First up we have two fantastic images of Doctor Fate by Terry Huddleston (Thuddleston on deviantART).  I LOVE this pop-art style!  The good Doctor’s helmet always looks cool, but Terry makes it especially awesome!

Terry has done more fantastic head-shots and full-body poses of various Marvel and DC characters. Click here for Terry’s DC head-shots and click here for his DC full-body poses. So cool!

Next up we have Doctor Fate by Alessandro (AlexMax on deviantART).

I love the stylized look! As seen below, this is actually just one section of a larger drawing featuring seven members of the Justice Society.  Click the image to enlarge.  Click here to be taken to Alessandro’s deviantART page for an even closer look at this spectacular piece.

See below for the other JSA group shot Alessandro drew. Click the image to enlarge. Click here to be taken to Alessandro’s deviantART page for an even closer look at this gorgeous piece.

My thanks to Dan from the It’s a Dan’s World blog for leading me to Terry Huddleston’s work.  My thanks to Frank Lee Delano for leading me to Alessandro’s work. Check out Frank’s Power of the Atom blog for a great Hawkman by Alessandro, then follow the links for four more cool pieces by the same artist! Finally, check out Firestorm Fan today as I’ve got artwork of Firestorm by Terry Huddleston and Killer Frost by Alessandro!

I’ve never actually understood my husband’s hobby. For years, he has been collecting superhero figurines and reading comic books. I think since he was at least 10 years old. I’ve never been able to figure out what draws people to stories about Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Firestorm (my husband’s favorite character). Is it the costumes? Or the powers they have? What is it….

I was surfing channels on TV last night, when it hit me. One bad news story after another. News shows talked about the Casey Anthony trial. The “love child” of John Edwards. A missing child in a far away state. Sexual predator arrested in Florida. More and more sad, depressing stories. I turned off the TV and decided we do need superheroes.

My parents were my “superheroes.” But not everyone is so lucky. Caylee Anthony. Michael David and Alexander Tyler Smith. Paul, Luke, Mary, Noah and John Yates. I am sure you recognize the name Caylee Anthony since the trial is going on now. Do you remember Susan Smith? She killed her two sons by driving her car into a lake. Andrea Yates killed her five children because they couldn’t be “saved.” You get the idea.

Your parents are supposed to be your role models. Give you unconditional love. If your parents aren’t the ones who teach you right from wrong, then you turn to others. So, maybe superheroes aren’t so bad. Everyone needs a good role model.

So bring on the superhero movies….Captain America, Green Lantern, Spider-man.

Absolutely adorable! To see her in an Iron Man mask a last year, click here.

There I was enjoying my monthly “Geek Lunch” with the beautiful ladies from Girls-Gone-Geek, when suddenly this giant nerd barges his way into our conversation!  Not cool, dude!  See for yourself…

If you’re unable to view the embedded video above, please click here.

All kidding aside, my thanks to the folks at NerdLunch.net for inviting us on their show.  CT, Savannah, and Scott were great!  They did such a fantastic job with the camera work and editing!  I absolutely loved Vanessa and Erika’s expressions!  Priceless!  Be sure to check out previous episodes of Nerd Lunch: The Web Series! Also, you can follow them on Twitter by clicking here.

If nothing else, this video proves that I’ve got a face for radio. 

Boy was I wrong!  The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes is a truly great cartoon!

Right from the opening credits I was in love!  That theme song rocks!  “Fight As One” by Bad City – Google it, seriously.  Another neat feature of the opening credits is the group shot of the team at the end.  The team composition changes depending upon the team status in each episode.  Nice attention to detail!

The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes DVD vol 1 covers the first seven episodes of the series.  Essentially this introduces all the main characters and shows the formation of the team.  Each of the first five episodes spotlights a main character: Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Captain America, and Ant Man & Wasp.  This worked great on DVD, but I’m not so sure it would have worked for the once-a-week viewer on television.  For those viewers, they didn’t get to see the Avengers together as a team until they’d been watching the show for six weeks.  Regardless, it plays out really well on DVD and helps you understand each character better than expected.

No time was wasted detailing the origins of Iron Man or Hulk.  They assume the viewer is already familiar with these movie franchise icons.  The voice actor playing Tony Stark did a reasonable job mimicking Robert Downey Jr., while the Pepper Potts voice actress sounded exactly like Gwyneth Paltrow.  Additionally, Jarvis was dead-on from the Iron Man films.  I really enjoyed this interpretation of the Hulk.  He’s aggressive and simple, but not a mindless savage.

