Help save the planet

ok, not really. I need a bit of help. I'm trying to find any comic characters (sci-fi, anime etc will do too) that have a planet as part of their costume, or logo, or whatever. So far I have the Kree warrior uniform:

Then there's Mogo. Not so much a uniform as an actual planet, but close enough:

I suppose based on that, Ego The Living Planet would count too, but he's a bit elaborate for my needs. Oh yeah, I guess following that train of thought there's also Unicron:

Captain Planet sucks, so he doesn't count.

Anyway, if anyone out there can think of any others, name-drop in the comments please.

Bonus Content:

Someone might want to drop google a line.

Mentioning the Skrulls when you search for Kree could start a war.

Assorted thoughts

Just a few brief things I've found interesting/amusing over the last month.

I took a punt and added Blackest Night: Flash to my pull list when it was announced, since Geoff Johns making the Flash + Firestorm connection seemed obvious. Issue 1 was a bust, but the final 2 issues paid off. Only a brief appearance in #3, but it rules:

Barry fighting off Firestorm with a Firehawk ring construct is brilliant.

Slightly more puzzling than brilliant, is the question of just what the hell happened to Power Girl's boob window in the last issue of JSA All Stars.

I'm sure it was there last month...

Issue 4 of Realm Of Kings: Royal Guard had this interesting little sequence:


hmmm, fire-guy gets his containment field breached, and explodes. I'm sure I've seen that before somewhere...

Finally, just because I love me some tough-guy talk:

From Secret Six, naturally.

Also thought I'd mention incase I'm not the only one that almost never reads any sort of Previews type thing (either in print or online), the ORIGINAL X-FACTOR lineup is back, seemingly carrying on close to where it left off, with Louise Simonson back writing it. I am stoked, as that comic remains my all-time favourite. Will it live up to my memory of the original? Probably not, but I'm just glad I'm going to have back 5 characters that I used to really care about, in a form I recognise (that is, without the past 15 years of X-men baggage and assorted tinkering). Thank goodness for those little preview pages in the back of comics, or I may well never have found out about this.

So Much Work, And Nobody Even Dies

Just got hold of the original art for Firestorm v2 #45 page 12. Aside from a couple of great Hyena shots, I found this one panel really interesting purely for the amount of editorial guidance that went in to it:

First of all, we have the letterer Carrie Spiegle needing to add one of those line thingies (technical term) over the E in CAFE (all red markings are by me to highlight)

Next, the point on Felicity's speech bubble was lengthed. I've roughly drawn in where it originally went, as it's twinked out and doesn't show on the scan. I guess it looked a little too much like the woman in the background was talking, although you'll notice they didn't exactly follow the editor's suggested look (in blue).

The note in the margin reads "lenthen point to Felicity"

Finally, there's a note to change the hairstyles on a couple of figures. The margin note reads "More black in both Ronnie & Ed Raymond's hair, also fix Ed's hair style". Both figures in question are circled.

One small problem though. While that's certainly Ronnie on the left, on the right it's Doreen, not Ed! Ed is the figure with his back to the camera. Editor Janice Race missed that the figure on the right is wearing a skirt, so we're left with a very masculine head on a woman's body.

That's pretty funny.

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other

Another bit of comparisson of the printed page vs the original art. This is from Bloodhound #5 (by Kirk & Riggs), in a scene where Jason has an attempt to merge with Bloodhound rather emphatically denied. From the comic:

Original:

At the risk of sounding like I have something against colorists, I really prefer it in black and white. Could've been interesting if they still did all the lettering on the page though ;)

Manhunter in 30 seconds

Chris over at the ISB is running his annual "30 second" event, which means more bad art from me. Hooray!

This time around, it's the "Trial By Fire" arc from Manhunter, in which Shadow Thief is put on trial for the murder of Firestorm.











Previous years efforts here and here

If you've got it, share it

Following on from my last post (it's almost like I planned it...), this seems as good a time as any to point out that my entire art collection is all scanned and online right here!

36 pages of both classic and modern Firestorm, an entire issue of Moon Knight prelims, convention sketches, and a bunch of other pages from Blue Beetle, Aquaman, Birds Of Prey etc.

Despite what it tells you when you register a paid account, the pages do not quite display on a 1:1 scale. Shag over at Firestorm Fan has full size scans of various pages on his site, so consider that the place to go for the proper article. As an online collection all in one place though, ComicArtFans serves it's purpose very well.

It won't be up to date for long though, I just won two more Firestorm pages on ebay ;)

Sometimes high tech isn't better

Just had some more Firestorm artwork arrive (4 pages!), a christmas present for myself if you will (well that's my excuse, really it was just because a dealer was having a sale). Of particular interest (well, to me anyway) is the first panel from #6, page 18. As it appeared in the comic:

Cool effects and all, but here's what was actually there originally:

Heh, that's an awful lot of lines and white dots to have a colorist come along and cover up. The printed panel is certainly effective, but I think I prefer the original art (by Batista & Green).