Tilting at Windmills v3 #4 is live

You can find the newest Tilting at Windmills up right here. Go, read, give Jonah hits.

-B

No Wind in the Sails Tonight, But Here's Abhay and Secret Invasion #5 Anyways.

As part of my relentless pursuit to understand all things secret and invasive (e.g. your dad's hands), I attended a symposium dedicated to SECRET INVASION comic books, held at the 2008 San Diego Film Festival or "Comic-Con" as it's sometimes called. Within a half hour of arriving in San Diego, I was standing outside of the Hard Rock Hotel watching four bouncers rub a drunk, overweight, middle-aged Hispanic woman's face into the pavement while she yelled "Yo, why you gotta twist my thumbs? Why you gotta be twistin' on my thumbs?" But unfortunately, the entire weekend could not be that entertaining or make me feel that hopeful about my fellow man.

The way the panel works is about 20-30 gentlemen come into an auditorium, and sit behind a long table; each is introduced as having written or having watched someone write or having once had dinner with someone who wrote one of the SECRET INVASION tie-ins. Lead series writer Brian Michael Bendis, having won at comics, does not attend. The 20-30 gentlemen differ in various respects, though the majority of them seem to share an aversion for tanning parlors. Each is introduced in turn by a slideshow hosted by Panel Moderator and Marvel Editor-in-Chief, Joe Quesada.

Then, a pretty lady enters, and each man dons a Luchadore mask and gets in line to-- wait, no: then, the panel is immediately opened, without any delay, to a call for questions from the audience. The question-and-answer session begin, and a rather surprising fact quickly becomes apparent:

Despite the median age of these winners being about 27, apparently none of these people have ever read or even so much as encountered a Story before SECRET INVASION. In fact, they all seem confused if not maybe frightened by how stories work.

Here is my recollection of the question-and-answer session; these are all pretty nearly exact quotes, I think:

FAN #1: How does SECRET INVASION end?

JOE QUESADA: We can't say because the way a story works is that it has a beginning, a middle and an ending, and we usually try to tell you those things in a particular order. I can’t tell you the ending because we’re not done with the middle yet. Next question, please.

FAN #2: Joe-- at the end of SECRET INVASION, what will have happened to the characters?

JOE QUESADA: Aah, I see your confusion-- yes, sometimes people tell stories orally. In fact, this was the very origins of storytelling, and I'm sure anthropologists would assert that this tradition reaches as far back as to the Cradle of Civilization itself, that at the very Dawn of Man, somewhere in between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, that early, primitive man frequently indulged in oral storytelling. However, SECRET INVASION is exclusively being told through comics and is not being told orally. So I can't tell you what happens because words come out of my mouth, and not comic books.

FAN #2: I have a follow-up question. Will the heroes have defeated the villains by the end of SECRET INVASION, or will the villains have defeated the heroes?

JOE QUESADA: Aah, yes, that raises an interesting point. You "purchase" the comic books we sell using money that is contained in your wallet or pocket or grandma's purse. By "purchasing" our comic books, you get to find out the substance of the events that are depicted in the comic books you've "purchased". We are trying to make money by selling you the comic books. So if we tell you what happens in comic books that have not come out yet, we will not make any money. And that would be bad for us, financially. Next question.

FAN #3: First of all, I'd just like to say how you're all great, and this is great, and congratulations on being great. And I just think it's great that such greatness could be so great. It'd be great to rub your great bodies with a cheese greater [sic] and eat the great skin that I rip off. I think it's great that I said "[sic]" out loud.

JOE QUESADA: Thank you, sir. Do you have a question?

FAN #3: It's... there's... I want to know things.

JOE QUESADA: I think I see the problem. A question is a statement designed to invite a response from another person, with the expectation that the response will relate in some way to the original statement. Next question.

FAN #4: Heeeeey, how youse all doin’ today? I'm a huge fan of the Mighty Thor. Will he appear in SECRET INVASION?

JOE QUESADA: Yes, we are selling a comic called MIGHTY THOR'S SECRET INVASION FUNNIES which you should all buy. Thank you for that excellent question.

