Life was never that easy for Sam Thomas Wilson. The son of a minister, Sam grew up in Harlem, New York and developed an affinity for training and caring for birds. As a teenager, Sam began to grow cynical after repeated facing racial prejudice and told his parents that he rejected their faith. To his surprise, they responded by providing him books on other faiths so he could find his own path. Sam was deeply touched by this act but became jaded again when his father was killed the next night while attempting to stop a fight. After his mother was killed by a mugger two years later, Sam turned to a life of crime, taking on the nickname of “Snap.”

Snap Wilson’s life of crime later led  him to Exile Island, a place where he met Captain America’s greatest enemy, Hitler’s protege, the Red Skull. The Skull had recently acquired the Cosmic Cube, a device that can make thought reality, and decided to use Wilson as a sleeper agent to take down Captain America. With the Cube, the Skull blocked out Snap’s memories of the past several years, convincing him that his parents were still alive and that he’d become a social worker. No longer jaded by the death of his parents, Sam Wilson reverted to his previous, good-natured personality. The Cosmic Cube also gave him a psychic connection to his pet falcon Redwing.

When Captain America came to Exile Island to fight the Skull, he met Sam Wilson and the two joined forces. Cap took on Sam as his new partner and apprentice, teaching him acrobatics, military strategy, and martial arts. Calling himself “Falcon,” Sam became a hero in his own right, eventually gaining the ability to fly thanks to specialized wings constructed by the Black Panther. Eventually, the Skull attempted to activate his sleeper agent, causing the Falcon to recall his parents’ deaths and his years of crime all at once. But Sam fought the Skull’s orders to kill his mentor, having now seen that he could be a good person despite the tragedies had had suffered and the crimes he had committed.

After spending some time on his own, he resumed his life as a superhero. Sam’s powers have increased over the years, allowing him full telepathy with birds of all kinds. He can ask them for help, direct them in attacks and see through their eyes miles away. Whether he’s working alone, alongside the international agency known as S.H.I.E.L.D., as a member of the Avengers, or as a “hero for hire,” the Falcon is always ready and able to protect those who need him and punish those who deserve it.

Well, that brings us up to speed. Now let’s examine the artistic evolution of this high-flying hero. As usual, we are sticking with mainstream Marvel reality rather than parallel universes and the like.

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DC Comics turned some heads when they announced in late January that their upcoming crossover story Flashpoint would have 14 miniseries tie-ins, and today they’re ready to reveal the creative teams for eight of those miniseries on their official blog The Source, starting with a very familiar duo taking on Flashpoint: Batman, Knight of Vengeance. Cover images and information is after the jump, and keep checking this space, as DC’s letting details of these teams slip at a pace of roughly one per hour.

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Is Black Panther actually the second black costumed superhero?: Sean Kleefeld says yes, after having done some research on The Black Phantom. And on the subject of race and superheroes, here are two posts about two notoriously weird comics about white characters becoming black for a story: Tim O’Neil on that time the Punisher visited “a ground-breaking plastic surgeon who just happened to be a drug-addicted hooker” who turned him black as a disguise, and E. Peterman of Girls Gone Geek on the Lois Lane story “I Am Curious (Black).”

“Can New Characters Flourish in Today’s Market?”: The folks at iFanboy look at the comics charts in an attempt to parse which characters and concepts are “new,” and how they’re doing. It’s interesting reading, even if I’m not sure to what degree turning The Hulk red or putting new kids in the Batgirl and Robin costumes should be considered new, but this is always a topic worth considering/fretting over. Particularly for folks working in comics. (Even if for merely mercenary, monetary reasons: Barb Wire, Spawn, Kick-Ass, The Mask, The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Scott Pilgrim and that lady from Whiteout all had major motion pictures made long before Thor, Captain America, Green Lantern, The Flash and Wonder Woman).

There are few things I like more than pet versions of superheroes: One of them might be these sorts of creative exercises, in which The Absorbascon makes up some dogs to join Ace the Bat-Hound and Krypto the Superdog in a Justice Pack of America.

This crazy thing freaks me right the hell out: It seems like something you’d find in a haunted mansion. And it even generates its own spooky music? Brr! Still, I totally want one to put over my mantle.

