Hulk: Heart of the Atom HC (Marvel, 2008)

Remember the time when Greg Pak wrote that cool storyline where Hulk was blasted off into space by Iron Man and Reed Richards because they didn't want him to go rampaging all across the Midwest ever again but unfortunately the shuttle the Hulk was in veered off course and landed on an inhabited planet with warring factions and he quickly became the leader of the losing side and kicked the butt of the ruling class, appointed as the new ruler, fell in love, got married and then lost everything to a bomb because one of his new friends betrayed him? Yeah, Heart of the Atom is actually nothing like that.

It shares some similarities, though, but instead of outer space the Hulk travels down to microscopic level where he discovers the existence of a medieval-like civilization. The inhabitants embrace him after he shoos away some rampaging creatures that look like wild boars from destroying their castle. Plus, they also have green skin so they immediately accept Hulk as their own. If Spider-Man had saved them instead of the Hulk, they would probably shoot their arrows at him. Bastards! Anyway...

Hulk is brought to Jarella, Empress of this microscopic world, who orders her three sorcerers (two of whom are called Holi and Moli, I kid you not) to make the Hulk understand their language so that they can communicate. Not only did the magic spell work it also resulted in the Hulk having Bruce Banner's intelligence as well. One quick marriage with Jarella and the defeat of a jealous would-be usurper later, the Hulk is happy in his new role as King but this being Hulk, happy things don't stay too long. He is soon snatched back into the regular-sized world leaving behind a distraught bride who has no idea why her new husband grew to ginormous size.

Hulk visited the micro world a few more times over the years but it would end the same every time: something would compel him to leave his wife and her sub-atomic world. Things get really interesting when Jarella is transported back to Earth along with Hulk and she ends up getting killed. No, that's not a spoiler. You know things won't end well with her the moment she set eyes on Hulk. It's a given. It is also when Sal Buscema took over pencilling chores and I like his rendition of Hulk with the ever gaping mouth and spittle. Sal Buscema's Hulk never, ever looks dumb. He's just very angry and that's the way I like it.

Heart of the Atom collects all the relevant issues (11 in all) plus What If? #23 which asked what if Jarella hadn't died. All in all, it's a good collection on an often forgotten part of the Hulk mythos. No doubt it would claim credit for inspiring Greg Pak's Planet Hulk story (heck, the inside cover flap of the book practically said so) but there's nothing wrong with that. When you have been telling stories of the same character practically non-stop for the past 40 years it's kinda hard to come up with something new and fresh. Just read the back issues for ideas and try to cater it to the modern audience. Every writer does that. If you've read Planet Hulk and thought it was great, read Heart of the Atom. Greg Pak obviously did.

Oh, by the way, the cover above is the cover of one of the issues collected within and not the cover of the collection itself. The hardcover has dark green lettering on a black background and it didn't scan well. At least not on my cheap scanner.

Seconds Out...

Just warming up before this week's opening Friday Night Fights at the new ring over at Spacebooger.

Page from Bat-Manga, as if you didn't know.

Bat-Manga!

This is what I'm thumbing through right now:


One of the reasons why you should get Bat Manga: The Secret History of Batman in Japan:
Batman vs. intelligent ape = Gold, in whatever language.

Just Finished Reading Ms. Marvel vol. 5: Secret Invasion HC (Marvel 2008)

Five hardcovers on and I think I'm about done with Ms. Marvel. I still cannot bring myself to empathise with the character. Her siding with the pro-registration Republican-Avengers during that little misunderstanding called the 'Civil War' probably didn't help either. Maybe the problem with volume 5 is that it ties in with Marvel's annual mega event which hasn't been released as a one book collection yet as of this writing. For someone who waits for the trade, I only have a vague idea of what is going on in Ms. Marvel: Secret Invasion.

Tony Stark thinks Ms. Marvel is a Skrull so he sends SHIELD Agent Sum to take her down. Unfortunately, Stark sent Sum to the wrong Ms. Marvel (that is to say the real, human Ms. Marvel). Fisticuffs ensue. The collection ends with her big fight with all those Skrulls in Manhattan and her discovery that the Extra-Super Skrull was a Hydra project which adds more confusion that won't clear up until I read the Secret Invasion trade when it comes out.

The artwork by Melo, Benes and Coelho is the saving grace for this book. Ms. Marvel has always been saved by the artwork. If it wasn't for the cheesecake I would have dropped it two collections ago. It's not a bad comic. It's just a passable comic. Efforts by the art team could make me raise it to being a good comic but only just.

Go Out And Vote America!

Y'know, a Captain America-Batman ticket would totally rock.

