L’shana tovah and Happy New Year to all of my Jewish friends! (I will presume that you know who you are.) May the year 5774 bring you and everyone you love much good, and none ill.

In celebration of Rosh Hashanah, today’s Comic Art Friday features artworks starring the four most prominent superheroes of the Hebrew persuasion. At the top of this post, you’ll encounter Ben “The Thing” Grimm and Ruth “Sabra” Bat-Seraph, drawn by longtime Marvel Comics stalwart Rich Buckler. Further down, you’ll see Denny “The Spirit” Colt and Kitty “Shadowcat” Pryde, rendered by the artist known as Briz (a.k.a. Brian Douglas Ahern).

Someone asked me several years ago why I always post messages to Facebook and Twitter wishing folks well on Jewish holidays, given that I’m not Jewish. The best answer I can come up with is found in the lyrics of one of my favorite popular songs from the 1990s, Marc Cohn’s “Walking in Memphis”:

Muriel plays piano
Every Friday at the Hollywood
And they brought me down to see her
And they asked me if I would
Do a little number
And I sang with all my might
She said, “Tell me, are you a Christian, child?”
And I said, “Ma’am, I am tonight!”

The point being, here’s a Jewish musician singing Christian gospel music in a blues club… and why not?

Which is the frame of reference from which I come. I’m not Jewish, but I have a lot of friends who are — in fact, I’m sure that I probably have friends who are Jewish whose religion/heritage is unknown to me — so why would I not wish them well when they’re celebrating? It may not be my holiday, but it is theirs, and they’re my friends and I want them to be happy. That doesn’t seem all that difficult to understand — at least, not to me.

Incidentally, the same principle applies to my friends who identify as some denominational brand of Christian. I’m a Christian, but I don’t celebrate religious holidays as part of my faith practice. That doesn’t mean I can’t wish my friends whose religious practice does include holidays like Christmas and Easter much happiness as they celebrate. (And yes, I do celebrate Christmas — and, to a lesser degree, Easter — in a secular manner. I just don’t acknowledge December 25 as the “birthday” of Jesus, or attach any religious significance to the date.)

Although I don’t always apply this principle perfectly — mostly because it’s a lot of work to keep track of who might be celebrating what this week, and I’m sure I miss somebody’s Festivus Maximus or whatever — but I do apply it as universally as is practical. I tell my ethnically Asian friends “Gong Hei Fat Choi” at the Chinese New Year, even though I’m not ethnically Asian. I wish my female friends well on International Women’s Day and Women’s Equality Day, even though I’m demonstrably not a woman. I salute my friends who identify as LGBT during Pride Week, even though I’m pretty much a 0 on the Kinsey scale.

And why not? It doesn’t have to be my holiday for me to want you to enjoy it if it’s yours.

I believe a key reason why we have so much division among people — both generally, and in American culture specifically — is our tendency to separate ourselves from those we perceive as “different” or “other.” Now, there’s great value in finding and bonding with people with whom we share commonalities. I treasure the bonds I’ve made with folks whose beliefs or vocation or interests or hobbies mirror my own. I think it’s vital, however, to also connect with people who differ from me, so that I don’t end up living in a bland, homogenous world.

I’m glad that, even though I’m a nondenominational Christian, I have friends who identify with other varieties of Christian practice, and friends who are Jewish, and Buddhist, and Muslim, and Wiccan, and atheist. (And yes, I really do have friends who fit each of those labels, and more besides.) I’m glad that, even though I’m genetically biracial and identify primarily as African-American, I have friends who reflect every shade in the melanin spectrum, from inky to pasty and all of the various browns and pinks and goldens in between. I’m glad that even though I test out as more or less left of center politically, I have friends who range from left-wing socialist/anarchist pinko to right-wing reactionary whacko (and I use those terms advisedly). And I’m glad that even though, as previously noted, I’m unrepentantly hetero and monogamous, I have friends who are openly gay and lesbian and bi and trans and poly (and, I imagine, others who aren’t out to me).

I’m glad why? Because I love them all, and I learn from them all. And because my world would be less rich and glorious without them all.

And by “them,” I mean “you.”

So, yes. L’shana tovah to my Jewish friends today. And happy whatever your thing is, when your thing comes around. I’ll try to remember. (If I forget, it doesn’t mean I don’t love you. It just means I forgot. Or didn’t know. I’ll try to do better.)

And that’s your Rosh Hashanah Comic Art Friday.

In the entertainment world, rumors are a dime a dozen. With the advent of social media, that value has plummeted to, say, about a dime per quadrillion.

Still, I was intrigued to note earlier this week the rumor that actress Katee Sackhoff — best known to genre fans as Starbuck on the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, and currently costarring on A&E’s modern-day Western-slash-police-drama Longmire — is being touted for a film role as one of my favorite superheroines, Ms. Marvel.

Except… okay… she’s not Ms. Marvel any more. She’s Captain Marvel now.

But not the guy in the red union suit with the lightning bolt on the chest. Then again, he’s not Captain Marvel any more.

I’ll explain.

The original Captain Marvel first appeared in Fawcett Publications’ Whiz Comics #1 way back in February 1940. Enormously popular from the get-go — comics featuring Captain Marvel routinely outsold those starring Superman — the Big Red Cheese (as he was lovingly nicknamed) spawned an entire family of spinoff characters, including his sister Mary Marvel, his protege Captain Marvel Jr., and numerous Lieutenant Marvels. The publishing concern today known as DC Comics — National at the time — took Fawcett to court, arguing that Captain Marvel was a ripoff of their Man of Steel. (Never mind that Superman was himself, in some respects, a ripoff of Doc Savage and other characters who preceded him. But that’s an essay for another day.)

After years of legal wrangling, National/DC forced Fawcett to stop publishing the adventures of Captain Marvel and his cohorts, effectively pushing Fawcett out of the comics business. By the early 1970s, DC had won all rights to the Fawcett characters, and began putting out their own Marvel Family comics.

Only they couldn’t use “Captain Marvel” in the title of any of those books.

Why? Because in the intervening period when Captain Marvel lay fallow, the entity today known as Marvel Comics (who’d operated under various names, including Timely and Atlas, before settling on Marvel in the early 1960s) had created a new character named Captain Marvel, thus seizing claim to the then-inactive trademark. Marvel’s hero, unrelated to the Fawcett character other than in name, was a former soldier from a distant planet who embarked on a series of increasingly cosmic exploits. The real-world upshot meant that as long as Marvel kept a comic in active publication (that is, within a three-year window) with “Captain Marvel” in the title, DC couldn’t use that trademarked phrase in marketing any of its comics. Thus, DC resorted to “SHAZAM!” — their Captain Marvel’s transformational magic word — as the umbrella title for books featuring Cap and company.

In 1977, Marvel debuted Ms. Marvel, a distaff version of their Captain Marvel. (As both audience-expanding and trademark-grabbing moves, Marvel generated a host of female spinoffs during this period, including Spider-Woman and She-Hulk.) Ms. Marvel was the freshly superpowered incarnation of Carol Danvers, a supporting character who had floated around in the Marvel Universe background for several years prior. An officer in the U.S. Air Force, Carol’s new abilities (mainly super-strength, invulnerability, and flight) and costumed identity made her essentially Marvel’s equivalent to DC’s Wonder Woman, another powerhouse who likewise had a military career in her past.

Following the cancellation of her eponymous series after a two-year run, Carol (who flirted briefly with other codenames, including Binary and Warbird, but always returned to calling herself Ms. Marvel) moved on to a stint in the Avengers and occasional guest appearances in other Marvel books. She didn’t regain her own title until 2006, when writer Brian Reed and a revolving door of artists (Roberto de la Torre and Aaron Lopresti notched the longest tenures on the series) chronicled Ms. Marvel’s adventures until the book folded after four years. Last year, Carol ditched her longtime nom de guerre in favor of Captain Marvel (a name that had bounced around between a couple of different characters over the previous two decades), and began a new self-titled series under that banner.

Meanwhile, back at DC, the original Captain Marvel — who, as noted above, had headlined a variety of books with “SHAZAM!” in the title since the ’70s — finally gave up on the marketing nightmare a couple of years ago, and changed his own codename to Shazam (the name by which many readers called the character anyway, given the cover designation).

I’ve always really liked Ms. Marvel — I haven’t quite gotten the hang of calling her “Captain” yet — because from the time of her debut, she represented the kind of heroine that Marvel hadn’t had previously; an immensely powerful fighter who could battle mano a mano with any villain in the Marvel Universe. Plus, having grown up in a Air Force family, I felt a special connection to Carol due to her history in that service.

She remains one of my all-time favorites. I’d love to see her on the big screen someday. Katee Sackhoff, who exudes a kind of scrappy toughness, wouldn’t be a bad choice to portray her.

Of course, given how many decades I’ve been waiting for a Wonder Woman motion picture, I’m not holding my breath.