Art from comics masters before they were stars: Cartoonist Ed Piskor spent some time going through some old Comics Journals and Amazing Heroes and assembled a post chockfull of art from the likes of The Hernandez Brothers, Bruce Timm, Kevin Nowlan and others. Take a look. Speaking of Piskor, Top Shelf just announced that they would be publishing his complete WIZZYWIG next year. Piskor’s a great artist and his hacker series is a great comic, so this is great news. He’s been self-publishing trade collections so far and promoting them all on his own, so I imagine this will free him up to keep making great comics and leave it to the fine folks at Top Shelf to get his work in more hands. (If you don’t want to wait, you can buy the trades here, and read some of WIZZYWIG here).

“Technically, it’s a graphic novel adaptation of an all-new Peanuts straight-to-DVD movie, which in turn is based on several classic Peanuts strips”: Glen Weldon of NPR taks a look at Boom/Kaboom’s announcement of their new Peanuts ogn. When Boom first teased a Peanuts project, my first guess was that they had gotten the rights to collect the 1960′s comic books published by Dell and Gold Key. Turns out I guessed wrong. This is actually better news though, because it means a) a brand-new Peanuts comic (For some reason, I love the comics but hate the cartoons, so won’t be seeing the DVD, but am looking forward to the Boom book) and b) the Dell/Gold Key material is still out there, waiting to be collected. Be sure to read the Weldon post to the end, as he lists the titles of 40 Peanuts cartoon specials produced between 1965 and 2006, and plants four fake ones in there (What’s the one where Patty and Marcie were in France? That one depressed me so much as a child).

ABC’s new drama pilot sounds kinda familiar if you ask me.

The pilot, called Once Upon a Time, has just snagged Ginnifer Goodwin from Showtime’s Big Love to play the lead role…Snow White.  From Deadline:

[Once Upon a Time] centers on a woman with a troubled past who is drawn into a small town in Maine where the magic and mystery of Fairy Tales just may be real. Goodwin will play Snow White/Sister Mary Margaret, a beautiful woman with dark hair and very pale skin who has been placed under a wicked spell by the Evil Queen (Lana Parrilla), and is brought back from a living death by Prince Charming.

It’s not exactly the same as Fables of course, but awfully fishy when you consider ABC optioned the highly-successful Vertigo comic series for a pilot just a few years ago. Back then, Stu Zicherman and Raven Metzner were writing the script that would follow the fairy tale characters in their exiled home in modern day New York and feature Bigby and Snow White. Fables creator Bill Willingham did in fact read the script for the pilot but nothing more came of it from the network.

Once Upon a Time comes to us from Lost executive producers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. And it’s a well known fact most of those Lost guys are big comic fans. In fact, Kitsis and Horowitz produced and wrote for the short-lived Birds of Prey television series. Time will tell if the duo were simply inspired by the comic or are borrowing directly from it.

Scenes from an Impending Marriage: A Prenuptial Memoir
Written & Illustrated by Adrian Tomine
Published by Drawn & Quarterly

Adrian Tomine’s Scenes from an Impending Marriage was born as a wedding gift, a token given to the guests at he and his wife’s nuptials. As such, it’s fairly innocuous. And you can’t really blame Tomine for that – that’s the inherent problem with a gift for a hundred or so people with a thousand different interests. It’s hard to find something for everyone, so you keep it basic. Innocuous.

Which isn’t to say Scenes from an Impending Marriage is bad. It’s not. It’s decently funny, with scenes that anybody who’s been married (went through it myself last April, so it’s quite fresh) – or known someone who’s been married – can easily relate to. Tomine provides a few good lines, grits his teeth in frustration and rolls with the punches in the same way my wife and I did, and the same way every other couple in ceremonial marriage history has done. It’s effective and cute, and certainly very well drawn – the loose quality of the art makes for a much livelier book than any of Tomine’s others – but it’s not an essential piece of a strong cartoonist’s canon.

Welp, comic fans, after 2 years and over 200 strips today marks the end of “So Super Duper’s” run on the blog@Newsrama. Some of you may be dismayed by this, more than a few may be overjoyed, but regardless of how you feel (assuming you care one way or the other) I can honestly say, from my perspective, that sending my little comic out into the world has been one super wild rollercoaster ride, with just as many highs as lows.

When I created “So Super Duper” some 4 years ago, with the youthful naïveté of a lifelong comic lover, never in million-bazillion years did I ever dream that I’d be syndicating my often rough, mostly crude, very heart-felt little indie comic on a major site like Newsarama. It’s not a secret that I’ve been beaten up pretty badly by a good number of Newsarama’s legion of comic readers (apparently using Comic Sans is a sin worse than any other, which has been duly noted, FYI) but despite the many (many, many, many) attacks I can honestly say that I’m proud to have been a contributor to the site. And I recognize that all the heated criticism (and the vitriol) comes from the same place that I pull from when I create a strip: our mother $%&^# love of comic books.

