Oh, no, after 2000 years, I'm sure they're still fine...

This was a hole in my collection that I finally picked up, at the Spokane Comicon: Warlord #63. The main story doesn't move the plotline much, and a Masters of the Universe insert in the middle doesn't help. But, this issue features the first installment of The Barren Earth backup, "Stranded!" Written and co-created by Gary Cohn, art and co-created by Ron Randall.

Several thousand years in the future, earth's sun has become a red giant, which I'm pretty sure would just destroy earth outright...anyway, humanity has long colonized other worlds, but is currently at war with the insectoid Qlov. An expedition ship is sent to the outpost on Earth, which young crewman Jinal lampshades points out hasn't been visited in two millenia. "We can assume that they've gotten a bit rusty," the nameless captain admits.

Nameless? Yeah, he won't last out the installment. A Qlov battle-globe attacks, overpowering then boarding the ship. The humans fight valiantly, but are outnumbered and outgunned. The captain announces self-destruct, and manages to take out the Qlov ship; but out of a crew of 360, only six escape. (That we see; there could easily be a Lost-style whole other batch of crewmen escaping just off-panel. I don't think there is, but even so.) And one dies when the shuttle crash-lands, when Jinal gets her first glimpse of the desert of the Barren Earth...

...and she hasn't even hit bottom yet. Although Jinal mentions "being from a frontier world," as justification for her sidearms and the fighting skill she would display later, here Jinal seems like a redshirt ensign after the rest of the bridge crew, away team, everyone else is killed. Of course, she does have a lightsaber-y thing...

I still wish the Barren Earth would be collected--I've mentioned it before, but while it's a solid-if-standard adventure serial in the pages of Warlord, the follow-up limited series Conqueror of the Barren Earth takes a bit of a weird turn: how far is Jinal willing to go, to unite the Barren Earth and fight the Qlov? Pretty damn far, as it turns out...
Read more!

I had a brief window where there wasn't a lot of figures on the racks for me and before I paid my taxes, where I was if not flush with cash, I had a bit to spread around. And a bit of it went to Kickstarter. I chipped in just a bit to Rifftrax's 2018 Kickstarter, for the shorts: I'll go see the live shows in the theater. I was thinking I had backed Karl Kesel and Tom Grummett's Section Zero about the same time, but that might have been a bit ago. I have a signed one coming for that, so yay! But I did also just recently back Ron Randall's Trekker: Chapeltown as well.

Randall had been the artist for The Barren Earth, a long running back-up feature in Warlord, before eventually becoming the artist for Warlord itself! Aw, man: checking his name on the blog, he inked a few issues of the Keith Giffen Doom Patrol too. It was mostly on the strength of Barren Earth that I decided to throw in for Trekker, but I knew I had read it before at least in passing in Dark Horse Presents. Then, at a recent toy show, a local seller had a quarter bin with some, so I got Trekker #1-5 (from 1987-88) and the Trekker Color Special from 1989. I'm hoping to hit that box again at the next comic show, since I missed #6, but luckily enough Ron Randall is going to be a guest at the next Lilac City Comicon! (And Mike Grell, which'll be neat!)

And for Trekker itself? A fun little book! Solidly pulpy sci-fi. Mercy St. Clair is a bounty hunter, a Trekker; with the prerequisite tragic past and mildly surly attitude. (But not so tough as to seem indestructible or so mean as to be unlikable.) It's serialized over on Randall's site, give it a look!
Read more!

Maybe if I bump it up to three a year...

There were 133 issues of the original Warlord series (and 6 annuals!) and while I've joked about blogging an issue or two a year, we're still maybe not quite a quarter through the series! (Do I even have all of them? Um, well...) I don't plan on covering every single issue, but today we'll do a quick one with a checklist of the others we've seen so far! From 1982, Warlord #52, "The Sorceress' Apprentice" Written by Mike Grell (with uncredited scripting by Sharon Grell), pencils by Mark Texiera, inks by Mike DeCarlo. This was the first issue with the main feature not penciled by Grell!

Travis had ended up in the frozen steppes of Soviet Russia and was working his way back to Skartaris; in bloody fashion. Admittedly, it's not like the Russian troops would listen to him or believe him even if he spoke Russian, but he's just tearing into them. Jacking a helicopter, Travis begins a long trip; while back at Castle Deimos, his daughter Jennifer was still mostly catatonic, severely traumatized by Deimos. The witch Ashiya sees something in her, though: Jennifer understood machines (at least, better than Ashiya did) so the witch wanted her help with the ancient Atlantean machines in the castle. In return, she would teach Jennifer magic.

