Essential shelf life of a comic collection

Like I said there are a few things about my new bookshelf that I couldn´t get into my last post so let´s just continue. Like I already mentioned, the plan was to put all the ESSENTIALS on one shelf and all the SHOWCASE PRESENTS on another because there were a lot of those on my desk.

( Doc Ock marrying Aunt May - not as creepy as having sex with M J )

When you have read comics as long as me ( roughly forty years now ) your comic collection is scattered all over the house and there were some of those in my old bookshelf but most ESSENTIALS were in a cabinet.

Now my reasoning was that if I put all the DC SHOWCASE PRESENTS and MARVEL ESSENTIALS in the new bookshelf there would be a lot of free space in the cabinet where I could then put all the single issues I put aside to re - read or read for the first time like Tom DeFalco´s and Paul Ryan´s marathon run on FANTASTIC FOUR where Reed Richards and Doctor Doom kick the bucket that will be featured in an upcoming DEATH IN COMICS post, Norm Breyfogle´s PRIME for Malibu Comics or the second volume of THE FLASH that were also part of the big piles of comics on my desk.

That part did work out but I soon discovered that I had much more ESSENTIALS than SHOWCASE PRESENTS so I made one shelf just with ESSENTIALS and one shelf with the rest of the ESSENTIALS and all the SHOWCASE PRESENTS. But it´s only natural that I have more ESSENTIALS than SHOWCASE PRESENTS because - at least in my opinion - the Marvel stuff is always a good investment while the DC reprints depends heavily upon if you have a nostalgic connection to the title in question or not.

( the Luck Lords were the mystery villains in the first story of Mark Waid´s and George Perez´ run on THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD from 2007 )

And that´s no DC bashing on my part. It´s just the fact that when Marvel started out they had far better writing and art than their distinguished competition. The stories by writers like Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Marv Wolfman or Gerry Conway were much better, their heroes were not as two dimensional as the rest of the caped community and they still hold up to what is written Today. If you compare it to the current output from Disney I´d even say it´s superior. Yes, there are still a handful of titles worth reading like DAREDEVIL but for the main part you just bury your head in shame if you don´t outright want to kill yourself afterwards. There is a reason why most of my Marvel reading nowadays is old stuff and every time I have finished another ESSENTIAL, MARVEL MASTERWORK, Epic Collection or one of the pocket books from Panini UK I always have the same thought : It´s not that difficult. Why can´t the writers of this day and age write a decent story ? And what happened to editors who were supposed to read the stuff before it sees print ? Who knew something about the title and all of the characters that appear within its pages ?

But let´s not dwell on that and come back to comparing the ESSENTIALS to the SHOWCASE PRESENTS collections which gives Marvel an advantage since they started in the Bronze Age. Okay, technically Timely started in the Golden Age but those are not the comics you find in the ESSENTIALS. 

( back then Marvel made horror comics instead of horrible comics )

For newer comic readers this may seem like a brilliant plan to put the comics that were more interesting for a select number of comic collectors in the more expensive MARVEL MASTERWORKS hardcover collections.

The truth is that the MARVEL MASTERWORKS collections were already part of Marvel´s publishing program and they included Golden Age comics like THE HUMAN TORCH, the first CAPTAIN AMERICA series, Atlas Era horror mags or the monster comics by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby but also comics with an appeal for a broader reading audience like AMAZING SPIDER - MAN, UNCANNY X - MEN, AVENGERS, HULK, FANTASTIC FOUR or THOR.

( is there a bi - sexual subtext to these contests of strength in THOR ? )

The problem was that not many comic fans are willing to pay 50 - or nowadays 75 - bucks for a hardcover even if the pages are meticulously restored and re - colored and the book contains a lot of extra material.

And a lot of comic readers don´t have that kind of disposable income where you can spend 75 bucks on just one book. Even if you don´t take advantage of the sort of price cuts you can get at online bookstores like amazon or Thalia where you can probably get two omnibus books for that money or something between 6 and 9 trade paperbacks. For some people 75 dollars is their entire comic budget for one month and they would rather spend it on 3 hardcovers or 5 trades than on one single hardcover. 

