MARVEL KNIGHTS #3 Marvel Comics, 2000

I've always enjoyed comics where The Punisher interacts with the rest of the costumed Marvel Universe. Usually The Punisher spends his nights aerating, defenestrating, and disintegrating street-level criminals, but on occasion he runs afoul or teams up with a superhero like Spider-Man or Daredevil. Because let's face it, The Punisher is sort of a superhero himself. Purists might take issue with that description, but the guy wears a spandex costume with a big skull logo. If you're wearing spandex with a logo, that makes you a superhero in my book - with the possible exception being Olympic downhill skiiers.

Sure, The Punisher would seem a little out of place teaming up with The Silver Surfer or (ugh) Quasar, but there are certain superheroes who gel nicely with the Man in Black. Therein lies the premise of Marvel Knights, the 2000 flagship title ofJoe Quesada's Marvel Knights imprint. This book and other MK titles like Daredevil sold very well - so well in fact that they gave Joey Q the keys to the proverbial kingdom and made him Marvel Editor-in-Chief, and then he totally fucked up Spider-Man and there was much vex and wroth in the land.

But we're not here to bitch about Spider-Man, much as I'd like to. Others have done so at greater length and more eloquently than I could. (Although what's up with the guy on YouTube who burned his copy of One More Day? Burning books is creepy, even comic books. You're not in good company if you burn books.)

Anyway, back to Marvel Knights. Chuck Dixon wrote this three-parter in which The Punisher assembles a gang of "do-gooders" to help him take down a mysterious new underworld menace in New York City. He ropes in Daredevil, The Black Widow, Motherfuckin' Shang-Chi, and Dagger (of Cloak & ...) to help him crush these new players in the NYC mob scene.

Turns out the bad guys are Asgardian monstroids led by Ulik the Troll, Thor's old sparring partner. The Punisher's ad hoc team quickly come to blow with these otherworldly creatures - and that means...


FU.


In this final issue of the storyline, the heroes have broken into three groups, more or less. The Punisher and his seemingly endless supply of weaponry take on Ulik in a suicidal battle before he can chop down a skyscraper with his bare hands. For reals, yo. Ulik is a Thor-level bad ass who can shrug off anything The Punisher can throw at him. Things don't look good for Frank Castle.


Meanwhile The Black Widow, Dagger, and Shang Chi defend a subway car from wave after wave of giant cockroach things. Oh, wait. That's Mimic. They defend a subway car from generic mindless Asgardian troll-things who all shop at the same tattered loincloth store. Things look bad for our heroes.

Here, the Widow supplies one of the civilians with a sidearm before the three heroes march out into the tunnel to bust some monster heads. The panels on this page overlay a big picture of The Black Widow in the background, but since I only scanned the bottom part of the page it looks a little odd: Panel 1, Panel 2, Panel 3, CLEAVAGE SHOT! You can't go wrong with out-of-context cleavage, no sir.

Unless I'm mistaken, there's a slight spelling error in the second panel, above. I think the phrase they were looking for was "repel boarders" and not "rebel boarders," unless The Widow is talking about Confederates in a hotel.

Moving on, Daredevil gets to the bottom of this whole Ulik Kraziness. The trolls are in town to recover a magic Asgardian horn, which an effete mobster has aquired as part of his art collection. I'm not sure what the signifigance of the horn is. Perhaps it contains the ashes of Waggy, Ulik's beloved and deceased troll dog. Regardless, Ulik is so pissed about the horn that he's willing to chop the whole frickin' building down. I'm not sure why he has to destroy the building to get the horn - Ulik has evidently never heard of elevators.

Thankfully, Daredevil kicks some mobster ass (off panel) and gets the horn just in time to stop The Punisher from getting crushed. Everybody's happy and goes on their merry way.

