Indie Squid Kid

World's Finest by Guy Davis

(Via Aw Yeah Comics!)

"Don't Cross The Streams" by Andy Kuhn

(Via Hello-Zombie!)

Kazar (?) by Jordi Bernet

(Via Spaceship Rocket)

Wolverine by David Rubin

(Via Spaceship Rocket)

Aquaman and Topo by DocShaner

(Via Time Travel and Rocket-Powered Apes!)

Judge Anderson by Duncan Fegredo

(Via Aw Yeah Comics!)

©Marvel Comics

Patsy Walker: Hellcat was a five-issue mini-series from the Fall of 2008. Here’s the official description from Marvel (which, you’ll notice, doesn’t mention anything about fighting a Colossal Squid…you’d think that would be their main selling point!):

Iron Man’s one-woman Initiative team for Alaska finds herself in WAY over her head. Patsy Walker, Hellcat, is thrust into a world of magic, witches, rally-cars and demons of all shapes and sizes, and all she thought she was going to do was rough up a few lumber-thieves.

Written by Kathryn Immonen, Penciled by David Lafuente, Cover by Stuart Immonen

Patsy Walker was created by Ruth Atkinson, and she debuted in Miss America Magazine #2 (November 1944), a teen romance comic. Up until the late 60s, the character appeared in similar genre titles like Girl’s Life and Teen Comics, as well as staring in Patsy Walker, Patsy and Hedy, and Patsy and Her Pals. A cameo in Fantastic Four #3 (1965) established Patsy’s place in the Marvel superhero universe, and by 1976 (The Avengers #144), she had been given the costumed identity of Hellcat. She would later join the superhero team the Defenders, where she would meet future husband Daimon Hellstrom, the Son of Satan. Long story short, Patsy was driven mad, commited suicide, went to Hell, developed psychic powers, and was eventually resurrected. She sided with Iron Man in Marvel’s big Civil War crossover event (2006-2007), which leads us into the events of the Patsy Walker: Hellcat series.

©Marvel Comics

This is the cover art for a new one-shot ongoing series (it came out last week) called, I think, X-Men: Curse of the Mutants: Namor: The First Mutant…which, I’m sure you’ll agree, is an awful lot of colons for a single comic book title. This story was written by Stuart Moore with interior art by Ariel Olivetti, and it deals with the Sub-Mariner’s quest for Dracula’s (yes, that Dracula) severed head, which, in turn, appears to be crucial to the plot of the ongoing main X-Men series.

Full disclosure here, I rarely follow Marvel titles, and I haven’t read this issue (or any of the current X-titles). I did page through it yesterday at the comic shop, and it didn’t seem to contain any actual cephalopods. Prince Namor’s Throne O’ Tentacles™ also seemed to be absent from the story, existing only here in Jae Lee’s wonderfully creepy cover.

See this previous post for more information on Namor the Sub-Mariner.

We’ve been having some serious connectivity problems with our home WiFi network, so I’m only just now able to get to this week’s Wednesday Comics post. (I’d better make it quick too, since the modem could decide to crash at any moment!) Normally, I’d probably just skip it, but I really wanted to mark the birthday of comics legend Jack Kirby, who was born on August 28, 1917. He died in 1994, and his indelible influence still shapes the genre today.

Kirby was instrumental in defining the superhero renaissance of Marvel Comics’ Silver Age, co-creating (with Stan Lee) such notable characters as the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, and the X-Men. He also helped create a number of lesser known Marvel characters, such as Metallo, who was actually a suit of high-tech armor worn by human criminal Mike Fallon. Metallo’s first (and only?) appearance was Tales of Suspense #16 (1961), in the story “The Thing Called Metallo.” In it, Fallon acquires the suit, tests its capabilities, robs a bank, and finally attempts to break all the prisoners out of Alcatraz. The panel below (which actually comes from a 1974 reprint of the story in Where Monsters Dwell #26) shows Metallo’s encounter with a giant octopus.