FAN #4: I have a follow-up question. What will the Mighty Thor be doing in the SECRET INVASION?

JOE QUESADA: Oh, I went a little fast there; my bad: if you read MIGHTY THOR'S SECRET INVASION FUNNIES, you will find out what the Mighty Thor will be doing in the SECRET INVASION.

[Disconcertingly Enthusiastic Applause]

FAN #4: I have a follow-up question. Will the Mighty Thor use his hammer at some point during the SECRET INVASION?

JOE QUESADA: I'm not sure if I'm allowed to answer that, but I will say this: maybe. Next question.

FAN #5: I don't want to know what happens at the end of SECRET INVASION. I don't want you guys to ruin it because I love the endings of your comics. But what will the middle of the story be like? What will happen in the exact middle? Also: will I like it?

JOE QUESADA: Good question. We haven't discussed middles yet. Now, the middle is the part between the beginning and ...

***********************

The overwhelming majority of fans didn't want to ask about SECRET INVASION-- they were there to "debate" the fact Spiderman wished his wife to the cornfield. Remember that? Apparently, dudes out there still care! Like: a lot!

The point of these debates as far as I could tell...?

On the one hand, fans want to provoke Joe Quesada into admitting that he made a horrible mistake of which he's deeply ashamed of, and then to cry and beg for their forgiveness, and then, for him to cry into the microphone "Spiderman is why my wife makes me pee sitting down" and then for him to hang himself from the rafters, and then for adorable children to beat his dead body with a stick until candy comes out, and then for one of the children to eat a piece and scream, “Oh, that is not chocolate after all, senor!”

Joe Quesada, on the other hand, does not want to do any of these things. Editor-in-chiefs typically won't admit they screwed up the flagship characters with whom they've been entrusted-- it's their weird little way of avoiding being fired from their jobs. That's my guess, at least-- one not shared by most Marvel fans, apparently.

I'd estimate that the Spiderman "debates" took up about 50 minutes of the 60 minute SECRET INVASION panel.

The other 20-30 people? For the most part, not invited or asked to say anything. Just there for decoration. Man-decoration.

At some point, Brian Michael Bendis was called on a cellular telephone. Some fan tried to ask "Why is POWERS being released on a quarterly basis during such an important storyline? The quarterly release schedule has destroyed the book's momentum-- when will that book resume a more timely schedule?" Unfortunately, in greasy dipshit language, that sounds like "YO, AY YO, WHY YOU SELL OUT POWERS, MAN? AAAY." Which just got a hearty "Fuck You" in response. Newsarama changed "Fuck You" in its panel report to ... "Boo You".

Boo-You.

*******************

So: sometimes, in observing Marvel comics from the lofty vantages of the internet, one wonders "Do they really think their fans are THIS stupid?" And the answer is: You bet, and they find out that they're right themselves, first-hand! I urge anyone complaining about Marvel comics on the internet: get thee to a nunnery, and watch one of these panels. The fact any Marvel comic features words that are polysyllabic-- Wow! They trust their audience that much!

So, the review of #5 after the jump.

AFTER READING ISSUE #5: I don’t know about you, but my hope is this issue is a giant fake-out.

At least, that’s what I’d like to see happen: for the characters revealed to be Skrulls at the end to turn out not to be Skrulls after all. I think it’d be something if the Skrulls saw Reed Richards’s device coming, and figured out a way to use his brains / arrogance against him. I think that’d be a pretty funny twist, actually. I guess that’s what I’m rooting to happen after this issue anyways— for all of the Marvel Superheroes to be accidental murderers. I think it’d be super-funny to see fans react to that. Plus: it’d explain how the Mockingbird “Skrull” knew about the miscarriage (or was that explained in a stupid tie-in?)...

I think that’s plainly what they want fans guessing. It’s just hard to imagine Marvel would interfere with the White Queen from the ASSORTED X-MEN comics. I get the impression she’s a popular character for them. This entire enterprise would be a more entertaining series if it were easier to subtract those kinds of thoughts / considerations from the game, but...

