Neilalien : A Doctor Strange Fansite : A Comic Book Weblog  

Overview of the times Jack Kirby drew Doctor Strange [Sanctum Sanctorum Comix]
Hail to the King, whose 93rd birthday would have been Saturday.

Posted 30 August 02010 - Permalink

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Uncle Stan says There's Money In Comics! Marvel November 02010 solicitations include New Avengers #6 [Comic Book Resources]
Doctor Strange prominently on the cover. "The shocking battle for our dimension comes to a shattering conclusion; and not everyone will survive!! Who will make the ultimate sacrifice to save us?" Oh great.

Stan Lee rights terrible wrong in next month's Amazing Spider-Man #641: It turns out Superbad/Arrested Development director Greg Mottola suggested "Spectacular Spider-Mail" in 01977 for letters page name, and never got credit [Comic Book Resources]

Current PVP strips about a fraternity of superhero servants with their own agenda includes Wong [PVP Online] [thanks readers!]

Some recent love for artist Paul Smith:
Strange Saturday: Paul Smith and Doctor Strange [Giant Size Marvel Comics] [see other Strange Saturday links at this one]
Spotlight on Paul Smith [Stormantic]

More on that Stan Lee 01947 Writer's Digest article "There's Money In Comics!" by Stan Lee, and Marshall McLuhan using it "as a jumping off point for talking about middle- and low- brow art" in his 01951 book The Mechanical Bride [Comics Comics]
Previous: Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine

The Occultist Dark Horse one-shot in December by Tim Seeley billed as "an entry level mage-superhero- a first-year Doctor Strange" [Comic Book Resources]

A gallery of Neal Adams Batman covers [Golden Age Comic Book Stories] [via Comics Reporter]
Back when covers weren't lame pin-ups, and actually had to compete on a real newsstand for eyeballs.

A gallery of 75 Action Comics covers worth their weight in gold [io9] [via Mindless Ones]
Back when creators made crazy covers first to try to stump the writers of the books within.

Modern-day superheroes promote a macho, violent stereotype and bad role model for young boys; differ greatly from superheroes of yesterday [BBC News]
Professor Sharon Lamb said the only other role-model boys were exposed to in today's media was a slacker.

Neat video of artist Frank Quitely creating comics digitally with Wacom's Cintiq tablet [Comics Journal]
(It's actually a bit slow, but Neilalien ended up watching it through. You might want to let the video load completely first- then you can hop around at will.)

Congrats to Dean Haspiel for winning that Emmy! [The Beat] [previous when nominated, link to Bored to Death title sequence]

The ABCs of Mediocre Marvel Villainy [Kyle Starks' Flickr] [his blog; his webcomics] [via io9]

BATJESUS [Boundr] [via LinkMachineGo]

Posted 26 August 02010 - Permalink

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Doctor Strange by Ron Lim

Doctor Strange sketch by Ron Lim, from San Diego Comic-Con 01997
Sent from Weird Crime Theater as thanks for the recent link from this weblog.

Posted 23 August 02010 - Permalink

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Rumors swirling that Adrien Brody is close to signing onto a Marvel movie, either Ant-Man, Doctor Strange, or as Mr. Fantastic in a Fantastic Four reboot [ComicBookMovie.com] [Screen Rant] [thanks Jeff for the FYI!]

Dormammu confirmed for Marvel vs Capcom 3 video game [GamesRadar]
Doctor Strange Officially Deconfirmed [Xugo Gaming]
Dormmamu looks like the cool design from the recent Giffen/DeMatteis/Maguire Defenders miniseries.
Update: Is it the rule that obscure Dr. Strange villains must appear in all MvC games? Not that I'm complaining. [tweet by @jawn, referring to Shuma Gorath's nonsensical inclusion in the previous games]
Update: MVC3 Dormammu trailer [YouTube]

Incredible Avengers 01952 "Premake" video; Doctor Strange included [YouTube] [Sanctum Sanctorum Comix]

Posted 22 August 02010 - Permalink

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New Avengers #3 out today. Neilalien picked it up.