©Marvel Comics

The marine monster strikes! His huge powerful tentacles encircle your struggling form–he tries to destroy you–to crush you as he has crushed so many other creatures…

If you found it upsetting that Metallo punches the octopus to death, know that Fallon gets his in the end. Learning that he has been stricken with an ailment (cancer?) that is fatal without radiation treatments, Fallon must choose to either leave the radiation-proof Metallo suit and get arrested, or stay in the suit and die. It seems like a no-brainer to me, but the story ends with Metallo heading off to the mountains to ponder his dilemma.

©Marvel Comics

The original Marvel 1602 was a critically acclaimed eight issue mini-series from 2003 written by Neil Gaiman and penciled by Andy Kubert. It presents an alternate history (officially known as Earth-311) where characters recognizable from the modern Marvel Universe have appeared centuries earlier in the Elizabethan era. (Read a detailed synopsis here.) The success of 1602 spawned a number of sequel series: 1602: New World (2005), Marvel 1602: Fantastik Four (2006), and Spider-Man 1602 (2009-2010).

Peter Parquagh is the young apprentice of Sir Nicholas Fury, the royal spymaster of Queen Elizabeth I. He is sent to America to escort the young Virgina Dare to England, and he gets caught up in a series of intrigues involving the likes of Count Doom of Latveria and Carlos Javier and his school for “Whichbreed” (aka mutants). As you might have guessed, he eventually gets bitten by a strange arachnid, gains powers, and assumes a costumed identity as The Spider.

Spider-Man 1602 introduces Baron Victor Octavius, an Italian nobleman suffering from the plague. The Baron attempted to cure himself using octopus blood, and although this seemed to work, it also had the unforeseen side effect of changing him into a monstrous human/octopus hybrid.

Baron Octavius ©Marvel Comics

Attempting to reverse the transformation, Octavius has begun experimenting on both normal humans and Whichbreed, and he eventually sets his sights on The Spider. His plans are thwarted, however, by natrual philosopher Henri Le Pym, who was being blackmailed into helping the Baron research a cure for his mutated condition.

The fifith and final issue of Spider-Man 1602 came out this past February, and the collected story is due out in hardcover this June.

This is Tentakil, a Generation 1 Transformer, and member of the Decepticon sub-group the Seacons. Each Seacon was a different monsterous sea creature, and although the resemblance is questionable, ten-armed Tentakil does, in fact, appear to be a squid.

All five Seacons could combine to form the super-robot Piranacon. Tentakil was the left leg.

Pirnacon! (photo from tfwiki.net)

This is a little off-topic, but who the hell thought electric pink and teal were good colors for evil aquatic robots!?

Anyway…when not on leg duty, Tentakil could transform into three different solo modes. In his beast mode, this bipedal squid-bot appears to be wearing a Creature From The Black Lagoon Halloween mask. My figure is missing his accessories, but he would have originally come with two “Slime Laser rifles” that could be head-mounted (mantle-mounted?) in beast mode or carried like regular guns in robot mode. Tentakil also has a third “Targetmaster” mode where he turns into a “50,000 volt lightning rifle.”

Like all G1 Transformers (as well as the Battle Beasts from yesterday’s post), Tentakil was produced by Takama/Hasbro. The figure is stamped 1987, but it appears that the Seacons didn’t hit American toy shelves until 1988. I realize I didn’t include any sense of scale in these photos, but the toy is about 3 3/4″ tall. Even though my brother and I had quite a few Transformers in our time, we never had this or any of the Seacon figures. My future brother-in-law, who was an avid Transformer collector at the time, gave me this Tentakil figure after he found out that I collected cephalopods.

In Japan, the figure was marketed as Tentakil drone for the Super-God Masterforce line, and in 1998 a repainted version of this figure became Scylla, a female Predacon in the Beast Wars line. Another repainted Tentakil was released as part of an Official Transformers Collectors’ Club exclusive Seacon gift set in 2008.

