What’s that in the corner?

Reading a Hellboy omnibus and the Good Lord and Mike Mignola remind me of three of my favorite comics panels of all time:

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The whole thing happens after some stupid noblewoman opens a box containing Satan’s head. Which turns out to be a fly, which flies into her mouth and possesses her. Later Hellboy and Abe get attacked by a chimp with a revolver. Who is actually the lady’s husband. Mignola wrote that.

No one does straight-faced noir mixed with gothic horror and camp quite like Hellboy. It’s one of those things I’m grateful I was alive to witness.

Well, hesh mah mouf, yawl

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Northerner writers: Ah’m available tew help y’all larn how to raht the most authentic southern dialogue you ever did see, sugah.

I learned it from the fella what cooked in my mama’s summer kitchen, who picked a fine banjo and fed me on cracklins and the simple wisdom of these hills

hashtag parenting

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Tom King wrote the hell out of The Vision. It's a lovely and terrible story that's three parts surburban desperation and one part straight-up horror. It has one of the most poignant and unexpected applications of Chekhov's gun I have ever seen.

Comics fans have been happy for a while now to see our favorite characters mainstreamed onto screens big and small. Such is our delight that we have quietly tolerated those movies and shows lagging about two decades behind the kinds of stories even mainstream commercial comics are willing to tell.

Every superhero movie's third act is essentially "now we punch robots". Tom gave us a robot who makes the compromises he must to protect his family, who does everything he knows to be right and still loses. Who might be willing to burn the world to keep them safe.

Rest in Peace, Bub

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Len Wein is a name you don't know if you aren't a comics nerd. He died today.

You may not know Len's name, but he probably touched your life. He co-created the modern era of the X-Men, including Wolverine and Storm. All those X-movies people paid billions to see came from his work. He co-created Swamp Thing with Bernie Wrightson, who also died during this evil shitheap of a year. That's just the start of what Len did.

The horrible thing about working in comics is that you can have an era-defining impact on Western culture, then sit back and watch everyone else but you get rich off your work. And you labor on, for love of the game, until you die in relative obscurity. That was Len, that was Bernie. And scores more before and yet to come.

It is cruel to behold, crueler still that he should die in an era with robber barons and granny-starvers and literal Nazis taking the wheel. Len wrought heroism and optimism for a living. He deserved to die at least in sight of that promised land.

May he return to the Green.

Lying Cat is the official mascot of 2017 →

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Yes, Lying Cat. And you're either thinking "of course" or "…whuh?" but either way I'm not going to explain too much, because you don't deserve Saga or Lying Cat without putting in the minimal work of reading the link.

Lying Cat is one of my favorite creations in all of comics. In no small part because of this scene with Sophie, a recently-liberated young girl who had been sold into sex slavery:

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I was going to make a Hitler joke because Lying Cat's partner is named The Will (though he does not triumph all that often), but to me the president* is less a Hitler than a reupholstered Biff Tannen.

I can do this all day...

76 years ago, two Jewish men from New York who worked for a major comics publisher decided to create a new hero that would be an advocate for the US entering the war against racism, fascism, and anti-semitism.

They created the Aryan ideal, dressed him up in the stars and stripes, and drew him punching Hitler in the goddamn face. It was not subtle.

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The only good Nazi is a punched Nazi.

That character caught on, and his legacy expanded until his real superpower became that he was the moral center of his storytelling universe. Captain America is essentially an avatar for goodness and protection of the weak. His most recognizable element is a shield.

Then Nick Spencer and Marvel turned him into a Nazi. And, worse, revealed that that entire three-quarters-of-a-century legacy didn't actually happen, not really. Not in the really real Marvel universe.

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Now, and it's hard to find images of this because Marvel's whacking them down as they come up, they're going to validate Nazi Cap by showing him effortlessly lifting Mjolnir, Thor's hammer. Which Thor is currently unworthy to lift because he's going through a bit of a personal crisis. But Nazis are worthy. If they're good Nazis.

Oh. I should probably stress that Thor's hammer is one of many Norse mythological symbols treasured by real-world Nazis. So Nazi Cap is being morally validated by a symbol co-opted by white supremacists. A hammer, no less. They are overjoyed.

Will a reversal happen? Of course. But the damage to Kirby and Simon's legacy is done and cannot be undone. And one gets the feeling that Nick Spencer dumped all over that legacy for no better reasons than to be provocative and mess with his critics. He has the luxury of doing this because he doesn't have any ancestors who were rounded up and put into camps, of course. He's gonna do a great toldjuhso dance, you guys.

Does it matter? Yep. There are Nazis in the White House as we speak. Nazis and robber barons looking to line their own pockets by starving the poor. Literal comic book villains. It matters.

The only thing we can do to this turd taco is point out that the taco is in fact full of turds. Or make fun of it. Which Skottie Young has managed to do, on the cover of an actual Marvel comic book:

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Probably should have put him in charge of Cap.