The Random Dredd: Part 12

Justice Department has ordered that I interrupt this Random Dredd segment to bring you this important message from Judge Pals.



Ad from Judge Dredd Megazine v1 #4 (1991).

Really, Norton?

I mean really?


Sorry, I just don't see it.

Ways Comic Books Have Lied To Me

I love comic books. Although I went a long time without reading them (for a variety of life-circumstance reasons) I never really stopped loving them. Comic books were always pretty good to me. If you're a regular reader of this blog then they were probably good to you too.

The ads though... Sometimes the ads lied to me.

I mean they REALLY lied to me.


Yup, I remember building model cars when I was a kid. I remember how cute girls of every hair color would gush over me as I stood with my latest accomplishment for show-and-tell.

Oh wait, I don't actually remember that happening because THAT NEVER HAPPENS!!!

COMIC BOOK AD, YOU LIED TO ME!!!

Above ad clipped from Iron Man v1 #218 (1987).

2000 AD On-The-Go and Digital Comics

I discussed in a previous post that the only reliable way to get copies of new issues of 2000 AD in the USA is through a digital subscription from ClickWheel. Of course, reading digital comics poses a problem: loss of mobility. I wouldn't say loss of portability, because digital comics are actually more portable. A digital comic in CBZ format is 20 MB or less (double that if it's in PDF format). Just think how many comics you could fit on a 16 GB
MicroSD card.* What I mean is that you lose the mobility of comics in that they aren't like books anymore, they are more like movies; you need a "player". The absolute best way to read digital comics (in my opinion) is on a big computer screen. Widescreen monitors these days are big enough so that you can make the two page comics fill the screen and it can actually be bigger than if you'd held a paper comic over the screen. Add a comfy desk chair and you're good to go. And don't give me that "I don't want to sit in front of the computer for hours and read" business. How many hours do you sit in front of the computer now? Right. Now stop your whining.

So the only big drawback to digital comics is the loss of mobility. Well, I stumbled upon a pretty good solution: iPhone/iPod Touch. There are lots of apps on Apple's App Store for reading digital comics. There is iVerse, PanelFly, and ComiXology, just to name a few. I recommend downloading PanelFly and ComiXology because they're free and they have a good deal of free comics content, like #1 issues so you can see if you want to read the series in print or purchase it to read on your iPod. I just don't like the interface for iVerse, but that's just my opinion. The only real problem with all of these apps--and this is a big problem for me--is that you are buying the comic to view in this program only. Let's say you buy a comic on the ComiXology app and you decide that the art is such that you'd really like to view it on a big screen so that you can take it all in and appreciate it fully. Well, you can't. There is no way to get the comics off your device and onto the computer. That sucks. It's called DRM and it's the same problem that people have with digital music. I'm not going to go into it any more than that, except to say that this lack of freedom with my media prevents me from buying digital comics from these outlets.

However, there is another nice app in the App Store called ComicZeal. ComicZeal is a digital comics viewer for the iPhone/iPod Touch. They do not sell comics. You pay $3.99 for the app (the only app I have ever found useful enough to pay for), and you can download a free piece of software from their website called ComicZeal Sync which is how you put comics onto the device. Comics are sent over your home Wi-Fi network onto your iPod. What comics? That's the awesome part: anything in CBR/CBZ format! There is also support for PDF comics, but I hear it's buggy in Windows. To test the PDF support on my Mac I used Tales of Suspense #39, which was included on my Iron Man DVD. The PDFs on this DVD are watermark protected (a MARVEL watermark appears if you try to print them, but not when viewing them), and I've found that some non-Adobe PDF viewers show the watermark on the screen. So I wanted to see if ComicZeal would show the watermark when I imported the PDF. As you can see in the screen grabs below, the watermark is nowhere to be found. Score! You might not be able to tell from the size of the images, but when zoomed in the panel is perfectly readable on the iPod screen.



By now you might be wondering what this has to do with 2000 AD. Well, if you recall from my previous post, ClickWheel sells their digital copies completely DRM free. So all you have to do is download your 2000 AD in CBZ format, drag it into ComicZeal Sync, and you have 2000 AD on-the-go! It's not exactly one-click, but it's still really easy. I should mention that ClickWheel does offer comics on the iPod. The problem is that not everything is offered on the iPod, and weekly 2000 AD are not.

The purpose of this post is to tell you what's out there and that it works. I really like ComicZeal and it works great! There is a demo video on their site, but I have to say that it works exactly as advertised. No funny stuff. You can read the reviews in the App Store, they are all pretty positive.

There has been a lot of talk in the last few weeks about digital comics. Lots of comic blogs are saying that 2010 might be there year they take off. I don't know. All I know is that I can't buy weekly issues of 2000 AD in print in the USA, so digital is all I've got. Digital comics are cheaper though. That is a plus. I won't even talk about storage. Okay, maybe I will. Actually, I'll let these pictures talk about storage for me.



I think that sums up storage right there.