I’m happy and proud to be an out, gay man, who just happens to also be a devoted comic reader, thriving comic fan, and now, actual comic creator. I’m proud and extremely thankful that a site like Newsarama would showcase an underground talent like me, someone who has a lot to learn but has the drive and passion to grow and become (I hope) better.

It still boggles my mind that a mainstream comic site like Newsarama would be so open and supportive of a comic book series with unabashed gay themes, many a gay character and the occasional guy-on-guy smoochies. I’m honored to have maybe contributed even the tiniest bit of something to the history of comics, maybe even to our shared cultural dialogue, and perhaps, just maybe, to the importance of having visible, multi-faceted homosexual characters in the comic book medium. And hell, frankly, I’m really just grateful that I got off my fat-fanny, stopped talking and wishing and dreaming about one day creating my own comic book and actually did it.

So thank you so much to my incredible blog@ editor Troy Brownfield for taking a chance on me, for giving me this amazing opportunity, and for always having my back. Thank you to Newsarma for the home and the platform to share my work, to Celina Hernandez for taking over the art chores of the comic and for making my story shine and sing and look 200% better than I could ever do, to Prism Comics for giving a voice to myself and to many other LGBT comic book creators, to the many creators who contributed back-up stories and pin-ups (you rock), and super special thank you to Rich Boutell for being the first comic store owner to put my books on his selves.

To all those who read the comic and enjoyed it, to those who were able to change their minds mid-dislike and see the book for the diamond-in-the-rough I had hoped it was (and is), thank you so much. And for all those who hated it and hated me, thank you. You’ve made me a stronger, better, more determined person.

And finally to my boyfriend of 10 years, we’ve sure had a super wild rollercoaster ride (with just as many highs as lows), but I could have never, ever, in infinite number of worlds (or Crisis’s) have created a single page of a comic book without your love, your enthusiasm, and your unwavering encouragement. I love you, now, and always.

So this is the end of “So Super Duper” on Newsarma, but like our favorite space-faring mutant rising from the ashes, this isn’t the actual “end” end. Look for the return of “So Super Duper” in mid-March on the fabulously fun geek-filled website:www.fanboysoftheuniverse.com!

Kissies!
Brian Andersen
March 2011
One more time: for more “So Super Duper” go to:www.sosuperduper.com!

“Realism,” quotation marks and all, can be a strange thing to demand from any form of fiction, and it can be a strange thing to decry the lack of.

This seems especially true when the fiction under discussion comes in the form of comics, probably because the form has been dominated by genre works for so long that straight comics literature divorced from easy genre classifications (horror, romance, superhero, crime, etc) are still (relatively) new.

Of course that fiction’s not real—it’s fiction. Someone is making it up. How realistic do you want it to be? The easy answer is that it should be realistic enough that you can forget that people are behind the scenes inventing it long enough to lose yourself in the story and the drama enough to enjoy it, or be affected by it.

I think comics struggles with this a bit more than other media like, say, prose or film, simply because it is easier for them to achieve different types of verisimilitude. A film looks like the real world, the written word is the way we communicate a lot of information—a novel might look or read the same way a letter or email or news article might.

But comics? Someone had to draw all those little lines making up those people, and the little bubbles surrounding all the words, whether they hand-lettered those words or had a computer program do it for them.
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Well, if there was any doubt after the tiny flash of the Red Skull in the Captain America: The First Avenger teaser, this should erase it for everyone. Thanks to Entertainment Weekly, we have the first full shot of Hugo Weaving as the maniacal Nazi villain from the film (Yes, folks, while he’s wearing a Hydra belt/armband, he is also a Nazi, will be seen with Nazis, and called Nazis, as confirmed to Newsarama by official tie-in comic book writer Fred Van Lente), and it is just spectacularly creepy. Hopefully we’ll get something in motion soon in the form of another trailer. The above link also has an interview with Director Joe Johnston, but who needs words with a picture like that?

More casting news from the Wonder Woman NBC pilot! We already know that Adrianne Palicki, Tyra from Friday Night Lights, is starring as the title character, but thanks to the ever-impressive power of Twitter (insert Charlie Sheen joke here), we now know who will be playing the pilot’s villain: Elizabeth Hurley, surely channeling that old Bedazzled magic. Hurley broke the news last night on her Twitter account, saying she was “thrilled” about the role.

