Yahoo should have phrased that question as "Who, god willing, should NOT play Thor?"

1. Dolph Lundgren
2. Arnold Schwarzenblahblah
3. Any professional wrestler
4. That guy from Hercules
5. Lorenzo Lamas
6. A black person. (I'm just sayin'. The revamp-as-black-dude seems to be popular these days, and that's cool, but we're talking about a NORSEMAN. Samuel L. Jackson just isn't going to cut the mustard. Although... it could be amusing if Donald Blake were black: Thor turns back into Donald Blake, Mjolnir becomes a cane, but Blake is at a step dancing competition, and the cane gets tossed around among hundreds of performers each moments away from accidentally becoming Thor by pounding it on the ground.)

I'm going to suggest Viggo Mortenson in a blonde wig, if he can 'roid up a bit.
Jon H | Email | 08.12.07 - 2:49 am | #

But Garrett Morris already proved he can play Thor...
Bully | Email | Homepage | 08.12.07 - 3:17 am | #

I'll admit it, I bought Spawn up to #50.

Much of that was out of inertia, but at the time I did like it reasonably well. No idea now, as it has been years since I last read them.
Martin Wisse | Email | Homepage | 08.12.07 - 3:41 am | #

Thor's being directed by Matthew Vaughn, who did Stardust.
FxHx | Email | Homepage | 08.12.07 - 4:16 am | #

I'll admit to buying Spawn on and off for the first couple years. Heck, I only recently gave away my beat up copy of Spawn/Batman...

Also if the thief does snag some early Ultraverse, maybe he can fill the holes in my Firearm run...
LurkerWithout | Email | Homepage | 08.12.07 - 4:27 am | #

I am NOT admitting to buying Spawn (though of course, I did).

As for Dazzler, which I didn't buy (for real this time), I think it's the same as going to see Anaconda at the theater, or being into Ed Wood's features. It's so bad, it's good, and at a fair price.

Plus: Anything outright awful and risible is excellent blog fodder.
Siskoid | Email | Homepage | 08.12.07 - 4:53 am | #

It will be interesting if the Marvel films hit big. About the same time as the prospective Thor release, we may be seeing Spider-Man 4, Silver Surfer, FF3, Magneto solo and Wolverine solo with Iron Man 2 and Hulk 2 in the works if they debut well. Enough films to keep us rolling in Stan Lee cameos.
Anonymous | 08.12.07 - 5:44 am | #

I have a copy of "Dazzler" issue 2 that I bought new (I want to say at the same time as I bought the then-new "Dark Knight" issue 3) because for some reason, about 5 years after the fact, I walked into a comic book store in 1986, and about 20 copies of it were up on the new release wall at cover price. I'd never been able to figure out how on earth so many copies just showed up like that one day, let alone in the new comics section, unless the distributor tried to move leftover stock hoping her romance with Beyonder was gonna spike sales.

That said, it's written by Tom DeFalco and drawn by John Romita, jr, so it's pretty solid. It has an amusing sequence where danger breaks out at a Dazzler show, and the bathroom stalls are filled with heroes changing from their disco clothes to their costumes, so Peter Parker has to change elsewhere, and later Iron Man uses his chest beam as a spotlight on Dazzler as she performs for a record exec.

Considering there's a "Xanadu" broadway show, maybe it shouldn't be surprising people will throw down $16 for "Dazzler" comics.
Bryan | 08.12.07 - 6:07 am | #

I bought a lot of Spawns for my son, does that count?

"Things I Didn't Expect Yahoo to Feature as News on Their Home Page.", also known as "Worldwide Slow News Day Headline".
Johnny B | Email | Homepage | 08.12.07 - 7:07 am | #

Oh sure, I bought Spawn. Honestly, I thought the initial concept (superhero with a finite amount of power and must decide how best to use it) was a pretty neat idea. I don't remember when I quit, but I remember it being linked to realizing that McFarlane had completely abandoned that initial concept and instead gone with the tired old "this is just one of many [insert superhero]s who have existed throughout time.
Dave Lartigue | Email | Homepage | 08.12.07 - 8:23 am | #

I was about to take the moral high road by boasting about never buying (or breaking in and stealing) an issue of Spawn, but then I read your next paragraph. As the owner of the first year and a half of Dazzlers, I forfeit my right to be holier than thou.
H | Email | Homepage | 08.12.07 - 8:48 am | #

All of this bodes well for a Dazzler movie getting greenlighted soon. Lindsay's going to need SOME vehicle for her comeback, after all.
Ron Hogan | Email | Homepage | 08.12.07 - 9:05 am | #

Does "Adventures in Babysitting" count as Thor 1 or not?

I bought Spawn. All the way through issue #5. Then I came back for the "Look, good writers!" run.

