All I want for Christmas II: Electric Boogaloo

  I know I say nasty things about Amazon.com, write nasty articles about the site with screenshots, and complain constantly about their customer service on other sites, but I don’t really hate the website itself, just the reviewers on it, all of whom make a startlingly good argument for bringing back Eugenics.

 Thus, this being the season of new life and forgiveness (and because I’m sick and tired of being visited by those three ghosts) I’ve decided to be nice to Amazon this month and look at their vast selection of stuff for what to get my friends and what I’d expect them to get me. Looks like they have a nice array of new stuff!

 Marvel has recently been putting out ‘First’ collections for heroes of various decades, and they surprisingly have come out with one for the Golden Age heroes!

 Even better though, it will be a cheap trade paperback AND feature some of their more obscure heroes like Dynamic Man, Ferret( Though why they’d even bother with him is anybody’s guess) Destroyer and the Claire Voyant Black Widow! I sure hope Marvel will appreciate the free advertising I did for them by featuring that first BW story on here back in October! (And by appreciate, I mean “Don’t sue me please!!!!!!”).

 I applaud Marvel for doing this. It’s not exactly stuff that I or any of the more well-read GA fans haven’t read, but it will be a good introduction for more casual readers who don’t necessarily like to buy the expensive Masterworks or the long out of print ‘Golden Age of’ volumes, and that’s why I’m getting it for a friend.

 On a more selfish note, I sure hope that *I* get another Golden Age Marvel-related goodie: Softcover GA Sub-Mariner Masterworks! Marvel has recently begun releasing softcover editions of their GA Masterworks, with vastly improved art reproduction and coloring. The original Marvel Mystery and Sub-Mariner Masterworks were appalling, but the new version of MM that they released last year was excellent, as was their GA Captain America Masterwork. Hopefully this new GA Sub-Mariner volume will be as good. I still kinda wish that they’d release a chronological series of every Everett Sub-Mariner story like I wished for last year, but I’ll take what I can get.

 Speaking of last year, I also wished for a Captain Comet Archive from DC and a collection of Alan Davis’s Batman material. Good things come to those who wait.

 Technically, they already did release an Alan Davis collection under the “Legends of the Dark Knight” artists edition line earlier this year, but the pages were out of order and had various other flaws, like coloring splotches and images repeated over and over. Thankfully, DC is being kind enough to release an improved edition. I can’t wait! Totally on my “to get’ list.

 The Captain Comet Archive is the real surprise for me though. I always considered a CC Archive a pipe dream that would never happen, but with the character now being used as a villain in the current Superman titles and with Marvel coming out with a Guardians of the Galaxy movie, I guess they decided now was the time to focus attention on him. Who knows, maybe they’ll even give him a new series.

Special note: This is a very old fan mock-up.

  Moving away from stuff available on Amazon, there are some other bizarre pieces of merch coming out.

 Like the Watchmen toaster:

"And the toast will look up and shout "Butter us", and I'll look down and whisper: No".

 Mmmm. Mmmmm. Nothing better to start the day with than buttering and eating toast cooked with the broken dreams of a bearded British man and imprinted with the mask patterns of a raving lunatic designed to parody Steve Ditko characters.

 Seriously though, whose bright idea was it to make a Watchmen toaster? That would be like making a Nightmare on Elm Street toaster, totally stupid and---OHMYGOD:

"I'm part of your balanced breakfast now, Nancy"

 I’m all for using the classic logo, but in this case it actually would be more fitting to use the current logo, since it would mean there are two toasters out there based on properties that have involved Jackie Earle Haley.

 Anyway, stupid as those are, they’ll still make great conversation pieces and joke presents, so sign me up. My buddy Walt “Whale-Fetus” who runs the humor site Avatar Fans are Mentally Ill (Which I contribute screenshots to) would love to have either of ‘em.

 Hey wait a minute; both of those toasters haven’t had release dates set!

 Come to think of it, the Captain Comet Archive isn’t set to be released until late August of next year!

 And the Marvel Firsts collection isn’t going to be released until Februrary!

 The improved LOTDK Alan Davis book also isn’t going to be released until February!

 NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How am I going to explain to my friends? How am I going to be able to get them substitute gifts when today is Christmas Eve? WHY? WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME?

 Oh well, at least the Sub-Mariner is already out.

 And in the end, comics and stupid novelty merchandise isn’t what matters. What really matters are the essentials;

 Turboman action figures,

 Red Ryder BB guns,

 and Cha-Cha Heels.

 And of course, the roof over my head.

~

Merry Christmahanakwanzadan to everyone!

Amazon Boobs:

No, my friends, that's not quite what we will be discussing today. Rather, our focus shall be on boobs of a different variety found on a different kind of Amazon. Due apologies to our more lecherous readers, as well as to those of the fairer sex. This is a classy blog, after all.

