Madrox posted:That Weird Fantasy issue is so great. You really have to consider the time period for context as well. The issue came out in 1953 as noted, and the civil rights movement in America is often marked as solidly beginning 2 years later in 1955 (though I've often thought it silly to try and date something like that). Gaines had some nasty arguments with distributors over that one; one of the proposed solutions was "just make the astronaut white."
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# ¿ Feb 27, 2014 22:14 |
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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 09:20 |
Prokhor Zakharov posted:This has always been one of my favorite scenes in comics. I've seen it suggested that "the flames will not touch you" means that the Many-Angled Ones are unable to harm Sixpack -- either because he's "pure of heart" and "a true hero", or because he actually has some sort of force field power. This misses the entire point.
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# ¿ Mar 3, 2014 17:04 |
Skwirl posted:Which never made sense to me diegetically. Since with the exception of Thor, none of the major super heroes in the Marvel Universe wear capes. Sentry. Even if the population is mindwiped, they still remember 'cape'.
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# ¿ Mar 9, 2014 19:00 |
Lot of nice scenes in the original Suicide Squad - for instance, Gort vs Deadshot. Ivan Illyich Gort was an 80-year-old Soviet metahuman who'd fought in WW2, where he was nicknamed "Stalnoivolk" - a name that means both "Steel Wolf" and "Stalin's Wolf", which should give you an idea of his personality. He had the powers of Superman from Action Comics #1 - he could leap 1/8 of a mile, hurdle 20-story buildings, raise tremendous weights, outrun a train, and nothing less than a bursting shell could penetrate his skin. Not modern-day Kryptonian by any means -- not even Superman from 1945 -- but pretty drat impressive when up against normal humans. So when Amanda Waller recruits him for the Squad, he tells her that he's so grateful to her for getting him out of prison that he won't kill her. Then he gets set to leave... and discovers that maybe only a bursting shell could have penetrated his skin back in the 40s, but nowadays we have lasers. Anyway. Gort gets sent on a Squad mission, with Deadshot-and-a-laser-pistol as a chaperone. As usual for Squad missions, things go terribly wrong, and their plane gets shot out of the sky, stranding the survivors in a jungle in Cambodia. Gort wants to just walk away from the mission and leave everyone else to die, but Deadshot points the laser pistol at him... and later, because Gort was being so uncooperative, Deadshot is riding him piggyback, and holding him at laser-pistolpoint. They even meet some Russian metas, and Gort asks them (in Russian) if they could "get rid of this flea on my back", and Deadshot says (also in Russian) "one wrong move, comrade, and a beam of light goes in one ear and out the other", and the Russians back down. Anyway. Eventually the mission concludes, more people die, (as someone on Usenet once said, "it wouldn't be a Squad mission without the bitter taste of ashes"), the survivors get out, and Gort gets left behind. And someone asks Deadshot "why didn't you use the laser pistol to <set off the explosives or something, I don't remember precisely what it was>?" and Deadshot says "oh, the laser pistol broke when we fell out of the plane. drat thing's completely useless."
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# ¿ May 8, 2014 20:41 |
Madkal posted:Deadshot is all kinds of awesome! from the Ostrander 8-issue Squad mini a few years back - a scene where Deadshot's on a mission, and things have (as always) gone wrong. He's been injured in one eye, which could screw up his aim. So he takes off his mask and wraps a strip of cloth over his eyes... and finishes the mission blindfolded.
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# ¿ May 8, 2014 22:09 |
Dammit Who? posted:Except the response he's given is "you may have soundly beaten us, but the only thing you'll get out of it is everything you ever wanted! Ha HA!". Which is funny in a "sour grapes make the best whine" kind of way, but it doesn't exactly have him come off looking good. "The only thing you'll get out of it is everything you ever wanted... but you have no ambition and no dreams. We have ambition, we have dreams, and we have the universe. Because we tried harder."
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# ¿ May 17, 2014 01:57 |
Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:How do you manage to NOT fire in a straight line when the beams come out of your eyes? Saccades?
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# ¿ May 29, 2014 13:08 |
Yvonmukluk posted:I kind of had her pegged as a Mid-Atlantic accent, to be honest. Emma Frost has whatever accent her listener perceives as most socially impressive. edit: to clarify, Emma Frost is perfectly willing to telepathically make people perceive that she has whatever they find most socially impressive. Parahexavoctal fucked around with this message at 06:00 on Jun 2, 2014 |
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# ¿ Jun 2, 2014 05:55 |
Happy Noodle Boy posted:Is there a list in which Doom doesn't excel? There was a scene in... I think it was Loebdell's run on Excalibur, where Doom is assisting Kitty Pryde in some complicated magical thing. And she says "my god, is there anything you can't do?" and he answers "Knit. I find it too repetitious." "... I was joking." "I was not."
