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Solicits for the DC reboot madness

Posted in Batman, comic books, Superman, The Flash with tags Batman, comic books, DC Comics, Superman, The Flash on June 14, 2011 by Paxton

Well, the whole DC relaunch thing has the comic fanboys losing their damn minds. In case you don’t know, it seems comics fans are up in arms because DC decided to reboot all their titles back to #1. Comic blogs everywhere are kvetching about it. CT from Nerd Lunch even deemed it necessary to talk about the relaunch. CT mentions that he hates some of the costume redesigns, but I like them. Especially Flash. They just look more modern.

Now, I’ve read comics since the early 80s. I started with Flash and then ventured into Superman, Batman, X-Men and The Fantastic Four. I still read comics, but I tend toward the trade paperback collections and don’t really care about single issues anymore. I don’t care what number is on the cover, I just want good stories. But I look forward to this relaunch as a “wipe the slate clean” and start fresh with cool ideas. Almost buried in the announcement of the reboot is the fact that DC will also start distributing comics digitally the same day they release them in print. That’s huge. Reading comics digitally is growing quickly in practice, much to the consternation of comic book fans everywhere. With the iPad and other tablet computers, we finally have the perfect way to read a digital comic. I am looking forward to doing just that. I have been reading digital comics for the last few years now and while I prefer print, digital isn’t bad (especially when I get a tablet computer).

Anyway, I was reading The Source, the DC Universe blog, and they gathered together all the solicitations for the new reboot titles. There are lots of cool and interesting titles that have been announced. Let’s take a look at them.

Here are the Superman reboots. The two images above are for Action Comics #1 (left) and Superman #1 (right). In the solicit you can also see covers for Superboy #1 and Supergirl #1. Like I said I don’t care they are rebooting Superman, because, technically, they already did it once back in 1987 with John Byrne. This Superman #1 is interesting because it’ll be written and drawn by George Perez who took over from John Byrne back in 1989. I’m actually a bit surprised they are rebooting Action Comics due to it’s history. I mean, it was about to hit #1000. But they got Grant Morrison to write it, which is awesome. He did the spectacular All-Star Superman series with Frank Quitely. I’ll definitely want to check these out.

Here are the solicits for the Batman reboots. Detective Comics #1 is on the left and Batman #1 is on the right. I like Batman, I’m just not a huge Batman fan. Rebooting Detective Comics back to 1 is interesting to me because of the history (like Action Comics). It also nearly hit 1000. However, also interesting is the fact that this will be the first time that Batman has EVER appeared in a Detective Comics #1 (or #2-26). I’m surprised they didn’t reboot Detective Comics back to #27.

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12 comic book covers featuring super heroes and their secret identities

Posted in comic books, pop culture, Superman, The Flash with tags Batman, comic books, nostalgia, pop culture, Superman, The Flash on April 22, 2011 by Paxton

I was perusing one of my favorite sites, Cover Browser, the other day. It’s great. It has hundreds of galleries of comic book covers. Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age as well as more modern comics, you can see it all. Some of the images are of great quality and some are blurry scans that look like they threw the comic book into the air and tried to take a picture with a cell phone from 2001. But it’s great fun to look at old issues of Superman, Batman, Hulk and Iron Man. You can find some real gems.

Looking through you can see all types of trends and gimmicks companies used when creating their covers. Anything to capture the public’s eye. One of the more prevalent gimmicks is to have the superhero appear on the cover alongside their secret identity. I’ve gathered 12 such examples of superhero and secret identity co-existing harmoniously on a comic book cover. Not only that, I’ve split the list into two sections. In the first section are 5 comic book covers featuring super heroes fighting their secret identities. The second section will feature the superhero interacting with their secret identity.

So here are the first 5 covers featuring superheroes fighting their secret identities. Thanks to Cover Browser for the majority of these images.

Action Comics #341 – Battle of the Alter Egos. Turns out the “extra” Clark Kent is another survivor of Krypton that DC loved to throw out in the ’60s and ’70s. He took over Clark’s identity and Supes had to straighten things out.

Flash vol 2 #15 – Wally West trashed by The Flash. This is the second Flash series. Wally West had taken over the Flash costume. There was a drug called Velocity-9 that gave the users temporary super speed. A junkie got a fake suit and totally sucker punched the living sh*t out of Wally.

Web of Spider-man #117 – Spider-man vs Peter Parker. This is the beginning of one of the most controversial Spidey storylines ever – the Clone Saga. A clone of Peter reveals himself. He’s this homeless vagrant who then names himself Ben Reilly. Arguments develop over who is the clone and who is the real Peter. Peter is discovered to be the actual clone and Ben the “true” Peter. Clone Peter becomes so outraged he “accidentally” hits Mary Jane in the face. It’s pretty much insanity incarnate and due to high sales Marvel’s upper management kept the creative teams churning out the story for much longer than was originally planned.