Were you alive for CAPTAIN MARVEL? He was before my time, and that’s not material I revisited in my Marvel inquiries. That character’s most often linked to Jim Starlin, and I don’t rank Starlin personally, at least for the sort of thing I’m usually interested in. With Marvel, I’m most interested in Marvel’s geography, so the cosmic, outer-space stuff is usually completely lost on me. Anyways, I don’t really find that whole Captain Marvel stretch of the book terribly interesting. Plus, I think Leinil Yu’s space opera moments are the weakest he’s been on the series—for me, he definitely seems more “on” for the Savage Land sequences.

Speaking of Yu:

Maybe they shouldn’t let him draw tears anymore. Maybe it’s not right for kids to be looking at that.

Most of the things they promised last issue haven’t happened this issue, but those promises were made with respect to the events transpiring in New York City. I’m perfectly happy not to be stuck in New York for another issue.

The “Skrulls Offer World Peace” spread isn’t terribly interesting to me. I suppose an argument could be made that the finale of CIVIL WAR showed the Marvel populace eager to embrace fascism, and this could be that earlier scene playing out to its logical conclusion. Still: "evil aliens who claim to mean well" is too ancient a bit of business for me to get excited over. Besides the fact it’s another thing BATTLESTAR GALACTICA did already, there was the V, TO SERVE MAN, etc. It's a little familiar.

Plus, the prospect of the Marvel Universe being controlled by Skrulls for the next year or so-- it just doesn't seem plausible. It'd be too distracting for too many books.

I quite like that Maria Hill scene though. That’s the issue for me, personally. I think I’m a pretty easy audience—- any big let’s-all-cheer moment, I’m usually pretty happy to cheer along. Plus, for me, that scene’s about Hill forced to embrace being a superhero in a way I’ve never seen from that character before. Granted, I don’t read all the spin-offs; I’ve hardly read all of her appearances, by any means. But I always got a “I’m the grouch who doesn’t like superheroes and superhero craziness” vibe off how she’s been written before. So, I like that the character wins in this issue by kind of becoming a sort of legacy character for Nick Fury. Not the boring kind of 1:1 replacement character; “here’s the new Flash, just a little different from the old Flash, but with the same exact name, powers, costume, and hometown” legacy character, but as a unique character who’s filling the spy-superhero role that Nick Fury used to fill while he moves on to fill some other role.

I don’t know if I’d call it intellectually satisfying, but "intellectual satisfaction" is what’s tripped me up with FINAL CRISIS. If I find anything distracting to that series, it’s not that I’m confused as to what’s happening, so much as disinterested by how familiar the themes seem. The character imprisoned in human form who’s forgotten his true place in a larger universe, especially. I imagine the Monitor character will eventually “awaken” in some way that’s both thematically significant and of some confusing importance plotwise—- but I won’t really care when it happens, so much as be ticking off a box in my head. Flattering myself for recognizing themes I’ve already seen a half-dozen times before isn’t doing it for me, this round.

While with SECRET INVASION, right this second, I want that “Oh, No!” moment of watching Hawkeye realize he shot his wife to death. Or— or something bad to happen to somebody. This is a series I don’t want to end well for the characters in it; things have gone way too smoothly for everyone so far, and for me, it's absolutely built a hope that they're hanging onto some kind of ace card for issue #8, and that #1 to 7 have been rope-a-dope. That could just be wishful thinking, and this could just be ... well... dope-a-dope. This could all just be one giant Boo-You.

Time for the Garage Sale: Jeff Talks Prep and Pleads

As always, my timing sucks because I'm so happy Graeme's got a post up that I hate the idea someone might miss it with all the following hoo-ha I'm about to throw your way. So please make sure to see Graeme's post below! Thank you.

So it's time for the annual hillwide garage sale in Bernal Heights this Saturday: that means people all over the hill will be having sales in front of their homes and apartments. And it means that, once again, I will be out on Cortland Avenue with a table, a bunch of long boxes, and some embarrassingly low prices: after much consideration, I've decided to hold my prices to a quarter a book.