No, she’s not playing Circe or Cheetah or anyone like that, but in news that may be surprising to those who have followed reports surrounding David E. Kelley’s script, she’ll indeed be playing a character from the comics. Deadline says: “Hurley will guest star in the pilot as villain Veronica Cale, the beautiful, highly-educated head of one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the country who is afflicted with the serious deep-seated Wonder Woman envy.” Cale, of course, being a nemesis introduced in 2003 by Greg Rucka to serve as, essentially, Wonder Woman’s Lex Luthor.

Fans of AMC’s The Walking Dead have been ready for Season 2 since the Season 1 finale aired. How about a few words from Robert Kirkman to get you even more excited? Did somebody say “Hershel’s farm?”

With the Season 1 DVD hitting stores next week, Kirkman spoke with Entertainment Weekly about the instant hit. He says so far, Season 2 is going great. “We’re mapping out everything. We got a lot of cool ideas. Everyone here is mindful of how well received the first season was,” he said. “We’re breaking our backs, story wise, to make sure the next season is twice is good, or three times as good, with a lot of twists and turns and pushing the envelop of what you can do on TV.”

Kirkman told EW he couldn’t go into too much detail about location settings for Season 2 but said, “I know [showrunner Frank Darabont] has said we’re going to see Hershel’s farm. We’re looking to take some picturesque rural landscapes and playing with that and coming up with some cool zombie visuals. We’ll see some of the locations of the first season, but we’re going to mainly focus on breaking new ground.”

The show will continue to feature the Rick/Shane drama this season as well as focus a lot more on Andrea and Laurie according to Kirkman. He mentioned Darabont is concentrating on writing for the series as of right now. “I’m writing some episodes and he’s writing some episodes,” he said. “We’re trying to figure out what we’re doing with the directing right now. The logistics and also being big part of the writers room will limit his time.”

Kirkman also mentioned Bear McCreary of Battlestar Galactica fame is staying on as composer for the new season and that the cast and crew will once again make an appearance at San Diego Comic-Con. “We’re going to have a 12-foot-tall zombie costume,” he said.

The writer also spoke briefly about the upcoming The Walking Dead video game from Telltale.”Left 4 Dead is much more focused on action. On of the key aspects of Walking Dead is it focuses on characters and the emotion, and that theme is very much alive in the game, and luckily with modern games you can actually do that.”

The Walking Dead, which will premiere once again this October, is sure to keep fans happy with continued blood and guts. “We’ve been talking to [zombie effects master] Greg Nicotero a lot about some cool zombie stuff he has planned,” said Kirkman. “As much as this show pushed the envelope of gore on TV, the joy of seeing the best zombies ever done on a TV show every week, all I can say you haven’t seen anything yet.”

Whoa. What?

Helloooo…Ma Kent?

Deadline has reported that Academy Award-nominated actress, Diane Lane has been cast as Martha Kent in the upcoming Superman film. “This was a very important piece of casting for me because Martha Kent is the woman whose values helped shape the man we know as Superman,” stated director Zack Snyder. “We are thrilled to have Diane in the role because she can convey the wisdom and the wonder of a woman whose son has powers beyond her imagination.”

This is definitely a different vision than Phyllis Thaxter, who played Ma Kent in the Richard Donner film, and Eve Marie Saint who portrayed the character in Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns. With the casting of Kevin Costner as the possible Pa Kent, I guess this is a good match, just a bit different from what I’m used to imagining.

What do you think, readers? I love Unfaithful, the movie Lane earned her Oscar nomination for, and she definitely has a range. I’m excited to see what Snyder has up his sleeve.

Unfortunately, it was just a matter of time. A Blade Runner reboot is imminent.

According to Deadline, Warner Bros. Alcon Entertainment are in final talks to secure film, television and ancillary franchise rights to produce prequels and sequels to the 1982 science-fiction classic Blade Runner. The rights are currently held by producer-director Bud Yorkin who, as part of the deal, would serve as producer on future projects.

Celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2012, Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, was originally adapted from Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Thankfully, there is one caveat to this whole deal. “Alcon’s franchise rights would be all-inclusive, but exclude rights to remake the original,” according to Deadline’s report. That means prequels and sequels are a go as well as any other type of ancillary stories pertaining to the original but not a direct remake. *Whew!*

Does this mean we could see a Battlestar Galactica-esque project on the horizon?

