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Showing posts with label Atom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Atom. Show all posts
Our next DCU travel poster is for the Atom's burg, Ivytown.
By the way, when it was first introduced "Ivytown" was one word. Then they started to treat it as two words ("Ivy Town"). The fact that comic book lettering is all upper-case and is often kind of squunchy hasn't helped, and DC still doesn't do it consistently. I'm going with the one-word spelling, because it's the original one and because "-town" is much more commonly used as a suffix in place names than it is as part of an open compound.
Poor Ivytown. Unlike, say, Metropolis, Gotham, or Central City, it doesn't have a distinctive skyline or identifiable landmarks. The same was true of Coast City, but we got around that by choosing a skyline that was clearly on the water, had Hal Jordan zipping through, and was tinted green. But Ivytown doesn't have those kinds of geographic or chromatic short-cuts for us. Hm....
Turns out there aren't a lot of good images or information to work with for Ivytown. Mostly it's characterized as being centered around its prestigious school, Ivy University. The rest of it was quite vague, even for the Silver Age. It took writer Gail Simone to lavish some details on the Little Town That Could in her quirky All-New Atom series. Thanks to her and artist John Byrne, we do have this:
Ryan Choi's first view of Ivy University.
Okay. That's a pretty unique view, particularly with that statue there. I can work with that. Abstract that view a little bit, and we get...
A little color block variation for rhythm and balance. Collegiate font for the university setting. The red of the weird statue to bring out the Atom's logo. A cameo appearance by Ray Palmer himself. Really, the only thing missing is a silhouette of mad Jean Loring lurching around in a paranoidal panic, swinging a hotel cigarette stand above her head.
These are starting to look kind of nice on my one bedroom wall, by the way...
The next one, I'll let you contemplate in advance. It's one you probably couldn't get anywhere but here. The next DCU travel poster will be for Apex City. You think about that for a while, and see what your mind's eye comes up with...
So the Wind Pirate is using his Kirby Cube to take over the earth, which will be destroyed in less than three hours by Jean Loring's brain, which the Atom has entered to try and punch out the crazy evil.
Have you ever wondered what the inside of Jean Loring's brain looks like?
It looks like Frank Stella ate and threw up the collected works of Dr. Seuss.
Well, no WONDER Jean Loring's insane, she's got a slice of kiwi stuck in her brain. Atom takes a right at the kiwi slice, follows the fettucini-brick road along the Sea of Go-Go Checks and finds...
a giant pearl of crazy-evil. Which he goes inside. And punches.
And, pathetically inadequate word though it is sometimes... meanwhile...
Aquaman beats the crap out of the pirates...
"Time--to teach--these rude Parisians-- a lesson!"
and Captain Comet sweats.
Comet; we all loved Johnny Storm, stop obsessing over it.
Ray's punching treatment works,
It's not easy to get inside your girlfriend's head. It's even harder to get out.
... and Jean Loring's brain stops destroying the earth, and the Wind Pirate ... well, um, I think he blows up along with his ship. Or escapes. To come back when someone finally lets me write Aquaman.
See? I told you!
Well, the world's is safe, the Atom takes some aspirin, and Jean Loring lives to terrify the world another day. What else is there?
Next time, we wrap up with:
The Top Ten Things I Learned from The Attack of Jean Loring's Brain.
Well, while you were lolling about in a post-New Year's Eve stupor, I was hard at work for you, scouring seedy comic stores along the waterfront, risking capture by the United Underworld, all for some Bronze Age lunacy to lampoon... for YOU.
And, there, right near Ye Olde Benbow Tavern, after dodging some nuns and a Salvation Army Band, I found it:
Oh, yes.... there will be lunacy.
You've probably never heard of it, and are even less likely to have read it (unless you're Damian Maffei). It contains...
But you can just call it the same thing I call it during...
THE ATTACK OF JEAN LORING'S BRAIN
week
here at the Absorbascon!
Stay tuned.
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