Their universe-wide reboot only weeks away, DC Comics has released
52 new logos for their books; they've been met with some praise and
much griping.
But what makes a good superhero logo? Maybe the design history of
Daredevil (parts
2,
3,
4),
The Hulk (parts
2,
3,
4),
The Atom, (parts
2,
3),
World's Finest (parts
2,
3,
4,
5,
), The Legion of Superheroes (parts
2,
3,
4,
5,
Batman (
previously) or
Superman can shed a clue.
[more inside]
posted by Toby Dammit X
on Aug 25, 2011 -
30 comments
"Until about 1964 most comic books in the Middle East were in either English or French.... Then a forward-looking editor began to wonder why comic books could not be translated into Arabic."
Illustrated Publications, a Beirut-based company, did just that, starting with Superman. As
a reporter for "Al-Kawkab Al Yawmi" he swooped into the Middle east from distant Krypton on February 4, 1964. The mild-mannered report, Clark Kent, became Nabil Fawzi,
whose name roughly translated to "Noble Victory". The text of the comics was translated, but the rest of the comic looked an awful lot like the Superman of the United States, except
the covers lacked context, Superman's S logo was reversed, and some of the colors were skewed in odd ways.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Jan 31, 2011 -
5 comments
Frankenstein Defeats Evil Computer. Mysterious Grass-Roots Gal-Revolt Rocks Gotham! Are Hippies Slowing Down Space Progam in Protest? Headlines ripped from the pages of such great newspapers as the Daily Bugle and the Gotham Gazette await you at
Dateline: Silver Age.
posted by gamera
on Apr 30, 2010 -
16 comments
Cleveland, Ohio, c.1932: A young American writer named Jerry Siegel teamed up with a young Canadian artist named Joe Shuster to create science fiction comic books. Out of this collaboration, a superhero was born. In 1938, the duo sold their creation to Detective Comics, and the rest, as they say,
is history.
Ten years and several lawsuits later, Siegel and Shuster, after being fired from the company they had helped to build, signed on with a fledgling comics publisher called Magazine Enterprises. Once again, their collaboration yielded fruit. But... would lightning strike twice?
Sadly, it would not.
posted by Atom Eyes
on Aug 13, 2009 -
62 comments
Darkseid tries to join the Legion of Superheroes, Batman wrestles the serpent in the garden of Eden, Clarke Kent shoots Abraham (Brainiac) Lincoln...
Hall of Silver Age Elseworlds first pages - from DC Silver Age Elseworld stories that never happened, from the Elseworlds 80-Page Giant collection, which was pulped after controversy surrounding
Letitia Lerner, Superman's Babysitter - which later became the only story in the collection to see print again.
posted by Artw
on May 14, 2009 -
21 comments
"The K-Metal from Krypton" is one of the most important "lost" stories by the original creators of
Superman, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Written and drawn in 1940, but never published, the story would have vastly altered much of the Superman mythos for the next 65 years. Aside from the early introduction of
Kryptonite, the issue would have disclosed Superman's secret identity to Lois Lane, leading to a completely different relationship in which the two worked together as a team. Thanks to the work of readers and fans, including writer Mark Waid and artist Alex Ross, original art and scripts are slowly being recovered, and
the entire issue is being reproduced online, with full color treatment and missing pages being replicated in Shuster's original drawing style.
posted by XQUZYPHYR
on Aug 9, 2006 -
19 comments
And so begins the startling adventures of the most sensational strip character of all time : SUPERMAN!
posted by crunchland
on May 7, 2006 -
24 comments
ComicsFilter (but bear with me): Frank Miller & Jim Lee will be the writer and artist, respectively, of
All-Star Batman and Robin, a new miniseries intended to make the characters simple, interesting, and easy to follow after decades of backstory. Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely were announced to be doing the same thing on
All-Star Superman, and any comics fan will tell you that these four guys are some of the best in the entire field. Between these two projects,
DC Comics most likely has the top-selling books in the tiny comics industry sewn up for most of 2005, which is reason enough to publish them.
But there's also a question for non-comics readers here at MeFi: DC are really doing this for you. They want new readers (best-selling comics are lucky to top 150,000 copies these days), and they think publishing accessible comic books linked to the release of large movies (The Christopher Nolan film
Batman Begins, based in part on Frank Miller's
Batman: Year One, will be released roughly alongside
All-Star Batman & Robin) is the way to do it. But is there a snowball's chance in hell you'd read something like this? Would your kids, if you have them, be interested, do you think? (Frank Miller, it bears noting, is also the creator and co-director of
Sin City, a film you might've seen a preview for recently -- truly insane cast.)
posted by logovisual
on Jan 5, 2005 -
69 comments
Indian Superman is a movie of questionable legality released in India in the mid eighties. Perhaps it should have had a wider release since it has a great deal of humorous appeal for Western audiences. Check out this
review from Stomp Tokyo. I'm looking forward to a crossover when Indian Superman meets
Indian Spider-Man. via
Sepia Mutiny
posted by rks404
on Aug 17, 2004 -
10 comments
Truth, Justice, and the Soviet Way What if baby Kal-El's spaceship had crashed on Earth 12 hours earlier, in the Ukraine instead of middle America? The new 3-issue comic book series
Superman: Red Son envisions the Man of Steel as a good-hearted citizen of the USSR, helping to spread communism across the world. Wonder Woman is his girlfriend; Batman is an anti-Soviet terrorist; Lex Luthor becomes U.S. president. This alternate-universe jaunt is not just for fun:
writer Mark Millar says it's a timely exploration of what happens when one all-powerful country anoints itself leader of the world.
posted by Artifice_Eternity
on Jun 9, 2003 -
25 comments
The Birth of Superman. A complete scan of Action Comics Number 1.
(note - if you have a spare copy hanging about, probably net you a measly quarter of a mil...)
posted by Frasermoo
on Jul 22, 2002 -
38 comments
