GottaGetAGrip

Who'd have thought that Civil War II would be fought over Donald Trump of all possibilities!

As someone who saw the movie first, it was interesting seeing what changes Clive Barker made to his story for the adaptation when reading The Hellbound Heart for the first time. I.E. Kirsty being an unrequited lover in the novella rather than the daughter of the doomed Rory/Larry -> I feel this change gives the film a bit of a dark adult fairy tale feeling, with the evil stepmother and all.

You wouldn't have expected Pinhead to have become the face of the film franchise with how little he's used in the novella - I think he's mentioned for a grand total of like two sentences - but given what the Hellraiser franchise ended up as, I wonder if Clive Barker regrets ever penning that description of a guy with pins in his head. Or maybe not.

If Biden can maintain his leads in Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Nevada (where he only has a marginal lead of around 8000), he'll have the electoral votes he needs to be president.

Arizona seems to be in the bag, of all places.

Nevada is probably the one to keep an eye on because if it suddenly flips, Biden will have to turn at least one of Pennsylvania, Georgia, or North Carolina blue to get past 270. Last time I checked, Nevada was only the 80s in regards to percentage reported and for some reason, decided to stop announcing results until Thursday.

I don't see Biden suddenly catching up in Georgia or North Carolina. Trump has a big lead in Penn, but there's speculation that if the large amount of absentee ballots continue to skew for Biden, he'll eventually close the gap and take the lead. Penn is estimated to be counting their votes until Friday and I suppose Trump will try to use his Supreme Court to take some action to stop the count.

I've seen it mentioned that there's a chance that absentee ballots and mail-in votes that are counted separately from the election day votes might be able to aid Biden some, but given that Trump's spent his entire campaign playing those up as fraudulent and he now has a stacked Supreme Court on his side... I just can't get my hopes up.

Regardless, it's going to be a long week.

I suppose it's more bad timing than anything - I think this was announced last year at around the same time Spurrier's Hellblazer was announced but nothing of it materialized until now right when Spurrier's run is about to end and the only other Hellblazer on shelves in the future will be Taylor's mini and even that's not long for the world.

On the other note, I don't suppose we'll be seeing much of Chas in this one since it appears to be mostly set in America - unless he gets Americanized once more like Keanu's movie or the TV series.

It was announced a while back, but now images have been released for "The Mystery Of The Meanest Teacher: A Johnny Constantine Graphic Novel by Ryan North and Derek Charm"

Ryan North is probably best known for his recent runs on Squirrel Girl comics for Marvel.

After angering a number of hostile spirits in England, 13-year-old magician Johnny Constantine has to find a way out of the country. Persuading his parents to send him to America, John arrives at the Junior Success Boarding School in Salem, Massachusetts. But once there, he finds himself to be something of an outcast. And he is also convinced that his homeroom teacher really has it in for him. Worse, he's convinced that's she's really a witch.

Fortunately, John is able to find one kindred spirit at school with whom he's able to form an alliance--another misfit named Anna, who also happens to have her own developing magical powers. John recruits Anna in his efforts to uncover the truth about Ms. Kayla and expose the Meanest Teacher's real identity to the world. Joined by a friendly demon named Etrigan, these two amateur sleuths will uncover clues and stumble upon forces beyond their control in a humorous series of misadventures. (June 1, 2021)

More of the Spurrier/Campbell Hellblazer goodness I've come to expect from this far-too-brief run. The creative team brings about just enough horror and hard-hitting commentary to prevent this issue, which is essentially a lot of pre-finale exposition, from getting boring.

I've seen a review that marks this issue as the point where Spurrier exceeded both Delano and Ennis, and while I wouldn't go that far this issue once again illustrates how much of a worthy successor he is to the classic Hellblazer they established. That big shock reveal in this issue very much feels like something Ennis would've had Steve Dillon or Will Simpson draw.

In regards to that theory in the spoilers:

Since the issues were on sale a while back on Comixology, I've quickly breezed through Ed Brisson's Ghost Rider run, which was the most recent ongoing starring Marvel's Flaming Biker. I've not read Brisson's prior work or much Ghost Rider outside of Aaron's run and the Ennis minis.

After the previous Ghost Rider ongoings of late focused on Ghost Driver Rider Robbie Reyes, this one brings back Johnny Blaze and Danny Ketch as leads and is based on a premise presumably established in some other books that I didn't read where Johnny Blaze has replaced Mephisto as King of Hell. Hell is slowly but surely corrupting Johnny Blaze, and it's up to Danny Ketch to knock some sense into him.

Brisson's writing never rises above average. However, the biggest downside of this run is that it was one of Marvel's COVID cancellations, ending after only seven issues. As such, the run concludes with much of its plot left hanging. Marvel's yet to, and probably won't, resolicit the cancelled future issues or announce a special where Brisson can wrap things up more proper. Due to this, reading it just kind of leaves a sour taste in your mouth and a feeling that money and time would've been spend elsewhere.

I can't really recommend it, unless you're a really big Ghost Rider fan.

In regards to the nitty gritty of the run, I'm not sure Danny Ketch fans have had the kindest decade and counting, what with

Picked up the first trade of Moonshine in the used section of my then LCS a year or two ago. Didn't feel too strongly about it one way or the other - I am interested enough in where Azzarello may take the story to catch up eventually down the line.

