Comic Book Resources

The Fifth Color - True Believer

Welcome to the middle of November, folks so bear with me as we take a look back at the beginning of the year for Yours Truly and leave the House of Ideas be this week;  the following was written sometime in January, when my laptop finally rested at my side in the Acute Rehab Unit of the UCI Medical faciliy and I had enough finger strength and energy to type:

Well then.

Looks like the mighty Marvel Bullpen had to wait until I was trapped in an Intensive Care Ward, hands unmovable, before taking the winsome Wasp and splattering her against the windshield of Big Event Comics with nary a second thought.

Did you really think I'd let them get away with that?

But before I launch into the rich and honorable history of Ms. Janet Van Dyne, there are a few things I have to say first.

WARNING:  Personal note to follow, mostly comics related, spoilers to my recovery ahead.

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The Fifth Color - What About Bob?

The Sentry has come a long way, baby.  Bob Reynolds's story is no longer a man struggling with an addiction who was close to his dog, he's just about as far from that as possible.  The original April Fool's Prank for The Golden Guardian of Good turned out to be a larger tale of a man with the greatest amount of power having the greatest amount of responsibility.  That when you create the equal and opposite reaction to the power of a thousand exploding suns, the only way to win was to do nothing at all.  At his first introduction, we are left with a very quiet and beautiful study of the greatest good and the worst evil residing in an everyday man and the world that had forgotten him.

When Bendis puled him out of the Vault for his New Avengers, the stakes had already been changed.  The balance of good an evil was gone, just an implanted a virus from Mastermind and possible delusion villain The General that created psychological problems and the existence of the Void, which was just another extension of Reynolds himself.  We lost our philosophical battle and our more peacable idea of wrong and right to be able to tear Carnage in half in space.

Okay, there's nothing wrong with that.  Bendis even brought in Paul Jenkins as a character in the book to explain everything, kind of having him sign off on the project.  Despite his immense power and complexity, the Sentry was going to be an Avenger.  Hey, they've worked with gods and demi-gods before, what's the difference?

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The Fifth Color - Marvel Zombies Field Guide

Marvel, with its finger oh so close to the pulse of popular culture, let an idea fester in the minds of their bullpen, slowly creating a deadly infection through the titles of the Marvel Universe.  We can trace it from an original source, the strain of the disease that would later spread, to one man:  Mark Millar.

As much as I would love to chase him down with a bunch of dudes in HazMat suits, Mark Millar is our Patient Zero in the visual juggernaut that is 'Marvel Zombies'.  Who know where he got it from, the end of a bottle of alcohol, the late night viewing of one too many George Romero movies, some internet clicks and a savvy mind for a play on the not-so affectionate terms for the True Believers, but it is here and it's here to stay.  What Millar wrought, Kirkman forged and Arthur Suydam perfected, three men taking us on a wild ride since 2005 and it shows no sign of stopping.  As long as zombies entertain the pop culture brain, someone's going to want to eat those brains.

So, in no particular order, here are some simple signs and helpful tips to the wide multi-universal world of The House of Undead Ideas.
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The Fifth Color - Forward Into the Past Jan 2010 Marvel Solicitations

It's like looking back and seeing the tide recede.  You turn and think, 'Wow, that's a lot of water back there, all going backwards... I wonder what's going to come next?'

We have three major plotlines coming to fruition or at least the first blossom of a long road ahead:  the Siege, Fall of Hulks (wait, wasn't this War of Hulks?), and the start of the new era of Captain America.  No one is surprised that Steve Rogers is back in the old costume, but what he does next will have to rock the foundations of the Marvel Universe as did his passing.  2010 will one of those years we'll look back on as a point of interest on the Marvel superhighway, but for now, we can plan our trip along it's crazy, windy route and hope for a next rest stop along the way.

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The Fifth Color - Leader in Red

I don't think I'm fooling anyone when I note that Marvel's merry Mutants are bite-sized metaphors on the human condition.  Each one had their own little quirk or personality touch that makes us think about ourselves and our place in the universe.  Lonely girl who can't be touched.  Check.  Ice queen who's more empathic and natural when she puts down her facade of material power.  Check, though it's a new turn on Ms. Frost when her reup'd power set.  There's the teenage girl who feels like she fades out of the room, the sensitive man behind a layer of steel, the intellect of a genius in the body of a beast, the list goes on.  Try it yourself on long car rides or waiting for the bus!

Boiling each X-Man down to their essential humanity seems super easy in the case of Cyclops.  He's the blind guy at the steering wheel.  The one guy who can never truly control his powers yet tries to control the entire world around him, and can't see the world outside a single shade of red is in control of the X-Men team.  Yes, yes, there's a lot more to that and it could be easily disagreed that this isn't his essential point (I eagerly await your comments below), but for today, let's humor the lady and say he is a man who can never see anything but red trying to lead possibly the most colorful organization in town.