Now let's fucking get started.

Yes sir, Amazon.com has its fair share of Boobs; as in morons. Morons on Amazon tend to write reviews, many of them hilarious. Many a meme has sprung forth from the stygian depths of the website wherein entertainment is just a click away, and reviews of comics and graphic novels are no exception.

Now I want to make it clear that I am open to all kinds of opinions and that a negative review of a work I liked or a positive review of a work that I disliked does not necessarily a bad review make, but then there are the kinds which achieve a special kind of stupidity, ones like these:

Yeah, who would expect a collection of "greatest" stories featuring the most iconic comic book villain of all time to possibly be a collection of comic book stories? The horror! F. Paul Wilson, Joe R. Lansdale and many others have written some pretty damn good short prose stories featuring the Joker, but honestly, what was this guy expecting? Clever troll or someone deserving of a five-way revenge? You decide!

 Ugh. Maximum Carnage. I agree. It might be the definitive bloated, padded out and unnecessary 90's crossover event. You won't get any arguments from me about that. Heck, I don't even have much of a problem with this guy's broken english, since he's an immigrant and currently a fellow Californian. It's just the guy's totally over the top way of bashing the book and wishing Lobo would appear in it, as well as the hilarious mental imagery it conjures up that earns this review a spot on this list.

 A toast to you, my African friend, for alerting us all to the danger that terriers pose to the faces of those who choose to read graphic novels.

I should mention that in an animated series me and a friend recently pitched, one of the planned storylines would have been loosely based off of this guy's review.

 Moving on......

 What. The. Fuck. I could point out how stupid this guy was for thinking that any random comic would be a tie-in with the movie, regardless of when it was published, or the illogic of why he expected a collection of random stories by the same artist to have an inter-connected storyline, but then he admits he knew what he was getting into first hand because he was already a McFarlane fan.

 So either this guy is some sort of schizophrenic with short-term memory syndrome, or just a really, really dumb kid.

 Head, meet Desk.

  But no list of dumb reviews would be complete without an entry by an outraged moral guardian:

 I'm in a minority in that I don't worship The Dark Knight Returns, and I too hate the number of lesser writers who have ripped it off without understanding what made it work, hell, even Miller himself forgot. But what kills any sympathy one might have with the reviewer is his hilariously innacurate summary of both the book itself and Batman's history. Where was all of this gratuitous killing in the so-called first issue? And the Joker killed himself! And when did Batman ever fight Dracula in his early career? (I suppose he could be referring to The Monk from Detective Comics #31-32?). I'm not even gonna get into the blind hero worship of Kane.

 One really gets the feeling this was written by a traumatized child who had just checked the book out from his local library, then glanced at a Wikipedia article or two to back up his argument, or was an adult who had a similar experience in his youth and was remembering things vaguely. Some speculate the author of this review is really a fellow called Earl Roesel, who made a total jackass of himself on the official DC message boards and the off-topic section of Yuku's Classic Horror Film Board a few years back, complaining about the very same subject with very similar arguments, phrasing and grammatical errors as this reviewer.

I'm not even gonna try and link to his rants. Do it yourself. Have fun kids!!!

But no list of dumb reviews would be complete without an entry by an outraged---cetacean dental researcher?

 Er...wow. And yes, the "Eisner" in question is Will.

 Let's pray for the safety of the world that this guy never sees some of the depictions of whales done by artists in past eras, like this handsome piece by Rockwell Kent, of which I own a repro:

This may one day set off the next Charlie Manson

But the title of all time king of ridiculous comics reviews has to go to this guy's Watchmen review, which makes Debbie Schlussel's now legendary review of the film seem sane in comparison (well, mostly):

Umm, I think having read 99 prose novels and extensively reviewed them for a respected magazine more than qualifies as having read more than a fair share of "real" books.
 Yeah, that's all I'm gonna say. This whole thing is a drinking game in the making.

 Yes I do. You can't grasp the concept of fiction or alternate realities. Or irony.

 But that characterization, though, WOOHOO!

 You're a sophisticated adult who has no time for even the greatest of comics, and yet you've heard of and are intimately familiar enough with to praise Crossgen, a relatively recent company only a hardcore comics fan would know of, while most of the general public would be hard pressed to tell the difference between Marvel and DC, which have been around since the 1930s....

I could make a few "Pot calling the Kettle black" jokes right now, but they would probably be considered racist due to the magnitude of the allusions that would have to be made.

But the real gems are the comments for the review, where sadly, the fans of the book put up pretty poor arguments. That doesn't stop friend Seagraves from continually embarassing himself.

 "Listen, nerd". Oh, you're really making yourself out to be the mature one here, buddy.

And those are only the most blatant and well-known ones. I haven't even scratched the surface yet. There's gold in them hills and it's waiting for me there.