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14 vintage ads for video games based on movies

Posted in Activision, advertising, Atari, Back to the Future, Batman, movies, Star Wars, video games with tags advertising, Back to the Future, Batman, Cavalcade Arcade, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, Star Wars, video games, vintage on February 21, 2011 by Paxton

I love movies. I love video games. So, obviously, I love video games based on movies. Well, I love the idea of video games based on movies. And this type of corporate synergy has been going on for years. Ever since the enormous popularity of the Atari 2600, both video game companies and Hollywood have tried to capitalize on popular movie brands to boost sales. And it makes for awesome pop culture ephemera.

So here are 14 awesomely vintage ads for video games based on popular movie franchises.

ET (Atari 2600 – 1982) - This is it. The game that felled the house of Atari. Yes, I owned this game and hated every second I played it. I know a lot of people now retroactively say they enjoyed it, but I HATED it. You can only fall into an empty pit so many times before you throw the controller through the TV screen. Surprisingly, this game was designed by the same guy that did Yars’ Revenge, the highest selling original Atari game (and one of my all time favorites). Talk about Jekyll and Hyde. Seanbaby rated ET #1 on his list of 20 worst video games OF ALL TIME.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (Atari 2600 – 1982) – Around the same time ET was released, Atari also released this game based on the first Indiana Jones movie. And it’s starring YOU!

Total Recall (NES – 1990) – Video game based on the popular Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, Total Recall. Seanbaby rated this game #15 on his list of 20 worst video games OF ALL TIME.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Video Game Adventure (NES – 1991) – Bill & Ted. It is amazing this movie was as popular as it was. I mean, the movie spawned a sequel, a cereal, a cartoon show and a live action show at Universal Studios. And Keanu is even talking about making another one. Most excellent. I never played this game but I loved the first movie.

Rambo (NES – 1988) – A side scrolling shoot ‘em up adventure game that very closely resembled the Zelda sequel, The Adventures of Link.

(via oldmanwinters)
Star Wars Arcade (Atari – 1983) – The original vector based Star Wars game by Atari was extremely popular with fans. So, of course Atari was going to port it to their home consoles. Here’s an ad for the Atari port of the Star Wars arcade game for the 2600 and 5200.

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Even more awesomely vintage advertisements

Posted in advertising, comic books, nostalgia, pop culture, Superman with tags advertising, Batman, comic books, nostalgia, pop culture, Superman on September 1, 2010 by Paxton

Earlier this year I looked at several awesomely vintage comic book advertisements (such as the infamous Cube Lube) as well as a bunch of vintage and weird movie posters. Old vintage ads and posters are awesome and hilarious and they seemed to be pretty popular with readers. So I thought I’d take a look at some more vintage advertisements from my Flickr photostream.

Click the images to make them BIGGER.

The Super Hero Time Machine (1977) – Why they didn’t just call these “watches” I have no idea. Great looking ad, though. Interesting that it’s all DC characters except for the one Spider-Man watch.

Chuck Norris and Right Guard (1993) – Walker Texas Ranger roundhouse kicks underarm odor into submission, one armpit at a time.

Chuck Norris Action Jeans – “Won’t bind your legs” when you’re high kicking the sh*t out of some punk’s face. (Via Branded in the 80s)

Right Guard Lime Deodorant (’70s) – This is weird. Lime deodorant? I didn’t know it, but there still exists a Gillette Lemon-Lime Shaving Cream. What’s next? Is Kool-Aid releasing a deodorant flavored drink?

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The Grocery Aisle of long forgotten breakfast cereals Part III

Posted in Batman, breakfast cereal, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, Star Trek with tags Batman, breakfast cereal, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, Star Trek on March 16, 2010 by Paxton

Last year I wrote a two part article talking about long defunct breakfast cereals. They were both a very big hit. Dark Roasted Blend and The National Review Online picked them up and it exploded onto a bunch of other blogs after that. If you missed the first two parts of this article:

Read Part I here.
Read Part II here.

A big thanks to my friends Jackie and Steve for actually suggesting this topic to begin with. Now, let’s take another stroll down Grocery Aisle 7c and examine a bunch more extinct breakfast cereals.

Freakies cereal was created in 1971 by Ralston-Purina and lasted until about 1977. However, despite most of the general public not really remembering it, the sloppy man-love for this cereal among cereal box enthusiasts is insane. These boxes are traded heavily amongst collectors with the Cocoa Freakies box going for around $800. I honestly don’t remember it, but there are a lot of people who do and would shell out truckloads of dough for certain boxes. Here’s a commercial for Freakies.

Quisp and Quake were introduced back in 1965 by the Quaker Oats company. They were usually marketed together as rivals in much the same way as Baron Von Redberry and Sir Grapefellow. The characters and animation for the cereals and commercials were done by Jay Ward who also created Rocky & Bullwinkle. The commercial even uses some of the same voice talent as Rocky & Bullwinkle. Check out a Quisp commercial here (you see Quake at the very end). In 1970, Quaker ran a contest promotion to see which cereal was more popular. Quisp won and Quake quietly left the shelves. However Quake would resurface later in the even more queerly named Quake’s Orange Quangaroos. Quaker was totally committed to the whole ‘Q’ thing. See a Quangaroos commercial here. Retro boxes of both Quisp and Quake have been released to certain markets in the past few years.