§ Apparently there is a new MarkWaid.com site, which is in opposition to this Mark Waid Is Evil site. We expect the truth of the matter — whether an end to this classic Manichean battle, or the purpose of the marketing campaign — will be revealed in due course.

§ Maybe it’s our weakened state, but we can’t quite identify the target of this Dick Hyacinth satire, although it is quite funny.

THE VISION: Why do female robots (to the extent that such a term is meaningful for artificial life) always have breasts, but male robots only rarely have penises? The Vision wants to know, and he’s going to kill as many Hydra agents as it takes until he gets some answers. But he won’t know the real truth until he gets a look at Wonder-Man’s penis, which is being held hostage by Baron von Strucker himself. Can these two “brothers” put aside their differences long enough to rescue the kidnapped genitalia?


§ For Hollywood dirt fans: The secret history of why Disney dumped ‘Narnia’.

§ Richard Starkings remembers Archie Goodwin, someone who should always be remembered:

Just a dozen years ago, if you asked anyone in the comic book industry who THE Nicest Man in Comics was, they’d reply to a man (and woman): “Archie Goodwin!”

I was lucky enough to spend time with Archie in the late 80’s when I worked at Marvel UK’s offices in London as group editor of the Boys’ Adventure titles. Traditionally in Britain comics (NOT comic BOOKS) are magazine sized and published every week rather than every month. The titles under my supervision included TRANSFORMERS, ACTION FORCE (GI JOE to you Yanks) ZOIDS, THUNDERCATS and THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS… licensed titles that could command sales of 40,000 copies a week and up.

1 COMMENT

  1. Hyacinth’s post reminds me of a SNL skit where during a conversation the characters inserted (heh) “penis” into nearly every sentence because the FCC or somebody had just validated saying the word on the air.

  2. Hyacinth’s light slaps seemed to be aimed primarily at Marvel, the dominant publisher of comics these days, and secondarily at Diamond, for canceling the “Adult” Previews printed supplement and hurting small publishers in the process.

    There might be a fair number of readers who wonder, if the superheroes have all those muscles and powers, gee, what are their penises like? I’ve never been one of those readers, and I doubt that I reacted as Hyacinth intended, but I wouldn’t have reacted as intended anyway, perhaps, ‘cause Hyacinth got all the details about the Vision (I) wrong.

    The Vision was (is) a synthozoid, designed to exist as a synthetic human, with technology replicating many physiological functions. The connection to Wonder Man isn’t relevant in that respect.

    Questions were raised about the Vision’s “functionality” decades ago, when Englehart had him marry Wanda in AVENGERS. Englehart addressed those questions in FOOM #12, but questions were raised again, decades later, when Byrne’s AWC storyline depicted the rebuilt Vision as apenile. In light of the Vision‘s appearance in implied sex scenes, and Englehart’s statements on the subject — Byrne was wrong.

    Should anyone wonder about Vision II: The thing is purely and implausibly a software emulation running on a nigh-magical suit of armor that does practically anything that a desperate writer might want it to do, except, of course, emulating a penis.

    SRS