Inker Klaus Janson classes up the joint - it's great to see him drawing DD again. Dixon's Daredevil dialogue seemed out of character, but overall this first Marvel Knights arc was some decent plot-driven slugfest fun. It ends a little too abruptly, though - I would have liked to see a panel of misty-eyed Ulik hugging his horn and remembering better times when he frolicked in the spring meadows of Jotunheim with Waggy.

"Ulik will always love Waggy."

Sorry!

OK, we're back.

Sorry about the month-long hiatus. I had to take a break for health and family reasons, plus I had a few paying writing gigs that took priority over non-paying blogging. I'll try to avoid such lengthy absences in the future and I appreciate everyone being so patient. Sorry pals!

Many thanks to the DLB reader who supplied me with exploding teeth Midgard Serpent action!

I come from the land of the ice and snow... to destroy your website

THIS is the coolest thing ever. Or at least, the coolest thing I've seen today.

Net Disaster has a new Led Zeppelin option that allows you to crash giant rock and roll dirigibles into your favorite or most hated website.


Sometimes I love the Internet.

Thanks to Ragnell for pointing this out.

(I'm only a week behind with my posting! I will catch up with Real Time - this I swear!)

Captain Kirk, please... get some help.

You ever have a friend who is just... different when he/she drinks? I'm not saying that Jim Kirk has a problem, it's just that I get uncomfortable around him when he drinks. So do my dogs.

Dave's Long Box reader Meng Mantasoot inspired this post when he coined the term "The Bill Shatner Beer Face" which is best described by Meng in his own words (or he'll sue me):

"... [it is] a Shatner Acting Technique™ I've dubbed The Bill Shatner BeerFace™, whereby Shatner acts as he has either never tasted alcohol before or that it is of some unbelievable proof and potency as to cause him to wince, then grimace, then look at the glass to make sure it's the same beverage he was sure he poured into the glass. Works with beer, wine, liquor, Romulan Ale, Saurian Brandy and even plain old water. He basically does it when drinking any beverage..."

All hail cover artist Jerome K Moore!

I have sung the man's praises before, but I would be remiss if I let Star Trek, er, Week pass without mentioning artist Jerome Moore's fantastic covers.

More than once I have been persuaded into buying a Star Trek comic I might not normally get because of Moore's deft line work. And when I finished reading the hypothetical comic I would say, "That sucked!" But I still had that awesome cover, and nobody could take that away from me. Without getting stabbed anyway.

So here are a few moore covers (Did you catch that? That was a hilarious pun, FYI.) as well as some inked cover art that I stole from Moore's deviantART site.

Giant Ghost Head Spock disapproves of Kirk and McCoy's hurricane party.

Mmm... Suzy Plakson... If Moore would just draw me a Dr. Selar cover, I could die happy.

Tiny Chekov is trying to grab a little Vulcan boob. Naughty Tiny Chekov!

Cover for a Picard/Q slashfic, "We'll Always Have Paris... In the Butt."

"Spock... multiple Kirks... explain."

A little Star Trek chin music

Dude, you do NOT SCREW with Gold Key Captain Kirk. He will beat your ass if you get sassy with him. Don't look for help from any of the Enterprise crew either, most likely they'll find the whole thing incredibly funny.

WHO'S WHO IN STAR TREK #1 DC Comics, 1986

Look at that cover.

Howard Chaykin, am I right? I loves me that cover.

I am a total sucker for those compendium encyclopedia thingies that DC and Marvel publish like The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe and (to a lesser extent) Who's Who in the DC Universe, so when DC put out a guide to their Star Trek comics, I was on that shit like yellow on corn, baby.

Who's Who in Star Trek follows the same template laid down by DC's regular Who's Who books; it has biographical/historical info on noteworthy Trek characters and creatures paired with graphics of wildly varying quality. On one page you'd get a killer illustration of Khan or The Horta by John Byrne and on the next page you'd get an entry for James Kirk that looks like it was drawn by a fifth-grader with his left hand. A blind fifth grader. With a withered, deformed hand. Such was the nature of all DC's Who's Who books - it was just one big smorgasbord of crap and quality art all smooshed together between two covers.

