The Ottawa Comic Book Guy

Good day, and welcome back for those of my regular readers. At first, when my son went and made today's pick of a book for review, I was sighing a little on the inside, because he had picked another Superman book. But then, after hearing that news that Henry Cavill was now done as Superman in the DC movie franchise, I feel like this can be a good pick for things after all. The book I will be doing today is Adventures of Superman  # 618 (September 2003) "Four on the Floor, Break Stuff" - Writer: Joe Casey, Artist: Charlie Adlard, Colourists:  Tania and Rich Horie, Letterer: Comic Craft, Associate Editor: Tom Palmer Jr., Editor: Eddie Berganza Before we begin with what is happening in this issue, we need to quickly recap that in the last few issues before this one, Mxyzptlk has split himself into a pair of twins and has also decided to bother people by selling them encyclopedias door to door. (In the old days this actually happened, folks). BY the beginning of this...

If there is one thing that being a parent is teaching me, it's that kids are so consistently inconsistent. But there is one lesson we always try to teach them, and that's "Don't judge a book by its cover." My son doesn't follow that advice, he always seems to pick from the covers. In the case of today's book, he said: "Look at all the colours of the heroes, Papa," and chose this book. He then asked why there were so many Supermans? (When I answered I was informed there as a Shopkin named...this is for another column, perhaps?) Anyway, so today's choice is DC Comics Presents 80 (April 1985), which features a team-up between Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes (the above-mentioned "colours" since Shrinking Violet, Chameleon Boy, Ultra Boy, Phantom Girl and Element Lad and lots of Supermen.). One note before we start, the cover date for this book is the same month that Crisis on Infinite Earths begins, so this story will...

Well, as a recap, we have described the contents of the two Men of Steel series so far, and both stories contain a lot (for comic stories, anyway). Below is the best cover from both series, as far as I'm concerned: I begin by saying, that although both stories are about different parts of the Superman mythos, there is some commonality. The first series completely met its goal of introducing a new backstory to Superman, and eliminating all of the factors that DC was wishing to with regards to the new continuity of the DC Universe going forward. With a history spanning almost fifty years at the time (and with the character of Batman who was only a year "younger" having a major part of his story remain) Byrne did a heck of a job redefining the important parts going forward, especially establishing that the Kents live on to Clark's adulthood. (I have to say that as one of my not-so-favourite things about Pre-Crisis Superman, they had managed to de-age the Kents by al...

Good day, and I hope everything is well for you. I am happy, just cracked open my new edition of Overstreet Price Guide (this year is the 48th edition). I like looking at it before it gets all dog eared and used being in my knapsack for the next 360 days or so. I smirk as I look because a quick perusal of the book show that the Wasp turns 55 this year, with an accompanying story (been there, done that.) Today I shall continue with the review of the Man of Steel second series, 2018 edition. BOOK One The book begins on Krypton, where a figure by the name of Rogol Zaar is addressing a council made up of members of many alien races. He is delivering a speech which will potentially culminate in the end of Krypton. Cut to Metropolis, where Firefly and Killer Moth (two known Bat-villains) are discussing their move here and whether they are scared of...as Superman himself scoops them up. Superman then patrols Metropolis performing super-deeds, and ends up helping rescue people from a fi...

Good day, and welcome to our Man of Steel comparison as promised last time. Firstly though, long time readers of this space will remember my reaction to the announcement of the Buffy reboot. I am pleased that they have backed off of the idea of replacing Buffy and that they are going to have a new slayer telling stories in Buffyverse. It makes me think that this was the plan all along, and that they had announced it differently so that they could get some publicity out of it all (nothing generates more publicity these days then manufactured outrage) considering the environment the network was in when the news was revealed. Now on to the show.\ When we left off last time, John Byrne had come over from Marvel to DC to create the Man of Steel. Marv Wolfman, the writer of Crisis on Infinite Earths , and an old colleague of Byrne's from their joint time on the Uncanny X-Men , convinced Byrne to do it based on conversations they had before Byrne made the switch where Superman woul...

Good day, and I hope summer is treating you well. Thursday was an exciting day for me as my Kickstarter finally arrived, a collection of strips from the webcomic Irregular Webcomic!. Created by noted physicist and avid gamer Dr. David Morgan-Mar of Sydney, Australia, the strip itself features Lego mini-figurines and gaming figs as protagonists for various subjects such as Fantasy theme (which was the subject for the first collection which I also purchased), Space theme, Mythbusters, Steve Irwin vs Cthulhu, Pirates, Star Wars, and the like. But the theme that this book was based on was from the Indiana Jones franchise,which he has named Cliffhangers . The title of the collection I have received is Prepare for the Wurst! . It is hilarious and I recommend people check out this strip at:   http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/ . It's worth it. Now on to our topic for the day, the Man of Steel serieses. (I don't know what the plural here is. Is it series, like the singular, serie...

