Your attitude doesn't light my cigarettes any faster

In the interest of space, I'm dropping "Panel of the Day" from the subject lines and adding it as a tag to these posts. Check Robot 6 tomorrow for my full review of Atomic Robo: Dogs of War.



Robo and the Sparrow sneak with a homemade battering ram past distracted guards in Atomic Robo: Dogs of War #4 (by Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener).

Welcome to the X-Men, Molly...

I don't really have any commentary on the cover to Runaways #10 other than it looks really cool and... is that Spiral's helmet Molly's wearing? Maybe not.

At any rate, it sounds like a promising start to the post-Terry Moore issues. Not that I'm at all happy to see Moore go. I've been enjoying his and Humberto Ramos' time on the series.

For that matter, I can't find confirmation that #10's writer Christopher Yost will be the new full-time writer of the book. And even if he is, I wasn't 100% satisfied with his last Runaways story. That could've just been happenstance though and not indicative that Yost doesn't know what to do with Molly. If he is taking over the book, he's certainly off to a good start by focusing on her in #10.

Okay, I guess I did have some commentary.

Where's Hawkeye?

Not the Hawkeye in the picture there. That's actually Daredevil-villain Bullseye pretending to be Hawkeye. What I'm wondering is if Marvel's at all planning to address the issue that there's already a superhero calling herself Hawkeye out there. And doing it with the blessing of the original hero to use that name.

I'd hoped for a while that this would be addressed in Dark Reign. After all, the Young Avengers were going to appear in Mighty Avengers, but that turned out just to be Stature and the Vision. There's going to be a Dark Reign: Hawkeye mini-series, but that's all about Bullseye. And even the Dark Reign: Young Avengers mini-series sounds way more excited about introducing the Young Masters of Evil than about pitting Kate Bishop against Bullseye in a Battle for the Quiver or whatever.

On the other hand, DR:YA writer Paul Cornell says that he "just loves Hawkeye completely," so maybe he's planning to address it and it's just not part of the publicity. I'm really hoping that's the case.

Return of the Invisible Woman

I've been missing the Invisible Woman and the rest of the Fantastic Four since I broke up with them. Not enough to make me buy more of their comics as long as Mark Millar and Brian Hitch are making them, but I've been looking forward to the day a new creative team was announced.

In the meantime, I figured I'd take the edge of with the Dark Reign: Fantastic Four mini-series. After all, writer Jonathan Hickman is no slouch and a Dark Reign tie-in will undoubtedly feel more like a "real" FF title than Millar's weirdness did.

Then, at NYCC the weekend before last, Marvel announced that Hickman will actually be the new writer of the Fantastic Four ongoing. What's more, he's spinning his run out of the Dark Reign mini and he'll be joined by Dale Eaglesham, one of my favorite comics artists. Good times coming.

Yuki7 and the Art of Kevin Dart

I found this picture at Ted Mathot's blog and wanted to know more about the character it depicts: the stylish Yuki 7. Seems like a great Action Girl kind of character, eh? Well, Mathot says that she's the creation of Kevin Dart, an artist I've had in my sidebar (along with his studiomate Chris Turnham) for a while.

When I originally added Kevin and Chris' site to my bookmarks, all they had was an astoundingly excellent gallery of posters for fake movies like The Deadly Bikini Girls of Shark Island and Scubagirl. Now they have a blog and Dart's got a blog, and having discovered them, I'm still cleaning up bits of exploded brain from my keyboard. I could seriously spend the rest of my life making up stories based on Dart's posters and die a happy man.

I still don't know too much about Yuki 7 other than she's a '60s-style spy character from what Mathot calls "an upcoming book project." Whoever she is, I'm looking forward to reading more about her when Dart's book comes out.

Writing is Hard: The Idea Dam

Otis Frampton has an excellent post about the myth of Writer's Block. I totally agree with him and I encourage any aspiring writer to go and read it. I especially love the part where he says, "If you need prompting to write, you may not be a writer. If you need someone to tell you what to draw, you may not be an artist." Hard words to hear maybe, but I support him in declaring that they're true.

That's all preaching to the choir as far as I'm concerned though. I'll gladly stand up and clap at all that, but where his post was particularly helpful to me was his analogy of the writer as a dam. He says, "Artists and writers should create because they have a primal urge to do so, not because they think they should or can or might possibly be able to one day if only they read the right books or take the right class."

(Or, I might add, talk to the right authors. I've forgotten how many times I've heard the annoyance in an author's response when someone asks, "Where do you get your ideas?" What the asker really wants to know is, "How can I be as successful as you without having to think up my own stuff?" That kills me, but I'm digressing. Back to Otis' analogy.)

Otis says, "Writers and artists have creative reservoirs built up behind the dam and let it pass through as much as is humanly possible without causing a tidal wave, they don't pray for rain." I love that visual. It's how I feel, but it's also a challenge because I've been living in fear of the tidal wave. I'm doing better lately, but I've been holding back out of the irrational concern that if I just let the ideas flow, they'll get out of control, flood the banks, and I'll lose all of them. So, I've been damming them up and letting out a faucet-sized trickle a little at a time.

This isn't a declaration that I'm opening the dam wider or anything. These Writing is Hard posts are mostly just for me to refer back to later and this one is simply an acknowledgment that I should be more liberal in my output. But the fear - though crazy - is real and I'll need to take baby steps to overcome it.

Visualizing the dam is going to be helpful though, so thanks again to Otis for that.

To the Batephant!

A friend sent me this and I had to share.

Oh, Adam West. Is there no end to your awesomeness?

You... Just... Got... BACON'D!

Now this is a reality show I would watch.

Panel of the Day: Nice Shooting, Tex!

Brought to you by Atomic Robo: Dogs of War #2 (by Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener).

Giant Snow-Monster vs. Archangel Alpha

Zigfreid: Snow-Monster Hunter



By Sebastien Gallego.

Archangel Alpha



Robert Hood has the scoop on a live-action scifi-romance inspired by mech-style anime. They're not fighting giant monsters, but it's still a giant robot movie and the stills look promising.

Rogue and Con

The same guy who photographed that Mary Marvel costume last week also took this picture. Fantastic costume.

I have fond memories of the brown jacket/green-and-yellow costume wore during the Jim Lee era, but this is actually my favorite outfit of Rogue's. I think it's the mysterious, cloak-and-hood look that feels so appropriate to her name and character.