A few notes on the art we’re presenting today, starting at the top of this post:

Ms. Marvel in her original (and still my favorite) costume by Aaron Lopresti, who at the time this piece was drawn (at WonderCon 2007) was the regular penciler on the Ms. Marvel comic.

A battle of the two Marvel Families, penciled by Luke McDonnell (JLA, Suicide Squad). On the left, from top to bottom: Mary Marvel; the original Captain Marvel; Captain Marvel Jr. On the right: Marvel’s first Captain Marvel (Mar-Vell of the Kree); Ms. Marvel; Marvel’s second Captain Marvel (Monica Rambeau).

Ms. Marvel, again in her original costume, penciled by Michael Dooney (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). This piece was my very first Ms. Marvel commission, and also the first of my many commissions from Dooney.

Ms. Marvel in her second and longest-tenured costume (which I refer to snarkily as the Warbird Swimsuit), in beautiful brushed ink by the comics artist known as Buzz. (Buzz was supposed to draw Carol in her original costume, but forgot. I love this piece anyway… in spite of the Warbird Swimsuit.)

And back to the original — see how much better that looks? — with pencils by Matthew Clark (Adventures of Superman) and inks by Bob Almond (Black Panther, Infinity Gauntlet).

Finally, below: Ms. Marvel in battle against the sometime-villainous, sometime-heroic Moonstone; pencils by Scott Rosema (Space Ghost), inks again by Bob Almond.

And that’s your Comic Art Friday.

The truth can now be told: I’ve never much liked Thor.

I actually think the concept of Thor — lightning-wielding proto-Viking with a flying hammer — is pretty awesome. The character himself? Not so much.

I want to like Thor. He’s a pillar of the Marvel Universe, an original Avenger, wears a wicked costume, and talks as though he wandered in from an improvisational Shakespeare road company. His adventures have been drawn by some of the greatest artists in comics history: Jack Kirby, John Buscema, Keith Pollard, and Walt Simonson, to name just a few. What’s not to like?

But from the dawn of my comics-reading days until now, Thor has always left me kind of cold.

For me, Thor doesn’t work very well as a superhero. A superhero is a rather narrowly specific kind of fantasy character, a creature of modern urban mythology. Thor, who’s more or less a port-over from ancient Norse legend given a comic book twist, feels awkwardly shoehorned into superherodom. He’s too powerful to waste his time beating up Earthbound bad guys — which, let’s be frank, is also one of the main problems with the prototypical superhero, Superman — and yet, that’s mainly what superheroes do. It’s no accident that Thor’s best storylines place him outside the terrestrial realm and give him a more cosmic scope. But since he’s not a true spacefaring quasi-science-fictional character, like, say, Adam Strange or the various Green Lanterns, that doesn’t suit Thor very well either. So, he kind of floats in between, neither fish nor fowl.

We see this problem play out in Joss Whedon’s Avengers movie. Of all the titular heroes, Thor’s by far the least interesting — and, despite his familial connection to the villain of the piece, the one whose presence adds the least to the story. Which is saying something, considering how brutally that film treats Hawkeye, a character for whom I have a fair amount of affection. At least Hawkeye’s narrative, clumsy as it is, has some semblance of an arc.

Thor’s supporting cast can be fun. I’ve always had a soft spot for the Warriors Three, the triumvirate of bickering adventurers who occasionally pal around with the big guy. And Thor’s half-brother Loki makes a decent villain, as his enjoyable appearances in the first Thor and Avengers films attest. There’s at least a modicum of potential in the whole Asgardian thing.

Just not for me, I guess.

To his credit, though, Thor does make for some appealing pictures.

At the top of this post is a Common Elements scenario pitting the Thunder God against another hammer-slinging hero, Steel. Penciler Trevor Von Eeden said that he wanted to comment on the relative merits of the two characters. I believe it’s clear whom Trevor favors in this duel. Veteran inker Joe Rubinstein contributed the finishes.

Next up, penciler Geof Isherwood and inker Bob Almond team up to present old Winghead in all his Mjolnir-gripping glory.

Lastly, Bob McLeod gives us a classic rendering of the Asgardian wunderkind.

Ah, Thor. I wish we could be better pals. Unfortunately, that would require you to be less lame. No Dr. Don Blake reference intended.

And that’s your Comic Art Friday.

LearnedLeague Season 58 concluded this week, and in the immortal words of Gloria Gaynor, “I will survive.”

After a grueling 25-day campaign, I managed to finish 17th in Rundle A West — without dispute, the league’s most talent-loaded bracket. By placing above the bottom 10 in our 32-player Rundle, I avoided relegation (the LL euphemism for “demotion”) to a lower bracket for next season. Not escaping that fate were several esteemed competitors whom I consider superstars in the trivia world.

Sometimes, it is indeed better to be lucky than good.

It’s worth noting that my placement in A West plummeted nine slots between last season (when I finished 8th) and this, even though my statistical performance in both seasons was similar. (My head-to-head matchplay record in LL57 was 11-9-5; this season, LL58, I went 10-9-6.) The primary contributing factor here was the disbanding after LL57 of the League’s previous top level, Rundle Championship, and the redistribution of its participants into the four A-level Rundles. A West inherited several former R-Champ members, raising the difficulty factor of our bracket exponentially. (Not that it needed to get more difficult. Rundle A West has long borne the nickname “A Murder” with good reason.) I would have to check name by name to be certain, but I’m pretty sure that every A West member who was in R-Champ in LL57 finished above me in LL58. So, there you go.

Now that I’ve completed three full LL seasons, the last two in A West, it’s a good time to analyze my overall performance in the League to date.

My win-loss-tie record stands at 42-21-12. That’s significantly skewed by my rookie season, in which I went 21-3-1 against other rookies and won my Rundle. None of my fellow R Central competitors had yet advanced to A-level as of LL58 (I believe one or two just earned promotion to A for next season), so it’s fair to say that I compiled that gaudy rookie record against less-stiff competition than what I’ve faced in A West the past two seasons. So, let’s call that first season’s 21 wins an outlier. In A-level competition, I’m a just–over-.500 hitter.

It’s also important to understand wins, losses, and ties in the context of LearnedLeague’s unique method of match play. In LL, defense — that is, the point values assigned to each day’s questions by each player, based on his or her estimation of that day’s opponent’s likelihood of answering each question correctly — plays a critical role. Quite frequently, a player wins or ties a match in which his or her opponent offers more correct answers — simply by virtue of more effective defense. Here’s an example: Player A gets four of the match’s six questions correct; Player B assigned those four questions values of 3, 2, 2, and 1. (Player A therefore missed two questions, valued at 1 and 0.) Player B gets five out of six, earning the following points: 0, 1, 1, 2, 2. (Player B missed the sixth question, valued by Player B at 3.) Player A’s score is 8(4) — that is, 8 points on 4 correct responses. Player B’s score is 6(5) — 6 points on 5 correct responses. Since only the match points, and not the number of correct answers, determines the outcome of the match, Player A wins, despite getting one less question right than Player B.

As a hardcore trivia guy, I sometimes find that system less than satisfying. Ideally, every trivia matchup would be decided purely on the basis of “who knows more stuff.” But the fact is, even Jeopardy!, the venue from which whatever minuscule trivia street cred I possess is derived, works the same way. I’ve certainly won games in my Jeopardy! career where one of my opponents answered more questions correctly, but I happened to get more of the high-dollar-value questions, or a Daily Double or two, correct. It’s how game creators make games competitive and exciting. I get that, and I’m cool with it.

I do, however, like to keep track of my own performance based strictly on my percentage of correct answers. When it comes to LearnedLeague, I’m pleased that I’ve continued to improve in this regard. In my rookie season, I notched 118 correct responses for a .787 batting average. In LL57, my first season in A West, I got 124 answers right, upping my average to .827. In the season just concluded, I scored 125 correct answers (.833). Some of that is pure luck, of course — you happen to get asked things that you know, or can figure out — but I’ve also been working on upping my game by reviewing material in categories where I could use a boost. I also spend at least a bit of time each evening playing quizzes on Sporcle. You just never know when knowing, say, the capital of Burkina Faso will come in handy. (It’s Ouagadougou, in case you were curious.)

Speaking of categories where I could use a boost…

To help facilitate defense, LearnedLeague publishes extensive statistical background on each player’s performance. At a glance, you can survey an opponent’s track record in every category, and see where his or her weaknesses lie. (You can — if you’re really into it — review every question your opponent has ever played, and discover which specific items he or she got right or wrong. I’m not quite that anal-retentive.)

Were you to review my statistical profile, you’d find few surprises if you know me well at all. After three seasons, my highest correct percentages are in Current Events (100%), Television (96.9%), Film (96.7%), Theatre (92.9%), Lifestyle (a catch-all category that encompasses such diverse areas as religion and fashion — 91.7%), and Games and Sports (90%). You’d have predicted that, yes?

Conversely, my nemeses are Art (60%), Classical Music (58.8%), and of course, Math (16.7%). Again, if you know me, you know that my ineptitude in mathematics rivals only my distaste for country music. In fact, I believe that Hell is an eternal algebra class with country music playing at ear-splitting volume over the loudspeakers.

