AVENGERS ASSEM---WTF???!!!

Look. I've just seen the second, longer trailer for the new Jim Carrey comedy(?) MR. POPPER'S PENGUINS. It's one of those movies that, even if you haven't seen it, you've seen it: Carrey apparently plays a thoughtless, go-go business jerk who routinely ignores his adorable family in order to climb the corporate ladder. Then he inherits half-a-dozen adorable penguins and the chaos created by having the wacky waterfowl in his life helps help him get back in touch with his softer side, repair the rift with his family and blahblahblahyacketyshmacketyAAAAWWWwwwwwww. Trust me, the "curmudgeon/jerk/scumbag/Limbaugh finds his heart again thanks to the zany antics of some animal/ kid/magical being/ oxy-contin" movie has been made and re-made so often that it no longer needs to be written. The Script-O-Tron 5000tm just spits one out every six months or so, and they plug in whatever job-hungry meat-puppets----ahh, actors, they can dredge up.

But---this time there's a difference. Take a look at this thing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQpC6CAJB20

and you can see what I saw.

Right there, at 1:36, that's actor Clark Gregg, as a guy who seems to reeeaaalllly want to get his hands on those penguins. Now, if you're reading this blog, the the odds are inhumanly high that you recognize Mr. Gregg as SHIELD Agent Phil Coulson. Agent Coulson has so far appeared in both IRON MAN films and this summer's THOR, and will reputedly be visible in next summer's much-awaited AVENGERS. Which prompts me to imagine that whenever I see Clark Gregg in a movie, whatever his character is called, he's probably really Agent Coulson, working undercover. And what on earth could SHIELD Agent Phil Coulson possibly want with six penguins? Well, assuming his request is job-related and not some personal fetish-thing, the answer should be obvious: THOSE PENGUINS ARE SUPER-POWERED MUTANTS and HE'S TRYING TO RECRUIT THEM FOR THE AVENGERS! It's sooooo obvious!

Sorry, sorry. Long day. Is that even Clark Gregg? Imdb won't confirm it---which is exactly the kind of cover-up one ought to expect from SHIELD! Ha!!!

COULDA-BEEN QUARTER BIN PART DEUX

Hey-Ho! Let's Go! it's time for another peek into the Coulda-Been Quarter Bin. This time around, we look backwards at the first and only issue of Jack Kirby's SILVER STAR.

Back in the early 90s, speculators were handing over crippling quantities of cash to comics publishers in exchange for poly-bagged foil covers and zilo-tupple-platinum editions of the same old four-color crap. So even people who ought to have known better were deciding to churn out funnybooks. One of those neo-publishers was Topps, longtime purveyor of bubble gum and baseball cards. Poor bastiches never even knew what hit 'em

The opening salvo in Topps' dedicated attempt to separate America's youth from their lunch money was a buncha new comics characters created and designed by "The King" himself, Jack Kirby, "new" being something of a relative term here. The character designs and story concepts chiefly came from Kirby's files of unrealized and/or unfinished projects, many of them originally slated for Pacific Comics a decade or so earlier. But this meant they were "new" to the comics-buying public---or mostly so. Fair enough. Topps licensed these and launched what was to be an eight-title interconnected world ---the Kirbyverse!!! ---whose core title was Jack Kirby's SECRET CITY SAGA.

Chances are the Topps people,figured they had struck gold. They had a coterie of costumed super-doers, created by one of comics' most admired and enduring creators. Many of the writers and artists producing the books had an impressive list of credits behind them: Roy Thomas, Tony Isabella, Steve Ditko, John Severin. Dick Ayers. And even more, the whole shootin' match was spearheaded by Editor-In-Chief and all-around Cool Dude Jim Salicrup, who had, in his two decades at Marvel, edited both the X-Men and Spider-Man titles,two of Marvel's best-reconized and best-selling franchises. On paper, it probably seemed like a pretty good bet.

But the best-laid plans, and all that. The Kirbyverse failed to catch fire in a major way. SECRET CITY SAGA, CAPTAIN GLORY , NIGHTGLIDER and TEEN AGENTS ---probably others, I can't recall---all rolled out and quickly tanked. The Topps Gods had no desire to lose any more money than was necessary, so they pulled the plug on this patient. While some of us were, of course, still working furiously to fan that spark.

I am referring here to SILVER STAR. SILVER STAR was a title that, unlike most of the others, had originally been published a decade or more earlier by the aforementioned Pacific Comics. That meant that there were readers who were already (theoretically) familiar with the character and his "Captain America-by-way-of-the-X-Men" origins. And maybe, just maybe, some of those who'd been fans of the character back in the '80s would join the new readers we hoped to attract.The creative team was totally into it. The book was written by soon-to-be superstar Kurt Busiek, and inked by already-a-superstar Terry Austin, both of whom I had collaborated with before. Kurt was one of my bestest buddies, and we had worked together on one Project (heh heh) or another since 1987 . Terry Austin was, well, Terry Austin, one of my (and almost everybody's) all-time fave inkers since before his X-Men days. And here we were, working on a character created by Jack Kirby. Honestly, how could this not be fun? For us, anyway.We wanted to continue with many of the themes and characters from Kirby's original six-part series, but tell a new story that would be a good fit for

Kurt and I were both fans of the films of John Woo (kind of a new thing for many folk in this country back then), and the overlap between Woo's sensibilities and Kirby's informed the story Kurt concieved. A shameless paraphrasing of a tagline from HARD-BOILED served as the springboard: One Bold Hero! One Criminal Mastermind! One THOUSAND Supervillains! And believe you me, we were gonna live up to the hype!

