Silly question time…
Have there been any superheroes, or supervillains who’ve served in the French Foreign Legion?
Knowed Out, A new Dr. Strange series written by JMS (Amazing Spider Man, creator of Babylon 5) should come out in early 2004. As for collected volumes of Dr. Strange stories their is an Essential Dr. Strange volume reprinting the early issues of his title by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.
DocCathode, Good call on Nightmares and Fairytales. Have you read Fables from DC/Veritgo comics? If not I highly recommend this series. It’s when fairytale characters come into the real world, it’s pretty good and is one of my favorite titles.
Ranchoth, LOL. I can’t name any from the top of my head but I’m sure their are people here who know.
…And a less-silly question, to boot: How many “Elseworlds” comics have been published, so far? Is there a list of them available?
Ranchoth, Their have been tons of Elseworlds over the years. The first one that started it all was the critically acclaimed “The Dark Knight Returns”(even if it wasn’t the first official Elseworlds). It’s funny though when I compiled this list I thought that more Elseworlds existed.
This list should be accurate but if anyone notices that I missed any Elseworlds please let me know.
Batman: The Blue, the Grey and the Bat Maggin/Weiss/Garcia-Lopez
Batman: Brotherhood of the Bat Moench/Misc.
Batman: Castle of the Bat Harris/B. Hampton
Batman: Dark Allegiances Chaykin/Chaykin
Batman: The Devil’s Workshop Chaykin &
Moore/Chiarello
Batman: Gotham by Gaslight Augustyn/Mignola/Russell (first official Elseworlds)
Batman: Holy Terror Brennart/Breyfogle
Batman: In Darkest Night Barr/Bingham
Batman: Man Bat Jamie Delano/Bolton
Batman: Master of the Future Augustyn/Barreto
Batman: Scar of the Bat Collins/Barreto
The Golden Age Robinson/Paul Smith
JLA: League of Justice Hannigan/Hannigan/Giordano
Kamandi: At Earths End T. Veitch/Reyes/Barreiro
Robin 3000 Preiss/Russell
Superman: At Earth’s End T. Veich/Gomez
Superman: Kal Gibbons/Garcia-Lopez
Superman: Speeding Bullets DeMatteis/Barretto
Superman: Red Sun Millar/DJohnson
JLA: The Nail Alan Davis/Mark Farmer
Graphic Novels
Batman/Dracula: Bloodstorm Moench/K. Jones/J. Beatty
Batman: Dark Joker the Wild Moench/Jones/J. Beatty)
Batman/Dracula: Red Rain Moench/K. Jones/ M. Jones III
One who I think wasn’t mentioned was Wonderman. He was a member of the Avengers back in the eighties and basically wore a safari jacket and slacks. It stood out because his teammates were all wearing typical superhero outfits.
My two questions:
I’ve heard there was a DC superhero story set in an alternate history where the nazis won WWII. Does anyone know the name of this book?
I read the Top 10 series about a police precinct in a world were everyone has superpowers. Has the writer ever explained the background of this world?
I find it interesting that the Shadow and Doc Savage keep resurfacing.
While they aren’t successful for long, they have had more lives than a cat.
Am I the only one who loved the 1994 movie of the Shadow?
I gots a coupla questions:
Why did Valiant Comics tank? Was it the Deathmate crossover? Was it Bloodshot?
Should they have severed ties with Jim Shooter when they did?
Did anyone else love BWS’s Archer and Armstrong, Bob Hall’s Shadowman and Don Perlin’s Solar as much as I did?
Man, I miss those old Valiant books.
Not a bad start, but there are more listed here. Looks like he keeps it fairly up to date.
Little Nemo, I’m pretty sure you’re talking about the “River Run” storyline in Swamp Thing a couple years back. It’s when Swamp Thing kept traveling to alternate realities and he entered a reality where the Nazis won World War II. It was issues #151-#159 and I highly recommend it. Just remember that it only dealt with the World War II thing in one issue (which issue number I don’t recall at the moment) but the whole storyline is still good though. I think you may also be talking about JSA: The Liberty File Elseworlds mini-series but I’m not sure if the Nazis won in that series.
