Category: Books & Comics

Ultimately

andertoons6 Comments

Lately I’ve been back into comic books.

It started about a year or so ago while looking for graphic novels at the library. I ran across The Ultimates which I liked very much. The art is wonderful (so much better than what I remember from being a kid) and the stories are, well, more adult.

Ultimates

Everyone is re-imagined (I hate that word, but it fits here) in interesting ways. Giant Man and Wasp have some serious domestic issues, Thor is a seemingly crazy eco-hippie, the Hulk is maleness magnified a hundred fold… Neat stuff.

It got me into the whole Ultimate imprint of Marvel comics. I usually wait for the hardcover collections to come out, and I follow Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimate Fantastic Four and The Ultimates.

I also recently followed the whole Civil War thingy (disappointing though it was), and I’m buying the nine issue series, Ultimate Power. It’s hard to ignore when Sue Storm looks like this:

Suestorm



While the art and stories are generally more interesting and geared toward adults (OK, man-children), also interesting is how the ads have changed.

Gone are the X-ray specs and sea monkeys. Video games and movies remain, but there’s an awful lot of car ads. And a recent ad with a woman sensuously licking an ice cream cone for Old Spice (yes, Old Spice!) strikes me as very adult.

And it’s all cool. I like reading them, and it’s nice to see the medium matured. But it’s harder and harder to find a comic for my son that I feel comfortable with him reading.

He’s three and loves loves LOVES superheroes. Captain American especially.

I’ve tried the supposed all-ages comics, but there’s an awful lot of violence in them, and he has plenty of time to be desensitized to that by TV down the road.

With the kids-related toy lines, and the Marvel babies yet to come, you’d think there’d be friendlier stuff for a kid his age.

Anyway, it’s cool to be somewhat back into comics again. And I’m looking forward to sharing them more with my son down the road.

What a long way they’ve come.

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Trying To Light Myself On Fire

andertoons3 Comments

GrSo Ghost Rider comes out in a few weeks, and they’re really ramping up the ad campaign.

In addition to the Jackson Hewitt ad where he gets his taxes done and sets off the sprinklers (it was up on YouTube but now it’s down), Sony has a page on their site where you can use your webcam to insert your face and see yourself as Ghost Rider, AKA with your head on fire.

I tried it for about a half hour this morning with my Mac and its built in iSight, but this must be one of those “95% of people use Internet Explorer so just build it for that and screw everyone else” sites. Yes, I tried Firefox too. Grrrr….!

I guess I’ll just have to light my head on fire the old fashioned way later.

Anyway, here’s the link if you wanna try it…

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Thinking Outside The Box By Thinking In Panels

andertoons4 Comments

AutotoonsI ran across AutoToons a while back, and dropped them in my “blog about later” file. Welcome to later.

Basically, there are a number of different strips (auto dealer, real estate, etc…) that businesses can license for their advertising. The strip changes with each ad, and takes advantage of what I always tell advertising clients – nobody can ignore a cartoon!

I wouldn’t say these are funny comics per se, but that’s not really their function. They are, however, well drawn, and nicely written for their end use.

Dunno how business is, but kudos for a great idea!

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