Most surprising to me was how exciting Thor and Captain America came across on-screen!  Personally, I’m not much of a Thor fan.  I’ve never enjoyed his monthly comic, with the exception of the stories by Walt Simonson and Warren Ellis.  Thor is a difficult character to make accessible to the average person and I wasn’t expecting to enjoy him in this cartoon.  Another surprise here — they did an excellent job conveying Thor’s back story and making Asgard an exciting place to explore!  Thor is an awesome character in this series and I look forward to seeing more of him!  Captain America is another challenging character to make interesting.  His out-of-time morality and relatively low power-level could have worked against him.  Instead they managed to create a compelling and inspirational hero that can hold his own with the Avengers!  With the upcoming theatrical releases of Thor and Captain America, these character’s popularity is going to skyrocket.

The Avengers team is finally formed in the two-part story that bridges episodes six and seven.  There is an astonishing battle with Graviton in those episodes that blew me away!  The action was non-stop!  This was the kind of epic superhero battle I’ve been longing to see on-screen.

The majority of the story elements in The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes is based in the comic’s continuity.  For example, the team composition matches that of the original comic heroes, and the machinations of Loki are responsible for bringing the team together.  Other nods to the original comics include Hulk quitting the team during their second adventure and the discovery of a frozen Captain America.  I enjoyed the inclusion of the New Avengers comic plot point that the team banded together to hunt down a group of escaped supervillain inmates.

Through the course of these DVDs, we’re also introduced to characters such as Black Panther, Hawkeye, and Black Widow.  Nick Fury plays heavily in these adventures, his character coming across as an amalgamation of the movie version and the comic version.

The Avengers Earth’s Mightiest Heroes vol 2 DVD continues the team’s grand adventures.  In this volume we see: the team begins to gel and figure how they’ll function as a unit, Captain America makes his modern day debut, Wonder Man makes an appearance, and the DVD wraps up with a massive Gamma Monster brawl!  Both vol 1 and vol 2 offer a unique bonus feature with sneak peaks at season two of the series!  Nice featurettes that got me excited for further adventures!

I watched these DVDs with my eleven year old step-son and my five year old daughter.  I was interested in getting their opinion on the series.  Like me, they loved it!  Probably most surprising was my daughter’s intense interest in the show.  She’s very much a princess & pink kind of girl, so I didn’t expect her to latch onto this series as much as she did.  As we progressed through the episodes, this five year old child was spouting off bits of continuity from previous episodes that even I had forgotten about!  Understandably so, her favorite character was the Wasp.  I think Wasp might just be my favorite too.  So heroic and adorable!  Interestingly, both my kids noticed the immense amount of collateral damage and innocent bystanders in this series.  The superhero battles are big, bold and destructive.  I thought it was a very astute observation coming from children.

The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes vol. 1 & 2 on DVD went on sale last week.  Here are the details:

Volume 1 Episodes:
1. Iron Man Is Born!
2. Thor The Mighty
3. Hulk Versus The World
4. Meet Captain America
5. The Man in the Ant Hill
6. Breakout: Part 1
7. Breakout: Part 2
BONUS FEATURE: New Looks, New Heroes

Volume 2 Episodes:
8. Some Assembly Required
9. Living Legend
10. Everything Is Wonderful
11. Panther’s Quest
12. Gamma World: Part1
13. Gamma World: Part 2
BONUS FEATURE: New Stories, New Threats

I feel the quality of the stories, animation, and characters in this series are reminiscent of DC’s Justice League Unlimited animated series.  Make no mistake, that’s high praise coming from me!  While I enjoy many superhero cartoons, I don’t typically watch them a second time.  I feel confident saying that I’ll be re-watching these cartoons again in the near future.  If you’re a fan of superheroes or comic books, these DVDs are for you!  Buy them today!

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My thanks to Walt Disney Studios for sending me copies of these DVDs for review.

I’ve been an avid collector of Avengers comic books since the early 1990s.  I love this team and I love these characters.  The animated series really has an interesting take on these fan-favorite heroes.  I haven’t seen every episode of this series yet, so I’m looking forward to watching the entire run on DVD.  Pick up your own copies today and watch for my review of the series here in the near future!

For the past two years, I’ve run a site dedicated to Firestorm the Nuclear Man. While I enjoyed writing about Firestorm, I felt it was time to move on to something new. When I started the site in January 2009, Firestorm had been reduced to a minor character. His monthly series had been canceled for a third time, and he was a junior member of the Justice League of America. It was easy to keep up with his appearances and I could spend lots of time focused on his history. I liked that formula. Nowadays Firestorm is practically mainstream, appearing in DC’s number one selling comic Brightest Day. With rumors abound of a new Firestorm ongoing series, I felt it was time to move on before it became too difficult to keep up.

