Everybody's got something to hide except for me and the Monkees!

Hello and welcome to Hoopla!

Man, what a great time to not be rich, huh? I don't have anything invested in anything at all, so this financial crisis is just passing me by...

Wheee!

Meanwhile, Robot-McCain has released this statement, making me feel much more secure about the future of our economy.

>Bleep! They have treated this economy like a casino. Bleep! They have the corruption and the access and the I tried to warn them but it is the old boy network, treated this economy like a casino. Bleep!<

Of course the one question that's on the minds of everyone on Wall Street right now is "How will the sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America and the collapse of Lehman Brothers affect the Marvel and DC solicitations for December 2008?"

Well, the good news is that, thus far, they appear to have had no real effect on them. Just take a look...

See? There's the cover to The Age of the Sentry #4, looking just as pretty as a picture (which, in fact, it is... if you want to get all technical about it). No doom and gloom about stock prices here, my friend. Not a bit of it!

Read, and grow wise...

THE AGE OF THE SENTRY #4 (of 6)

Written by JEFF PARKER & PAUL TOBIN

Penciled by NICK DRAGOTTA & RAMON ROSANAS

Cover by DAVE BULLOCK

What happens when our hero takes a good long look in the mirror...and sees The Golden Age Sentry! PLUS, It's an invasion! No---not that kind of invasion; it's a British music invasion. But the dance party grinds to a sudden halt when the Crick-Hits are kidnapped, and it's all tunnels lead to Rome as the Golden Guardian of good teams up with the Blonde Phantom journeying deep within the Earth to do battle against a seemingly unstoppable army of monsters and their rather tyrannical leader, Marvel presents a story we just had to call--- "I Wanna Hold Your Band!"32 PGS./Rated A ...$2.99

Also coming out in December from Marvel is The Wonderful World of Oz (#1 of 8). This is a sort of strange pick for me... I have no inherent love of the World of Oz, but it's being written by Eric Shanower, who's won an Eisner for his comic, Age of Bronze, and the art is by Skottie Young, who has done a lot of art for Marvel that has always left me feeling that A) His art is pretty cool but, B) It doesn't go well with mainstream superhero stuff.

Let's see if I can utilize this here world wide web that the kids are always going on about to find a sample of his work for you, okay?

That's Kazar (Marvel's Tarzan rip-off... er, I mean homage...) hanging out with Deadpool.

This next one is one of my all-time pics of Iron Man...

If I saw that thing coming my way, I would surrender with great haste. Even if I wasn't doing anything wrong at all, I'd just go ahead and surrender.

And this next one is Deadpool with a very Sienkiewicz-esque Dr. Strange...

As a general rule, Young's interior art has been far less interesting than his cover work, but I'm hoping that illustrating The Wonderful World of Oz will give him the opportunity to really cut loose and do something innovative.

We shall see...

Meanwhile, if you and/or your kids have been enjoying Tiny Titans and Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam, there's a new title from DC you'll want to put on your pull list...

SUPERGIRL: COSMIC ADVENTURES IN THE EIGHTH GRADE #1

Written by Landry Walker

Art and cover by Eric Jones

Meet Linda Lee! She's the newest kid on the block - and the planet, too! Find out how an ordinary girl from Krypton became the most extraordinary girl on Earth in the pages of this brand new monthly series. And if you think life is tough as a hero, try being in the eighth grade.On sale December 3 * 32 pg, FC, $2.50 US



This new line of books for young kids has been pretty outstanding, thus far... so kudos to The Powers That Be for putting these together AND for keeping Dan Didio away from them...

Speaking of Dan Didio... a few months back I did a column pretending that Dan Didio had been brought in to edit the Archie Comics and he was going to make them all dark and gritty... well, apparently DC has bought the rights to the Archie super-heroes and they are going to start integrating them into the DC Universe.

Now, the good news is that no one actually cares about the Archie super-heroes... I know I read a few things with them, many years ago, and I think one of them was called the Fly? I don't know. But it seems like a strange move on DC's part...

But, then, what the hell do I know?

Not a damn thing, that's what.

Anyway, there's plenty more to say, and God knows I'm just the guy to say it, but I need to start preparing for tomorrow's class... I'm loving being a professor, but the prep work you have to do for classes can be a bit overwhelming... of course, compared to a REAL job, it's pretty minimal, so I guess I shouldn't complain...

Until next time, here's a little financial tip from me to you... Buy low and sell high. Right now, everything is low. So, don't sell. And stop calling up your bank and asking if your money is still there... it is. Individual accounts are insured up to $100,000. If you have more than that in your bank account, then you can send the surplus to me until this whole thing blows over. I've got plenty of room in my bank account...

It's like an echo chamber in there...

- Paul, echo-ey

Spanish Dream

Hello and welcome to Hoopla!

I am so tired... it is amazing.

I went to bed at a normal hour last night (around midnight), but woke up at 2:30 all worried because I didn't feel completely ready to teach... today's lecture was on State Legislatures and up until a few days ago, I had no idea what those were, so I've had to do a LOT of research so that I can trick my students into thinking that I actually know something...

So, I woke up at 2:30am and I couldn't go back to sleep.. so, finally, I got up and read some more articles and planned my class some more.. and then, when I was finished with that, it still took me a long time to fall asleep... I think I finally fell asleep again a little after 5:00... and then my alarm woke me up at 6:30...

I was so unhappy to hear my alarm clock... I wanted to argue with it... to say, "Hey, you stupid alarm clock... I've only been sleeping for 90 minutes!!! Leave me alone!!! Go bother someone else!!!"

But instead I had to get up and get ready for the day...

Before waking up, though, I had a funny stress dream... I dreamed that I was in a Spanish class and we were all waiting for the teacher to show up, and then she finally did enter and she looked at me and said, "Paul, aren't you supposed to be teaching this class?"

And I was trying to act like I had everything under control.. so I told the class to open their books and I started trying to speak to them in Spanish... like, I tried to tell them "Open your books" in Spanish.. .but I don't actually know Spanish, so I couldn't do it... I said something like "Cerrar tus libros." But I wasn't sure if "cerrar" actually means "open" and the students were looking blankly at me, so I just said it again, impatiently, as if they were the stupid ones because they couldn't understand me. "CERRAR TUS LIBROS, estudiantes!"

And the students kept correcting my Spanish and then someone said, "Do you even know Spanish?" and I said, "Si. Of course I do. Si." But I couldn't think of any Spanish words other than "si." So I just kept saying that. "Si. Por su puesto, yo hablo espanol. Naturalmente."

Anyway, it wasn't a funny dream when I was dreaming it, but it seemed funny afterwards because of how the brain works...

Silly brain...

And this time it's personal...

Hello and welcome to Hoopla!

So, it's been a while, yes?

The good news is that I think I am finally, after a couple of months of extreme wackiness, ready to return to the wonderful world of writing comic book reviews that are then read by approximately three people, maybe one and half of whom actually have any interest in comic books.

The other good news is that I'm 97% finished with the whole dissertation thing... I need to revise one more sentence (seriously... that's what my Dissertation Chair told me in her email... "There's just one more sentence I think you need to revise...) and then that will be a done deal.

The other other good news is that I have purchased a computer that doesn't crash every five minutes, which means that I can work on Hoopla! from home... which will make it much easier for me to do this on a regular basis...

The other other other good news is that... hm. No, I don't suppose there is any other other other good news.

Crap.

Well, no comic book reviews today, but I've got some coming up, I promise...

In the meantime, if you're looking to be a little bit horrified by what the future has in store for us, I strongly encourage you to check out this link...

See ya soon...

- Paul