Category Archives: Comics
Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews – 5/16/20
What’s this? I have more than one comic to review this week? And were I a more diverse man, I’d have a bunch of comics?! The industry is slowly coming back to life with a pile of new digital releases this week, and I was able to catch up on two of my pre-pandemic favorites: Ant-Man and Lois Lane!
It’s not particularly fair to award Comic Book of the Week this week, but I’mma gonna give it to Ant-Man just because I liked that issue better than the other one I read. Both were good comics though. Good enough, at least.
Pam, we hardly knew you
Meanwhile, I continue to busy myself day-to-day with bouts of XCom 2 and Days Gone in video game world. I’m smashing my way through one TV show after another, be it DuckTales, Harley Quinn, Rick and Morty, Dead to Me or, this weekend, the final season of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. I also finally caved and splurged on some LEGO to keep up my spirits. Stay safe out there, everybody!
Comic Reviews: Ant-Man #4 and Lois Lane #10.
My Top 6 Funnest Amalgam Comics Combinations
Newsarama spent all last week designing and showing off their own Amalgam characters, and that’s got me in the mood to keep talking about Amalgam Comics and characters! For those not in the know, Amalgam Comics was a joint project between Marvel and DC in the mid-90s where they merged their characters and put out a couple random, stand alone issues.
The world needs Amalgam now more than ever!
Amalgam Comics is everything I love about comic books. Two rival companies came together with their best talent to produce this insane project. Pepsi and Coke have never come together to create some blended soda. But Amalgam was real, I owned and read a bunch of issues, and the world is a better place knowing this existed. So let’s celebrate Amalgam with a list of my favorite characters, and some of the ones that I think are just a great combination!
Please feel free to share your own favorite Amalgam character combos in the comments!
Let’s Revisit Amalgam Again with Newsarama!
Newsarama is one of those comic book news sites that’s always got some solid content on whenever you’re blandly surfing the internet — which I do all the time. It’s also one of those sites that this blog was created for, like my own personal resume for being able to write comic book news and features that should get me hired! But I never pursued any of that, so here I am excitedly sharing a Newarama feature on Amalgam Comics instead of writing it for them myself!
During these crazy quarantine times, the staff at Newsarama apparently took it upon themselves to revisit Amalgam Comics and come up with a bunch of their own combined characters. Like the Iron Bat!
Billionaire, playboy, genius, philanthropist
Beautiful.
For those who don’t know, Amalgam Comics was this glorious moment in comic book history when Marvel and DC Comics were working together for the greater good of humanity. Amalgam spun out of the Marvel vs. DC event in the 90s, during which the two companies merged their characters and actually jointly published a line of comics about these new oddities.
You had Dark Claw, the combination of Wolverine and Batman. You had Super Soldier, the combination of Superman and Captain America. You had Iron Lantern, the combination of Iron Man and Green Lantern. You had Lobo the Duck, the combination of Lobo and Howard the Duck! Seriously, Amalgam Comics were a perfect sort of thing that only comes along once in a lifetime. I owned a couple issues myself.
Too bad all of the collections have been out of print for decades and cost a princely sum on Amazon.
So kudos to Newsarama and their art teams for having a little fun this quarantine.
The Mighty Mortal: Thor and Shazam!
They did five characters total, which you can check out on their website. This is exactly the sort of fun, creative silliness we should all be doing in quarantine.
Amalgam was everything I love about comics. And I know I’m not the first online to suggest another crossover between Marvel and DC would be a great way to bring the comic book industry back to life following this shutdown.
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Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews – 5/9/20
Would you like at that, we’ve got a normal comic book today! The news in the world is that comic books are going to come back towards the end of the month. Marvel and DC are making plans, releasing schedules and putting some comics digital-first. So we will have new comics again!
The return starts this week with a new issue of Grant Morrison’s The Green Lantern! Too bad it’s probably the weakest issue yet! Man, if this is what comics are going to be like coming back, we should be worried…
Happens to the best of us, Hal
Meanwhile, life goes on in quarantine. I’ve started walking, finally. I splurged on some LEGO, finally. I watched The Midnight Gospel, which was good. I didn’t realize when HBO’s free streaming would end, so I didn’t get to finish the first season of Succession. And I’ve been playing XCom 2, which is really fun! So at least I’m keeping busy.
Comic Review: The Green Lantern: Season 2 #3
Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews – 4/25/20
Still trapped in quarantine. Still without new comics, for the most part. But I’ve got nothing better to do with my time so I grabbed Anti/Hero from DC Comics! It’s intended for young readers, but there weren’t any other comics I wanted to check out this week, so let’s go for it!
Meanwhile, I watched the HBO show Barry on their free streaming services and it was great! Highly recommended! I’m now playing the video game Days Gone, it’s an open world zombie game, and it’s fine. It’s filling that niche of having a distracting game to play. Still haven’t bought that Switch…
What are the rest of you up to in quarantine?
Comic Reviews: Anti/Hero.
Henchman-4-Hire 