More comicky quotey goodness!

Ok, this one’s from two weeks ago, but still some an awesome Hustonism (if you will) from the lead of Rick Remender’s Fear Agent (drawn here by Tony Moore)…

And the moral of the story? Just be yourself! Even if that is a buck-naked Earthman, doped up on alien narcotics and covered in bubble bath!

Science! It’s useful!

One of my favorite lines from this week’s comics!

Ok…yes, another shameless plug for Blue Beetle on my blog, but I love this book and with all sorts of rumors flying around the web about it’s impending cancelation, I gotta show love to this book while I can—And I hope I can for a good long time to come!

The Joker must seriously hate me….

When I was flipping through the new Previews catalog yesterday, I came across a cover featuring the Joker that I found particularly disturbing. I’ll explain why this cover made me shudder so much, even at the risk of divulging my own personal kryptonite…

Now a smiling, psychotic madman might be enough to put a shiver down anyone’s spine. Throw in a knife or a gun as a weapon and he’s amped up to even more threatening and menacing. But, on the cover of Batman Confidential #23, the Clown Prince of Crime takes things to an entirely more fearsome level with one of the world’s deadliest weapons (to some)…a PEANUT!!!

I mean, playing on the deadly food allergies of the masses?! The Joker truly is a villain of the utmost degree! Looks like I have a new fictional character to add to the mortal enemy list alongside the Planter’s peanut guy!

(Oddly enough, this comes a week after a minor reaction to peanuts led me to spend a few hours in the emergency room!)

Hey, want a copy of ‘Son of Rambow?’…

…then enter my super easy contest!

Simply click here to head back and read my review of “Son of Rambow,” grab a quote from it (so I know you at least headed back to check out the review) and email it to me at TheLoudestMonkey@gmail.com along with your address for a prize copy of the DVD!

Now, just to mix it up a bit, we’ll do it radio contest style and the ninth and tenth emailers will be the winners. But hey, it’s easy! You’re an email away from winning a cool DVD, so do it up!

Lil’ Batman and Superman bring hilarity to the DCU!

This week’s Superman/Batman (Issue #51) by Michael Green and Mike Johnson, with art by the completely awesome Rafael Albuquerque (Click here for a post that link sto tons of rad Rafael art from Blue Beetle), is a must-read this week just for the pure fun factor it delivers.

Bringing back the Lil’ League from Superman’s hallucinations on Magic Kryptonite from Superman/Batman #46, the issue sees the full-sized heroes meeting up with their pint-sized counterparts, and it’s a real fun read.

Here’s a taste…

I love Albuquerque’s art as much as a Bat-man loves his strawberry ice cream, so seeing him doing art on this super fun issue was just a blast. Go pick it up, you won’t be sorry.

The Happiest Bat-man!

So, after reading and editing a ton of Staff Writer Steve Sunu’s Webcomics of the Week column, I’ve been hankering to start drawing some comics of my own. Now, I’m no artist and was always more of a doodler within the lined domain of my school notebook paper, but heck, I figure even doodles can convey some comedy!

Here’s two I did today in little spans of free time—both of these puppies can be clicked on and enlarged, by the way—I hope you enjoy them!

The first one sprung out of a conversation with Staff Writers Steve Sunu and Kevin Mahadeo—and Mahadeo is the man behind the Mobile vs. Mobile joke—so, credit where credit’s due. “Happy Bats” is all me and the idea of what little moments make a dark, mysterious hero truly happy just cracks me up. So, you’ll likely see a few more of these cropping up as I come up with them.

Spider-Man explained in an adorable and hilarious nutshell

If you didn’t check out the King-Size Spider-Man Summer Special two weeks back, well you missed a ton of web-slinger fun courtesy of Paul Tobin, Colleen Coover and Chris Giarusso (not to mention a cool Spidey/Falcon retro team-up from Keith Giffen, Rick Burchett, Wil Quintant and Nate Piekos)!

However, fun as the whole super-sized issue was, the simplest yet most hilarious moment may have come on the intro page in a single-panel strip by Coover.

It’s the the wall-crawler’s origin in a silly six words! Good stuff, just like the rest of the issue, so go pick it up!

Catching up on comics: late July’s best of the bunch!

