Friday, July 24, 2009

Coal to Diamond, Marvel does good, Jake Lloyd, Facebook

Can Superman Make Diamonds from Coal?

Thanks to JimD who sent this along:

Legendary question-answer man, Cecil, takes on the old Superman trick of using Super-strength to squeeze coal with so much pressure, it becomes a diamond.

The Straight Dope

While its understandable why one would want to find ways to make diamonds to impress Annette O'Toole (the trick was employed in the Pryor-rich Superman III), this was also done in the comics in the Silver Age. But Superman also used to fly so fast he would travel through time, and regularly destroy landmarks (and super-rebuild them) just to mess with Lois's head. So, you know...


Marvel Does Some Geek Good

Well, this is blowing my mind. In the 1980's, there was a comic on the stands called, alternately, "Marvelman" and "Miracle Man". The character may have the most complicated publishing history in comics, and I highly recommend you read the Wikipedia entry, as its quite fascinating. A knock-off of Captain Marvel for England (as Captain marvel had been a knock-off of Superman from a Mid-Western publisher), the character became caught up in some pretty serious legal disputes in the late 1990's or so, and has been in limbo ever since. This has meant no reprints, and odd stabs from different creators who've claimed they owned bits and pieces of Marvelman to put out product.

Creators with names like Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore have not just made their mark, but had ownership privileges, and its all led to Marvelman gaining a reputation as the best comic many comic readers haven't just never read, but which was impossible to obtain. To actually buy the back issues to read the series is prohibitively expensive.

Or was.

Apparently, Marvel just decided to cut checks to all involved and has purchased the rights to Marvelman.

Here.

This most likely means reprints and new material and a bunch of comic nerds in their early 30's and 20's who are now waiting for announcements about the reprints.

Well done, Marvel! I've only been waiting since about 1995 to read these stories.


Here's Jake Lloyd, the guy who played Anakin Skywalker in "The Phantom Menace"




He turned into a bitter nerd kid. Awesome.

Facebook

By the way, if you aren't a fan yet on Facebook, I'm actually using the thing. There's a bit of what I'd call Bonus Content. Plus, you get comments, etc... from folks who are coming in by way of Facebook.

Anyhow, use that box over there on the left and join up! Facebook is free and mostly not-scary.

6 comments:

Michael Corley said...

I have never hear of Marvelman, need to look into that.

Bitter nerd kid huh? Such is his... DESTINY! ssssss ppprrrr sssss prrrrr.

J.S. said...

Well, it's hard to fault a young kid for putting in a terrible performance which just about ruins your affection for one of the most beloved movies/stories of your youth- but Jake Lloyd was so bad that I'm willing to do it.

Michael Corley said...

I did find myself wondering, "This was the best child actor? Really?"

The League said...

Well, it doesn't help that the dialog was awful ("Yippee!" anybody?), and that Lucas' idea of direction is getting the biggest green screen he can find.

I think the best you can say about it is: mistakes were made.

tjeff said...

yeah, I mean Mark Hamill was so awesome and all... Seriously, when was the last time you guys saw Star Wars O.G.?

...let the flaming ensue..

The League said...

Actually, they run it so much on cable these days, I catch pieces about every 6 weeks or so. No doubt, the original movie has its clunky pieces, especially Hamill. If not, we would not have "but I was going into Tosche Station to pick up some power converters" in our minds as the whiniest line ever delivered.

I do not bag at all on Lloyd. He was a small kid doing his best, and he was far from the only problem in the movie. That's like blaming one of the St. Bernards in the Beethoven movies for not giving a great performance.

Its just fascinating to see him as an adult.