Google maps is being kinda dicky without map links, but here's one to my rough location: 515 Cortland Avenue, 94110.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&
geocode=&q=515+Cortland+Ave,+San+Francisco,+CA
+94110&sll=37.739601,-122.412007&sspn=0.007772,
0.019312&ie=UTF8&ll=37.74296,-122.413852&spn
=0.007771,0.019312&z=16&layer=c&cbll=37.739054
,-122.416435&panoid=HLCG6xVb0K-nW0iBtW78qg

The Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center, which organizes the sale, hasn't told me the exact location, but it's somewhere on Cortland between Andover and Moultrie.

Interestingly but probably unsurprisingly, in the year since I've stopped working at CE, the number of books I've bought has diminished significantly: this is probably because not having them right in front of me for eight hours at a stretch has made them easier to resist. I'd made it a point to try and spend less on comix when I left CE but I don't think that influenced things much--more of my spending has moved toward trades, archives, and manga than the actual floppy/pamphlet/single format. (Fortunately, I'm a notoriously poor bellwether for the rest of the industry, otherwise I'd be worried for future of the singles market.) So whereas in the past few years, I've had something like eight longboxes of books for sale, currently it looks like it'll be at most five.

That said, I'm looking to get rid of a lot of duplicates and stuff that has been traded (or at least in good-enough Essential/Showcase format) from across the range of my collection. Here's three quick pictures to give you an idea of what I mean:

Although it's still a work in progress. I mean, having just picked up the HTD omnibus, I really don't need all my issues anymore, so I pulled them and put 'em in the to-sell pile. But those issues have a particular hold on me--some of them I can remember what I was eating when I read them for the first time, or where I bought them, or the quality of light in my room as I reread them for the third or fourth time--and I'm finding myself skittish about letting them go. I was always a reader, not a collector or a speculator, but I find myself wishing now I'd been more of one (I was flipping through my copy of Hulk #181 today and, sure enough, I'd clipped the stamp like a good little Marvelite), just so that the filthy lucre could provide a tipping point in this tug-of-war between my past and my present. Strangely, it's the more personal stuff--like Howard The Duck--I feel more like letting go for a quarter. It's like returning an animal to the wild or something.

Uh, anyway, that's all a long winded way of saying there are going to be some very good deals. Depending on how manic or depressive I let myself get about all this, maybe some very, very good deals. If you're in the city this weekend, please think about showing up between 9 and 4 on Saturday on Cortland between Andover and Moultrie. Introduce yourself and I'll try to press a free comic in your hands or something. Feel free to drop me an email with any questions, or leave 'em in the comments link.

Patience Is A Virtue: Graeme's getting bored with Secret Invasion

Here's the thing. When I got to the last page of Secret Invasion #4, and I saw Thor arrive and the glimpse of Captain America, I thought, okay, so #5 is going to see them getting involved and maybe something will finally happen in the series. Well, SECRET INVASION #5 made half of that come true, I guess. Just the less expected half.

The complete lack of Cap and Thor in this issue just made me concentrate on the incredibly weird pacing of this series so far: What was the point of teasing their appearance so blatantly when you're not going to show them at all in the following issue? Probably the same point as having nothing whatsoever happening for three successive issues, and then blowing your plot development wad on three climaxes this time around. And, while I'm asking questions, what point did the whole Savage Land plot serve whatsoever, apart from taking the Avengers out of New York? If all of the heroes who came off the Skrull ship were Skrulls - and if Reed Richards can just expose them all by building his Skrull Detector off-panel in a moment of prime McGuffin-ing ("They're undetectable! No, wait, I need someone to detect them now. Okay, Reed can build a detector, but I won't tell anyone what his discovery that changed everything actually was.") - then... okay, I guess? But what purpose did it serve, especially when the fake heroes didn't actually do anything apart from run around the jungle and get killed?