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# ¿ Jun 18, 2014 17:57 |
Prokhor Zakharov posted:It wouldn't have been as dramatic to have Gordon take it with food and make the crowd stand around for 45 minutes. So he probably took the pill before everyone showed up. Rigged demo.
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# ¿ Jul 3, 2014 12:52 |
IndenturedHobo posted:Wait... Does being royalty give them different colored blood? Plus, he's revealed to have killed non-TV-heads also.
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# ¿ Jul 10, 2014 12:59 |
I just remembered a scene from... I think it was the Pulse, where Ben Urich has a private conversation with Peter Parker about secret identities. "Peter, I'm an award-winning investigative journalist. You and I have worked together for almost ten years. Frankly, it's a little insulting that you'd think I wouldn't know."
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# ¿ Jul 12, 2014 13:21 |
Ashcans posted:Can Blob turn his power on and off? If not, how did he get nipple rings? Did he find some piercing parlor with the power cosmic or something? Well, like he said, nothing gets inside him unless he wants it to. (Or: in AoA, Norrin Radd decided to settle down on Earth and run a piercing parlor. Your choice.)
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# ¿ Aug 12, 2014 14:14 |
Hakkesshu posted:Is Elsa Bloodstone any good outside of Nextwave? Elsa Bloodstone post-Nextwave : Elsa Bloodstone pre-Nextwave :: Machine Man post-Nextwave : Machine Man pre-Nextwave.
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# ¿ Aug 12, 2014 18:13 |
Lurdiak posted:That's so lame. Is every character on the roster going to no-sell the penance stare through technicalities? It's supposed to make you feel the weight of your sins, you're not supposed to be able to wiggle out of it due to your mindset. I'm remembering the Ghost Rider encounter from McDuffie's run on Deathlok. (important background info: Michael Collins, a pacifist robotics expert, discovered that his research was being used to make Deathlok murder machines, so he told his bosses. His bosses weren't as surprised as he thought they'd be; they then decided it would be sadistically fun to murder him and use his brain to run a Deathlok. Except he hadn't told them about the back door he'd left in the system, so he was able to eventually escape their control, set the "WHEN TO KILL TARGET" parameter on the Deathlok's OS to "ABSOLUTELY NEVER EVER EVER", etc etc.) Ghost Rider confronts Deathlok/Collins. Says I WILL GIVE YOU THE PENANCE STARE. Deathlok/Collins says, go ahead. <PENANCE STARE IS IMPOSED> and we see... Collins, as an eight-year-old boy, running from a supermarket with a stolen candy bar. and we see... Collins, getting a speeding ticket while his wife is in labor. and we see... Ghost Rider, looking confused.
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# ¿ Aug 18, 2014 14:37 |
AnonSpore posted:Guy why did you steal Gambit's clothes He didn't steal them. Gambit couldn't keep them.
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# ¿ Aug 28, 2014 12:43 |
Hakkesshu posted:The Jenkins/Lee book is one of my favourites and gives you a good summary of what the Inhumans and their society is all about, though in general their modern depictions are nowhere near as dark (the fact that they had an entire subservient slave race working for them is never brought up again). As I recall, Black Bolt tried to emancipate the Alpha Primitives, but then it turned out that they'd been genetically engineered so as to require enslavement... or something.
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# ¿ Sep 9, 2014 18:10 |
Have you read Chew by John Layman and Rob Guillory? If you have, you'll already know about Poyo. If you haven't, Poyo is... well, imagine if Lobo was literally a chicken. Mostly, Poyo terrorizes and brutalizes and slaughters people horribly. He also fights Kaiju, and demons (at one point, he gets horribly injured; while USGOV surgeons work frantically to save his life, Poyo's soul descends into Hell and beats the poo poo out of the assembled demons). Most of what Poyo does is too over-the-top to genuinely seem badass. But look at this scene here -- what Poyo does after getting shot down.
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# ¿ Sep 20, 2014 18:03 |
a recent "Rip Haywire" strip, as posted in the Comic Strip Megathread XV. Last words and confidence.
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# ¿ Oct 11, 2014 15:41 |
Small Frozen Thing posted:Who the hell is Krona? renegade Oan whose research into looking at the Big Bang with his retro-time-viewer created the multiverse and leaked evil and/or entropy all over existence. why do I know this....
