The Ephemerist

This map was published in the official DC Role Playing Game in 1990, and locates all East Coast cities that feature in DC Comics, including Gotham City and Metropolis. No sign of Blüdhaven, though, which miraculously sprouted from the ground in the early 2000’s.

I guess, with the DC titles glut of recent years, a map like this now would have to be some kind of 3D affair, with all earths on different planes.

Just thinking about this gives me a headache. More here.

(Thanks, Tom)

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[youtube width="500" height="418"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZntKMJFqLRA[/youtube]

A DC Comics fan mixed clips from a wide array of films to create what could be a real JLA film trailer. I think I’d go and see it.

(Thanks, Christian)

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From Showcase #64, 1966. This semi-naive art makes me a bit melancholic.

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At the height of the comics crusade, DC pulled out all it had to prove it was on the right side. The “oldest comics magazine publishing firm” sided with authority. They could have sided with other publishers to defame anybody who wanted to silence the art form, but they chose to pull themselves to safety first, and watch the others drown…

And besides, what is the “Best in Comics Entertainment” - Superman, DC or National Comics ? Talk about muddled branding…

(From Big Town 49, © DC Comics, 1957)

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This old ad (from The Adventures Of Alan Ladd #2), reminded me of an article I read in a Flemish newspaper the other day, which claimed that of all the members of a household, father gets the least presents with Christmas. It’s just something I wanted to bring out in the open, so to speak. So there…

And another thing - are there still men who address their wives as “mother” ? Or is she really his mother, and has she aged very well ? We’ll never know…

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By chance I came across a bunch of Alan Ladd comics recently, which also contained these wonderful elaborate comic style ads for Ray-O-Vac batteries and P-F sneakers. What was the deal with all these hyphens in the brand names from the 1950’s ?

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Please. Don’t suck.

Oh, and that goes for you too. Be warned.

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From the DC Infinite Halloween Special (which, by the way, isn’t half bad as holiday specials go). Looks like they’re trying to pull the Marvel-Bullpen-cum-Image-Rebels spiel all over again. Who can name the other eager beavers in this picture, besides Dan DiDio ?

(artwork © DC Comics 2007)

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Used to be a time when you could find stamps with US comic characters from countries all over the world, except from the US themselves. Since 2005, the US Post Office is finally catching on. Brilliant move, although I think the choice of characters is a bit too much driven by marketing, and the art is not that representative. Personnaly, I would have had one artist doing all the portraits (Darwyn Cooke, or Alex Ross). Still, it beats licking the back of a president…

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In the 1940s, National Periodicals began to carry educational features scattered throughout the pages of its comics. One such feature, written and drawn by unidentified creators, was the “Animal Alphabet”. These were half vertical pages pairing a cartoony animal with a short rhyme - and a plug for a current comic thrown in for good measure.

Arthur Lortie has gone and collected all of these features on The DC Alphabet, featuring good scans of each of the 25 episodes (indeed, DC stopped at Y).

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