That's the problem with Secret Invasion, ultimately; it doesn't stand up to any real questioning. It's just a series of moments that probably looked cool in Bendis' head when he thought of them strung together in some semblance of plot without much thought to the mechanics of how they'd actually work (Of all the Skrulls on the Helicarrier, not one of them noticed that there was another Maria Hill hiding out watching the showdown? Really?). As a big summer blockbuster about explosions and people saying "Oh my God" to tell the audience that this is meant to be important, it works well, but as a story? It's just turning out to be kind of Crap.

From The More Things Change Department...

Going through my stuff in preparation for my upcoming garage sale and came across this lovely number:

What amuses me about this issue of Comics Interview from 1987 isn't the boast that we'll be watching the Watchmen, but the corner claim about Alan Moore says farewell to comics "at least for now." No wonder Affable Al believes we live our lives over and over again!

Arriving 8/13/2008

More line items than we've seen in a few weeks, hope you like SECRET INVASION...

100 BULLETS #94
2000 AD #1595
2000 AD #1596
A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #86 (A)
ACTION COMICS #868
AMAZING SPIDER-GIRL #23
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #567
ANGEL AFTER THE FALL #11
ARCHIE & FRIENDS #122
ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #191
ASTONISHING X-MEN #26 MD
ATOMIC ROBO DOGS OF WAR #1 (OF 5)
BATMAN #679 RIP
BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL #20
BATMAN STRIKES #48
BOOSTER GOLD #11
BPRD THE WARNING #2 (OF 5)
BROTHERS IN ARMS #3
BUCKAROO BANZAI THE PREQUEL #1 (OF 2)
CAPTAIN BRITAIN AND MI 13 #4 SI
CHECKMATE #29
CHUCK #3 (OF 6)
CTHULHU TALES #4 CVR A
DELPHINE #3
DOCTOR WHO #6
EVERYBODYS DEAD #5
FALL OF CTHULHU GODWAR #1 (OF 4) CVR A
FANTASTIC FOUR #559
FINAL CRISIS REVELATIONS #1 (OF 5)
FIREBREATHER SERIES #2
FRANK FRAZETTAS DRACULA MEETS THE WOLF-MAN
FREEDOM FORMULA #1
GALAXY QUEST GLOBAL WARNING #1
GEN 13 #21
GENEXT #4 (OF 5)
GOLLY #1
GOON #27
GREEN ARROW BLACK CANARY #11
GREEN LANTERN CORPS #27
GROTESQUE #2
HALO UPRISING #3 (OF 4)
HELEN KILLER #4 (OF 4)
HELLBOY THE CROOKED MAN #2 (OF 3)
HYPERKINETIC #2 (OF 4)
JUGHEAD AND FRIENDS DIGEST #29
KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE SPECIAL ED LAST MAN STANDING
LAST DEFENDERS #6 (OF 6)
LEGION OF SUPER HEROES IN THE 31ST CENTURY #17
LONE RANGER #12 (NOTE PRICE)
MACK BOLAN THE EXECUTIONER DEVILS TOOLS #5 (OF 5)
MAD MAGAZINE #493
MARVEL ADVENTURES HULK #14
MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN #42
MINESHAFT #22
NECESSARY EVIL #7
PUNISHER #60
PUNISHER KILLS MARVEL UNIVERSE
RAMAYAN 3392 AD RELOADED #8
SECRET INVASION #5 (OF 8) SI
SECRET INVASION INHUMANS #1 (OF 4) SI
SECRET INVASION RUNAWAYS YOUNG AVENGERS #2 (OF 3) SI
SECRET INVASION THOR #1 (OF 3) SI
SECRET INVASION X-MEN #1 (OF 4) SI
SIMON DARK #11
SIRIANUS #1 (A)
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #191
SPAWN #181
SPIKE AFTER THE FALL #2 (OF 4)
TALES DESIGNED TO THRIZZLE #4
TINY TITANS #7
TRANSHUMAN #3 (OF 4)
TRINITY #11
UNCLE SCROOGE #378
UNIVERSAL WAR ONE #2 OF(3)
WALKING DEAD #51
WELCOME TO HOXFORD #1
WONDER WOMAN #23
WORLDS OF DUNGEONS & DRAGONS #3 BALAN CVR A
X-MEN ORIGINS JEAN GREY
YOUNG LIARS #6
ZORRO #6

