The Savage Critic: July
16th 2003
By Jeff Lester
Welcome back, my friends, to the show
that never ends...Jeff here, with no scrappy intro this time. I’m
mega-late with this column because, frankly, I just couldn’t get
motivated after last week’s column. Reading thirty-six comic books
in a few days may sound like candy, ice cream and free rides on a pony
to some of you (hell, it did to me when I first signed on) but it’s
damn debilitating. Every time I do two of these in a row, I’m
shocked, simply shocked, that Brian Hibbs doesn’t have a
brain like curdled tapioca. No wonder half his columns start with him
pissing and moaning about how busy and put-upon he is… I have to
finish this up so I can go work the “real” job, then start
in on doing the in-store newsletter. It’s like candy and ice cream,
all right: candy and ice cream being jammed down your throat by the
hooves of a vengeful, bitter pony pissed because its back is killing
it and it doesn’t have one fucking dollar to show for it…
Which of course brings me to Gary Groth.
Perhaps some of you, like me, have read the start of Mr. Groth’s essay about
the death of critical standards on The Comics Journal website:
And hopefully those of you that have, rub your hands (as I do) in anticipation
of a good essay by the good Mr. Groth, and not only for the vicarious
thrills to be had of sacred cows being eviscerated, and their remains
thrown to the lions, and like that. Hopefully, you’re looking
forward to an essay that, while attacking some aspect of the comics
industry, will lock its pitbull-like jaws on nothing less than our culture
and society itself. If there’s one aspect of Gary Groth’s
criticism that I feel has been unfairly overlooked by his critics, it’s
that he never shotgunned a child without first blaming the parents.
Any vituperation Groth has leveled against the comics industry he has
been careful to level against the rest of society first: The American
comics industry is a fucking pit, seems to be the recurring message,
but it’s not surprising since American culture is, as well.
Comics are just a little more blatantly moronic than everything else.
There’s a line in the introduction of the current essay that is
quintessential Groth: “If we turn our attention to comics, the
situation is, if anything, even worse.”
Now, without having read the rest of
the essay (which puts me in the position of being a big ol’ jackass,
but bear with me for these next four paragraphs), I’d like to point
out a few things. One is, maybe this essay, about the death of criticism
and the degradation of public taste that results, should not be the
first essay for Mr. Groth to publish after a bunch of people
went out of their way to spend money to save Fantagraphics. (And
by “save Fantagraphics,” let’s assume I mean more than
“keep Groth and Thompson from taking on outside investors.”)
And I don’t mean this in a derisive “You got your money, Groth,
now shut up and look pretty” kind of way. I just mean: a lot of
people in and outside comics went out of their way to save your company
because they recognized its existence and its products as being valuable
and worth preserving. Doesn’t that mean that a lot of people have
an impressive and sufficient ability to judge quality, thus rendering
your arguments about the lack of critical standards moot?
Or is Groth going to take a potentially
more interesting approach, and argue that even though his status quo
has been preserved by a lack of critical standards (Fantagraphics is
seen as good by the culture, because everything is seen as good), the
culture as a whole is still going to suffer? I don’t think he’ll
go that route, but I guess it could happen.
I’m assuming that Groth won’t
address this conundrum, which is a shame because a lot could come from
it. was Fantagraphics saved not by the enlightened masses who actually
can tell a good comic from their ass, but by “Team Comics,”
blind uncritical boosterism powered by—what? Empty activism? I
don’t know if anyone else has suggested this, but it seems that
Team Comics is powered in large part by the desire to be part of a team:
to belong.
Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe Groth
will address this in his article, but it seems to me that blind boosterism
in criticism isn’t always a sign of ethical or moral deficiency.
It is merely a natural extension of the purpose that culture now serves
for our society, and that purpose is to join us together, to give us
common ground. Why does our culture follow the weekend movie grosses
now? To root for the film we want to be number one. Why do
people pay money out of their pocket to call and vote for Reuben, as
opposed to Clay? Because they wanted to see the guy they liked win.
Why is the public so apathetic about pop culture? Because people
don’t care about the art, they care about coming together.
Talking about the movie/exhibit/performance afterward is more important
than seeing the movie/exhibit/performance these days and pop culture
provides a common ground for people to meet and discuss—a ground
that, perhaps by necessity, is particularly flat and valueless because
it must cover so much area. Cyberspace and global culture is much larger
than any previous interconnectivity in history—and I think their
emergence resulted in a shockwave that helped flatten critical judgment.
Critical judgments, after all, are typically the reserve of the ethics
and biases of a dominant culture, and we may now be in a place where
we don’t know which culture that is. And that’s part
of why criticism is so crappy, and people’s tastes are so bad:
art has to be homogenous in order for the most people to come together
over it, and the forming of that mass is now the predominant purpose
of art. Fuck Team Comics? Dude, the world is Team Comics.
In other news, I liked Terminator
3 much more than I thought I would, and Radiohead’s Hail
to the Thief is keen. Don’t expect works of genius, but neither
of them were the tired recycling I thought they’d be.
And now, on to the funny books…
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #55: What? “To
be continued?” I read this with a bit of trepidation since I haven’t
read anything by Fiona Kai Avery I particularly liked, but most of this
was a very acceptable JMS story with dialogue by someone who can do
JMS dialogue pretty well. But this reasonably well-measured story (about
Peter trying to save a gifted student whose family is struggling after
Spider-Man helped put the carjacking brother away) would have worked
better with the tone of the penultimate pages, where the conundrum of
unintended consequences seems just a sad fact of life that all of us
have to deal with. Who knows? Maybe Part II will completely prove
me wrong, but if this had been a stand-alone I would feel less antsy
about giving this a Good.
AQUAMAN #8: Hmmm, at first I thought
the idea of Black Manta being a troubled autistic was cool one—there
seemed to be an interesting link between Black Manta’s outfit and
this one autistic person I had heard about who’d constructed a
sensation suit that allowed them to have all the control over their
immediate sensations—but toward the end, I found myself feeling
a lot more uncomfortable, because Veitch appears to characterize Manta’s
super-autism as more like chemically induced Bizarroism—I love
Aquaman, therefore I have to kill him—than any sort of real desire
to examine the subject. Still, it’s a pleasant change-up to The
Thirst storyline which feels like it’s gone on too long and still
isn’t over. Throw in the fact that, as written, Tempest is a more
interesting character than Aquaman, and you’ve got a high-end Eh.
ARROWSMITH #1: This is one that would’ve
benefited more from a Hibbs review—he’s more on top of the
fantasy thing than I am. I will say that despite my desire to quibble
about what looks to be an analogy equating magic and technology at some
points, and magic and the old world at other points (which strikes me
as analogies at odd with each other), I thought Carlos Pacheco’s
beautiful art worked well with the era. He has none of the problems
with anachronism that Salvador Larocca’s having over on Namor;
indeed, check out that double page spread of the town around page 12,
which effortlessly summons up a time gone by. His artwork, and the
occasional sense of melancholy appropriate to World War I (the last
panel of dead boys in trenches surrounded by dancing faeries) is effective
enough to think this one’s worth checking out. In other words,
Good. I’ll be picking up the next one.
BATGIRL YEAR ONE #8: This has certainly
been the loosest “miniseries” I’ve read in a while—the
larger arc with Firefly and Killer Moth isn’t particularly gripping
and the creative team seems to more or less know it—and reads more
like a very extended pitch for a regular series. But that really seems
to suit the book—the looseness helps strike a strange balance between
the more modern Bat-mythos and the lightness of earlier eras. I’ll
be bummed to see this mini come to an end. Good.
BATMAN GOTHAM KNIGHTS #43: By contrast,
this grimmity-grim story (by Batgirl co-writer Scott Beatty)
which focuses on good ol’ Jason Todd and Batgirl seems more focused
and on point but less enjoyable. Elements of the tale have a certain
tragic resonance (particularly the conversation about the Joker) but
the overall effect isn’t “tragedy” as much as “bummer.”
