Welcome to the latest installment of your breath of snark free air!
Enjoy!
COOL COMIC THINGS
One of the coolest things in comics has to be the SHIELD barbershop!
First introduced in Strange Tales #136 (the second appearance of S.H.I.E.L.D. period), the barbershop (most certainly influenced by the laundromat secret entrance on the Man from U.N.C.L.E.) was the cover to the entrance of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s secret headquarters.
Every time S.H.I.E.L.D. was attacked, they would move the main entrance (at one point, it was at a pizza parlor!).
In addition, soon the hydraulic system would be replaced.
The new system used holograms rather than long chutes.
You have to love the old security of S.H.I.E.L.D., they'd let almost anyone into the chutes, and at the end of the line, they'd be ready with a couple of agents with guns.
Perhaps it was not the most efficient system (as S.H.I.E.L.D. dropped it altogether in the 90s), but it was most certainly the coolest!
(Images courtesy of this really cool S.H.I.E.L.D. website.)
COVER HOMAGE
One cool point to the person who tells me which cover this Flash cover is homaging!
WHO'S YER FAV'RIT...
original member of the Justice Society of America?
Doctor Fate...
Hour-Man...
Spectre...
Sandman...
Atom (it's kinda sad that there were no cover appearances for him for me to use)...
Flash...
Green Lantern...
or Hawkman?
TODD KLEIN RULES
Don't get me wrong, we all know that Todd Klein is amazing. Well, that is, we all know he is amazing if we have ever seen a comic book lettered by Todd Klein, as the guy is the king of lettering (and there are plenty of excellent letterers out there! So it is a big compliment to single Klein out)!
However, I just wanted to do a little bit where we can grasp at how big of a figure Klein has been in comics the past decade or so. To do so, let us look at the Eisner Award winners for letterer since the award was first handed out in 1993.
1993 Todd Klein
1994 Todd Klein
1995 Todd Klein
1996 Stan Sakai
1997 Todd Klein
1998 Todd Klein
1999 Todd Klein
2000 Todd Klein
2001 Todd Klein
2002 Todd Klein
2003 Todd Klein
2004 Todd Klein
2005 Todd Klein
2006 Todd Klein
That's the Eisners, now, for the same time period, let's look at the Harvey Awards, where he is LESS dominating, but still...
1993 Todd Klein
1994 Tom Orzechowski
1995 Todd Klein
1996 Chris Ware
1997 Dan Clowes
1998 Todd Klein
1999 Todd Klein
2000 Chris Ware
2001 Todd Klein
2002 Chris Ware
2003 Todd Klein
2004 Dave Sim
2005 Todd Klein
Todd Klein rules!
SNARK FREE CHALLENGE
Presuming they were both dealing with drivers of equal skill, if Reed Richards and Tony Stark were both to design a soapbox derby car, which one would deliver the better car?
Well, that's it for this installment of Snark Free Corner. Hope you had fun!