From Captain America: War & Remembrance trade paperback collecting Roger Stern's and John Byrne's nine issue run on Captain America

It's O.K. To Hurt Gorillas When They're Nazis

Context: Hellboy has been captured by a Nazi scientist and has left Hellboy in the "care" of a cyborg Nazi ape. Nazi ape has been torturing Hellboy with electrical shocks when somebody switched off the supply. Nazi ape knows what's coming next...

Hellboy takes down a cyborg Nazi ape while mouthing off the sound effect himself. It's like that Onomotopeia guy in Kevin Smith's Batman story. Aw, go look him up yourself. Hellboy: Conqueror Worm, written and drawn by Mike Mignola is just all kinds of awesome!!

The Conqueror Worm trade is still widely available or you can just wait a while, save some cash and wait for the oversized hardcover 'Library' edition coming soon next year. The Volume 1 is already out. So is Volume 2. Every discerning fan of comics needs to have these babies in their collection. After all, volume 3 will have Hellboy punching a Nazi Gorilla in huge, huge panels! Also, a guy named Lobster Johnson craps in his pants when he has to shoot a horde of the undead in a derelict Nazi castle.

A question all of us wish we could ask at least once in our lifetimes.

When A Talking Duck Met A Vampire Cow...

Really this thing should have been posted sometime, oh I don't know, before Halloween maybe but with real life responsibilities and sheer laziness DGR has been kinda quiet in October. Mea Culpa. I even missed what looks to be the final Friday Night Fights ever.

So anyway,
Apparently, Bessie the cow was bitten by Dracula (or at least a vampire in a cape, anyway) and for the past 300 years have roamed the world as an undead bovine to seek revenge.


Good thing Bessie was a Christian cow, huh? Wouldn't have worked if she was kosher.

And that's the end of Bessie the vampire cow. Brought low by a talking duck. I think we can pretty much agree that the late, great Steve Gerber was a comic genius right? So go get the Howard the Duck Omnibus sharpish. His next of kin will appreciate the royalty checks.

Friday Night Fights: Ladies Night Round 11 - Impressive, Most Impessive.

I've been lax with my Friday Night Fights lately. Would you believe I had trouble finding really good female contenders? But I got a good one tonight!

I present to you, Princess Leia Organa-Solo (nee Skywalker).

Latent Jedi powers + her father's temper + a lightsaber = somebody's gonna get his hand chopped off.

From 'The Other' by Jason Hall & John McCrea collected in Star Wars Tales vol. 4 (Dark Horse, 2004)

Tales from the Crypt: Cutting Cards

So there're this two gamblers, right? Gus Forney and Lou Crebis. They love to gamble. They live to gamble. They also hate each other. They can't stand each other. They both wish the other would just die. So one day they decided to settle the matter once and for all. They're gonna bet their lives. Winner takes all, loser dies.

They decided on Russian Roulette:

Okay, that didn't work because the bullet turned out to be a dud. No one dies. So Gus suggests a new game, Chop-Poker. What's chop-poker? Well, let the Crypt-Keeper explain it:

Now that's just messed up!

From Cutting Cards, collected in EC Archives: Tales From the Crypt vol. 3. Art by Fred Peters.

Batman Hates Apes

Especially albino apes. The SPCA be damned. Albino apes freak the hell out of Batman and when he sees one, he's gonna make sure that mother goes down.

Remember kids! Always destroy those who look, move, speak and behave differently from you.

From DC Goes Ape tradepaperback.

Superman & Batman vs Vampires

So there's gonna be a mini series featuring Batman & Superman fighting werewolves and vampires. John Byrne already did that in 1987. Well okay, it was just Superman and Batman versus one vampire and no werewolves but it only took him 38 pages to do it which is just about the right number of pages for a vampire story.

Batman is referring to his apparent death few pages earlier when he dives into quicksand and sinks. Sinking into quicksand equals death, right? Makes sense. Not necessarily, says Batman:


No you can't swim in quicksand like you do in water! The hell, Bruce? Or is he so well prepared and such a badass that he can bend the law of physics to his will? In which case...cool!

From Action Comics Annual #1 collected in Superman: The Man of Steel 6 by Byrne, Adams & Giordano

Meanwhile...

From Postsecret.com


Hey, I get turned on by Poison Ivy. That's even scarier.