If you are a huge fan of the character or the artist or if it contains one of your favorite stories you might be able to swallow the hefty price tag but for most comic readers it´s not a big option. I myself own four MARVEL MASTERWORK books of which the first one contains an Avengers story I always wanted to read and I just grabbed the chance when it was offered at amazon at half price. I found the second one also at half price at the used books section of amazon and I bought it because it contains possibly the best Fantastic Four single issue of all times, FANTASTIC FOUR 51.

The third MARVEL MASTERWORKS in my collection contains one of my all time favorite Fantastic Four stories - period - and with the last one I opted to get it instead of buying the second UNCANNY X - MEN omnibus hardcover because the price for it at amazon is just ridiculous and it also contains PHOENIX : THE UNTOLD STORY and a Phoenix story from BIZARRE ADVENTURES issue 27. Furthermore it gives me the opportunity to get the new DAYS OF FUTURE PAST hardcover which also contains three issues of EXCALIBUR. It´s a shame there still are no hardcover collections of that brilliant series by Chris Claremont and Alan Davis available and you have to rely on such books like MARVEL VISIONARIES : CHRIS CLAREMONT or the X - MEN : INFERNO CROSSOVER omnibus book to get some issues.

But back to the MARVEL MASTERWORKS : they were too expensive for most readers so Marvel came up with a way to make the titles that were interesting for most of their readers available at a reasonable price.

Even if the big phone books were only in black and white it was a cheap way for readers to get a lot of Marvel content, Marvel got to make money selling old issues all over again, it had no effect on the back issue market - at least no negative effect - and for those who were willing to pay more there were still the MARVEL MASTERWORKS. And besides getting money for their bestsellers like SPIDER - MAN, AVENGERS or FANTASTIC FOUR they could also make series that were only interesting for readers of certain genres available in this cheap format like WEREWOLF BY NIGHT, FRANKENSTEIN, KILLRAVEN or TOMB OF DRACULA. Especially the last collection has benefitted greatly from the black and white reproduction, presenting for the first time the brilliant art combo of Gene Colan´s pencils and Tom Palmer´s inks without the technicoloring of that time. 

Of course the greed has brought Disney to cancel the ESSENTIALS in favor of the new Epic Collection line but so far the price is the only epic thing.

After arranging the ESSENTIALS and the SHOWCASE PRESENTS on the bookshelf there was some free space so I put the Epic Collections there since they are going to continue where the ESSENTIALS left off, although in some cases they will reprint material that was already included in ESSENTIAL form. But the thing is I only own three of these new trades because there is the problem with the gutter in all three of them. For DC it´s the omnibus books where they never can get it right, for Marvel it´s the Epic Collections. Now if this was a small independent publisher in his first publishing year I could maybe forgive such an faux pas but not with one of the the two biggest comic publishing companies. Marvel is just producing trade collections for a far too long time NOT to know that when you produce a thicker trade you have to calculate more gutter so you can open the book and read the comic without problem. It is not acceptable that I can´t really open any of my three Epic Collections without trouble.

There have been already three or four trades I would have added to my collection if it weren´t for the expensiveness and the problem with the gutter. Because I won´t spend 30 or 35 bucks on a comic I can´t read even if they have finally acted on what I write on this blog and started collecting Ann Nocenti´s and John Romita Jr´s criminally underrated DAREDEVIL run in this new format ( publishing date January 26th 2016 ).

And speaking about reading : one of the reasons for getting the new bookshelf was to have quicker access to my comics and not having to search that much for the various series, so I have also put the trades of series like THOR or FANTASTIC FOUR with the ESSENTIALS volumes according to the reading order. With some I just have one or two of them but with AMAZING SPIDER - MAN I got to volume 7 before I somehow lost interest. One of these days I have to look for the remaining ones and at least PETER PARKER, SPIDER - MAN number one which contains the Spider - Man stories by Sal Buscema and Ernie Chan I remember from my youth.