Co-founders and co-Chief Executive Officers of Alcon, Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove made a joint statement, “We are honored and excited to be in business with Bud Yorkin. This is a major acquisition for our company, and a personal favorite film for both of us. We recognize the responsibility we have to do justice to the memory of the original with any prequel or sequel we produce. We have long-term goals for the franchise, and are exploring multi-platform concepts, not just limiting ourselves to one medium only.”

What do you think Blog@ readers? Is Blade Runner too perfect to be touched or would you enjoy seeing further tales of the replicants?

While the Siegel and Kirby families continue to fight their battles in court, readers who want to a fun and accessible overview of the legal issues at stake should pick up the special All-Lawsuit Issue of Comic Book Comics, out in comic shops today.

Comics Alliance has a generous preview, and tonight in New York Evil Twins Fred van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey will be signing copies of the book at the 64 Fulton Street location of Midtown Comics. I’ll be there too for the panel discussion, since I served as the book’s pro bono legal consultant.

Just a guess guys, but I imagine Marvel went with Monsters over Mojitos because comics about you guys fighting stuff are more action-packed then comic books about you guys drinking fancy drinks.

Anyway, the comic that the pugilistic pair above are discussing is, of course, Wolverine/Hercules: Myths, Monsters and Mutants, a four-issue miniseries in which one of Wolvie’s foes teams up with a couple of Herc’s, necessitating the two heroes team up to fight them. It’s by Frank Tieri, one of mainstream comics’ premiere writers of tough guys, and drawn by artist Juan Roman Cano Santacruz. You’ll recognize it by it’s cover though—from the great Joe Jusko.

In fact, you may have already bought it, seeing as how it’s now halfway through New Comic Book Day, instead of the night before, which is when I usually post this column. As I mentioned last night though, sickness kept me from spending Tuesday the way I had planned to spend Tuesday, so I’m running super-late with this. There are so many good and/or interesting looking comics in shops this week though that I didn’t want to just scrap doing a column entirely this week.

So let’s take an extremely belated look, shall we?

An Elegy for Amelia Johnson: The 30-year-old title character is about to die from cancer, and one of her final wishes is to have her two closest friends travel across the country to personally deliver her final messages to people in her life. It’s 130-page, $15 hardcover from writer Andrew Rostan and artists Dave Valeza and Kate Kasenow. I have a copy of it sitting right here next to my laptop as I type this. I haven’t read it yet, but the artwork looks quite gorgeous.

Axe Cop: Bad Guy Earth #1: Webcomics creators Malachai and Ethan Nicolle become comics-comics creators with this new three-issue miniseries from Dark Horse Comics, publishers of the Nicolle brothers’ Axe Cop collection. Preview here.

Captain America and Falcon #1: This is the first of five Captain America and… oversized, $4 one-shots Marvel has planned for the month. It’s by writer Rob Williams and artist Rebekah A. Isaacs. “The First Thirteen,” Crossbones, Batroc and The Secret Avengers will also get team-up specials.

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“Did I mention I like Arlo and Janis too?”: Fantagraphics’ Eric Reynolds, Kim Thompson, Gary Groth and Jacob Covey debate the merits of Scott Adams’ Dilbert via emails with each other for some reason. It’s pretty great reading. I really had no idea that Dilbert was so incredibly controversial.

The new Death Ray cover is cool: In fact, it is so cool, , I kinda wish I didn’t already have 2004′s Eightball #23, where Daniel Clowes’ story of a guy who finds a death ray was originally published.

“Hey, Johnny Depp! Here Are Some Superheroes You Should Play”: This list-article offers five suggestions for superhero-ish roles Depp should take on. There are some…interesting suggestions. I can’t imagine any female I know would be very happy to have Depp play The Question however, as his beautiful face would be obscured for far too much of the film’s running time.

“Comic Book Girl ‘Nerd Panties’ Trend on Facebook—Is Your Daughter Next?”: I can’t figure out if this is real or fake. I assume from the huge gallery of girls wearing ‘nerd panties’ that follows the piece that it must be fake. Well, that and the Wertham era concern over Batman, expressed as if English was the writer’s second language: “As reviewed, Batman is the story of a middle-aged man who fancies forcing a boy to wear tight see-through stocking.” But I don’t know, there’s all kind of dumb, blatantly hypocritical stuff on the Internet. So, um, good job, guys? It’s close enough to the real thing that I wasn’t 100% sure if it was a parody or not.

“Neil Gaiman and Jim Lee’s collaboration, 100 Words, Now Available Digitally”: So says DC’s Pamela Mullin at The Source today. The piece is a poem about death by Gaiman, illustrated and turned into a seven-page comic by Lee. You can purchase a digital version for 99 cents, with all profits benefitting the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. So, 100 words for 99 cents—that works out to a penny a word, with the 100th word free.