Books / Mags / Stuff
A TREASURY OF 20TH CENTURY VOL 01 MURDER OF LINDBERGH CHILD
ABANDONED CARS HC
ABSOLUTE LOEG THE BLACK DOSSIER HC
BLACK DIAMOND GET IN THE CAR & GO TP
CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED JOURNEY TO THE CENTER O/T EARTH
CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED TIME MACHINE
CREEPY ARCHIVES HC
DEATHBLOW AND THEN YOU LIVE TP
DISAPPEARANCE DIARY GN (RES)
FROM SHADOW OF NORTHERN LIGHTS TP
HEAVY METAL SEPTEMBER 2008 #118
HUSTLERS TABOO ILLUSTRATED #5 (A)
JUDGE DREDD COMPLETE CASE FILES TP VOL 10
JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE #274
JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL HC VOL 02
KIDNAPPED GN
LEES TOY REVIEW #190 AUG 2008
MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST CRIME COMICS TP
MARVEL ADVENTURES HULK TP VOL 03 STRONGEST DIGEST
MARVEL HEROES 2009 PAGE A DAY CALENDAR
MEATHAUS SOS TP
MIDDLEMAN COLLECTED SERIES INDISPENSABILITY COMPENDIUM TP
MILLENNIUM TP
MOME VOL 12 GN
MOON KNIGHT PREM HC VOL 03 GOD & COUNTRY
NEW EXILES TP VOL 01 NEW LIFE NEW GAMBIT
NEW X-MEN BY MORRISON ULTIMATE COLL TP BOOK 02
NIGHTMARES & FAIRY TALES TP VOL 04
SFX #172
SIMON DARK WHAT SIMON DOES TP
SLAINE HORNED GOD GN
SPIDER-MAN TP KRAVENS LAST HUNT
SPIDER-MAN TP ONE MORE DAY
SUPERGIRL BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL TP
TESTAMENT TP VOL 04 EXODUS
THUNDERBOLTS BY ELLIS PREM HC VOL 02 CAGED ANGELS
TOYFARE #134 MATTEL SKELETOR CVR
WALT DISNEYS COMICS & STORIES #693
WHERE DEMENTED WENTED THE ART AND COMICS OF RORY HAYES
WOLVERINE TP GET MYSTIQUE
WORLD OF WARCRAFT HC VOL 01

What looks good to YOU?

-B

The POS follies: Part 11b

For the dozen or so of you who care about such things, in our last installment I discussed taking some 1400 items off the racks when the POS system says "Hey, that doesn't sell!"

"But, Brian," some asked, "What are we going to do with 39 Avengers?!?" Er, no, wait, the question was about 1400 removed-from-stock books, same diff.

Well, we have a sale, I guess.

My wife gets invited to Nordstrom's "Customer appreciation sales" which is like a pre-sale sale for Nordstrom's "best" customers (she's not actually one of those, but my stepmother is, so...), and I thought it was a great idea to try and emulate.

So, we invited all of our subscribers (box customers, whatever you call them locally) to a private, pre-opening sale for two hours this morning. Half off the stock I wanted gone, and if you bought like 10 or more books, it could go up to 60% off.

The weather was deeply against us this morning -- SF has been ucky thick fogbound for the last 10 days or so, so when it was a GLORIOUS summer day today I knew we wouldn't have as many people as I would have liked. We only had about 20% of the people invited actually show up. Which, actually, is a good response rate, don't listen to my whining.

I was hoping for about 20% of this stock to go away during our two hour sale, and I think we got closer to 15%, so I can live with it.

That's still 85% left though!

I'm going to start filtering the remaining books into the Sale boxes over the next week or so (in fact, I think I'm going to temporarily remove the Starter Sets from the sales floor to accommodate the volume I want to put out at once), and I think I can get rid of another half of them within 60 days or so. The final, what is that, about a third, will trickle out over the next year or so. We're down to virtually nothing left of the "Let's not even count this in the first place, and remove it now" pruning I did BEFORE we put in the POS, so that seems like reasonable timing. And, because I'm using color coded labels, I'll know in a year what are the REAL dregs that should be donated away or even left on the curb for recycling, as need be.

