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AWESOME-tober-fest 2016: Asher Cobb from The Sixth Gun

Posted in comic books, Genres, Halloween, holiday, horror, monsters, mummy, pop culture, Western with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2016, comic books, Halloween, holiday, monsters, mummy, pop culture, reviews on October 19, 2016 by Paxton

Today I’m going to talk about a specific mummy character from one of my favorite comic series, The Sixth Gun, by Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt.
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The comic is a horror western about six cursed pistols and the battle between good and evil to possess the guns and prevent them from destroying and remaking the world. There’s so much stuff running through this comic like gunfighters, undead Civil War generals, dark swamp gods, skinwalkers, black magic, ghosts and a 9 foot tall mummy. It really is worth a read and I can’t recommend it enough. The series as a whole ended this year with issue #50 and I recently did a re-read of the entire series from Book 1 up to the final issue and I loved every bit of it. The comic really gets deep into its own mythology and I really liked how it ended.

Anyway, the part of this comic I want to discuss today is the aforementioned 9 foot tall mummy. His name is Asher Cobb.

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Asher first shows up in the series in the collected edition Book 3: Bound. Specifically in the final page of issue #12.

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He shows up out of nowhere and steals the coffin containing the undead corpse of the evil General Hume. He fights spectacularly for the next issue and a half. Then, in issue #14, we finally get his origin as told to us by an old carnie.

Asher Cobb was born deformed. He was oversized, which made him an outcast. To add to that, he also received visions. Visions of the future. He was befriended only by a nice girl named Ruth who he fell in love with. One day he received a terrible vision of Ruth’s death. So to prevent the death of the girl he loved, he sought out some old witches and made a devil’s bargain to cheat death. But to do that, he had to endure death.

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Unfortunately Asher was not able to prevent Ruth’s death so he is constantly wandering, driven crazy by his unnaturally long life and the knowledge that he couldn’t prevent Ruth’s death. He is at first used by the forces of evil as a tool, but Asher would show up much later helping out the good guys and hoping that whomever acquired the guns and remade the world, would also bring back his beloved Ruth.

Asher is a pretty great character, both in the story but also visually. He is super strong, gets visions of the future and just looks awesome. He’s just one of the reasons I love this comic.

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

AWESOME-tober-fest 2016: A tomb full of mummy covers

Posted in comic books, monsters, mummy, pop culture with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2016, comic books, comic covers, Halloween, holiday, monsters, pop culture, The Mummy on October 7, 2016 by Paxton

We’re getting towards the end of my mummy themed weeks. Next week, the final week of AWESOME-tober-fest, will be my usual “greatest hits” articles where I revisit previous topics in the history of my Halloween celebration.

But, now, let’s continue our slow, creeping walk down mummy lane with a variety of mummy covers for comics and magazines.

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I spoke about this character earlier in the month, so here are two more covers for The Living Mummy’s appearances in Marvel’s Supernatural Thrillers. (Supernatural Thrillers #7, 1974, John Romita cover, Supernatural Thrillers #11, 1975, Frank Brunner cover)

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Here’s the Living Mummy teaming up with The Thing in a cover by Ron Wilson and Chic Stone (Marvel Two-in-One, 1983).

The Gold Key Star Trek title even got in on some mummy action. (Star Trek #21, 1973)

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Wonder Woman battling mummies in a cover by Ross Andru (Wonder Woman #161, 1966).

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The Shadow wants in on some of that battling mummies action. Cover by Frank Robbins. (The Shadow #8, 1974).

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I’ve reviewed other Dell comic monster adaptations with Frankenstein, Wolf Man and Dracula. Here are two covers for Dell’s adaptation of the Universal Mummy movie. Unfortunately Dell didn’t try to turn the mummy into a super hero.

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If you listen to the Nerd Lunch Podcast, you should remember the character of Fantomah. I talked about her on episode 197 where we were modernizing Golden Age comic characters. CT assigned me Fantomah. Well, Fantomah was rebooted several years after her “wild jungle girl” phase into an adventurer who was descendant of ancient Egyptian royalty.

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Here are two Hammer Horror magazines featuring cover stories on the Hammer mummy movies. I love that Mummy’s Shroud painted cover on the right.