Ashiya takes the form of Jennifer's mother, Travis's first wife; to gain her trust. The two begin teaching each other, even if Jennifer's protector Faaldren doesn't approve. He's never a major character, but I forget Faaldren's deal: from Ashiya's threat, I think he was a lizard or maybe a snake, turned into a man. Very Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo, but she just needed some muscle, someone to open jars and clean the gutters and so on.  Meanwhile, Travis nearly gets back to Skartaris when he runs out of fuel and crashes the helicopter, but is greeted by a pleasant surprise: Tara and Shakira! Who normally wouldn't travel together, but it was too cold for Shakira to change out of her "fur coat!"

Also this issue: back-up feature "Dragonsword," written by Paul Levitz, art by Tom Yeates. It...it's not one of my favorites.

Annual #5

#133

#128

#121

#111

#104

#100

#95

#93

#87

#84

#79-80 (The Barren Earth features.)

 
#77

#66

#63 (The Barren Earth feature, anyway.)

#60

#54

#50

#48

#46

#42

#41

#40

#39

#38

#37 (The OMAC back-up.)

#35

#31
 
#27

#26

#23

#22

#17

#4

#3

#2

Read more!

Like I said, nothing but respect for MY president.

I mentioned this issue on Twitter the other day, but wasn't going to blog it right away, even though I love it and had a hard time finding a copy in the quarter bin. (I totally still have my old one, but still!) But let's jump in anyway: from 1984, Warlord #84, "Hail to the Chief" Written by Cary Burkett, pencils by Dan Jurgens, inks by Dan Adkins.

I was going to hold off a bit since this was towards the end of a multi-issue time-travel storyline, ranging from the present New Atlantean war in Skartaris, to a post-nuclear war America in 2303, to ancient Atlantis. But we're getting ahead of things there: in 2303, after the suicide of the president, who had been the pawn of a traitor trying to consolidate power, Congress proclaims Travis Morgan the new President of the United States! A surprisingly sheepish Travis asks "Why me?" and is told post-nuke communications make an election unfeasible, but his leadership had been proven. Travis balks at accepting, but Shakira tells him he's the only man for the job. (His tantrum and her ensuing pep-talk are the second and third pages of the issue, pushing the title's traditional double-splash pages back to four and five!) Travis is immediately swamped with duties (and a tailor pushing a new wardrobe!) and has to chase them out of the Oval Office at swordpoint...

After a visit to the present to check in with Jennifer Morgan and Tinder, we cut back to several weeks into Travis's presidency, and it's not going well: the nuclear war had damaged earth's ecology behind any repair. Frustrated at having to manage it, Travis has the idea to stop the nuclear war before it occurred, and checks with his friend Dr. Reno. Reno explains maybe, in theory, the timeline could be altered, but there's no guarantee of a better tomorrow. Still, it was more doable than Travis could have guessed, since they already had time-travelling ships, in a cavern deep below a mountain in Utah...that sounds very familiar to Travis. Reno realizes the time-travel experiments there may have caused a "time-stasis field," cutting the mountain off from regular time, or else those ships would have been used during the nuclear war.

Reno, Travis, and his companions Shakira and Krystovar head to the mountain; where Reno explains the situation to the scientists that had only lived two years while centuries passed on the surface. Below the mountain is the cavern, which Travis had first seen at the start of the storyline in Warlord Annual #2. They plan to use the flying-saucer style time ships, to change history...!

Also this issue: another chapter of the Barren Earth, in which Jinal and her friends are taken to visit the embassy of the Old Ones, which has technology far beyond what she had expected. Indeed, the Old Ones may have been responsible for the earth's most recent inhabitants, the lizard people and the "mushroom folk" the Mulge. Jinal petitions the Old Ones' speaker for them to help her unify the planet against the alien Qlov, but as the speaker shows her images of some Qlov stranded like she was, he asks why they should side with her? To Jinal, they're obviously the bad guys, since their war had gone on for years; but the speaker tasks her with capturing one of the Qlov for questioning...(Story by Gary Cohn, art by Ron Randall.)

Although I would pick up most if not all the back issues eventually, this was the second issue of Warlord that I know I bought: I had #66 first, but can't remember how I got it exactly; but I read Warlord off the racks from #83 to the end.