I also put all the Biblioteca Marvel and the Panini UK pocket books with the ESSENTIALS or better in front of them since that way you can still see which trades are behind them. The last few months I have added quite a few of the UK pocket books because I like to put one or two in my comic orders to get an even numbered saldo. I´m a bit strange like Adrian Monk in that way. And speaking about strange : I just got SHATTERED BY THE SHOCKER which contains the second issue of AMAZING SPIDER - MAN by Condor when they started publishing the series in Germany after the long hiatus of Williams Verlag. Initially I thought it was the first issue but then I remembered that was the one where Spidey is attacked by his old foes.

It was kind of nice to take a trip down memory lane by reading those crazy stories again from that period when Doctor Octopus roamed the streets as a bum because he was haunted by the ghost of Hammerhead and the Spidermobile was out to kill everyone´s favorite wallcrawler.

Those are my kind of stories and one of these days I have to do a post on artist extraordinaire Ross Andru who doesn´t get nearly the credit he deserves from comic fans for his contribution to the Spider - Man canon.

And with that we are once again at the end of Today´s post. I know that I haven´t talked much about DC´s SHOWCASE PRESENTS collections and why I think that most of them are not for the broad reading public but there´s just too much stuff about The Legion of Super - Heroes and The Justice Society I want to write about to use it as an addendum to this.

Recently my interest in the Legion has been rekindled thanks to the new collected editions of THE GREAT DARKNESS SAGA and THE CURSE and I have decided to continue reading with the AN EYE FOR AN EYE and THE MORE THINGS CHANGE trades. I just hope DC doesn´t loose interest with this run and SOMEDAY starts reprinting the Keith Giffen run as it´s ONLY the best run ever of the Legion. Well, according to some people since I haven´t read it. Anyway, there is more than one Legion - centric post coming in the future ( no pun intended ) and my only regret is that I did not buy the deluxe hardcover of THE GREAT DARKNESS SAGA when I had the chance because the deluxe hardcover of THE CURSE is just too sweet.

It´s like I always say : you regret not buying comics more than you regret buying shitty comics. Because if you buy a comic and it´s not good you lost some money but maybe you can sell it again or give it away as a gift.

But when you don´t buy a comic when it´s a bargain you can never pay full price for it. At least I can´t. If it is still available. In some cases you may have even lost your opportunity to buy that particular comic forever.

But what about the Justice Society ? - he said with a fearful shiver in his voice. Blame fellow blogger Terry Hooper for opening that can of worms.

After reading his post Justice Society of America - It USED To Mean Something ! I remembered that I never got around to getting the new trades which collected all the crossovers between the Justice League of America and the Justice Society of America back when they were on two separate earths. One of the reasons for that was that the part George Perez did is not that easy to get. As I said earlier you most regret not buying certain comics and one on my list is the CLASSICOS DC : LA LIGA DE LA JUSTICIA DE GEORGE PEREZ book Planeta DeAgostini published in Spain the last time I was there. Only I didn´t know that it would be the last time for a very long period. In my defense I have to say I spend my money on the first volumes of Marv Wolfman and George Perez´ NEW TEEN TITANS which in hindsight was a brilliant move since it covers the first omnibus edition from DC which is a book binding nightmare from all I have seen. It´s also not hard to believe if you see the binding on the second and third of THE NEW TEEN TITANS omnibus. Or on the ORION OMNIBUS BY WALTER SIMONSON. I think the only omnibus where the book binding is good is the new WONDER WOMAN BY GEORGE PEREZ hardcover and there the paper cutting is messed up. I´m just glad I get to read it for a decent price since I bought it when it was offered for 55 EUROS.

Anyway, the George Perez issues ARE available in hardcover through the DC COMICS CLASSICS LIBRARY but they split it into two books so you have to pay 40 dollars for six issues on each of those books. Sorry, but I usually pay around 35, 40 EUROS for a Marvel omnibus which contains around 30 issues. So paying 80 bucks for 12 issues is just ridiculous. There are of course the new trades available in english AND german and naturally the german editions are more expensive. The good part about the german edition is that they are also available in hardcover, the bad part is that they are also very expensive. The german comic market is still mainly a collectors market NOT a reader market. So I decided to go with the US edition but of course the part with the George Perez issues is out of print or sold out at most comic shops. I have now ordered the JLA / JSA trades from Thalia which lets me use at least one my eleven percent off coupons I always get with my comic orders. Last night I was looking for stuff that I could spend those coupons on when I found out that THANOS VS HULK and THANOS : THE INFINITY RELATIVITY by Jim Starlin are finally out. Yay !

