270. Blue Beetle

270. Blue Beetle
The Ted Kord Blue Beetle is one of my all-time favorite comic book characters. I like him for a variety of different reasons. He’s basically light-hearted Batman. He’s got all the skills, the gadgets and the money without all the brooding, mopey tragic bullshit (FYI, A well-adjusted Batman is my favorite Batman. Give me Brave & The Bold ‘toon Batman over Christian Nolan’s Batman any day). Plus he’s a genius (Batman’s smart, but Ted’s smarter). And he’s funny. Because he puts his wit out on display, everyone underestimates him and treats him like a joke. I like to think that’s a part of his great plan, even though he’s clearly been shown to be bothered when folks put him down. And to top it all off, he’s got a snazzy-ass costume. I challenged myself to do a Beetle redesign. It was tough to pull off a look that was reminiscent of his costume and something newish. I think I did okay. It really helped a lot when I discovered that beetles only have 6 legs, not 8, which I mistakenly believed. I’m a dumb guy.

And if you think I’m not furious that DC still hasn’t brought him back, you would be mistaken.

Also, I just learned that there briefly was a woman running around using Ted’s stuff calling herself “Red Beetle”. She was red. I guess this was in the Justice Society book just before Flashpoint/New 52. Apparently – according to the website I discovered this on – one of her powers is “Attractive Female”. Really? (Edit: To be fair, they list Ted’s powers as being an Attractive Male, so I guess that’s a thing).

I watched Repo Man. I didn’t enjoy it, and I think it’s a matter of not living up to the hype.

I also watched V/H/S 2. I believe I wrote about the first one somewhere here. I had liked it, but it had its problems. Part 2 improves on it in every way. It’s got a two clunker stories, but even those are pretty good. The wrap-around is also far more intriguing. But the real gem is the story called “Safe Haven”. Co-written and co-directed by Gareth Evans of The Raid. It’s a just slow-burning piece of tension that keeps mounting and finally erupts into a bedlam of batshit mayhem. The entire movie is worth watching for that segment alone.

269. Harley Quinn

269. Harley Quinn
Harley Quinn, to me, has always been an incredibly sweet, if not absolutely psychopathic character. She’s awesome and it seems like a hugely popular cartoon and award-winning graphic novel (Mad Love) would set the standard for how the character would be portrayed. Yet, every time she shows up without Bruce Timm & Paul Dini’s influence, she’s pretty much just a psycho-slut from hell. Her looks in the Arkham games and her New 52 appearance are pretty terrible, unless you’re a 12 year old boy. Which is weird, because mentally, I am. But her original costume is so great. So I decided to try to combine the overtly sexualized looks with her original and also a pinch of Juggalo.

268. Hawkwoman

268. Hawkwoman
This was a tough one. Not much to say about it.

Last night I had a chance to do a thing I haven’t done in a while – watch about 4 movies.

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark. Guillermo Del Toro produced remake of a tv movie directed by comic artist Troy Nixey. Nixey’s a fantastic artist and I would love to see him draw something again. He had a bit of a relationship with Mike Mignola for a while. The movie is just okay. Not really worth watching, except as background noise.

Tank. James Garner plays an Army officer with his own personal Sherman tank. He runs afoul of the local corrupt redneck law and winds up on an adventure with his son and a hooker. It actually feels a lot like an episode of The Rockford Files, which is probably why I enjoyed it so much.

The Girl Next Door. Pretty much a torture porn movie based on a novel by Jack Ketchum loosely based on a true story. Um, yeah. So if you like seeing a young teenage girl brutally tortured for 40 minutes, hey there you go, enjoy.

Devil. This is the M. Night Shyamalan produced movie about people stuck in an elevator and one of them is the devil. It got panned upon release, and people laughed in theaters when the trailer was making the rounds. Honestly, if M. Night’s name wasn’t so attached to it, I think more folks would have given it a fair shot. It’s pretty good. And M. Night has very little to do with it anyway outside of a “Story by” credit. It’s a tense, well done, claustrophobic movie. Also, maybe if the title of the movie didn’t give away the “twist”, it would have been better received. Basically, I’m saying give it a shot.