I’ve been doing some brush-up reading on art, and trying to memorize some basic facts about the most notable classical composers. I think it’s helping. Nothing will help me get better at math. If you find yourself facing me in a future LearnedLeague match, and there’s a math question in the day’s sextet, you might as well slap a big fat 3 on that one. (Then again, I do pull one out of thin air 16.7% of the time. So, you never can be too certain.)

For what it’s worth, I’ve also attempted to work on my defense. I’m consistently a subpar — although not altogether horrible — defender, which means I do a mediocre job at assigning points based on my opponent’s perceived strengths and weaknesses. I could probably win an extra couple of games each season just through better defense, so I’m trying to take more time with that portion of each day’s quiz. My defensive efficiency rating improved to .672 this season, from the previous season’s .651, so I suppose I’m doing something right. Or at least, less wrong.

LearnedLeague 59 begins November 11. I’m looking forward to the next challenge.

A while back, I was randomly browsing the comic art listings on eBay — you know, like you do — and I stumbled upon this drawing by artist Michael McDaniel of one of my favorite heroines, Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch.

Except… this isn’t a drawing by Michael McDaniel.

It’s a drawing by another artist, Matt Martin.

I can understand how the eBay seller, who I will presume is not terribly familiar with either artist’s work, could make that mistake. Both Matt Martin, who’s probably best known as a cover artist for Avatar Press (Lady Death, Crossed) and for his creator-owned series Snowman and Vortex, and Michael McDaniel, a popular pinup artist, sign their work with only their initials, MM.

Matt Martin’s signature, however, is unique in that he always surrounds it with a word balloon, as you can see in the Scarlet Witch piece above. Martin also stylizes his initials in an immediately recognizable fashion, as though the letters were dripping inky blood. (He’s primarily a horror artist, so that makes perfect sense.)

Conversely, McDaniel’s signature is clean and very linear, as shown in his own rendition of the Scarlet Witch, below.

Having commissioned both artists on multiple occasions, I immediately recognized the mislabeled drawing as a Martin, rather than a McDaniel. That worked out fine for me. Now, I’m glad to have a Wanda in my collection by each of these talented gentlemen.

If you’d like to see another same-character comparison, take a gander at these two images from my Taarna gallery, both of which I commissioned directly from the artists in question.

First, here’s Michael McDaniel’s take on our Taraakian avenger.

Now, here’s Taarna, as envisioned by Matt Martin.

Would you confuse the styles of these two creators, friend reader? I’m confident that you would not. But then, you’re probably not selling comic art on eBay.

In the above-cited instance, we’re talking about what I’m positive was an unintentional error on the part of the seller. (I want to make that clear. I’ve done business with this person numerous times over the years, and have never found him to be dishonest.) It underscores, however, the old maxim: Caveat emptor.

Stories abound of unscrupulous sellers misrepresenting art in order to increase its price tag. It’s not at all uncommon to find pieces in eBay’s comic art listings that are blatant copies of works by established name artists, or worse, outright forgeries. (In fact, I personally know a collector who unwittingly bought a forged version of an original drawing that I own, by an extremely popular artist.)

And I have no doubt that there are as many — perhaps more — cases like my Scarlet Witch, where the seller simply doesn’t know what he or she has. A buyer who is equally ill-informed might well end up purchasing something he or she will be disappointed to learn isn’t what it was represented to be.

Consider yourself warned.

And that’s your Comic Art Friday.

So, here’s the deal.

I’m Michael Rankins — you knew that, right? nobody’s real name is SwanShadow, for crying out loud — and way back in 1988, I was a five-time undefeated champion on Jeopardy!, America’s favorite quiz show. You can see how young and serious I was then, in the graphic above. (You’d think they’d have found a pic of me smiling, wouldn’t you?) I was also a semifinalist in the 1988 Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions; a participant in the first prime-time Jeopardy! tournament, Super Jeopardy! in 1990; the winner of the Jeopardy! Battle of the Bay Area Brains in 1998; and a Round One winner in the Jeopardy! Ultimate Tournament of Champions in 2005.

Okay, résumé over.

Now, I’m competing for the chance to go head-to-head against other 1980s Jeopardy! champions in the show’s 30th Anniversary Season Battle of the Decades! The Battle of the Decades is bringing back former Jeopardy! champions from the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s to compete in a multi-level tournament, that will begin airing in February 2014. The show’s producers have already selected 14 champions from each decade, but the 15th and final spot in each tournament is up to Jeopardy! fans — this means YOU — via an online voting campaign. I’ve been selected as one of five candidates for the 1980s Fan Favorite slot in this mega-event.

To get there, I need your help!

Here’s how you can throw me your support starting today, and continuing daily until 6:59 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time on Monday, October 7.

• Visit the official Jeopardy! website (that’s Jeopardy.com, of course), choose me from the five Fan Favorite nominees, and click the “Vote Now!” button.

• If you’re on Facebook, you can go to the Jeopardy! Facebook page (a.k.a. Facebook.com/Jeopardy) and use the Battle of the Decades voting tab. Just like on the Jeopardy! site, you can choose me as your Fan Favorite, and click “Vote Now!”

• If you’re a Twitter user, you can vote for me by tweeting: Michael #JeopardyVote. (Be sure to include both my first name and the hashtag.) One such tweet per day counts as a vote for me.

It’s that easy! You can vote for me once each day in each format — that’s one vote on Jeopardy.com, one vote on the Jeopardy! Facebook page, and one vote via Twitter using my first name and the special hashtag: Michael #JeopardyVote. Again, voting starts today, and continues until next Monday morning, October 7, at 7 a.m. PDT.

I’m not the sort to ask folks for much — if you know me, you know that. But if you would take a moment each day this week to vote for me — once per day in all three locations, if you have Facebook and/or Twitter accounts — I would be eternally grateful. (Well, for this lifetime, anyway.) And I’d especially consider it an honor and favor if you’d invite your friends, family members, and other contacts to vote for me too.

By the way, each of the other four nominees is a worthy champion also. Some of them I’ve come to know at least a little over the years, and they’re all cool people. Any of us would do you proud in representing our Decade of the 1980s as your Fan Favorite. But if you’re inclined to give me your votes, please know that I treasure your generous support. (And please, vote fairly. No spambots. I want your help, but not that kind.)

Thanks for your time, friend reader.

Now, please… go vote for me as your Jeopardy! 1980s Fan Favorite!

Once upon a time (let’s call it the early 1970s), there was an anime series entitled Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (Kagaku Ninjatai Gatchaman in the original Japanese) about a five-member team of young superheroes-slash-ninja who dressed in costumes representing various birds. When ported over to the English-speaking marketplace in 1978, this series — in highly edited and rescripted form — became known as Battle of the Planets. Years later, the series was again recrafted for the West as G-Force: Guardians of Space. Still later — because Western packagers could never leave well enough alone — the show was retooled once more, this time as Eagle Riders.

Confused already? Okay, good.

To make matters even more convoluted, all of the characters in the series were given different names (and often very different personalities) in each version. The lone female member of the core team, whose costume represented a swan (any question as to why she was my favorite?), was called Jun in the original Japanese presentation. In Battle of the Planets, she became Princess. In G-Force, she was known as Agatha June (often “Aggie” for short). In Eagle Riders, her name was Kelly Jennar. (Why the characters in Eagle Riders suddenly had extraneous surnames is unclear to me. But then, has any of this nomenclatural folderol been clear to you?)

In all iterations, her primary fighting tool was a yo-yo. You did know that before it was marketed as a toy, the yo-yo was a Filipino weapon, yes? So the next time you yo-yo — y’know, like you do — you can thank the Ilocano people, not Mr. Duncan. Or Tommy Smothers.

Still confused? I must be telling the story correctly, then.

I first discovered Gatchaman in the late ’70s under the Battle of the Planets banner, so the young heroine depicted above by artist Iago Maia will always be Princess to me. But if you want to call her Jun, or Agatha June, or even Kelly, I won’t argue. Just don’t call her anything but awesome.

And that’s your Comic Art Friday.

When I was a young comics-reading lad, I always liked Batman.

Superman never really appealed to me because he was too… well… super. I mean, the guy could fly so fast he could travel through time, and so strong he could carry a planet out of its orbit. Who can identify with someone who can basically do anything he wants?

Batman, on the other hand, was just a really smart guy with lots of cool toys. He wasn’t inhumanly strong or fast, and he couldn’t fly. He was, however, the world’s greatest detective, and a supremely well-trained athlete — like Sherlock Holmes and a pre-plastic-surgery Bruce Jenner rolled into one. Or, to put it another way, he was Iron Man, without the armor, but with a host of other gadgets to accomplish most of the same tasks.

The Caped Crusader ruled in the late 1960s and early 1970s, especially when his adventures were chronicled by inventive creative teams: writer Denny O’Neil (and later, Steve Englehart) and artist Neal Adams (and in partnership with Englehart, Marshall Rogers) in Detective Comics, and writer Bob Haney and artist Jim Aparo in the Batman team-up series, The Brave and the Bold. (To this day, Aparo remains the definitive Batman artist to my eye. When I close my eyes and think, “Batman,” it’s Aparo’s rendering that I envision.)

