The Dumb Are Mostly Intrigued By The Drum

Just last week, PartyMarty & I were discussing the Marvel Comics license Marc Ecko obtained for a couple of years around 1999 and how it was one of the first times that a license was used in that manner to attract the older generation of comic book fans with dope integration between comic books & clothing design. No longer were we limited to logo stamped t-shirts from comic book stores. Nope, the characters we grew up reading had been implemented in a tasteful manner in which nerds all around wouldn't have to fear getting ridiculed for wear such things. And now, it seems that era might have returned with Ecko picking up the Star wars license. Fuck....that Boba Fett hoodie is so fucken dope! Sure, it's $98 but dude......it's a Boba Fett hoodie! You can head on over to the official site here and place you order right now if you got the skrilla but I'm sure we'll be seeing these hitting your favorite mall pretty soon. Guess I finally have a reason to return to the mall to shop for clothes. Head on over to Slash Film here to check out the full post including a special code on how to get $10 off any order over $100 PLUS free shipping. Nice!

Behold the great Soundwave! Aight, I wasn't too excited about the Transformers line when it was announced at Comic Con but that looks pretty bad ass!

And although these have been announced for a while, here is the first pic of the entire next wave. Classic Iron Man FTW! And finally, it has been announced that the Indiana Jones line has been canceled. WTF!? I want my damn Dr. Henry Jones, dammit! I know people that have picked these up but according to Mighty Muggs Lounge (which is where all these pictures & info come from), all Waves (including Wave 2) have been cancelled. Time to start picking them up on eBay, people!

This weekend Flawed Hollywood (via Slash Film)was able to catch a picture of the Desperate Housewife Eva Longoria walking out of Marvel Comics Beverly Hills office with a stack of comics. And not just any comics, Avengers comics. So now the speculation is running rampant that she's up for the role of Janet Pym aka The Wasp. Yup her powers suck if you as me but she's part of The Avengers picture and you gotta have the core team there right? But besides all that weak powers non-sense, not to bad of a pick if this is in fact true. What do you guys think?

Another comic book post, another Mark Millar story. I've said it in the past, for me, this dude is the best writer in comicdom right now so when these stories pop up, you'll see them here. After staying on the sidelines in the Ultimate Universe, the sheriff is back in town next year when Millar comes back to do Ultimate Avengers in 2009. Check out the interview over here at Newsarama for all the details. I'm guessing that Ultimates 4 with Ed McGuiness isn't gonna happen? That sucks if true but as long as Millar is back at the helm (Loeb's run has been dumb so far), all is good in the universe. Now I'm left wondering who's going to be doing the art duties....Joe Mad & Millar would implode my head like the Large Hadron Collider.

It's over. Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch's brilliant run on Marvel Comics' The Ultimates has finally come to and end and I'm a bit saddened. With this book, these guys reinvented comics and injected the often misunderstood world of comics with a dose of gritty storytelling, artwork and reality based credibility and will forever live , in my book, as one of the greatest series I've ever read. Always viewed as kiddie material, comics these days are far beyond that. Quite frankly, I'm not sure if I would of been able to understand today's comics back in the days and it's almost as if the industry has grown up right along with me. I started reading comics back in the early 90's when I was at a Madera Johnny Quik on my way home from a visit to the hospital (I can't quite remember for what, though). On the rack there I saw it and it jumped out at me. I remember thinking, this has to be the stupidest thing I had ever seen up to that point in my life: NFL Superpro #1. Yup, that was my first comic book, or "funny book" as my dad used to call them. I bought it and I laughed my ass off for all the wrong reasons. That shit was absolutely horrible. But, it was that book that lead my to start reading comics and the more I read them, the more I was pulled in by the Marvel Universe and it's many inhabitants. As the audience and creators got older and became bored with this universe, they began to create comics aimed at an older audience. A revolution was started and the mid-90's brought us the Image Universe, a creator owned imprint that would let artists work on characters spawned from their own imaginations and not have to worry about decades of back story and continuity issues. As good as it sounded, the end result wasn't what everyone thought it was going to be. The creative freedom didn't do much but create second rate characters with female sidekicks adorned with giant boobs and wraped around with shiny chromium hologram covers. Anything to sell books to my adolescent demographic and sometimes it worked, but I quickly lost faith. As did most people, it seemed. In turn, the industry was almost killed. Marvel was in shambles. DC was worse. And besides the brand name artists, Image was sucking big time. I went back and read my Superpro and thought "Geez, we haven't progress that much further than this, have we?" I flat out stopped reading comics.