Day of Judgment #1 (November 1999)

In the DC Universe, the phrase "Hell on Earth" is not thrown around lightly. Why? Because Hell is a real place in the DCU. And sometimes, Hell decides to come throw a party on Earth. And by "party", I mean invade and wreck stuff. In 1999, the DCU did get such an invasion, and it was not helped that one of their earliest heroes was corrupted and led the invasion. This is Day of Judgment #1!

The cover is a Matt Smith piece. It depicts a group of heroes in what looks like a plain pin-up. It's nothing special. I do like the detail of the Spectre's face being shadowed. Nice subtle bit of foreshadowing. I wish he was shown looming over the heroes. And of course, Batman is front and center because it wouldn't be a modern DC story starring a ton of heroes without having Batman all up in it.

"The Summoning"
Writer: Geoff Johns
Penciler: Matt Smith
Inker: Steve Mitchell
Colorist: James Sinclair
Letterer: Comicraft
Editor: Kevin Dooley
Executive Editor: Mike Carlin

The story begins in Hell. And naturally, since this is Hell, there's some torturing going on.

Hell really needs arcades.

Meet Asmodel. First appearing in JLA #7 (July 1997), he was once one of Heaven's Army. However, he grew fed up of his position, decided to pull a Lucifer and try to conquer Heaven. This led to his battling the Justice League, and as a punishment for his actions, the Prescence (Basically the DCU's version of the Judeo-Christian God) banished him to hell in the 1998 miniseries JLA: Paradise Lost. 

His torturer is a demon named Neron. First appearing in Manhunter #11 (October 1995), Neron is a fallen angel. He can be seen as a Satan analogue, and he was allied with Asmodel during the Paradise Lost affair. The demon decided to take a break from torturing the angel, saying he has other souls to buy. After all, he's not worried. Asmodel is totally not going anywhere, right?

Exactly. Asmodel is rescued by a certain famous DCU demon.

"There's no need to pout! I'm just hanging about!"

Yup, gone gone the form of man, it's the demon Etrigan. The demon rhymes with Asmodel, saying he can help Asmodel not only escape, but get revenge on Earth and Neron. How? Well, in the form of...the Spectre.

You may be familiar with the Spectre, if you've read my review of the first issue of his 1992 series here. Basically, the Spectre is an angel of vengeance who was bonded to the soul of a policeman named Jim Corrigan. But that's no longer the case. He's now without a host, thanks to Jim Corrigan moving on to heaven. As such he needs another soul to bond to. A soul that is touched by the Presence. And although the Presence denies him, Asmodel is one such soul. Asmodel is suspicious about this. Demons do not help out of the kindness of their hearts, even ones who have been known to hang around with superheroes like Etrigan. Etrigan does have reasons of his own, but he wants to help. Etrigan summons the Spectre.

"Whaddaya want! I was watching my stories!"

The Spectre, being a vengeful sort, angrily slices off Asmodel's wings. 

There's just angel blood and feathers everywhere now. Neron is not going to be happy about this because this was the janitor's day off, and he promised to keep the place clean.

Anyway, Etrigan wanted this to happen. And contrary to what you all think, it wasn't because of raging wing envy. You see, Etrigan said Merlin (yes, the Merlin of Arthurian legend) once claimed that the ashes of an angel's wings can bind a heavenly soul to just about anything. Yup, angel wing feathers are the supernatural equivalent of Gorilla Glue. He gets proven right as Asmodel ends up bonded to the Spectre.

"THIS WAS A BAD IDEA! THIS HURTS SO BAD!"

The Spectre bonded to an angry fallen angel with a raging power lust.

What's happening on Earth in the meantime, you may ask? Well, one Zatanna Zatara is finishing up a performance. A bartender named Eric asks her out on a date, but she turns him down, as she fears the dangers of his being involved with a superheroine. She senses the merging of the Spectre and Asmodel, and heads out. 

We next head to New Jersey. In particular, the Ostrander Mental Institute (Heh). A sudden storm has kicked up, and it's made one of the patients go nuts. That patient is one June Moone, aka the Enchantress. The wild magic the storm is kicking up causes her to transform into her Enchantress form.

"With great power comes a great bod!"

Problem is, Moone's Enchantress persona tends to get a bit...drunk on magical power and when that happens, she goes bad. It's why they called her the "Switcheroo-Witcheroo" back in the day. She busts out, only to encounter the Kyle Rayner Green Lantern. Over in Hell, the Asmodel Spectre gets in Neron's face, saying that he will get control of the place, freezing Neron. He rampages through Hell, causing it to literally freeze over.

