile on your face, it's easily the most fun of the strips.

8. Deadman by Dave Bullock and Vinton Heuck

Deadman wants to help out a beautiful woman, and then gets sucked into Hell! Dave Bullock's art is a visual treat.

7. The Flash by Karl Kerschl and Brenden Fletcher

Kerschl and Fletcher really play with the form here and for the most part cut each installment into two strips: The Flash and someone else, like Iris West. Narratives intertwine, and the story involves time travel and therefore multiple versions of The Flash. It can get confusing, but the playfulness is worth it.

6. Sgt. Rock by Adam Kubert and Joe Kubert

This Sgt. Rock story isn't as good as Joe Kubert's in DC Legacies, but it's Adam's first turn scripting, so we'll let that part off the hook. This is one of Joe's last works, and it's as good as ever. The scratchiness and the mood are perfect for wartime-era comics. Just like Kubert's art always was.

5. Metal Men by Dan Didio and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez

My favorite artist in the entire book is Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, so this was always gonna rank fairly high. The story is nothing really to write home about, with its most ostensibly impactful moments lacking much oomph. But the art has Garcia-Lopez at his draftsman's best, with his big trick of characters breaking out of panels to emphasize power and momentum being used multiple times. I actually thought he was holding back. I'd like to have seen more.

4. Metamorpho by Neil Gaiman and Mike Allred

This type of fun sci-fi stuff isn't the kind of thing Gaiman is known for, but it's one of the most experimental comics in the entire collection. Metamorpho the Element Man has to go to The Antarctic to dig up some treasure. Allred's art is drop-dead gorgeous, and the two of them take risks with the form. There are two pairs of installments that form a polyptych, or a continuing picture, which is something I'm surprised I've never seen actual newspaper artists do. There's also a sequence where Metamorpho and Element Woman go through each element in the Periodic Table, which doesn't sound like it should be a fun read, but it is.

3. Strange Adventures, Featuring Adam Strange, by Paul Pope and Jose Villarubia

Not counting Jonni Future, a genderbent analogue of Adam Strange, this is my favorite version of DC's premiere spaceman. Paul Pope's art really shouldn't grab me as it goes against so many of my usual tastes, but I love it. He has so much quirkiness and so much momentum that it's a pleasure to look at.

His reinvention of Adam Strange is also something of interest. Traditionally, Adam Strange is an Earthman who gets taken to the scientifically advanced planet Rann via a Zeta Beam, where he becomes their superhero and falls in love with Princess Alanna. Pope turns Rann, into a wartorn planet, and Alanna into a Dejah Thoris–type warrior woman. But the biggest change he makes is the idea that the Zeta Beam translates you from your Earth self into your Rann self. So whereas in the regular DC Universe, Adam Strange is a superhero on Rann but normal on Earth only because he's surrounded by other superheroes on Earth, in the Popeverse, he's a superhero on Rann and a tired old man on Earth. This twist leads to the resolution of the conflict, but also raises questions. What would Alanna be like on Earth? And if they were on Earth, would they still be in love?

It's a really interesting take on the character that may not be sustainable in the regular DC Universe, but I'd love to see it explored more.

2. Hawkman by Kyle Baker

Kyle Baker is more known for being a humor cartoonist, so seeing him draw this way was a revelation. I've always liked the look and visual of Hawkman, so this was perfect. I really would like a more substantial Hawkman run from Baker or an artist with a similar tone. Plus, he really won me over with that dinosaur.

1. Kamandi by Dave Gibbons and Ryan Sook

Pretty much all of the Wednesday Comics are well drawn, but Ryan Sook's rendition of the Last Boy on Earth is evocative of a specific classic newspaper strip: Hal Foster's Prince Valiant. The prose style also allows him and Gibbons to develop the story more than the other strips did. It even includes a romance, as we're introduced to Orora, possibly The Last Girl on Earth. With the beautiful art, the callback to a classic strip, and more development than the other strips, it's hard not to make Kamandi the top Wednesday Comic.

Did Mars Ravelo Really Read Captain Marvel?