I loved that Batman.

Then along came Frank Miller.

And the love died.

Frank Miller — a tremendously talented cartoonist (that’s the technical term for a comics creator who who both writes and draws, regardless of whether the material is comedic or dramatic), by the way — holds the unique distinction of single-handedly ruining two of my favorite superheroes — Batman and Daredevil. He did this by making both characters dark and hyper-violent, to the point of psychopathy: Batman, in Miller’s landmark 1986 miniseries The Dark Knight Returns; Daredevil, in Miller’s lengthy run (1979-1983) as first artist, then writer-artist, on the character’s eponymous series. Ironically, it was Denny O’Neil, whose Batman stories I so admired, who hired Miller for both jobs, in his capacity as editor, first at Marvel, then later at DC.

(More recently, Miller decided to become a film director so that he could destroy yet another of my boyhood idols: Will Eisner’s The Spirit. But that’s a rant for another day.)

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t oppose Batman being what he was originally intended to be — the grim avenger of the night. Let’s face it, he dresses in a bat costume for a reason. But Miller’s perspective robbed Batman of the features that made him so fascinating — his brilliant intellect; his investigative skills; his technical wizardry — and turned him into a thug in a bat suit. Someone could create great comics about a thug in a bat suit — in fact, Frank Miller did. But that character isn’t Batman. At least, not the Batman of whom I was once so enamored.

Some historian might well note that when Batman first appeared in comics in 1939, he was a much darker character. In his earliest issues, Batman even carried a handgun — and used it, frequently. (The same could be said of a number of Golden Age heroes; the Spectre, for example, took eerie delight in killing off evildoers using grotesque, often graphic, methods.) So, true enough.

But the Caped Crusader evolved away from that initial “gunslinging vigilante” image fairly quickly, just as Superman evolved away from “faster than a speeding bullet; more powerful than a locomotive; able to leap tall buildings in a single bound” into the almost godlike power-set with which we’re more familiar. For my money, the Batman who was the world’s foremost investigator and inventor — and a reasonably functional human being — is infinitely more interesting than the twisted, tortured, bloodthirsty antihero he is now.

But maybe that’s just me.

In an effort to reconnect with the more human (and more humane) side of the Dark Knight, today’s dynamic duo of artworks depicts Batman paired with his longtime nemesis-slash-paramour Selina Kyle, better known to the world as Catwoman. The piece at the top of the post features the pencils of former Supergirl artist Ron Adrian, embellished by his fellow Brazilian, Di Amorim. The scene in the center was penciled by the late, lamented Al Rio, with inks by the thankfully neither late nor lamented Geof Isherwood.

And that’s your Comic Art Friday.

Followers of this space know my fondness for vintage superheroines. In fact, I’ve devoted an entire themed commission series, Bombshells!, to female costumed stalwarts who made their comics debuts before I was born.

Among my favorite characters from the Golden Age is the original Black Cat, who first appeared in Harvey Publishing’s Pocket Comics #1 in August 1941. (That was a fertile month for superheroines, incidentally. Such legendary figures as Phantom Lady, Pat Patriot, Miss Victory, and Wildfire also stepped onto the scene in books bearing the August ’41 date.) I say “original” because this character bears no relation — aside from code names — to the Black Cat more familiar to comics readers today: Felicia Hardy, the more-or-less-reformed ex-criminal who has alternately bewitched and bedeviled Spider-Man for the past three decades.

Unlike Marvel’s feline fatale, the first Black Cat carried no bad-girl baggage. Linda Turner, a former Hollywood stuntwoman turned star box office attraction, donned a mask, gloves, buccaneer boots, and a bathing suit (you know… like you would) to battle crime, often from the seat of a motorcycle. The skills she’d developed as a stunt performer, including adeptness with a lariat (Westerns being far more popular then than now) and karate, frequently came in handy in her new sideline. Linda even had her own masculine version of Lois Lane in the person of Rick Horne, a reporter for the Los Angeles Globe who never made the connection that Linda, whom he dated in the later years of the series, and the Black Cat were the same woman. (Apparently, journalism schools in the comics multiverse place little emphasis on observational acuity.)

For most of the Cat’s career, which included five years as the lead feature in Speed Comics before segueing to her own eponymous title in 1946, her adventures were drawn by Lee Elias, a gifted artist who had once served as Milton (Terry and the Pirates) Caniff’s assistant. Ironically, Elias also worked for a time on DC Comics’ Black Canary, the most blatant of the numerous Black Cat imitations that popped up during the 1940s. In the 1960s and ’70s, after a brief sojourn into newspaper strips, Elias illustrated horror titles (House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Witching Hour) for DC, and later, drew Power Man and Iron Fist and The Human Fly for Marvel. He also did some amazing work on the science fiction adventure series The Rook for Warren Publishing, the folks who brought you Vampirella.

What made the Black Cat such a terrific heroine? Aside from the sleek and powerful art by Lee Elias, it was the character herself. Smart, talented, beautiful but tough, and resourceful, Linda was Bruce Wayne without the edginess and gimmickry, or the adolescent boy sidekick. (Actually, she had one of those for a while. His name was Black Kitten. Some stories are best left untold.) The Black Cat proved that a female comics superhero could be both entertaining and successful, paving the way for numerous other characters — including the more familiar Wonder Woman, who arrived on the scene several months after the Cat’s debut.

Today’s art, from the top: The Black Cat as Bombshell!, with pencils by Dan Veesenmeyer and inks by Bob Almond; Linda kicking a criminal to the curb, with pencils by James E. Lyle and inks once again by Almond; the Cat swings into action, courtesy of Gene Gonzales.

And that’s your Comic Art Friday.

It struck me this morning as ironic that on the birthday of the late, great Tony DeZuniga — who led the tsunami of artists from the Philippines that took the American comics industry by storm in the 1970s — his native land is being pummeled by one of the nastiest typhoons on record.

Weird universe we live in.

I happened to be in the Philippines for a major typhoon once. On Thanksgiving Day in 1974, Clark Air Base — where my father was stationed at the time — was struck by Typhoon Irma, packing winds approaching 100 miles per hour. It was the most powerful typhoon to hit the area in the base’s 90-year tenure.

We lost electrical power by late morning. Fortunately, my mother had cooked the turkey early as a precautionary measure, so the bird was ready to roll at mealtime. Most of the accompaniments we ate cold, straight from the can. When we weren’t eating, we spent the day mopping up the water that blew in under the front door, bracing the windows with duct tape in case the winds shattered them, and praying that the roof would hold. It did. The bamboo pole that held our TV antenna aloft was not so fortunate.

Anyway, in memory of Mr. DeZuniga, that’s his rendition of Taarna, the heroine of the final segment of the animated film Heavy Metal, leading off this post. Below, you’ll see Taarna again, as drawn by Tony’s close friend and colleague, Ernie Chan, another member of the Filipino-American comics community who passed away a mere five days after Tony left us.

Again, irony.

Speaking of Taarna…

For several years, I maintained a reference page about Heavy Metal on Squidoo, the web community founded by marketing guru Seth Godin. A while back, I got a cryptic email from the site’s administrative team, advising me that they were shutting down my page due to some kind of inappropriate content.

Nothing in the notice explained exactly what content was under review. Although nudity is depicted in the film (okay, it’s animated nudity, but still), I didn’t use any nude images on the site. The text was 100% original — I wrote the entire page from scratch; no content was pirated from Wikipedia or any other site — and 100% profanity-free. The only links on the page went either to my Comic Art Fans gallery (where my Taarna commissions are displayed) or to Amazon (where readers could purchase the DVD of the film — the kind of link Squidoo encourages). So I have no idea what the issue was.

At any rate, I copied all of the text into a Word document for my own records, and deleted the page. If you want to know more about Heavy Metal — a landmark film in the history of animation, and an essential bridge between comics and the movies — you’ll have to look elsewhere than Squidoo.

You could always just ask me, of course. I know almost everything there is to know about the film.

I used to have a Squidoo page that demonstrated this.

Our final Taarna image is a new one, courtesy of Gene Gonzales, who — unlike Messrs. DeZuniga and Chan — is still with us, and still creating lovely artworks like this. I love the dramatic angle Gene employs here. Taarna looks strong and majestic, as a good Taarakian defender should. Her windblown hair is gorgeous as well.

Although…

…I hope that isn’t a typhoon stirring up.

And that’s your Comic Art Friday.

Although I collect original comic art exclusively — and that within a fairly specific range — I appreciate many different styles and genres of art.