Good day, today begins the story I have to tell about the differences and similarities of the two Man of Steel series, the famous one from 1986 (right after Crisis on Infinite Earths) by John Byrne and 2018's version written by Brian Michael Bendis. Both represent new starts for the character in new eras. They contrast in that the original one was a hard reboot, and the newest one a soft one. Before we get too far into it today, the first thing we need to discuss is: why reboot? Usually, the reboot of a character is tied to the possible financial gains of a character. A new story (like movie reboots and resets), means you basically get to start over a character, and, at least at first, you don't even to try that hard as you are basically retelling the origin of the character (see Batman reboots and Spider-Man reboots; all have them have cleared insane amounts of dough at the box office, and I am guilty of falling for it myself. A reboot is usually done with a character th...

Good day, everyone. It's time for another "episode" of  Random Books, this time my son picked Adventures of Superman #637 (April 2005). When I asked him why, he gave this reaction: (This picture comes in so handy...) This book is from an era of Superman that my knowledge is lacking in, as I actually have some missing books from this period as the print runs were not as large. Not that it really matters here, of course, after all to qualify for this column, it has to be already in my collection. So before I completely chase you away, heeeeerrrrreeee's my review! Adventures of Superman #637 - "The Road to Ruin - Part Two) Writer: Greg Rucka, Pencillers: Renato Guedes and Matthew Clark, Inkers: Renato Guedes and Andy Lanning, Letterer: Rob Leigh, Colourists: Tanya and Richard Horie, Associate Editor: Tom Palmer, Jr.,  Editor: Eddie Berganza (This is a long list for one regular-sized book.) A flashback starts the book. In the Oval Office, President L...

Good day. We are back after a short hiatus for this thing that Prince called life. Today I am going to do a review of the latest book that my son picked out, saying he loved the big yellow man. So without further ado, here is a review of December 1980's issue of DC Comics Presents #28, featuring Superman and Supergirl. (Doesn't Mongul have a face that even a mother can't love?) There are two stories in this issue, the main one and a feature called "Whatever Happened to" that was a regular feature of this book during this time. This months feature is Johnny Thunder, Lawman (not the doofus with the magic T-Bolt, the other one.) Story 1 - "Warworld" Writer: Len Wein, Artists: Jim Starlin and Romeo Tanghal, Letterer: Ben Oda, Colourist: Jerry Serpe, Edied by Julie Schwartz. The story begins with Superman and Supergirl flying through space where Supergirl is recounting to her cousin his story of how he met Mongul before, and that Mongul got away...

If there are two truisms in life, one is that there is never enough time; although time itself is (allegedly) infinite, we humans have only a finite amount of it. This week has seen me working too much and family has taken up the rest of the time. (The other truism that taxes (cue Prinicpal Skinner's "oh yeah, the taxes" thing), which just depletes the resources needed for more comic books.) So, as I have not had enough of "me" time this week to begin writing my article on gorilla comics, I thought I would show some interesting covers of books of the subject I shall be covering soon. Luckily for me, school is winding down for the boy (meaning less school events to go to) and time should free up again soon. (Please note I am not complaining truly as I would do anything for my kids first and foremost.) So without further ado let's get our monkey on... I tried to get a mix of comic book companies, but DC has by far the mo...

I have had no time due to work and children to begin any articles yet, but I don't want to go too long without entries so..the good , the bad and the ugly of comics right now. (I can tell by the reaction on Boris' face, he's excited.) The last month and a half (from late April to about mid-June) has too many blockbuster movies for most geek budgets...I mean Avengers, Deadpool 2, Solo and another Jurassic Park movie all so close together? Come on, how much money do these people think we have? (Although, even in a role where she keeps her clothes on all the time, still awesome to see Emilia Clarke.) Judging by how under-expectations the box office take for Solo was, can we expect that movies may actually start going down in box office take? Speaking about money, after Amazing Spider-Man 800 and it's 57 cover variants, we are going to get yet another Amazing Spider-Man #1. And of course, after Action 1000, and a new Man of Steel , we are going to get yet anothe...