On all things heroic and bright...and The Defenders too!

Things aren't feeling as bright and shiny as they were a few weeks ago. Case in point are the following quotes from the big two's respective brain-child's about the new direction for their comic book universes.

First up is Brian Michael Bendis talking about The Heroic Age, courtesy of the fine folks over at comic book resources...

I think when people hear the words 'Heroic Age,' they're thinking it's going to be all blue skies, picnics, and snowball fights in Central Park. That isn't it.

Then we have Geoff Johns giving us a heads up about Brightest Day over at The Source...

Nor is ‘Brightest Day’ a sign that the DC Universe is going to be all about ‘light and brighty’ superheroes.

Hmmm...I think this may be another case of the marketing department getting a little ahead of themselves. Thankfully, that can be easily fixed.




That's better.

Now let's get on to the official business.

So what random book am I going to read next? Take it away Randomizer...

...and that book is The New Defenders #129 from March 1984, published by Marvel Comics!

So it's another go around with The Defenders after we had such a good time with the last issue we reviewed a couple of months back.

We're jumping ahead about 7 years this time, and it looks like the only member still on the team is Valkyrie. The rest of the team is made up of ex-X-Men, ex-Avengers, and ex-statues.

Judging from the cover it would also appear that this is going to be our first encounter with The New Mutants, so we're in for a bunch of new characters here at the Random Longbox.

See you in a day or two for the review of The New Defenders vs. The New Mutants!

And here I thought that Marvel's overuse of that particular adjective was just a recent phenomenon.

Adventures in Horribly Dated Panels

Since I had such a good time with The X-Men vs. The Avengers #2 from yesterday, I thought I may as well read the first issue too.

It was a little more "talky" than the second issue, but it was still just as entertaining. And speaking of talky, I came across a horribly outdated panel that completely threw me out of the story and I wanted to share it with everyone.

Before we get to the panel though, I have to preface by pointing out that I was recently listening to one of the Bendis Tapes sessions on Word Balloon where Brian Bendis was giving someone (Matt Fraction?) a hard time about using current pop culture references in their stories.

He went on to tell a funny story about how someone thought it would be a good idea to give Peter Parker a Fred Durst style, red baseball cap when they were launching Ultimate Spider-Man.

Why would that've been such a bad idea? I present to the court Exhibit A...


To have a little more fun with it, let's take Bendis' example and "modernize" this panel up to the 90's!