I've made many comments over the years about how Mars Ravelo must have based Darna, the Philippines' #1 superhero, on Captain Marvel, he who says "Shazam!" Since Darna's alter-ego is a young girl who says a magic word to turn into Darna, she's more like Captain Marvel than she is like Wonder Woman, who she looks more like. But recently I was asked...

Did Mars Ravelo Really Read Captain Marvel?

by Duy

Well, honestly, although I do vaguely remember reading somewhere that he definitely read Captain Marvel, I can't find it now. What I do find are some unsubstantiated claims and references to Superman, specifically this, pertaining to Varga, his pre-Darna creation:

Alam mo naisip kong gawin yung Varga para itapat kay Superman. Lalake yung sa mga Amerikano, babae yung sa atin. Di ba ayos?
(You know, I thought of doing Varga to put up against Superman. The Americans have a guy, we have a girl. Wouldn't that be cool?)

However, I would find it really difficult to believe that he didn't base Darna on Captain Marvel. Let's just look at some facts.

1. Mars Ravelo created Varga in 1939

Varga was the original Darna, and was created to be a counterpart of Superman. There isn't much more to her beyond that and the fact that her costume is based on the Philippine flag:

That's because Varga wasn't actually published until 1947. So although her creation precedes the release date of Captain Marvel (1940), there are no details about how her secret identity would have worked in 1939. When Varga was released in 1947, rights disputes forced Ravelo to give her up and then create Darna with the legendary Nestor Redondo. (Side note: Isn't this basically what happened with Walt Disney and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, leading to the creation of Mickey Mouse with the legendary Ub Iwerks?)

2. By the time Varga/Darna was released in full, Captain Marvel was the most popular superhero in the world. 

Superman was created to be a two-fisted champion of the oppressed. He was a grounded hero who just happened to have a crapload of superpowers. By 1950, he was participating in fantastical sci-fi adventures, and that's because Captain Marvel was outselling him, and everyone else.

As Michael Uslan put it:

If you go back and look at when Captain Marvel first started outselling Superman, this was a huge, huge turning point in the Golden Age of comics. And the way DC responded was by ordering a more comical, silly direction for Superman. 

All of a sudden, you started to see one-after-another covers of Lois dropping the pie she’d made on Superman’s toe, or Lois cutting Superman’s hair in a barbershop. They started to switch it over, since Captain Marvel had the lighter tone and was outselling Superman.

So Varga may have been created before Captain Marvel, but by the time she was published and had a secret identity, Captain Marvel had already been firmly established as a young boy named Billy Batson who said one magic word and then turned into a superhero. That's a bit too much of a coincidence.

3. During World War II, American soldiers got comics in care packages

Many soldiers who had read comics overseas found them to be a comfort item on their return. Maybe it was escapism, maybe it was a habit, but either way they were a solace to many of the soldiers who would later introduce the comics to their children.  -From History Rat

And a huge portion of American soldiers were stationed here in the Philippines. If Captain Marvel was the biggest comic book of the time, and American soldiers got comics in care packages, it's incredibly unlikely that Captain Marvel didn't make it to the Philippines. I mean, Plastic Man did:

Larry Alcala's Siopawman, playing off the three
most famous heroes whose names end with "man."

And we know Ravelo based a superhero on him:

The not-so-imaginatively-named Lastikman,
on a much more imaginative cover for Aliwan

4. Mars Ravelo created Captain Barbell, for crying out loud.

After her release in komiks, Darna had two movies in the 1950s, and Ravelo was a legend. He created more in the 1960s, most very probably because the superhero genre was getting revitalized in America. And next to Darna, his most famous creation was a young scrawny asthmatic boy named Tenteng, who'd lift magic barbells to become Captain Barbell.

C'mon. That's pretty obvious. The names even rhyme!

So Therefore...

It's possible that Mars Ravelo never had Captain Marvel on the brain when creating Darna. It is. It's also possible that the name of your favorite search engine has nothing to do with Barney Google. Meaning it could have happened that way.

But it would have been extremely unlikely. And I really, really wouldn't believe it.