Back on Earth, Enchantress engages Rayner in battle, her dialogue implying that she is unaware of the events of Emerald Twilight and Final Night, as she not only doesn't recognize Kyle, but she also still thinks Hal Jordan is the Green Lantern. Kyle demands to know what she's up to, but the Enchantress points out she's not the perpetrator here. She wishes she was, but she's not. The two witness Etrigan and Hell's hordes burst out of the ground. Well, I guess the office party is cancelled. A shame. 

In Boston, Zatanna meets up with a rather obscure DC character: Doctor Occult.

"Zatanna, this had better be good. I'm busy tombstone-gazing."

Fun fact, he was created by the same guys who created Superman: Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

She next goes to pick up Deadman in St. Louis. At the JLA Watchtower on the Moon, the Justice League girds for battle, calling in all reserves as well. 

The Justice Society battle Solomon Grundy in Blue Valley. Members of the Quintessence find themselves unable to enter Earth thanks to Asmodel. Zatanna grabs Sebastian Faust (the... more heroic-leaning son of JLA villain Felix Faust) in Detroit, and Madame Xanadu in Greenwich Village. The Phantom Stranger also arrives, saying he's gathered some others as well. 

The heroes try to fight the demonic invasion, but they're not doing so hot. They should call the X-Men. They've dealt with this kind of thing before.

Asmodel is confronted by the JLA's angelic member Zauriel...and he just gets his wings turned to stone. The Enchantress decides it's time to hit the ol' dusty trail, much to Kyle Rayner's fury. Alan Scott, aka the Sentinel (Yeah, at this time, DC was pushing the whole "Kyle Rayner is the Last Green Lantern" gimmick, forcing creatives to have Alan, the original GL, go by Sentinel) tells him to just let her go. Asmodel is the bigger problem right now. He also laments about letting the Spectre be released without another soul to bind him to in JLA #31.

The heroes try to take Asmodel on, but now that he has the power of the Spectre at his command, it's naturally ineffective. Asmodel does some pretty horrifying stuff to the heroes. He turns Superman into salt. Argent and Wildcat's eyes are turned into fly larva. Kyle Rayner is turned into wood. Asmodel gloats over this, saying that nothing can stop him from wrecking heaven now...until another group makes themselves known. 

Zatanna. Madame Xanadu. Sebastian Faust. Alan Scott. The Phantom Stranger. Ragman. Raven of the Teen Titans. Meet the Sentinels of Magic. And they are going to make Asmodel's day a very rough one.

I enjoyed this issue. We got a big bad set up, we got some action, and Geoff Johns's love of the DCU really shines. I love  Matt Smith's art bring a nice bit of moodiness to the story, especially with the usage of shadows in the Hell scenes. He also seems to be channeling his inner Mike Mignola for it. I do think it was forced to hold back on the horror a bit, but otherwise that, the art is really good. 

If you want to read this comic for yourself, I recommend tracking down the 2013 trade paperback Day of Judgment. Thanks for reading this blog entry!

Friday the 13th

I hope you all had a very pleasant Friday the 13th today! 

Yeah, I hope that you managed to avoid this guy. He's a weirdo. Likes offing teenagers for some reason. I don't know. People are crazy.

World Dolphin Day!

Happy World Dolphin Day, everyone!

Dolphins are aquatic mammals. There are 40 extant species of dolphins, and they're rather common critters, depicted in numerous cultures. Many of them prefer the warmer waters of the tropic zones, although some don't mind colder waters. 

They have very strong senses of hearing. They also breathe through blowholes, much like whales. In fact, so they don't suffocate in their sleep, dolphins only take short 15-20 minute naps. Dolphins also sleep in a way that makes them still aware of potential threats. 

Male dolphins are called bulls, while female dolphins are called cows. Appropriately enough, baby dolphins are called calves. Like all mammals, the babies are raised by their mothers. Dolphin calves can take between 9 and 17 months to be born. They are nurtured between about one to two years, and they stay with their mothers for about another one to seven years. 

Also, believe it or not, dolphins are most closely related to hippopotami. Yeah, they shared a common ancestor that branched around 40 million years ago. 

Dolphins are known to be rather intelligent. They have been known to make friends with other dolphins. They are social creatures, speaking to each other with clicks and whistles. They live in pods that can comprise of up to about a dozen individual dolphins each. They have also been known to make plans, use tools, teach and learn things, and even grieve lost friends and family. They are presumably the most like humans among all sea life in that aspect.

Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake Release Date Trailer, My Thoughts

Back in 1988, a role-playing game came into the world: Dragon Quest III: The Seeds of Salvation. Developed by Chunsoft and published by Enix, the game was originally released for the Famicom in Japan. It was the third game in the massively popular Dragon Quest RPG series. The game would be released for the NES as Dragon Warrior III in March 1992 in North America. 