It is NOT possible to deal in physical goods (retail or wholesale) and not have some spoilage and leftover and just plain unsalable junk. The key question is in MANAGING that junk.

I suddenly realized that I can get most of a column out of this, can't I, so I'll shut up there. In theory, expect to see more on this in TILTING on CBR on Friday...

Anyway, I'm hot and tired and sweaty, moving all of those boxes take a lot out of ya'! Off to the showers!

-B

I'll Make A Brand New Start of It: Diana Has A 2005 Flashback, 6/8

Oh, NYX. You came and you took without giving. So I sent you away. Fat lot of good that did. Even after three years, NYX is still on my Top Five Embarrassing Marvel Moments list: a 7-issue series written by the EIC himself, with delays between issues that varied from nine months to over a year. The jokes would practically write themselves: it took Lance Bass less time to come out, we'd have to send our grandchildren to pick up NYX #8, Quesada was retconning every issue as he wrote it... the whole thing was one big fuster-cluck.

And now, here we are with NYX: NO WAY HOME #1, and all that baggage is... well, still around, really.

So what do we have here? It's a six-issue miniseries by Marjorie Liu and Kalman Andrasofszky. While this is (as far as I know) Liu's first work in comics, she wrote an X-Men novel called "Dark Mirror" a few years ago - it was kinda-sorta okay but lacked any real connection to the characters. It's pretty much the same here, but before we get to that...

Okay, here's the thing. NYX, at the time, was part of a whole movement at Marvel to deliver "edgy" variations on familiar properties. The high concept for NYX, as I recall it (it's been three years and, quite frankly, it's not worth the few seconds it'd take me to research - again, we'll get to that in a bit), was a different perspective on the Marvel Universe's mutant population. Not even street-level, like Bendis' ALIAS; more like gutter-level, as far below Charles Xavier's watchful eye as you can get. Of course, Marvel isn't very good at being deliberately edgy, so you got things like X-23 being a prostitute.

So Liu's not starting out from a great place here. And, more importantly, Marvel's not exactly into "edgy" material anymore. You can tell as much from page 6, where Kiden seems to be injecting invisible heroin into her arm (although, bizarrely enough, two panels later we get a full-frontal shot of Kiden slicing up her arm like an emogirl who's just discovered that Penance used to be Speedball).

Now, the research thing. You know, I've gotten pretty used to recap pages as a quick way of getting up-to-speed on any given series. And I'm honestly surprised there isn't one here: again, these characters haven't been around in three years, and that's assuming someone was still reading when NYX #7 came out in 2005. I'd certainly given up by then. Liu tries to give us a brief summary of what happened, but that doesn't tell us about any of the other characters. And because I don't know anything about the other characters, and there's no room in 22 pages to reintroduce all the players, I'm pretty much not interested in the cast.

(In fairness, this is a problem Liu had before - "Dark Mirror" ultimately failed to really get into the characters' heads, they were all written in a very generic and middling tone, which is pretty much what we get here as well. The characters are just sort of... there.)

Now, it's altogether possible that Liu and Andrasofszky will carve out a halfway decent story from this mess - they've got five issues to go, and the set-up is ostensibly finished (as opposed to Quesada's run, in which six of the seven issues introduced new characters to the "team"). But we're off to a EH start, because I think what this comic really needed was a reason to care about these specific characters and to be invested in their story, and it doesn't deliver that.

You swear you've been bitten: Douglas reads three new Spider-Man comics and more

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN itself has had two skip weeks in a row, but we've gotten three other Spider-Man books instead--the new FAMILY series, a SUMMER SPECIAL, and a BRAND NEW DAY EXTRA. Reviews of all three, plus INVINCIBLE IRON MAN and FINAL CRISIS, under the cut.

