Balladeer’s Blog’s 31 Days of Halloween continues with this neglected horror hero.
THE COFFIN (2000) – Written by Phil Hester and drawn by Mike Huddleston, The Coffin was originally a four-part serial before being collected into graphic novel format. I’ll provide details below but right up front let me point out that the horrific but intriguing premise is that the Coffin is a dead scientist whose soul is trapped within a polymer techno-suit of his own creation.
Dr Ashar Ahmad, the brilliant scientist in question, is employed by Heller Technologies, whose eponymous owner is a vile and amoral tycoon. Heller himself is a figure straight out of a horror film.
He’s incredibly old and his withered, wrinkled body is still functioning only because of all of the legal and illegal organ transplants he has had. His body is a battleground of scars from all that surgery. Obviously immortality is what our power-mad plutocrat longs for.
And so Heller Technologies recruited Dr Ahmad to devise strong, lightweight polymers for medical purposes. To that end Ashar has developed polymers that can be used to form an artificial membrane that is perfectly impermeable and incredibly durable.
Extensions of that technology result in masses of polymers – literally thousands of layers – some of them only a few molecules thick. Dr Ahmad has managed to make it so that these polymers react to electronic pulses like the kind from a human brain to its body’s muscles, making the polymer “skin” or membrane expand or contract in response to those electronic pulses. Continue reading
AMAZING ADVENTURES Vol 2 #28 (January 1975)
AMAZING ADVENTURES Vol 2 #27 (November 1974) 
Cyberfrog and Heather Swain are back in action! In the tradition of other great duos like Rocket Raccoon and Groot, Howard the Duck and Beverly Switzler, Rocky and Bullwinkle or Crusader Rabbit and Rags the Tiger, everyone’s favorite frog/ full-grown woman pair have returned in their first new adventure since the 1990s. 
Van Sciver, after legendary runs at Marvel and DC, is the leader of the comic book “outlaws” pursuing their own projects free from the corporate influence of the Big Two publishers. 
Here’s Balladeer’s Blog’s examination of Don McGregor’s 1973-1975 Black Panther story Panther’s Rage. I’m no comic book expert but in my opinion Panther’s Rage surpasses much of the work done by the overrated and overpraised Alan Moore. 
Labor Day weekend is the appropriate time to post this look at neglected working class folk hero Joe Magarac. This figure was the Steel Mill equivalent of Paul Bunyan and John Henry. 
As a lame play on words since this is Labor Day season I’ll present Joe Magarac’s origin and then depict his tales as “Labors” like in The Labors of Hercules. 
With superheroes OWNING pop culture right now, readers often ask me where the next big names are coming from since most of the iconic figures from Marvel and DC have already been brought to the big and small screens. Richard Meyer’s JAWBREAKERS series, featuring a team of mercenary superheroes, has become a graphic novel phenomenon in recent years. THESE are the superhero legends of tomorrow. 
Marvel Comics rules the superhero roost right now, and with the movie business being what it is that means they pretty much rule blockbuster cinema, too. We have all seen Marvel’s superhero characters dominate the big screen in a way not seen since Cowboy stars of long ago. 
CAPTAIN TERROR 
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