Hey Folks! I’ve been absent from the blogosphere for a week’s vacation (Hey, it’s summer! I gotta get some fun in the sun in some time!), which led to much relaxing and quite a bit of catching up on comics. I managed to pound through all the books from the last two weeks of July that had been piling up on my desk, so I figured I’d drop my top recommendations from the past half month now that I’m caught up (ok, ok…I’m actually still a week behind after missing last week, but give me a break and just read the recs!)…

Ambush Bug: Year None #1 (of 6)
It’s Keith Giffen—have I mentioned I’m a big Keith Giffen fan? No? Well, I’m a big Keith Giffen fan!—and it’s some good, irreverent fun, with some snazzy, old school interiors to boot!

Joker’s Asylum: Scarecrow
Wicked cool interiors from Juan Doe alongside a classic slumber party horror scenario make for a classic and spooky look into the Bat-rogue’s world. With this issue added to Jason Aaron’s Penguin story and J.T. Krul’s Poison Ivy tale, this series is doing justice to the one of the main things that make the Dark Knight one of comics’ top sellers: his villains!

The Exterminators #30
This book has been one of my favorite reads for a while and it’s conclusion two weeks ago was amazingly bittersweet: I’m bitter because I want more, but man, what an ending! If you haven’t checked out the story about city pest control bad asses and their battle against a killer swarm of bugs bent on bringing back an evil Egyptian insect god, now you can go scrounge up all 30 issues and indulge! Get on it!

Blue Beetle #29
Jaime Reyes is hands down my favorite character in the DCU, so I was super pleased to see his book pick up again with a larger storyline after Will Pfeiffer’s one-shots (they were fun, but one-shots…not much gravitas). Now, if you read the cover, you might have expected not only the return of the radical Rafael Albuquerque on art, but also writer John Rogers (the man responsible for The Reach story in BB, known for its massive amounts of pure awesomeness), and if you didn’t read the internal credits you would never have guessed the series has a new full-time scribe in Matthew Sturges. Take the one-shots out of the picture and it easily could have been mistaken for a continuation of Roger’s run—and that’s a distinctly good thing!

The book’s definitely got a new voice on the insectoid-monnikered hero with Sturges, but one so inline with everything that Rogers did that I’m really excited to see where Sturges takes things. He’s already got the most important part—the characters—down, so I’m psyched for the rest of his stories.

The bottom line: if you haven’t read Blue Beetle before, there’s no better time to start enjoying the adventures of El Paso’s superhéroe numero uno (but seriously, go back and read everything from issue #1 onward if you have the time and funds—you won’t be sorry)!

Teen Titans #61
It’s a Blue Beetle and Kid Devil-centric issue (more importantly Blue Beetle, read above), need I say more?!

Ok, Sean McKeever’s got a good handle on this team. It may not be the coolest incarnation or the most-seminal run ever, but it’s darn fun and it’s got my boy in blue rockin’ alongside Robin here and there, so you know I’m in!

Black Panther #39
One of my favorite writers, Jason Aaron, takes the reigns on the king of Wakanda’s book for a three issue tie-in to Secret Invasion.
And. It’s. AWESOME!
It’s war epic meets superhero story mashed together with a classic sci-fi alien invasion, and it features plenty of Skrull decapitation, so yeah…awesome!
(I chatted with Jason recently—mostly about Wolverine: Manifest Destiny but a smidge about BP’s SI tie-in—so check that out here if you feel so inclined!)

Skaar: Son of Hulk #2
If you saw my review of Skaar #1 then you not only know that I am a huge fan of Greg Pak’s Hulk work, but also loved issue #1 of the third part in his big, green epic! Issue #2 just keeps things rolling on what is set to be one of my favorite weekly reads for a long time coming!

I also really enjoyed Fantastic Four: True Story and Immortal Iron Fist #17, but you can read more about my thoughts on those books here (FF) and here (Iron Fist)!

Well, that’s it for this round of “Best of the Bunch!” Hope those recommendations help out a few of you readers in need of some comicky goodness!

‘THWACK!’ Attack! From the pages of Wizard #203

Don’t say I never gave you anything…

Here’s the complete THWACK! for Wizard #203! Just one of the few perks of staying tuned to The Loudest Monkey…

Make sure to pick up Wizard #203—in comic shops now and coming next week to book stores—to see THWACK! in all its glossy-paged glory (Oh, and there’s some other great stuff in there too!).