Catwoman 59
And the daddy is.... Sam from the looks of it. Another gorgeous cover. Mostly setup, and boy is the Film Freak nutso. Ted babysitting was fun and Selina was in fine form. More, please.
Birds of Prey 98
Ah, there's nothing like a cover homage, this time to the appearance of the Babs Gordon Batgirl. And who is the new one? Still a mystery, and an odd one, at that. Everytime I see Dinah with Sin, who at 9 is a bit older than Lian, I think of Lian. I wish there would be some mention of Roy and Lian, given Roy's like a brother to Dinah, Lian's like a niece, and Lian's half-Asian and is growing up with one parent. It's the sort of connection I expect in real life to be made, so I expect it here, too. And that's my only quibble with a book building to another nice little mystery tale.
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Nice version of Animal Man on the cover. He's really been growing on me. I hope he's not one of the upcoming deaths we've heard rumors about. I know people think it's Kory, but I think it might be Animal Man. Good issue, but I want to get back to Ralph and to Renee and Charlie. Even weekly, I can't seem to get enough of this book.
I tried to post a comment on your naked man entry but the comment was disallowed. Don't know why, this one may suffer the same fate. My comment was that the naked guy could have been Roy Harper since every time a character is drawn by different artists he or she gets a different face. That's why hair color is so important in comics.
ReplyDeleteOkay so that one went through. Maybe Loki or Darkseid spit on my connection the first time! (And I did the word verification the first time.)
ReplyDeleteHow odd. I didn't get any notices there were comments to approve, but these two came in fine.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Cole could pass for Roy in a way, though his hair is dark blond and Roy's is red. But oddly enough, unless an artist is incompetent, I can always pick out most characters, even my favs.
And I hadn't thought of them as being similar, since I've followed Roy from his teen years and Grifter was fully adult when I first saw him.
Well, I was only commenting on most comic artists inability to give characters individual faces, not trying to draw any parallels with the characters of Roy and Grifter. I only read a few of those Wildcat comics when they first appeared. I'm learning more about Roy Harper reading your blog than I ever knew even though I've been reading DC comics since the early 60s. Sidekicks were never a big interest to me. But your devotion makes him seems interesting enough for me to investigate what trades I can find in which Roy has appeared.
ReplyDeleteThere is definitely artistic similarities and differences between characters and for the same character. Grifter has varied greatly, too, by artist. Travis Charest drew a wonderful Grifter and it was his version I first saw and fell in love with. His Cole was almost innocent looking until the guns came out.
ReplyDeleteI'm particularly annoyed right now with how Capt. Boomerang Jr is being drawn in Outsiders, as a lookalike for Roy. In the first OYL issue, I thought it was Roy on the cover and didn't realize it wasn't until I saw the costume in the book, saw his name mentioned, etc. I still get confused when I see Owen (?) in a book before I realize it's him and not Roy.
I missed a lot of Roy appearances, in that dark decade when I wasn't really reading comics. When Roy was in the Suicide Squad, or so I've been told, and a version of the Titnas/Teen Titans after he became Arsenal. I'm not sure I want to find those issues. I've been told they pretty much sucked.
This is turning into a chat room.
ReplyDeleteHave you ever put together a checklist of Roy Harper appearances? Or do you know of one? Previously I said sidekicks did nothing for me. That's primarily because they stayed static for decades. Just off the top of my head Roy's "life" has seen more changes than any other sidekick I can recall.
Way back when, I used to index my comics. All of them. On paper. In the pre-computer days. Then real life got busier and I let the comics indexing slide. I also let comics slide from 1985 to 1995 or so, except for Titans, and I gave those up in 1991, so I've got a lot of gaps in my knowledge where Roy and others are concerned. There's a nice site for Roy: http://darksigma.com/roytoys/index.html but she's been rebuilding it. I don't think she has anything like that on it and she hasn't redone the links page yet.
ReplyDeleteI would love to do a Roy index but I have just too many things to do and not enough time for half of them. I do need to find out what I missed and if it's worth pursuing them, I guess.
I became a fan of the sidekicks because they were closer to my age and we grew up together, tho I'm a lot older than they are now. heh
I concur on many levels. Too many things I want to do, too little time to do them. I've been cluttering up your comments on breaks between a large-ish commission caricature job. One of the hazards of my chief work tool being also my chief distraction. When I was a kid and Roy and Dick's age they already had better lives than mine so I latched onto the adults, something to shoot for. (Please don't ask if I hit that target) One of the things I want time to do is to put something up on my painting blog. My regular blog is more informative but no comics stuff http://mccalls.paulmccall.com/
ReplyDeleteNice blog. Will be interested in seeing the painting one. :)
ReplyDeleteThe sidekicks, being close to my age, made better lust objects for me. Especially Roy and Dick. ;)
Lust objects, yeah, I can see that from a young girls POV. Fortunately I never had that feeling myself since there were very few female sidekicks. Wonder Girl and the original, very silly, Batgirl are the only ones that come to mind. By the time I was ready to lust after comic book females I was into the 60s/70s Marvel Age where there were even fewer sidekicks, male or female. I did spend a bit of time copying drawings of Sue Storm, Countess Val (from Nick Fury Agent of … you know), Shalla Bal from Silver Surfer.
ReplyDeleteAnd that's another reason we need more females. There were plenty in Legion of Super-Heroes. I had a thing for Element Lad, but there were plenty of girls there, including Saturn Girl, Triplicate Girl, and Dream Girl.
ReplyDeleteWonder Girl was probably the best of the early female sidekicks. Supergirl was almost too sweet.
Yes, I read the Legion but in those days girls were icky and not to be paid attention to (elementary school). The art was mostly done by John Forte whose girls weren't really very sexy, nor were they intended to be. Of course by the time Mike Grell took over and the girls costumes started shrinking, then I was noticing them! I think my favorite lady legionaire was Triplicate Girl/Duo Damsel, I always preferred brunettes.
ReplyDeleteWere there many stories with Wonder Girl working with Wonder Woman? I, of course, never read a WW comic as a boy (those were the rules). I looked at a few in high school when she was doing the Emma Peel in white thing.
I forgot to mention the comic blog I put up awhile back but in which have only placed one post. I tried doing this on blogspot but couldn't get the format diddled the way I wanted it.
ReplyDeletehttp://silveraged.wordpress.com/
Oddly enough, for the years I was first reading comics, Wonder Girl wasn't much of a sidekick. She mainly appeared with the Teen Titans and both Roy and Wally lusted after her, but Roy had the inside track.
ReplyDeleteMy friends wouldn't be seen with me when I pulled out a superhero comic. Only Archies, romances, and Classics Illustrateds were tolerated.
I'm glad to see things are changing.
I still don't see many women in the comic stores unless they are accompanying their significant males, then they stand around the counter or door looking uncomfortable. I know women who read comics, I'm married to one (who is also a librarian), but I don 't see many in the stores. Could just be timing. I don't buy the monthlies much at all so I go in only once a month or less.
ReplyDeleteI too mainly saw Wonder Girl as a Teen Titan.
It could be geography. I've always been in NYC and over the years, I've seen more and more females shopping in comics shops. Not always buying comics (they sell other things, too), but many are. And probably at least a third of Forbidden Planet's staff in the NYC store are women now.
ReplyDeleteGlad your confused about the new Batgirl, as I am.
ReplyDeleteI agree about Animal Man..and there was a post-shower panel with him and Adam Strange that was yumocity.
Ah, yes, the post-shower scene. Very yummy. It's good to see some nice man flesh in comics lately. ;)
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