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

AWESOME-tober-fest 2016: Marvel’s The Living Mummy

Posted in comic books, monsters, mummy, nostalgia, pop culture with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2016, Cavalcade Comics, comic books, Halloween, holiday, Marvel Comics, monsters, The Mummy on October 6, 2016 by Paxton

Marvel has had a long history with monsters. I’ve covered several monster titles from Marvel for previous AWESOME-tober-fests like Tomb of Dracula, Frankenstein and Werewolf by Night. Well, not surprisingly, Marvel also had a mummy character. He was called The Living Mummy and he debuted in the horror anthology series Supernatural Thrillers, issue #5, August 1973.

You may remember the comic Supernatural Thrillers as I reviewed issue #2 last year which contained an adaptation of HG Wells’ The Invisible Man.

The first four issues of Supernatural Thrillers were mostly adaptations of existing work; Stephenson’s Jeckyll & Hyde, Robert Howard’s Valley of the Worm, Sturgeon’s It! and the aforementioned The Invisible Man. With issue #5, editor Roy Thomas had Steve Gerber create a new original character to be run as a feature. While issue #6 would contain a somewhat sequel to Irving’s Sleepy Hollow, issues #7-15 would solely feature the character The Living Mummy.

Living Mummy

The Living Mummy started out as N’Kantu, son of the Chief of the Swarili Tribe in ancient Cairo. He is 21 and is preparing to become a tribal warrior by taking the Test of the Lion. While away on a hunt, N’Kantu returns to his tribe to discover that the Pharoah Aram-Set has conquered his tribe and enslaved them to work building monuments. N’Kantu helps plot a rebellion, but his planning is discovered and he is sprayed with a paralyzing liquid that renders him immobile. Then his blood is replaced by a special alchemical embalming fluid, he is wrapped in bandages and put in a coffin to lay, immobile, for the next thousand years.

Living Mummy origin

After about a thousand years, the paralyzing liquid wears off and N’Kantu escapes from his coffin, however, he is completely insane due to being trapped immobile in the dark for a millennia. So he goes on a rampage in “modern” Cairo.

He gets electrocuted which knocks him out, then is electrocuted AGAIN and is revived. Goes on another rampage. Meets an archaeologist who cures his insanity, but unfortunately N’Kantu is then sent to another dimension. And in this dimension, we get a few stories of The Living Mummy…wait for it…IN SPACE.

Mummy in space!

Yep, he’s trapped in space fighting aliens. Doesn’t get much more awesome than that, ladies and gentlemen.

After the mummy shenanigans in Supernatural Thrillers, N’Kantu would break out and guest star in other titles like Spider-Man, Marvel Team-Up and Deadpool Team Up. He made the jump to television in the animated series Ultimate Spider-Man, Super Hero Squad and Hulk and the Agents of SMASH and even joined The Legion of Monsters at one point.

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

Fourth of July Showdown: Uncle Sam vs Captain America

Posted in comic books, holiday, nostalgia, pop culture with tags Captain America, Cavalcade Comics, comic books, comic covers, holiday, Photoshop, Uncle Sam, vintage, Vintage Comic Throwdowns on July 1, 2016 by Paxton

Happy 4th of July! To celebrate today I’m back with a quick holiday themed Cavalcade Comics cover. If you remember, July 4th last year, I showed you Uncle Sam: The Ultimate Ninja. Well, I thought it was time to bring Uncle Sam back. But instead of my Ultimate Ninja version, I’m bringing you a more traditional version of the character. And he has a few words for Captain America.

Yikes, Sam, that’s gonna leave a mark. I thought this idea was too perfect to pass up on this, the celebration of America’s Independence Day. And I thought labeling it Civil War II was appropriate since Marvel is actually doing Civil War II right now.

So, where did I get the images? I found Uncle Sam from the cover of Freedom Fighters #8, June 1977. The cover was done by Rich Buckler.

Captain America was taken from his own title, issue #124 from 1968. It was drawn by Marie Severin.

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I had to jockey around a few things but for the most part the images fit together nicely. Now, the background. I’ll admit, I had the HARDEST time finding a background that worked. I originally wanted the background from Freedom Fighters but it was a generic city street. I wanted something more “Washington DC”, like the White House or Capitol Building. I was close to using The Flash #200 from 1970 as it had the dome in the background. But then I happened upon another Cap issue, #444 from 1995. And I decided to roll with that.

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As you can see, it’s got the nice government building in the background and I thought it would be great to have Cap and Sam slugging it out on the steps of that building. I had to change the perspective a little and use layers upon layers to hide Cap’s shield, but I think it turned out nicely.

