My genuine first thought on seeing this Flashpoint cover (from Lois Lane and The Resistance #2, if you’re curious; hopefully, you’re paying attention to Albert’s running tally of all the third-month-Flashpoint titles to keep track of all of this)?

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Why doesn’t comics have its own Jump The Shark?

Let me explain: I don’t mean “Why doesn’t comics, as a medium, have a moment where everything was ruined and could never quite be repaired ever again?” (in part because, well, I remember the 1990s very well, thank you very much), but why doesn’t comics have its own term like Jump The Shark? Think about it: Television came up with the original, when this happened:

and movies came up with its own “Nuking The Fridge” when this happened:

..but what’s the comics equivalent? I can’t believe that there isn’t a comic that has a scene considered so bad that it’s become synonymous with everything going horribly wrong. I can think of some that would come close (The Rise of Arsenal #3 with the dead cat? Avengers #500 with “Not like this”?), but are any good – or bad – enough? So I’m turning to you, dear internet: Use that comments section below to suggest what the best suggestion for the comics version of nuking sharks would be, make your case, and solve the dilemma that the internet didn’t even know that it had. Please. Do it for the kids.

For this week’s “Flashpoint Friday” at DC’s official blog The Source, the publisher is rolling out covers and asking “Flash Questions” for July Flashpoint-related titles, starting with Flashpoint #3. That’s after the jump!

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The Green Lantern Corps is an intergalactic police force of warriors who are all chosen for their honesty and the ability to act without fear. They wear power rings tap into the emotional spectrum of the universe, drawing on the collective will of all sentient life and pouring it out as green energy. These weapons are among the most powerful in the universe and are mainly limited only by the bearer’s force of will (which must harness and shape the green energy), their imagination, and the need to occasionally recharge through the use of a lantern-shaped power battery. Green Lanterns patrol the universe and sometimes will venture into parallel realities when they recognize that there’s evil that they need to take down.

This is pretty epic. And the Earthmen who have been chosen to be Green Lanterns are all pretty formidable characters. And fortunately for these folks, a hero can’t always be judged by his or her enemies. These days, the GLs fight the likes of the Red Lantern Corps, the conqueror Mongul, the necrotic Black Lanterns, and other terrifying menaces. But back in the old days, for every great villain that existed like Sinestro, the rogue Green Lantern, there were a couple of losers who just had no sense of style and couldn’t help but make you chuckle. Let’s look at some of them, shall we?

MYRWHYDDEN

A powerful mage who is a little crazy and has a serious revenge fixation on Green Lanterns, due to one of them (Abin Sur) forcing him into exile for a time. That’s not a bad recipe for a cool, scary villain. But when the mage in question looks like an old man who accidentally threw his underwear on outside his collared sweatsuit, you look creepy in a nursing home kind of way rather than as a super-villain. A few changes in this wardrobe and Myrwhydden could finally be ready to lay down some punishment.

MAJOR DISASTER

Paul Booker could create natural disasters whenever he wanted to. This is a scary thing, no doubt about it. The destruction you could cause, the terror you could inspire. You could hold entire cities or even countries hostage. Earthquakes and hurricanes could keep police and military forces from reaching you. This guy could cause volcanoes to form in front of him!

But then, we have this suit. Magenta and blue? And what’s the deal with that weird mask and hood? Those are strange enough, but then you add in a skirt and thigh high boots? Really? You thought all of these elements worked well together?

Booker later got a new look and spent some time with the Justice League where, surprisingly, no one really brought up this previous fashion disaster.

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With the final episode of Smallville getting closer by the second, fans are in a swarm of anticipation as to whether or not star Tom Welling will slip into the iconic suit. Well, we don’t have the answer just yet but the CW is painting a pretty picture. Or poster as the case may be.

The image comes via Entertainment Weekly who also have their hands on a (non-embedable) teaser commercial set to air on the network today. Listen carefully and you just might hear something familiar.