Read more!

Couple more like that, Luke's gonna put that 'whiny fanboy' rep to bed.

Panel from Star Wars #14, "The Sound of Armageddon!" Written and edited by Archie Goodwin, art by Carmine Infantino and Terry Austin. This wasn't the first Marvel Star Wars comic I had as a kid, but it's one of my favorites, and chock full of house ads for stuff at the time I had never heard of, like Machine Man, Devil Dinosaur, and the X-Men. What? I was like seven!

Anyway, the Comic Book Shop had another of their progressive sales this weekend, and I made it in with the boys three times to take advantage of it. (Partly for the increasing discount, and partly because the Youngest will only let me go through the long boxes for so long...) I was able to replace a number of lost or mangled books for cheap. So, what did we get?

Star Wars #14 & 15
Captain America #269, Annual #5 (In the Annual, Gene Colan art! #269, Mike Zeck and Team America! Whoo!)
Conan #100, #161, #163, #164, #167, #200, Annual #6 (Mostly replacements: lending out Conan comics is like kissing them goodbye. Some great covers in there.)
Marvel Premiere #32 (Monark Starstalker, Howard Chaykin art!) #46 (Man-Wolf, George Perez art!) #56 (Dominic Fortune, Chaykin again) and #61 (a Star-Lord story I vaguely remembered reading as a kid)
Kull #5
Warlord #64-65 (Am I the only one who would like the Barren Earth backups in the new Warlord series? Is it just me?)
World's Finest #240, #276
Daredevil #268
Thor #316

And a few more from the quarter boxes, like Danger Trail #1-3...man, #4 is gonna be a bear now. A lot of these will probably be blogged later: I was impressed with Daredevil #268 a lot more than I had expected, since I just picked it back up for the great John Romita Jr. cover. More later, I'm going to be reading and watching Deadliest Warrior and the Simpsons at the same time, so, um, busy.

I did take a look for Deadpool/Death, one of the only Deadpool books I'm still looking for; and there wasn't a single Deadpool book to be had in the back issue boxes. Completely wiped out.

Oh, and I'm trying to finish a topical strip for Wednesday, and I'd be done...except I can't find two figures I need for it. And I've used both of them before, so that's driving me up the wall...

Read more!

Lilac City Comicon this weekend!

As usual, I have the bingo cards! But a new development: this year, my Youngest decided he wanted to go as well! Omigod, I am going to load that kid like a mule. How many comics can he carry? I'll let you know! As long as you don't let the child labor law people know...


Still can't believe I got that Conan, honestly; and the Savage Sword next to it I got as a reprint, Dark Horse's Savage Sword of Conan volume 22 for super cheap--less than the cost of two issues back in the day! I just recently moved that one from my unread pile.

I don't usually go for autographs at the shows, but Mike Grell and Ron Randall are guests this year! Most of my beloved Warlord comics are read to the point of looking chewed on, but I wouldn't mind getting something from Grell's Iron Man run signed; and if not an issue of Trekker, I need to find my set of Conqueror of the Barren Earth. We'll see what we get!
Read more!

Pirates=Still Jerks.

Years ago, we checked out an issue where King Conan's wife Zenobia was stolen by pirates. But Zenobia wasn't a hardened warrior, like Tara from the Warlord, that would never happen to her...oh, wait, we're doing this? All right...from 1984, Warlord #87, "Bargain with the Devil" Written by Cary Burkett, pencils by Dan Jurgens, inks by Rich Buckler.

Travis's ship, the Wind Shadow, has sailed into the midst of a pitched sea battle. One of the participating ships is a New Atlantean vessel, and thinks Travis is reinforcements; he's not, his forces are at war with the Atlanteans and captured that ship. Travis and his crew take the Atlantean ship, which was carrying captured slaves; but then they get a call--a shout, literally--from the other ship, the pirate vessel of the dread Hawkins the red-hand, Cap'n Hawk, the scourge of the Skartarian Seas, otherwise known as the Sea Snake! Travis has never heard of him, and isn't that impressed; but wonders if he can't use the pirate against the Atlanteans.

The Cap'n isn't adverse to making a deal with Travis, but wants an ace up his sleeve, and has his men kidnap Tara while he and Travis are hashing out the details. He'd planned on keeping her as insurance, with a bit of ransom for good measure, figuring Travis wouldn't dare attack while they held her. Yeah, not so much: Travis has himself launched at the pirates by catapult, then shoots Hawk's sword with the always-handy .44 Automag! Not to be left out, Tara gets to slug Hawk as well.