How's he doing?

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The Fifth Color | Raise the flag high

All day, last week, I was kicking myself for my very important omission. Yes, I have disappointed my fan (Hi Mom!) by leaving out of my December preview-o-rama with the most important book to hit the shelves since Moses's Ultimate Ten Commandments:

Captain America: Who Will Wield the Shield One-Shot #1

Kind of looks biblical, doesn't it? Well, it is! Captain America: Who Will Wield the Shield One-Shot #1 isn't just a mouthful of an awkward rhyme to get your mouth around, it's titanic in scope and importance. It means Captain America: Reborn will shock no one with its conclusion but will leave two men to wear our star-spangled tights and, unless they start switching off on Tuesdays, only one will be raising that shield come 2010.

And in a moment of horrific honesty, I will tell you I don't want to see Steve Rogers back.

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The Fifth Color - How We Handle Crisis

This week on Totally Biased Opinion with No Real Numbers Backing up a Gut Feeling Theater, I'll put on my comic shop clerk hat and say that, as a retailer, there was a drop off of customers reading Ultimatum as the issues chugged along.

Keep in mind, this is not me as a comic fan or as a critic (as laughable as the term is in my case), but for awhile the comic shop I work for sold Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimate X-Men and Ultimates like gangbusters.  That is, with a loud and explosive beginning; I can recall barely getting my copy of Ultimate X-Men #1 as Marvel's newest set of titles did remarkably well and the speculator market turned its Saruman-like eye on the brand.  Years went by and we continued to put our stock in the Ultimate titles, through the rocky road that was Ultimate Fantastic Four, through the non-existent road that was Ultimate Hulk vs. Wolverine.  Yes sir'ee, if it had word 'Ultimate' on the cover, you could practically call it the 'Gold Standard' by which Marvel Comics could be judged by!

Man, remember those days?

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The Fifth Color - TIMECRASH! November 2009 Solicitations

Our pal, the EEK in charge Joe Quesada has been very clear with us that Dark Reign won't last out this year (God, willing, the creek don't rise and shipping schedules don't fail us).  At SDCC's Cup O' Joe he was asked this pretty directly and all on the panel sort of nodded calmly to the inevitable fact that whatever madness that got Norman Osborn to be in charge of national security would be put away by the end of 2009.

I know, direct, huh?  Not exactly like our extravagant exaggerators and hold-out experts to just give us a timeline and shrug as they'll meet you at the finish line.  Where's the panache?  The bells?  The whistles?  The hows and whys and hey, look.  November's solicitations.  Maybe we'll find some answers here, at the second to last month of year when it all ends for Dark Reign.

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The Fifth Color | Man Made Monster

There it is.  Bask in its glory.  There is so much in so little that this teaser image can be dismissed as cheap marketing, stringing readers along, chasing after a dead horse in the form of the zombie bandwagon, even vaguely familiar.  But, the longer you look at it, the more you start to see and if you really think about it, turning Frank Castle into some sort of sewn together undead abomination is simply what's left, America.

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The Fifth Color - TIMECRASH! October Solicitations for 2009

As a wise man once said, "Fool me once, shame on you..."  Last month, HeroesCon sniped my preview review in the land of Spider-Man reveals so no!  Oh no.  Not this time.  I waited, went to Comic Con and then came back to sit with you Dear Reader and get to the bottom of these little "TO BE REVEALED AT SDCC" notations.  Classified info be damned!  We're gonna look at the big picture, no matter how lines we had to stand in (I mean, no matter how cozy and thorough the primetime CBR coverage was)!

Here it is, folks, October at the House of Ideas and we're in for something mighty and massive.

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The Fifth Color - Overassembled

They're Mighty, they're New, they're Young, they're Dark, they have their own Initiative and, if you want to get technical, they even have their own Marvel Adventures. The Avengers are in high demand in the MU and not as Earth's defenders but as something even more important to one and all. Back in the day, the Avengers had a huge rotating roster, now they have their own specialized teams to tell specialized stories. Think of them less as Earth's Mightiest Heroes and more like... Earth's Mightiest Plot Device.

And really, what's wrong with that? Pick up a Marvel book at the start of the alphabet and you can get an incredible snapshot of the entire Universe in your own favorite flavor! Want to know what's going on with the cool kids? Read New Avengers and get headliners and raucous rebels. Want to know what villainy is afoot? Go for an issue of Dark Avengers and watch the current status quo come alive in various shades of sinister. I'm looking for a book about the foundations of a team and focused character development, so I read Mighty Avengers and find myself satisfied. But are you, dear reader? Are we really getting what we paid for? After all, that's what the cover is there for: to judge the book. So are these Avengers stories or something more?