Yup, that’s part of the 1978 original Superman score. What are they trying to do to us?!

Along with “The Planet Krypton” notes comes Welling saying, “I finally know who I am,” accompanied visually by the Superman symbol and the word, “Believe.” Honestly, I know the whole motto of Smallville used to be “no capes, no tights,” and that some people are against Welling getting into the real costume but at this point, if he doesn’t, I’m going to be pretty let down.

Smallville returns with new episodes April 15 while the two-part series finale is set for May 13.

This week’s discussion topic: This week’s Village Voice is the special “Comics Issue,” and features a great cover by Ward Sutton, depicting comics characters in the styles of different catoonists (Jack Kirby’s Charlie Brown! R. Crumb’s Olive Oyl! Et cetera!). The most talked about/blogged about issue raised by the issue? That of paying and not paying cartoonists. Here’s the Voice article “If Cartoons Are So Big, Why Don’t They Pay?”, and here’s a little round-up of some of the many reactions to the piece and its existence in the Voice.

“Wouldn’t it be cool if Marvel tried its hand at that format again? Well, guess what? It did, and quite recently”: Don MacPherson discusses Marvel’s recent flirtation with the magazine format. Have you heard of them?

Peanuts by Eric Reynolds, age 8 or 9: On the Flog blog, Fantagraphics’ Reynolds shares some childhood comics he did as a kid.

Noooo!: Why can’t you just leave poor Dr. Thaddeus Bodog Sivana alone, Titans?

It’s been three months since the release of Choker #5 (review here), the penultimate issue of Ben McCool and Ben Templesmith’s retro-futuristic six-issue miniseries starring private investigator Johnny “Choker” Jackson. During our interview with McCool on the WonderCon convention floor this past weekend — where we talked about Pigs, the new Image ongoing series he’s launching in September with co-writers Nate Cosby — we also got a quick update on the status of the final installment, delivered with a heavy dose of dry British wit:

“Choker #6 is on its way our now, Templesmith’s definitely working on that. That should be out, and we’ll have a trade out for Comic-Con, which will be awesome. I can’t wait to bloody see it. I can’t even remember what happens, and I wrote the bloody thing.”

For Chris Arrant’s interview with McCool and Templesmith on Choker, head over here.

Hey, look: Marvel is apparently planning to publish something called Venom: Flashpoint #1 in July! Now, some might say that spinning off a book from a just-launched series that hasn’t even released its second issue yet is being a little bit premature, but (a) I would lay money that this is another of those $4.99 collections of the first three issues of a series, instead of a whole separate thing in and of itself, and (b) this is Marvel Comics we’re talking about here, a publisher so eager to spin off books that Hit-Monkey is a comic that was actually published.

But all of that is beside the point: Marvel is putting out a book subtitled Flashpoint at the same time that DC’s uber-2011-event Flashpoint is running (#3 of the event should appear in the same month as this Venom book). What comedy! It’s just like when they published Identity Disc at the same time that DC published Identity Crisis, or released a collection of Wolverine and the X-Men cartoon episodes as Final Crisis Trilogy when DC was publishing Final Crisis, despite the episodes having an entirely different name (“Foresight”) ! I know, I know; Your sides may be splitting from the hilarity already.

As everyone knows, brand confusion has long been considered the highest form of wit in publishing circles, but this time, the joke might be on Marvel:  With DC flooding the market with 20 spin-offs from Flashpoint in June alone, there’s every possibility that seeing that word in any solicit will make fans and retailers stay away from the Venom book instead of upping their orders. And if that doesn’t work, we can always hope that DC retaliates with a book called Fear Itself. Oh, wait: they did that back in 1999.

I hate introductions. No, wait; that’s not entirely right – I like reading introductions, I like knowing whose words I’m reading – I just hate writing them. They’re kind of necessary, though, otherwise new names appear on bylines and you’re all “Wait, who is that? Are they writing for the blog now?” and things can get kind of confusing, so here goes: Hello, Blog@ readers. Pleased to make your acquaintance. (more…)

I like high concepts as much as the next guy, even if the next guy is a rabid otaku, and, let’s face it, when it comes to high-concept comics, Japan’s are higher and more numerous than anywhere else on earth.