Don't get me wrong, I will not give up my print comics without a fight. A really nasty, pulling hair and spitting kind of fight. It's not just the DRM issue, but the experience. Home theatres have decreased movie theatre attendance, but lots of people still go to the movies. Going to the movies is an experience. For many comic fans (myself included), going to a comic book shop is part of the experience, as is reading comics in the way we always have: on paper. I don't want to get bogged down in this discussion, so that's all I'm going to say.

While I'm back to pimpin' 2000 AD, I want to mention the Halloween Special. If you want to check out either ClickWheel or 2000 AD for cheap, purchase and download the 2000 AD Halloween Special (it's listed between Progs 1656 & 1657). It's $2.50 for 136 pages of collected Halloween-themed stories. Complete stories.

$2.50

$2.50

Come ON!! I shouldn't need to sell it harder than that. It has an Alan Moore story, how's that?

Okay, I'm done. Hope someone finds this helpful. And I hope you all point your browsers at ClickWheel to download that sweet Halloween Special for only $2.50!


*As a side note, the fact that the iPhone/iPod Touch doesn't have a MicroSD slot is a major (although undoubtedly intentional) design flaw.

Something Awesome This Way Comes

There is something coming. Something awesome.

Something that makes people run in terror.

Something that even Tony Stark fears.

What could this awesome force be?

Every day in January 2010, check this blog for a special "Iron Man Versus" series: Hulk Month! That's right, 31 brand spanking new installments of Iron Man Versus, all featuring the Incredible Hulk.

Prepare to witness the smackdown.


*First four panels from Iron Man v1 #131 (1980); full page ad from Hulk Annual #11 (1982).

Merry Christmas from Iron Santa & Doktor Andy!

The above is a Gimped up version of an in-house ad that ran in Marvel comics in issues dated February 1985. The unaltered ad can be seen here.

If you want to make your own version of this, I've uploaded the blank image here, and the comic book font I used in Gimp can be found here.

Enjoy! And Merry Christmas!

ROM, Spaceknight, Awesome Read

I've mentioned before that I'm currently working my way through every Iron Man issue from the beginning. (I'm currently in 1981.) Well for the last few "years" this ad has appeared in several issues.


I decided to go dollar bin diving at my comic shop this weekend as I got word they made a ton of new acquisitions. Turns out they picked up a good chunk of the ROM series. I was intrigued. I had never actually seen this book before and they had quite a few; perfect if I wanted to start reading it. Then I opened up an issue and rediscovered that ROM was done by the writer/artist team of Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema, who did some kick ass runs of Iron Man in the 1970's. I was sold right there. I got a total of 17 issues in two good size runs. I only have a chance to go to my shop about once over 2-3 weeks, so I took the chance and picked up a good run of issues. So far I've only read one issue, but I'm hooked. This book is excellent. Now I have to get to my shop to pick up every other issue they have! The series is 75 issues + 4 annuals, and annual #1 was among my acquisitions.

To start, I read the Wikipedia page for the fair spaceknight to get the character background before diving into issue #26 (which was the earliest issue I found). There were quite a few awesome bits in that one issue alone that I'd like to share with you.


Galactus on Galador! Galador is ROM's home world, so right there you know that this issue is going to be action packed! "ROM" is a three letter word. You know what else is? "BAM". I'm just saying...

It doesn't take long for things to get AWESOME. Page three contains this very serious warning.


That's right kids, Stan "The Man" Lee HIMSELF says that this issue contains so much action that it will FUCK YOU UP! Now I was going to read this issue while eating lunch, but when I saw this I had to stop. You see, when encountering Xtreme Xcitement I follow the same rules as swimming: I don't do it within 30 minutes of eating. After I had digested for a full 40 minutes (to be safe), I continued reading. Let me tell you, it did not disappoint. Although part of it did get a little gay.


But it just gets more MOTHER FUCKING MIND BLOWING AWESOME from there! Turns out that in the last ish there appeared a twin of ROM named "Terminator." Terminator battled Galactus while ROM snuck aboard Galactus' ship to wreck up the place. Galactus gets mildly irritated by Terminator and, as the panel says, he suffers a punishment such as no other spaceknight has suffered before.


HE GOT HIS FUCKING BALLS BLOWN OFF!!! JESUS CHRIST!!!!!

Seriously, never have a I read a comic and reacted so strongly to a combat scene as I did when I saw this. I need to frame this panel or something. It is too awesome for words.

Now you know why I must own every single issue of this series. Honestly, how can you not want to read a series that has this as a cover to an annual?


His metallic package and glowing eyes herald the Awesome.

The Cosmic Cube vs The Twinkie

This is an ad I found in Iron Man v1 #88, from 1976. This type of ad was pretty common back then, especially for Hostess "foods".



What caught my attention was the middle panel on the bottom. Let's take a closer look.


Now I don't MEAN to be perverted, but is that Cosmic Cube fucking that Twinkie? Does it not look like that's what it's doing?

Also, everything about this is wrong:


What does any of that even mean?