Serious question now: This site and Hibbs' Savage Critics ones are the only places I hear retailers talk about how well books sell at their stores. His store isn't selling Countdown; yours is. Do you know to wwhat to attribute that? I'm really fascinated by DC's weekly books.
caleb | Email | Homepage | 08.12.07 - 10:27 am | #

Like everyone else it seems, I bought Spawn, and have no idea when I stopped. Maybe like Dave it was when the initial concept was abandoned.

I still own a Spawn Lithograph that is professionally framed. Sort of like those First Team Press Lithographs from many a year ago, not the lame ones that came around later.
Jason | Email | Homepage | 08.12.07 - 10:39 am | #

Just for a change from the rest of you, I've never bought or even leafed through a single issue of Spawn. On the other hand, I think I have a complete run of Dazzler. I know that, like a good Marvel zombie, I subscribed to it and just about everything else Marvel was putting out back in the early '80's. Unfortunately, I don't think the Essential buyers are going to be happy. It was more dull than sublimely awful, as I recall.
Bill | Email | 08.12.07 - 10:52 am | #

"It was more dull than sublimely awful, as I recall."

Yeah, I recently found some of my own Dazzler comics (mostly from the later end of her run), and they're pretty dull. It's kind of interesting in retrospect to see Marvel trying to figure out what the hell to *do* with the book, as it lurches from periods where it's chock full of super-villains and Dazzler in her white jumpsuit and that weird blue makeup outfit, to periods where she never even touches anything resembling a superhero outfit and the "soap opera" aspects are heavily stressed.

For a while, they had great painted covers by Sienkiewicz that suggested stylish contents, but like the contemporaneous Dakota North that was mentioned on a comics blog recently, the promise of different, stylish art was just a tease, and the insides were the same Springer/Coletta stuff as always.

I think the main reason I bought it was to fill a need for occasional "pretty girls in their underwear" art....
suedenim | Email | Homepage | 08.12.07 - 11:05 am | #

Caleb - I'll probably expound on this further at some point, but it may just be down to "regional differences." There are several books we sold lots of that other stores couldn't, and vice versa.
Mikester | Homepage | 08.12.07 - 11:14 am | #

I'm surprised anybody's buying Essential Dazzler. I remember back in the 80's the local comic book shop held sidewalk sales in the summer,and each time, they had a long box full of Dazzler #1, unbagged, that they could never get rid of. It was the mid-80's equivalent of mid-90's Spawn now, I guess. I bought one, using 12 -year old reasoning, that this must be an overlooked treasure.

C'mon, the in-house ads from Marvel books in 81 read, "With friends like these (Avengers, FF, Spider Man)... She's bound to have enemies!"

I bought the first Secret Wars II tie-in to Dazzler... I think I had to buy an Iron Man, a Captain America, and a Thing that month, and boy, was I disappointed. Five stinko books -- no wonder "Grim'n'gritty" a la Frank Miller caught fire on a few months later
rockie bee | Email | Homepage | 08.12.07 - 12:34 pm | #

Yes I have a crapload of spawn and let me tell you I can't even give them away. I think I dropped them right around the time I started reading Vertigo and realized comics don't have to suck. Witchblade though......I just wasn't that dumb.
Ginrummy | 08.12.07 - 2:16 pm | #

I also admit to buying Spawn. I gave up on it around issue 50. The book had been souring on me, but when I read something about the robo-monkey with Al's brain (or whatever the story with it was), I realized that the direction I had been waiting for was not coming anytime soon.

I too, discovered Vertigo and the joy of well-written stories that didn't drag on forever.
Cory | Email | 08.12.07 - 3:04 pm | #

I enjoyed Spawn at first and I know I kept buying it long after I stopped enjoying it. I loved McFarlane's art, but I know I kept reading long after he stopped having anything to do with it.
Eric L | 08.12.07 - 4:56 pm | #

I never bought Spawn when it came out. However, years later I pulled the Gaiman and Moore issues out of dollars bins, paid a few bucks for the non-reprinted Sim issues, and bought the TPB with Grant Morrison's three issues in it.

The Moore one's decent, as is Gaiman's. Sim's actually good. Morrison's? Easily the worst work of his career.
Joe Gualtieri | 08.13.07 - 1:30 am | #

Some Dazzler context for those who were not around at the time:

1. The book came out after disco died, culturally speaking. There's nothing as cold as the just-dead culture, when people are distancing themselves from it so as not to seem uncool. It takes a while for "retro" to be legitimate.

2. The first issue was promoted as a special, direct market only thing when such a book was a rarity from the big two. Between that, the hype, and the guest stars, folks invested heavily in the issue; remaining piles of #1 really indicate overordering rather than poor sales.
Nat Gertler | Email | Homepage | 08.13.07 - 8:40 pm | #