Happy New Year!

Here's wishing you luck on keeping those resolutions!

TOUGH KID SQUAD

Overdue for a reboot, Marvel. Or maybe a movie! JK Simmons as Doctor Klutch! A cast of unknowns as the Danger Twins and the rest of the Squad! It'll be the Summer blockbuster of 2026!

(A cast of unknowns because I don't know the names of any child actors)

Getting Back into the Game

So: I recently returned to lovely Nova Scotia after a year away, a year in which I ended up going cold turkey on buying comics. Money was tight and every item I brought into the house was another thing that would have to be moved home, so I didn't even visit a shop in that time. Meanwhile, digital comics are a bit too bountiful a garden for me to visit without an infinite line of credit. So: I have read almost nothing in the last year.

Once we returned, there was a lot to do: we had a whole house to unpack and get in order while my wife was starting a new job - it was all very grown-up. I even did yard work because I cared that my yard looked bad!

So with one thing and another I didn't start unpacking any of my comic stuff until about a week ago. And then this happened:

For reference: those stacks are waist high.

Pulling out all of the trades and OGNs and strip collections was basically the equivalent of the a movie character having One Last Cigarette in a moment of stress. If I had actually been trying to quit comic booking, all of my hard work would have been in the toilet. Instead, I got to feel the familiar desire to read all comics everywhere reassert itself in my heart.

Eventually things got neater and a lot of stuff got packed away again, but I was left with this:

... which represents everything in those former piles that I thought I might like to read in the near future. And that's what I'm going to do, and then I'm going to write about 'em here. Not quite sure whether there's going to be a set format or if I'm just going to tell you about my feelings, so it's a good thing that my first choice of reading material was this:

Ignore the glare. I am not a professional

Hellboy is basically the prototype of the comics series that I will love. Tales of the supernatural featuring a big lug who solves most problems with punching? Deep dives into folklore? A story that evolves from fun vignettes into a cohesive and compelling tragedy over the course of years? 

And so on.

So, I'll see you later, cool kids.

Minor Villain Showcase: PHOTON

A while ago I wrote my second bio for this site. Afterward, I happened upon my first one and realized that both times I had made a point of mentioning obscure 1970s Marvel super-villain Photon as a formative part of my comics-loving childhood, yet somehow had never written about him. So here you go:

Has anyone ever uttered a true statement on a comic book cover?

Photon appeared in a two-part Spider-Man/Nova team-up, the setup of which is pretty well-summarized by this splash panel:

The eternal question. Asked from time immemorial

Here are some facts about Photon's only adventure (to date):

- Rich "Nova" Ryder's scientist uncle Ralph gets murdered.

- Uncle Ralph is a wordplay enthusiast, and so we learn that Peter Parker anagrams to "Kree Trapper". We also get the above photo in which the murderer is revealed to be Jason Dean by dint of tricky calendar arrangement.

- Peter Parker is ostensibly on-hand in order to study Dr Ryder's physics library, but really he's there to team up with Nova. We all know it. 

In unison: "Goodbye fools!"

Here are some things that I thought were true about Photon until I revisited him for the purpose of writing this:

- I thought that he worked for AIM, because there are little AIM goons running around. Also because AIM is totally the sort of organization that would give one of their middle-management guys a laser gun and a code name instead of, say, dental benefits. Turns out that one of the OTHER suspects was an AIM middle-manager, and Photon was just too lazy to do his own hero-killing.

- As a corollary  to the last one: I thought that he, and not the little AIM goons, came up with the above anchor-based death-trap, which has long been one of my favourites if only because it was one of the earliest I ever encountered. Can you blame me? That ASM cover is very misleading.

"Like I was some sort of... bug-man!

- I misremembered him as wearing the classic big-time super-villain colour combo of purple and green but it turned out to be more of an off-red. A shame, really, because one of the things about Photon that I DID remember correctly was:

No quip, quote, quibble or quiz! No diatribe, debate, discussion or dirge! No fanservice, filibuster...

- He may be a two-bit jerk punching above his weight class, but he has the villain-speak DOWN. I can only assume that he spent his evenings leading up to this one just watching and rewatching old footage of the FF confronting Dr Doom and taking notes. This is a guy who has some assumptions about how successful a super-villain he is going to be.

Finally, something that I didn't remember about Photon but that kind of makes me like him more:

- As I said, he didn't turn out to be working for AIM, where about one in three guys who aren't in beekeeper outfits have villainous identities. No, he was a Maggia guy, which makes it much more likely that this is just something that he came up with on his own, that it might be a decent second job - in addition to his main gig as a mobster - to be a goof in a green mask that he probably sewed himself. I have to admit: fairly endearing.

SO, that's the secret behind my affection for generic 70s super-villain Photon: misremembering a lot of details and affection for dumb goofs. Until next time, I remain,

JOHNATHAN

ODINBATH

I have not seen Thor: The Dark World, so I am eagerly awaiting Dave and Rachelle's review. I am fairly certain, however, that the following scene does not appear in it. This is a crime, as Odin's Imperial Bath ought to be featured in all Thor media, if only as a background feature.

Now bring me the Scrub-Brush of Kings, along with Mr Quackers, Squeaky Duck of the Divine Light

What's distracting me from comics this time increment?

So: I wrote something on this blog for the first time in forever the other day (read: several weeks ago). I liked doing it - I enjoy writing in general and writing about comics in particular - so why don't I do that all the time? There really is no good reason, but in thinking about it I realized that there are a whole lot of terrible reasons. Thus, this post.

First, some backstory. I started writing on Paul and John Review, the blog that would eventually be folded into Living Between Wednesdays, in 2006. I had just moved back to Nova Scotia after impulsively moving to BC for a few years. I was broke, single and had a terrible call centre job. I also had an Internet connection and time on my hands. This combination led very naturally to me reading/writing about a lot of silly Silver Age comic books, those being my most frequent Muse.

Eight years have passed. I am chunkier, baldier and beardier. I got hitched, I got a dog (not necessarily in that order). Most critically, I am no longer broke all the time, and I still have that Internet connection, which means that I have an absurd array of interesting things to occupy my time with. No reading silly Silver Age comics precludes writing about silly Silver Age comics.

But! Most of these things are incredibly nerdy, and thus a perfect fit for LBW. Plus, I am woefully out of writing trim, and getting back in practice while simultaneously expanding my horizons is just plain a good idea.

Here's the first thing, and the one that I probably have the least to say about: new comics. There are so dang many good comics coming out right now. And! I'm (temporarily) living far away from Strange Adventures, which means I'm using Comixology - I am basically inundated with the dang things! Oh, the woes that I have to face.

In any case, tune in next time increment for more discussion of the incredible hardship that I face every day.