Christmas Comics Cavalcade – Star Trek: The Next Generation #2 (DC Comics)

In the past two years, I’ve become a fan of Star Trek.

Previously, I never had much use for Star Trek. I was always more of a Star Wars kid growing up and, if I’m being honest, I found a lot of the Trek canon to be nothing but a slow, boring slog as a teenager. Star Trek was the first Geek Certified property I never quite got a handle on enjoying… and it perplexed me!

“By all rights,” I thought to myself back in 1992,  “I should be incredibly interested in Star Trek! Look at all these other socially unacceptable pursuits I undertake that make me comically unappealing to the opposite sex! Comics! Toys! Video games! Science Fiction! Star Trek fits right in there!”

…and what was worse, I now realize it was never a better time to be a Star Trek fan than in the 1990’s. Ample opportunities to become a Trekkie existed in the during that decade, with a hefty amount of new spin-offs and movies being cranked out by Paramount.  Still, nothing ever really appealed to me outside of kind of enjoying Star Trek: First Contact when I saw it in theaters.

Trek caught my attention in a big way in 2016 when I suddenly found myself very discouraged about the state of humanity in general. 2016 seemed to usher in a cruel, stupid new paradigm for my country and I didn’t like what I was seeing.

As with many before me, I found solace from the harsher realities of the world in some of the loftier ideals of Star Trek. The idea that some day… some day, humankind sheds the base, antagonistic bullshit we always seem to be caught up in and we get to explore the stars?

During much of the last two years, I’ve needed that kind of hopeful escape.

At any rate, I started getting into Star Trek: The Next Generation in a big, bad way.

Christmas doesn’t come up much in Star Trek. Besides a couple of throwaway lines and scenes over the last 50 years, no Star Trek series has ever directly tackled a holiday episode. That’s why I’m doubly excited today as both a fan of Star Trek and a fan of Christmas comics to look at Star Trek: The Next Generation #2, published in 1987 by DC Comics

…an honest-to-God Star Trek Christmas story. Look at Captain Picard defend that Christmas tree!

The comic was written by Mike Carlin with art duties from Pablo Marcos, Carlos Garzon, and Arne Starr.

Teacher Comics: January 10th, 2017

For those of you who’ve never read the Brubaker/Cooke/Allred take on Catwoman… get on that. It’s good stuff.

Christmas Comic Cavalcade: The Batman Adventures Holiday Special (DC Comics, 1995)

This week, we’re looking at The Batman Adventures Holiday Special, published by DC Comics in 1995. Cover price was $2.95. I picked this up for $5 dollars at a comic convention this past April.

When I would shop for presents for my family as a teenager, I’d often treat myself to a comic book from the spinner rack at Waldenbooks. If possible, I would try to find a comic that was reflective of the holiday season. Indeed, some of my favorite comics of all time are collections of yuletide stories featuring superheroes (I’ve talked about many of these books before here on the Cavalcade). This comic was one of those purchases and it’s a great one.

Romeo & Juliet Projects, Part 2

Continuing to share my students’ awesome Romeo and Juliet movie pitch projects. In brief, students in my classes are assigned a scene from the last half of R&J and asked to create a modern take on the material for moviegoing audiences.

One of the things I believe made this year such a successful one in regards to these projects is my taking a slightly different approach to mentoring. I asked students to think more this year about creating a believable “feud” dynamic than I ever have before. That work reflects itself in quite a few of these projects.

 

To wit, I received several “Marvel Comics vs. DC Comics” Romeo & Juliet pitches. I have to imagine the popularity of superhero movies lead students down this route, casting the R&J roles based personalities of the various hero characters. In both of these projects, independent of one another, the students cast Deadpool as Mercutio… which kind of fits, if you think about it.

(FYI, the Batman/Spider-Man poster is not meant to lead you to believe those two heroes are the Romeo and Juliet of that pitch… although that is something of an unintended consequence.)

 

 

Here’s another cool take using pre-existing characters: A Romeo & Juliet casting the major roles from the play around the eternal divide between Nintendo and Sega. I wasn’t even aware this particular feud was still going on, but I’ve been since assured it is. In this version, Sonic the Hedgehog woos Princess Peach.

More in upcoming weeks…

Christmas Comics Cavalcade: Superman #165 (DC Comics)

This week we’ll be looking at Superman #165, published in December of 2001 by DC Comics. The book was written by Jeph Loeb and was something of an all-star “jam” issue featuring a who’s who of popular superhero comic artists. Cover prices was $2.25.

Superman’s been involved with some great Christmas stories in his 75 year history, but this one is different in that it’s highly connected with several ongoing stories within the Superman family of titles. In brief: Lex Luthor has just been elected President of the United States of America. Superman is obviously quite conflicted about this development and spends this issue visiting with the various members of the Justice League to get their take on the recent election results.

Half-Price Books finds

Not exactly a thrift store find this week, I’ll admit. Where I live in Southwest Ohio is within a twenty mile radius of three Half-Price Books. Four times a year, HPB sends out these great coupons where, during a week of sales, you can get 20%, 30%, 40%, and on Sunday a whopping 50% off one purchase. It’s perhaps a bit gluttonous of me, but on those 50% Off Sundays, I hit all three stores and these are my finds.

Thrift Store Finds: The Best of DC Blue Ribbon Digest #10 (DC Comics)

This week, we’ll be looking at The Best of DC Blue Ribbon Digest #10, a digest-sized collection of comics published by (you guessed it!) DC Comics in 1981.

Cover price is .95 cents… I paid $4 dollars.

