Category Archives: Comics
The 6 Greatest Comic Book Santas
Let’s get this out of the way first: Santa Claus is real. Totally real. He’s big, he’s jolly, his white beard is legend and he lives on the North Pole making toys for all the good little girls and boys of the world. He uses time zones to his advantage when flying around the world in one night, and his reindeer fly using magick. Boom, mystery solved! If he wasn’t real, why would I, a 28-year-old man, still be getting presents marked ‘From: Santa’ under the Christmas tree? Can’t explain that!
Also not every kid in the world celebrates Christmas, so that cuts down on his time considerably.
It also helps that he's sometimes a vampire
Santa Claus is such a popular guy that he’s one of the biggest celebrities on the planet, and is always appearing in movies, TV shows and more. Whether he’s selling Coca Cola, being put on trial on 34th Street or getting his testicles electrocuted by terrorists in Iraq on South Park, Santa Claus spends a lot of his free time in show business. He’s even made more than a few appearances in comic books. Back in the 40s and 50s, Santa had his own funny books. And Silver Age superheroes like old-timey Batman and Superman were always willing to lend the jolly old elf a hand. But he’s not always portrayed as quite so jolly. Or quite so non-homicidal.
And we’re not talking about stories starring a mall Santa or just a guy in a Santa costume – like the time vampire-slayer Blade had to kill a mall Santa who was possessed by a murderous demon – we’re talking the real deal Kris Kringle himself!
Read on to see the 6 best comic book appearances of Santa Claus!
Review: The Ray #1
I can only assume that The Ray was a rejected idea for the New 52 back in September. Coming so soon after the big reboot, and resigned to just a mini-series, I imagine that some editor somewhere liked the idea enough to give it a lifeline. Which is fine. I’ll never oppose adding more comics to the shelf. But The Ray #1 is so bland, mediocre and generic that I can see why it was rejected. The book lacks a hook, lacks any creative or interesting idea to make it worthwhile.
The Ray #1
So if you like your superheroes ordinary and plain, The Ray is the book for you.
Comic rating: 3/5: Alright.
That’s not to say The Ray is a bad read. It’s a perfectly fine comic book about a brand new superhero and his origin story. Though the concept isn’t new. The character of ‘the Ray’ has been around since 1940, and DC had a C-list character running around with his own series back in the 90s and up until the New 52 reboot. For this story, though, writers Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti are starting from scratch. The light-based powers are the same, but we’ve got a new hero, a new supporting cast, a new status quo and new villains. Unfortunately, Gray and Palmiotti did little to capture my attention.
I picked up The Ray #1 on a whim. I like the costume, it was a light comics buying week and I thought ‘what the heck?’. While I’m not disappointed that I bought the comic, I don’t know if I’ll buy anymore. The Ray just isn’t a very bright idea.
Spoilers after the jump.
The Internet Justice League
College Humor has done it again with a hilarious superhero parody: The Internet Justice League. This is the kind of thing Internet writers such as myself wish we’d come up with…and then we wish we worked for College Humor. Anyway, enjoy the hilarity and then go check out the rest.
Sad Multiple Man News
Marvel.com is featuring a sneak peek at their X-Franchise comics coming out in March. As some of you know, I’m closely following the events in X-Factor as they involve the death of my favorite character, Multiple Man. It’s my theory, and my hope, that Multiple Man will come out unscathed and still be in the book. But the March solicitations offer only bad news.
No sign of Multiple Man whatsoever!
You can all go to Hell!
The solicitation for the issue goes as follows:
X-FACTOR #233
WRITER: Peter David
ARTIST: Leonard Kirk
Cover By David Yardin
• Havok And Polaris Take The Reins Of X-Factor Investigations!
• Featuring The Return Of X-Factor Foe The Isolationist
Nothing about that sounds good to me at all. This is sad, sad news. Multiple Man is worth a dozen Havoks and Polarises!
But perhaps when the world of comics closes one door, it opens another. March is also the month that the Mimic, another favorite character of mine, will be appearing in X-Men: Legacy. That in no way makes up for the loss of Multiple Man, but I guess at this point I have to take what I can get.
Henchman-4-Hire 