But Yu Aikawa’s Butterfly features a really complicated one, which takes a majority of the first, 200-page volume to simply lay out.

High schooler Ginji Ishikawa hates the supernatural and angrily dismisses all aspects of it—from belief in ghosts and curses to horror scope reading. He also dismisses anyone who believes in it. This is kind of odd, since every single night Ginji is visited by the ghost of his dead brother, whom he shouts away with I can’t see yous and There’s no such thing as ghosts.

Ginji’s friend is constantly trying to set him up on dates with girls, although they usually end disastrously because of his ant-occult stance. On one double-date, they visit an amusement park, and when he’s reluctantly pulled into a haunted house, Ginji punches out an actor dressed as a ghost. He manages to avoid legal trouble, but only by committing to paying off the injured actor and park.

An opportunity to make the necessary money presents itself when a mysterious little girl approaches Ginji with a proposition: “Let’s go and kill all the ghosts in the world together!”
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Well here’s something you don’t hear everyday. Actor Andy Serkis, who served as the visual map and voice for Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, has just announced Peter Jackson asked him to serve as the second-until director on both of The Hobbit films.

Serkis said it was a fantastic surprise when Jackson emailed him out of the blue. “I think I understand Peter’s sensibility and we have a common history of understanding Middle Earth,” Serkis told The Hollywood Reporter. “A lot of the crew from The Lord of the Rings was returning to work on The Hobbit. There is really a sense of Peter wanting people around him who totally understand the material and the work ethic.”

IMDB.com lists the actor as having acted as a second unit director just once before, on the video game Heavenly Sword, but even that is sublisted as “dramatic director.” Though Serkis is named as a director on another project called Freezing Time, listed as announced.

Serkis told the website his directing duties would go beyond performance capture. “It is wide ranging and encompasses a lot of directing aspects of filmmaking and story. Yes, there is some performance capture, but I will be very much on the live action sets and locations helping Peter to tell the story,” he said. In the same way Lord of the Rings was an interpretation of the book, The Hobbit is being treated the same way,” Serkis said. “It will be faithfully represented with a fresh interpretation.”

“The learning curve is The Hobbit is being shot in 3D,” he added, noting that the 3D would be used “dramatically, to give a point of view.” Or, to make extra money, in this authors opinion.

Serkis just completed his role in the film which is still shooting currently in New Zealand. “He is very much a Gollum that people will recognize,” Serkis said, also adding that the character would be seen in his “truest form.” “When we created Gollum the first time, performance capture was it its infancy,” he said, noting that today, “within the industry, there is more appreciation for it as an acting art form. It’s all about character, learning what the character thinks, feels, how he carries pain.”

THR also mentioned Serkis has two more motion capture roles set for the near future. He will play Caesar in the Planet of the Apes prequel Rise of the Apes and Captain Haddock in The Adventures of TinTin: The Secret of the Unicorn.

It Came From the NYPL

Alan Moore’s Complete WildC.A.T.S
Written by Alan Moore

Penciled by Travis Charest, Kevin Maguire, Ryan Benjamin, Jason Johnson, Dave Johnson, Kevin Nowlan, Scott Clark, Aron Wiesenfeld, Jim Lee, Josh Wiesenfeld, Mat Broome, Pat Lee & Rob Stotz
Inked by Troy Hubbs, Randy Elliott, Sal Regla, Trevor Scott, Scott Williams, Art Thibert, Terry Austin, Hakjoon Kang, Andy Owens, Harry Thuran, Tom McWeeney, John Nyberg, JD, Bob Wiacek, Dexter Vines, Richard Friend, Mark Irwin, Luke Rizzo, Sandra Hope, John Tighe, Richard Bennett, Jason Gorder & Scott Taylor
Colored by Wildstorm FX, Bad@$$ & Alex Sinclair
Lettered by Bill O’Neil & Comicraft
Cover art by Charest
Published by DC/Wildstorm

