Another Sunday morning rolls around and here I am, still not entirely free of my cough, but soldiering on. Eventually I’ll catch up with all the posts I’ve missed, but until then, you’ve got this. And Flippin’ at some point this week, I hope. I’ve taken so long I think Burgas has forgotten he did his part already! My attention is even more divided than usual!
Sunday Morning Item! I had this one last week but didn’t use it for some reason, even though the key words of “Clown-themed Iron Maiden tribute band” and “multi-million dollar drug bust” should have put it to the top of my list.
Sunday Morning Item! Scientists are puzzled that butterfly tongues seem to predate flowers, and are wondering what they were there for. Obviously, it was for butterfly kisses….
Sunday Morning Item! The “best” thing about the President’s comments earlier in the week was that cable news had the word “shithole” onscreen for hours at a time. And then Rachel Maddow had to blushingly say the word herself once in order to “properly report” on things. (I’m pretty sure Lawrence O’Donnell was more than happy to say the word 😉 ) If you don’t have hours to wait for it, she says it at 14:47 in the video here (took her long enough!). Lawrence says it at 4:35 in, 3 times in the video below that.
Sunday Morning Item! Oddly enough, after I’d just mentioned this to my mom when the two senators appeared on Morning Joe together, this was the Final Jeopardy that same night. I swear to you, I did indeed make the anagrams comment! (question/answer image taken from J! Archive.)
Sunday Morning Item! The New York Post had a headline this week about “Why JFK Went to Hell”, and it took me a bit to realize they meant the airport and not the President….
Sunday Morning Item! I don’t really care that much about Conan, even though the book was a big influence on Cerebus (clever self-promotion…), but I found it interesting that Marvel announced they were getting the license again nearly a year before they’re set to use it. I guess that’s why Dark Horse has been putting out the Omnibus collections, knowing they weren’t doing more with the character but wanting to still make some money off it, but I wonder if the Robert E. Howard people pressured them to not do any more with him since they wanted Marvel to take him on, or if them not doing much led REH and/or Marvel to start talking. And is he going to be integrated into the Marvel Universe, like in this picture? How about the movie universe? Maybe a world Thanos is attacking has a barbarian culture on it still?
Sunday Morning Item! From a newspaper semi-local to me:
Sunday Morning Item! Pants Knife! (Ok, that came from a conversation we were having behind the scenes here. Maybe I’ll mention it again when the context is revealed. For now, enjoy as is!)
Sunday Morning Item! The Pope’s a pervo!
See you next week when another Sunday morning rolls around!
I was kind of bothered by the Conan announcement, to be honest. Dark Horse has done very well by the barbarian; the only real fumble was Brian Wood’s run, and that wasn’t BAD. It just wasn’t really Conan. Whereas when Marvel had it, the quality really depended on whether or not Roy Thomas was involved. When he wasn’t, the best we got was Chuck Dixon, and those stories were just on the high side of okay. Also, I’m not really landing on any Marvel artists that would be a good fit; freely granting I’m not that current, but it seems like most of them are doing that sort of hybrid manga/Humberto Ramos bigfoot thing. There’s nobody that’s got that gritty John Buscema, Tony DeZuniga, Ernie Chan vibe. Are the Kubert boys still doing Marvel work?
The other thing I wonder is whether non-Howard Conan adaptations are on the table. Been working my way through some of the books I missed in the 1990s and beyond. Robert Jordan in particular, and also Leonard Carpenter did some pretty good stuff that nobody remembers (– well, except for weirdos like me. ) Some good source material there.
Conan with Marvel?! Ugh. I agree Dark Horse has done an outstanding job with the franchise. Even the letters pages with the mini-comic, The Adventures of Two-Gun Bob, are a fun read month to month. Marvel? Marvel doesn’t even do well with their own franchises anymore.
I do admit it was Brian Wood, and in no small part Becky Cloonan’s covers, which got me into Conan again. I agree it wasn’t the same Conan we all knew, but it was still good. In my opinion it started very strong, and I would not argue it wavered towards the end. And then Fred Van Lente took the reigns and just nailed a perfect Conan! He did a marvelous job acknowledging what Wood had just produced by using it to help Conan grow into the Conan we know so well, and then he simply moved forward with some fantastic fantasy tales. I felt like it was a cool nod from pro to pro. I stopped when Cullen Bunn took over. I’ve been burned by some Bunn comics and decided that was my exit.
Luckily I completed a collection of the first Marvel series in singles. I’ll use the Dark Horse hiatus as an excuse to bust those out. I can’t wait for the nostalgia – the smell of 40+ year-old paper and ink, and good old fashioned swords and sorcery!
I’m (ahem) flippin’ through the Marvel Previews to see who they have, and thought Mike Deodato Jr. might be good, and then I realized I didn’t know who did the art that I posted, and now I see it was him, so yeah, I guess I’m not the only one. Maybe Leinil Francis Yu? Otherwise, yeah, not seeing anyone who looks gritty enough.
Adam Kubert was doing the latest iteration of Peter Parker Spectacular Spider-Man, but I’m not sure if he’s on a break or just off it now. With him, he might need to start now to get enough of a jump on a Conan book in 2019 😉