I have not read the THANOS : THE INFINITY RELEVATION original graphic novel and the THANOS ANNUAL until now and when I have those two I can finally read the whole story in one sitting. Some people have said that Jim Starlin is just going through the motions in this story but that still has to be better than ninety-nine percent of Disney´s actual comic book output.

In the end I opted for ordering the CRISIS ON MULTIPLE EARTHS trades that I couldn´t get from amazon from Thalia because at first I ended up with an order for more than 150 EUROS and I had to reduce it. I was a bit bummed out that I just could use one of my coupons with each order. At first I was afraid that I could not use the coupon for ordering books which is what I usually do at Thalia because there had been a mail stating that there was some kind of law that forbid Thalia to give discounts on books but apparently that was not the case. It would have been better if I could have used all three coupons on one order because that would have meant a bigger discount. Naturally it was only after I finished ordering that it came to me that 11 percent off doesn´t care about how many books I order. In any case it might be better if I have to cut my order into three parts. The only downside is that if I want to order more books I have to place the orders before the first order has arrived because that always takes up to two or three weeks when you order books online from Thalia.

That´s one of the things I don´t like about Thalia and the main reason why I buy so many comics via amazon. With Thalia the books are always listed as available and then you get an e - mail that the books are not available, they have to be re - ordered and that takes up to three weeks. And in some cases it turns out that the book you ordered is not available anymore. Anyway, when the books from Thalia have arrived I will have to get the other trades from amazon but I´m already excited to read all the famous Justice League of America / Justice Society of America crossover stories I remember from those SUPERMAN TASCHENBUCH and SUPERMAN PRÄSENTIERT : GERECHTIGKEITSLIGA SONDERBAND I read as a kid.  

And THAT´S my final word on this post. I´m not sure if I brought my point across better than in my last post but it´s time to wrap things up for Today. This time around I have written more about Marvel stuff than about DC stuff but as the next post on this blog will be the big finale of my Hollywood edition of casting the Justice League of America movie ( which I had posted before but decided to put on the back burner because of the birthday posts of Salma Hayek and Beyonce ) I´ll call it even.

Okay, one quick thing before the video section. Some readers might think it´s not very realistic to get 9 trades for 75 EUROS so I made a quick scoop at amazon´s bargain section and although there are currently no bargain books that interest me I made a shopping cart. I picked FAIRY TALES OF OSCAR WILDE with art by P. Craig Russell, AVENGERS WORLDS with the issue by Dale Keown, HULK - BANNER D.O.A. , CHRONICLES OF KING CONAN 8, ACTION PHILOSOPHERS 2, EMPOWERED 4, ORDINARY by Rob Williams and ZENITH PHASE 2 which brings us to a total tally of 76.53 EUROS. Okay, this is slightly more than 75 EUROS but the last two books are hardcovers not trades so it would be possible. And that´s a shopping cart that usually will cost you more than 125 EUROS ( I couldn´t find the second ACTION PHILOSOPHERS TRADE anywhere so it´s more than that ). Yes, there is some Marvel stuff in there but with FAIRY TALES OF OSCAR WILDE, ACTION PHILOSOPHERS 2, EMPOWERED 4 and ZENITH PHASE 2 there are some high caliber books among them which I bought myself. 

Since this post was about no specific topic - except comic collecting - there are no links and we start with COMIC BOOK COLLECTOR a documentary about the history of comic books hosted by Frank Gorshin, best known for playing the Riddler on the 1960s campy Batman tv show.



Some months ago I posted a video with Darth Vader, here is the original song he plays, Hootin´ the Blues by Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee.



I talked a lot about Marvel Essentials in this post and one of the essential Marvel / X - Men stories is the DARK PHOENIX SAGA which will be covered in comicbookgirl19´s EPIC HISTORY X - MEN VOLUME 2 which is available on Vimeo On Demand. You can see the first ten minutes for free here. 



