Sunday, April 17, 2011

Sqweasel's First Webcomic

After creating Sqweasel to be the blog mascot, I figured that at some point I'd have to create an origin story for him.  I do have one and rather than type it out in a big block of prose as if this were the Official Handbook to the Key Issue Comics Universe, I decided on doing a webcomic.  Here's the first episode.  A giant thank you to the artist, Gene Dodge, who did the pencils, inks, colors, lettering, and interpretation of my second attempt at a comic script.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Key Issues - Moon Knight

Marvel Spotlight #28, Don Perlin cover
Because I'm being bombarded with teasers and promotions in damn near every Marvel book for the new Moon Knight series, I thought I should put together a Moon Knight key issues list.  The new Bendis and Maleev series starts in May and I must say I'm not very excited about it.  I love MK but I'm not a fan of Bendis and the premise I've heard so far doesn't sound that great to me.

If you're not familiar with MK, he's a former mercenary named Marc Spector who is brought back to life by Khonshu, the Egyptian god of the moon.  He was created by Doug Moench and Don Perlin as an adversary for Werewolf By Night.  Some great artists worked on MK over the years including Perlin, Bill Sienkiewicz, and David Finch.

Werewolf By Night #32:  1st appearance of Moon Knight

Marvel Spotlight #28:  1st Moon Knight solo story, 1st appearance of Marlene
Cover by Bill Sienkiewicz

Moon Knight #1:  Origin of Moon Knight, 1st appearance of Bushman, 1st appearance of Khonshu.  Marc Spector dies for the first time.

Moon Knight #3:  1st appearance of Midnight Man

Moon Knight #12:  1st appearance of Morpheus

Moon Knight #14:  1st appearance of Stained Glass Scarlet

Moon Knight #25:  1st appearance of Black Spectre

Moon Knight #29 - 30:  Moon Knight fights and later teams up with Werewolf by Night.

The West Coast Avengers #21:  Moon Knight joins the West Coast Avengers.

Marc Spector: Moon Knight #4:  1st appearance of Moon Knight's sidekick, Jeff Wilde (Midnight)

Cover by
David Finch,
Danny Miki
Marc Spector: Moon Knight#10:  1st appearance of Keith Kraft (The Ringer)

Amazing Spider-Man #354 - 358:  Parts 2 through 6 of the "Round Robin" story where Moon Knight and other heroes face his former sidekick, Midnight, whose been turned into a cyborg by the Secret Empire.

Marc Spector: Moon Knight #35:  1st Randall Spector (Shadowknight, Hatchet-killer) because Chuck Dixon retconned him.  In Doug Moench continuity his 1st appearance would be in The Hulk! magazine #16.

Marc Spector: Moon Knight #50:  Moon Knight quits the Avengers.

Marc Spector: Moon Knight #60:  Marc Spector dies again.

Moon Knight: High Strangers #1 - 4:  In a limited series that was actually titled "High Strangeness", Moon Knight takes on the CIA.  It won a Comic Buyers Guide fan award for Favorite Limited Series.

Moon Knight Vol 3 #2:  1st appearance of The Profile.  Moon Knight kills Bushman.

Moon Knight Vol 3 #12:  Moon Knight kills his former sidekick Midnight.

Moon Knight Vol 3 #19:  Moon Knight kills Black Spectre.

Vengeance of Moon Knight #10:  Moon Knight joins the Secret Avengers.

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Jenny Everywhere/The Shifter/Shifter Mouse - Draw This Script

I mentioned in the post announcing Sqweasel as the blog mascot that I went down a few rabbit holes and here is one of them.  I started looking for a large generic monster character that was in the public domain so I wouldn't get sued.  As it turns out there are plenty of public domain characters that can be used.  This seems to be the comprehensive source, pdsh.wikia.com.  So I walked around that site for quite a while trying to find something useful.  None of them seemed the perfect fit.  Also lots of the characters have kind of questionable copyright/trademark issues.  So back to Google for a few searches about public domain super heroes and I finally end up with this intriguing link about Jenny Everywhere aka The Shifter.  Fascinating.  An open source, public domain superhero that anyone can use with this caveat:

The character of Jenny Everywhere is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Everywhere, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed.
 Her powers are listed here:
Jenny Everywhere exists in all dimensions at once. She has the accumulated wisdom of all her other selves, and she can potentially shape or change dimensional properties.
This makes her a ridiculously powerful and versatile character.  I love the idea of this.  Not just the powers but also the fact that she came from open source.  So my early idea was that I would create a character based on Jenny Everywhere and wrote a script for what would've been an introductory comic for Shifter Mouse.  Now I've got Sqweasel but didn't want this script to linger in Google docs purgatory so here it is.  If anyone is feeling frisky and would like to sketch it, that would be awesome.  I can't give you any pay but I can put your name in the infamy of this blog.  Click the jump for the script.


Saturday, April 2, 2011

Pip's Pick Ups - 30 March 2011

A little late getting to the LCS this week and unfortunately all their copies of Captain America 616# were gone.  Here's what I picked up:

Deadpool Team Up #883 - Not as funny as Daniel Way over in the main book but still worth buying.  Deadpool talking so much that he annoys Galactus and then a battle with Silver Surfer make this issue awesome.  Regrettably, this is the last issue of Deadpool Team Up

Detective Comics #875 - Haven't read it yet.

Wonder Woman #609 - Nine issues into an arc, plus one issue of Justice League: Generation Lost, and I think I finally understand what's going on.  That's a ridiculous amount of time to tell a story.  I might be mistaken but I think JL: GL #22 takes place after or concurrently with this issue.