Bill Paxton passes away at 61 so to the grim reaper I say "Fuck you asshole!"

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Unfucken believable! I literally only 30 moments ago just read the sad news about Bill Paxton having passed away during some sort of surgical procedure. Here we go again with yet another iconic actor from the sci-fi genre of the 80s passing away and we're not even done with February yet. Many people wouldn't know that his list of credits both in front and behind the camera is very extensive but I'm not going to get into a long winded posting about his fantastic career. But suffice it to say I loved Bill Paxton he's been in some great films both big and small that I've enjoyed since the mid 80s.
The land mark role that put him on the map no doubt was private Hudson from ALIENS but we actually saw Bill before that in a small part in the original classic Terminator film. Since then he's played in a number of great films like Tombstone, Apollo 13 and One False Move. He's also done some work on the small screen I remember him in particular most recently from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D when that show was actually watchable. Bill was also in another great yet little known film that's one of my favorites from his acting resume. The movie is a modern day vampire film from the late 80s called Near Dark in which Paxton plays a psychotic vampire with an entertaining and twisted sense of humor when it comes to hunting his prey and taking on his enemies.

As if 2016 wasn't bad enough it looks like 2017 is already becoming a shit year for celebrity deaths from my child hood in the science fiction genre. We also lost Richard Hatch to cancer earlier this month whom you remember from Battlestar Galactica, The Streets of San Francisco and most recently from Star Trek Axanar. I actually met him only about a year and a half ago at a convention in San Jose California.

Gordon Henley from the original Star Wars (A New Hope) film and also most recently in Rogue 1 thanks to inserted footage never used from A New Hope died from a bizarre and tragic choking incident during a meal last month.

Let me just throw this in here real quick let's see if you can figure out the Star Wars reference here in this Battlestar Galactica comic book clip art from Dynamite Entertainment.

Anyways, also last month we lost Miguel Ferrer whom Robocop fans certainly remember and perhaps even some Star Trek fans as well. Miguel died of throat cancer.

Lashina cosplay

Julie Wilhelm

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I remember when I first saw this Starfire bonus pin-up page back when I was a kid in the mid 80s. It was in the back pages of some issue of Ambush Bug (#2) which I was browsing at for reasons that I can't remember since I never had any interest in that character. I remember being so sprung at the time to see something like this in a comic book by a main stream publisher like DC.
But ofcourse by today's standards this is quite tame. Especially when you consider how the character has been re-imagined in the DCU reboot. At the time I was tempted to buy the issue just for that bonus pin-up page alone but just couldn't bring myself to paying the cover price for an issue of Ambush Bug. I've seen that same issue in $1 boxes a couple times recently but it's just as well to have found this Starfire bonus pin up online.

Janus Directive splash page

It seems after all there may yet be a little bit of Suicide Squad stuff to blog about as we kick off 2017. I was at the library today when I noticed a Janus Directive trade paper back on the shelf. I never knew there was a TPB of that multi-titled DC story line in which a conspiracy devised by Kobra turns all the U.S. meta human special ops organizations against each other. The top part of this splash page ( jeez, did they really have to draw Bronze Tiger with that excessive bulge in his costume?) from Checkmate 15 can be found at the DC Wikia page but I mostly like the bottom half with the character chess pieces.

Also today, I was reading Justice League vs Suicide Squad # 3 on Youtube. I have to admit it was actually pretty good. Top notch art with some well done character development and a story line that looks very promising.

Unknown Suicide Squad Millennium art recently discovered

I recently found this art work on DC's wikia page. Although I don't know where this art work originated from I'm always never the less delighted to uncover some Suicide Squad related art from the late 80s and 90s. We see there Rick Flag and Bronze Tiger along with Karen Grace (mission casualty) who's got some some "history" with Flag back from their pre Ostrander Squad days together. There's also The Privateer (a.k.a Mark Shaw), a former manhunter recruited to help Task Force X for the Manhunter Louisiana fortress assault mission (see Millennium week 4, Suicide Squad 8 and 9).

