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Captain Ultimate Halloween Spooktacular (Comics)

We’ve written before about Captain Ultimate, a kid-friendly comic written by Joey Esposito and Benjamin Bailey, with art by Boykoesh, colors by Ed Ryzowski, lettering and production by Adam O. Pruett, published by Monkeybrain Comics. Guess what? They’re already up to issue #4, and it’s a Halloween Spooktacular!

According to the official Captain Ultimate blog, issue #4 features “an evil punk rock band, Shakespeare, hot rods, and, of course, buckets and buckets of candy.” The band is called The Pumpkills, which is Spooktacularly awesome. As someone who played in a band many moons ago (click this link to listen to me playing at CBGBs but not when the kids are around because there’s probably some cussing), I was psyched to see music, especially a band who finishes their show by shouting “We hate you! Goodnight!”, feature prominently in the story. And yes, they even quote Shakespeare, something many Marvel Comics writers have done often over the years, beginning with Stan the Man Lee himself. (Spider-Man in particular seems to inspire quite a bit of Shakespeare espousing, but that’s a tale for another time, True Believer.)

As a tremendous cheapskate, I’m very psyched to tell you that Captain Ultimate #4 is only 99 cents over at Comixology. 99 cents! That’s change from your digital dollar.

Still not convinced? Here are some preview pages from Captain Ultimate #4, generously provided to us by the authors.

Captain Ultimate #4 is listed as being appropriate for ages 9 and up. That sounds about right to us, although there is a letter from a parent on this issue’s Ulti-Mail page saying that he shares the comic with his offspring, ages 3 and 5.  As always, use your own judgment about what level of entertainment your kids will tolerate.

Personally we think Captain Ultimate is a good one for the young’uns. The art alone is a huge draw… no pun intended. (Seriously, that was an accident.) The story in issue #4 is good clean fun, with barely anything one would call violence, and not a drop of blood gets spilled. There may be some injured candy, but to say anything more would be a spoiler.

With so many entertainment options vying for your wallet, we think it’s important to support independent publishers and creators. Don’t get us wrong. Spider-Man is awesome. We’re 1000% ready for the new Thor movie. We’ve seen every episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. at least three times. The Avengers movie… we might have watched it 15 times so far. And we will watch it again. But it’s important to make room for other stuff as well. After all, Spider-Man was once the new hero on the block.

Buy Captain Ultimate #4 at Comixology

More info at the Captain Ultimate Blog:

Captain Ultimate #4 On Sale Now! | Captain Ultimate

Captain Ultimate, New All Ages Comic

We’ve mentioned Joey Esposito here before (actually, we’ve even met him in person — nice guy). Joey is the comics editor at IGN, and also writes comics himself. His latest is Captain Ultimate, a really fun all-ages book published by MonkeyBrain Comics. Joey wrote it with fellow IGNer Benjamin Bailey. The amazing art is by Boykoesh, with eye-catching colors by Ed Ryzowski. Adam Pruett is the letterer. (Hey, Stan Lee always mentioned the letterers back in the day. Artie Simek, represent!)

Here’s the cover:

Looks like fun, right? It is. Read on for more info. Read more »

Batman Beyond and Justice League Now on Netflix

Two of the best superhero cartoons ever are now available on Netflix — Batman Beyond and Justice League.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaM1FKhrODc]

I’m futzing around on Twitter and I see this from IGN’s Joey Esposito:

The rest of my night is Justice League cartoons.

— Joey Esposito (@joeyesposito) April 1, 2013

So I tweets to Joey, I says, what Justice League cartoons? You mean these Justice League cartoons? Probably my favorite superhero cartoon ever? And he’s like, yeah. Netflix streaming. Batman Beyond too. I’m all, whoah. And he’s like…

OK, I can’t keep that going any more. Bottom line — if you have Netflix, you can watch Justice League, Justice League Unlimited and Batman Beyond on demand. Why aren’t you doing that right now?

h/t @JoeyEsposito