Ken Aldred

I was thinking about some Usagi this year too.

I read it as a stand-alone story. You should be fine.

Is that the current series by Waid and Mora? Heard good things about it.

Look forward to participating.

Buy the book, not the grade. Always been the rule if you’ve any concern about presentation vs grade. Same subjectivity as always. Rookie confusion, perhaps? We’ve all gone through that stage.

You left out this classic clash...

Several from the Ann Nocenti era... (X-Men villains) (Avengers villain) Mephisto - wonder why it took so long to use this one ? Too obvious?

I have the Absolute New Frontier book. It’s stunning.

Yup. Seconded. Cooke was an incredibly talented writer / artist. Capturing the feel of the Silver Age period superbly, with perfectly-matched artwork.

Colossus as well down there in the Savage Land, IIRC. A lot of frisky mutant behaviour going on.

To be fair, it is a first issue, and those are always valuable. (So I thought when I was a 12-year-old, anyway.)

Just watched the Xmas ‘Special’. I approached it from a car crash perspective, counting the number of times the writer would introduce ‘correctness factors’, but gave up after about 30-or-so minutes as it became a painful exercise in masochism. Plagiaristic and dull.

Yes, I know he’s not Martian. Just a similarity.

As an aside, the excellent Martian Manhunter series by Steve Orlando and Riley Rossmo has a very interesting and creative explanation as to why the Manhunter looked human when he was first transported to Earth.

Sadly true.

Yup. That’s what I’d been thinking as well. A Cro Magnon with a primitive chisel.

I always thought he was incredibly arrogant and narcissistic.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays !

I can imagine a similar decision was made for Jon Bernthal as The Punisher, being equally brilliant casting, judging from his classic graveyard monologue in season 2.

I’m currently watching seasons 1 and 2 of Netflix Daredevil on Blu-ray. Really excellent stuff. Compared to the current Phase, Marvel Studios garbage, it’s more sophisticated, thinking person’s super-hero material, with great dialogue about the grey areas of morality and the psychological effects of trauma and loss. Charlie Cox is perfect in the main role, and pleased that he’ll be back. Hopefully Disney will continue at the same standard with the upcoming adaptations. I know it’s wishful thinking, given their utter uselessness at present, but one can only hope.

There were some shapeshifting Martians and Venusians in Lee and Kirby’s monster / science fiction stories, and in EC’s Weird Science comics. It’s probably about infiltration and fears about recognising the outsider, society being undermined, manipulated and controlled invisibly at a high level, especially in those books as they were from the time of, or shortly after, the early 50s Red Menace scare and witch hunt period. In the case of Martian Manhunter, simply a case of avoiding any paranoia and fitting in, with the ECs, a darker, more extreme, covert military / political takeover. There’s the full spectrum of intent.

Well spotted.

Hawkworld by Tim Truman was excellent. That’s enough reason for it.