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The Fifth Color - The Triumph of the Inhuman Spirit

Yeah, yeah, I know. Tomorrow is indeed the Fourth of July and most have stirring visions of Captain America already mixed about their brains. Captain America: Reborn has set us on a path to recapture our Greatest Generation's hero of choice perhaps with a depth and breadth of understanding of our country, patriotism and this symbol of the ol' USA none of us would have had without the insightful storytelling of Mr. Ed Brubaker...

... but we're going to skip all that today. Captain America posts on Independence Day are kind of cliché, don't you think? And since Captain America: Reborn #1 is just starting out what could very well be Act Three of the epic tale that is Brubaker's Grand Design, well. The man isn't done with it yet, so we can save the throwing of roses and the ticker tape parades for how awesome he is for when he's done getting to the awesome parts at the end of his awesomeness (SPOILER: it's gonna be awesome).

Let's instead turn towards a story that's coming to its own close and the war of Independence that no one may win after all.
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The Fifth Color | Our Own Heroes

Like boy bands, sentai teams and sitcom pals, the X-Men thrive on fan identification. Mutants aren't just the outsiders, they are in many ways just like us. They've been multi-gender and multi-racial, with backgrounds as rich and diverse as they are simplistic and stereotypical. Just enough to give the reader something to identify with and hook them into the rest of the story. While it might seem odd since I certainly can't 'relate' to being possessed by an innate cosmic power only to be resurrected while my genetic clone has had a baby with the boy I crushed on in high school, you have to admit that the X-Men, above all other Marvel comics, find a way to relate to all of us and we likewise see ourselves in Xavier's students.

They have grown with us pop-culturally, from Kitty Pryde's interest in home computers to Jubilee's rollerblading mall-rat 'tude to Pixie's 'Chemical Romance' so to speak. They have loved and lost and grown older (but not too much older) and wiser (but not too much wiser) as we grew up along with them, each generation it seems getting their own freshmen class of mutants. They've been heroes, they've been villains and then they switch around in that gray area for a story or two, I could go on. But today is not for the X-Men as a whole, but one particular member not cited on Marvel.com or listed by the inexhaustible uncannyxmen.net. Someone I got to know through the talents of Joe Casey and John Paul Leon... and the funding of Steven Spielberg and General H. Norman Schwarzkopf.

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The Fifth Color | Marvel Solicitations for September 2009

Okay guys, this is September. Time to get serious. The summer blockbusters are either put to rest or coming to an end, and we have 11 different #1 issues to sort through, not to mention the other 11 #2 issues that are kicking it into high gear from last month. And what about the eight issues we know NOTHING about?? Pencils down, kids. The Marvel U just got real.

Or kind of ridiculous in regards to the ongoing narrative. But don't be afraid, not everything is all new and different. Let's take a gander at the September solicitations for the House of Ideas and see what we can look forward to hearing about when we're darn good and ready.

Okay, no joke, there are indeed 11 #1 issues coming out, from the benign Thor and Punisher Annuals (I actually find myself missing when they used to number annuals by the year they came out) to the long-awaited Spider-Woman #1 and Wolverine: Old Man Logan Giant-Size #1. There's even the ridiculous, but I'll get to that later. Point is, this is just as much a month for starts of things to come as August, which tips the scales at 14 #1 issues. Marvel may tout their 600th Captain America, Spider-Man or Incredible Hulk, but let's face it: #1 on a cover gives the book that delectable little collector's spice.

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The Fifth Color | Reach for the Stars

It was four o'clock in the morning. We had to leave my place in Santa Barbara at 2 a.m. to arrive on time to get into costuming and make-up at a blimp hanger in Tustin, CA. Corporate Headquarters called me in.

And by Corporate Headquarters, I mean Starfleet.

From a notice on Startrek.com to a casting call of what honestly felt like over 9,000 hopefuls and fans (one even flew in that day from the East Coast to wait his turn in line!), I got the callback from some very nice people who would induct me into a lifelong dream.

For others, this was just another day at work. For you non-California types, one can make a semi-honest living as a movie set extra. The professionals were rather amused by the extreme nerd set milling about and there was a rumor running around amongst us that if they found you out to be a Super Fan, they might remove you as a security risk. JJ Abrams wanted this more secret than secret and all of us were under non-disclosure agreements. Talking Trek was difficult at first, but it didn't stop the fans from finding our own. Suiting up in the women's dressing room, I heard one girl complain about how nerdy some of our fellow extras were. "One guy was complaining about the pin on our jackets!" she decried.

"Really, oh my God," I commiserated. "... which one was he again?"

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