Tag Archives: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

I don’t plan on making all of these blog posts about comic books. but Co-Uberfriend-In-Chief Shaggy Shanahan insisted on a post about FanExpo Canada and I only go there for the comic books. But, before we get started with that, here are some non-comic book highlights:

- Towards the end of the day on Sunday, I happened to be taking a break and saw Heroes’ own Hayden Panettiere go into the bathroom. I can exclusively confirm that celebrities do need to use the toilet! And, not just the new ones! Soon after she left, I Dream Of Jeannie went in! And she’s, like, a million!

- There was an impressive, enormous Hagrid made of Lego. I could not confirm if it uses the bathroom.

- I drooled over an Actionclix model of a Scarab from Halo. It was glorious. And 150 dollars.

Scarab. Drool.

- If you have ever want to see Eric Roberts get covered in ejaculate, you have to see Wadzilla in Chillerama.

All right. Now that that’s out of the way – comics! At previous FanExpos, I usually mix in some celebrity and comic book personality meeting with my shopping. This year, for whatever reason, I concentrated mostly on the shopping. I did go to a panel on the DC comics relaunch that’s starting this week. Since I don’t actually read any DC comics on a monthly basis, I found it a little dry.

Shopping wise, I got some really good deals and had an excellent time hunting through the longboxes. I got the latest volume of Unwritten by Mike Carey and Peter Gross (excellent series so far), the first two volumes of Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man (love Bendis), and some other gems. But, lists are the big thing on the Internet these days, so here’s my top three most interesting buys at FanExpo Canada 2011:

3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics.
Recently, I started collecting the Archie Comics published Ninja Turtles issues. At some point I’ll do a whole post just on my infatuation with these characters, but for now I’ll concentrate on my find from the con. I went through a ton of long boxes looking for issues, and the few I found were usually overpriced. Apparently, I’m not the only one with this infatuation. When I finally found some that were reasonably priced, I managed to find what might be the single greatest cover of all time:

A trenchcoated chameleon with an uzi.

2. Showcase Presents Shazam! Captain Marvel is a character with a fascinating behind the scenes history. At one time, he was more popular than Superman. Then, DC threatened to sue the publishers so they stopped putting out issues. Eventually, DC just flat out bought the whole company. By the time they started making new issues with the characters, Marvel had taken the copyright on the name Captain Marvel. So, DC had to use the name Shazam. Meanwhile, in the U.K. they made their own version – Marvel Man. Nerdly sidenote: Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman both cut their teeth on that series. Anyway, what gets lost in all of this intrigue is just how cool and weird those early Captain Marvel comics are. It puts the weirdness of 60s Superman to shame! Captain Marvel is friends with an intelligent talking tiger named Mr. Tawky Tawny. There’s a Marvel Family that includes Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr. and Uncle Marvel. One of his major recurring villains is a psychic, alien caterpillar named Mr. Mind. All of this and more is contained in the black and white collections I got for $10. I can’t wait to read it!

SHAZAM!

1. The Crippled Masters. Not actually comic book related, it’s still the coolest find from FanExpo I’ve had in years. This is a movie that was released in 1982 and features two martial arts masters. One doesn’t have legs, and the other doesn’t have arms. I’ll let the trailer do the rest of the talking:

Crippled Masters Trailer