We were getting off the C train when I heard it – tinny and distant, sure. But unmistakable, still: the theme to “Superman.”

It was coming from some guy’s cell phone. I couldn’t tell whose at first. Then I saw a short, rotund man shoving people and shouting “make way, make way! Here come the KING!”

As soon as he got off the train he spun towards the rest of us and held his hands up in a regal Superman pose, allowing the strains of Donner’s super-score to wash over him. And then he announced it real, real loud, in case any one didn’t catch it:

“I AM the KING, baby. The king is HERE!”

You’ve got to admire that kind of self-esteem…

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Previously on Aquaman Zen: Alarmed Viewers | Giant Crabs Help

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Previously on Aquaman Zen: Alarmed Viewers

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A while back, I came across a 1968 Big Little Book featuring Aquaman, in a story titled “Scourge of the Sea“. The book is beat to hell, with the binding glue failing and pages falling out, the cover is creased in half with Aquaman’s face gouged out by repeated scribbling with a ballpoint pen, and there are a few holes where the assailant then stabbed the book with said pen… but the contents are gold. Specifically, the captioned illustrations… which are weird and wonderful little self-contained tableaus when taken out of context. I plan to share these illustration pages here for your quiet reflection, in no particular order and without their supporting story text, whenever I feel like it.
This is… Aquaman Zen.

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Plugging like this blog has sprung a leak!

APRIL 3 – JUNE 12, 2009
SYNTHESIS : CONTEMPORARY COLLAGE
Carroll Square Gallery, 975 F Street NW, Washington DC 20004
OPENING: Friday, April 3, 6 – 8pm

CURATED BY HEMPHILL FINE ARTS, and FEATURING WORKS BY:
D.Billy | Billy Colbert | Nathan Gluck | Franz Jantzen | Camila Rivera-Morales | Holli Schorno | Al Souza | Daniel Tierny

These are my contributions to the show… but you’ll have to swing by the gallery to check out the excellent work by the other seven artists. And, of course, to get the full sensory experience of my pieces… which may or may not include olfactory overtones of the studio environment in which they were created. (Hint: think propane heater, macaroni and cheese, Mexican Coca-Cola, and cats.*)

*Kidding. They’re unscented and hypo-allergenic. I swear.

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Whether or not you cared for the Watchmen film, you’ve got to respect this: for the most part, people aren’t defacing Watchmen posters on the subway. It’s amazing. Every other poster, there’s teeth blacked out, toilet-stool poetry scrawled in Sharpie, or, most notably, 3-D genitalia sculpted out of chewing gum. But for some reason, the Watchmen posters get left alone.

Except for this one — which has been dramatically improved by replacing Billy-Crudup-as-Dr.-Manhattan’s CG head with Barack Obama’s wise and otherworldy dome-piece. Complete with hydrogen atom symbol on the forehead, too! You can see this for yourself at the A/C/E/B/D/F/V stop at West 4th street, NYC.

Here’s the total poster:

Here’s a closeup:

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I spent most of the NYC ComicCon lurching in circles with my mouth half-open, hunting for a copy of Detective Comics # 587 and spending way too much money on plastic bullshit that reminds me of my childhood. The experience was spectacular.

I haven’t been to a comic book convention since 1991, in Virginia Beach — the whole enterprise was dusty, pasty and pungent. Not now, baby. Now that comics, computers and sci-fi are billion dollar businesses, nerds are out of the basement and blinking in the klieg lights. Pop culture’s always been a byproduct of marketing campaigns, but we are now in a golden age of hype and shiny bullshit.

Today’s thirtysomethings were the target audience back in the ’70s and ’80s when Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and other pop mythologies did the first Triple Lindy into the collective consciousness. Now we’re just old enough to have kids who get just as pumped about Star Wars as we did, and fetishizing fictional universes is a family affair.

Whenever alien archaeologists unearth whatever temples we leave behind, they’re gonna think that Spiderman was our God and stormtroopers were some kind of high priests. Frankly, I’m thrilled. Digging through comic boxes and buckets of chipped action figures gets me all stoked and unstuck in time and I get the same sense of wow, cool wonder that I got when my dad took me to see Star Wars for the first time.

But this thing was for everybody. Really, it was just like the Mermaid Parade except indoors and marginally less sexualized. The people-watching and the costumes were spectacular and totally worth the admission price.

This is my favorite photo from this weekend’s NYC ComicCon, but there’s a lot more after the jump:

Read the rest of this entry »

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If you’ve read this blog for any time at all, you’ll know that me and David are suckers for brightly-colored comic-themed street art. Particularly if there’s a visual non sequitur involved. Like this poster I saw plastered around the streets of Philadelphia this weekend.

It’s an image of Marvel’s Doctor Doom charging toward the viewer with the phrase “Well, at least things can’t get any worse” superimposed over top in bright pink text …

Pretty much perfect, I think.

Although it contradicts the Simmermon family motto, which I swear I am not lying about. My dad always says

You know, Jeff, we have a saying. “Things go on like this for a while, and then they get worse.”

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From The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, Vol. 1, No. 11, November 1983:

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My friend David snapped this awesome photo of a zombie-fied Incredible Hulk guarding some bikes in Greenpoint.

Zombifying any pop icon makes it it exponentially cooler. It’s true. Have a look at this zombiefied Elvis karaoke robot and see if I’m not right.

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