Since the days when I struggled through an introductory fine arts course in college, I’ve enjoyed master painters and their work. Among the immortals whose creations resonate with me: Titian (his Venus of Urbino is probably my favorite painting of all time), Giorgione, Veronese, Rubens, Vermeer, Renoir, Boucher, Frederic Leighton, Tissot, Albert Joseph Moore… well, there are others, but my typing finger cramped. I’m also a fan of great pinup artists, from Gil Elvgren and Alberto Vargas to Olivia De Berardinis and Dave Stevens. I even love gawking at unusual architecture — anything from Frank Lloyd Wright to Antonio Gaudi to the Las Vegas Strip.

The one artist outside the comics realm whose work I always carry with me is Alphonse Mucha, the Czech painter and printmaker whose distinctive style defined what came to be called Art Nouveau. Mucha first came to fame in the 1890s when he created a series of advertising posters featuring actress Sarah Bernhardt, who was to 19th century Paris what Meryl Streep is to modern Hollywood. Mucha’s unparalleled design sensibility inspired a host of homages and imitations. Even today, more than 70 years after his death, artists are still trying to recreate the Mucha magic.

I have an app on my iPhone that displays Mucha’s complete works at the tap of a finger. I tap often.

Earlier this year at Big Wow ComicFest, the Pirate Queen and I stopped by the booth of a Canadian cartoonist named Sanya Anwar. (People often are taken aback by the word “cartoonist,” thinking it refers only to those who draw humorous strips or panels. In fact, a cartoonist is simply a comics creator who both writes and draws. The term is equally applicable to such diverse talents as Charles Schulz, Will Eisner, Charles Addams, Jack Kirby, Art Spiegelman, and the aforementioned Dave Stevens.) Sanya’s signature project is a self-published comic entitled 1001, a reimagined twist on the classic Arabian Nights.

I was particularly impressed with a series of posters Sanya created using an Art Nouveau approach reminiscent of Mucha. I took her business card and made a mental note to contact her about a commission. Fast forward to today, and you see the result above.

Isis seemed like a perfect choice for Sanya’s commission project, given her visual and cultural sensibility. Also, since I so admired Sanya’s Muchaesque “Silk Road” posters, I asked her to create a piece with a similar flavor. The combination of character, artist, and style melded perfectly.

Comics and Art Nouveau are like a graphical Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup: Two great tastes that taste great together.

And that’s your Comic Art Friday.

I thought long and hard — well, okay, as long and hard as I think about anything; which, given the attenuated nature of my attention span, is not all that long or hard, really — about what to post on a Comic Art Friday that falls on the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

Given that I was a toddler on this date in 1963, I haven’t any emotional tale to share about where I was or what I was doing when the news broke. I only kinda-sorta-vaguely recall the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, and those occurred five years later. Thus, no deep personal insight here.

As a Presidential history buff, it does strike me as interesting that Kennedy’s assassination resonates with us the way that it does. Kennedy wasn’t the first President to be assassinated. That dubious honor fell to Abraham Lincoln, as has been extensively memorialized in print and on film. Two other Presidents — James Garfield and William McKinley — were bumped off within the following 40 years. By the time of Kennedy’s murder, it had been more than 60 years since a President had been killed, and Americans had largely begun to think that we had advanced beyond that sort of business.

Of course, we had not.

Perhaps by coincidence, the Kennedy assassination would mark the start of a turbulent era in American public life. The rest of the 1960s and ’70s would see the polarizing Vietnam War, the full impact of the civil rights movement, the Watergate scandal, the resignations of Vice President Spiro Agnew and President Richard Nixon, and the Iranian hostage crisis. Politics in this country would never again be the same.

Ironically, it took a band of Englishmen to record one of the most provocative commentaries on this dark time in American history. In 1979, the Kinks released the album Low Budget, which featured a song entitled “Catch Me Now I’m Falling.” The lyrics read, in part:

I remember when you were down
You would always come running to me
I never denied you and I would guide you
Through all of your difficulties
Now I’m calling all citizens from all over the world
This is Captain America calling
I bailed you out when you were down on your knees
So will you catch me now I’m falling

That song reverberates through my synapses today as I think about the Kennedy assassination, and all that’s gone on in this country since then. We’ve fallen — and in my view, continue to fall — in many ways over this past half-century. And yet, by many other measures, we rise to levels that no other nation in the history of human civilization ever has.

Bizarre how that works.

I suppose that both our struggles and successes are to be expected, and are to some degree of a piece. We are remarkably accomplished as a people at making both good and bad, both love and hate, out of the same things; at finding unity in places that ought to divide us, while dividing ourselves over that which ought to unite us. Our greatest national strengths are often the cause of our most debilitating weaknesses… and vice versa.

I’m not entirely sure why that is. But that’s America for you.

And that’s your Comic Art Friday.

If you do something ten years in a row, it’s definitely a thing.

Every Thanksgiving beginning in 2004, I’ve paused here in my little corner of the World Wide Wackiness to express my appreciation for 26 people, places, and/or things, one for each letter of the English alphabet. Truth to tell, there are so many people, places, and/or things sharing my universe for which I am grateful, that if I seriously attempted to make an exhaustive list, I’d be typing from now until next Thanksgiving, by which time my fingers would long since have snapped off. Therefore, this has become my yearly exercise in gratitude, with its arbitrary format allowing me both room to range and boundaries at which to stop.

The list you’re about to read marks my 10th annual Thanksgiving post. (You are going to read it, aren’t you? You might as well; you’re here already.) Much has changed in my life during the decade since I composed the first one. No doubt, much more will change if I’m privileged to write others in Novembers yet to come. If I’m granted those opportunities, I promise to be as grateful — for everyone and everything listed, and for so much more — as I am on this Thanksgiving Day.

On this particular Festival of Turkey, I am thankful for…

Auditions. I have a weird job. The overwhelming majority of my working life is spent performing for free, in hope that someone will pay me money instead. Most workdays, I spend hours standing or seated (I switch it up a lot) in front of a microphone, auditioning for voiceover projects. Once in a while, I book one. As much I live for those latter moments, I also can’t help but appreciate how cool it is that for a few hours every day, it’s my task to just play.

Bay Bridge. We got a new one this year, finally — nearly a quarter-century after the original was horrifically damaged in the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, and three years after the not-yet-in-existence suspension span became the logo of the Golden State Warriors. The upgraded Bay Bridge will probably always play second fiddle to its more famous younger cousin around the corner, but it’s a beauty — and a treat to drive — nonetheless.

Crustaceans. Tasty giant insectoids that live underwater. I’m fond of all the edible species — lobsters, crabs, shrimp, langostines, crawfish, you name it. During our spring vacation in Australia,  the Pirate Queen and I dined on yet another variety that neither of us had ever tried: Moreton Bay bugs, prehistoric-looking creatures that resemble lobsters whose claws were snapped off, then were run over by a truck. Like their relatives worldwide, they sure were delicious.

Down Under. Speaking of Australia, we spent three incredible weeks touring the Island Continent and its next-door neighbor, the North Island of New Zealand. We saw a play at the Sydney Opera House, marveled at the mysterious sandstone monolith known as Uluru, explored a tropical rain forest north of Cairns, watched tiny penguins scurry ashore on St. Philip Island, enjoyed the view from two of the tallest towers in the Southern Hemisphere, and saw where the hobbits live. A spectacular adventure, and one that I should write much more about.

Enter the Dragon. The only motion picture to which I ever memorized every single line of dialogue. Throughout my teenage years, a poster depicting Bruce Lee in the film’s climactic fight scene graced my bedroom wall. In 2013, we lost Jim Kelly, who costarred alongside Lee as the irrepressible Williams. When Han, the villain of the piece, insists that Williams must prepare for defeat as well as victory, Williams replies with consummate cool, “I don’t waste my time with it. When it comes, I won’t even notice. I’ll be too busy looking good.”

Fountains of Wayne. When I need a quick pick-me-up, I throw on a tune by this power pop quartet from the Big Apple. Songs like “Denise,” “Maureen,” “Hey Julie” (my personal favorite), and the ubiquitous “Stacy’s Mom” never fail to put a grin on my face and some extra pizzazz in my step. The band’s name, incidentally, was cribbed from a garden ornaments store in Wayne, New Jersey.

Grandma. Not my Grandma, but The Daughter’s. With boundless patience and good humor, she shares her home with KM and her hyperactive canine companion Maddie. She graciously lets me drop in for visits, keeps me posted on goings-on in The Daughter’s life, and even hems a pair of pants for me on occasion. She’s not my mom, but after many years of dutiful service as my mother-in-law (she was my late first wife’s mother), she might as well be.

Heroes and heroines. Regular visitors here know that I own an extensive collection of original comic book superhero art. I started reading comics at age five, and from that time forward, the costumed characters who starred within those colorful pages became my fantasy friends. If you ask me why I love superheroes and superheroines, I can rattle off a litany of reasons. But the one that trumps all the others is this: It just feels good to be reminded that there are heroes in the world. The real ones don’t usually wear costumes. You know who you are.

iPad. It’s the device that serves up my VO scripts, delivers the news, keeps me in touch with friends and colleagues, and provides the occasional stress-alleviating game of virtual pinball. Thanks, Steve Jobs, wherever you are.

