1. Yes. Why do you think it’s called the Batcave?
2. Yep. A trophy from a villain obsessed with pennies.
3. Duh. Because the Bat-Garage is stupid.
4. Sure. What else would you wear if you wanted to match fisticuffs with Superman?
5. Affirmative. It’s from Dinosaur Island.
6. Jah. Batman keeps the uniform of the second Robin, Jason Todd, on display in the Batcave as a memorial. Despite being killed by the Joker, Jason seems to have come back to life in the comic books recently as the villain Red Hood.

In the 1940s, Captain Marvel was the most popular comic book superhero. His book actually outsold Superman’s on a regular basis. So, how come we know the “Man of Steel” better than we know the “Big Red Cheese” (I’m not kidding, that was his nickname)? One year after Captain Marvel came out, DC Comics (then know as National Comics) sued Fawcett Publications (Capt. Marvel’s publishers) for copyright infringement since both characters were strong and could fly. While it took 11 years for the trial and appeal to come to a conclusion, in 1952 Fawcett admitted defeat and settled out of court with DC. Thirty years later, DC bought the licensing to Fawcett’s works and started publishing them again because there’s nothing like adding insult to the injury.

The Number One reason why the most recent Superman movie was awful was not the story or the acting. The Number One reason was that Superman had a kid with Lois Lane. Two reasons immediately come to mind why this is an awful plot twist and the guy who wrote the script should be hit with a frying pan:
1) If an invincible daddy gets together with a fragile and mortal mommy, I’m not sure mommy would survive the ordeal.
2) They are different species. Not like a chihuahua and great dane different. I’m talking fikus tree and African lion different.

Watchmen
Written in 1985 by the father of the modern comic book, Alan Moore, this graphic novel is undergoing filming for release in 2009. The story is about a group of retired superheroes from the 1950’s coming back onto the job to address a mysterious, new supervillain who is trying to push America and the Soviet Union into using their Cold War missles. Some of the foibles and interactions between the superheroes are more adult in nature, but this graphic novel was the only comic to make Time magazine’s 2005 “Best English language novels from 1923 to present” list. It’s The Great Gatsby of comics.

Out of the following items, which are or are not present in Batman’s Batcave.

1. A colony of bats
2. A giant penny
3. The Batmobile
4. Kryptonite jewelry
5. A robotic Tyrannosaurus
6. The clothes of a dead child

The Answer will appear at 10pm.

Goon
There’s hardly any character development. There’s a thin plot. But, a thuggish style “goon” who is partnered with a 1950’s Little Orphan Annie-stereotype and beats up zombies to rescue his city from organized crime while using slapstick humor never gets old. Published by Dark Horse and written by Eric Powell, this book is for the kid in you that still thinks monster trucks and mud pits are awesome.

Queen Hippolyta of Paradise Island, where the Amazons lived, wanted a daughter, but was quite adamant about keeping men off her island. So, she did what any Greek goddess would do and made one out of clay. Her daughter, named Artemis or Diana depending on the legend, grew up to become Wonder Woman. Why a Greek goddess wants to dress in star-spangled underwear is beyond me.

Don’t Believe Everything You See On TV
The WB network’s teen drama Smallville is meant to examine the early years of Clark Kent growing up in rural America. In agreement with the comics, Clark does befriend Lex Luthor in Smallville before they become enemies. However, in the comics Lana is a redhead who marries a blonde Pete Ross and there was no Chloe Sullivan.

Although, just like Spider-Man’s web shooting and black kryptonite, Chloe will be appearing for the first time in comic book form this coming March.

http://www.dccomics.com/comics/?cm=8982

Ethnically black characters have been featured in comic books since their inception, but they usually served small roles in the story and were often shown in a racist light. One of the most commonly cited examples is Ebony White from Will Eisner’s Spirit.

http://www.answers.com/topic/ebony-white

It was not until 1966 that Stan Lee created the first black superhero. Named the Black Panther, he was a vigilante like Batman, but unlike Batman, he had political immunity since he was the king of the fictional African country of Wakanda. (Actually, Eddie Murphy came from Zamunda.)

