Yearly Archives: 2019

Free Comic Book Day Bay Area: A Superpowered Guide

The Bay Area has more comic shops than any other region of the United States. Within a 15-mile radius of San Francisco’s City Hall, there are no less than 10 stores pushing funny books on impressionable youth (and adults). Free Comic Book Day returns on May 4 and due to the close proximity of Bay Area stores, it’s possible to hit five or six in a single day (if you’re so inclined). That equals a lot of free comics. Here’s our guide on how to do Free Comic Book Day right in the Bay Area.

free comic book day 2019

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Read more about the article Captain Marvel crushes completely ridiculous success metric

Captain Marvel crushes completely ridiculous success metric

Captain Marvel has become the seventh film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to break $1 billion. It’s an incredibly significant metric for multiple reasons but perhaps most importantly because achieving $1 billion was a made-up measure of success by people looking for reasons to call the film a failure.

It wasn’t until after Captain Marvel‘s record breaking opening weekend that sites pushing for the film’s failure started to move the goalposts. Before the opening weekend, sites like Bounding Into Comics and Cosmic Book News had started telling their readers the film would be a complete failure if it didn’t break $100 million.

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Deep Dive: The Green Lantern Issue 5 (2018)

The fifth issue of Grant Morrison and Liam Sharp’s critically acclaimed Green Lantern series is more intimate than previous issues. In “Blackstar at Zentih” we zoom in on Hal Jordan as he runs a gauntlet through the vampire planet Vorr to earn a place on Commander Mu’s Blackstars.

From the cover of The Green Lantern #5

Here’s where you can find my previous The Green Lantern Deep Dives:

Let’s dive…

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Green Lanterns: Where Are They Now?

It can often be difficult to keep track of the whereabouts of Earth’s Green Lanterns.

For the first time since the early aughts, DC Comics only has a single series on shelves with the word Lantern in the title. That title is Grant Morrison and Liam Sharp’s critically-acclaimed and best selling series The Green Lantern. The star of the series is Earth’s first member of the Green Lantern Corps, Hal Jordan. As of The Green Lantern #10, Jordan is the only Earthling protecting and serving in Space Sector 2814. So where the rest of Earth’s Green Lanterns? Updated: August 16, 2019.

jessica cruz and simon baz
Jessica Cruz and Simon Baz saying farewell in Green Lanterns #57.

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Comic Book Shows: The Definitive Live-Action List

Have we reached peak comic book shows?

We’re living in the heyday of shows based on comic book properties. There was a time when live action shows came out every couple years and the quality was always questionable. Shows like Wonder Woman, The Incredible Hulk, and Smallville were few and far between. We’d gnaw on every little morsel thrown our way in hopes it would boost ratings leading to more adaptations. Remember Ultraverse’s Night Man? Or The Crow: Stairway to Heaven?

How the times have changed. In the first half of 2018, there are were nearly 30 shows based on comic books. It isn’t slowing down. The already long list will be joined this fall by Titans (please be good enough to justify a “Titans Hunt” storyline), Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and possibly Umbrella Academy. 2019’s new comic book shows include Doom Patrol, Deadly Class, and The Boys. If we want to keep our sanity (and have a social life) we need to now make sacrifices of shows instead of sacrificing our free time for questionable quality.

With impending comic book show doom on the horizon, I thought it might be a good time to take stock of what’s out there and what brings me joy. Below is a list of live action comic books shows I’m currently watching and what I think about each one. At the end are shows I stopped watching and shows I’ve yet to watch.

Note: This article about comic book shows is full of spoilers about every single one of these shows.

Note II: Updated November 28, 2018 to include The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. December 26, 2018 to include Titans. February 23, 2019 to include Happy! season one, The Punisher season two, and Daredevil season three.

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Deep Dive: The Green Lantern Issue 4 (2018)

And we’re back with the fourth issue of Grant Morrison and Liam Sharp’s cosmic epic The Green Lantern. This is another exciting issue which provides background on where the Blackstars located the Anti-Matter Lantern, gives us more insight into the mysterious Commander of the Blackstars, Countess Belzebeth, and pits the Corps against Sun-Eaters.

Cover of The Green Lantern 4
Liam Sharp’s cover for The Green Lantern #4

Here’s where you can find my previous The Green Lantern Deep Dives:

And away we go…

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Deep Dive: The Green Lantern Issue 3 (2018)

We’ve reached the third issue of Liam Sharp and Grant Morrison’s The Green Lantern and, wowza, is it a doozy. This one is a little more compact in scope. It mostly takes place at a Dhorian planet auction and aboard the spaceship of this issue’s main antagonist, The Shepard. What it lacks in locales it more than makes up in character appearances.

Cover The Green Lantern 3
Cover The Green Lantern #3 | Art: Liam Sharp

Before we start gutting this issue here are the links for the previous deep dives.

Let’s jump in!

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Who is DC’s Queen Bee Zazzala?

There are several Queen Bee’s in the DC Universe but there’s only one Zazzala of Korll. Queen Bee was a mostly forgotten Silver Age Justice League villain until Grant Morrison brought her back in the pages of his run on JLA.

Queen Bee Zazzala
Queen Bee Justice League of America #23 | Words: Gardner Fox | Art: Mike Sekowsky

Created by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky, her first appearance was in Justice League of America #23.  Queen Zazzala hides a machine in the core of the Earth and threatens to blow up the planet unless the League helps her acquire an elixir of immortality (blackmailing the JLA into helping was a fairly common trope in those early days of comics). They don’t have a choice, so they agree to become “drone-workers” and help the villain. The team locates the vial but before handing it over Green Lantern secretly uses his power ring so she’ll never be able to open it (this is a questionable plan).

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