Khairul H.'s Room of Geekery

Taking a cue from Maxo over at Great Caesar's Post (or to put it bluntly, totally cribbing another blogger's idea and making it your own. Shameless? You betcha!), I have taken a 360 degree look around my room and damn if I don't have a lot of Star Wars crap. Statues, mini-busts, dolls (I don't call them action figures), ships and assorted aliens. Impressive if I may so myself but I just realised I must have spent the equivalent of a small island's total GDP to acquire all these things. Ironically, I don't keep my comic books and trades in this room where I blog about them. Comics and assorted novels are kept in the next room so if I need to scan a panel or refer to something, I have to get off my butt and walk to that room and find the material there. Why didn't I keep my books here and the Star Wars stuff in the other room, you ask? To which I reply, "Shut up! Just shut up!"

Let's see:

• There's a small pile of trades on my worktable here next to the PC which I have yet to catalogue and shelf. I'll do it someday. Hey, I just found my Daredevil Companion Omnibus. So that's where it's been hiding!



• Next to those trades and still on the same table is the 1:1 scale of the AT-AT from Empire Strikes Back (with missing signature plaque), a 1:1 scale of Darth Vader's helmet from Revenge of the Sith with Hayden Christensen's signature and a small statue of kneeling Vader from that scene in ESB (see pic above).



• Seven 1:1 scale replicas of lightsaber hilts from Master Replicas. No, they don't light up or anything.



• A crapload of Force FX Lightsabers from Master Replicas. These do light up and make that "zzeeoow, zzeeoow" sound if you swing them around. Cool. Perfect for scaring kids and noisy dogs.



• My dvd collection. Hmm, maybe I should watch Y Tu Mama Tambien again.



• Next to the dvds is a 1:1 scale replica of a Stormtrooper blaster from the movies. Bought if from a fellow collector.



• My 50 inch plasma. Use it to watch Simpsons dvds and play Madden on the XBox. I know, what a waste of plasma power.



• An entire row of shelves with scale models of Star Wars ships (the falcon, Luke's X-Wing, Vader's Tie Fighter, Boba Fett's Slave I ship, the chicken walker from Return of the Jedi and that gunship from Episode II. All from the now defunct Code 3 Collectibles people.



• Some 18 inch SW statues from Sideshow: Solo, Boba Fett, Luke, Vader, Maul. Toldja I had a lot of Star Wars crap.



• And last but certainly not least, some Spidey 12-inch poseable dolls from the overpriced Japanese toymakers, Medicom. Also some Marvel and DC (mostly Batman) 7-inch figures.

And that's it. Oh, in the middle of the room there is a coffee table:



I promised myself that I will sort out all those books and put them on the shelves in the next room as soon as possible. That promise was made last year when there were only five books on the table. I'll get to it...someday. I promise.

I Know What I'll Be Reading Tonight...

Wonder Woman: The Circle HC (DC, 2008)

How to get me to pick up a Wonder Woman book? Have Gail Simone write it and have her write in a scene where the Amazon goddess fights talking gorillas. Super-intelligent talking gorillas are your go-to guys in comics. It is simply impossible to have a bad comic when it features talking gorillas. Impossible.

And to have Wonder Woman toss one of those apes over a waterfall, screaming like that Imperial officer in Return of the Jedi? Bonus!

Maybe it's my affinity to anything written by Ms. Simone but her debut in WW isn't half bad. I ignored the Allan Heinberg run (which wasn't all that bad I was told) and stayed away from the Jodi Picoult run (this one was all kinds of bad, again I was told) and simply waited for DC to collect Gail Simone's first six issues of Wonder Woman. Story: super powered neo-Nazis have invaded Themyscira for some reason (really, do you need to know their motivation? They're Nazis. They invade. That's what they do) and Diana rushes off to her island home to save her mother and fellow Amazons. Little does she know that four disgraced former bodyguards of her mother who were imprisoned for treason have escaped and are waiting for Diana to arrive and kill her. The reason they betrayed Hippolyta was because she wanted a child and in the minds of these four, that was just wrong.

The other story completing this collection sees Wonder Woman travelling to the Khund homeworld to help save them from an alien threat only to find a Green Lantern protecting the aliens. Nice two issue story which also sees Wonder Woman asking Nemesis if he wanted to go steady. Lucky comic book character bastard.

I like the Dodsons' artistic style. Anyone who doesn't draw Wonder Woman in a thong gets a thumbs up from me. She still looks like she's getting ready to play beach volleyball but at least we don't get to see her crack. Yes, it's a big deal to me. I have a 5yr old girl and I don't want her growing up thinking you have to show your butt cheeks to gain respect. The Dodsons are assisted by Ron Randall and Bernard Chang who also follow the "she-wears-shorts-not-a-thong" rule when drawing WW. Good for them.

With Gail Simone no longer writing Birds of Prey and her other book only just started so it'll probably be late 2009 before it gets collected (Secret Six? Sinister Six?), I think I'll be picking up more Simone-written Wonder Woman collections to satisfy my G.S. fix.