Please support comicbookgirl19 because I want to see more such videos from her. Yep, this is totally selfish on my part so what ? She makes THE BEST comic videos on YouTube - period - and we have to keep her going.

One of the characters that has already gotten three ESSENTIAL volumes as well as his first Epic Collection with a second one on the way this November is Moon Knight. Here is a video that explains why he is so cool that also references his involvement in the time travel story ( during the five minutes that Moon Knight was an Avenger ) that was reprinted in the second AVENGERS WEST COAST omnibus which I still haven´t read.



This is usually the part where I pimp a cartoon but Today I´m leaving it up to the Nostalgia Critic to explain Hanna Barbera´s genius Tom and Jerry.



New to the blog ? Everything you need to know about TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN : top ten posts / more posts of interest / best of the best

Beyonce birthday post gets re - posted

I was so busy with other stuff that I totally forgot this but thankfully I had already done this post last year ( or better worked on this ever since last year because I kept adding more pictures and GIFs and stuff to it until I had to give it its own post ) so in tribute to the babe who came up with the " bootylicious " thing I just re - used what I already had written.

Today is Beyonce´s 43rd birthday but instead of doing a celebrity birthday post I posted part one of my SUBZERO edition of casting the JLA movie.

Now the reason for that is that I have already finished all the JLA casting posts months ago but I don´t want to post them all at once because then my blog would be full of the hottest sexbombs on the planet and some people have a problem with that. Also I like to keep things different here so I like to do the comic related posts between them. The thing is that it takes me a very long time to do my post because they always - always - end up longer than I planned them. I´m also kind of a perfectionist which means I try to do the best posts possible with the best pictures and all kinds of extras like links and videos and GIFs and anything else I can think of. So the time between posts can be really long and to shorten it a bit I post the JLA casting posts after each finished new comic post.

So I was totally oblivious to Beyonce´s anniversary which I´m going to rectify by bumping the JLA casting post to the top of the blog once I have finished my next comic post. Which means that I now have two posts with hot babes in short succession but for anyone who reads the posts in a few weeks ( I hope my next post is finished until then ) it will really not make a difference if the JLA casting post post will be posted Today, Tomorrow or in a few days but I feel I should set the Beyonce post at her birthday.

Now when I re - posted previous posts on my old boob blog I reworked the download links and tried to add some new pictures. Which I will also try on this post. When I first made this I didn´t find the animated GIFs I was looking for so I had to make my own. And while they are how I wanted them I have found a lot of new Beyonce GIFs since. In fact I have now so many that I put the main part of them in a folder and kept the best ones in another folder which is the one I´m currently using to put all the new pictures in that I collect for the posts. So instead of the old GIFs there will be some spanking new ones in this post. I say some because like with the pictures I will keep the best ones. I thought about re - using the Justice League casting post with Beyonce but since her part in that one was very short ( It was mainly about Halle Berry, that one really got away from me. The post I mean, not Halle Berry. Ah, what I wouldn´t do to her ! ) and mostly stuff from her birthday post I´m re - posting this anyway.

So I have included the link to the JLA casting post with Beyonce above if you want to read more about Halle Berry as well as the link for her old birthday post if you haven´t already checked it out and want to see this post in the original version. I´m going to put some new things in here as they occur to me so let´s get to what I wrote about Beyonce last time :

Some of the younger readers might not know that but Beyonce didn´t start out as a solo act but rather as part of a group called Destiny´s Child. I know that when I saw the first video of Destiny´s Child on Mtv ( they still played music videos at that time although they had already begun with the animes and the reality tv shows and such ) I wasn´t impressed. They were announced as the next big thing - I think the video was the remix for NO NO NO NO NO  - but frankly while the song didn´t sound too bad it didn´t exactly overwhelm me.

The moment when I really took notice of the group - in it´s original form before the various membership changes - was when their HOP ON THE BUS video aired. It´s still one of my favorites even if I can´t find it anywhere on DVDs or the internet. Anyway, the video was very sexy but the woman that got me going wasn´t Beyonce Knowles but Kelly Rowland.