[Spoilers and Speculative Braindump follow]

OK Doctor Strange fandom, let's take a step back and read the comics again, and wait for more issues to come out.

Perhaps this is Neilalien's hopeful delusion, but he's not entirely convinced yet that the Ancient One is the villain in this book, the tearer/invader of the dimension, the manifester of the fire/demons from the sky, and the fire-eyed possessor of people to acquire the Eye, due to his crossing over to the dark side and/or pissed off at the way Sorcerer Supremedom has been handled, per standard reading of the text and last-page reveal. If it is the case, it's extremely disappointing.

Possible alternate "softer" interpretation #2a: The Ancient One is pissed off at how Doctor Strange and his Amazing Friends have handled their mystical-protection duties of late, and is getting spunkily involved, not as the Real Evil Baddie but as a grey third party, starting with collecting the Eye for himself, to prevent it falling into the real baddie's hands via Strange/Voodoo incompetence, or to take it back from incompetents, or because it's needed to solve the dimensional tearing problem in spite of incompetents. He's not behind the dimensional tearing/invasion, but he is behind the possessions, in order to get the Eye.

#2b. As 2a., but he is not even behind the possessions in the first two issues; that's still the real baddie. In order to get the Eye, the Ancient One snagged an Iron Fist possessed by the baddie at the time. Iron Fist was freed by this intervention.

Neilalien might be missing a damning panel, or squinting too hard, but he sees these other interpretations. Or are they Duh to other people?

First, a language-of-comics point that in the whitespace, the non-Iron-Fist word balloons are colored yellow and green to signify two unseen speakers. Neilalien is assuming that the yellow is the Ancient One, and the green is his unknown buddy who brought Iron Fist there. When AO emerges, his balloons are now white. This could simply mean they don't have to be colored now that his identity is revealed, or it could mean he has two buddies, yellow and green. If AO does not have two buddies there with him, then Neilalien argues that AO's balloons should have stayed yellow to clearly signify he was one of the earlier speakers.

AO says, "This is why your kind no longer gets to rule your own dimension." And because of Doctor Strange, the AO's "greatest failure", being dishonorable, "your time is done." Neilalien cannot argue that those aren't dramatic villain-like things to say. But there is a chance they might simply be observations. It doesn't 100% imply that the Ancient One will be personally finishing the time of anyone or ruling from now on. Although granted, it would have been nicer and more still-a-good-guy if AO said Iron Fist's time was "at great risk, if we don't do something".

It's viable that Greenballoons was the one possessing Doc, Hellstrom, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist, with the fire eyes and scraggy word balloons. But even that's open to interpretation- it could have been that Greenballoons snagged (and thus freed) an Iron Fist possessed by the baddie: "he had the Eye" at the time. It might be significant that Iron Fist, AO or his buddy/ies, are not shown with the scraggy "evil" word balloons and fire eyes in the whitespace.

When possessed scraggy-voiced Iron Fist is teleported away in issue #2, he says, "Well... that's not true at all." almost as if it's not the actual possessor who's doing the teleporting away.

Or, for the other angle, has it been firmly established that the possessions were Capital-E Evil in nature, or were being perpetuated by the same entity/phenomenon that is tearing the dimension apart? Could it be that the the possessions were by a non-evil AO's Greenballoons buddy to get the Eye? Neilalien would say, given what happened to Voodoo's spirit bro, how the possessions were done in issue #1, Luke speaking to "the new ruler of this dimension", that they are Evil.

If the Ancient One were evil here, would he have treated Iron Fist as well as he did, offering the mystic warrior respect and a deal? Okay, maybe, the devil offers "deals" all the time- and they did clearly expect the holder of the Eye to die upon being brought to the whitespace, that's not very nice.

Neilalien's going to go with interpretation #2b. The Ancient One is not the main villain and dimensional invader here, but a hostile third party, also after the Eye but not behind the possessions, who beamed up Iron Fist while he was possessed.

