Tuesday, February 15, 2011

The Dissector #195.

DISCLAIMER (angry creators, please read)

[[WARNING! THIS COLUMN MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS!]]

"AAAH! I'M BEING FELT UP BY A PERVERT FROM BEYOND SPACE AND TIME!!" Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man #653.

Here we are with a very short column for the week of 02/02, and only a few days late! Last week's DT! was cracked by JohnnyDoe who noticed that if Steel is talking about the four Super-shield wielding characters from "Reign Of The Supermen", one can't say that the Cyborg Superman (Hank Henshaw) signed up for "fighting the good fight". Quite the opposite, really. Badge for you, JD.

The Dissector's Picks Of The Week are these: Best Book Of The Week was Legion Of Super-Heroes V6 Annual #1... classic Legion fun with Paul Levitz writing, and Keith Giffen dipping in the Kirby-inkwell. A must for any Legion fans. Worst Book Of The Week was, as it was once last month, Batman Confidential, this time issue #53. Boring, slow, yawn. Cover Of The Week, there wasn't anything that stood out much, but this cover for Freedom Fighters #6, by Dave Johnson, was pretty nice, and slightly Sterankoesque.

By the way, the three things I had to say last week still stand, so I'll just quote myself:

First, that I built a Facebook fan page for the column... Here it is. Please go click "like"; and promote it. Second, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU THAT YOU HAVEN'T VOTED IN THE 2010 AUTOPSY AWARDS?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Seriously, go check out the nominations and vote. If you already voted, please disregard this outburst. Also, while you're at it, there's a design-your-own-superhero contest at Talenthouse, sponsored by The Stan Lee Foundation... would you mind going to this page and click on the right to vote with your Facebook account? Thanks!

The Rundown: Batman Confidential (Hal's badge), JSA All-Stars ("acult" instead of "a cult"), Secret Six V3 (Rita Farr's eyes, and "American's sweetheart"), Time Masters: Vanishing Point (Hal's badge, Rip Hunter's eyes and hair). Yeah, short like that.
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"THE CAGE."

TITLE: The Amazing Spider-Man (Marvel).

ISSUE: 653.

CULPRIT: Stefano Caselli (penciller).

DISSECTION: For some reason, both on the cover and inside, Luke Cage has blank eyes. Why? Isn't it enough to look at one reference image of the character and see he has normal looking eyes? That besides bullets bouncing off his skin and him lifting trucks there are no visible manifestation of his powers? I understand giving Magneto or the Molecule Man blank eyes when they're using their powers at a high level (even if it's not standard design for them, as it is with Storm), but Luke Cage? You're working on pre-existing characters, shared creations, being a good artist is not enough, you have to respect character designs.

DISSECT-O-METER: 8 Bazzars. Jessica Jones' eyes are colored wrong, and Squirrel Girl is missing the markings around her eyes.
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"DOCTOR'S ORDERS."

TITLE: Doctor Who Classics: The Seventh Doctor (IDW).

ISSUE: 01.

CULPRIT: John Ridgway (penciller).

DISSECTION: This one is for Whovians, but anyone who's seen a bit of the show should be able to notice it.


DISSECT-O-METER: 8 Bazzars.
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"PEAK PERFORMANCE."

TITLE: Legion Of Super-Heroes V6 (DC).

ISSUE: Annual 01.

CULPRIT: Paul Levitz (writer).

DISSECTION: Cosmic Boy wonders if any of the Legion's fast responders are able to get to Orando (a planet reportedly far away from Earth and from regular space routes) for an emergency, and mentions Wildfire and Dawnstar... now, they can travel through space, but they've never exhibited super-speed. In fact, not even characters with super-speed and flight, like Mon-El and Ultra Boy should have enough speed to get there in time. Ultra Boy, now that I mention him, probably wouldn't be able to fly as fast as Mon-El even, since he has to use one power at a time; and I doubt his super-speed would be able to affect the speed his flight ring propels him.

DISSECT-O-METER: 7 Bazzars. As usual, Dawnstar's powers are incomplete, and we also have Sensor Girl's eyes colored incorrectly.
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"HARD TIME."

TITLE: Superman 80-Page Giant V3 (DC).

ISSUE: One-shot.

CULPRIT: Neil Kleid (writer).

DISSECTION: Let's assume Perry White is what, 70-73 years old? That's as far as I'm willing to go with him... then during the 40s, when the JSA, particularly Wildcat, who he shares this story with, and the Guardian (Jim Harper, though not a JSA member) were active, he was... not even born? Three years old in 1940? If we stretch his age to 80, he was ten in 1941? Sorry, but the timelines for him to have been a cub reporter back then don't make sense, particularly when he's recently been shown befriending Lex Luthor when they were both young men (in their 20s, perhaps Perry in his 30s and Lex in his 20s); and Lex is shown to be not that much older than Clark Kent.

DISSECT-O-METER: 7 Bazzars. Both Perry and Wildcat's eyes are colored wrong, and Wildcat and the Guardian shouldn't have public identities back in the 40s.
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This week had nineteen total dissections, and a 6.2 Bazzars average. Normal. Moments Of The Week are all (except one) from the Legion Annual that was best book of the week. First up, Violet defeats the Emerald Eye:


... but not without some consequences:


Emerald Vi again? And in case you wanna learn the Legion's history quickly and in a fun way? The Legion History Boardgame!


Yeah, it's a large image, but I decided not to resize it so you could enjoy it. No mention of what happened between The Magic Wars and the recent return of the original LSH... And last, what shouldn't you feed to giant monsters?


MODOK BRAINS!!! That's gonna end up badly... That's it for now, until next time, I'll be on the outlook for more dissections, because (almost) nothing escapes...

THE DISSECTOR!

8 comments:

JohnnyDoe said...

The DT: Isn't the tardis/phone-booth suppose to be blue and not violet?

MaGnUs said...

Sorry, my bad... I credited Ridgway as colorist, but he's the penciller. The color of the TARDIS is okay, given the lighting.

JohnnyDoe said...

Oh, how about the SIZE of the tardis then? It's too big for the proportions shown in the image.

MaGnUs said...

That's exactly it. It should look like a regular phone box, not two stuck together, at least from the outside. You nailed it again.

Now go recruit more readers.

Sidney said...

Couple more mistakes. Ever since she was introduced in Black Terror #11, the character Red Anne had a thin horizontal line on her face that seemingly served no purpose. It even made it look like she had a mustache. In Black Terror #14, it was shown that the lower part of her face, below the line, was colored red, which means that she had been miscolored before. The blame would fall on the colorists Adriano Lucas (#11), Vinicius Andrade (#s 12 & 13), and art director Alex Ross.

The second mistake comes from Flash #9. Richard Zajac did the inking for the issue, but the book switched editors in the middle of production, and the new editor, Adam Schlagman, forgot to credit him. I know this because Richard works at the local comic store.

MaGnUs said...

Thanks dude, I'll include it in the next column.

Donald313 said...

Wow, look at the time. Today it´s been exactly one month since the last column. I shudder to think of the rundown.

Don´t look at me though, I voted in the Autopsy Awards.

MaGnUs said...

Yeah, I know. I've been crazy busy with work, mostly, but other stuff too. I'm working on a column for the rest of February... soon... soon... (I still have too few votes for the Autopsy Awards... but there's no rush on that...)

Sorry to keep you waiting with the column, I don't know when I can get that last February one done... I need to work on a comic book script to hand into my artist; there's a con in May we want to have a couple of mini-comic mags for sale at.