If you read the post below – you’ll know I went on a hunting trip through Google Images for JLA pictures. Well I did manage to find an amazing JLA lithography by Nitch & Neary. Heavan know’s why I didn’t pick up on this at the time (probably something to do with writing up my PhD thesis ). Anyhow I’ve just found a full colour picture of the lithograph and had to share it. Enjoy.
Well its Saturaday, half-past midnight and I’m wide awake – something that is probably due to not going to sleep until 5am last night. Damn you Middle Earth will I ever finish the Lord of the Rings before the final film! Currently I’m on that huge section in the middle where the Hobbit outward bounds movement is randomly wandering the Dead Marshes. The bit they almost eliminated from the film. It justs drags on, and on, and on. A bit like a Dragonball fight scene.
As insomnia settles down for the second night in a row I find myself over halling the front of the site. However I need to replace the graduated background. I’ve tried a larger version of the Crisis image, but it just doesn’t work. In an attempt to find a decent image I even tried putting the term “jla” into the Google image search. One or two interesting results pop-up…
This post is dedicated to those hundreds of normal people who called the pictures on their homepage jla.jpg. I had to wade through the lot of you – whoever you may be.
If you’ve been reading the Justice League Library (formerly the Justice League FAQ – the only continously maintained League site older than this one) then you will have noticed the little cartoon renditions of the JLA members in their characters section. These are Mircoheroes. They started out as minature cartoon characters people used to identify themselves in message boards. Fandom being fandom the scene just exploded and now almost every comic or major hero has been turned into a Mircohero. Thus I would point the interested web surfer towards JLA Microheroes – an amazing archive of JLA related Mircoheroes. People have spent serious time and nervious energy on this project.
There is an excellent article over on Newsarama about Diamond’s new sales figures for the top 300 comcis. Diamond are now releasing the rankings based on actual sales figures rather than based purely on initial orders.
A few points of note in Feb’03 rankings:
Your probably know Joe Rubinstein as an inker, but did you also know that he’s also an award winning portrait painter and a commercial illustrator (its amazing who you get working in comics). Joe now has a page over at The Artist’s Choice and is happy to accept requests for recreations or original commissions.
Joe Rubinstein worked on the Justice League International during the late 1980s and inked the pencils of Ty Templeton and Adam Hughes. He also inked the massive group shot for the cover of Mayfair Game’s JLA Source Book. More recently he inked the two part Elseworlds story JLA Created Equal. You can find Joe’s comments on inking at the Comic Book Inking Survey.
Update: Joe will be the inker on the new FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE JLA series which features the reunion of the creative team and character line-up from the Maxwell Lord era. Interesting there will be a new crowd scene cover. Remember that Joe is available for comissions so you could always ask him to recreate you favourite JLA moment.
The big release this week is the first issue of the latest JSA plot arc. Picked up my subs a day late so I’ve only just had a chance to read this issue. A lot of setup, general chaos as the JSA gets their buts kicked, a handful to build up clues, etc. Hard to judge as its only the first chapter of the big arc that leads up to issue 50, but it looks like it going to be good.
“Calling all web surfing fans.” Just been doing bit of websurfing over the weekend and its become obvious that a fair number of the JLA/JSA/YJ writers have their own websites. So far:
New section on the Official WB website: Cartoon Monsoon. Its basically a head-to-head style showdown between a set of new webtoon episodes to so see which is the most popular. Of special interest is a special Zatanna webtoon writen by Paul Dini and animated by Caroline Hu. Dini is the writer of the upcoming Zatanna Vertigo special.
This webtoon sees a younger version of Zatanna (more like Sabrina) who lives with her stage-magician/real-sorcerer father Zatara. These episodes see Zatanna versus Klarion the Witchboy. To go direct to the Zatanna episode click here. Remember that it is a contest so vote if you like the webtoon.
I first spotted this on the Comics2Film section of the CBR website. They also have an interview with voice artist Corey Burton (Brainiac) about his work on the new Justice League guest appaerance in Static Shock.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!!! Flaming software – just lost todays excellent posting. Synopsis: JLA/Avengers out in the autumn, new line of JLA mini-busts also out in the autumn, out this week JL Adventures #17 and Young Justice #55.
How many good English language Justice League websites were there in 1994? Answer: Three. There was Michael Kooiman’s excellent JLA FAQ, the original incarnation of David Stepp’s JSA Fact File and a different JLA FAQ (unfinished and now defunct). There was also a smattering of “second tier” websites proclaiming that the JLA was the author’s favourite comicbook. You know the type – hoards of graphics, no content, and a dozen hyperlinks to similar sites. I must admit that my site was one of the latter. I then discovered a very important fact – if you put content on your website then people will visit it. Ergo I decided to beef up this website with news and press clippings, original profiles and new articles. Low and behold the Captain’s Unofficial Justice League Homepage was born!
There were a few other websites launched around the same time as mine, a number of them are quite good (highlights included Greg’s the JLA Watchtower Website). A lot of stuff changed with the publication of Justice League: A Midsummer’s Nightmare (Waid and Nicieza) and the subsequent relaunch of the League by Grant Morrison and co. Suddenly the League was cool again and the number of League websites easily doubled. It was about this time that I proposed the Justice League webring to a number of other JLA webmasters. The ring is still out there, but I’m no longer involved with its management.
That second incarnation of my website looks dated now. It was based on a modified theme downloaded from one of the many clip art websites and used the new JLA logo so much that it was danger of looking like propaganda. However, I still feel that this version was a high point in the site’s history. It had the largest number of full profiles and was the most colourful. A number of the profiles were translated for a now defunct Italian JLA Central Website (not to be confused with the English language website of the same name) and are listed as part of the Unofficial DC Who’s Who. The most surprising moment was when a profile of Doctor Midnite (supplied by contributor Alan Kistler) was mentioned in the DC handout for the JSA Returns skip week.
My aim was and is to produce a series of articles and profiles that are heavily cross-referenced and interlinked. In this respect the second incarnation of the site just became too hard to manage. So I went back to basics. I kept the general layout and design, but radically restructured the backend HTML to include pop-up profiles and mini-profiles in smaller pop-up windows. I also used frames to produce a navigation sidebar. This seemed like a smart move, but in retrospect was a mistake. Frames and pop-up windows are too of the biggest bugbears in web design. Current thinking is to steer clear of them as much as possible. My problem was that I was trying to deliver a database like website with static HTML pages. This meant that there were numerous “coming soon” notices and cross-references that didn’t reference anything.
By 2000 the entire thing was a mess. I’d taken down the successful V2, was mired in the hideous mark-up of V3 and I was trying to finished my PhD thesis. Something had to give. Unfortunately the thing that gave was the JLA website. I just haven’t had the time to devote to it for over 18 months. But my mind has not been idol on the matter. New XML and CSS web technologies allow me to separate content and mark-up, server side scripts make things smoother and a cleaner interface makes things more readable.
I would really like to thank all the people who have contributed to the Captain’s Unofficial JLA Homepage over the years – guys I still have copies of all (well most) of your material and it will reappear online one day. I’d also like to thank all the people who have offered corrections, questions, support and comments over the years. Wizard recently reviewed JLA websites and commented the Captain’s Unofficial JLA Homepage (along a couple of others) “do the League justice, but not having been updated in months tends to take away from their lustre. Get on the ball, guys!” Not much I can add to that. I have big plans for the Captain’s Unofficial JLA Homepage (perhaps even an acronym), but in the meantime I’ve put together as much of the old material here as possible. I hope you enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed putting it together.