A while back, I borrowed Wild Worlds, a collection of Alan Moore-written odds-n’-ends set in the Wildstorm universe, from the library, and it was a mostly terrible reading experience. Eventually, despite Wild Worlds, I decided to borrow the other major collection of Alan’s Wildstorm tenure – his slightly-over-a-year long turn on Jim Lee’s WildC.A.T.S series.

Reading the stories, I’m couldn’t help but think … — so y’all know I’m a big Neil Young fan, right? These books – Wild Worlds and Complete WildC.A.T.S – remind me of Neil’s early and mid-1980s output: amazing artist, really terrible work.

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Surprising news. Christopher Nolan’s third and likely final Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises, will shoot primarily in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In other news, I’m moving to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

According to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, the Pittsburgh Film Office made the announcement yesterday that they had sealed the deal with Warner Bros. to shoot the movie there. “We are thrilled to be welcoming the Batman film to Pittsburgh, and eager for the economic impact that our city will experience,” said Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl. “This is another example of the growing film industry in our community, and we will be rolling out the red carpet for them.”

“They’re still nailing down actual locations but what they really fell in love with was the diversity of architecture and the gorgeous buildings that we still have in Downtown Pittsburgh and the surrounding areas,” said Dawn Keezer, the director of the Pittsburgh Film Office. She also mentioned the production would likely shoot there for four to six weeks in the downtown and nearby areas. Apparently the decision was four months in the making.

Batman Begins was shot primarily in England and Chicago while the sequel, The Dark Knight, was shot mostly in Chicago with other scenes being shot in the UK and Hong Kong. The setting of Chicago certainly gave a home to Gotham so it’s very curious to see this switch to Pittsburgh being made.

“Pittsburgh is a beautiful city,” said Nolan. “We have been able to find everything we were looking for here, and I am excited to spend the summer in Pittsburgh with our final installment of Batman.”

“We’ve been thrilled with all the work we’ve had in Southwestern Pennsylvania but Batman’s a known franchise. People know what Batman’s about and we’re thrilled that they have chosen Pittsburgh,” said Keezer. She said it’s too early to know how much local cast and crew will be hired but that it will certainly help promote jobs and financial growth for the city.

Another comic book adaptation, Joe Hill’s Locke and Key television pilot, was recently filming in the city as well. The Dark Knight Rises is due in theaters July 2, 2012.

What do you think about the move and how it will affect the look of the film? Anyone from the area?

“‘Just look at it,’ quoth the Helfer”: In light of the recent announcement of DC’s Retro-Active comics, in which J.M. DeMatteis will be re-teaming with Keith Giffen and Kevin Maguire for the ’90s Justice League issue, the writer shares an old essay about how he got involved with the franchise. It’s a fun piece with some fun behind the scenes details, and a good argument for the value of a talented, engaged editor working closely with creators on a title.

“Miller and Varley’s Joker”: The Mindless Ones series “Three Fools” continues with a look at The Joker in Frank Miller and Lynn Varley’s The Dark Knight Returns. It’s a particularly intersting piece following the first part, which covered The Killing Joke, since Dark Knight isn’t particularly known for its Joker.

“Once upon a time the mouse named Batman…”: James Kochalka tells the best bedtime stories.

“I know I’m supposed to get all excited about the Thor movie, and the Green Lantern movie, and the Herbie the Fat Fury movie, like everyone says I’m supposed to…”: What live action superhero is Ty Templeton most excited about these days? Click to find out! I must confess, that particular hero translates remarkably well to that particular venue, which generally doesn’t do live action superheroes all that well.

It’s new to me, too: Check out this iFanboy post, in which a 2004 Frank Quitely image featuring the Masters of the Universe characters gets dug out and shown off.

