POBB July 4, 2025

Pick of the Brown Bag

July 4, 2025

by

Ray Tate

It's a trio of retreads for this week's shorter than usual Pick of the Brown Bag.  The length is due simply because, well, there's little new to see here.  So this is more of a POBB alert to save your money.

The most disappointing of the lot comes from writer Jinx and artist Shaky Kane.  Magic Lantern, cool name, basically takes the movie The Fly and mixes it up with thin political and religious satire.

Elon Gates.  See, how thin it is?  Elon Gates marries a pop singer Pearl and with her produces a sickly daughter.  To restore her to health, Elon begins working with the obscure energy force Orgone.  

Orgone--no, Siri, not a misspelling--is essentially the energy of the orgasm manifested as some kind of invisible field or plasma, depending on what nut-bar you talk to. 

Orgone was "discovered" in the nineteen-thirties by Freud cult member and all around fruitcake Dr. William Reich.  He used to toss naked women into Faraday Cages and claimed to collect Orgone, somehow, to hopefully cure cancer.  Laudable goal.  Horribly misguided approach.

In Magic Lantern the Orgone investigation leads Elon to create a transmogrifying device which he uses to turn water into wine.  Okay.  

This inspires Elon to scrape DNA samples from the Shroud of Turin.  He intends to fuse Jesus with himself to become a being that cures cancer.  Alas, there's a fly in the ointment.

Magic Lantern's best element.  The art.  Shaky Kane is a cross between Jack Kirby and Robert Crumb.  Damn fine, unique artwork.

The story however doesn't really even rate as a parody.  It's a direct rip-off.  The plot is the same right down to the strange fly with a "white head."  

If you haven't seen the 1958 Fly, it's worth a watch.  Because of its Twentieth-Century Fox history, the movie likely lies in a rights gray area and available from a number of sources.  If you wait long enough, you may be able to watch it on Svengoolie, Elvira or Joe Bob Briggs.  Don't pay for it.  It's not that good.

Next on the list, the reliable Chip Zdarsky and artists Valerio Schitti and Frank Martin rearrange Captain America's history to make it agree with the sliding scale of Marvel time and Marvel continuity.  Essentially, Captain America is Spider-Man Chapter One.

In that series, Marvel hired John Byrne to write and illustrate Spider-Man, as adjusted for then modern times.  So you would get things like Flash Thompson with an earring or Mary Jane carrying a big portable phone.  That series would have been completely without merit if not for John Byrne rendering Spider-Man.

This Captain America reorganization doesn't have that kind of backing.  It's not bad.  It's just not necessary and overpriced.  However, it's also not without merit.  If you don't mind the walk down memory lane, you will get a good short story.

It's great to see Captain America just be Captain America.  He's not dark.  I had to sort through multiple covers just to find the Frank Miller one.  All the rest were sad Captain America.

Look at that! Proper Captain America shield action!  He aims the shield in one panel.  It flies multiple times in another.  

The slow artistic representation of the shield has been a huge pain for me when trying Captain America books.  Too many artists want to storyboard the shield, frame by frame.  Not this one.  So double points for that.

The short story has a beginning, middle and end all which depend on the Captain's characterization.  

And that's where the novelty ends.  After this lovely vignette, you get Captain America interacting with Iron Man, the Fantastic Four.  Establishing he hasn't joined the Avengers yet.  He returns to the Army...Um...Yeah.  There's also a juxtaposition with Captain America's story and a kid named David Colton, who I'm sure is important for somebody.  Just not me.

Last but not least is the debut of Krypto The Last Dog of Krypton.  I love Krypto.  I wasn't all that excited about the new  Superman movie until they presented Krypto in the trailer.  

The premiere issue of Krypto is more of the same.  It's Krypto's origin, just longer.  Though not excruciating.

Krypto's origin isn't frequently covered all that much, and younger readers just may not know it.  So, this is the only book out of the three that actually has some reason to exist.

Writer Ryan North reminds readers that Krypto wasn't Superman's dog.  He was Jor-El's and Lara's dog.

Kal-El is the newest addition of the family.  Krypto adopts baby Kal-El as his family.

Yeah.  That's freaking adorable.  Mike Norton and Ian Herring are behind the Krypto artwork.  Perfect choice.  Krypto in the comics is always a normal looking dog amongst normal looking people.  He's not a cartoon dog sticking out amidst the cast of Superman.

As in the original, Jor-El and Lara use Krypto to test baby Kal-El's rocket because they are running out of time.  Krypto's origin plays out against the backdrop of Krypton's doom.

Something catastrophic happens. 

You know what?  They do.  They really do love Krypto.  They never meant for this to happen.  How could they prepare for the incalculable?

If anything, Krypto redeems Jor-El, who in the original tale solely sent Krypto, still the family dog, out into space as a test subject.  Having Lara as his fellow scientist adds knowledge to the experiment.  It should not have happened.  Their joint love for Krypton cannot be questioned. 

Krypto of course crash lands on earth, fifty miles shy of Metropolis, and there he meets a new friend.  Though not a certain bespectacled, mild-mannered reporter.  Thus the mini-series finally bestows something new to Krypto's origin.

