This, my children, is Ultraa… …who should not be confused with Ultra, Ultra Boy, Ultragirl, Ultraman ( Japanese or American version), Captain Ultra, Ultra the Multi-Alien, the Ultra-Humanite, Gary Concord the Ultra-Man, Ultraforce, or Lords of the Ultra Realm. Ultraa was the first superhero of Earth-Prime, which was the plane of existence where we readers dwelled in [...]

Sometime back in the summer of 1985, I came home from a D&D all-nighter to find my little brother hovering over a massive pile of funnybooks stacked in the middle of our bedroom’s orange shag carpet. The bewildering haul was a gift from my uncle, who’d discovered Jesus and/or the realities of married life and [...]

There was a time when I used to post long rants about current trends in superhero comics, but that era has long since passed. Complaining requires caring, and I stopped giving a shit somewhere around the Civil War and Identity/Infinite/Final Crisis debacles. As my dad is fond of saying, “when something gives you more headaches [...]

Some comics are remembered for being good, some comics are remembered for being terrible, and some comics are remembered solely because of a stategically placed house ad. Oh, sure, it’s possible to find the planet’s biggest and only Slash Maraud or Electric Warrior fan with some extensive digging, but good luck finding someone who will [...]

There are eight million forgotten supporting characters attached to the Superman franchise… …but few are as forgettable as the aptly named Scorn. The Boring Blue Behemoth was a scion of Kandor (not the Kryptonian one, but the barely remembered Cynosure-as-Mega-City-One incarnation of the bottled city) whose dedication to the YOLO lifestyle caused no end of [...]

As entertaining (and easy) it may be to mercilessly mock some ill-conceived backbenched dredged up from the dregs of funnybook history, that was never intended to be the purpose of Nobody’s Favorites. There’s no denying that facile snark brings in the readers, but this feature was supposed to be a response to the “SO LAME [...]

We’re going to kick off our return to regular updates with a vile character who cast a long, slimy shadow over the 1980s and beyond… …Margaret Thatcher, a.k.a. The Iron Lady. “But Andrew,” I hear you saying, “Thatcher was a real person, not a funnybook character!” Regrettably, but Maggie has also made a number of [...]

Hey, everybody! Are you ready to take a quick look back at the Sensational Character Find of 2007? Sorry to disappoint you then, because our subject this week is Simon Dark, “Gotham City’s Other Protector (who isn’t Robin, Batgirl, Batwoman, Spoiler, Orpheus, the Golden Age Green Lantern, Onyx, Hitman, Jason Blood, Zatanna, the Question, Black [...]

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF THE INTERNET, ARE YOU READY TO ROCK? Well, you’ll have to look elsewhere, because today we’re going to discuss the baffling synergistic trainwreck known as Nightcat. The 1991 multimedia misfire was Marvel’s miguided attempt to resurrect their original plan for the Disco Dazzler: a real-life pop princess crafted in-and-around a fictionalized [...]

I was cleaning out the mess of “out of sight, out of mind” junk I’d thrown in the bottom cabinet of my entertainment center a while back. Wrapped up in the tangle of busted joypads and old cassette tapes was the mourner’s armband which came packed as a “collectable” extra in the 1993 Death of [...]