I talked to Chew co-creator and writer John Layman this afternoon about his three-part “Identity Wars” story at Marvel — starting with this week’s Amazing Spider-Man Annual #38 — and during the course of conversation, he revealed that he’s working on an as-yet unannounced project with The Maxx‘s Sam Kieth.

“That is super-exciting, because Sam and I are good friends, and we’ve been wanting to work together for a long time,” Layman said.

We don’t know much else about the comic at this point, other than it’s for a company that Layman has never worked with before. Feel free to speculate on who that might be, and we’ll let you know more when we know more. And look for our “Identity Wars” interview on the Newsarama homepage soon.

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords. As should you. Once a week I sift through the millions of Etsy listings to find the best in geek chic for Blog@ readers and last week I focused on the delightful, yet scarce, Batgirl finds from the site. This time around I’m giving our metal brothers and sisters a chance to shine. Why? Because this past weekend I was served alcoholic beverages by a few at BarBot in San Francisco and I wish to keep them happy.

I purposely steered clear of movie or television robots because that’s a whole other category for another day. Here’s some great robot finds from Etsy.

Now here’s an item name that roles right off your tongue, Anti Boredom Flat Pack Puzzle Robots in Deployment Pod. It may sound complicated but it isn’t. User Tinkeringproductions created this set of puzzle robots for $10 out of laser cut hardboard. Tinkeringproductions says they can do boring tasks for you like distribute business cards, hold other small stiff pieces of paper, hold pens, and pen like objects as well. You’ll never be bored at work again.

Meet Billy the Robot. He’s part of a family of robots. As you can see, he enjoys:
figure skating, pudding pops, epic fantasy and dislikes: insult comics, turnips and cigarette smoke. Sounds like my kind of guy. User sweetmealine has created this robot in a frame out of tiny bits of watch pieces, cogs, gears, electronics, jewelry findings, and other found objects for $20. And make sure to check out the rest of the family.

This one should have creeped me out but it’s too darn cute to be scared of. It’s a MilliBOT Sculpture from user JunkBOT. Measuring just 2.5″ long, this little robot bug was made out of 20 electrical components and capacitors. It stands on a small wooden base with a hand stamped nameplate. $12.

You’ll be able to clean a lot with Mr. Robotic Clean Fun set of 8 soaps. User Melsfunsuds recommends giving them out as party favors. For $14.75, each robot soap also comes with its own key. Various colors and scents are available.

If you’re nice enough, maybe this guy will let you wear him around your neck and even help you with directions. It’s an antique bronze robot with compass and clock from user fashionjewel. It’s only $4.99 and yes, batteries are included.

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!

The biggest direct market release of the week should be Fear Itself #1, the official kick off of Marvel’s latest line-engulfing crossover story. Unlike the majority of the previous big Marvel crossovers, this one won’t be written by Brian Michael Bendis, but instead by Matt Fraction, with Stuart Immonen providing the pencils and covers (Well, some of the covers, anyway; there should be several for each issue of this). As far as I can make out, the premise seems to have something to do with a pre-Asgardian force referred to as The Serpent giving various Marvel characters giant Thor-like sledgehammers and glowy redesigns, and also making other heroes face their worst fears or something.

At the very least, I imagine the prevalence of hammers in the series will guarantee a great deal more hitting and smashing than either Siege or Secret Invasion managed to muster. It’s a $4, 56-page book.

Aaron and Ahmed: Prose novelist Jay Cantor and Bronx Kill artist James Romberger team for an original graphic novel exploring the question, “What causes terrorism?” It’s a $25, 145-page hardcover from Vertigo’s crime imprint.

Blue Estate #1: This high-concept crime comedy comic sounds like it could be either awesome or terrible—“an alcoholic hit man and a desperate starlet dodge Russian mobsters, Italian gangsters, ninjas, hippies and the LAPD in a scheme to steal millions from a psychotic action movie hero”— but considering some of the artists involved, I’m leaning toward awesome. Screenwriter and artist Viktor Kalvachev write, while Nathan Fox, Toby Cypress, Kalvachev himself and others draw. You can see a preview here.