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# ¿ Oct 28, 2014 06:07 |
Gaz-L posted:On the other hand, I assume the next page has Zatanna go "Um, Harley? You're a psychiatrist, not a vet." Psychiatrists have MD training, and most monkey species are close enough, anatomically, to humans that Harley could reasonably fake it (assuming that the monkey is injured, not poisoned or infected).
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# ¿ Oct 30, 2014 14:31 |
Dammit Who? posted:The Human Torch doesn't even get near the Planck temperature. Reed Richards lies all the time about this kind of thing, because he's an rear end in a top hat who thinks it's funny. Even people technically qualified to call him out on this don't do it because they're afraid of looking ridiculous by accusing Dr. Richards of the Fantastic Four of making an undergraduate error. And that's the same reason no one's ever corrected Wally West about how short an attosecond is. (Unless... was that Wally? Or was it Barry? Because if it was Barry, then... poo poo, there's a reason his life is an "endless gallery of statues".)
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# ¿ Dec 1, 2014 03:15 |
You might think it's difficult to show the Spectre as badass because he/it is just so powerful that nothing could really challenge him. The trick is to provide opponents against whom sheer overwhelming force won't help. Opponents like the US legal system. The Spectre, volume 3, #52 (1997). The Spectre goes to a prison and walks along Death Row, killing all the prisoners -- and the guards too, because they were dirty. And he leaves one man alive, because he knows that this one man happens to be innocent. "Are you gonna tell them that I'm innocent?" "No. That's a legal issue. It's not my business." "But they're gonna execute me! You have to save me! "No, I really don't. I only have to take vengeance. Goodbye." and the Spectre fades away... but he's bothered by this, especially since Corrigan was a cop and doesn't like the idea of the wrong person being prosecuted because then the guilty will escape punishment. So he gets an idea. The next night, the surviving prisoner is being strapped to a gurney, and insisting that they have to know he's innocent because why else would the Spectre have spared him. And the warden says, well, who knows why the Spectre does anything, really, just lie back and it'll all be over soon... and then the Spectre materializes. the warden is stunned, but recovers quickly: Spectre, you can't interfere with this! This is entirely legal! and the Spectre says: You misunderstand. I am not here to stop the execution. It is a mortal legal issue, and is none of my business. HOWEVER. I have told you that this man is innocent. If you execute him, then THAT will be murder. And I will avenge that murder... on everyone who was involved. Warden gulps. "You can't blame us for this! We're just carrying out the wishes of the people of the State of New York!" Spectre gazes down at him. "Then, in accordance with your logic... it is the people of the State of New York who shall feel my wrath." Warden says "... call the governor, we've suddenly got a reason to commute the death sentence."
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# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 04:39 |
Cassa posted:Kind of a terrifying threat too. Terrorist Spectre is nightmarish. Ostrander did some magnificent stuff with the Spectre. What vengeance should the Spectre wreak on, for instance, people who were doing ethnic cleansing as vengeance for the previous ethnic cleansing that had been done as vengeance for the ethnic cleansing previous to that? If your answer is anything other than "deem that everyone innocent within the nation has been murdered, and everyone still alive within the nation's current borders is guilty... and then purge every single one of the fuckers all at once", then congratulations: you have too much humanity and compassion within you to be the Spectre. (Well, almost every single one. He kept two alive: one political leader on each side. Just so they could see what he was doing.) There was also the story where Madame Xanadu managed to steal the Spectre from Corrigan. She intended to use it to bring about a golden utopia! Feed everyone! Heal all diseases! Spread equality! ... BUT FIRST, she had to wreak terrible vengeance on the industrialist polluters who were raping and murdering the Earth! And Corrigan - who at this point is little more than a solid ghost - and his companions manage to summon Madame Xanadu to them, and confront her. And he yells at her. "You think the Spectre is just some power source you can use however you want? I lived with it for almost seventy years! It's made of rage. You're never going to get around to changing the world, because there will always be people to punish! Your targets might be different from mine, but your methods will always be the same! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT? TO END UP JUST LIKE ME???" and Madame Xanadu says "... no." and she relinquishes the power of the Spectre.
