Adscape: Cube Lube

I've read a lot of comic books and seen a lot of strange advertisements, but this... I don't even know what to say. 

I can't even pull myself together enough to make a proper joke connecting the Rubik's Cube craze and some sort of deviant sexual practice. Cube Lube. CUBE LUBE!

I would, however, be willing to place a bet that the name preceded the actual product in whatever brainstorming session this was come up with in.

- From DC Comics Presents No. 46

BONUS, from the same issue:

Whether this is the greatest or worst ad I have ever seen shall remain a mystery for the ages.

Peoples of the Solar System: The Oceans of Venus

This was supposed to go up last week, but my uploading skills failed.

Mysterious Venus! Swathed in clouds and mists! What, oh what lurks underneath? Well, according to my research, approximately half of all mid Twentieth Century writers thought it was likely that there was a lot of water and thus fishy-looking aliens:

 

Click to expand! Next time, some land-dwellers! 

A Glimpse of CRIME AND TERROR!

My favourite comic of 2010 was Scott Morse’s Strange Science Fantasy, a six-part miniseries published by IDW. Each issue of the series explored a different facet of pulpy B-movie sci-fi tropes—one dealt with hot rodders in a postapocalyptic future, another featured an amazing colossal soldier sent into space to battle invading cosmic gods…you get the idea. Morse, a Pixar animator in his day job, thrillingly channeled his love of big-idea SF into a form of cartoon storytelling that can only really be described as “pure comics”—not always totally linear or easy to explain, just a creator’s enthusiasm spilling out onto the page in fast & furious fashion. I found Morse’s enthusiasm infectious, and I suspect that enthusiasm will carry over into his new series, Crime And Terror, a new collaboration with writer Steve Niles (30 Days Of Night, Criminal Macabre).

Crime And Terror is said to be forthcoming in a series of original 80-page, self-published hardcovers, but I got my first taste in the form of a special limited edition preview book. This limited, signed edition is printed on cardboard pages with rounded edges in an oversized format, and features two short stories by Niles and Morse. The first, “The Bee’s Knees” follows a lovestruck duo of bank robbers on the run from the law, determined to live together forever—quite literally, it turns out, while the second, untitled story features an ever-shrinking group of survivors surrounded by an army of the living dead. Both of Niles’s stories have a similarly hard-boiled vibe, complete with first-person narration, brought to vivid life by Morse’s blocky, splashy artwork (someone once described his art as looking like a mix of Jack Kirby and Darwyn Cooke, high praise indeed).

I thought “The Bee’s Knees” worked a lot better than the second, but that could just be that I’m suffering from a bit of zombie overload these days (zombie comics, movies, and TV shows seem to be multiplying at a rate that makes their fictional counterparts look lazy!). The “crime and terror” promised by the title certainly can be found in the first story, but the second tale is pretty much just straight-ahead survival horror. Each revolves around a doomed romance, defiant in the face of overwhelming odds. Maybe this will be the thread that connects the future Crime And Terror stories? Based on this early taste, I’m definitely curious to find out.

Peoples of the Solar System: Mercury, Part 1

I'm far from done, but for a while now I've been keeping track of the various alien races mentioned in the comic books I read. Why? Because stuff like this looks interesting when you put it all together.

EDIT: I didn't like the original post, so I redid it as a graphic! You should probably click to expand.

For the Record...

 Batman liked dressing up as a gorilla enough to do it at least once more:

From Detective Comics No. 269.

A Gorilla-Themed Palate-Cleanser

I was going to write about Flashpoint No. 5, but I just don't feel like being super negative today. Suffice to say that I exclaimed "That's stupid" more than once, and that my dog was saddened by the tone of my voice. I had to calm him down with a belly rub.

Instead, here's an excerpt from a comic I read and genuinely enjoyed this week:

 

Namely, Detective Comics No 232, in which Batman is consulting on the set of a Batman movie. On this specific page, a couple of writers try to get a handle on the character and are delightful.

They might actually be the only characters to get a chuckle out of me with the old "accidentally discover Batman's secret identity and then laugh it off" gag, possibly because of the joyful little faces pictured above.

 

Even more likely, though, is that it's just reflected hilarity from this couple of panels. These guys should have been folded into Batman's supporting cast.

 

Bonus! That wasn't just a throwaway gag page, it was set-up! It was an example of Chekhov's Gorilla Suit, and that might be the most satisfying thing I've ever written.

Of course, there were plenty of good comics out this week. Skullkickers, The Sixth Gun, Invincible, the excellent Infinite Kung Fu TPB (came out last week but who's counting). The moral of the story, I guess, is that I should never read event comics ever again. Also, watch out for guys in gorilla costumes.