  

 

POBB January 25, 2022

Pick of the Brown Bag

January 25, 2022

by

Ray Tate

Welcome to the Pick of the Brown Bag.  Here I review the current comic books on the racks.  

It sounds simple enough, doesn't it? Yet reviewing comic books requires a certain level of care when providing explanations.  

Comic books demand their own jargon.  The problem is; if you spoke it, only comic book nerds would understand it.  Some of the jargon grown mimetically over the years is relatively simple.  

Continuity, for example, can be defined as the contextual history of a character or comic book universe.  As opposed to history, which is just that.  When created and/or when the comic book company published the figure.

I always meant for the Pick of the Brown Bag to be read by anybody with the slightest interest in comic books.  For that reason I frequently need to mangle the English language.  I take no pleasure in it.

She-Hulk created by Stan Lee and John Buscema first debuted in 1980.  Silk is about eight years old historically.  Both heroes feature in multiple volumes of comic book series and mini-series.  She-Hulk of course more.

So how do I phrase our current subjects? Issue number one of She-Hulk and Silk.  Except that's nonsensical.  How can this issue of She-Hulk be number one when she debuted in 1980?

The answer is that these are the number one issues of the latest volumes of She-Hulk and Silk.  You see how clunky that sounds?  Like I said.  I take no pleasure the twists.  

In any case, should you not have time for the deep cuts of the POBB, try the lean ones on Twitter: #PickoftheBrownBag.  Mmmn.  Tasty.

You know.  What with the unvaccinated spreading COVID, Russia threatening the Ukraine, Manchin, Sinema, Tennessee, the news isn't so hot.  But here's a story that only a misogynist will diss.  Meet the youngest woman to fly solo around the world.

And now back to our main feature....

Shot by mobsters, attorney Jennifer Walters receives a blood transfusion from infamous cousin Bruce Banner and becomes the Savage She-Hulk.  Though savage, She-Hulk retains more marbles than the Incredible Hulk.   As time passes, Jennifer gains even more control over her alter-ego, eventually joining the Avengers and the Fantastic Four.

Under the auspices of Rainbow Rowell, Roge Antonio and Rico Renzi She-Hulk returns much in the way fans remember her: emerald green near seven-foot lawyer.

We join Jennifer as a work in progress.  For reasons unknown to me, she's been downgraded by life to struggling.

The person she's fighting is arch-nemesis Titania.  Originally, Titania was a one-note villainess introduced in Marvel's Secret War, but the half-life for super-strong punks is quite long in the Marvel Universe.  

They're ideal for showing off a new hero's chops or providing some nostalgic face time with an old favorite.   The Wrecking Crew fits this definition nicely.

Titania graduated to a B List protagonist thanks to Al Ewing's Immortal Hulk.  There she became a Canadian government operative alongside her lover, the fan-favorite Crusher Creel also known as The Absorbing Man.   

For that reason, combined with Titania's shared continuity with She-Hulk, the fight doesn't really go as planned.  Rowell with a light touch suggests a refreshing and appealing alternative to the mindless slugfest.

After defusing the situation, Jennifer reunites with one of her colleagues from another volume of She-Hulk.

You can't really call Mallory Book a friend.  She even fronted an organization to destroy She-Hulk.  However, her rational for hiring Jen makes sense, offering the chances for a lot of conflict and interesting situations.  

Jen's fortunes really change when she checks in on her best friend Janet Van Dyne.

Rowell very wisely and keeping with the mood points out that She-Hulk's descent really cannot be that far with friends like Janet.  The Wasp is generous to a fault.  Hell, she adopted the daughter of former husband Hank Pym and his first wife Maria.  I hope to see Nadia Van Dyne guest star in future issues of She-Hulk.  As well as Tigra, but that's a given.  At the present time, in the conclusion, Jen must deal with a much more colorful arrival.

Now, it's no accident She-Hulk returns with her full faculties just as Marvel will debut a She-Hulk stream-series on Disney Plus.  Starring Orphan Black's Tatiana Maslany.  So what? For a She-Hulk fan that's a win-win.  We don't care why it was done, just that somebody did it.

Silk is Cindy Moon, the second person to be bitten by a radioactive spider, in Marvel continuity.  A contrived incarceration is the reason why you never saw or read about a Silk/Spider-Man dynamic duet.  She's out of her cell/bunker now and web-slinging amidst the Marvel Universe.

She possesses an eidetic memory and works for J. Jonah Jameson at The Daily Bugle.  Well, it's not the venerable newspaper.  It's a platform called Threats & Menaces, but it translates to the same thing.  The incarceration made her decades behind when absorbing technology.  This leads to some amusing moments.

Cindy however is a reporter, not a photojournalist, investigating a museum break in.

This leads to a supernatural threat.  

So, far Silk is pretty entry-level stuff.  The threat's new and has a nice old school horror vibe.  Emily Kim creates a pleasant personality for Cindy and Takeshi Miyazawa generates some inviting artwork for the eyes.  Really, what more can you want in a comic book?