Conan
Every issue of a sword and sorcery genre comic usually featured the rescue of a scantily clad girl and a sword fight. There was little plot or character development, only the allure of sex and violence in pencil sketch. Dark Horse Publishers set out to change this by enlisted Kurt Busiek (my favorite comic author) to write a deeper look into the most famous barbarian character. If you like the allure of a sword fight but also enjoy the storytelling of a bestselling novel, this may be your book.

X-Men Quiz Answers!!

1. Wolverine
2. Cyclops
3. Storm
4. Gambit
5. (Arch)Angel
6. Nightcrawler
7. Magneto
8. Kazar (I’m not sure if he qualifies as a mutant, but he’s in all the X-Men comics)
9. Quicksilver
10. Shadowcat

Publisher Quiz Answers
1. DC
2. Marvel
3. DC
4. DC
5. Marvel
6. Marvel
7. DC
8. DC
9. Marvel
10. Marvel

In 1992, Art Spiegelman shocked the snooty literature world that doesn’t like pictures with their novels by being awarded with the first and, as of now, only Pulitzer Prize ever given to a graphic novel. There’s no category for comic books for the Pulitzer committee to vote on, so Spiegelman received a “special citation” in the Letters award category. His awarded work was Maus. It’s the survivor’s tale of his father during World War II where the Jews are represented by mice and the Nazis as cats.
http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2001/12.13/photos/19-spiegelman-435.jpg

The Silver Surfer’s surfboard allows him to travel at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) with his thought as the only throttle. Peter Parker’s Aunt May once obtained a walking speed of 0.4 miles per hour when she heard there was a sale at Macy’s.

Bone
I grant you that the main characters look like variations on the Pillsbury Doughboy, but the story is Disney magical. I avoided this book for a long time because I thought that there was no way main characters that resembled marshmallows could carry a book. Then I bought it and stayed up late at night several times refusing to put it down. It’s a perfect introduction into comics for the innocent at heart. Oh, and did I mention it’s addictive to read? Written by Jeff Smith and published by Scholastic as a graphic novel. The One Volume Edition is the most cost effective to buy.

Whether you’re a fan of the movies, comics, or Saturday morning cartoons from the ‘80s and ‘90s, the X-Men are famed within American culture as people who are both different and remarkable. Name the X-Man who is gifted with each mutant ability listed below.

1. Healing factor and the most savage brass knuckles ever
2. Laser beams out the eyes
3. Weather control
4. Makes things explosive with his hands and throws it at you
5. Giant wings
6. Blue, fuzzy, and teleports
7. Moves iron-based objects with his mind
8. Wears a loincloth and runs around with a sabertooth tiger in the Savage Land
9. Can run really, really fast
10. Can run through walls

Answers will be posted at 1pm.

Marvel Comics owes its success to Stan Lee. He was the one who created the characters of Spider-Man, X-Men, Avengers, Iron-Man, Incredible Hulk, Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Doctor Strange, Sergeant Fury and the Mighty Thor (just to name a few). Unlike some creators like Alan Moore, Stan “the Man” doesn’t mind lending out copyright licensing of his characters to movie companies. He just has one stipulation: he needs to make a cameo in his characters’ films. Here are some of his appearances (he’s the white-haired guy with a mustache and shades).

Most people think that comics are only for boys under the age of 12. If you don’t think that, you are probably turned off by the comic storylines of the 1990’s where you needed to read $30 to $50 worth of 24-page comics a month to keep up with what was going on with the X-Men. As a wise man from Minnesota once said, “The times are a-changing,” and when regarding the world of comics, this is very true.