As you'll see a small example of below, we crammed more costumed evildoers than Anybody Ever into these four issues. Honestly, I don't remember how close we came to the actual 1,000 before the plug got pulled, but we were Very Close. Nowhere near all of them were lucky enough to have their names spoken on-panel, but Trust Me, they DID all have names. If a character was specific to the plot, Kurt would come up with a name and/or shtick for him/her. Other times, he would just tell me "fill the background with twenty or thirty bad guys. A DIFFERENT twenty or thirty bad guys than the previous panel". Often the groupings were completely random. From time to time, we would bunch them by theme, which often made generating names and powers a simpler matter. It stood to reason that with so many villains, duplication of powers and motifs was going to be inevitable. So our bad guys often broke into sub-groups full of like-powered characters. Issue three began with three splash pages featuring Silver Star versus an army of giant-sized villains. My faves from this bunch?First there was "Gi-Ant", a Hank Pym-inspired goon with a twenty-foot tall human body and the head of, obviously, an ant. And close on his heels was a curly-haired four-story bruiser in a Buster Brown outfit and a domino mask, brandishing a lollipop the size of a pickup truck. Him we called "The Big Sissy".

Silly? Hells, yeah. YOU try coming up with names for a thousand goddamn supervillains and see what kinda straws you start to clutch at. In any event, that was a big part of what made this series was THE most fun I'd ever had drawing a funnybook at that. Costumes Galore! Action Aplenty! Pretty girls Everywhere! And juuuuust enough plot to justify it all. It was the comic book every twelve-year-old wants to do, whether he knows it or not. And, of course, we were hoping a few of them might want to read ours.

But, you already know how the story ends. Issue one of Jack Kirby's SILVER STAR and the cancellation order kinda crossed at the water-cooler. Kurt and I have had numerous conversations about someday reviving the story. All it would take is a new, original hero in the lead, the removal of all the Kirby-elements, and a new publisher willing to take the shot. It could happen (see Coulda-Been Quarter Bin Part One). But, until that happens, here's the first issue, as it appeared way back when. And even though I look at Every Panel and see hundreds of things I wish I had drawn better, I'm still pretty proud to show it off.

COULDA-BEEN QUARTER BIN, PART 1

Hey, humanity. Like the title of today's post? Thank my son, Ian Thompson. I had wanted to call this feature "Canceled Comics Cavalcade" and then remembered that was SO already taken.

Anyway, from all that chatter, you may have gleaned that the Coulda-Been Quarter Bin is about cancelled comic books. Like many other funnybook droids, I've had a few titles canceled right out from under me. I came in as a hired gun to send off X-Factor (#149, 1998), just before it metatasized into Mutant X. Then a few years later, I drew the 2001 Mutant X Annual, just a couple of months before that title also went down for the big Lumber Slumber.

But these are both fairly normal cancellations. Each of these books ran for years before finally giving up the ghost. Today, we're concerned with cancellations that were a little more abrupt, a little less "Final Season of M*A*S*H" and a lot more Pearl Fucking Harbor (the real-life attack, not the movie, which was a different type of disaster altogether).

'Cause it happens that way, sometimes. You're drawing a comic, minding your own business, all's right with the world, and suddenly all your effort is blotted out by the shadow of Darkseid's descending fist. It happened to me recently, on a highly-publicized project (trust me, any of you with even the most miniscule pop-culture awareness have heard of this thing). My colleagues and I put in an awful lot of hard work on the first issue of this disaster. There were many long nights, frenzied trips to the local FedEx office, anxious calls from a desperate, put-upon editor,and what seemed like thousands of unpaid-for alterations/corrections/what-have-you's from unknowing, uncaring Comics Gods. And, what the hell, before the first issue could be released ---or even finished---we were dead in the water.

When I can, I'll be happy to share the name of this project with you, along with what art was actually finished on the title. For the moment, though, I thought I'd bring up the Other Three Times this had happened to me: comics cancelled as of issue number one. The comic book below represents the second time it happened, back in late 1996. I know, I should start with the first time, but we're starting here instead. Deal with it!

A then-unknown Dan Slott called me with an idea for a hero who was a costumed, super-powered gorilla, a throwback to the sillier, more fun comics of our youth. I was totally up for that. We traded sketches until the character's look was working for both of us, after which a plot was deliriously devised. Dan then somehow managed to trick Fabian Nicieza, who was editor-in-chief at Valiant/Acclaim at the time, into agreeing to publish this four-color fever dream. Inker Andrew Pepoy, with whom I'd happily worked on several projects prior to this one, became the next member of our Wrecking Crew, and creating the first-ever appearance of Big Max was a good time for us all. That is until, shortly after the completion of that first issue, Fabian informed us that the company couldn't convince ANYONE to actually order the book. NOBODY. Seems that the earlier, pre-Fabian management at Acclaim had done so much stuff that left a Bad Taste in the mouths of distributors and retailers that the New Acclaim sometimes took some Very Undeserved hits. And hey, let's face it: the approach to comics was undergoing a rather pointed shift into darker territory. These guys seemed to feel that they couldn't sell their customers a whimsical comic book about a fun-loving, crime-fighting, high-flying ape. Who's to say they were wrong?

One way or another. we had no say in the thing. Big Max sat gathering dust in a drawer, and the creative team all went on to other projects. A couple of years later, Acclaim went toes-up. Fortunately, as Dan mentions in one of the text pages below, some years later, along came Mr Comics, a publisher who thought our power-punching primate was just what Doctor Zaius ordered. BigMax finally saw the light of day. Did anyone actually buy it?

Ahem.

Well, not as such. But in the intervening years, Dan had gone on to become something of a Big Shot at Marvel Comics, so by dint of having his name on it, the project did garner some media attention. And most of those reviews were pretty favorable. And Good Reviews are better than Fantastic Sales any day of the week, right?

Anyone?

Beuller?

Screw it. We had our fun. Here's BIG MAX: