Mexican masked wrestler Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta, better known as El Santo, was an icon in the ring, but artist José G. Cruz turned him into a superhero with his Santo comics. On film, El Santo would go on to battle mad scientists, witches, zombies and, most famously, those wicked vampire women. Even when luchadores are wrestling more earthly foes, they appear as costumed supermen brought to life. Artist James Pirat Patradoon plays with Lucha Libre attire and other brands of masks, mixing it up with superhero accessories, costume makeup, retrofuturistic ray guns, vigilante gangs and the classic superhero suit-up. When he's not drawing masked men, he's doodling demons and three-headed chimera or animating moments from the pink and purple cyberpunk future that never was.

If you think about it, Darkseid and Thanos would probably get along. Their similarities, most notably their obsession with death (or in Darkseid's case, Anti-Life), have often linked the two in fans' minds. As such, writer Justin Jordan and artist Rafer Roberts created a short story for Roberts' site that depicts the classic villains in the only type of friendly setting you could ever really envision two beings wholly obsessed with the absence of life: a suburban carpool lane.

Check out the full comic after the cut to see Darkseid discover the true source of Anti-Life: Thanos' special brew.

While other sites may be content to bring you Rocktober, Shocktober or Mohawktober, ComicsAlliance is committed to commemorating the things that really matter! That's why this month, we're bringing you 31 days of one of Empowered's lesser-known Superhomeys as we celebrate Syndablokktober!

Naoko Takeuchi's (the one named) Sailor Moon has been battling evil for 20 years across manga, anime, live action television and even the stage, but unlike a lot of her magical girl contemporaries, the heroine's fashion doll/statue to action figure ratio is staggeringly imbalanced. As revealed at Japan's Tamashii Nation 2012 preview event, however, the tide is starting to sort of turn with the reveal of Bandai's upcoming S.H. Figuarts Sailor Moon figure. From the looks of things, the figure will come packed with the usual S.H. Figuarts accessories including swappable hands and a posable base, plus a tiny Luna the cat and likely crazy effect parts down the road. The figure reveal didn't clarify a specific release date, but sometime in 2013 seems likely... perhaps followed by figures of the other Sailor Scouts? You can peep a few shots of the upcoming S.H. Figuarts Sailor Moon action figure after the jump.

I think we can all agree that for all of its benefits, PhotoShop pretty much ruined the movie poster industry -- and nobody was hit harder than horror movies. Maybe it's just that I'm old enough to have memories of being absolutely terrified of an aisle at my local video store, but I'm continually fascinated by the awesomely terrible art that used to adorn VHS boxes.

That's why today, with Halloween just around the corner, ComicsAlliance is continuing its mission to celebrate the more underappreciated art of pop culture by raiding CriticOnline's truly fantastic VHS cover archive to pick out 25 of the most awesomely terrible (and terribly awesome) horror movie boxes ever!

We make a regular practice at ComicsAlliance of spotlighting particular artists or specific bodies of work, but because cartoonists, illustrators and their fans share countless numbers of great images on sites like Flickr, Tumblr, DeviantArt and seemingly infinite art blogs that we've created Best Art Ever (This Week), a weekly depository for just some of the pieces of especially compelling artwork that we come across in our regular travels across the Web. Some of it's new, some of it's old, some of it's created by working professionals, some of it's created by future stars, some of it's created by talented fans, and some of it's endearingly silly. All of it's awesome.

Attorney Marc Toberoff continues to be a very busy man. In between two different court appearances for different lawsuits surrounding the rights to Superman, he has appeared before a three-judge panel to argue for the overturning of an earlier ruling that Marvel Entertainment owns all of Jack Kirby's creations for the company outright.

2014's sequel to X-Men: First Class may be more of a case of time-traveling déjà vu than originally anticipated, with the news that director Matthew Vaughn has stepped down as the man in charge of X-Men: Days of Future Past, and Bryan Singer - the director of 2000's original X-Men movie - is rumored to replace him.

The CW's new superhero series Arrow re-imagines Green Arrow for a TV audience as a tough, often ruthless vigilante bent on setting things right in his home of Starling City by punishing the wicked. ComicsAlliance's Matt Wilson will be following along all season to see how he fares.

On this week's episode, our verdant hero takes on the single-goggled but sadly unmustached TV version of Deadshot while getting to the bottom of a power struggle over an energy company. Also: A secret is revealed! Find out what and to whom after the jump!

Over a lifetime of reading comics, Senior Writer Chris Sims has developed an inexhaustible arsenal of facts and opinions. That's why each and every week, we turn to you to put his comics culture knowledge to the test as he responds to your reader questions -- and as Halloween approaches, we make those questions spoooooky.




Q: The superhero team of your choice is stuck in a deadly, haunted mansion. Who dies first? Who survives? -- @drawesome86

A: That kind of classic slasher movie setup has been on my mind quite a bit lately -- more than creepy mansions full of deathtraps and lurking horrors usually are, I mean. It's mostly because I finally got around to watching Cabin in the Woods this week, a movie with a pretty incredible premise rooted in exactly those sorts of scary movie archetypes, and because I'm gearing up to spend Halloween watching Nobuhiko Obayashi's House.

I've actually had that one on DVD for a year and I've been legitimately wary of watching it because people have told me that there are some genuinely disturbing bits and I'm ridiculously easy to scare. On the other hand, it's a movie about Japanese schoolgirls with names like "Gorgeous" and "Kung Fu" trapped in a haunted house, and there's only so long I can resist that premise.

I've been to a lot of Marvel Comics conventions panels this year. Only three major conventions -- San Diego's Comic-Con Internation, Toronto's Fan Expo, and the New York Comic Con -- but a lot of Marvel panels. They're usually boisterous affairs full of good humor and happy hucksterism. Occasionally the company's former Editor-in-Chief and current Chief Creative OfficerJoe Quesada insists on shouting into a microphone, and that is not OK (and I may never recover), but as roadshow sales pitches go they're usually very entertaining.

But these presentations are never as good as the Women of Marvel panel. Taking place on Sunday afternoon at the recent New York Comic Con, the Women of Marvel panel was a highlight of my convention year. There were no announcements, and the sales pitches were kept to a moderate sufficiency. Instead the emphasis was on community and the oft-forgotten idea that the people who make the comics and the people who read the comics can actually be on the same side. And it was a breath of fresh air.

Recently I read Miguel Corti's experimental comic Watchmen #13. A cut-up pdf created by numbering and randomizing the panels in Alan Moore and David Gibbon's Watchmen, the book is laid out along variations of the original's consistent nine-panel grid. It is a compelling read, one that made me think about the other major superhero comic of the same era. Another book that pursues it's narrative through a strict system of grids.

Created in 1986, Frank Miller's four-issue miniseries, The Dark Knight Returns, is considered a classic of the superhero genre and of the comics medium in general. Inked by Klaus Janson and colored by Lynn Varley, it is not my favorite by Miller -- I have a real love for his prime period as a writer for other artists: Daredevil: Born Again, Hard Boiled, Elektra: Assassin -- but it is a truly masterful piece of comics. The Dark Knight Returns represents Frank Miller at the peak of his powers, transitioning from an experimental period to a stronger narrative one that's been described as cinematic, but that remains indelibly a master work of sequential art.