Transformers #47 (December, 1988)

Tentakil (and the entire Seacon crew) debuted in Marvel’s Transformers comic in a four issue story arc called the “Underbase Saga.” As far as I can tell, it has something to do the battle between different Transformer factions to control the master database that contains the collective knowledge of the entire Transformer race. And it’s under water. Or something.

The Seacons, it seems, work for Decepticon mini-cassette Ratbat, and they are trying to acquire the “Underbase” before either the Autobots or the treacherous Starscream does.

According to the Transformers fan site Unicron.com, this is how Tentakil is described in his comic book appearances.

He is undeniably the cruelest, deadliest Seacon. His style is as distinctive as it is lethal.  He showers a potential victim with kindness, offering him help, even complimenting his appearance. And then, once he has gained the confidence of his victim, Tentakil moves in for the kill. In a flash, kindness turns to cruelty. The soft caress of his limbs turns into a deadly, unyielding stranglehold. He seems to take a perverse pleasure in these amiable charades, enjoying them even more than their inevitable, lethal conclusions.

Wow, what an a-hole!

Sub-Mariner #35 (August, 1954)

Wow, there’s sure a lot going on on this cover! Our hero, Prince Namor of Atlantis, aka the Sub-Mariner, is caught in the unwelcome embrace of a mostly off-panel cephalopod while simultaneously his undersea kingdom is being invaded by Soviet submarines, deep-sea divers, and bathyspheres (!). These brutish Communists appear to have the technology to allow them to fire a harpoon through a glass porthole, which perhaps isn’t that remarkable, but I imagine it would be rather hard to reload…I guess they are counting on that octopus (?) to hold Namor still? There’s also a shark, but it’s unclear where its loyalties lie…

Namor the Sub-Mariner was created by Bill Everett, and he debuted in Timely Comics’ Marvel Comics #1 (October, 1939). Sub-Mariner Comics ran for 44 issues between 1941 and 1955, and most, if not all, of those issues were written and drawn by Everett (including issue #35, seen here). Timely Comics would eventually become the company we know today as Marvel Comics, and Namor remains a prominent character in the Marvel Universe. He is a Human/Atlantian hybrid (Little-known fact: Namor’s last name is McKenzie!) and a mutant to boot—in fact, he was Marvel’s first mutant character. The Sub-Mariner was also Marvel’s first anti-hero, sometimes fighting alongside and sometimes against the likes of Captain America and the Human Torch. Over the decades he’s been associated with a number of superhero teams, including the Invaders, the Defenders, the Avengers, and the X-Men, but he once also tried to conquer the surface world with an army of sea monsters! (It seems Mr. Splashy-Pants has a bit of a temper.)

Perhaps not surprisingly, Namor has a lot in common with DC Comics’ Aquaman (who debuted in 1941, the same year Namor got his own title). They both had human fathers and are Atlantian royalty. The two aquatic heroes have a similar power set—under-water breathing, super-human strength, and the ability to communicate telepathically with sea life—but thanks to his cute little ankle wings, Namor also has the power of flight! The Sub-Mariner also had the moody asshole thing down decades before Aquaman adopted his shirtless Captain Hook look. Also, only one of them looks like Mr. Spock in a Speedo. I’m not saying that is necessarily a good thing…I’m just sayin’.

ICAD begins tomorrow, so get ready to appreciate the hell out of some cephalopods!

Like I said yesterday, Dragon*Con is this weekend, and I am rather bummed not to be in attendance this year. The con is more than just a science-fiction or comic book convention, it is a chaotic multi-media/multi-genre extravaganza celebrating every corner of geeky popular culture. Here is but a small tentacled taste of Dragon*Con from the past few years. All photos are from my Flickr account, unless otherwise noted.

Doctor Octopus (Dragon*Con 2008)

Stygian Depths booth (Dragon*Con 2008)

"Doctor Cthulhu" (Dragon*Con 2008)

Photo by Foenix

Cthulhu and Ichigo (Dragon*Con 2007)

Photo by Futuregirl_LeahRiley

"tentacle monster" (Dragon*Con 2005)