Slightly Misplaced Comic Book Heroes Case File #59: Slapstick

Not the guy to call if you are afraid of clowns.

The comedic superhero is a time-honored tradition.  Sometimes its just a hero like Spider-Man who cracks wise during any given fight.  Other times you get a hero like Plastic Man, who may or may not be the straight man in his own adventures but has goofy powers and kooky adventures to compensate.

Then there’s Slapstick.  He didn’t fight crime.  He played cruel jokes on it.

Jimmy Attempts To Read All Of Secret Wars XXXIII (Ghost Racers Edition)

Like many back in the day I was a huge Ghost Rider fan.  I grew up with the Danny Ketch Ghost Rider, but also read a lot of Johnny Blaze and the original incarnation from the 1970’s.  I lost touch with Danny and Johnny at some point after the Midnight Sons days.  I did pick up some of the “recent” mini-series written by Devin Grayson and Garth Ennis that saw Blaze return as Ghost Rider.  But that’s still like 10 years ago.  The look of the All-New All-Different Ghost Rider never grabbed me so I haven’t read any of the adventures of Robbie Reyes.  Which puts me at kind of a disadvantage as he is the main character of this book.

But in all honesty, all you really need to know is that all the Ghost Riders from across time and the multiverse have been brought to Doom’s Killiseum to entertain the masses in a kind of twisted, demonic chariot races.

After the cut I’ll look at Ghost Racers #1, Ghost Racers #2, Ghost Racers #3 and Ghost Racers #4.

Related links:
Secret Wars Power Rankings
Tom’s Road To Secret Wars: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,7.
Other parts of this series: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32

Jimmy Attempts To Read All Of Secret Wars XXXII (Anthology Edition)

This cover is all lies.

There’s been quite a few short stories during these last few months of Secret Wars.  I’ve liked a handful of them, but a lot of them have missed the mark badly.  (Ryan would beg to differ, but we all know what Ryan’s like.)

I’ve already looked at Secret Wars Battleworld 1 and 2 and Secret Wars Journal Parts 1-3  in some detail.  After the cut I will finish those series with Secret Wars Battleworld #3, Secret Wars Battleworld #4, Secret Wars Journal #4 and Secret Wars Journal #5.  As well, I’ll also look at the equally unimpressive Secret Wars Secret Love #1.  

Related links:
Secret Wars Power Rankings
Tom’s Road To Secret Wars: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,7.
Other parts of this series: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31

Tom Recommends: Raising Arizona

There was a time when Nicholas Cage’s career didn’t seem like a joke and the Coen Brothers weren’t really well known.

Raising Arizona pretty much ended the Coen’s anonymity while playing well to Cage’s talents.

Jimmy Attempts To Read All Of Secret Wars XXIII (Inhumans Edition)

I’ve never cared much about the Inhumans.  And I’m willing to bet if Marvel had the movie and tv rights to the X-Men, we wouldn’t be seeing the massive Inhumans push from them that we are seeing today.  High profile comic launches, essentially the entire season two and looks like season three storylines of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and a major motion picture in 2019 (which seems way too far off and they should be capatilizing on what they are setting up with AoS now, but anyway…), everything is coming up Inhumans.

After the cut I’ll look at the first four issues of Inhumans series from this beast of an event called Secret Wars.  It’s another of those series I had little interest in, but turned out to be quite good.  (Currently holding the number ten spot on our Secret Wars Power Rankings.)

Related links:
Secret Wars Power Rankings
Tom’s Road To Secret Wars: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,7.
Other parts of this series: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22

Before You See Ant-Man Check Out This Infographic Of All Marvel Movies

This post is so awesome, this isn’t even the infographic!

While Iron Man was the first film of what we now know as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it was far from the first Marvel film.  That distinction belongs to…ugh…Howard The Duck.  But they followed that up with The Punisher…starring Dolph Lundgren.  And then Captain America and Fantastic Four films so bad they never received theatrical release.  Marvel was really not off to a good start.

But starting in 1998, though there would still be some bumps in the road going forward, Wesley Snipes came along and saved the day.  Yes, Wesley Snipes.

Read more about Blade and all the other Marvel movies on the infographic from shirts.com after the break.

Jimmy Attempts To Read All Of Secret Wars Part Four

Secret Wars continues on and I continue to blow deadlines.  After the break I’ll look at three recent tie ins: Ultimate End #1, Spider-Verse #1 and Secret Wars: Battleworld #1.  I also chat with one of my fellow Gabbing Geeks about one of these books and surprisingly it’s not Tom Kelly!

Also, if you are like me and haven’t read all of Johnathon Hickman’s Avengers run leading up to Secret Wars, be sure to take Tom’s Road To Secret Wars course at gabbinggeekuniversity.com.  The reading materials are online here: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six and Part Seven.

And that course is a prerequisite to the other parts of this series: Part One, Part Two, Part Three

Slightly Misplaced Comics Hero Case Files #14: 90s Ghost Rider

Real Firestone tires!

 

Legacy heroes are nothing new.  DC has practically built their whole universe around it when they revived a few of their Golden Age heroes as new Silver Age versions with new names, looks, and in some case, powers.  Marvel hasn’t done it quite so often, but there have been a couple cases.  The big problem with a legacy hero, where the superhero name can be passed along to a successor, is that sooner or later the original–or at least best known version of that character–returns and takes the mantle back.  This can occur no matter how popular the new guy is, though the new guy may stick around for other reasons.

Dan Ketch, the Ghost Rider of the 90s, was not one of those new guys who got to stick around.

1.21 Gigawatts: Jimmy Revisits A Comic Book Movie Post From Y2K

“A Watchmen movie? Don’t hold your breath.” – Jimmy Impossible circa 2000

Before I started writing endless Secret Wars posts for Gabbing Geek, I used to work on and write for a site called the Hollywood Stock Brokerage & Resource (HSBR, no “&”, I don’t care what you say).  It was a (the best) Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX) fansite.  While the site has unfortunately closed it’s doors, I still interact with most of the group on a daily basis.  Gabbing Geek founding member Ryan “don’t call me hose311” Garcia was also a contributor to HSBR and foolishly recruited me here.

In recently rambling writing about Superman: Earth One, I mentioned that around the turn of the new millennium I wrote an article that Rising Stars by Earth One writer J. Michael Straczynski would make a great movie.  While I pulled that observation out of the Impossible memory vaults, I wondered what else I had written in said article, and if any of them had come to pass.

So let’s hop in the Delorean, look into the Pensieve, travel naked back in time courtesy of Skynet and revisit and update that post.

Slightly Misplaced Comics Heroes Case File #3: Sleepwalker

And he’s the good guy…

90s era Marvel comics have a reputation.  The guys who founded Image Comics were cutting their teeth there, and the characters they worked on seemed to take on many of the sorts of things fans today bemoan but which must have been selling back then, hence the reason for so many of them.  They were massive guys with guns, pouches, and bad-ass names and powers.  Bishop.  Cable.  Ghost Rider.  X-Force. Venom.  I think the Punisher had three separate titles going at one point.  Todd McFarlane’s Spider-Man series showed the Hobgoblin going nuts, thinking he was a real goblin, finding religion, and ripping his own face off.

Then there was Sleepwalker.