There are many comic book titles geared toward an adult audience currently in circulation. In fact, graphic novels, a collection of 24-page comics made into a several hundred page book, are currently dominating the French best-seller list. Taking into consideration that the French have won more Nobel Prizes in Literature than any other people, I think we should follow their lead.

Thereby, to broaden the horizons of the readers of www.mikedidonato.com, I’d like to present a few shameless plugs of comic books which can be found at any Barnes and Noble or internet books store in graphic novel form. I hope you can find something that appeals to you.

Fables
Published by Vertigo, the adult-oriented comic book branch of DC, and written by Bill Willingham, Fables is an ongoing story which assumes the characters from human fairy tales are real. Once confined to their own dimensions, in this story the fairy tale characters such as the Big Bad Wolf and Snow White have been chased out of their paradises into the human, mundane world by a sinister conqueror known only as the Adversary. Misadventures trying to protect their identities from humans of the mundane world, interactions with each other, and trying to recapture their homeland dimensions ensue.

Everyone knows who Superman, Spider-Man, and Batman are, but do you know which comic book universe they belong to? The two biggest publishers of comic books, DC and Marvel, have two separate worlds for their super beings to frolic and interact. If these two worlds were to interact, it would be Armageddon (also referred to as copyright infringement).

So, to know the likelihood of seeing Captain America buy the Incredible Hulk a beer, you need to know who publishes them. See if you can match the characters below with their correct publishing company, DC or Marvel.

1. Superman
2. Spider-Man
3. Wonder Woman
4. Batman
5. Wolverine
6. Incredible Hulk
7. Red Tornado
8. Adam Strange
9. Stilt-Man
10. M.O.D.O.K.

The Answers will be posted at Noon today.

4 What Color Is Your Mood Ring Now?
Over Superman’s 70 years in ink, he has been challenged by a number of minerals from his home planet, collectively called kryptonite, that emit radiation to affect the hero’s power, appearance, and mentality depending on their color. Here’s a short list of the five most common colored kryptonites and the adverse effects they have on Kryptonians.

Green – This is the most common kryptonite and causes pain, weaknesses, loss of superpowers, and the possibility of death with long term exposure.

Red – In modern comics, red kryptonite causes a loss of powers without the nasty pain and death of green kryptonite. However, red kryptonite was the Kryptonian LSD of 1960’s comics and caused Superman to change physically into things ranging from a humanoid ant creature to a morbidly obese, balloon-like person.

Gold – It is rumored that gold kryptonite will permanently rob a Kryptonian of their superpowers gained from yellow sun rays.

Blue – Blue kryptonite affects the backward Bizarro Superman the same way green kryptonite affects normal Kryptonians.

Black – Originally created for the Smallville television show, the comics adopted this new form of kryptonite into their pages in 2005. Black kryptonite causes the good and evil sides of your personality to literally and physically split into two separate beings.

The iconic cover to the first Incredible Hulk Annual only took Jim Steranko 20 minutes to draw.

In the recent Spider-Man movie trilogy, the audience is shown that Peter Parker’s ability to shoot webbing is Tobey Maguire-made. However, when Spidey first appeared in the ‘60s (and for more than 40 years after), he didn’t have this ability and had to use a fancy chemical-shooting device to spin his web.

Then in 2004, Marvel Comics Inc. decided it was a better idea not to confuse moviegoers who wanted to pick up a comic after seeing the film and alienated comic fans by changing a 40 year precedent of chemical webs in exchange for the organic variety.

Premiering in June of 1938, Superman was the first super-powered hero. This also means that good ol’ Clark/Kal-El turns 70 years old this year! Just to give you and idea of how much this character has evolved, originally Superman couldn’t fly. He could only jump long distances (hence “leaping tall buildings in a single bound”).
Here’s the cover of Superman’s first appearance:

Chris, though a late joiner to the 720 posts game, decided to do some mass contribution. Chris is a comic book fan and has put together a full day of posts that relate to comic book trivia.

Special thanks to Chris for all his efforts!!