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# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 15:00 |
Dolash posted:Yeah, that posturing at the end where someone's like "were we so especially terrible?" and the specter says "oh hey good point maybe I should destroy the world" is an especially eye-rolling sign-off. It's not exactly bad-rear end to say shades of grey are hard so kill everyone, from the soldiers down to the children and newborns in their mothers' arms. And if Heaven then acquits him that just sounds like some kind of embarrassing, adolescent pseudo-philosophy. I felt the badassery was not in the earlier genocide, or even in the threat of further genocide, but rather in the Spectre figuring out a way to transcend his boundaries and thereby actively save someone's life, rather than punishing someone reactively. What's interesting with the Spectre is not when he wreaks horrible vengeance on murderers, but when stuff happens that he didn't expect. Like the 95-year-old woman who committed a single murder when she was 20. The body was never discovered, she was never even suspected, let alone arrested or prosecuted or convicted. And then she spent the next 75 years trying to atone. Does she get mindbogglingly torn to bits, even though she's on her deathbed already? Or, for that matter, the woman who shoots her 95-year-old great-grandmother so as to spare the old woman from the Spectre's mindbogglingly brutal vengeance? Was that murder, or mercy? Or the time that the Spectre found a group of gay-bashers who had just beaten a man to death... and the bashers said "yes sir, Mr Spectre, we absolutely DID kill that man just now! Thank you for noticing! He was a homosexual, and homosexuality is a sin, and we're following your example by killing sinners! We want to be instruments of God's vengeance, just like you!" (long pause) Spectre says "YOU WILL SURRENDER YOURSELVES TO THE POLICE FOR THIS MURDER. IF YOU DO NOT, I WILL KNOW." (That's not badass, but it is an interesting narrative development.)
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# ¿ Dec 11, 2014 00:27 |
Gaz-L posted:Yeah, I think Dan3k got mixed up with Barbara Gordon or something? I think (but am not 100% sure) that some of those were plot elements from Claremont's "X-Men Forever", actually.
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# ¿ Dec 30, 2014 01:56 |
Gavok posted:Didn't they also have a woman who literally wore nothing but two clouds? Cloud wasn't technically female. Cloud was a homunculus remotely operated by a sapient stellar nebula. The homunculus looked female, but Cloud was able to replace it with a male homunculus if it wanted.
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# ¿ Feb 22, 2015 00:34 |
goatface posted:There's also the Inhumans' response to the US government refusing to give back some Terrigen crystals. war.
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# ¿ Apr 4, 2015 00:16 |
VagueRant posted:What does Black Bolt do outside of those moments? He's a king. He oversees the activities of Attilan. He can fly, he's super-strong, he can shoot energy blasts, and he spends most of his time listening to trade proposals and arbitrating over minor disputes.
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# ¿ Apr 4, 2015 12:33 |
Opopanax posted:
... and that's why Krypton exploded. It was unstable.
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# ¿ Apr 9, 2015 13:02 |
mind the walrus posted:
"Top Ten: Beyond the Farthest Precinct", by Paul di Filippo, was kind of mediocre but at least came to a proper conclusion. "Top Ten: Season Two", by Zander Cannon, was quite good but stops mid-story.
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# ¿ Apr 28, 2015 19:44 |
Uthor posted:Robocop vs. Terminator Epic Rap Battles of History?
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# ¿ Jul 11, 2015 18:09 |
Milotic posted:I'm not seeing many badass panels on this page. So here's a bunch from Civil War #1. I can remove the first few if needed, but I think they're important for context. I can't take that scene seriously at all, because I've read Chris "MightyGodKing" Bird's version. http://mightygodking.com/i-dont-need-your-civil-war/
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# ¿ Jul 17, 2015 06:07 |
Literally Kermit posted:Ghost Rider's penitence stare doesn't work on Frank Castle because he doesn't regret a goddamn thing. Okay, see, that is badass. It's like when Molly Hayes punched Frank in the gut and he managed to not collapse. Badass, to me, is about will and determination. I remember the way Grant Morrison described Kyle Rayner using the Green Lantern Ring: "using the Ring is like giving up smoking. He feels like a fifty-a-day man." It's not necessarily about physical power. It's about doing stuff versus overwhelming odds, when the sensible option would be to quit. Self-sacrifice. Putting yourself at risk. Standing alone at Gjallerbru. I've already mentioned the "Spectre vs Capital Punishment" incident, where the badass factor was that the Spectre managed to stare down the human legal system. There was another incident in Ostrander's run where Madame Xanadu forcibly separated Jim Corrigan from the Spectre, saying that she could do better things with its power than he could. So she merges with the Spectre, and starts bringing about a utopia - BUT FIRST, she has to slaughter all the rapists, and abusers, and polluters. Corrigan (who is by this point little more than a ghost) joins forces with a few other magicians, and they manage to summon Xanadu/Spectre into their pentagram. They try telling her that this isn't what the Spectre is for, that she can't use it to fix the world, to cure all diseases - what, would she banish death? And she screams "WHY NOT!" And he confronts her. She's like a hundred feet tall, and fused with the Wrath of God, and he's screaming at her. "You think the Spectre's just some power source you can use however you want? I LIVED WITH IT FOR OVER SIXTY YEARS! IT'S MADE OF RAGE! YOU'LL NEVER GET AROUND TO CHANGING THE WORLD, BECAUSE THERE'LL ALWAYS BE PEOPLE TO PUNISH! YOUR TARGETS MIGHT BE DIFFERENT FROM MINE, BUT YOUR METHODS WILL ALWAYS BE THE SAME! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT? TO END UP JUST LIKE ME?!?!?" and this tiny tiny ghost glares up at the fuming furious incarnation of anger... ... and the incarnation of anger blinks. "... no." and she releases her hold on the Spectre.