B’wana Beast has always been my favorite character and after searching around the web I haven’t been able to find an active blog dedicated to the character. I decided it was time to bid Firestorm a fond farewell and follow my heart. Thus was born B’WANA BEAST’S BLOG!

At B’WANA BEAST’S BLOG I’ll discuss all things about the character. I’ll be covering both B’wana Beast and Freedom Beast, comic books, toys, cartoon appearances, memorabilia, advertisements, my own editorial thoughts on the character … just about anything related to B’wana Beast. For example, today I published posts featuring some of B’wana Beast’s cartoon appearances, best comic covers, action figures, and more! That’s the general idea behind the blog.

So please feel free to stop by anytime or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Support B’wana Beast! Do Justice to the Jungle Master!

It was first collected in 1996, a time when trade paperbacks were uncommon.  You really knew DC believed in Starman because of these trades.  I was pleased to get it at cover price, thinking it was extremely scarce.  Now that I look online, paying $12.95 was a fair price for a second printing.  Worth noting is the cover looks sort of odd, like a poor digital scan.  Weird.

If you’ve never read Starman by James Robinson, Tony Harris, and Wade Von Grawbadger, you really should.  It was truly groundbreaking at the time.  Nowadays it may not seem like a trailblazer, but it’s certainly still a good read.  Part of the reason I bought this trade (even though I own the issues) is to loan and get others addicted!

John Ostrander started in the comic book business in 1983 and was incredibly successful.  By 1987 he was writing five different monthly titles!  He is best known for his work on SUICIDE SQUAD, GRIMJACK, THE SPECTRE, and STAR WARS: LEGACY.  Ostrander has written hundreds of fantastic comics and was nominated for the Comics Buyer’s Guide Award for Favorite Writer in 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000.  Ostrander wrote 45 issues of FIRESTORM vol II from 1987 through 1990.   Besides Firestorm co-creator Gerry Conway, Ostrander has written the character more than any other author.  Probably his most lasting contribution to the DC Universe was the recasting of the former Batgirl, Barbara Gordon, into the information and computer specialist Oracle.  Currently he is working on STAR WARS LEGACY: WAR from Dark Horse Comics.

John was kind enough to spend some time discussing his run on Firestorm with me for FIRESTORM FAN.  We discussed how Ostrander broke into the business, his time on the Firestorm comic, and his career in general.

So head over to FIRESTORM FAN.com and check out comic book legend John Ostrander.

I’ve always liked the Hank Pym character.  He was one of Marvel’s first heroes, yet he’s such a wreck.  All the problems he’s had over the years make him a lot more interesting than most other squeaky-clean heroes.  He’s constantly searching for redemption.

I absolutely loved the short-lived comic, The Irredeemable Ant-Man! That series launched back in 2006 and only lasted 12 issues.  I enjoyed it so much, I stole my “Irredeemable” moniker from that comic.  As the new Ant-Man, Eric O’Grady made for a poor superhero and a despicable human being — but dang was the comic hilarious!  Since the cancellation of The Irredeemable Ant-Man, Eric has been relabeled the “All-New” Ant-Man appearing in series such as Avengers The Initiative, Thunderbolts, and Secret Avengers.  Eric is the antithesis of Hank.  Pym is always seeking redemption for his actions, whereas Eric revels in his disgraceful behavior.

Below is a page from Ant-Man & Wasp that demonstrates Hank’s efforts to make up for his mistakes…

Eric O’Grady has mellowed since his Irredeemable days, but this series still kicks off with a truly Irredeemable-like moment…

Showing his true Irredeemable colors, Eric follows up by saying, “Y’know, I thought being an Avenger would mean better quality one-night stands, but I still have to send a few down the fire escape so the neighbors don’t see them. Woof.” That’s absolutely horrible, but hilarious at the same time!  I was happy to see a moment like this, demonstrating that Eric can still be irredeemable.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t endorse behavior like this.  It’s just that in a world of super-powered people, surely somebody gifted with powers would be a completely dirtbag.  And besides, it’s funny!  During the course of the mini-series, we see that Eric isn’t completely horrible (just mostly).

Here is the description for issue #1:

Two of Marvel’s smallest heroes must join forces and get over one BIG elephant-in-the-room! Eric O’Grady once STOLE the Ant-Man suit from Hank Pym. But now, Eric is the only one who knows about a secret AIM plot to steal Pym’s greatest invention! Can the two men get along long enough to save the soul of the former GOLIATH, Bill Foster?

You can still find Ant-Man & Wasp in stores now!  Check it out!