Ok I just wanted to open up this next segment of the posting by saying I was a graphic designer for 10 years so I thought these panels were funny as Hell. Last night I came across this these panels (issue 4) while watching some youtube videos that basically let you read the Suicide Squad Rebirth series in slide show format they have issues 1- 7 so far. Considering how easy it is to read a comic book series these days online I think you must really really want to buy something for the sake of having a hard cover in your collection.
Anyways, this latest Squad series is much of an improvement from what DC came up with when the DCU relaunch first happened not to mention The Squad title reboots prior to Rebirth. This rebirth series is certainly worth taking the time to read on youtube but not worth buying and taking up space at home. It does have it's moments, like Captain Boomerang getting killed in issue 2. Just go to Youtube and paste the following in the search bar...suicide squad rebirth #1. Or start with a later issue but either way after the video finishes it'll go right to what ever the following issue is until you finally reach # 7.

Swamp Thing and The Golem

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I recently found a couple of volume 2 Swamp Thing issues (only fitty cent each) from the early 80s I used to have back in the day. I really like rereading old issues like these because you really do often get more out of it when you read these stories as an adult as opposed to a teenager. I had almost forgotten how the early story line of that series was heavily steeped with an Old Testament and World War II narrative mixed in with some of the same Jewish folklore that Ragman mine is derived from. The few panels I posted here from Swamp Thing 11 do a good job of explaining the nature of The Golem.
 In this story line Swamp Thing teams up with a group of guys going after this evil mutant girl who they think is the herald of the coming "anti-Christ" that will bring the apocalypse with him when he/it comes to Earth. As you can see here they utilize a golem to help fight this evil mutant but we see later that the golem can sometimes get confused about it's mission due to it lacking a soul and mind. Think of a computer given a task a bit too complex for it's fairly simple programming. Let me digress for a moment to make this point. This imperfection in the golem is a fundamental aspect of the Ragman suite which was created from rags with a variation of the golem spell by Jewish mystics in order to create a protector with a human mind and hence the ability to reason.

BACK ISSUE magazine #92  October 2016

December 8th Update: It's December and that means it time for Hannukkah.

Well it had it's moments at least

Did you know that out of the entire Ostrander run for The Suicide Squad there was only one annual? And admittedly despite having been written by John Ostrander it wasn't a very good read in what was other wise an awesome series. But it did have it's moments like the exchange between Rick Flag and Boomerang as well as between Shade and Manhunter. In case you didn't know during his time with Task Force X Shade was known for having something of a condescending attitude toward Earth technology which other Squad members found to be annoying at times. So it was kinda funny seeing someone talk down to him for a change when it comes to the comprehension.

Amanda Waller vs Barack Obama

So just this past Wednesday DC Comics relaunched for what I believe is the 3rd reboot of the Suicide Squad title since the inception of the New DCU. There was the original series that was part of the New 52 line up that eventually gave way to another title called "The New Suicide Squad". I dropped the original title after issue 11 and didn't keep up much with what went on with the series after that but I think that first series ended some where in the 20s and then became the "New" Suicide Squad and who knows what after that.
Although not getting a lot of great word of mouth the Suicide Squad movie is something of a commercial success so I guess DC Comics is looking to capitalize on that with a relaunch of the title that mirrors the movie in many respects.

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Coincidentally we now have a Suicide Squad that looks a little more like the Ostrander series from the old DCU. Waller is a plus size woman again along with Rick Flag and Enchantress being added to the line up of Squad members. Also, Deadshot a.ka. Floyd Lawton is back to having his signature mustache/goatee but that might have been the case again after I dropped the first series for all I know. All that aside this ideological debate between Waller and Obama was pretty well written I have to say I really enjoyed it. Not saying I'm gonna go out and buy this book but for now it's at least worth keeping an eye on. If you want to read a real review of the Suicide Squad Rebirth there's close to a half o dozen videos on youtube already among other places on the internet.

Now, why am I posting this photo of Voila Davis? Is it because she played Amanda Waller in the movie? No, I did for no other reason other then that she looks fucken gorgeous here.

August 23rd update
A little something interesting here I wanted to share with any Ragman fans out there. I'm sure most of you recognize this Batwoman cover art and have probably figured out the writing at the bottom left is Hebrew. But I doubt most any of you knew what it meant. Pronounced "emet", that's Hebrew for the word truth. Which is interesting because in according to Jewish golem folklore part of the spell that animates the clay creature known as the golem is to inscribe the word truth on it's head. As some of you know the Ragman suite was created from a variant of the golem spell so I imagine that has something to do with the Hebrew inscription of that Ragman dominated Batwoman 35 cover art. Almost bought that issue at one point but it wasn't quite what I was hoping for on the inside.