A prequel to the previous two games in the series, Dragon Quest III has you play as the young hero who will eventually be known as "Erdrick". Erdrick's father Ortega attempted to fight an archfiend called Baramos who is threatening to conquer the kingdom of Aliahan. This game was the first in the series where you got to have a party of adventurers. You also had a degree of customization in the form of choosing a class for your party members (Warrior, Thief, Priest, etc). 

The game would sell a million copies in Japan within a day of release, and three million copies within a week. It led to an urban legend that the Japanese Diet (the country's ruling body) banned releases of Dragon Quest games on weekdays due to many kids playing hooky to get the game. This is untrue. Where there was some truancy, the policy to only release Dragon Quest games on weekends was a policy enacted by Enix of their own accord. The game would also be given much critical acclaim in its home country. 

Like many old games, Dragon Quest III would get its fair share of re-releases and remakes. It would be remade for the Super Famicom (the Japanese Super Nintendo) in 1996. The game would also get released for the Game Boy Color, Android and iOS phones, and the Nintendo Switch in North America. Japan got exclusive re-releases for the Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation 4. But now, the world is getting another remake, this one in the vein of Octopath Traveler. Let's look at the trailer!

The time is nigh...to play video games!

I think the remake looks really neat, but there is something the feels...off about it. It's beautiful, but the best way I can describe the "off" feeling I get is that I feel like the playable character sprites seem to not fit with the backgrounds and world, if you get what I mean.

I would be a bit nervous walking under those big swords. If they fall, you may lose something important.

I think it would be so funny if each of that dragon's five heads had a different favorite food.

"Whaddaya want?! I was sleeping!"

Oh, they're doing this for the first two games as well?! Alright!

One feature I do hope this game includes is from the Final Fantasy remasters. In those games, there were options to adjust how much gil (money) and EXP you got after you won a battle. I loved that feature (made it real easy to save up money to upgrade my party's equipment and keep them in healing items and also made grinding less of a chore), and I hope it's included here. 

Well, I think I'll let this gif express my feelings on this. 

Yup, I am very excited about this. I am a big Dragon Quest fan, and funny enough, I recently started playing the original version of III on my Switch. Hopefully, I'll get through it in...a month. Still, I want to play this new version, and I want to get the remakes of the first two games, too. Thanks for reading this blog entry! See you next time!

Green Lantern #59 (March 1968)

As regular readers of this here blog know, I'm a big fan of the Avengers, in particular the Kurt Busiek era. As regular readers of this blog also know, I am a big fan of the Justice League as well, the Justice League International era in particular. Much like the Justice League has their "Big Seven", I think the JLI has a "Big Five": Booster Gold, Blue Beetle (Ted Kord), Fire, Ice, and Green Lantern (Guy Gardner). While the JLI is arguably the era that made these particular characters famous, many of them were around well before the JLI was a thing. The comic we're looking at here today is the first appearance of Guy Gardner. Let's take a look at Green Lantern #59!

The cover is a Gil Kane and Murphy Anderson piece.

"Earth's Other Green Lantern!"
Writer: John Broome
Penciler: Gil Kane
Inker: Sid Greene
Letterer: Gaspar Saladino
Editor: Julius Schwartz
Executive Editor: Julius Schwartz

The story begins with the Guardians of the Universe, our man Hal Jordan's bosses, showing him some important machines that they use to help protect the universe from evil and general skullduggery. 

One of the machines is a device designed to record the minds of Green Lanterns after they pass away. The Guardians ask him if they can show Abin Sur's last memories. Basically, this allows Hal to see Abin Sur's last moments from his own perspective. Kind of macabre, if you ask me.

However, Hal learns some new information from this. Evidently, the ring didn't just find one Earthman worthy of being Sur's successor, it found two. 

Besides Hal, the ring also found a man named Guy Gardner, who is a physical education schoolteacher. Abin is on his way to the great beyond, and he is unaware of how much time he has left. So, he picks the guy who was closest: Hal Jordan. Which does make me wonder, where did Abin Sur actually crash? I mean, Ferris Air is based in California, and at this time, Guy Gardner was working in an "Eastern school", presumably the East Coast of the United States. I mean, according to Green Lantern #182 (November 1984), Hal buried him in the Sierra Madre mountains. That makes sense, with Hal being closer and all...

Right right, sorry. So, after the recap, Hal gets a bit curious. He wonders what could have happened if Guy got the ring instead of him. Yup, he wants to play "What If", or "Elseworlds" in DC's case. The Guardians input the possibility into the computer, and we get to see what could happen. 

Gardner gets the ring, but he is shown struggling to master it.

“Ow! My funny bone!”

He continues his regular life, until he reads an article in a newspaper about a group of saboteurs at work. His first job as the Green Lantern! 

