Tag: Green Lantern

Grayson: Another Awesome Fan Trailer

After posting the link to the World’s Finest fan film trailer, I ran across another excellent fan trailer, Grayson. This one’s almost 5 and half-minutes long and blew me away. Basic premise is that Batman is dead and the former Boy Wonder is out to catch the killers and avenge Batman’s death. Some excellent effects including brief appearances by a number of JLA members.

As technology costs continue to fall and companies like Warner continue to come out with crap like “Catwoman” or the rumored bastardization of Green Lantern, fan films like this could fill a needed void and even pose a threat.

The other day I finished reading the trade paperback version of “Squadron Supreme” — an early 1980s Marvel series which was the forerunner of later series like “Kingdom Come.” The thing about “Squadron Supreme”, though, is that its basically the Justice League of American in different costumes with different names. So Batman becomes “Night Hawk,” Superman becomes “Hyperion” with a red costume but similar origins and powers, etc.

Whose to stop someone form taking a cue from “Squadron Supreme” and making their own JLA-ripoff film (especially since it’s unlikely we’ll ever see a genuine JLA film)?

Wired’s Neal Adams Profile

It’s not online yet, but the latest issue of Wired has a long profile of comic book artist Neal Adams. That wouldn’t be so bad, except that the profile is largely about Adams’ pseudo-scientific view that the Earth is growing in size.

And no, Adams doesn’t just think that the Earth is growing in volume, but that it is also growing in mass. While he’s at it, Adams thinks matter is constantly being added to the universe and even invented his own particle, which he calls “primal matter,” to explain the allegedly fattening Earth. He rewrites practically every other area of physics while he’s at it to fit his growing Earth hypothesis.

Neal Adams the comic book illustrator is rightly a legend (remember the furor over the Green Arrow/Green Lantern cover with Speedy shooting heroin? That was Adams’ work). Neal Adams the scientist, however, is a nut. An 8 page story on Adams the artist might have been interesting, but the 8 page story on Adams the pseudoscientist was a pointless waste of paper.

Green Lantern, Part II

I went to E-Bay and found several of the green lanterns for sale. Swiped one of the pictures from there so y’all can see it in its full glory.

It’s even cooler than I imagined since it comes with a ring and it lights up. Excellent.

Don Larson (ever notice how I always mess up Seth’s URL, but never Don’s?) notes that the mention of GL brought back memories, “I recall reading Green Lantern between the late 1950’s and the very early 1960’s.”

Good memory. The silver age book started in 1959 (there was a Golden Age Green Lantern, but we won’t get into that) — the actual character goes back to July 1940, though the original GL looked more like the Joker than the anything else.

Regardless, Don read the books when they were actually decent stories — in fact a near mint condition of GL#1 goes for about $500 and up today. To see just how convoluted and bizarre comic books have gotten, this fanboy site has a summary of the 40-odd issue run of GL following the death of Superman (this includes Hal Jordan’s killing of the all of the Guardians). Only DC would have a super villain named Ohm (they always had the lamest names).

Some Excellent Lego Links

  • Christina Hitchcock posted a ton of photos of a very large Lego castle she built.
  • The Math Lego site is an awesome depiction of mathematical constructs in Lego form. There’s a Lego Mobius strip, a trefoil knot, and several minimal surfaces. Very cool.
  • While it doesn’t have the beauty of mathematics, Adrian Drake as a very well done bust of everybody’s favorite superhero, The Tick. As I told Lisa, something like that would look great next to a green lantern.

My Green Lantern Story

Mark Morgan linked to this wonderful site/newspaper column on comic books that I’d never heard of, Captain Comics. Anyway, my wife’s more the comic fanatic (but she reads comics for normal people like Strangers In Paradise), but I’ve got a ton of comics from when I was a kid.

Anyway, the stupidest idea for a comic book hero has to be Green Lantern in my opinion, but for some reason I could never put the stupid books down. I remember being hooked on the Green Lantern/Green Arrow crossover book that DC had going for awhile (leave it to DC to try to color coordinate their superheroes). Anyway the book I really obssessed over (and still do) is Legion of Superheroes, but I’ll always have a love/hate relationships with Green Lantern.

So where’s this going? Somebody wrote in to ask Captain Comic about a collector’s item Green Lantern ring that DC was selling a few years ago. Good luck finding them. But when I was in the comic book shop the other day I noticed they had a life-sized green lantern just like in the books and it was only $250! I’m thinking that would look great next to my desk, but $250 is a lot of money.

Fortunately my wife resolved the dilemma by pointing out that if I spent $250 on a green lantern replica she would change the locks and it and I would have to sleep on the porch, but someday I tell you I will have that green lantern.