The Highlight Reel: Lady in Red

How many comic books have I read? 

Good Lord, I couldn't tell you...though I'd estimate the total would easily top the "mega-thousand" category.  More to the point, how many of those mega-thousand comics made an impression...or do I even remember reading?  Ballpark estimate:  Not as many.

However, there remains a respectable percentage of them that not only made an impression but are absolutely unforgettable....at least to me.

That's why I thought I'd try to "catalog" some of those great moments from my own comic book reading experience, a "highlight reel" if you will.  Not that I'm the ultimate arbiter of determining what qualifies as an official "great moment", but at the same time, maybe something I like will make an impression on another fan who may, in turn, add that "great moment" to their own memory banks (or comic book collection).

The moment I've chosen for the Reel's maiden
voyage is taken from JLA #33 (1999).

Set-up: Batman dispatches four members of the Justice League to the French Riviera to bring in...Bruce Wayne?  Well, without getting into the obvious secret identity issues there, Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner), Steel, and Plastic Man, along with new members (and New Gods) Orion and Big Barda arrive in France to play the part of swanky jetetters.

We now join the undercover JLA members as they admire the normally fully-armored Big Barda modeling a form-fitting red dress (click on the panels for a larger view)...

Though the art's a bit on the shakey side, writer Mark Waid's wonderfully paced, absolutely hilarious Plastic Man gag more than overcomes it. Plastic Man had long been known to assume the shape of anything while still retaining his costume colors and design, and Waid's gag cleverly (and a bit naughtily) updated that great tradition for a modern audience.

Comments

[cinephile]

Great, great idea for a blog post! We so often think of comics, because of their sequential nature, as whole/transparent narratives (the link with cinema coming through the "editing" of panels together in our brains) but the very "separateness" of the panels (with the gutters between boxes) means that they are ripe for the sorts of individual moments you note. I am a child of the 80s in terms of comic reading, so a lot of my "moments" come from that period between 1978 and 1988. Here are a few:

-- Tony Stark drunkenly transposing the building numbers of the address Bethany Cabe gives him, then getting angry the next day when she doesn't show (I remember the way Romita Jr. and Layton drew Stark angrily looking at his watch), Iron Man #127.

--Again, Tony Stark holding the newborn baby to his chest in the snow to keep it warm and alive, lying in an alleyway, Iron Man #182.

--Spider-Man swooping in from nowhere to confront the Hobgoblin in a busy Manhattan square, 3/4 of the way through the epic Amazing Spider-Man #275.

--Art Spiegelman having an exchange with his shrink over the efficacy of silence in the face of trauama, and managing to turn it into a bit of literary critique (I think the line's about Beckett: "On the other hand, he *said* it." "That's good, you should put that in your book"), Maus II (I also remember lots of images of "mouse Art" smoking, the cigarette dangling precariously from his lips).

-- The Human Torch making a giant flaming heart over Manhattan to express his love for alicia masters, somewhere in the 260s of Fantastic Four.

--Batman showing up to battle Dr. Death, standing like a vampiric avenger in the double-doors of the Dr.'s balcony, moon yellow behind him, Detective Comics 29.

--All the watch/snowglobe recurring images in Moore and Gibbons' Watchmen.

--Brian Michael Bendis freaking out when told that a film company wants to option his graphic novel for a film...that will star Pauly Shore, Fortune and Glory.

[Mark Engblom]

Hi, Cinephile!

Hey, glad you like the idea. Funny, the very day I post it, I read on the "Blog@Newsarama" about another guy doing something similar. I guess there's no such thing as an original idea anymore. However, that guy seems to be focusing on the "high fallutin' " stuff, with not alot of superhero entries. That's MY niche, pal!

I liked (a share of a few of) your personal faves. I've already got a pretty rubust list of classic moments I want to hit...but Iron Man's in there!

[Matt]

Ha, this is kind of ironic - mostly because I JUST read that issue for the first time the other day.

GREAT moment.

-M

[Mark Engblom]

I figured there's a bunch of comic fans out there who haven't experienced alot of the "classic moments", especially the ones that aren't super obvious. Glad to hear you were able to check out the "Plastic Man Dress" moment recently.

[Tom the Bomb]

I gotta agree with Cinephile - Highlight Reel is another great new feature. How do you do it, man?

It's such a d!@k move on Plas's part, and yet it's hilarious in execution.

Looking forward to the next Reel.

[Tom the Bomb]

I gotta agree with Cinephile - Highlight Reel is another great new feature. How do you do it, man?

It's such a d!@k move on Plas's part, and yet it's hilarious in execution.

Looking forward to the next Reel.

[Mark Engblom]

Glad you like the Reel feature. I've got some great stuff coming up...so stay tuned, as they say.

Yup...certainly a bad move on Plas's part....but he almost gets a pass since he's such a mental case.

[Siskoid]

Cool feature! Like Cinephile, it got me thinking about cool comic book moments. I guess those would be the ones that readily come to mind years after I read them. Mine might include...

-Animal Man's "I see you!" moment (right through to the end of Deus ex Machina).
-Kitty Pryde's face being turned to goop by Masque before her wedding to Caliban (Uncanny X-Men #177).
-Aquaman disbanding the JLA in JLA Annual #2.
-Slam Bradley's distasteful twirling of a "chinaman" over his head in Detective #1.
-Jonni DC revealed as the killer in Ambush Bug #3.
-Danny the World.
-Ed the Happy Clown spontaneously breaking his leg.
-Tintin blowing up a rhino.

And lots more I'm sure.