I also tried watch about 10 minutes of Flowers in the Attic and 20 minutes of the new Dracula series on NBC. Both were wastes of time.

267. Shadowhawk

267. Shadowhawk
1992 was a crazy year for comics. The founders of Image Comics changed the entire medium and joined together to break away from their corporate gigs – all of them the biggest names working in comics and Jim Valentino.

When the big news came out – Todd McFarlane, Rob Liefeld, Jim Lee, Erik Larsen, Marc Silvestri and Whilce Portacio were all superstars and working on the biggest books around at the time. And Jim Valentino. If you’re a person who a) knew who the hell he was; b) liked and was aware of the book he was working on (Guardians of the Galaxy); and c) was excited and understood why he was involved in the formation of Image, then you are a better person than I am. My only reaction was “Who?” And then Shadowhawk came out. And my only reaction was “What? Why?”

But of course I bought that first issue. I bought every first issue of every Image book coming out at the time. I never bought another issue of it. While working on this, I looked the character up on Wikipedia. I think I made the right choice.

To be fair to Valentino, if it wasn’t for him, Image never would have broken out of the stigma of being plotless, empty superhero rip-offs done by flaky creators. He brought a lot of diversity to the company as the publisher and as spearheading the ShadowLine imprint.

So anyhoo, Shadowhawk.

266. Riptide

266. Riptide
This was a tough one to get around and I absolutely failed. In the comics, Riptide – one of Mr. Sinister’s Marauders that killed a bunch of Morlocks in the Mutant Massacre – is pretty much always in human tornado mode. Looking him up, it took a while to find out what he’s wearing under the tornado. And the answer is: either a plain solid white bodysuit, or a plain solid purple bodysuit. I also found out that he was in the movie X-Men: First Class. He wears nice suits in that. He also made such an impression that I was completely unaware that he was in the movie despite having seen it at least twice. So basically, fuck Riptide.

The only comic I’ve read with this character was actually one of the first X-Men books I ever read, part of the aforementioned Mutant Massacre. In it, Riptide is spinning around, killing morlocks with throwing stars as Colossus charges him, grabs him by the throat and snaps his neck. It’s a great, memorable scene.

Anyhoo. This abomination happened.

265. Deadman

265. Deadman
I “get” the original look for Deadman. Boston Brand was a circus acrobat, so it sorta looks like that, crossed with a superhero costume. And a large “D” on his belly. For some reason. So going off that, I tried to base Deadman’s look on some Cirque Du Soliel-type outfits and makeup. Also, I wanted to retain some of the Kelley Jones style that I will forever and always associate with the character. Whenever he shows up looking “normal”, I just feel it’s absolutely wrong.

I tried to watch Arrow as it aired, but due to other Wednesday night obligations and general dislike of what I had seen, I gave up on it pretty quickly. It recently popped up on Netflix, so I decided to give it an honest binge-watching shot. I still don’t particularly love it. But it’s watchable. I do think I like it better than network television’s other big comic-related property, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. I think the characters are more engaging and less annoying and the overall story more intriguing, if not stretched to the very limits of tolerability. SHIELD’s characters (outside of Coulson & May) are vapid empties. When they are busy not making me give a crap about them or what they do, I am highly irritated by them and what they do. Arrow – while every single last character is a vapid empty – I am not annoyed by their presence. One thing SHIELD gets right: cutesy winks.

Both shows offer up a lot of winks and nods to comic fans with names of things and references to their universes and whatnot. SHIELD is a little more subtle and clever with them, though, and makes it seem like each and everytime it happens, it could be a possible plot point or something that comes later. Everytime Arrow does it, it’s like the writers have cold-stopped the show, walked onto the set and while looking at the camera, begin to scream directly to the viewer a sorrowful “THIS IS FOR YOUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!! ALL FOR YOUUUUUUU!!!!!!” and then break down into some shame tears.