Even if the Ancient One is somehow not the villain here, Bendis still gets no points for perpetuating this spunkier darker-sided re-emerged Ancient One that began in the Dead Girl miniseries. It was a bad idea then, and it's not looking like a good one here yet. The only positive is that it's vague enough for Neilalien's fandom hopes tonight. We shall see.

Otherwise, Immonen's art is beautiful in this issue as usual, the Bendis banter is good but doesn't one-size-fits-all fit all the characters as usual, and Neilalien has still seen no evidence that in this new Heroic Age the heroes whine any less, are any more competent, or act like douchebags any less.

Posted 18 August 02010 - Permalink

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Home Sweet Home: Five Comic Book Dwellings I'd Move In To Immediately [Heard Mentality weblog at OCWeekly] [thanks Denise!]
The Sanctum Sanctorum is on the list, natch.

Posted 16 August 02010 - Permalink

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'Scott Pilgrim' Versus The Unfortunate Tendency To Review The Audience [Monkey See at NPR]

Posted 14 August 02010 - Permalink

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Teaching philosophy with Spider-Man [BBC News]

Now, philosophy professors are finding superheroes and comic books to be exceptionally useful tools in helping students think about the complex moral and ethical debates that have occupied philosophers for centuries.

Take that, people who think superhero scaffolding holds no weight! Part of the usefulness is the interest using comics generates:

"[I]t's amazing how much more the students are interested and engaged when you them put in cape and tights and have them slug it out."

Oh, but those jealous medieval poetry professors:

The incorporation of superheroes into a philosophy curriculum is not without critics. When academics struggle to fill seats in their medieval poetry classes while their colleagues are turning students away from packed courses on the mythic rhetoric of the superheroes, sniping in common rooms is to be expected.

Posted 12 August 02010 - Permalink

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The Spider-Man Musical "Turn Off The Dark", music by Bono and Edge, opening date 21 December, previews 14 November [Gothamist]
Redux: Neilalien's Spider-Man Musical song list.

Posted 11 August 02010 - Permalink

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Embrace-The-70's Non-Gay Doctor Strange Dr. Strange The Movie: Why It's Not as Crazy As It Sounds [Cracked.com] [thanks Franklin!]
<- It's Embrace-The-70's Non-Gay Doctor Strange.

Marvel-superheroed McDonald's Happy Meals, the Fantastic Four's "It's Clobberin' Time!" and "the horrifying spectacle of a man engulfed in flames", run afoul of children's advocacy group [Bleeding Cool] [Campaign For A Commercial-Free Childhood]

Posted 9 August 02010 - Permalink

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Marvel Characters Re-Imagined As MegaMen [Suzuran] [full panorama] [via GorillaMask]

Posted 7 August 02010 - Permalink

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ROBOT 13, the stylish steampunk fantasy comic by Thomas Hall and Daniel Bradford, has just become one of the first independently produced comics to push past the 100,000 download mark on iTunes and Android [The Beat]
Robot 13 was part of Neilalien's Favorites of MoCCA 02009.

Posted 6 August 02010 - Permalink

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Very fun interactive Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World trailer

Posted 5 August 02010 - Permalink

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The Nerd Rage Rap, by Sidecar [Atom]

Posted 4 August 02010 - Permalink

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Comics Reporter doesn't drink enough of the kool-aid to not be critical of the Direct Market; responds to retailing group ComicsPRO president's frown-upside-downer [Comics Reporter]

Posted 3 August 02010 - Permalink

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Daniel Clowes interview: Wilson; likable protagonists are insulting; you've got to be obsessed to be a cartoonist [Guardian UK/The Observer] [via Robot Wisdom]

Posted 2 August 02010 - Permalink

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Fiction can do anything, Grant Morrison... except undermine the reader's investment-trust that it's going to make sense; "how fortunate for Homer that he died before he had to answer questions from fanboys" [The Hurting]

Posted 1 August 02010 - Permalink

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