Black Panther No. 18
Marvel Comics
One thing Marvel Comics has always done better than its competition is throw a wedding. The Fantastic Four's Reed Richards and Sue Storm, Spider-Man and Mary Jane and the X-Men's Cyclops and Jean Grey are just some of the more memorable Marvel unions, and last week the company added another when it married off X-person Storm to the Black Panther.
Something rang false about the marriage since the announcement went out months ago, as the two characters haven't had the decades-long courtship of other hitched heroes (Superman and Lois Lane flirted for over 50 years, for example), and there's a certain predictability to having the only two African heroes marry one another.
But Black Panther writer Reginald Hudlin managed to pull the wedding off quite well, in the process turning out one of the most fun Marvel books in a while. It was basically just a lighthearted who's who of guest appearances, with some pretty unpredictable guests attending.
The Panther is king of a high-tech sci-fi African country, Wakanda, a sort of dry Atlantis, and he and Storm are the most high-profile heroes of color in the Marvel stable, so the guest list was a fun mélange of real-world celebrities (President Bush, Fidel Castro, Nelson Mandela and Oprah attend; Prince plays the reception) and Marvel heroes (just about everyone, particularly all the black heroes, many of whom are too rarely seen).
Shark-Man No. 1
Thrill-House Comics
Back in the golden age of comics, creating new superheroes was as easy as taking an animal and adding "man." Batman, Spider-Man and Hawkman are still going strong, but there's an encyclopedia's worth of forgotten also-rans (Gorilla Man, anyone?).
One animal long missing from the superhero zoo is the shark, probably because it's such a scary animal that supervillians usually gravitate toward it for their names, suits and killer submarines (King Shark, Killer Shark, The Shark, etc.).
Well, brand-new comics publisher Thrill-House seeks to rectify that with its very first series, by Hollywood screenwriter Ronald Shusett (the man who brought us the Aliens franchise, and far lesser films like Total Recall) and artist Steve Pugh (taking a Photoshop paintbrush to his pencil art, and doing some of the best work of his career here).
The futuristic city New Venice has canals instead of streets (hence the name), and the seas around it are protected by Shark-Man, a sort of underwater Batman who fights pirates from a hammerhead-shaped sub using shark-themed gadgets.
If it sounds old-school and cheesy, it is, but it's a fun sort of old-school and cheesy, and there's a subversive complication—the hero dies in the first issue. Does that mean this will be the shortest comic-book series ever? Maybe not; Shark-Man just happens to have a son who looks old enough to fill out a shark suit. Guess we'll have to tune in next month, same Shark-time, same Shark-channel.
Bumperboy and the Loud, Loud Mountain
AdHouse Books
With big eyes and no nose, Bumperboy looks like something you'd see advertising candy or soda in Japan. He's a little guy who wears a white rubber body suit that helps him roll through "borp" holes that, like warps in video games, spit him out in random, faraway places. His best friend is a dog named Bumperpup who wears the same outfit and rolls through borp holes in a sort of giant hamster ball. They live in a house shaped like a marble.
Yes, it's a very weird concept that sounds much weirder to read about than to actually experience, as creator Debbie Huey's Bumperboy graphic novels feature charming artwork, cute character design and plots so strange it seems as if a child had written them (but in a good way).
In this second adventure, BB and BP discover a chatty mountain, a race of earless, armless marshmallow men, a fruit tree that gives mountains sentience and a secret, slave-labor-created soda operation run by a guy with a curly moustache. It's all connected, naturally. Or, at least, it seems natural when it's actually unfolding, thanks to Huey's superior art and ability to give even the most random-sounding story some veracity.