~ admittedly, we haven’t read any x-books for fun since grant morrison’s exceptional run on ‘new x-men’; we only read them occasionally to keep up w/ who is on what team and or in which future/past they are or who is dead/returned from the dead. it is a chore, but we try to keep up so we aren’t totally lost for the inevitable crossover events:

colossus about to get ruined

the pseudo-military jargon that he has been barking since replacing xavier as ‘leader of all mutants’ was annoying enough, but when did cyclops start talking like a religious lunatic: messiah, extinction? captain america’s oldest friends are androids, an atlantean, an alien/god; he even gave the red hulk a job! we are sure he isn’t trying to kill every mutant on earth. magneto looks like less of a psycho than cyclops now.

speaking of religious nuts, since when does storm believe on god? shouldn’t it be ‘goddess help us’?

anyway, do they not have a continuity style sheet for marvel writers/artists? we understand it when they do things like draw brownstones or a river in downtown atlanta, but why are the avengers calmly jumping out of the intact helicarrier in ‘new avengers’ 24, but at the beginning of ‘avx’ issue two they are thrown out as it is being destroyed? why does the helicarrier look different in every marvel comic? is s.h.i.e.l.d. building a new one every week? jrjr’s looks ridiculously incorrect; the jets are flying out of the sides as if it is the battlestar galactica!

also, in real life the avengers would totally pwnt the x-men.

grade: B-, for laughs

~ r.i.p.

continue reading…

~   if the movie ‘kick-ass’ is true at all to the source material, the tween star will be slicing heads in half and shooting people through the taint, but some fucking pussy choad minlfs are worked up about her saying words that the new york times thinks aren’t mainstream: spoiler alert – ‘cunt’ and ‘cock’?

‘cunt’ isn’t mainstream?  one of the most iconic shows in the history of television, ‘the sopranos’, which i know the times has creamed over, did not let a day go by without helping to put ‘cunt’ a household usage, ex: ‘i’m about a cunt hair away from throwing this text-a-day project in the trash’.

what fucking parent would be letting their kids go see–spoiler alert–humans being chopped in half and burned alive, even if the killer was 18+, but ‘blanch’ at the idea of seeing a 13 year old saying ‘fuck’.  we didn’t have red band trailers when we were 13–back in the 1960’s–to teach us about ‘pecker’, ‘snatch’, and ‘cumguzzling’, but we sure as shit talked about it, as does every kid whose mom works at beliefnet – guaranteed.

about the only thing that ‘makes sense’ in this article ironically comes from a corporate studio:

“It”s really important for people to know what kind of movie this is so they can make an appropriate decision about whether or not they want to see it.” – NYTimes.com.

you mean they don’t want some simple asswipe fuckwit walking into the theater, expecting to see mr. fantastic using his stretching abilities for some gosh-darn zany dancing, surprised upon seeing a comic book movie about a guy whose only superpower is beating people in the face with sticks?

~ here are the ten (10) best spider-man covers of the last decade. these are not the best covers ever, but we have already presented many of those, six years ago. obviously, some of these are not covers of spider-man titles; others are not final production images (no title or logos). they are in no particular order, except that the last one is most irrelevant.

the amazing spider-man 600

continue reading…

~ r.i.p. mike wieringo

wieringo is the nicest guy we ever have ‘met’ at a convention. whereas many comic idols are rockstars about their work, charging cash for sketches or refusing to sign books outside of specified ‘autograph hours’, we came across wieringo sitting alone at a table at dragon*con, politely sketching anything requested – the flash, robin, wonder woman – by an enormous line of fanboys. for us, he sketched out a spider-man mugshot, natch.

(no, this is not the sketch; this is from the cover to ‘sensational’ #10)

~ it is bad enough that you emptied two months’ worth of comics from our subscription box, including the issue covering the return of the black uniform, but it was it necessary to patronize us by shouting to the clerk from across the store, ‘show them where it says to come in and pick up books.’? we are aware that we need to physically appear in the store in order to pick up our books. after shopping at your store for two years, we were not under the impression that we would somehow receive the books into our possession without taking any action to place our hands on them. after you discarded our books, we had made plans to never enter your store again, but as your clerk had a new subscription sheet waiting for us at the counter, we felt obliged to fill it out. so, enjoy holding those books for three months before discarding them, as well.

