Pre-Long-Weekend Quickie Aside: New JLU Figures

These have hit the web over the last 48 hours, but in case you haven’t seen them, take a look….

Weekend Aside: Justice League Task Force (SNES)

One area where Marvel’s always had a massive, massive edge on DC was in the fighting game department. Marvel had the good fortune to have their characters licensed to Capcom, who produced first the X-Men fighter (complete with voices from the animated series) and later the vs. series (which is apparently getting revived fairly soon). DC, on the other hand…

Weekend Aside: Blackest Night Thoughts

I swear, this is only a somewhat transparent grab for page hits on a slow day. But feel free to skip this one, it’s more of a mini-rant on my part. But let’s put it this way: this is completely unnecessary reading if you’re here for the DCAU stuff, even moreso than the usual weekend asides. And, frankly, if you liked Blackest Night, you may not want to click past this, as I don’t have much in the way of kind words for it.

Weekend Aside: The Death and Life of Superman

Written by Roger Stern
Amazon.com entry is here.

Well, this is going to be a rather morbid stretch of updates, since the obvious theme of the next Justice League is how to deal with loss – whether it be on a micro (the death of a close companion) or macro (the death of everything you know). But since the centerpiece of “Hereafter” is the first animated rendition of the most famous ‘death’ in comics history, let’s look at the first time it happened.

Weekend Aside – Yet More Fleischer Superman

Well, the planned weekend aside was scuttled by my inability to find a copy of The Kents, so, just like always when there’s a gap, revel in the joy that is public domain animation!

Remember to follow this blog on Twitter to be notified of updates as they happen.

Weekend Aside: The Further Adventures of Batman

In the continuing theme of “Stuff Found While Cleaning Out My Old Room”, this entry deals with part of the post-Tim Burton Batman movie merchandising boom, a short story collection that hit shelves during what DC took to calling the “Summer of Batman.” And darned if they weren’t right, at least from a merchandising perspective. When you’re selling action figures of “Bob the Goon”, you know you’ve got a hot product on your hands.

This, however, actually had a bit of quality to it.

Weekend Aside: The Super Powers Collection

So my mom’s finally moving out of the house she’s lived in for nearly twenty years – I think I was twelve when we moved there – and I was faced with the daunting task of cleaning up all the toys I’ve accumulated over the years. Although a good bunch of those were the result of my frequent trips to Toy Liquidators while attending Law School in the U.S., I also had to dig through the older stuff. So we might as well talk about the greatest mass-market super hero toyline in history, the Super Powers Collection, specifically the stuff I had.

Weekend Aside: “JSA – The Golden Age”

Written By James Robinson
Art By Paul Smith and Richard Ory
But it from Amazon.com here

Okay, so even though I swore I wasn’t going to review the Justice Society’s debut on Smallville, I figured this is as good a time as any to cover what’s probably the most famous Justice Society story ever told. Long before he supervised the team’s revival in JSA, James Robinson teamed with his Leave it to Chance partner Paul Smith to produce what many people have called the in-universe version of Watchmen, The Golden Age. Tom Welling’s wooden acting or Robinson hitting one out of the park? Yeah, that’s a real tough choice.

(To be fair, Smallville was actually fairly decent for the sheer amusement of seeing all the props they put in the JSA brownstone)

Weekend Aside – Mark Millar’s Superman Adventures

The number of comics icons who have passed through DC’s line of Animated tie-in comics – the ‘Adventures’ line – is astounding for what was ostensibly a kids’ comics line. The line’s received a large amount of critical praise through the years, winning back-to-back Eisners for Best Single Issue along with the expected haul of ‘Best Comic for Younger Readers’ wins, but beyond that there’s an undeniable appeal to comics pros to have the opportunity to play in a different sandbox.

However, it’s also served as a launching ground for several careers; Dan Slott and Adam Beechen both got their big comics breaks writing Justice League tie-in books (to be fair, Slott had a bona fide hit with a Ren and Stimpy book at Marvel first). But the most curious case is a writer who went on to become arguably the most popular writer in comics, all the while writing in a tone completely different from an adventures title. So as promised, let’s take a look at Mark Millar.

Weekend Aside: “JLA: Earth 2″

Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Frank Quitely
Buy the TPB here

Oh, like you seriously expected me to talk about anything else the weekend before A Better World came up in the episode order. As always, use Twitter to be informed when a new entry is posted.