Jupiter Jones. The leader of the Three Investigators proved to my boyhood self that a smart chubby kid could be a hero. He proved it to Alfred Hitchcock, too. You could look it up.

KM, referred to more often here as The Daughter. The brightest, funniest, most thoughtful offspring any father could ever ask. I continue to be shocked and awed by the young woman she’s become. It’s unfathomable to me that she’ll be 25 next year. That’s the same number of years that I spent married to her mother KJ, who lost her battle with breast cancer in 2010, but left an indelible legacy in the daughter she birthed, raised, and continues to inspire.

LearnedLeague. It’s described by its creator and Commissioner, the honorable Thorsten A. Integrity, as “a creed, an ideal, a Weltanschauung.” I call it the universe’s greatest online trivia league, where some of the finest quizzers on Earth –  from Jeopardy! champions and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire winners to The Beast and The Governess from both the American and original UK versions of The Chase — assemble to do daily battle. An experience of knowledge warfare both adrenaline-pumping and humbling. Lately, more the latter.

Monterey Bay Aquarium. Endlessly fascinating and dazzlingly educational, it’s one of my favorite spaces to wander. Filled to bursting with phenomenal displays of ocean life, it’s as though Aquaman invited you to hang out at his house for the day.

Navigation apps. How did the directionally challenged among us get around before GPS? Maybe we didn’t. Some of us might still be out there, lost in the boondocks without a clue how to get home.

Oracle Arena, or as we like to call it during the NBA season, Warriors Ground. The oldest active arena in the Association is also the loudest, wildest, and — thanks to a long-overdue ownership change, leading to an influx of top-flight talent over the past couple of years — most exciting home court in basketball. With Splash Brothers Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson bombing away from downtown Oakland, All-Star David Lee maintaining a seemingly nonstop streak of double-doubles, center Andrew Bogut finally healthy to anchor the middle, and key acquisition Andre Iguodala completing the puzzle, the boys in blue and gold come ready to rock the house.

PayPal, for making it quick and easy to do business online, and for keeping the Pirate Queen gainfully employed.

Speaking of whom… all hail the Queen of Pirates, who shivers my timbers without ever threatening to make me walk the plank. (I think she’s thought about it, though.) We are at once the classic Odd Couple and a perfect match. It would be impossible to envision the second chapter of my adult life without her.

Renaissance Faire. Seriously, who doesn’t love spending a day surrounded by merry folk in Elizabethan drag, spouting in pseudo-Shakespearean patois like the mighty Thor? (Which raises the age-old question: Why did a supposed Norse quasi-demigod talk as though he’d wandered in from a road company of Hamlet? Discuss.) I totally get into the RenFaire atmosphere — it’s among the best venues for people-watching to be found anywhere. Park me on a hay bale while blackguards and wenches regale me with sea chanteys and bawdy songs, and I’m as giddy as Puck on a midsummer’s night.

Solvang. Remember: Copenhagen is Danish. Solvang is Dane-ish.

Tropicana Las Vegas. After burial in the bowels of the cavernous MGM Grand, followed by drowning in the screaming miasma of Circus Circus, TCONA — that’s the Trivia Championships of North America, for the uninitiated — finally found a fitting home in its third year, at the Tropicana. Laid-back, comfortable, user-friendly, and conveniently located, the Trop provided the best experience yet for our annual Continental Congress of quiz nuts. I was thrilled to hear earlier this month that we’ll be back there again next summer.

Uluru. The emotional highlight of our Australian expedition, nothing prepared me for the power and majesty of what Westerners formerly dubbed Ayers Rock. Scientists describe it as an inselberg — Uluru is to the Australian Outback what an iceberg is to the Arctic Ocean, albeit on a far more imposing scale. As immense as the rock we can see is, there’s a good 80% more of it under the desert surface. It’s as though God were holding this ginormous stone at the creation of the world, set it down in the center of Australia while He busied Himself with other creative tasks, then left it there. You should go see it. But be warned — billions (and I do mean billions) of obnoxious flies share the site.

Vermeer, Johannes. The legendary painter’s masterwork, Girl with a Pearl Earring — sometimes referred to as “the Dutch Mona Lisa” — made a tour stop in our fair city this summer. I’ve seen the image dozens of times, but standing before the actual canvas in all its luminous wonder shook me to my shoes. I literally had tears welling in my eyes as I looked upon this sublime beauty. A true representation of the power of art.

The Walking Dead. Both the TV series that the Pirate Queen and I have grown to love, and the video game series that keeps many of my talented voice acting friends employed. I haven’t scored a role yet. But I’ll keep trying.

Xhosa. How can you not love a language that sounds like humankind communicating with dolphins?

Yams… because it’s Thanksgiving, and they’re yummy.

Zite, the news aggregation app that puts all the cool stuff right at my fingertips. What’s great about Zite is that you can give it feedback on every article it offers – I like this or I don’t like that — and it adjusts future filtering based on your input. You can also set specific subject categories, from ocean-broad (“Politics”) to pinpoint-narrow (“Hunter Pence”), and the app will make sure you get a bounty of content on that topic. There are plenty of apps that function similarly, but I’ve yet to find one that does the job as efficiently and as effectively as Zite.

And as always, friend reader, I’m thankful for you, who take the time to stop in here from time to time and peruse my drivel. I don’t use that word “friend” lightly. I appreciate your kind attention, and hope that my words continue to prove worthy.

May you and the people you love have much to be grateful for on this Thanksgiving Day… and may we all be here for the next one.

In respectful acknowledgment of the passing of former South African president Nelson Mandela — one of the towering figures in human events in my lifetime — today I’m sharing a few choice images from my Black Panther gallery, interspersed with selected quotes from a real-life African-born superhero.

To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.

A fundamental concern for others in our individual and community lives would go a long way in making the world the better place we so passionately dreamt of.

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

We must use time wisely, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.

A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.

Rest in peace, Mr. Mandela.

And that’s your Comic Art Friday.

In case you missed it, the upcoming Batman/Superman feature film just added a Wonder Woman.

Warner Brothers has cast Israeli actress and model Gal Gadot — that’s her, right above — as mighty Diana, warrior princess of Themyscira. No one knows yet whether Wonder Woman’s role in the movie will be major or tangential. One supposes that the publicity splash over Gadot’s hiring suggests that she’ll contribute something more than a cameo, but that’s purely speculation.

I don’t have a strong opinion about Gadot’s casting one way or the other. So far as I’m aware, I’ve never seen the erstwhile Miss Israel perform on film — she’s costarred in the three most recent iterations of the Fast and Furious franchise, but after sampling the inaugural F&F I never had any hankering for further helpings. I’m told that she can act a little. I’m willing to extend the benefit of the doubt there. From the photos and video clips I’ve checked out, Ms. Gadot looks a fair bit leaner than I’d envision Wonder Woman, but six weeks in the gym before filming could easily fix that. At five-foot-ten, she’s more than tall enough. (Heck, if Tom Cruise, who’s a few inches shorter than I am, can effectively play the towering Jack Reacher on the silver screen, a 5’10″ actress certainly qualifies as Wonder Woman.)

Plus, Gadot served two years in the Israeli Defense Forces, and is an expert on military weaponry. You’re not going to hear me question whether she’s tough enough to play a superhero.

I do appreciate the fact that Warner cast someone of eastern Mediterranean ethnicity, with physical features to match, as the (presumably more or less Grecian) Amazon, rather than Hollywood’s stock northern European type. If I imagine Gadot’s headshot with Diana’s trademark ruby-starred tiara Photoshopped in, I can certainly see the face of Wonder Woman there. She definitely looks closer to my personal impression of Queen Hippolyta’s daughter than did the now-iconic Lynda Carter (who, yes, I know, is not the usual stereotype either — she’s partly of Latina heritage). At least, from the neck up.

But here’s the thing.

Why does Wonder Woman have to be a walk-on in someone else’s movie?

Why doesn’t Wonder Woman — the most prominent female superhero in comics for more than 70 years — rate her own motion picture?

If you ask the folks at DC/Warner, Wonder Woman is one-third of their “Trinity,” their top tier of characters. Since 1978, the other two members of the DC Trinity — Superman and Batman — have headlined 13 theatrical motion picture releases between them, plus numerous animated TV series and telefilms. Since the cancellation of the mid-1970s Wonder Woman live-action TV program, the Amazing Amazon has appeared in the various Justice League animated series (as one character among a veritable horde of super-doers), a stand-alone animated direct-to-DVD project, and one embarrassing and ill-fated live-action TV pilot (starring Adrienne Palicki, late of Friday Night Lights) that did not result in a series. Despite rumors here and there — including a persistent one involving fan favorite writer-director-producer Joss Whedon — there’s never been a Wonder Woman movie.

And now, she’s relegated to supporting duty in a big-budget Batman/Superman team-up flick.

That’s just pitiful.

Heck, even the Hal Jordan version of Green Lantern got his own terrible movie. And Hal Jordan is lame. (Except in Green Lantern: The Animated Series, which was awesome, and never should have been cancelled.)