Blue Exorcist Vol. 1: This new manga series from Viz is about young  Rin Okumura, an orphan boy raised by an exorcist who discovers his real dad is Satan himself. With a background like that, naturally he decides to go to exorcism school. It’s from creator Kato Kazue, and the first volume is 200-pages for $10

BPRD: The Dead Remembered #1: The latest offering from the Mignola-verse is a three-issue miniseries flashing back to a teenage Liz Sherman joining Professor Broom on an investigation in New England. Scott Allie and Mike Mignola write, while Karl Moline and Andy Owens provide the art. You can see a preview here.
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Producer Donald De Line recently spoke with the Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision blog about the rush to get one of this summer’s biggest blockbusters done in time for its release date on June 17.

According to THR, De Line sat in the audience for the Green Lantern movie panel last Friday at WonderCon as 9 minutes of footage from the film was premiered for eager fans. Afterwards he was happy with the response. “This was important because when we went to Comic-Con last summer, we were still shooting. We didn’t have any shots or any visual effects to show,” said De Line, “This was very important because we finally had something to put in front of people. We showed people what we have finished with visual effects, though only 80 percent was technically finished. Some of it is still work-in-progress.”

Though the audience got a lot of footage, the completion of the film is still a ways away. “We’ve had a very tight post- production schedule. We have over 1500 visual effects shots in this movie, which is a lot,” said De Line. “And we have to convert to 3D. That pushes your schedule up even tighter so they can go through this painstaking conversion process. You want to do it with the right quality so you need a lot of lead time. Those things conspired to make what seemed like a decent amount of post feel like incredibly pressured.”

De Line said their visual effects houses are working non-stop, 24 hours a day, seven days a week but that he’s excited about what they have to offer. “You have this superhero genre and you get to take it into space, go to the center of the universe where you have all these alien cultures represented. You get the best of superhero-meets-space opera, in a way. And you get to bring both of those elements together and it’s the kind of thing that I think that makes it different,” he said. “In a world that is becoming increasingly populated with superhero movies, and everyone is going “Gosh, there’s a lot this summer” and “Is there room for all of us?” we all can say we offer something different. Thor stands on his own with one kind of world, we are an entirely different world. And Captain America is another kind of world. So I say were all very distinct.”

Don’t expect this film to connect with Zack Snyder’s Superman project or the future Justice League film. De Line said, “We didn’t do that but there some little references to what could be outcroppings from the Green Lantern Corps, because as you know, the Green Lantern Corps went on to become a lot of different offshoots and have different aspects. And we’re already working on a sequel script so we have a cool story idea that we think will go in a direction they don’t expect.”

The producer also mentioned it was “fantastic” working with DC and their Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns. “We would say, ‘We want to do this, does this cross a line for you, is it true to the piece?’ And he was our bellwether. He knew we had to be creative and go in certain ways, things would work in a movie but may not work in a comic book, and he would help to think of new ways.”

De Line said besides finishing all the massive special effects, they begin scoring the film this Thursday with James Newton Howard. The next official Green Lantern trailer will show before Thor in theaters on May 6.

I just read a review copy of Chester Brown’s upcoming Paying For It, and am still processing it and am thus still a long way from writing an actual review of it yet (it doesn’t come out until May). But one of my favorite aspects of the book were the scenes in which Brown’s comics versions of real-life friends and cartoonists Seth, Joe Matt and himself would hang out and talk about the subject of the book (Brown’s “whoremongering,” as Matt calls it, and their various theories on romantic love/human relationships). Here Matt, whom you may recognize as the author of Spent (in which Brown and Seth also appeared as supporting characters), reviews Paying For It…or at least its portrayal of him in some scenes.

“G-g-g-ghost World?”: Check out this neat “mush-up” of Ghost World and Scooby-Doo.