This particular Who's Who includes both people and aliens from the original series and first couple movies as well as lame-ass Star Trek comic book characters like Konom the Klingon pacifist and Bearclaw, the pastry chef on the Enterprise. When I first flipped through this book it challenged my smug sense of Trekkieness - who were these people? My God, were there actually episodes of Star Trek that I hadn't seen? Then I realized that they were just non-canon comic book characters and totally didn't count and I laughed and laughed and laughed. Phew.

The laughs kept coming as I flipped through some of the entries, which were graced with crude, rushed-looking art. Here's the Chekov entry, take a look:




OK, anchoring the piece we have an unsteady, full-color Pavel Chekov who is looking dangerously thin and perhaps a little drunk. Not everybody can pull off those pirate pants, can they? The collage-thing illustrates Chekov during three formative periods in his life:

1) Finally mastering "Axel's Theme" from Beverly Hills Cop on his Casio,

2) Experiencing a crippling "charley horse", and

3) Getting rounded up by security after a drunken night out on the town.

John Byrne, get on the mike and show us how it's done. Here's Byrne's Khan:

That's how you do it. That's a guy who understands composition, design, and perhaps most importantly, the purpose behind the illustrations for these entries in the first place.

Don't get me wrong, I loves me the Who's Who for what it is - I just wish the art was consistent and halfway decent throughout the book. What's the point of getting John Byrne to do art if you've got Ted the Intern on the next page? At the bare minimum, recruit people who know how to put together an image - and that includes backgrounds. Some of the artists skimp a little on backgrounds (see Chekov, above) while others include background art that looks a lot like bathroom tiling or gingham.

Bonus points for Who's Who in Star Trek #1: they include an entry for Deltans, who sort of look like Cirque de Soleil performers with Alopecia. I just love the idea of Deltans and their Planet of Orgies. HOTTT.

Enough petty bitching, here's your Klingon Komedy for the day:

Why I Hate Gold Key Star Trek Comics

Star Trek Week flows on like Big Daddy Kane as we take a look at my decades-old hatred of Gold Key comics, and Gold Key Star Trek comics in particular.

First, I must clarify: when I use the term "week" I don't mean an actual Earth week, I am using a lesser-known definition of "week." It's such a lesser-known definition that only I use it, actually. My "week" lasts from 8 to 12.5 days. I use the term "week" because Star Trek Nigh Fortnight just doesn't sound right to me.

OK, let's talk about Gold Key comics. I only read Gold Key comics on those long summer road trips from California to Saskatchewan, when my dad would buy my sister and me comic books from gas stations in order to keep us quiet. Usually I was rockin' the Batman or the Legion of Super Heroes in the back of the station wagon, but on occasion we'd be stuck in some wasteland far from civilization where the spinner racks were loaded with nothing but Gold Key comic books. As I mentioned previously, I would grudgingly accept the Gold Key comics because I feared the Mark V Backhand* - but I didn't like them.

Gold Key's Star Trek comics seemed like they were produced by bored hacks who had very little interest in the actual source material. They were sort of generic science fiction stories that just happened to be called Star Trek. Sometimes you wondered if the guys writing and drawing these things had actually seen the show, or if they were just working off a couple of dog-eared publicity photos for reference. Even Young Dave could tell these comics bore only a passing resemblance to the Star Trek TV show.

The Gold Key books often featured stories, aliens, and technology that was wildly inappropriate for Star Trek. Here's a taste; check out the giant space genie grabbing the Enterprise:

The artist mistakenly thinks the ship's nacelles are big rockets or something. Don't they know the Enterprise's nacelles house the warp coils??? Stupid Gold Key, ha ha!

OK, here's Baggy Pants Pistol Packin' Karate Spock busting a move:

Is that bearded guy slapping Spock's ass while he dances like a Russian? What the hell?

