Secret Identities

Check out the website for Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology, which looks cool. It is coming out on April 15th, so call your comic store and demand one. Greg Pak is one of the creators featured in this anthology, and if you've never read his work on Planet Hulk or World War Hulk, do it! Here is a link to his interview with Newsrama about his creation for Secret Identities, "The Citizen". Also, link-fellow Jerry Ma has supplied some groovy inside cover Bruce Lee art for a charity auction here. This Anthology looks like it is going to be sweet, especially The Citizen.

In other great news, I have completed my collection of Venom: Lethal Protector from 16 years ago, at long last. This was one of the first comic books I ever owned, and was always one of my favorite series, if only for sentimental reasons. Issue #3 was my long-time missing piece, and I finally stumbled across one this past weekend.


The discovery of this issue led me to re-read the series, which I haven't done for years. This was Venom's first of many solo mini-series from the Nineties and it is about what you might expect. The first three issues were drawn expertly by Mark Bagley, though the coloring had some strange foibles. They didn't seem to know where the drool from Venom's toothy maw was supposed to begin and end in some panels, though Bagley's pencils were fantastic for it being what it was. The final three issues were drawn by Ron Lim, not that they were bad, but they weren't exactly my style. Also, the coloring issues seemed to be fixed in the final three. The story was so-so, relying on Spider-Man guest appearances that really served no purpose. And the fight with 'The Jury', indeed 'The Jury' themselves, was totally 90's in a radical way.

*slammin' guitar solo here*

Thanks again to Ryan at Charging Star Comics for helping me relive my childhood!

Bonus cover: Trial By Jury!