“So let me throw out a few vaguely related thoughts that I can’t really seem to flow in a cohesive narrative right now…”: Sean Kleefeld on what still strikes me as the strangest announcement of the weekend.

“I’m not the biggest Neal Adams fan. This will not change my mind”: Blog Into Mystery blogs into Adams’ Skateman #1. What I wouldn’t give to see Adams have Skateman team-up with Batman in a Batman: The Odyssey special…

That White Queen costume doesn’t look quite 1960s, and yet doesn’t look quite modern to me either: Total Film attempts era-appropriate X-Men: First Class for their issue featuring the upcoming X-Men film.

Great headline, guys: “The Green Lantern comic is the basis for a movie due in June”

That’s about 23 more expressions than most super-comics artists seem capable of mustering these days: Brad Mackay closely examines a two-page spread of various Superman faces and expressions he found in DC Comics Year By Year: A Visual Chronicle. (Via Comics Reporter)

And they’ve already got a theme song!: A recent installment of James Kochalka’s American Elf diary strip was entitled “Pitching Superf*ckers,” and was about he and four guys on his team pitching the four people on “their team.” “I could write a whole graphic novel about the emotional dynamics in that room,” Kochalka wrote. Man, I would love to read that graphic novel. Almost as much as I’d like to see a Superf*ckers cartoon.

Rip Kirby v. 3
Written by Alex Raymond, Ward Greene & Fred Dickenson
Illustrated by Raymond
Published by IDW/Library of American Comics

After leaving the Flash Gordon, the sci-fi adventure strip he’d created in 1934, for a stint in U.S. Marines during World War II, Alex Raymond was informed by his editors at King Features that Flash was doing quite well without him, thank you very much, and they would not reinstate him to his creation. Although he was almost certainly very disappointed, Raymond didn’t let it show – he simply created another engaging strip, this one thoroughly different in tone, content and style.

Rip Kirby, which debuted in early 1946, became Raymond’s longest run on a daily strip (Flash was a Sunday strip), the feature which he devoted himself to until he died in a car accident in late 1956. A break from earlier pulp-inspired detective strips, Kirby presaged more recent procedurals, with a debonair private detective who relied on wits and science. Though he could punch a crook out when he had to!

While it’s not the best adventure strip you’ll read – the plots are mostly good, though a few stretch credulity, such as The Mangler’s attempts to ruin Pagan Lee, a storyline predicated on a half-reasoned excuse to bring back a popular female character – Kirby always manages to entertain. Raymond and his co-authors (Greene, who scripted the early stories, leaves during this run, claiming that Raymond received too much credit for the writing – Dickenson replaced him) keep the pace up consistently, pepper the scripts with small bits of humanizing humor, and throw in enough wrinkles to keep readers off-balance if not entirely surprised.

The classic romantic aspect of adventure fiction remains strong here; nearly every case Kirby solves seems to bring together two conflicted lovers. Supporting players are well developed during the strip – onetime bad-girl Pagan Lee and Kirby’s reformed-safecracker-cum-valet Desmond each carry the strip for over a month of strips without any slack in the storylines, and Rip’s main squeeze Honey Dorian nearly matches them in a storyline of her own.

Raymond’s attention to detail – both in panel composition and in the styles of the time – pull readers into each continuity. Raymond was among the first comic artists to speak publicly about the possibilities of the comics medium – he found the glossy illustration work he thought he wanted less fulfilling than telling stories with pictures – and his attention to craft shines through on these pages. The Library of American Comics’ typically high standards of reproduction remain unimpeachable, with pristine linework, proper binding and a handy sewn-in bookmark.

Fast-moving, surprising, and beautifully drawn, Rip Kirby ages very well, and fans of Alex Raymond or comic strip history should love having the Library of American Comics’ superb collections on their bookshelves. These strips are among the most influential artistry in comics history – they deserve preservation and, even more, a passionate audience.