I was struggling to find something to write about this week when the universe presented me with The Colonel of Two Worlds, a promotional comic from KFC and DC Entertainment that features a team-up between Col. Sanders and The Flash and Green Lantern. Free copies of it will be given away this weekend at New York Comic-Con, but those not in attendance will be able to download it online.
Done by Tony Bedard and Tom Derenick and for the most part it’s something a lot of modern superhero comics aren’t; a lot of fun. I’ve got to confess I had completely blanked on the fact The Flash even had a new unnecessarily over-complicated, hyper-detailed costume until I saw it here (I thought it was supposed to be red and darker red but here it reads as being more red and black). Happily Green Lantern is wearing his Silver Age outfit, the one with the full-length opera gloves, and not his current "Renegade" look.
I can’t predict if we have another Pokemon on our hands, but I’ve seen the show and at least it doesn’t look anything like Pokemon; which is a good thing given how many kids-playing-games cartoons I’ve seen been. It’s about a kid, here called Nate, who’s befriended by Whisper, a Yo-Kai (ghost) who gives him the titular watch which allows him to see the mischievous creatures who cause problems for people. Together with a cat Yo-Kai named Jibanyan, they make friends with some of the creatures and battle others, which is one of the nicer aspects of the series. Nate has the option for either (as the show puts it) "negotiation or confrontation;" he doesn’t always have to fight, and in the first episode Nate gets good results by just talking to the critters.
There was a comic book convention in Russia this month, though I didn’t know until I saw it mentioned in passing on Facebook. It’s no wonder I hadn’t heard anything about it because it took quite a bit of online searching just to confirm that Comic-Con Russia had been held on October 1-4 at Moscow’s Crocus Expo. Though it had "Comic" in its title I honestly couldn’t even tell you just how big the comic book component of the festival was; the only evidence of any comic book presence was a piece on the GameScope website titled "Trina Robbins and Jim Salicrup Comic Con Russia 2015."
It also made a strong case for the argument that "Geek Culture" has become an international phenomenon, citing the cons in Delhi in 2011, Dubai in 2012 and Romania in 2014. But it was also aware some thought the Con was "another advertisement for westernization" and there that there was some resistance to the very idea of fandom, that it somehow "isn’t Russian." One woman, who was only there only "to supervise her 13 year-old-son," was quoted as saying "It’s not part of our culture and it’s not part of us."
* I would be neglectful of me to not mention that Dejah Thoris is also a part of this makeover relaunch, which I find more than a little ironic seeing as how she has a literary license to be 99% naked (as in, this was the state she appeared in when Edgar Rice Burroughs first introduced her in the 1917 novel A Princess of Mars). It’s also worth mentioning her comics outfit bares a striking resemblance to what the character wears in the 2012 movie John Carter (with maybe a little fairy princess thrown in for good measure).
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