I didn´t notice Beyonce until the - aptly enough - BOOTYLICIOUS video ( ? ) and Kelly is still one of my favorite performers. I´m glad that she stayed until the end - although you never know if there is not a reunion coming.

Anyway, Beyonce did start a solo career after a few years and while a lot of people didn´t think that was a good idea she managed to become a world famous singer, performer and actress. And no, I haven´t seen a lot of her movies because they either are comedies I can´t watch like the Austin Powers movies ( which in my opinion are only funny for american audiences because I don´t think it´s ridiculous that the world´s greatest spy is british ) or Dreamgirls which just has too much drama for my taste. My own life has already enough of that so I don´t need to watch movies to get even more. But who knows ? Maybe some day I´ll watch the movies.

Now since we are on the subject of movies I should probably mention that Beyonce was one of the candidates for my JUSTICE LEAGUE movie ( well, I casted the female members ) and you can find the link for that above.

I cast her as Mari McCabe which went against the new JLA comic from that time since Ed Benes obviously based her appearance on Halle Berry.

And knowing what a big fan I am of Halle Berry you might think it obvious that I would do the same. But they do that with a lot of female black characters in comics and I don´t want to cast Halle in five different roles.

And I don´t use the term " black " to provoke. It´s just that " afro - american " sounds more like some pc nonsense to make it sound not as offensive while people have the same stereotypes in their minds.

Technical speaking Mari is " afro - african " since she was born in Afrika where there are also white people. And she doesn´t even wear an afro.

So, for playing the afro - african - american Justice Leaguer who is also a model I went with somebody who is hot, has starred in a few movies and is no stranger to the world of fashion. She even designs her own clothes.

So the bootylicious Beyonce got the role of Vixen in my fantasy casting for a JUSTICE LEAGUE movie, and boy she does bring out the animal in men.

Vixen is not really a good name for a woman in Germany as it sounds like wichsen or wixen ( I´m never sure what the correct form is ) the german word for spanking the monkey .... to stay with the animal terminology.

When I did my posts about the best runs on Justice League or Justice League of America this was ways before Ed Benes became the regular penciler when they restarted the title. And I think one of the reasons why I never did a long post about that period was that I mentioned some of the issues as I was reading them. All in all I wouldn´t say that it was a bad run, they had some decent stories in there and it sure helped that they stuck a lot of hot babes in the series since that is Ed Benes´ forte.

This was probably one of the few times a comic company really took advantage of having a so called " babe artist " on a book even if Ed Benes can draw muscular men just as good. Of course it took them years before they had the idea to let him draw an all girls team like Birds of Prey.

Back to JUSTICE LEAGUE one of the big draws of the book - Ed Benes on art - was also one of it´s big problems since all the meticulous pencil work took that much longer so there were a lot of fill in artists and there were some issues where the art didn´t look really finished. The first story TORNADO´S PATH by Brad Meltzer was the best one since Ed Benes had already gotten a few issues in the can so he did the art on all issues.

The second story LIGHTNING SAGA was not as good because it was not as well rounded as the first story being a crossover with Justice Society of America. I liked the story because it brought the Legion of Super - Heroes back into DC continuity proper ( although some with different costumes )

and the West family returned after vanishing during INFINITE CRISIS

but it was all just build up for Geoff John´s LEGION OF THREE WORLDS epic. Man, you remember when Geoff Johns was writing good comics ?

And speaking about well rounded things : the things that probably most people remember from the issues is that JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA cover artist Michael Turner got a bit too enthusiastic about Power Girl´s breasts on the cover for issue 10 - which I can quite understand.

This was Brad Meltzer´s last story on the book and Dwayne McDuffy took over the writing reigns with the INJUSTICE LEAGUE story. The story didn´t live up to the expectations and there were a lot of guest artists on the book although Ed Benes managed to do the best parts like this double page spread. I thought I had a picture in better quality somewhere.

The next story SANCTUARY was another crossover, this time with the SALVATION RUN series which I still haven´t read. SALVATION RUN I mean, not the SANCTUARY story in JUSTICE LEAGUE. That I did read.

I don´t remember much of the story, there were some guest artists.

