Speaking of Dan Slott...

FURTHER props go to the man for The Thing #10 (August 2006), with lovely artwork from Kieron Dwyer. This was back in the day when Iron Man was still friends with everyone, Captain America was still alive and Marvel mags were still allowed to be fun.

In this ish, readers see the Texas Hold'em poker tourney to end all tourneys featuring a swag of cool heroes, including some great cameos from the likes of Man-Thing (!), Impossible Man, Black Goliath and the GLX.

What else? We get to see The Thing and Squirrel Girl team up to take out the Bi-Beast. We find out Ben Grimm is Jewish and he organises a bar mitvah!

And we get to see The Thing lose to Flatman, which inspires the GLX to change their name (yet again) to the Great Lakes Champions.

All in all, a simply fantastic issue. Shame it was the last one in the series.

Damn you, Marvel.

Comic brilliance: She-Hulk #21

BETTER late than never, I just wanna give props to Dan Slott & Ty Templeton's last issue in their brilliant run on the second She-Hulk series.
With Marvel getting all mega-serious (well, more than usual) - House Of M, Civil War, Captain America's death, etc - it's nice to see Slott valiantly try to keep some fuckin' humour in the company.
Big thumbs up to Rick Burchett and Cliff Rathburn's art, too.

Anyway, I'd love this issue anyway - just 'cos it features my two all-time fave second-stringers 3-D Man (above) and Captain Ultra (below) - but Slott & Templeton excell themselves with a plot that cleverly explains away every single fucking mistake ever made in Marvel continuity!!

Yep, how do you explain away 3D Man (who's been retroactively written out of continuity), a tiny Armadillo (as seen in Thunderbolts) and the decidedly different Monica Rambeau/Pulsar/Captain Marvel (from Nextwave)?

Well, in She-Hulk #21, it turns out all these "anomalies" are actually tourists from Earth A who come to Earth B (our Earth) via a dimensional portal run by an unscrupulous businessman (and his Earth B counterpart) and play superheroes while on holidays. Without checking up on current continuity, these Earth A dipshits fuck up stuff and cause mass confusion.

In the end, all the replicas get sent back to Earth A via the same portal although, according to Reed Richards, "It's hard to put a technological genie back in the bottle. We can probably expect more holes to Earth A in the future."

A nearby cop bellows, "What? So when something messed-up happens, we have to assume it's because of some idiot...who couldn't be bothered to take five minutes to read their darned handbook?!"

Hmmm...do you pick up the sub-text here? It seems someone (not pointing any fingers) is taking a huge dig at certain Marvel writers who can't be bothered to get their continuity straight.

Like I said, it's funny stuff and somehow works as a way to patch an ongoing problem at Marvel (they also use this concept to cleverly give She-Hulk her powers back after she lost them in Civil War thanx to Iron Man).

I'm gonna miss Slott and Templeton - these guys seem to truly care about making great Marvel comics.

A LOOK BACK: Death of the original JLA

I WAS never a huge Justice League Of America fan, but I remember how excited I was in the late 80s to discover the new series of the Justice League in my local newsagency. It was different to anything else being put out by DC at the time: smartly written, well-drawn and, best of all, very funny. BWAH-ahahahahahahahaha!

I rode the Giffen/DeMatteis/Maguire wave of greatness for more than two years until it crashed into that shore of comic-dom mediocrity known as the early 90s (the four-colour equivalent to the "one-day-wonder video porn shite" made during that time).

Anyway, Justice League was pretty cool, but what made it more even more amazing was how it was the complete opposite to what had come before. 'Cos what had come before in the old JLA comic was god-awful. I mean, universally reviled by nearly all fans, from what I seem to recall.

Recently, I unearthed some old JLA mags including #259-61 (Feb.-April, 1987) from the always excellent Elizabeth's Bookshop in Pitt Street, Sydney...and I bought them just to see if the pre-"new" Justice League period really was as crap as I remember.
Guess what? It was really, really CRAP.

FIRST up, I bought an early issue (#241, Aug. 1985) in the tragic final run of JLA. This was at a time when all the big guns like Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman had left the league and the team had relocated from their base above the earth to...Detroit (?!?).
Leading the team was perennial B-grade loser Aquaman (who actually quit in this issue...not that anyone cares), supported by veterans Zatanna and Martian Manhunter (who would become much more interesting in the relaunched Justice League, but was still kinda dull at this stage).
Rounding out the team were newcomers Vixen, Steel, Gypsy and the obnoxious Vibe - four more inept, boring heroes you couldn't hope to find, yet here they were stinking up the once-prestigious JLA.