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# ¿ Aug 1, 2015 18:02 |
flosofl posted:Because he's describing the Sepctre as an entity. With Corrigan in the blend, he can temper the Spectre and introduce, however minuscule, some manner of mercy to the Spectre's actions. My understanding is the host is the driving personality, with the Spectre trying to subvert them to its "primary mission". If the host is aware and of strong enough will, they may be able to assert their own agenda in some way or form. Incidentally, I should point out that the mission to protect Jim Corrigan's loved ones ... failed. Jim's in love with Amy Beitermann. She gets a prophesy that she will soon be murdered by a serial killer. Jim decides "gently caress THAT" and begins hunting the killer. Unfortunately, this draws him into battle with Azmodus, and while he's busy with that, someone knocks on the door of Amy's apartment. As Amy's opening it, Madame Xanadu sends her a telepathic message - don't open the door! It's the Reaver! RUN! And Amy decides, maybe this bastard IS going to kill me, but that doesn't mean I have to make it easy for him. And instead of running for the fire escape... she runs to the kitchen and grabs a knife. She has a knife fight with the serial killer who she knows is going to defeat and murder her. THAT... is badass. now, unfortunately, Amy Beitermann wasn't trained in knife fighting. She was a social worker. And she didn't have superpowers: in the words of the OHOTMU, she had the strength of a normal human female of her age and physical condition. She slices him up a bit, to slow him down, but he's outfighting her. She flees. He chases. She runs into an alley, then realizes that it's the alley from the prophesy: this is where she's going to be hacked to death. And as Madame Xanadu casts spells in a desperate attempt to distract Azmodus so the Spectre can get the hell out of the fight and come protect Amy... the Reaver catches up with Amy and begins stabbing and slicing. Seconds later, the Spectre arrives. But it's too late, Amy's sustained fatal injuries. The Reaver sees this glowing green guy and starts to back off... the Spectre becomes Corrigan, who kneels by Amy... she says "I'm dying... please, stay with me so I'm not alone at the end?" and then the Reaver runs out of the alley and Corrigan automatically transforms back into the Spectre and chases after the Reaver. (Madame Xanadu teleports in and holds Amy's hand until the ambulance shows up, but Amy dies before she gets to the hospital.) Parahexavoctal fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Aug 2, 2015 |
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# ¿ Aug 2, 2015 19:47 |
Chinaman7000 posted:I like the way you think, but the real solution here is to kill yourself before you could ever end up in an alley. Amy considered that, but the Spectre said "people who kill themselves go to Hell. Here, let's go on a brief visit to Hell so you can see that it's not just an idle threat."
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# ¿ Aug 3, 2015 01:36 |
HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:I've always liked the Cup O' Noodles joke here. I don't see it?
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# ¿ Aug 10, 2015 00:24 |
Are these Celestials fighting? If not, what are they? edit: Oh, bleh. Okay, it's Kirby's NFL. Thanks.
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# ¿ Aug 29, 2015 14:20 |
Breetai posted:Kirby drew FTFY. It's interesting to compare Kirby's stuff here to Neal Adams's 'Hockey Heroes' (http://www.nealadamsstore.com/Hockey-Heroes_c_56.html).
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# ¿ Aug 30, 2015 13:54 |
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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 09:20 |
fatherboxx posted:Nah, it is a pretty popular move. Amanda Waller bought off Deadshot for "whatever he's paying, plus a nickel".
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# ¿ Sep 17, 2015 14:14 |