Maybe it’s just because this story covers the time when the Batman
franchise was handled in a particularly icky and slipshod fashion, but
this was just a depressing OK despite Peterson’s capable grasp
on the Batman mythos. Oh, and that back-up story was pretty much an
enjoyable throw-away despite how great Philip Bond’s work looked
in black and white. I’d like to see him score more b&w work.
CALL #4: You know that old gag where
the guy writes “this was really, really” and then fills the
page with “really, really” and then puts the word “bad”
at the very bottom of the page? Let’s pretend that I do that here.
Please remember that this is the Internet so the length of the page
can be infinite. That’s important to remember in this case. Awful.
CAPTAIN MARVEL #12: “You see,
Rick, any of us can be pushed to kill when the writer wants to make
an easy point or score some cheap irony.” Yuck. Awful.
CREW #3: Priest, as usual, is a little
too clever with his plot twists (I still can’t figure out how Danny
knows his lockbox is rigged to set off C4) but his dialogue and characters
are enjoyable, and the art looks decent. If they can make this a slightly
less twisty reading experience, I’d be happier, though. Good.
DAREDEVIL #49: Great job of fucking
with my expectations here since I expected most of this to go down in
issue #50. Bendis gives us a bout between superhero and supervillain
that’s more of a brutal trash-talking street fight, and it works
like a charm. Shocking how satisfying this was. Very Good.
DORK TOWER #23: I gotta say, the pacing on this book bugs the
crap out of me. It feels like Kovalic takes a four panel strip and
simply blows it up as a full comic page (occasionally holding the last
panel gag for a page turn) and although that’s a perfectly fine
dynamic, it gets used so often it becomes monotonous (or feel like filler—check
out those two pages on 12 and 13). I’d like to see Kovalic take
a lesson from other relatively limited cartoonists (like Brian Bendis
and Alan Moore, for example), and try something a little more ambitious—like
the double-page spread on pgs. 14 and 15, only more so. And yeah, there
are laffs to be had here (what gamer geek couldn’t laugh at squidbob
‘thulupants?), but I really wish this was a deeper book than it
was. Eh.
GIRL GENIUS #9: First issue I’ve
read since, um, issue #2?, or something like that, and I liked it fine
(and was super-grateful for the two page story summary). In fact, now
that the main character is coming into her own as a “spark,”
this book’s living up to its charm and potential. Admittedly,
this is an “all-action” issue so I can’t imagine they’re
all this lively, but I definitely want to pick up next issue and see
how it holds up. A high Good.
GLOBAL FREQUENCY #9: Ellis really
seems to get Japanese culture: this issue’s tribute to current
Japanese horror flicks really worked for me, despite suffering from
the format being so similar to other GF stories—it would
have been a very tensionless read if Lee Bermejo hadn’t turned
in such expressively kick-ass work. Still among the better issues of
this series, though. Good.
GOTHAM CENTRAL #9: Oooh, baby. I’m
loving this. The character interactions between Josie and Crispus,
that beautifully underplayed art, and the continuing twists of the narrative.
It’s an incredibly thin line they’re walking here, between
crime procedural and super-powers book, but Rucka and Lark make it look
effortless. Very Good.
HAWKMAN #17: A pretty decent wrap-up
to a potentially messy storyline. I particularly loved the classic
Kubert monsters Byth transformed into, as caught by Morales and Blair.
I’d be happier if Johns didn’t again turn to a “Hawks
of days past” issue like it looks he’s going to, but after
giving him crap about this storyline, I think he deserves a little slack.
Good.
HERO #6: Ahhh. The nice fresh feeling
of reading a perfectly paced single issue that wasn’t padded out
to six issues for easier collection as a trade. Thank you, Pfeiffer
and Kano. That
feeling gets harder and harder to come by. This issue also dodged all
the obvious clichés, which is also a pleasant change. Very Good.
HIP FLASK ELEPHANTMEN #1: I think
they slipped up in production because this was wayyyy too dark in too
many places. I liked a lot of this—the art (when I could see it)
was great, Casey’s characterization of Flask worked quite well,
and the story seems ambitious enough. Perhaps too much so, in fact:
By the time the next issue comes out (in 2004?!), all the nuances will
have been forgotten. I think I’m gonna have to wait for the trade
on this one because I can’t go that long between issues on a book
that unlike, say, Black Hole, offers only solid but derivative
thrills. Only OK because the reproduction problems gave me a
damn headache.
HUMAN DEFENSE CORPS #3: Apart from
one itsy-bitsy teeny detail (a guy who can’t listen to other guys
bitching has no place in any branch of the armed forces), this all seemed
strong—a lot darker and lot bleaker than I would have expected.
And you know what? With a lot of troops stuck overseas for what will
probably be a very long time, I almost feel like we need a book
that can address a lot of the issues about occupying armies while also
playing weird war tales. I’m not sure where the seance angle is
leading, but on its own this issue was damned Good.
HUMAN TORCH #4: Okay until the supervillain
showed up—I thought the idea of turning the Human Torch book into
a firefighter manga was a pretty cool one. Too bad it seems
to have no interest in that. A high Eh.
MAGDALENA VOL 2 #1: Twice, I’ve
seen this trailer for this new movie with Heath Ledger as a priest who’s
investigating a bunch of other rogue priests, and I’m like “Rogue
priests? What’s scary about rogue priests? What are they gonna
do, baptise the dog?” Likewise, warrior nuns. Or whatever Magdalena here happens to be: a warrior trained by the Knights
of Malta to bear her midriff and thighs so as to confuse evil into trying
to put a dollar in her g-string. Or something. Even with all the confusing
storytelling going on here (the link between page two, page three and
page four is still bewildering me), the “Top Cow Approach to Character
Creation” (step one: create a strong female character. step two:
tell the story from her chest’s point of view) shines through.
A mighty low Eh to me, but maybe the throng of Top Cow customers
will be more appreciative.
NAMOR #4: I can’t blame Jemas
and Co. for thinking romance means pretty pastel colors, but this is
pretty tepid stuff. There’s just not enough characterization there
for me to hang any romantic feeling, and the world is so poorly thought
out there’s no sense of being in a magical place (“Phew.
Too hot,” Sandy says. “I’ll get
you a drink,” Namor says. Now, keep in mind they’re both
underwater, so—so I’m just confused. How can they drink underwater
(particularly a human being who’s got a glurgle bug in her or whatever
they’re using to give her the ability to breathe (and talk), much
less how she can get hot from swimming underwater? And how’s she
strong enough to swim down that far? What about buoyancy and weight
belts and stuff?). Instead, it feels like I’m reading an underwater
series by people who never made it into the deep edge of the pool.
I hope Andi Watson’s cashing the checks, that’s the only real
upside to this. Oh, and that Bill Everett can’t see what’s
become of his creation. Awful.
NEW MUTANTS #3: “And tonight,
a very special episode of New Mutants…” This had a
lot of stuff that struck me as off, from the student at Xavier’s
calling another kid a freak, to Professor X not telling Dani about Magma
(for no real reason that I can see), to Kevin’s emotional range
(“Yeah, I hugged my dad until I killed him, and my mom died when
I was born, but you’re taking me to Xavier’s where the X-Men
are? Cool!”). I think DeFillipis and Weir are out of their element
here and it shows. But I’m Mr. Sensitive: I’m bothered by
the fact somebody put Wario’s head on Ali G.’s body on the
inside front cover. Who’d want to go do that. A super-low Eh.
POSSESSED #1: I can’t help it—this
seems more like Geoff Johns’ recycling his old Hollywood screenplays
for movies to me, than an actual idea for a comic series. Because as
a screenplay pitch (“It’s like The Exorcist meets SWAT!”)
it makes some sense than as a comic book (“Quick, Robin! To the
Exorcistmobile!”), and didn’t anyone think that, um, you know,
Ghostbusters kind took the piss out of this about twenty years
before the first issue came out? I dunno. Junk, but I guess it’s
kinda competently done junk. Super-low Eh.
RELOAD #3: For an all-action finale,
this was pretty low as far as the all-action goes, and I was at least
hoping for an uglier emotional denouement here than what we got here.
Last issue’s America is run by organized crime spin had an enjoyably nasty
spark to it, but this issue’s showdown with the bad guy could have
built on that (a nifty little speech the logical outcome of capitalism
being crime, or something) instead of being a four page “let’s
see who pulls the trigger” first sequence. I wish Ellis had looked
at this as more than a check and a chance to see some pretty Gulacy
art. Oh, well. Eh.
RUNAWAYS #4: “Yes, Runaways,”
Hibbs said Wednesday when he handed me the books. “The book where
the title has nothing to do with the story!” “They haven’t
run away yet?” I asked him (I’d missed issue #3). And sure
enough, Hibbs is right: it’s the kids sneaking around and things
coming to a head with the evil parents. Maybe we’ll get lucky
and they’ll pull an switcheroo (like turning Alias into
The Pulse) and call this Teen Oedipal Force for the trade.
Maybe they run away at the end of the first arc? A pretty high OK
despite all that: the art and the characterization is good although
the tension seems to be dissipating rather than building.
SIMPSONS COMICS #84: Wow, the last
Boothby issue or two hadn’t done much for me but he comes back
in force with this issue. “The Principal of the Thing” is
packed with seriously funny shit, from clever character bits (“Oh,
whenever you’re having dinner, I hide in the bushes and say grace
for you!” is Ned Flanders’ explanation as to why he’s
suddenly popping his head in the window to give advice) to silly sight
gags (Frink’s last panel) to the tweaking of pop culture The
Simpsons does so well (I thought the American Idol gag was
clever, but the Comic Book Guy gag had me literally laughing out loud,
as did Agnes Flanders’ great dream). This may actually be an issue
of the comic that’s funnier than episodes of the show—which
is truly amazing. After starting this gig with Bri, I’ve learned
to rein things in a bit, to save the highest ratings (and lowest) for
stuff that I really, really thought was worth it. So I apologize for
only giving this a very, very, Very Good. This isn’t Maus,
after all, but it is, at this point in the alphabet, the best book of
the week, hand’s down.
SLEEPER #7: I’ve got a lot of
faith in the Brube, so I hope he keeps Carter and us dangling about
this whole extraction business: the thrill of this book is in keeping
us mired in the paranoia, and I’d like it if we could take Carter’s
degradation a little further before this wraps up. If he could rise
higher in the ranks while having to sink even lower and lower in the
shit, I’d be much happier. Hard to rank this issue on its own
terms, but it’s Good compared to what went before it, and
I’m hoping the beginning of a strong storyline.
SPAWN #126: Huh? So before becoming
Spawn, Al Simmons killed his commanding officer to keep him from becoming
a member of the undead army of soldiers who die in war? Or is that
not a flashback, but rather a dream sequence? Or a metaphor, a thirteen-of-the-eighteen-pages
metaphor for how like, war is hell and stuff? I think directing rock
videos has done bad things for McFarlane’s storytelling abilities.
Very bad things. Awful.
SPIDER-MAN & WOLVERINE #2: This
was super-stinky. Not funny, not exciting, and not interesting. I
have to admit, I wasn’t on board from the very first page (Just
didn’t buy the premise: Nick Fury knows Peter Parker’s Spider-Man,
and blackmails him because they have to get a captured Wolverine back
at all costs. Now, why didn’t Nick use Captain America, Black Widow, or, you know, the freakin’ X-Men?
Well, because comics with Spider-Man sell, I guess…) but this book
did nothing to win me over what with lazy storytelling, unfunny banter
and a really awkward flashback sequence that ensures minimum excitement.
And we can look forward to a trade of this in five months, I’m
sure. Awful.
TEEN TITANS #1: I’ve said it
before and I’ll say it again: Geoff Johns gets the DC Universe.
He pretty much can take any character and make them work for me, and
so this issue, with great Mike McKone art, is as strong a start to this
new title as Graduation Day was a poor wrap-up to the previous
series. Even with this being largely filler (showing each member of
the new team being recruited by their mentors), Johns’ knowledge
of, say, how Batman, Superman and Flash are all different in the way
they see the world and how they would see the new Titans project makes
this a satisfying read. I think even if you’re not an old-school
DC geek, you’d think this was good. But if you are, you’ll
probably find this, like me, Very Good.
TRUTH RED WHITE BLACK #7: And so,
fifteen years later, The Truth finally wraps up… Kyle Baker
does some nice work in this issue. Really nice work. So nice, I wondered
why I didn’t see anything this good before this issue. (That double-page
spread works as more than just a bit of back-patting because Baker’s
gift for caricature is so strong). I really feel like this was a botched
opportunity, and it bums me out. But maybe I’m wrong, and it’ll
read better collected. I really don’t think so, though. Eh.
UNCANNY X-MEN #428: So, you’re
saying that Mystique’s true form, if you get her to be completely
naked, still has that little skull thing in her hair? BWAAA-HAAA-HAAAA!
Of course, I’m bitter because it looks like we’re going to
find out the skinny about Mystique and Nightcrawler’s purported
heritage in the course of this crappy story. And Marvel’s rating
system is deeply, deeply confused: this book can get a PG because you
go back and put some shading to look like a bra and panties on a character
that’s committing adultery (the fifth time in the book, in fact)
in a church? I don’t think that’s the way it works, guys.
Awful.
WOLVERINE #3: Great art and storytelling
from Robertson and a nice scene from Rucka can’t hide that this
really isn’t that much better than what Frank Tieri was doing,
frankly: any good “man without a name” story is only as good
as the characters you develop around him, and there just aren’t
any here. I think this is moving too slow and not having anything to
show for it. Depressingly, just barely OK.
WRITERS BLOCK 2003 #1: The premise
for this book is fun: three different writers try to piece together
a six-page story from just the art. You can then look at each of the
stories and compare and contrast. However, the art, being kinda crude
and amateurish is one strike against it, the likelihood of getting stinkers
more than you’re going to get anything decent is another strike,
and the fact that you’re still reading the same story three times
is, at the least, a bad foul ball. The “story,” in which
pregnant warriors duel in a city, doesn’t allow for much development
but Mark Waid, to his credit, pulls off something clever, while Jo Duffy
and Roger Stern go for a straightforward approach, God help them. Sadly,
once you get past the premise, you’ve passed 80% of the fun. Eh.
X-MEN PHOENIX #2: Well, Marvel made
this a “Max” book so now kids can’t read it. Too bad
they couldn’t make it so nobody could read it. On the plus side,
it’s inspired me to write my own Johnny Cochranism: “Teen
thong…is simply wrong.” Yes, that’s the plus side for
this book, everybody: I tell a Johnny Cochran joke. How fresh and
up-to-date I am! I know: I am lame. But, then, so is this really icky
book. Awful.
X-TREME X-MEN #28: I am soooo super-lost,
and I think I’ve read almost all of this storyline. Again, this
is a book that would get more of a fair review from Hibbs, because I
just couldn’t get over the ultra-fallacious blabbity-blab Mr. Claremont
threw around this issue (Ditko’s Mr. A is a light and
witty read by comparison). Gets a looks-pretty-but-Awful rating
from me, I’m afraid.
Y THE LAST MAN #13: Hmm, a rare bit
of poor staging from Pia Guerra throws this off a bit, as does a messy
bit of infodump between two soldiers on a hill. But the charms of this
book (dialogue, idea, characterization) are still intact. Any comic
where someone says, “What the…? Cookie Monster speaks better
English than you. Where the hell did you learn all that?” is a
book I’m going to continue to pick up. Good.
For
Sake of Completeness, here’s a list of all of the OTHER comics
that CE got in this week, that I did NOT read (and, therefore, am unlikely
to review!). Note, that in most cases this is limited to 1) Manga, which
I try to read as it is collected; 2) “Kids” comics like most
of the Archies; 3) titles that were subs-only, either by design or accident
[this can include being shorted by Diamond as well]; 4) Porno [oh, like
you need me to REVIEW it!], 5) Things that looked SO bad on the racks
that I didn’t bother, and 6) stuff that I’ve assessed before,
and I care so little about that I don’t want to waste my time reading
anymore. You decide which is which. There’s also the occasional
“whoops we forgot it!” in here as well...
AGENTS
#3
ALICE IN SEXLAND EXTREME #3
BATMAN ADVENTURES #4
BRIAN PULIDO LADY DEATH #6
CANNON GOD EXAXXION #15
CHIP ZDARSKYS PRISON FUNNIES #1
DEFIANCE #8
ELFQUEST 25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
EVENFALL #3
GI JOE FRONTLINE #8
GRENDEL GOD & THE DEVIL #6
HEROES ANONYMOUS #1
HSU AND CHAN #3
KISS ART CVR #11
KORE #3
LIL RED STITCH #1
MICRONAUTS #9
NEGATION #20
PAPER MUSEUM VOL 2 #1
POWERPUFF GIRLS #40
SIGIL #38
SILKEN GHOST #3
SMALLVILLE #3
SUPER MANGA BLAST #33
SUPERMAN METROPOLIS #6
THUNDERBOLTS #81
VAMPIRE THE MASQUERADE GIOVANNI
VERONICA #142
VICTORIAN #19
And,
for even MORE completeness sake, here’s a list of books, TPBs,
GNs, magazines, and other things that CE got this week. I generally
haven’t read any of this by the time I post these reviews. Though
I generally attempt to give at least one recommendation amongst the
TPBs each week, since I HAVE read the material at SOME point.
BASIC
PERSPECTIVE FOR COMICS
BISLEYS VEROTIK WORLD SC
BTVS VIVA LAS BUFFY TP
CASTLE IN THE SKY VOL 2 TP
CATWOMAN SELINAS BIG SCORE SC
CONAN SKETCHBOOK BY GARY GIANNI
DEATH AT DEATHS DOOR SC
DH GOON VOL 1 TP NOTHIN BUT MISERY
GRIN AND BARE IT #9 MAGAZINE
HEAVY METAL AUGUST 2003
JUSTICE LEAGUE A NEW BEGINNING TP NEW PRTG
LIBERTY PROJECT VOL 1 TP
LOCUS #510
LONE WOLF 2100 VOL 2 TP
MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE ICONSOF EVIL MER MAN #1
METAL HURLANT #7
MY MONKEYS NAME IS JENNIFER VOL 1 TP
NAUGHTY BITS #38
NEVERMEN VOL 2 TP STREETS OF BLOOD
NORM 12 STEPS TO MARRIAGE
ONE PIECE VOL 1 TP ROMANCE DAWN
PROMETHEA BOOK 4 HC
SAMURAI JAM TP
SEMANTIC LACE GN
SHRIMPY AND PAUL SC
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG BEGINNINGSTP
STAR WARS INSIDER #69
STRANGE EMBRACE TP
SWITCHBLADE HONEY GN
TOMARTS ACTION FIGURE DIGEST JUL 2003 #112
VIDEO WATCHDOG #97
X 1999 VOL 10 TP FUGUE
XENOZOIC TALES VOL 2 TP
X-MEN LEGENDS VOL 3 ART ADAMSBOOK 1 TP
This Week’s TP recommendation
is: Ooo, tough call, tough
call. I love how good Death: At Death’s Door looks but
I just haven’t been motivated to pick it up and actually, y’know,
read it. So out of the remaining books that are more-than-worthy
of your time and money, Promethea Book 4 HC, Selena’s
Big Score SC, and The Goon Vol. 1 TPB, I pick The
Goon, Vol. 1 TPB. Funny, beautiful stuff and finally in color
to boot!
|