Hawk graciously decides to let Travis and Tara go, after all, he was merely, um, testing them, to insure Travis was the legendary Warlord. And he was still down with rescuing slaves for sacks of gold, so Travis did win an ally. A slimy, untrustworthy bastard of one, but still.

And also this issue: another installment of the Barren Earth, in which the captured bug-headed alien Qlov seems far less threatening when it repeats the word "Qlov!" excitedly. And seems to be wearing slacks. ("The City in the Sky!" Written by Gary Cohn, art by Ron Randall.)
Read more!

This would be total Christmas nightmare fuel, if it wasn't so funny.

The Hellboy Christmas Special features the usual rock-solid Hellboy tale (including an old woman who thinks Big Red is St. Nick) and a Gary Gianni Corpus Monstrum story, which I almost wish was still a back-up feature in B.P.R.D. or something. (Like Barren Earth or Tales of Dave, it's a feature I like when I see it, but don't necessarily go out of my way to get.) But both of those are overshadowed for me by the inimitable Steve Purcell, with Toybox.

Purcell of course is the creator of Sam and Max, Freelance Police, which are probably better known for their video games or even cartoon than for their comic, which is a crime against comics you should all hang your heads for. I'm not sure if he did more Toybox stories, but I wish he would. In this one, Suda (weird little goth-looking girl) and Ernie (rat) end up at an old lady's cottage on "the night when a strange visitor arrives with a message of giving."

The cottage is empty, the old woman Suda thought lived there gone, a mysterious pile of black lumps left in her bed. They start a fire, and fall asleep. Ernie wakes up late, the fire out, to see the arrival of a strange visitor.


As the spider rummages through the pantry, then moves to eat Suda, Ernie has to take it down with a handy harpoon: "I can take him. I have thumbs, and...the superior brain of a mammal!" Dead, the spider's belly starts to wriggle, so Ernie takes a butcher knife to it, finding another surprise:

Well, at least Ernie saved next Christmas. But, to continue gushing, I hate rats, and Purcell makes them look great. I'm not sure if this issue has been reprinted in it's entirety, since Dark Horse usually just keeps the Hellboy stuff in the trades, but see if you can dig it up. Read more!

I don't intend to blog all of these either, but we'll see...

The other day I wrote another Warlord post and scheduled it for 2029 or something, which admittedly seems optimistic as hell; but I keep setting them up to run a couple a year. I didn't blog the back-up features though, possibly because we could be in the Barren Earth by 2029, the way things are going...Better do this now, then: from 1984, Warlord #79, "Slave Market" and Warlord #80, "Pursuit" Written by Gary Cohn, art by Ron Randall.

We're up to episode 14 and 15 here: the serial would continue until episode 23 in Warlord #88. I was going to say it was more than half over when I started reading regularly with #83; except that's not quite right: there's a memorable bit of body terror in #73 that we might have to come back to sometime. Jinal and her companions Skinner and Renna have been captured by slavers; where they meet Yisrah, a chatty "travelling shaman." Skinner notices Yisrah may be more than he seems, as he lets slip a clue about the Old Ones' floating city, D'roz. At a slave auction, the four are rescued by their Harahashan (lizard-man) ally Barasha, and when the slavers pursue them (like the title) they ride into a massacre.

In the wrecked slavers' tank, Jinal tells Yisrah she plans for him to find D'roz for her, as the shaman finds her weapons. Maybe not as bumbling as he seems, though. With this post we've blogged six of the twenty-three chapters; but I keep meaning to come back to the mini-series, too.
Read more!

Vertigo Comics has had its hits over the years, like Sandman, Preacher, or Transmetropolitan; and also some successes imported from the DC Universe proper, like Swamp Thing, Animal Man, or the Doom Patrol. But for every import that thrives, or even does respectably (like, say, Unknown Soldier or the Losers) Vertigo's had a ton of DC transplants that are forgettable at best. Tomahawk, Prez, Black Orchid, Congo Bill, Deadman...a lot of characters and titles that didn't break it any bigger in Vertigo than in DC.

