Rubbing elbows with pinoy stars

Oct 27 at Comic Odyssey, Robinson’s Place Manila. My first meet and greet with comic artists: John Beatty was early (inker of Batman years ago and who is practically Pinoy - aside from being engaged to a pinay, he says "C.R." instead of toilet) ; Leinil Yu and Gerry Alanguilan (together on Superman Birthright and New Xmen Annual of 2001, Leinil is currently drawing New Avengers and Gerry says he’s concentrating on his original work – check out Elmer), Mico Sauyan who is currently doing the pencils on Moon Knight, and Ed Tadeo who worked on Iron Man and Spawn. Well, I was that patient and excited that I got sketches from all of them!

I got talk to John Beatty first. I asked him to draw Barbara-Gordon-Batgirl. The way he sketched her hair was way cool. He also sang Beautiful Girls while drawing. Just to prove to Gerry that even though he was forty-ish, he was still hip! Hehe! Ed Tadeo and I had to remember where the phoenix in Jean's chest was facing - left or right? Gerry didn't know the costume of the new Catwoman and he looked at a Ponds ad for Selina's face and checked out an issue for the costume. He was shocked when he saw a man's throat get violently cut (with blood spurting), he said, "Di ko akalaing me ganito na sa comics ngayon." I asked Mico to draw Moon Knight because I had to get over the wimpy way that Bendis portrayed him in Ultimate Spiderman. Mico's Moon Knight is bad-ass . And of

course.... Leinil's Logan. Chatted with him a bit about his brother who - we went to the same college.

Plus there was free food and drinks. I also won a John Romita variant WW HULK #3! Thor got the best advanced birthday gift ever - an original plate from Superman Birthright! More power to Comic Odyssey!

One More Day . . .

. . . pero Happy Birthday Thor!

Dead or Alive

Mark Millar's the Phil Collins of comics or maybe the Bon Jovi. Big on catchy hooks and slick riffs and mad skills but short on risk and danger and vision. Chosen was him with the safety off, though, and brilliant for it and Wanted came close even if everything else
- - -Civil War, Ultimates, Wolverine - - - is the comicbook equivalent of a Jerry Bruckheimer event movie : hot and fast and empty and PG-13 only with IQ points and prog-rock set pieces. Am so there if a Chosen movie happens but the Wanted movie just got my attention. Two things: Timor Bekmambetov directs. And the Eternal Angelina stars.

Looky, drooly.

Doom Patrol

Superman Doomsday
Directed by Lauren Montgomery,Bruce Timm
and Brandon Vietti
Written by Duane Capizzi






Let's piss on a sacred goat, why not. The Death of Superman was a turd - - - the infantile nadir of deep continuity superhero eventmaking. You do sign up for Bruce Timm making a 75 minute OAV out of it because he seems to think so, too- - - and his design sense's got dynamic game. You get to dip your eyeballs in candy at least. Supercompressed like this means it's crisper for having the flab cut out but does crank its pitch to a hyper only nerds in advanced stages of ADD would find soothing - - -don't kids breathe at the movies anymore? Upgrades still boom, though. Freeing themselves from feeding an event marketing brief and the ramifications of the outcome, Superman dying here is just another trope for Timm and cohorts and less didactic for it, less in the grip of the buildup , more with the aftermath, where the story is anyway - - - the co-dependencies bred by superheroes in the real
- - - and the resurrection engineered feeds everything of Dan Jurgens and cohorts to the sharks. Doomsday gains a measure of pulpy arcana, who'd have thunk? Gives good skirmish and carnage at that. And Luthor as reptilian git emits hard crackle. No buffoonery here. The moment when he whips out a gun to shoot his assistant out of just feeling like it trumps everything the movies did wrong . The geek in me just wet himself. * * *

Machine Head

Can a comicbook cover be incredibly dumb and impossibly wonderful at the same time?

The Artificial Kid

2009. Fuck yeah.