Archie versus the Punisher

Ain't the internet a wonderful thing?

I'm not a huge comics geek; but it's hard not to get intrigued by some of "the scene" when you work with two of them.

Here's a little fallout of a search I did for "Superman versus Muhammed Ali", which my colleague and I both recall from ages ago. On the same site (technknight.com), I discovered ARCHIE VERSUS THE PUNISHER. The storyline is pretty silly and not really important.. (something about mixed up identities). However, the whole exercise is worth it for this page (pay attention to Archie's eyes in the top frame). I don't know when this came out or why, but I think it's hysterically funny.



Since I try to keep comics chatter to a minimum, I'll drop in a few non-sequitor comics related bits here so I don't clutter up the blog with it:

From the recent visits to a couple of Northern Va. comics shops with Gar on FREE COMIC BOOK DAY, I got finagled into trying a few slightly irreverant series.. what the heck, I bought the first issues of both of them.

The New MARVEL ZOMBIES is great fun.

Premise:

THE STORY:
Torn from the pages of Ultimate Fantastic Four! On an Earth shockingly similar to the Marvel Universe’s, an alien virus has mutated all of the world’s greatest super heroes into flesh-eating monsters! It took them only hours to destroy life as we know it—but what happens when they run out of humans to eat?!? Follow their search for more food—and witness the arrival of the Silver Surfer!

I guess I'd have to back track to figure out how they set this up, but all of the Marvel heroes have become flesh-eating zombies. The kicker is that they are still intelligent, and still subject to their previous moral/ethical code.. that is, until hunger sets in. Oh, wow, is this "irreverant".. what they do to that pack of goody-two shoes will have you howling with laughter. No spoilers!

Also, I tried out the first twoo episodes of NEXT WAVE.

This is a sort of "altered universe" niche universe thing. Warren Ellis, the mind behind TRANSMETROPOLITAN, and to whose blog I subscribe, is a guy who's been around the block a few times but I'm just now getting into him (due to a recent podcast I heard where the name was being dropped). Ellis takes several b-side, second string characters (the black female Captain Marvel, Machine Man, etc) and builds a "monster fighting" team of them. The humor is dark and funny, the art reasonably well drawn. I think I will pick up the first collection of this when it comes out, it's really funny and well worth your time.