Which brings us to another revival: Angel and the Ape. Written by the American Century team of Howard Chaykin and David Tischman...look, I don't care if Chaykin's done a ton of other books, I liked that one...and art by Philip Bond of the perennial classic Kill Your Boyfriend; this revival had a strong pedigree. Actually, it was Angel and the Ape's second revival, Phil Foglio had previously done a 1991 miniseries. The thing is, I didn't read that one...or the original series. And I've read a lot of comics, but apparently they're hard to come by, and I can only recall one comic with the duo.

I can see why it would be tempting to try and bring it back, though, since it seems to have that high concept hook: she's a hot young blond! He's a gorilla that wants to draw comics! Together, they fight crime! In some versions, Angel's a ditz--at best--and Sam Simeon, the titular Ape, can talk; in the Vertigo series, Angel's a party girl, no rocket scientist, but not dumb; Sam can't talk but no one seems to have a problem with him being a gorilla.

This was a four-issue limited, which probably would've led to more if it had taken off; which I guess it did not. Maybe it's just I've liked other Chaykin books better (I liked the all-but-forgotten Power and Glory, for pete's sake...) but it seems like they were trying to walk a fine line between smutty and funny and didn't quite nail either, but both have their moments. Bond's art is great though, so good I'm not quite sure how it didn't carry the whole project through. Maybe it wasn't promoted enough, maybe it was promoted as a nostalgia book when it totally wasn't, and don't you have to remember something to be nostalgic for it? And the four issues were one mystery; second-guessing, maybe two shorter stories or single-issues might've been the way to go. Yeah, like I know.

Currently, Vertigo's got new versions of the Haunted Tank and another shot at Unknown Soldier (Garth Ennis did a limited with him, that I really need to finish a writeup for here...) so they haven't run out of DC characters looking for a new limelight. Probably won't for a while, either. It might not be tops of anyone else's list, but I'd love to see a revival/relaunch of The Barren Earth myself.

Cheer up: if they ever do a Vertigo Sugar and Spike, maybe then you'll get that Showcase collection. Some readers might remember a few years back Kevin Smith took an almost Vertigo-style look at Stanley and His Monster in Green Arrow, of all places...I think I'd prefer Sam's version. Or Philip Bond's. Read more!

I mentioned some time back that I appear to be blogging an issue or two of Warlord a year (and blogged another proper issue and that crappy Convergence since!) and it's not really intentional, but why not hit another one now? From 1984, Warlord #77, "Let My People Go!" Written by Cary Burkett, pencils by Dan Jurgens, inks by Dan Adkins.

Shamballah and neighboring Kaambuka have been invaded by New Atlantis--this Atlantis being unrelated to Aquaman, Namor, Spongebob, or such. But while Travis had a flashback to old Atlantis some issues back that made it seem OK, the New Atlanteans are monstrous. Sometimes literally: most of their officers were mutated Beast-Men...which, with few exceptions, mostly looked like regular medieval-style troops but with like a bear head or something. A little low-end, but probably perfect for action figures, not unlike the Warlord figures advertised this very issue! (I don't think the Beast-Men were specifically intended to become toys, because I don't think they did; although there's any number of He-Man knock-offs with the big muscley body and a beast-head!)

While supporting characters Shakira and Scarheart rescue Kaambuka's King Ashir, Travis and Tara share a moment at the lake: this war is horrible by any measure, with war crimes and atrocities and refugees and death, and it is about the best of both worlds for the Warlord. He gets battle, without having to leave his wife, and that's a win-win for him; even if Travis isn't going to examine that too closely. They're interrupted by the bard Graemore, Tara's childhood love; and Travis suspects him of swiping the odd metal cartridge stamped "U.S.A.F." that he had found in a mysterious cavern of weapons. The reader sees an odd, hairy hand take it, though.

Elsewhere, a New Atlantean force attacks a seemingly undermanned castle, only to be driven away by giant monsters. The castle formerly belonged to Deimos, and is now the home of sorceress supreme Jennifer Morgan, who spooks the troops with illusions, but now wants to find out more about the invaders. Later, Travis rallies his forces to attack a New Atlantean slave caravan, freeing the slaves and then capturing a galley. Next, Travis and Tara plan to sail to the cavern of weapons...which of course is not going to go as plan, but there are some big detours coming! Which is probably why the New Atlantean invasion would go on until the somewhat underwhelming finish in issue #100.