~ regarding litter, guns, and philadelphia’s insistence on thin whitewash over deep itreatment nstead of painting a mural of trees next to the empty lot on 47th, why not just plant some real trees in the empty lot on 47th?

~ all the panic can cease; we managed to score a copy of ‘amazing spider-man’ #529 at new york city’s forbidden planet this weekend. we dug through a pile of second printings and uncovered a few first printings; we left two (2) of them on the shelf for anyone who wants to pedal there immediately upon reading this.

~ speaking of marvel comics, it is news to us that marvel and dc have held the rights to the term ‘super hero’ since the 1960’s!

~ speaking of ridiculous ideas, we have seen parked in front of the abandoned church on 47th and kingsessing vans emblazoned with a logo for an ‘anti-graffiti network’ [w]. this is a surprisingly clever use of philadelphia’s limited resources; we need graffiti so much less than we need anti-stabbing, anti-shooting, or anti-getting beaten in the street in broad daylight networks. although, perhaps if more hoodlums were allowed to spraypaint, they would have less time to punch cyclists in the face [+] and steal routers and hand tools [+].

~ we were just as torn up as the next reader when we reached the end of ‘daredevil’ #81 and found that it was the last issue of the bendis/maleev run that has kept us riveted to the title for the past four years. wiping away two (2) months of tears, we cracked open #82 and #83 and discovered brubaker and lark might be able to ably succeed bendis/maleev. if not, we can always revisit ‘hardcore‘.

~ also, we were unable to get our paws on a copy of ‘amazing spider-man’ #529. who knew that ‘asm’ would sell out? that is like being told, ‘we are all out of coke.’ if anyone has an extra copy, you can send it to our box.

~ we will try to answer some of the questions abotu CBR/CBZ files that are bringing people the angry red planet. in an effort to make sure no more comic books are put into the .pdf format, here is a simple set of instructions for how to build files compatible with CDisplay [see update below]:

1. scan the cover and all pages of your comics.
2. crop everything but the artwork.
3. save each page as .png or .jpg at maximum quality.
4. number the image files in the same sequence as the pages (ex.page00.jpg, page01.jpg…)

now there are a couple of choices with the files—creating a CBR or a CBZ. With any given batch of images, both resulting will be similar in size, and both will be readable by the same Comic Book Reader software. The main difference is that CBR requires proprietary software to create, whilst CBZ can be created with open source and/or system software.

To create a CBZ:

1. Using either your operating system or a 3rd-party software such as 7-Zip*, place all of the comic’s images into a .zip file
2. Rename the resulting file’s extension from .zip to .cbz
3. .cbz file will now open in a comic book reader.

To create a CBR:

1. Using the commercial software WinRAR**, place all of the comic’s images into a .rar file
2. Rename the resulting file’s extension from .rar to .cbr
3. .cbrfile will now open in a comic book reader.

finally, share your comics! it isn’t right to share new comics that will hurt sales and cause our favourite books to be canceled. scanning and sharing comics should only be done in the interest of preserving old comics and protecting those comics that are out of print.

*For creating CBZ, you can use 7-Zip
**For creating CBR, you will need WinRAR

Update 11/1015. Software locations have changed since original post:
To read comic books on Android devices, we recommend CDisplay.
CDisplay reader: http://www.cdisplay.me/.
Original CDisplay is no longer being updated CDisplay Ex, has continued development http://www.cdisplayex.com/.

To read comic books on Android devices, we recommend Perfect Viewer [link].

~ we’ve made the history of atlanta available in the right column.

~ we would like to hear from our visitors in mumbai, contact us today!

~ the only thing more annoying than blogs is hearing the unschooled refer to a site that is not a blog as a ‘blog’!

~ happy free comic book day! [w]

~ some terms to add to our list of words whose sudden prevalence is annoying: snarky