And the covers! I swear, often the only thing recognizably Star Trekky about the covers was the little photo inserts of Kirk and Spock. It's as if the folks at Gold Key knew that they were producing generic sci-fi and they desperately had to insert some visual branding to distinguish the comics.

Looking back at those painted Gold Key covers, I have to admit - they are pretty awesome. Gold Key's covers were like the last gasp of the old pulp sci-fi magazines. At the time I hated the painted look, vastly preferring the vibrant, lurid covers of Marvel and DC comics, but now I can appreciate them for their hacktacular radness. They weren't Star Trek, but they were something special.

You know, the more I think about it the more I realize that I don't actually hate the Gold Key Star Trek books. They were old-fashioned throwbacks to a less sophisticated age of print science fiction, when pulp tales of alien worlds and swashbuckling spacemen were churned out en masse by tired old men in horn-rimmed glasses. I just loathed them as a child, but Adult Dave can appreciate them for the harmless schlock that they are.

Plus - green haired Kirk. You have to love green haired Kirk.

OK, I've pretty much done a complete 180 and now no longer hate Gold Key Star Trek comics. I'm glad I could work out my feelings from them here with you today. I think I've learned a lot.

My thanks to Kevin Church for the Gold Key panel scans. I paid a heavy price for those images, but I suppose it was worth it.

And now, Spock freaking out on acid:

*Kidding! My father is a wonderful person.

Previously on Dave's Long Box...

Given my affection for Star Trek I'm kind of surprised that I haven't done more posts about it. For the sake of delivering the full spectrum of Star Trek Week goodness, here are links to two previously published posts on the subject.

First, there is the legendary Star Trek/X-Men comic, which is both awesome and not very good. Wolverine does get the Vulcan Smackdown layeth upon his mutant ass, courtesy of Mr. Spock.

That's called "getting Spocked."

Next there is a little post from the F&*% Yeah Files where I sing the praises of the famous "Khaaaan!" scene in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, one of the greatest moments in Film History.

Ever.

According to a rumour I just made up, William Shatner is a hardcore method actor who really lives his roles. He prepared himself mentally for the emotional scene by meditating every night for a week on how much he hated beloved TV actor Tony Danza. When Shatner roars "Khaaan!" he's really summoning the focused totality of his Danza Hatred. Little trivia for you, there. It just makes the scene all the more powerful if you know that.

STAR TREK: The Orbs of Milos VI

Star Trek Week continues! Here's a cute Lil' Star Trek mural thingy I did on a piece of comic book art paper. I occasionally do stuff like this or this or draw illustrated maps for my kids. Why? Because I am a geek. Some day I'll post more of this stuff. Anyway, I present for your pleasure or lack thereof... The Orbs of Milos VI!

And now, more Kooky Klingons:

STAR TREK #35 DC Comics, 1986

It seems like every comic book publisher – from Gold Key to DC to Marvel to Malibu – has had a crack at Star Trek. The property has been licensed by Paramount to seemingly everybody but Broadsword Comics, but for various reasons such as editorial restrictions and cost, no single publisher has held on to Star Trek indefinitely.

Most of the Star Trek comics I own are from DC, although I think I still have some of those weird-ass Gold Key issues in a long box around here somewhere. I’ll be honest, Gold Key comics were never my first choice – on vacations my dad would stop for gas and we’d beg him for comics and sometimes he’d come back with Gold Key’s Star Trek or Dark Shadows or some shit. “It was all they had," my dad would say. "Be happy you got anything at all.” And then he would hit me. (Kidding! Hi Dad!)

But I digress. Star Trek #35 was the middle of a multi-part storyline written by Len Wein called “The Doomsday Bug." I think I had the Doomsday Bug the other week. This particular Doomsday Bug is a deadly zombie virus, however, and unlike my bug, this one doesn't involve diarrhea. The story revolves around an intergalactic incident caused by the pesky disease. Spock’s life hangs in the balance! Kirk defies orders yet again and gets into a pissing match with a Romulan commander! A plague ship full of Zombulans speeds deep into Romulan territory! Holy shit, dude!