Also this issue: Episode twelve of "The Barren Earth!" While Jinal has lost all of her stranded shipmates from the first episode, she has fought hard to survive, made friends among the native humans, and forged some allies between different races. Still, the threat of the alien Qlov lingers overhead, so her discovery of a working Federation space cruiser is a godsend. That of course is taken away before the end of this chapter, by mysterious hooded types who remotely control the ship and destroy it. I absolutely wouldn't blame Jinal for being a little discouraged at this point, but she realizes somebody had the power to control her ship, and it may be time to look for them...I wish DC would relaunch this one, but I already know it's not "meat-and-potatoes" enough for their current business plan.
Read more!

Things I Bitch About, Part 1

Wow, Hood Ornament Man gets all the chicks., originally uploaded by googum.

This is:

A. Once again, toys not in scale with one another...What? They are in scale? Oh.

B. Wow, Hood Ornament Man gets all the chicks.

C. Strength 18, Charisma 18, but Armor Class of 8.

D. Yeah, you wish that C was the geekiest reference we'll ever have here, but just wait.

Things I bitch about, part 1

Going the roundabout way on this one, so hang on.

The guy upfront with the awesome helmet is a Warlord figure, circa 1983. Not one I ever had as a kid, he was a good deal on ebay, though sans his weapons, and I believe he originally came with a mini-comic and a cape of some kind. As you can probably guess, the toys were not quite a knockoff, but in the same vein as Mattel's Masters of the Universe toys. He-Man ruled the boys' toy aisle at the time, and I think the Warlord's packaging even name-checked him: "Plays with Masters of the Universe figures," or some such.

The original comic from Mike Grell, however, predated Masters by many years. I know I saw an issue or two in passing around fifth grade or so, but some time later I found a 100 page DC Blue Ribbon Digest of the Warlord. Now, keep in mind I could be wrong about some of this: I don't think Warlord was a full length comic in the first place; it usually ran with a backup feature, possibly in order to get a cheaper mailing rate.

I remember the Barren Earth as the backup for most of the time I read it, but moving on: the digest version cuts and crams a ton of issues (short or not) into the complete (abridged) Deimos Saga, and it works suprisingly well as recompressed storytelling. Travis Morgan, the Warlord of the underground land Skartaris, starts the book with a short recap of the first four or so issues, then leading a rebellion against Deimos, killing him, going back to the surface world, picking up a hot Russian redhead as a sidekick, visiting a friend who's now a king and has a cursed battleax stuck to his hand(!), and I don't have the book next to me as I type this, but I don't think we're more than 40 pages in.

Which brings us to our first "Things I Bitch About" bulletpoint: I miss when comics were printed on the cheapest available paper. The current Marvel Essentials and DC Showcase volumes are the closest current approximations to the old digests or reprint comics, but they aren't quite the same bite-sized goodness.

To be fair, I have seen scans of reprints like the Legion of Super-Heroes archives, which are recolored and printed on great paper; and as such look way better than the pulpy reprints I got as a kid. But, while I first read old Superboy and the Legion comics at my mom's cousins' house for Thanksgiving; the digests were how I really got into the book. Who were all these characters? Well, with several issues worth in each digest, I was able to catch up and get a better understanding what was going on in the current Legion series. I was also exposed to the Legion of Super-Pets, the Substitute Heroes, and the noble sacrifice of a protoplasmic blob ("Proty," which would be like calling me "Whitey," or "Humey."), but again, neither here nor there.

The point is, you aren't going to turn kids onto the Legion of Super-Heroes, or comics in general, with fifty dollar archive editions. Those are for old stiffs like me--no, scratch that, old stiffs with more disposable income. Little kids are never going to get their grubby little hands on those.

Aside number one: although I don't have anywhere near a complete set, I do have several of the DC Digest volumes. Most were individual stories, but occasionally they would do "A Book-Length Shocker!" This could be a few issues or a complete storyline, perhaps editted of subplots, so you could read the whole thing. They weren't as good as the Warlord one, but how could they be?

Aside number two: Recently, I read a piece explaining the simple reason why Mattel's Barbie dolls have the "unrealistic" measurements that some feminists and others have been grousing about for years. Setting up an unhealthy, unattainable body image for little girls and whatnot, you know. Why would Mattel do this? Because Barbie's measurements have to be unrealistic, or her clothes wouldn't fit properly.

Seems so simple, doesn't it? I never thought of that either. But, if Barbie is an unrealistic, unattainable, false ideal; what's He-Man? Little boys in the 80's weren't all bulking up and hitting the 'roids and wearing fur underpants. I hope.

Read more!