As for your other question I don’t read Top 10 but I’m sure there are people here who do that can answer your question. Same thing for Bulla’s questions I never read Valiant but again I’m sure someone else can chime in with an answer.
Mockingbird, I didn’t like The Shadow movie at all, it just wasn’t for me. But I heavily recommend Andy Helfer’s run on the Shadow in the 1980s if you haven’t already read it.
Question: does X-Force/X-Statix (the stuff done by Milligan and Allred) occur within mainstream Marvel continuity or not? The book itself (which I’m reading in collections) refers to characters and events from the regular Marvel Universe, but the events in X-Statix don’t sound like they crop up in the rest of the lineup.
Examples: the extensive fan club/media frenzy surrounding X-Statix, and stuff like feeder teams for potential team members.
Some of the background of Neopolis can be gleaned from the text pages at the end of issue no. #1. Basically Neopolis exists as a city designed by Nazi-super scientists after WWII that is principally populated by various superhuman beings. These, we may be sure, are the same comic book Nazis that were building giant Hitler robots, cellular replicants, death ray guns and other uber-weapons in various comics over the years.
Later in the series we discover that Neopolis is one of a series of parallel worlds, and its precinct, Top Ten, is just one of many different police parallels – and a smaller one at that. When King Peacock visits the Roman parallel, one of the officers accompanying him makes the comment that “When we ran out of room for our separate sagas, we moved here.” Inferred from the dialogue, it seems that other parallel worlds have at least one ‘super-city’, too.
Recently --in either TOM STRONG or PROMETHEA – the city of Neopolis is revealed to be in Florida (!)
The police procedural aspect of the plotting is based on American police ensemble dramas – principally HILL STREET BLUES, which Alan Moore was definitely a fan in the 80s, and others like HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREETS and LAW & ORDER.
Mockingbird, I echo DK2’s endorsement of Andrew Helfer’s SHADOW run. I have every issue and I pull them out to read every once in a while.
As for the Phantom, it really depends on who’s doing the writing. I will note that many of that character’s aspects were borrowed by Priest’s very early issues of Black Panther before Everett Ross started taking up too much screen-time and the series turned quasi-political.
Interrobang!?, X-Statix is indeed in mainstream Marvel continuity I’am 100% positive on this. On the account of the Wolverine appearances and the upcoming appearance from Spider-Man (in the next storyline after this one). On a sidenote I consider X-Statix to be one of the best comics being published currently.
Coupla Gotham City questions, this time…
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In a few comics (Like Kingdom Come), I’ve noticed a large, Statue of Liberty-lookalike statue built on an island near Gotham. What is this statue, exactly? Are there any pictures of it online?
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Über-geek time; does anyone know Gotham’s supposed Latitude and Longitude?
Early on, Gotham was NYC as far as I know.
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I think that is the Statue of Freedom in Gotham’s harbor. You can probably find it somewhere online, but it may take some looking.
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Well, not the exact location, but it is supposed to be in Delaware, so that should narrow down the possibilities.
Lok
Just as an aside, the whole River Run storyline (which, IMO, was the only Swampy run worth reading after Veitch left) was an homage to the pre-Crisis universe.
The “Nazis won” issue was the wink-wink-nudge-nudge homage to “Earth X” (the Pre-Crisis world where the Nazis won and the Freedom Fighters hung out).
IIRC (and it’s been years ) there was one with a retired hero and his daughter that was Earth-2, one where the formula of “dead guy+fire+swamp” did NOT equal “Swamp Creature” but instead equaled “Soggy, burned corpse” which was “Earth Prime”. The one where magic worked was (for reasons far to involved to go into) “Earth S” (where the Shazam! characters hung out) and so on.
Great series and I think it’s about time to reread em.
Fenris
And some people wonder why Fenris is my boy toy.
Um… that was a joke.
Boy, that sure killed the conversation…
Got a question:
In the most recent Gotham Knights, Bats and friends flush out the cave to decontaminate it of a disease that nerly killed Alfred. At the end, there’s a frame showing a weird bat-like creature, and a caption something like: “And all the residents of the batcave were safe, even the ones that usually go unnoticed.” (going from memory here, so forgive me). What the hell is it? Is this BatMite? I’ve heard of him, but don’t know anything about him. If not, what is he?