It Came From the NYPL

American Splendor: Unsung Hero: The Story of Robert McNeill
Written by Harvey Pekar
Illustrated by David Collier
Published by Dark Horse Comics

This book is one of Pekar’s lesser known, but more affecting, efforts. Robert McNeil enlisted in the U.S. Marines in 1969 at the age of seventeen, and only one birthday later was shipped off for a year-long tour of duty in Vietnam.  In Unsung Hero, Pekar shares McNeil’s story with us, from a brief walkthrough of his childhood and scholastic career, into basic training, and ultimately through his military duty during which he won Navy Commendation Medal with Combat.

Pekar narrates the book from McNeil’s perspective, as if the reader is sitting down and listening to McNeil tell his tale. Occasional panels of McNeil as he appeared when the book saw print, 2003, enforce the casual sit-down nature of the writing. McNeil’s tale is very powerful, focusing on the conflicts between his own self-preservation and his desire to not fail his comrades. Threads of drug use and McNeil’s role in a collective of black soldiers weave through the saga, adding palpable humanity.

The artwork, sketchy but effective, enforces the narrative, but rarely adds much depth to it. The text, McNeil’s memories and insights, could almost stand alone. David Collier, however, does enhance the humanity of each moment with his impressionistic style and focus on capturing the emotional experience of McNeil.

Harvey Pekar may no longer be with us, but he’s left behind a deep body of writing, many of which we may have overlooked. I had missed out on American Splendor: Unsung Hero: The Story of Robert McNeil, and fortunately, the library helped me fill in that oversight. Hopefully your library can help you discover works by your favorite authors that you haven’t read.

Once a week I sift through the millions of Etsy listings to find the best in geek chic for Blog@ readers. Last week I focused on video game daydreamer Scott Pilgrim, this week it’s all about the man, the myth, the legend…Mario.

When I first saw this, I thought it was a gigantic wall hanging. Turns out, they’re much easier to display. User Aristomatic created these Super Mario Brothers Sprite Magnets out of birch wood. A steal at $45 I say, especially since you can arrange them however you see fit.

We’ve already got Mario on the brain, why not have him on our head? Check out these adorable Super Mario 3 Tanooki barrettes from pixelparty. Or if you prefer, he’s also got Froggy Mario bobbypins, both sets, $14 each.

Mario’s Overalls, your Nintendo DS is naked without them. User ellesroom created this truly original case for your DS Lite for $19. Complete with two back pockets to hold games!

I love all of Mario’s power-up outfits but by far, Kuribo’s Shoe has to be my favorite. Also known as Goomba’s Shoe and called Kuribo’s Boot by myself, the first and only appearance of this delightful ensemble was in Super Mario 3, World 5-3 and user gamerpaige liked it enough to make this nifty Kuribo’s Shoe Perler Bead Magnet. Also available, Statue, Raccoon and several other Mario outfits, all for $4 each.

For the extra fancy gamer out there, how about a Swarovski Crystal Super Mario cover for Apple iphone 4? User IcyIcyBlingCouture did this one, which can be yours for a mere $169.99.

As always, bear in mind, since Etsy is a craft website and not a commercial, mass-market dealer, items are almost always one-of-a-kind or in very limited availability. When you see something you like, buy it. It may not be there the next time you surf round. (Yes, it’s a very dangerous site for your wallet.) Also, since most items are created individually, many sellers are willing to customize something specifically to suit your needs. Just ask!

…is postponed due to sickness. If I survive the flu, then I should have an installment of the column up tomorrow morning.

Written and created by Brian Andersen, art, colors and letters by the talented Celina Hernandez. For more So Super Duper go to:www.sosuperduper.com!

Not surprising: Fantastic Four #588, out last week and billed as the “final issue” of the long-running Marvel Comics series (it’s being supplanted by the simply titled FF this month), is seeing a second printing. Slightly surprising: the reprint will contain writer Jonathan Hickman’s script for the issue. Surprising because the main section illustrated by Nick Dragotta is mostly silent (the second story, with art by Mark Brooks, was more talky), which may suggest at first that there isn’t all that much to the script — but of course, seeing the nuances on what Hickman passed on to Dragotta, how scenes are set up and what goes into making such an issue should actually be very cool, as opposed to just re-reading a bunch of dialogue (which can also be cool, natch, though not quite as unique).

The second printing’s out on April 6, and the cover is after the jump.

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