Which brings me to the similarly sorry case of Ms. Marvel, who’s the closest thing Marvel Comics has to a Wonder Woman archetype.

Marvel has enjoyed a spate of success in recent years producing its own movies (now as an arm of the Disney entertainment megaconglomerate), churning out one blockbuster after another featuring top-shelf heroes Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor, plus their in-house supergroup, The Avengers. [Comics-to-film cognoscenti know that the ongoing Spider-Man (Sony) and X-Men (Fox) movie franchises, as well as the soon-to-be-rebooted Fantastic Four (also Fox) are the licensed product of other studios.] Marvel currently produces the live-action series Agents of SHIELD for ABC television, and has theatrical Ant-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy features in the works. The House of Ideas recently announced that it will, over the next few years, generate four additional series to be distributed via Netflix, starring Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, and Iron Fist, plus a miniseries featuring another superteam, The Defenders.

So where’s the love for Ms. Marvel?

Not long ago in the comics, Marvel started a new ongoing series about Carol Danvers — who’s been Ms. Marvel for 35 years — redubbing her Captain Marvel. I know that Marvel editorial viewed this as a promotion, but I did not. Marvel has already had a long-running character named Captain Marvel. Actually, they’ve had a few; most recognizably Mar-Vell, a former soldier of the alien Kree civilization; Mar-Vell’s son, Genis-Vell, who assumed his father’s mantle after Mar-Vell’s death; and Monica Rambeau, whose tenure as Captain Marvel bridged the years between Father-Vell and Son-Vell. There have been at least three more Captain Marvels in the Marvel Universe, but you get the idea. (This of course says nothing about the original Captain Marvel, who’s still alive and kicking over at DC, but now calls himself Shazam. That’s a whole other story.)

Although she falls somewhere in the line of the Kree Captains Marvel (her powers derive from an explosion that infused her with Kree DNA), Carol’s Ms. Marvel identity has existed for the most part independently of that franchise. I would wager that there are plenty of comics fans who didn’t even know that Ms. Marvel had anything at all to do with Marvel’s Captain Marvel, so distinct an entity has she become in her own right. Foisting the Captain Marvel nom de guerre on Carol lessens her, in my opinion, to being just another knockoff of a male superhero, when over the past several decades she had evolved into far, far more than that.

And, like Wonder Woman, she still can’t get a movie deal.

Which I think sucks, quite frankly.

Both of these great heroines and role models deserve better, as do their fans. Your Uncle Swan included.

And that’s your Comic Art Friday.

You know what has always bugged me about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?

Donatello.

Not the character Donatello. He’s fine.

His name, however, bugs.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Um… it’s giant, anthropomorphic, sentient, talking turtles. Who are mutants. And ninjas. Who eat pizza. And the thing that bugs you about this is the fact that one of them is named Donatello?

Permit me to explain.

All four of the TMNT (because I’m not typing that entire phrase more than once today) have names that reference classical Italian artists. More specifically, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo (generally referred to these days with the geographical modifier da Vinci) form the so-called “Trinity” of the Italian High Renaissance, a 30-to-40-year period beginning in the 1490s — when Leonardo painted his famous Last Supper — and ending with the sacking of Rome in 1527.

These three geniuses helped elevate the art of painting to new heights; their best-known works remain iconic today. All three also excelled in other art forms, including architecture, sculpture, and engineering. In fact, Leonardo may well have been the most broadly talented individual in human history, and Michelangelo might not have been too far behind him. Raphael’s greatness was more narrowly focused, but his creative output was prolific; he also probably trained more painters than any of the other Italian masters, so his legacy extends far beyond his own works.

But you remember the old Sesame Street game, “One of These Things Is Not Like the Others”?

I give you Donatello.

Donatello doesn’t belong in a group with Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo for three reasons.

First, he wasn’t a painter: Donatello was a sculptor.

Second, as an artist, Donatello was a one-trick pony; he wasn’t also an architect or a painter or a poet or an inventor. He was an excellent sculptor, but that was the boundary of his artistic expression. (Not that there’s anything wrong with being really good at just one thing.)

Third, Donatello’s life and career preceded the High Renaissance by many years. He passed on a good quarter-century before this influential time period began, having shuffled off this mortal coil in 1466. In fact, Leonardo da Vinci was a mere teenager when Donatello died, and Michelangelo and Raphael wouldn’t even be born for another couple of decades.

Do you see what I mean? In the TMNT naming convention, Donatello’s an outlier. And not just a minor outlier — he’s in a whole other category altogether. Okay, he was Italian. But there’s where the similarities end.

I wasn’t in the room when Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird chose the designations for their reptilian heroes. Therefore, I’m not sure why they chose the names they did. If I had to guess, the idea of great Italian artists probably landed on the table, and they picked the first four that came to mind. I’m not sure why, instead of Donatello, they didn’t choose a fourth painter who was actually part of the High Renaissance movement — say, Giorgione or Correggio or Titian (okay, I can guess why they didn’t go with Titian, and it has nothing to do with the fact that his later career extended well beyond the period in question).

But it would have made more sense if they had.

Today’s artwork featuring the TMNT was drawn by Josh Lyman — the comic artist, not Bradley Whitford’s character from The West Wing. I picked it up in an auction sponsored by the Inkwell Awards, a worthy nonprofit organization (headed by comics inker Bob Almond) that seeks to promote appreciation for and understanding of inkers and their unique craft.

For the benefit of those who can’t tell their Turtles without a scorecard (or without color; the TMNT can usually be identified by the color of their accoutrements), clockwise from the top, we have Michelangelo (with the nunchaku), Leonardo (with the swords, or ninjato), Raphael (with the sai), and Donatello (with the bo staff).

Maybe I’ll start calling that last guy Titian, just to be historically accurate. I don’t care if the fanboys snicker.

And that’s your Comic Art Friday.

2013 proved itself a solid year for my comic art collection.

Perhaps the most significant 2013 addition was one that doesn’t appear in any of my galleries — a detailed catalog, completed this past July, of every piece of art that I own. For the first time in a very long time, I can determine exactly what I have in my portfolio at a glance, with all of the pertinent information about each item recorded. A task that should have been done years ago finally found fulfillment this year.

And then there was the art itself.

Although the actual number of pieces I added this year isn’t all that large, every new artwork I acquired — whether a preexisting piece, or one I personally commissioned — truly brought something special to the party. As I peruse the Class of ’13, there’s no chaff among the wheat here. Which makes choosing the very best — or at least, my very favorite — among these creations especially challenging.

But, here we go. (Remember, you can click on any image to go directly to the corresponding entry in my Comic Art Fans gallery. You’ll be able to view a much larger image there.)

Favorite Common Elements Commission, Mixed Company Division:
“Do You Feel Lucky, Punk?” (Lady Luck, Jack of Hearts, Gambit)
Pencil art by Allan Goldman

It might be possible to squeeze more detail into a single panel of comic art than Allan Goldman accomplishes in this incredible tableau. Then again, it might not be.

Favorite Common Elements Commission, All-Female Division:
“Raiders of the Lost Archaeology” (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Hawkgirl)
Pencil art by Drew Edward Johnson

I love it when an artist grabs hold of a Common Elements concept and runs with it like the wind. That’s precisely what Drew Johnson did with this assignment.

Favorite Common Elements Commission, Living Color Division:
“Through Being Cool” (Valkyrie, Taarna)
Pencil art by Steven E. Gordon

Animation maven Steven E. Gordon, who worked alongside the legendary Ralph Bakshi on several of his classic feature films, brought clarity and attitude to two of my all-time favorite bad mamma-jammas.

Favorite Solo Commission, Shazam! Division:
Mary Marvel
Pencils and inks by Brian Stelfreeze

You might think you’ve seen a more winsome rendition of Mary Marvel created this year. You’d be mistaken.

Favorite Solo Commission, Celestial Madonna Division:
Mantis
Pencil art by Steve Mannion

I never can get enough of Steve Mannion’s uniquely quirky take on the world of superhumans. Here, he gives one of Marvel’s classic heroines a fresh, funky energy that is a joy to behold.

Favorite Solo Commission, Feline Division:
The Black Cat (Linda Turner)
Pencils and inks by Gene Gonzales

Few artists today rock it old-school as brilliantly as Gene Gonzales. Gene’s deceptively simple neo-retro style, combined with his genuine love for classic comics characters, keep resulting in beautiful art like this.

Favorite Solo Commission, Art Nouveau Division:
Isis
Pencils and inks by Sanya Anwar

It’s always a treat to discover the work of a fantastic artist I didn’t know was out there. This year’s Big Wow ComicFest introduced me to the talents of Canadian creator Sanya Anwar, and I immediately became a fan. I’m looking forward to adding more of Sanya’s eye-popping work to these galleries in the coming year.

