Yet More Justice Beards: ST:McCoy, Frontier Doctor

Yesterday, I bought a comic I've been looking forward to for months. Of course, all the while I was waiting it was ALREADY on sale and I just never saw the thing. So issues 1 and 2 sold out while I was waiting. Oh, why, oh why didn't I ask Happy Harbor to hold it for me? Still. It comes out in trade by October. Probably.

Get this, I love every word of this:
IDW Comics.
'Star Trek: Leonard McCoy, Frontier Doctor'.
Written and Illustrated by John Byrne.

Byrne is very probably my all-time favorite comic illustrator. His previous Star Trek stuff for IDW (Assignment Earth, Star Trek Romulans, Star Trek Crew) has been just great. I bought the latter two in trade format and am still seeking the first. This fails to mention a lifetime of achievement in sci-fi and superhero drawin'. He's got more talent than me in every hair of his triple-blessed beard.

Also, McCoy is my utter favorite original Trek character. Sarcastic, slightly pervy, a bleeding heart cynic who wants to help everyone everywhere. This story must be set in 2270 or so, as the doc is sporting his 'ST: The Motion Picture' petulant early retirement beard.

Now, stay with me, in this joke cover McCoy's treating a Puppeteer (!), a beloved two-headed alien from the unutterably groovy Known Space Universe novels of Larry Niven. (seen here)

Both Niven and the puppeteer are sporting beards!
Coincidence?
Yes, yes it is.

Don't care. Can't give a proper review for this one, since I want to read it in sequence.

But, frankly, I cannot see any way on God's Grey Earth that I won't love this comic.

So, enjoy your weekends, stroke your beards, and be excellent to each other.

I Only Read She-Hulk for the Articles

From naughty librarians to lady lawyers eager to examine their briefs, I think it's universal: dudes dig smart chicks. I know my own admiration for the She-Hulk is focused entirely on her large, powerful, heaving brains.
So, taken from that perspective, this comic is VERY thought-provoking. Reading it is a deep, meaningful experience rife with well-considered messages on Jung's 'shadow side' of the human psyche. Is man inherently evil? Does it do more harm than good to suppress our rages and lusts? Is man merely an animal or instead a spiritual being capable of transcending his baser instincts?
Consider, too, the double standard of gender politics and the inequality still inherent in the relations between the sexes. Tony Stark might have a list of sexual conquests as long as his... arm and he's still a matinee idol. Give a similar checkered past to the She-Hulk and suddenly you've got people yelling 'Slut!'.
(I prefer the term 'Sexually Accessible' myself.)
Because sluts are BAD. Sluts are just... NAUGHTY. And I think it's pretty clear to everyone that She-Hulk is a GOOD GIRL.Is it her fault if a rocket engine blasts her pants off? Or that even unstable molecule costumes can rip in the most EMBARRASSING of places in the midst of an ordinary day's heroics?
It's just the job, that's all.
But men get too hung up on the whole Madonna/Whore angle. Real women tend towards the middle of that scale, neither unreachable perfection nor skanky trash.






In a genre and medium still rather dominated by male creators and readers, most of whom are very handsome, desirable, and brimming with confidence, it only makes sense that they would craft a female character so similar to themselves. Thus, there can occasionally be a danger of objectification, but entirely unintentionally, of course. After all, Wertham fought bravely to defend our minds against that kind of filth and impurity. Comics are safe as houses nowadays!Superheroine costumes NEED to be skimpy: it distracts the villains. That's just shrewd tactics, not cheesecake.
Also, Jen Walters being a shape shifter, she just normally has to deal with clothes that rip or slip. Wardrobe malfunction is a hazard of supernatural combat.
What fan service? Sometimes a gal just wants an all-over tan. Plus they don't make towels big enough for your average glamazon, do they? They're so dinky!
So if a grown woman feels like supplementing her income with a metal bikini photoshoot in a magma pool, who are we to stand in the way? That would be... wait, what's going on here?
I've lost all credibility, haven't I?

Captain Complainy: Kirby Equals Unsexy

I'm reading "Was Superman A Spy?" by Brian Cronin, a collection of legends about the comics industry from his blog 'Comics Should Be Good'. I came across the one about how in the 70's DC comics hired artistic legend Jack Kirby away from Marvel amid great brouhaha and fanfare, then proceeded to advertise and crow and count their money because they had Kirby as an artist!
Then they went and PASTED other artists' illustrations of Superman's face over Kirby's faces to match the 'house style'.
I've gotta say, I'm deeply conflicted on this one. Morally? I vehemently object to hiring and praising a guy to his face for his ground-breaking NEW LOOK and then re-doing his art to look like the regular stuff. That's low, brother. However... Aesthetically? I'll just have to say it, I'm in complete agreement.
Kirby's Supes is on the left, and Al Plastino's Curt Swan-style Supes is on the right. Maybe it's just me, but Kirby's Superman's face looks like a squashed toad. As do most of his male AND female characters. Creepy bug-eyed men and women with wide, weird maws.
I'm dead serious. Why are Kirby's Reed Richards and his Thor always shouting things toward the reader with outstretched arms and a grimace of what appears to be constipation?
I first realized this while staring at a 'pin-up' Kirby did of Sue Storm (Richards). It just didn't DO IT for me, you know?
The man drew a HELL of a good monster. He drew SQUAJILLIONS of good monsters.
Thing, Hulk, Mole Man, Mole Man's horrifying underground armies, every screaming ugly weird-ass troll and freaky-deaky nightmare for over a decade at Marvel was probably his doing. And let's not forget Etrigan, Darkseid, Granny Goodness, Desaad and every other creepy thing the darkness ever congealed over at DC.
AND his regular, ordinary, down-to-earth HUMAN people look like toads! I'm slightly ashamed of my own stomach-knotting jealousy, but they do, they DO look like toads!
I KNOW Jack was the King! I KNOW he inspired a generation of artists! But look at one of the guys he inspired for a moment. John Byrne. An example of a student whose skills surpassed his teacher in his very earliest years, at least in certain areas.
This is how John Byrne draws Sue Richards of the Fantastic Four.
And this is how Kirby draws the same woman.
OH! I'm kidding! Too soon!
I hear you baying for my blood. 'How dare you denigrate Mighty Kirby? Pistols at dawn on planet Apokalips, sir! My Female Furies shall disembowel you!'
Well, I say, bring it. Your Kirby Furies against my Frank Cho Furies and we'll JUST SEE whose are sexiest in the cold light of day!
(Or something else threatening that makes more sense.)
Look, the last thing I wanna do is crap on Kirby. The man was an Art Master whose shoes I'm not worthy to shit in. Is his art dynamic? Hells, yeah. Was he prolific? NOBODY could match his output. Did he work himself to death in relative obscurity and revolutionize an industry that gave him (while alive) little credit? I venture YES. He worked his butt off for a pittance, an early grave and just oodles of post-death accolades from everybody who ever read him. Were his drawings of women (or men) sexy? I venture NO.
I also have to assume he wasn't trying to be. The beauty of his work is in the STRAIN and the PAIN, the eye-bags, the veins-a-poppin', the bared tooth and claw, the bristly beards, the calloused hands, the wailing mouths, the sunken, haunted eyes. The dark side of humanity.
Assuming that's what you think is beautiful.
If I stared at stuff like that all the time, I'd never get any sleep!
So... very... tired.