(On the topic of a 100 Bullets adaptation - Tom Hardy was supposedly involved with one back in 2015 but presumably the project is dead/way on the backburner since there hasn't been a peep since)

100 Bullets - spent some months during this pandemic making my way through the entirety of 100 Bullets for the first time - I had started some years ago but never got past more than a few issues. I have to say, I respect Azzarello and Risso's achievement of making 100 issues of a niche genre comic (without ever using a fill-in artist!) more than I actually loved the book itself. Especially after Azzarello's overarching conspiracy plotline overshadowed the more-standalone crime stories it had begun with.

So it seems that Alan Moore has worked on a film. Comes with a new interview where it seems the interviewer once again prods Alan Moore with the same old questions bout superhero comics so they can mention how much he hates 'em in the headline.

Spurrier also noted that there seemed to be supply issues with the first trade in Europe during the week of its release on his Twitter.

I suppose a worldwide pandemic may not have been the best time for DC to decide to upend Diamond for a new system of distribution...

I bet someone wishes he'd taken the Coronavirus a tad bit more seriously now...

(If Dear Leader himself testing positive for the Virus doesn't finally convince his supporters to finally acknowledge the existence of this pandemic, nothing will at this point)

(Unless this is all some tasteless PR move for his reelection campaign... wouldn't put it past Trump!)

I suppose if anyone here is still interested in these "What-If" scenarios, about a month back, a few pieces of concept art for Doug Liman's cancelled iteration of JLD film were released - including some by Lee Bermejo.

I didn't watch the Biden-Trump debate, but I assume from what's trickled down to my area of knowledge that it's exactly the type of slop that demons would leave John Constantine forced to watch, tied up while upside down.

Jordie Bellaire ought to win all the awards for her coloring in this issue!

It seems that Trump plus his handling of the Pandemic has accelerated that amnesia/revisionism amongst certain liberals that crops up around this time of the year, where they yearn for that post 9/11 America that probably only ever existed in their heads.

Can anyone type with a straight face a Tweet that claims that there was no mass anti-Islamic sentiment in the post 9/11 America and that Dubya never stroked those sentiments for his own gain and then hit send? I guess Paul Krugman can, though to his credit his follow-up tweets eventually form a somewhat firmer grasp on reality.

I think it might be worth sticking it through to the end of the original USM run. Bendis still puts out some good stories here and there. And somehow he even manages to wrangle a decent finale out of a tie-in to the infamously wretched Ultimatum event.

However, Bendis lost me as far as Ultimate Spidey was concerned with the post-Ultimatum renumbered relaunch that followed early on - I gave it an arc or so but ultimately the book was no longer doing much for me. To date, I've never bothered with reading the rest or the Miles Morales USM that followed.

It seems that in the wake of Chadwick Boseman's untimely passing, Marvel's made many of the Black Panther comics free (in the form of single issues, not trades) on Comixology. I checked and it includes amongst others:

Christopher Priest's run

Reginald Hudlin's run

Jack Kirby's run

David Liss' run

Coates' run

Assorted mini-series - quite possibly anything Marvel ever put the name Black Panther on

However, Don McGregor's run is not among these, since Comixology doesn't seem to have the Jungle Action issues in single form.

Well, plenty of time between today and this Tuesday to step right back into the firing line, though I'd imagine that $7 price tag is a fine incentive to stay the course.

(To Taylor's credit, is he the first writer to make an explicit Cheryl reference since the original series? Unless I've already forgotten some bit of dialogue from Spurrier's run...)

https://www.dccomics.com/blog/2020/08/28/first-look-a-new-hellblazer-is-born

The first six pages of Rise and Fall are available for preview, wherein Tom Taylor appears to make some extremely significant alterations to Constantine's backstory.

(Nice Bermejo variant cover, though!)

As this is another Early Years take on Batman, it does come with the possibility that if it gets sequels, this Batman may very well ditch the armor and graduate to a costume closer to a comic counterpart.

(If one unanimously positive thing could be said about Ben Affleck's Batman, it's that his costume pretty much was a Frank Miller drawing come to life)

Quite possibly the most a Hellblazer has eviscerated the Royal Family since Ennis' Royal Blood.

Starting from #6 and continuing on with this issue, it feels like Spurrier has truly hit a stride in his run - it's been a strong stretch of issues with that mix of social commentary, horror, and a Constantine both smart-arsed and empathetic as Hellblazer at its best does. A true tragedy that this stretch will be cut short with the impending cancellation - I'll miss not only Spurrier's John, but the world and supporting players he was building around him as well.*

(Unless a miracle occurs and Spurrier gets to continue his run in some form)

*Maybe this is one of the secret ingredients that has set Spurrier's Hellblazer apart from the three other attempts at ongoings

Our first look at said Glaswegian Batman, and apparently Colin Farrell is also here, buried under lots of make-up.

Rather disappointing, I was hoping he'd just be prancing around as an ultra-unhinged ultra-Irish Colin Farrell a la his turn as Bullseye in that Daredevil film.

There's a recent interview of Jim Lee treading on eggshells where he basically admits among other things that corporate is keeping the comics around for IP development in other media and that Batman is the thing that people seem to be buying so get ready for some more Batman.