I liked the next story SECOND COMING much better which I got in the german trade for ten bucks at the comic fair in Leonberg. I don´t know if I already had the single issues and bought it as a present or if it´s still somewhere in my collection. In any case it had a slow beginning and turned into a parallel world story and longtime readers know that I love a good parallel world story. There were some guest artists in this one too which I think was the main reason why I got it in trade from because it´s easier to cope with that in the trade format. Or, like I said, it might have been a birthday present. Also Vixen was the main character of the story which had something to do with her origin and / or her powers.

Instead of just copying the abilities of animals she had started to copy the abilities of meta humans and the story resolved that somehow.

I don´t know if Brad Meltzer had been sowing the seeds for this or if Dwayne McDuffie had to do it this way because he had written himself into a corner in any way I liked the story and it also involved some trickster / spider deity that wove the threads of fate or such. And like I said, beautiful artwork of Vixen by Ed Benes in some of the issues.

Speaking about parallel worlds, Dwayne McDuffy tied his MILESTONE characters into the DC universe in WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE which I would have enjoyed more if I had actually read any of the Milestone books.

Apart from that there were the usual event tie ins like BLACKEST NIGHT and FINAL CRISIS before James Robinson took over. Since he wrote the excellent STARMAN series I had high expectations for that but his take on the Justice League just couldn´t win me over and he brought in too many characters like Nightwing, Troja or Cyborg who for me belong in Titans.

But you see that even back then some forces at DC tried to shoehorn Cyborg into the Justice League. All in all I would say that the Justice League of America run by Brad Meltzer, Dwayne McDuffy and Ed Benes could be summed up as some really good stories with great art in it, a lot of crossover events and tie - ins and a lot of different guest artists.

You could see that the idea behind it was to present a really cohesive super hero community where they brought in such characters like Red Arrow who were second or third generation legacy heroes - which I think they tried to copy from Justice Society of America although they didn´t pull it off as good as the JSA did - with the Justice League at its core.

They also put a lot of female characters in prominent positions like Black Canary who became the chairwoman or Vixen who had a whole arc.

Now part of this was obviously to give Ed Benes something to play with since he´s very apt at drawing the female form on the other side it doesn´t hurt to let the ladies show what they are capable of.

I especially liked the chance to read more about Vixen since I have not read the Detroit League run which is when she was last on the team.

Now that was a long tangent about the Justice League. So, time to return to our celebrity birthday babe Beyonce and wrap things up for Today.
 

This is the part where I posted the animated Beyonce GIFs I made myself last year so here are the top five of the ones I found on the internet.

Okay, one more animated GIF. Here´s one I made myself. So who´s got the better gluteus maximus : Janet Jackson or Beyonce ? You decide.

Anyway, here´s to the inventor and living embodiment of the word bootylicious, happy 34th birthday Beyonce and many happy returns.

I wanted to post GET ON THE BUS since that´s where my whole story with Destiny´s Child started but it should be no surprise that I still couldn´t find it on YouTube. Last year I posted the BOOTYLICIOUS video but since it all began with Kelly Rowland here´s an appearance on Craig Ferguson.



I still can´t find the CRAZY IN LOVE video where Beyonce first made her signature booty shake which thankfully has become such an addictive thing that girls of all ages or nations start shaking their butts like there´s no Tomorrow whenever they hear " oh oh oh oh oh oh ", thank you for that Beyonce ! Here´s another compilation where Beyonce struts her stuff.



But I just have to add a Beyonce video so here is one of her earliest ones BABY BOY featuring Sean Paul where she does her bellydance routine.



Apparently there is a new VIXEN animated series announced which ties in with the ARROW and FLASH live action series. I have no idea how this works but here is the best clip I could find which is not just a few minutes of animation followed by a long rant or review. Sorry for the shortness.



And speaking about animated series, Today´s recommendation is SYM - BIONIC TITAN which didn´t get a second season because there were no toys to sell to kids. Aaaaaaaaargh ! How stupid can people be ? Anyway, don´t let the art frighten you this is one of the best written cartoon shows for kids AND adults and the character writing is soooo good !



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