BOO! Happy Halloween!

And now for something completely different this Halloween: A recommendation. It's for a 4-issue anthology miniseries published by Monkeybrain Comics called Boo! Halloween Stories, and it features some great work by some of my fellow Twitterati by the names of Jon Morris and Ken Lowery.


Also? It's extremely good!


You can buy all four issues on Comixology here.

Friday Night Fights:Wright - Round 9: Mayhem In The Maternity Ward!

Halloween is just around the corner, which means it's time for a special monstrous edition of Friday Night Fights: Wright. However, this October also marks a very special event for me: My son's first birthday! 


So how do I simultaneously commemorate both those occasions? With this special fight scene  Batman Family#17, written by Bob Rozakis and illustrated by Michael Golden. Synopsis: Kirk (Man-Bat) Langstrom is pacing in the waiting room during his wife Francine's labor. (You can tell this story takes place in 1978 by the simple fact that Kirk is in the waiting room and not in the center of the action, camera at the ready. Trust me on this.) However, Kirk endures some "labor pains" of his own when....

"Anti-tank gun"? Ouch!

So Man-Bat went full-on Will Ferrell??

Anyway, Man-Bat ends up teaming up with Etrigan to stop Morgaine LeFay, who is responsible for the rash of demon-births, from turning more babies, including possibly Kirk and Francine's, into monsters. They shut her down and Kirk returns to the hospital, with the story ending with this beautiful Michael Golden-drawn revelation of the Langstroms' first child, Rebecca.

So of course Dan DiDio had to ruin this story for me 35 years later.


RAGE!!!!!!


Ok, rage over. Soooo....


Tonight's fight music is a song about another difficult labor story by Kate Bush.

For more post-natal pugilism, click here. And don't forget to vote!

(For "A.J.")

Friday Night Fights:Wright - Round 8: William Conrad Style!

For tonight's round of Friday Night Fights: Wright, I prove that Daredevil isn't the only one who can fight while wearing a fat suit. Christopher Chance aka The Human Target can give him a run for his money.


Tonight's plus-size pugilism comes from the backup story in Action Comics#423 by Len Wein and Dick Giordano. For those of you unfamiliar with the Human Target, Christopher Chance is a private investigator/bodyguard who assumes the identities of clients targeted by dangerous killers. Here, he's impersonating a man named Hiram Walsh, whose look was apparently patterned by Giordano after "Cannon" and "Jake And The Fat Man" star William Conrad.

There's an added personal element here: The man attempting to end Walsh's life is a deadly assassin named Dancer who, coincidentally enough, just happened to have killed Chance's father before his very eyes while Christopher was a kid, an event which inspired him to choose his current vocation.


Here, Chance-as-Walsh tracks his would-be-killer backstage to a closed theater.

So the Human Target is about to live up to his name for the last time, right?


WRONG!

THWAAM!


BONUS: Here's the aftermath of that fight, which gets....very weird.

In all fairness, Chance-as-a-boy did almost kill Dancer with his bare hands in a fit of sheer rage back then, but...still.


Tonight's fight music is from Spoon, who vocally express their wishes not to be like Christopher Chance.

For more faux-fat fracases, click here. And don't forget to vote!

Friday Night Fights: Wright - Round 7: What's Green, Black, And White And Suffers From Frequent Head Traumas?

For tonight's round of Friday Night Fights: Wright, I thought I'd dig up something from one of my favorite comics growing up, Justice League Of America#200. Here's something from writer Gerry Conway and artist Gil Kane.

Synopsis: the seven original (pre-Crisis) members of the JLA have been brainwashed into retrieving seven meteors containing the remains of the menace they first got together to defeat (pre-Crisis), the Appellax Aliens, while the remaining uncontrolled Leaguers rush to stop them. Green Lantern has gone to retrieve the meteor that was buried in Zimbabwe.

Well, just one minor one.

Ahh, it's been too long since I've shown some full-fledged Hal Jordan abuse! Thanks, Atom!


And since our fight ended off with one riddle, what's more fitting than for tonight's fight music to feature another one, this time courtesy of Nik Kershaw?

And for a final riddle: Who gives you fantastic fights like this every Friday?


A: This guy.

Friday Night Fights: Wright - Round 6: Freelance Kids!

Tonight's round of Friday Night Fights: Wright comes from the Freelancers#1, which begins the story of two early twenty-something best friends named Cassie (the blonde) and Val (the brunette) who also happen to be freelance bounty hunters raised together in a kung fu orphanage called The House Of Little Fortunes.


Tonight's entry features Cassie and Val as little kids making their first attempt to run away from the orphanage after Val mouthed off to the headmistress. But it's not even 5 minutes after walking on the streets that they run into these guys.

If this were a Nu52 comic, this might have gone off into a more....unpleasant direction. But fortunately, it's a BOOM! book, so...


...did I mention Val's penchant for mouthing off?

The creepy guys don't take that well.

Unfortunately for them.

Tonight's fight music is another demonstration of the power of two by Grover Washington Jr. and Bill Withers.

For more freelance fracases, click here. And don't forget to vote!