He's able to deal with the saboteurs, his ring protecting him from bullets, while his fists handle their jaws. His career as Green Lantern goes on, facing Hal's rogues gallery like Black Hand, the Shark, and even Sinestro. He would eventually get to Oa where he'd learn about his being a Corpsman. You'd think that they would have contacted him right away after getting the ring.

Anyway, Guy heads home, but he goes on a different route to Earth than Hal used. Some explosions go off around him and he decides to check it out. It might just be a natural phenomenon, but who knows?

“This planet’s version of Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots is WEEEEEIRD.”

The two beings blast at the Lantern, but Guy takes them down. He discovers these fighters are robotic, so he goes to look into it. The robots explains that guy is on a planet called Ghera...and the planet is inhabited by children. You may be asking where their parents are.

Well, there is an explanation. You see, the children's parents somehow all dies from a disease called the "Yellow Plague". The children were somehow immune to it. Without any parental guidance, the kids grew very bored. The plague also caused them to make like Peter Pan and never grew up. The kids now play endless war games, the two sides inspired by these robots that the parents made: An orange robot and a blue robot. 

Guy decides to talk to these kid armies and see if they can make peace. But as he flies off, something takes hold of his mind and makes him fly into a chair.

Captured by the Blue army, they make Guy into their weapon. He wrecks his way through the Orange Army's robotic war machines. One Orange Army kid tries to use his mental powers to force Guy to attack the Blue army. The mental tug-of-war allows Guy to fight them off and create a green suit of armor to somehow protect himself. Using his skills as a PE teacher...somehow...Guy convinces the kids to use sports instead of war to settle their issues. Guy heads back home to Earth. He recharges his ring, and finds that he's not feeling too well.

“But I’m a Winter!”

Yeah, he's somehow contracted the yellow plague. Nice work, Guy! You brought an alien sickness to Earth!

Well, using the last of his strength, he summons someone to take up his ring. And that someone? 

Hal Jordan. Yeah, so in this simulation, Hal still becomes Green Lantern. Hal is astonished. More on this later. Hal wants to meet the "real" Guy Gardner, and the Guardians are cool with that. The story ends with them presumably becoming fast friends, and Hal leaving for the next adventure.

This comic is...weird. I want to lean more on it not being that great. For one thing, for a comic that supposedly was about debuting Earth's other Green Lantern, we only really meet him at the very end. Most of the story is just a possible simulation of what would have happened if Guy Gardner was chosen to be Green Lantern instead of Jordan. And because of it being a simulation, we don't get any idea of what the "real" Guy is like as a character. This story has a lot of plotholes. 

If you want to read this for yourself, I recommend tracking down the 2008 trade paperback Green Lantern: In Brightest Day. It's a nice trade, collecting a series of Green Lantern stories selected by Geoff Johns. 

Happy Labor Day!

 This is a reprint of a blog entry from 2017. Apologies for this, as I lacked the time, and I was far too tired to make a new one. So, Happy Labor Day, everyone!

What is Labor Day, you ask? Well, the American Labor Day is celebrated on the first Monday in September, which is when Canada also celebrates their own Labor Day. It marks the end of the summer, and it's a federal holiday here. It also means a three-day weekend.

What is Labor Day? Well, it's basically to honor and celebrate the working person, the people who work hard to build, to heal, to create, and to feed. A day to express gratitude to the worker and remember their contributions to the country.

So, how did Labor Day get started? Well, in the late 19th century, the growth of trade unions and labor movements led to a call to celebrate the working person. In 1887, Oregon became the first U.S. State to declare Labor Day a public holiday. 29 other states would do the same by the time 1894 rolled around, in which Labor Day became a federal holiday, signed into law by President Grover Cleveland. You can learn more about the history of Labor Day here.

The labor movement is the reason we have a minimum wage, Social Security, a 40-hour work week, Medicare, and even family leave. So when you celebrate this day, think about this...and thank a working person.

Ginger Cat Appreciation Day

Today is Ginger Cat Appreciation Day!

This day is about celebrating ginger-colored cats. It's also about raising awareness about finding homes for cats that don't have one. 

This day was started by software developer-turned-animal rights activist Chris Roy. In 1997, he found a little stray cat and took it in, hoping to find it a permanent home. That little cat ended up finding such a home with Roy. Roy would name the cat Doobert, and for the next 17 years, Doobert lived with Roy. 

Roy fell into a deep grief at Doobert's passing, but it also inspired him to create an app named after Doobert. This app allowed animal shelters and rescue homes to connect with volunteers all over the world. since 2014, over 20,000 pet lovers have connected with over 1,200 organizations across North America to help house pets that need a home. All out of love for a cat.

So, hug a ginger today. I know I will! Thanks for reading this blog entry! See you next time!

September