The story is set some time between Star Trek II and III I think, and draws off the designs from those films. The Romulans were nowhere to be seen in the films, so DC got to sort of wing it and make up a new look for these classic bad guys. And by “new” I mean “goofy as hell.” The results were… well, check it out:

I chose this issue because I like the art by veteran penciller Gray Morrow – the characters look like the actors without seeming too heavily photo-referenced, a common pitfall of any Star Trek comic. Seriously, some Star Trek comics draw so heavily on photographs that they might as well just be fumetti. Not here - Morrow manages the tricky balancing act of drawing comic book characters based on real people while still adhering to comic book aesthetics. The coloring is a little washed out, but that might just be the aging twenty year old paper.

Morrow doesn't do so well with the starships, however. Check out the cover - the Romulan ships look OK I guess, but that's supposed to be the USS Excelsior in the center there. It doesn't look any better inside the book - I've included a picture of the movie version of the Excelsior and Star Trek #35's Pregnant Excelsior as a comparison/contrast exercise:


Apparently in space it's really important to have your ship's registry number in HUGE LETTERS on the saucer section for quick and easy identification by binoculars or something.

Aesthetic nitpicking aside, I enjoyed this storyline. It's the kind of Star Trek story I would write: lots of space battles, daring gambits, brinksmanship, and awkward dialogue. Writer Len Wein obviously has some love for Star Trek and its characters, although a couple things stand out.

First, this panel (below). What's wrong with this panel?



This is a pet peeve of mine. "To coin a phrase" means to create an entirely new saying, such as, "That's the cat's banjo!" There. I just coined a phrase. It does NOT mean to use an existing, established phrase. Come on, Kirk, get it right.

My other petty complaint concerns these two panels:

That just seems sort of patronizing to me. Oooh, Kirk is so enlightened that he's willing to turn over temporary command of the ship to - gasp! - a woman while Mr. Scott is in the bathroom. Don't strain anything patting yourself on the back, Starfleet. I understand that this is just Wein's way of saying that Uhura is a capable officer who is much more than just the Enterprise's switchboard operator, but I think the same message could have been conveyed by having Uhura just matter-of-factly taking command without making such a big deal out of it. It's the 24th century, you'd think they'd be well beyond silly 20th century gender politics.

Fun as it is to pick at goofy stuff in comic books, I really enjoyed the Doomsday Bug storyline when I was a youngster and enjoyed re-reading it today. You could do a lot worse in a Star Trek comic, and believe me, people have.

In closing, Star Trek #35 is the cat's banjo.

And now for Klingon Komedy.

Star Trek Week Begins!

I've been feeling kinda Star Treky lately.

I am a big fan of Star Trek in all its many forms. I should qualify that: when I say "big fan of Star Trek" I am speaking in realtive terms, i.e., a big fan compared to normal people. I don't consider myself a Trekkie or a Trekker, I don't speak Klingon, I don't belong to an imaginary starship crew, I have never referred to Gene Rodenberry as "The Great Bird of the Galaxy," I don't dress up in costumes or tell the cashier at the supermarket to live long and prosper, and I don't own a fake bat'leth. I'm not even sure if that's how you spell bat'leth. You know what I'm talking about: that curvy scythe/sword thing Klingons use.

Anyway, although I have not devoted all or part of my life to Star Trek, I still consider myself a big Star Trek fan. The Wrath of Khan is one of my favorite movies of all time - I don't just think it's the best Star Trek movie, I think it's the Best Movie. I've read more than my share of Star Trek books, including those James Blish ones from back in the day.

And yes, I have a bunch of Star Trek comic books which I would like to talk about with you.

So come - join me this week as I look at the worlds of Star Trek through the lens of comic books! I know: through the lens of comic books? That makes no sense.

Added bonus: LOL Klingon screencaps! Everyone loves Klingons - only some p'tahks love them more than others...