I know what you’re thinking: $4 bucks is kind of a big purchase for me book-wise, you’re right! When I’m at thrift stores, I mainly stick to lower priced paperbacks. I found I couldn’t resist this one, mark-up be damned.

DC Comics got out of the digest business in the mid 1980’s but for years, digest sized presentations of their comics were a regular feature at newsstands and grocery stores across the country. These days, Archie Comics is the last company standing in regards to the digest… and there’s a very definite reason for that. Most Archie comics are meticulously drawn in a house style pioneered by cartoonist Dan DeCarlo. Comics drawn by the company today match DeCarlo’s style from the 1960’s. This gives Archie Comics a wealth of back catalog from which to draw for their current digests.

The art and writing for superhero comics has always been a bit more faddish – trends and artistic styles come and go with the times. A Superman comic from the 1960’s looks almost nothing like a modern day Superman comic, save for some cross-generational touches (the “S” shield, the cape, and so on). While Archie can seemingly reprint stories forever with consumers being none the wiser, most of DC’s back catalog has been rendered quaint by time.

This Best of DC Digest is subtitled Secret Origins of Super-Villains and contains six stories focusing on the baddies of the DC Universe. The majority of these stories look to be drawn from DC’s Silver Age of comics but although creator credits are given, the digest doesn’t give any notation of where and when the stories come from. I found this to be somewhat annoying but it makes sense given the time this book was published that this information would not have likely been at the forefront of reader’s minds. Some Googling does reveal the sources of these books and I’ll include them in my appraisals, but as far as I can tell, the first comic story in the collection is original to this digest.

Chalkboard Drawings: The “All sea” edition

I draw a picture of myself on my classroom’s chalkboard everyday. I collect those pictures as camera phone photos and post them on Sundays. See the rest here.

Two things about this week’s chalk offerings:

1. Some kind-hearted philanthropist donated some supplies and books to my classroom last week. Included in this package was a set of Chalk Ink Wet Wipe Markers. They provide a bolder line and I seriously love them. I wanted to use them as much as possible this week, even while quickly becoming aware they weren’t great for coloring in large spaces.

2. The theme this week was “the ocean” because… I don’t know why. I guess it being a four day week (thanks to Labor Day here in America) had something to do with it but I couldn’t tell you why. 

Thrift Store Finds: August’s Half-Off Sale

On the first Monday of every month, our thrift store marks everything in the store down to half off. During summer vacation, Ellen and I make a point to go to the store first thing on these Monday mornings, so as to have full range of choice in whatever secondhand wares that strike our fancy. Although we’re about out of August now, I thought I’d rundown our last half-off sale of summer 2013.

BOOKS –  Lover Boy by Stan and Jan Berenstain was one I grabbed because I had already talked about the sequel to this book, Office Lover Boy, in a previous post. Seeing the husband/wife duo behind the wholesome Berenstain Bears work blue was something of a shock back when I wrote that post… and it’s still a little strange to see now! This book’s falling apart but for a quarter, I figured it was worth it. I also found The A-Team 5: Ten Percent of Trouble, the fifth in a series of novelizations adapting episodes of NBC’s 1980’s action series. I collect novelizations when the mood seizes me and… c’mon! Mr. T! George Peppard! The guy who originally played Starbuck on Battlestar Galactica!

VIDEO GAMES – I picked up four GameBoy cartridges for $2 bucks apiece: Terminator 2: Judgement Day (LJN), Top Gun: Guts & Glory (Konami), Bugs Bunny – Crazy Castle 3 (Kemco), and Pokemon Pinball (Nintendo). This was a mixed bag of carts. I don’t know why I picked up Top Gun; the Nintendo game was awful and this just seems to follow suit. Crazy Castle 3 is fine; it’s just an incredibly boring game. Terminator 2 is (quite surprisingly considering it was published by LJN, purveyors of the worst licensed games ever) the most fun out of all these, however it’s wicked hard. They only give you one life and I can barely make it to the second board without dying. Pokemon Pinball… I haven’t tried yet. I want to wait until I can scrounge a AAA battery for the Rumble Pak.

COMICS – Paul Dini’s run on Detective Comics yielded some fun Batman stories but his work was  overshadowed at the time by Grant Morrison’s Batman work. I’ve been going back and checking Dini’s Detective Comics’ work and it’s about as solid as you’d expect from one of the main architects of Batman: The Animated Series. The best of these are a two-parter featuring Scarface as the main baddie and a team-up with Zatanna (one of Dini’s favorite DC characters). The next few issues dovetail with Grant Morrison’s Batman R.I.P. storyline. Dini’s stories are aided by Dustin Nguyen’s capable artwork. I got these for fifty cents apiece.

VIDEO CASSETTE – I have the first ten seasons of The Simpsons on DVD and watch them on an endless loop. I probably don’t need a VHS cassette collecting the first two episodes of the first season of the series, which is lucky because despite what the colorful box says, that’s not what I got here. The Best of The Simpsons Volume 1 includes “There’s No Disgrase Like Home” and “Life on the Fast Lane” but the cassette here includes “Bart the General” and “Moaning Lisa.” It’s a weird mistake and a little Googling reveals that the cassette I have is The Best of the Simpsons, Volume 2.

Thrift Store Finds: Superman – Miracle Monday

This week’s Thrift Store Find is Superman: Miracle Monday, written by Elliot S. Maggin and published by Warner Books in 1981.

Cover price was $2.50, I got it for a quarter.

This is the second in a series of paperback novels Warner Books published, presumably in conjunction with their Superman franchise of movies starring Christopher Reeve. Superman II was released in theaters in 1980; presumably this book was in bookstores to capitalize on that film.