Variant Edition 10/01/08

They’re back with a catch-up on the news and reviews of War Heroes #2 and Walking Dead #52, plus looks at Flash Gordon #1 and Red Rocket 7.
Variant Edition Pick of the Week? Invincible #53!

Star Wars Fan Film - Essence of the Force

X-Men: Night of the Sentinels Part 2

Here's episode 2 to the original X-Men animated series. It's a continuation of the Night of the Sentinels story from the previous episode. Episode 1 is already up. The character of Morph was created for the animated series and eventually was introduced into the comic book series. Nuff' said.
Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

The Spirit #6 & #7

The Spirit #6
The Spirit #7

Spawn Episode 1 Season 1

This is the first episode from Todd McFarlane's animated Spawn series. It's a more adult version of the comic book. Believe it or not, Todd is currently back at writing the Spawn comic book series. Even he seemed to forget that his creation still existed.
Todd was recently talking about a sequel to the original live action Spawn movie. He said that it would have to be a low budget film and that he pictured Spawn as a boogeyman kind of character in a new movie. Todd seems to like bringing up the thought of another movie every now and then, just so he can find someone to finance it. He could have partially financed it himself, a few years back, if he hadn't spent all his money on baseballs. If the Spawn comic book survives another 10 years, maybe we'll see another Spawn movie. There just isn't the audience that there once was.
I remember that when the book was really plummeting in sales, Todd would print these uncensored letters from fans at the end of every issue. They would swear at him and he would swear back. And he lost more readers. I wonder why.
I feel bad for Spawn artist Greg Capullo. He flawlessly took over for Todd as penciler and drew basically the next consecutive 80 issues. Capullo actually had a breakdown from working on Spawn and has only recently been able to sit down and pencil again.
Originally Spawn was a fun, edgy book. Spectacular artwork, a mystery about Al Simmons' origin, and crazy villains and supporting characters. Then it kept losing direction, becoming very depressing, until every issue seemed to be Spawn sitting on tree stump or dumpster and having maggots crawl out of his head. I think it represented Todd's brain rotting. Instead of lightening up the book, it kept getting darker by the issue. Al Simmons became a crabby, old man who didn't want to do anything heroic anymore. The last time I looked at an issue, I think all the pages were completely black. I could barely see the green glow from Spawn's eyes anymore. So enjoy this first episode from a time when Spawn was still fun and was at least king of the alleys.
Part 1

Part 2

Part 3