Fantastic Four #3, January 1997, cover by Jim Lee and Scott Williams
Being the Image artists geek I was, of course I actually was excited about Heroes Reborn. Obviously, I know it pretty much sucked, but it did gave birth to a lot, concept wise, that has become canon and status quo for Marvel, in both the 616, the Ultimate U and now its full-blown cinematic universe. And Jim Lee’s art is always good, even when its not-as-good.
Mullet Monday: Tony Stark- Iron Man!
In honor of the Avengers movie coming out this weekend and being really awesome, here’s a look at the Iron Avenger looking not-so-awesome. Special cameo from Nick Fury, who, while not rocking a mullet, has also made a questionable fashion decision with the military banana hammock.
R.I.P. MCA
Have to make a little exception to the “Comics” part of this tumblr, and honor a man who was a big part of the 90’s (and beyond) for me, Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys.
Last week I get a text from my buddy Shawn saying,
“Fuck you. Now i have written a guest post of Dave Loves 90’s Comics and you have to post it! JakeGallows forever!”
and I reply:
“Good! I’ve been lazy” (Which you all see)
No, I don’t understand why he was being so hostile either.
Here it is, Punisher 2099 Superfan, and my best pal since the 90’s, Shawn DePasquale with a special guest blog:
PUNISHER 2099 - Jake Gallows - PEP Force Operative!
Where Did I Buy It: At COMICS! a small comic and trading card store located in a strip mall in my (and Dave’s) hometown of Coral Springs, Fl. The store was owned and run by a woman in her mid-40’s, her two daughters (16 and 14- who btw, could care less about comics) and her husband (who I never actually saw but heard her talk about him to other customers)
What I Thought/ Think: I always have and always will love Jake Gallows. A Punisher fan since the first time I picked up a comic, this Punisher series was exciting for me because I was able to hop on at the launch of the 1st issue (something I was too young to do for the Frank Castle incarnation) and follow it through to the end 34 issues later. Jake’s Punisher origin is similar to his modern day counterpart in that some dickhole with a hate for happiness and family uses extreme violence to murder the Gallows’ clan. This time, however, the killer is caught by police only to escape with a minor wrist slap and the payment of a fine. This is enough to send Public Eye Police Force operative Jake Gallows over the edge and into the forgotten NYC hideout of the original Punisher. It is here at Gallows discovers Castle’s “War Journal” and commits to continuing the fight against crime Frank Castle started. One of the things that sets this new Punisher apart from the original is that Gallows retains his position on the police force, using that outlet as means of finding targets for his nightly activities as Punisher 2099 (he was never called this….actually none of the 2099 characters were referred to by the year in which they existed to the best of my knowledge, which consists of wiki results and a weed-impaired memory of the comics).
Jake Gallows run as Punisher was violent and sometimes downright silly (see Jigsaw 2099; one arm is from an ape and the other is robotic!). Towards the end of the run his personality began splitting so that Jake could continue to function as a normal member of society in spite of Punisher’s extreme methods and preferred forms of torture. It seemed as if this run could continue forever, consistantly getting weirder by the issue until the great Warren Ellis took over the 2099 Universe by writing the Doom 2099 series that would lead to Doom becoming President of the United States. Doom dismantled the PEP Force in favor of establishing a new SHIELD agency. Doom would go on to choose Jake Gallows to be the new head of SHIELD (making him FURY 2099…..they never said it but….seems likely) and then immediately regret this decision when Jake starts reading the thoughts of innocent people and executing them for even thinking about committing a crime.
Eventually Punisher 2099, after leaving Doom and joining a female version called Vendetta in space aboard a giant laser meant to “keep the peace”, Jake Gallows is killed by something called Wave Spiders of Herod (thanks WIKIPEDIA) which was as stupid as it sounds. What a waste….
I never liked Punisher 2099. Spider-man 2099, and Doom 2099 fo ‘sho.
Marvel Cards Series 3- see what I was talking about in the earlier thread? Those are some ugly cards. Ed’s looking pretty badass in his hood though.
Retro Ad! May 1992
ETM (Entertainment This Month)! These ads were for a mail order comics buying service that was big back then. They also would mail out these full color catalogs of all the comics coming out.
This particular ad was how i found out about Image Comics. I don’t think I was really on the internet or anything at that point and had no concept behind the business of comics at the time, so when I saw this ad I just thought they were advertising a couple of new Marvel Comics. The description of Youngblood even says a “Hot new team of mutant heroes!” It’s crazy how hot the X-Men were back in the 90’s that books would be advertised on the merits of including mutants.
The big window advertises Marvel Cards Series 3, a set I did not dig. While the series featured some great art (the Larsen Spider-man particularly comes to mind) the design of the cards featured a black space background/border on every card which made the series look very uniform, dark and just not that great looking. I collected some of these, but it was the 1st Marvel Cards set I did not complete. They’re still the worst looking Marvel Cards set, in my opinion. I know the set has it’s fans. Even Series 4, which didn’t have the benefit of the Image defectors, looked better just because of the design layout. Again, in my opinion. Check out my homie Ed’s Tumblr http://aguywithsomemarvelcards.tumblr.com/ , if you wanna see some more Series 3 to see what I’m talking about.
Looking at the comics on this list is the closest I can come to traveling back in time to a comics store of my youth. Spider-man 30th Anniversary Hologram covers, Batman:Shadow of the Bat #1, The Infinity War, the 2nd Robin mini-series, and the Valiant launches- so many comics I loved.
Retro Ad! July 1990
The king of shitty Marvel NES games, this game looked like a Light Bright shorting out. It was a just a bunch of incomprehensible flashing light and clicks and whistles. I never got this game, even though I wanted it, because it was like one of the first Nintendo games to cost like 50 bucks for some reason (at my local Toys R Us anyway) while the other games were like $25-35. My dad’s cheapness actually benefitted me here.
The Amazing Spider-man GameBoy game advertised as “coming soon” on the bottom corner however was completely rad-ass. Yeah, that’s right, I just coined “rad-ass”.
Retro Ad!
The Marvel Super Heroes Roleplaying Game. I had this game, but I was never smart enough to really figure out how to play it.
alexhchung asked: Falling out with Neil Z’s? That sounds like an interesting story...
Basically, he shortchanged me by like 10 bucks when I was eleven years old. Neil had a reputation for ripping kids off but he’d had always been pretty nice to me. I never went back there again.