Jesus, they were so bad The Outsiders would've rejected them.

Anyhow, #241 is of interest 'cos it brought back Amazo, the android creation of evil scientist Professor Ivo, who would go on to destroy the JLA 18 months later.
Another final thing: the "creative" team on the title at this time were two old hacks, writer Gerry Conway and penciller George Tuska. This, more than the line-up, indicated how little DC cared about JLA at the time.
The letters pages also make fascinating reading. Editor Alan Gold wrote a defensive editorial: "For some reason I can't fathom, a small number of disgruntled readers are dead certain...I've been suppressing a mass of negative reviews for this magazine."
So he published two anti-JLA letters about #237, prefaced with this curious comment, "I count five more or less dissatisfied correspondents for this issue; compare that number with the number of correspondents overall (Just for the record, there aren't that many gushing effusions of unmitigated delight, either; but that's OK, because we're not 100% happy with what we've achieved ever month, either, you know)."
What an odd, yet frank, admission.

JM DeMatteis was on board as the title's writer when the decision was made to kill off the title (and the team). Basically, JM laid the groundwork for the relaunch of a more entertaining, more internationally focused Justice League and he went balls-out to end the old league in memorable fashion. It's a pity he was lumbered with shitty penciller Luke McDonnell (who also stunk up Suicide Squad and Iron Man during the 80s).

The saga began in #258 (which I couldn't locate, unfortunately) - with the Legends miniseries as a backdrop (where the public was being manipulated into fearing and hating DC's superheroes) - when Professor Ivo sent android assassins to off the league. It began with Vibe and, as you can see, it was a success.

As the group mourned Vibe (thank God, 'cos the readers sure didn't...more on that later), Gypsy was stalked by another assassin in #259. While the misleading cover hinted at her death, she actually survived, but fled the JLA and returned to her family. So that was her out of the picture.

Although more robot than human, Steel also had a fatal encounter with an Ivo android in #260.

That left Vixen and Manhunter to hunt down Ivo and his assassins in #261. Turns out an Ivo look-alike android was murdering the JLA while the real Ivo had gone mad and was locked in a room in a straitjacket. Not that anyone cared. The JLA was finished and so was the series.

And, just to rub it in - with the old JLA's body still warm - there were not one but TWO ads promoting the new Justice League series in #261.

The final letter in the final letter column summed up the majority of readers' feelings on the death of this incarnation of the JLA, "OHHH, THANK YOU, LORD!!! VIBE IS GONE!!!!!!!! YAYYYYY!!!!!!!! GREAT MOVE, PEOPLE!!!!!!"

Next to that letter ran the second ad with this accompanying blurb: "BEGINNING: A NEW ERA OF GREATNESS FOR THE JUSTICE LEAGUE. ON SALE NEXT MONTH!

Now, that's cold.

Hayden Panettiere in "Men's Vogue"

THANK you, God.

I just went to the Anthony Mundine press conference...

SEEMS Choc’s the “Not So Cocky Man” nowadays. Anthony Mundine was very humble at the press conference, held at the Sydney Entertainment Centre (just down the road from where I work). He showed a few sparks of brashness during the 30-minute event, but mainly he just seemed unsure of himself in front of the gathered media, friends and curious onlookers.

The main reason he'd called the press conference was to announce an WBA supermiddleweight optional title defence on December 10 against Jose Alberto Clavero in Sydney.

This is despite the fact doctors, friends and his sleazy management team all wanted him to retire after he received a serious eye infection back in August. He has blurry vision in his left eye and may never regain full vision. Basically, Mundine will be fighting next month with one eye.

It was a fascinating experience watching The Man in action on the mike. He has undeniable charisma in the flesh.

But he also seemed very vulnerable up on the dais, the arrogance is gone...for the moment anyway.

I've never liked Mundine. I've always cheered every opponent he's faced, hoping to see Choc get KOed.

But after today, I almost feel sorry for The Man and - I can't believe I'm saying this - I'll be barracking for him on December 10.