Favorite Non-Commission Acquisition:
Film noir pinup study
Pencil art by Jim Silke

I’ve been an admirer of Jim Silke’s gorgeous pinup stylings for more than a decade. This year, I finally managed — thanks to the largesse of my beloved Pirate Queen — to add an example of Jim’s art to my collection. This piece was a preliminary study for a painting Jim created a number of years ago, for another collector. He based the character on 1950s model and B-movie actress Mara Corday, who might never have looked better even in real life.

There’s a noteworthy omission in my “Best of” post this year. For the first time in recent memory, I didn’t add a new inking commission. Part of the reason for this is that my go-to inking talent, Bob Almond, was sadly beset by family and personal health challenges over the past several months. My thoughts and prayers continue to be with my pal Bob as he recovers. I’m hopeful that we’ll collaborate successfully again in 2014, as we have on dozens of previous occasions.

Thank you, friend reader, for stopping by my little corner of the World Wide Wackiness most Fridays, and allowing me to share my collecting hobby (okay, perhaps mania is a more accurate word) with you. May 2014 bring you and all those you love health, harmony, and happiness… and bring me more reason to keep generating these posts.

And that’s your final Comic Art Friday for 2013.

It’s generally acknowledged that superheroes are a manifestation of adolescent power fantasy. What teenager doesn’t secretly wish to vanquish with a mighty blow all the people and things that cause one angst?

That being the case, I’ve always thought that Captain Marvel — the original hero by that name, not any of the legion of subsequent characters who have been and are so called — is the ultimate superhero. Not only is the Big Red Cheese powerful, but he allows young Billy Batson to skip the entire teenage trauma and advance directly to adulthood with a single word.

I’ve often wondered why there aren’t more superheroes like that. There have been plenty of adolescent heroes in comics, from Robin to the Legion of Super-Heroes, from the Teen Titans to the original incarnations of Spider-Man and the X-Men. But Captain Marvel’s vaulting from boyhood to manhood every time he suits up remains relatively unique.

Except for the mighty Mightor.

Those of a certain age will recall Mightor as the star of a popular Saturday morning cartoon back in the day. Set in prehistoric times, it’s the saga of an average teenaged caveman named Tor, who when he raises his magic club aloft transforms into Mightor, a brawny adult superman. At the same time, Tor’s pet dinosaur Tog morphs into a winged dragon. Mightor uses his superhuman strength, ability to fly, and energy-blasting club to battle all kinds of bizarre enemies, such as populated adventure cartoons in the 1960s.

Mightor is basically a Cro-Magnon version of another Hanna-Barbera character of the time: Space Ghost, who like Mightor was created by comics legend Alex Toth. (Space Ghost, however, was always Space Ghost, and had no apparent alter ego, adolescent or otherwise.) A persistent urban legend suggests that Mightor was designed as a riff on Marvel Comics’ Thor, which makes sense given the similarity in names (both Thor and Mightor are often adjectivally designated “the Mighty…”), costume (Thor wore a winged helmet and cape; Mightor sported a horned cowl and cape), and weaponry (Thor wielded a mystic hammer; Mightor, a magic club). Whether that connection is valid or not, it’s equally clear that Captain Marvel’s transformational ability also played into Mightor’s creation.

Captain Marvel, of course, also got his shot at Saturday morning television glory. In the 1970s, Filmation produced a live-action series entitled Shazam!, featuring the exploits of the studly guy in the crimson union suit. Actors Jackson Bostwick (season one) and John Davey (seasons two and three) played the good Captain, while the role of young Billy Batson was assayed by tween heartthrob Michael Gray. The show’s success led to the creation, in its second season, of its companion series, The Secrets of Isis — whose central character emerged after Filmation failed to secure the licensing for Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel’s sister, from DC Comics.

Our flash-aging heroes are depicted in today’s artwork by the Brothers Fraim. Brendon handles the penciling chores; Brian does the inking. The brothers’ clean, eye-pleasing style meshes perfectly with these classic characters.

Now if only there was a magic word that could instantaneously shave off a few years, and maybe a pound or several. But that’s more of a way-past-adolescence fantasy.

And that’s also your Comic Art Friday.

When I first began commissioning artworks for my Common Elements series nearly a decade ago, I started a list of character matchups that I thought would make for interesting scenarios. Over the years, I’ve added to that list frequently.

The ideas come from a variety of directions. Sometimes, a pairing simply flashes into my mind from out of the blue, and I rush to the computer to note it before the thought fades from memory. On other occasions, I’ll run across a character in the course of reading some article about comics, and I’ll begin to think of other characters with whom that one might share a “common element.” Still other notions are spawned from a desire to see an artist formerly associated with a particular character revisit that hero or heroine in a whole new light.

It also happens from time to time that planned pairings change. Take, for example, the matchup featured in today’s spotlight artwork by the enormously gifted Steve Erwin. (Click the image above to get a larger and clearer peek at the drawing, in my Comic Art Fans gallery. Go ahead. I’ll wait.)

One of the earliest scenarios I added to my Common Elements “to-do” list involved DC’s Vigilante, the character seen at left above. I only read a handful of Vigilante’s adventures, but I always thought his costume — mostly solid black, with white highlights — was among the most striking in all of comics. I’d originally intended to put him in a scene alongside Marvel’s better-known Punisher, who’s probably comics’ most familiar vigilante antihero (and doubtless one of the inspirations behind Vigilante).

Then one day a few years ago, I happened across a picture of Judge Dredd in my Internet ramblings. For whatever reason, seeing Dredd with pistol in hand reminded me of another gun-toting character who carried the title “Judge” — Vigilante, whose secret identity was criminal court judge Adrian Chase. “Now that’s a cool Common Elements concept,” I thought to myself (because, without the gift of telepathy, I’m really the only person to whom I can think). Off to the CE to-do list I went, and swapped out Punisher in favor of Dredd in the Vigilante scenario. And there the idea sat for a few more years.

Until my good friend and fellow commissioned art collector Damon Owens recommended the services of Steve Erwin.

Steve’s diverse career in comics began in the mid-1980s, when he penciled several issues of Grimjack and Shatter for the late, lamented First Comics. He soon moved on to DC, where his initial assignment was the final three issues of Vigilante — a series which ended with the lead character’s death by suicide. (Hey, just because they’re called comics doesn’t mean they’re all fun and games.) Steve continued at DC with lengthy, well-reviewed runs on Checkmate and Deathstroke the Terminator, as well as several Star Trek licensed comics.

When Steve described to me his idea for this commission, I knew it would be amazing. The finished artwork lived up to the preview, and exceeded it. I’ll let the talented Mr. Erwin describe what you’re seeing, in his own words:

Imagine each character patrolling beside a building (old brick) and round the corner, only to bump into each other. They draw their weapons and aim at each other’s heads. Stalemate. They might each say something to the tune of, “You have been judged.” (Well, Dredd would say that. Chase would try to figure out who this guy is, but size him up quickly as being very dangerous.) Both are judges, so that’s my connection.

The visual is the pair in a Mexican stand-off. Splitting the image between them is the corner of the building. We are looking at the “V” of the corner of the building and can see the wall next to each character, in perspective as it recedes into the background, ending just behind each figure. Beyond that, we see the distant night cityscape of Manhattan (behind Vigilante) and Megacity One (behind Dredd).

I got the idea trying to figure out how they might encounter each other, and I tripped back to my early comics days drawing stories in Grimjack: The city of Cynosure, where dimensions/realities meet. The corner they meet is where their worlds join, at least temporarily.

As noted in the header of this post, Steve titled his creation “Double Jeopardy at Munden’s Bar,” the saloon in Cynosure that Grimjack used as his base of operations. Of course, any title with “Jeopardy” in it is a winner in my book. (For reasons which, by now, I ought not to have to explain.)

Some of my fellow theme commission aficionados think it peculiar that I rarely, if indeed ever, script a specific scenario for artists to follow when drawing a Common Elements piece. Today’s artwork is a perfect demonstration of the reason why I don’t. Would I have come up with an idea as scintillating as the one Steve Erwin devised? Not in a million dimensions. That’s why I prefer to leave the imagineering to the professionals.

But for collectors who choose a different path… hey, I don’t judge.

I leave that to the professionals, too.

And that’s your Comic Art Friday.

I’ve long been on record as opining that Frank Miller singlehandedly ruined three of my boyhood comics heroes.

Miller ruined both Batman and Daredevil by forcing both characters down the road to inky-black insanity, a path that pretty much every writer who’s scripted either character since has felt compelled to continue. (And yes, I do understand that Batman — the 1960s TV series notwithstanding — has always been a “dark” character. But he wasn’t a psychopathic nutjob until Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns rendered him that way.)

Miller ruined Will Eisner’s The Spirit by shoehorning him into what stands as one of the most embarrassingly inept comics-to-film adaptations ever devised. Seriously, what WAS that movie?

And, through his potent influence, Miller shoved the entire superhero comics genre into the depths of grim-grittiness — a fall from which the medium has yet to recover.

Basically, with a few strokes of his pen, Frank Miller drained the fun out of comics.

But he did create Elektra.

And for that, I have to give Frank Miller credit.

But not forgiveness.

And that’s your Comic Art Friday.