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Year End Book Report: The Best Books I Read in 2015

Posted in Batman, books, comic books, movies, pop culture, Star Wars with tags Book Report, books, reviews, Star Wars, Year End Books on January 11, 2016 by Paxton

And here we are again, my year end wrap up articles.

Queue Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration”.

I say it every year, how did we get here already? The year just flies by. Anyway, the particulars: If you’ve read this year end round up before, you know I keep my book logs online in a Google Spreadsheet. I’ve been doing it since around 2009. Only “new to me” reads in 2015 are eligible, no re-reads.

This past year was an interesting year for my book/comics list. I really had an off year for books. It was really hard to get a good list of 5 books that I really enjoyed. This year as I combed through my list of books I realized I had been in a slump of “didn’t like” and “meh” books that I just didn’t feel comfortable forcing into this year’s “best” list.

Conversely, this was a phenomenal year for comics. I had SO MANY comics I read that I just LOVED that it became very hard for me to pare it down to only five. So, I think this year I’m going to cut the book list to maybe three and increase the comic list to 8. This would be a better representation of the good stuff I’ve read this year.

Looking at the log I see I read around 106 books and comics over the course of the year. That total includes books/comics I’ve read for the first time as well as any re-reads I did this year which I’ll do from time to time. Also, I see, after two years of reading 4 books released in the current year, I uptick to 5 books I read this year that were current releases. Wow. And none of them are going to make this list. One of them almost did, but, in the end, I decided no.

Here’s the list!

Books

Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1987) by H. F. Saint – I read and reviewed this book for AWESOME-tober-fest this year. See my full review there. But this hands down makes my best of year list and looking at my book log, it’s probably the best book I read all year.

Troll Mountain (2014) by Matthew Reilly – Matthew Reilly is no stranger to my “best of” books list. His Scarecrow and James West Jr novels have both made it on here. I read this fantasy novel back in February for the second installment of High Fantasy Month. It was a serial novel in three parts, each part about 55 pages long. And it’s junior fantasy, aimed at a younger audience. But like I said in my review, I really enjoyed it. The story reminded me of L Frank Baum. Lots of fun and adventure, full of hope, believing in yourself and believing that good will triumph over evil. Definitely worth a read.

Mistborn: The Final Empire (Book 1) (2006) – Brandon Sanderson – I really had trouble picking this final spot. A few things could’ve gone here. Rick Riordan’s tenth Percy Jackson book, The Force Awakens novelization, Stephen King’s Needful Things or Brad Meltzer’s The Inner Circle. And I liked all of these choices but I didn’t love them. So, I flipped a coin and the first book in Sanderson’s fantasy series gets the nod. It’s a great piece of fantasy world building with a cleverly different system of magic. Like Troll Mountain, I reviewed it for the second High Fantasy Month back in February. I just felt that this book runs a little long. But I liked it and I plan on reading the second book, even if I’m hearing that the second book is even longer. And unnecessarily so.

Now, let’s move on to the comics I read this year that I LOVED. And there are lots of them.

Comic Books/Graphic Novels

Aquaman (The New 52) by Geoff Johns and Jeff Parker – I’m including all six of the currently released collections of this title. This first entry was probably the most relevatory comic I read all year. I’ve never been an Aquaman fan, even with the Peter David series and the hook hand/long hair iterations. I just didn’t like the character. However, I heard such good things about this take on Aquaman that I decided to read the first trade. The next thing I know, I’ve read all six of the trade paperback collections encompassing the first 40 issues or so plus annuals. Geoff Johns writes the first four collections and Jeff Parker takes over for the next two. And they are AWESOME. All of a sudden, I’m an Aquaman fan. I even dove into and read the entire side series, Aquaman and the Others, which is not as good, but still enjoyable to read. I can’t recommend this title enough. I think Cullen Bunn has taken over the writing from Jeff Parker as of issue 40 or so. I look forward to more adventures with the King of Atlantis.

Avengers vs. X-Men (2012) – This is the 12 issue maxi-series Marvel event from 2012. It launched the Marvel NOW! line of comics. It’s written by a murder’s row of my favorite comic writers; Matt Fraction, Brian Michael Bendis, Johnathan Hickman, Ed Brubaker and Jason Aaron with lots of awesome art by John Romita Jr and Adam Kubert. The story is epic, it’s awesome, it’s everything you want in an Avengers vs X-men title. I loved it. And the conclusion of this entry leads directly into…