So yeah, I think both are watchable, just not very good. I know not every show can be THE WIRE, or BREAKING BAD, or JUSTIFIED, or RESCUE ME, or the first couple seasons of DEXTER, or DOCTOR WHO, or THE LEAGUE, or IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA, or 30 ROCK, or THE WALKING DEAD, or…

Actually, y’know, there’s a fuckton of good tv shows out there, I feel like there’s almost no excuse to make mediocre shows anymore. Fuck you, Arrow and Agents of SHIELD! I’ll see you next week.

264. The Atom

264. The Atom
Unlike some other silver age characters that were eventually replaced with modern counterparts (Barry Allen, Hal Jordan), I have nothing against the Ray Palmer Atom. In fact, I’d almost say that I’m a fan. Unfortunately, this all stems from the only Ray Palmer Atom series I’ve really read, The Sword of The Atom, which saw the character transform from a sci-fi superhero to a sword-and-sorcery/fantasy/Warlord Travis Morgan-type character. And it was pretty great, though it has been years since I’ve read them.

But despite that, I found myself really enjoying the Ryan Choi Atom when he came along, and that is who I chose to draw here. His costume was a simple and perfectly fine upgrade of Ray’s (though the colors were positioned wrong). But I came up with this basic design of an Atom costume back in like 1996. You can see my microhero version of that original concept on the micros site. I changed up the colors here because it felt like I’d been using a ton of red lately and my quota is almost up.

Last night I watched Maniac starring Elijah Wood as a serial killer. Which isn’t much of a stretch. He’s got the crazy eyes. It was… okay. I know it’s a remake, but I’ve not seen the original. I don’t know if the basic concept is the same or not, but this one is shot entirely from Wood’s point of view. It’s a First Person Movie. There are one or two moments when we shift perspectives and a flashback or two, but we really only see him when he looks in a mirror, etc. It can take a bit to get used to. It’s gory and weird and a little overwrought. I’ve also never been a fan of Elijah Wood, so hearing him as a whiny psychopath for 90 minutes didn’t do anything to change my mind on that.

263. Jesse Quick

263. Jesse Quick
I pencilled this while drunk, inked it sober and colored it angry. A gamut of emotion.

Jesse Quick has had a crapton of costumes, none really fantastic. It’s hard to be a speedster character, particularly in the Flash family and have a unique look. Unfortunately, I don’t know that I did any real great shakes here. Ah well.

262. Hellcat

262. Hellcat
Patsy Walker is a weird character. Starting off as a romance/comedy character and becoming an Avenger. I don’t mind her original costume, but it is a little bland, especially for a character with a modelling background. I tried to fashion-up the costume, but there is a reason I’m not a fashion designer. Also, my first instincts were to make her costume red and black, which is so overdone, I knew those instincts were wrong. They’re still wrong with the choices I did make, but at least there’s no red.

261. Gladiator

261. Gladiator
I read a short story once in an old issue of Marvel Comics Presents featuring Gladiator. It was a pretty great introduction to the character and managed to explain his entire schtick and tell a compelling story in 8 pages. He was a reformed Daredevil villain who opened a costume shop. This kid comes in and wants a custom Gladiator costume with working blades. He makes the costume but realizes the kid is going to use it to become a villain. So he dresses up in his old costume and scares the kid straight. It was good and had weird art and I loved it. Being a reformed villain, he doesn’t show up too often, but when he does, I’m always a fan.

This redesign is trying to combine the elements of his costume with that of an actual roman gladiator without hopefully being too ridiculous. I do like his normal look, but also feel like it needs some change. Mostly the colors, I think.

Last night I “watched” Ghoulies II. And by that, I mean that I slept through the majority of it. I will not be picking up where I left off on it.