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN FAMILY #1: The final page explains that this is the new identity of SPIDER-MAN FAMILY--the fat bimonthly title that includes vintage Spider-Man reprints and done-in-one new stories--now that it's been brought into the Stephen Wacker-edited Spider-Man group. Despite the Brand New Day banner on the cover, though, only one story here takes place in the current narrative--an 11-page Aunt May story. It's billed as "Aunt May, Agent of F.E.A.S.T.," which is a kind of promising idea (looking into what she does at the emergency-aid agency where she volunteers), but the story itself is a dire string of clichés. The lead story, by J.M. DeMatteis and Alex Cal, imagines what might have happened between AMAZING FANTASY #15 and ASM #1; setting aside the fact that it adds nothing but maudlin tedium to the original stories, there's the problem that there are already some perfectly solid comics about what might have happened in that period--the AMAZING FANTASY #16-18 miniseries that Kurt Busiek and Paul Lee did back in 1995. (It's also got an error that drives me bats: if something shows discretion, it's discreet, not "discrete.") Then there's a dozy little throwaway set in SPIDER-GIRL's continuity, and a five-page prologue to MARVEL APES that mostly consists of an unfunny riff on the famous Spidey-trapped-under-a-heavy-thing sequence from ASM #33 and makes me want to steer clear of the miniseries. (Maybe MARVEL APES was commissioned because MARVEL ZOMBIES did so well, but that at least had a funny premise; making Spider-Man Spider-Monkey doesn't appear to go anywhere interesting.) The issue's filled out by a reprint of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #300, which it's kind of alarming to realize was almost half the series ago. It hasn't aged well, and the new material is AWFUL stuff.

Meanwhile, a bunch of Nathan Cosby-edited material that I'm guessing was commissioned for SMF has ended up as KING-SIZE SPIDER-MAN SUMMER SPECIAL. I will happily read anything by the Paul Tobin/Colleen Coover team, and their collaborations here are as fluffy and charming as usual, starting with the six-word Spider-Man bio on the first page (reproduced by Chris Sims here). Their big story teams up Mary Jane, Hellcat, Marvel Girl, the Scarlet Witch, Clea, She-Hulk and Millie the Model, and also involves enchanted shampoo; they're also responsible for a two-pager about MODOK and his chair, which, you know, MODOK. The rest of the issue's filled by a Keith Giffen/Rich Burchett Spidey/Falcon teamup that seems to have been sitting in a drawer for a good long while and might just as well have kept sitting there forever, and a totally ridiculous but amusing Chris Giarruso Mini-Marvels story about Spider-Man and Venom as rival paperboys competing for the Osborns' account. Quite GOOD, on the strength of the Tobin/Coover stuff, anyhow.

On top of those, last week we got SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY - EXTRA! #1, three stories that actually are set in current continuity, more or less--actually, they're evidence of how far ahead the Spider-team is planning. #567 comes out next week, but Joe Kelly and Chris Bachalo's gory Hammerhead story (which takes 18 pages to get through what could've been many fewer pages of exposition) is a prologue to a sequence that apparently begins in October, and Marc Guggenheim and Marcos Martin's rushed-looking piece (Spidey on trial--well, at a pre-trial hearing, actually--and being defended by Matt Murdock) is an "interlude" in a story that doesn't start until #582, which if my arithmetic serves me will be the first issue of 2009. Nice to know that they're taking the long view, and it's OKAY--Bachalo's art makes me wish he'd find some project he could really make his own--but still doesn't convince me that they're going anywhere special with BND, maybe because none of the writers has license to steer the franchise anywhere unexpected.

Surprisingly, that's not the case with THE INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #4, in which Matt Fraction is treating Marvel's third-most-overexposed character like he's solely in charge of him. There's a scene this issue where Tony Stark announces that he's buying (a very thinly disguised) Coca-Cola to distribute antiretrovirals (not "retrovirals," despite Fraction's dialogue) in sub-Saharan Africa, and I have no idea where that's going--but it's hugely entertaining anyway. And the core of this issue is a handful of conversations between and/or about Tony and Pepper that run with the way their relationship worked in the movie. I still don't think Larroca & D'Armata's photo-based faces, CGI-type backgrounds and heavily computer-modeled coloring work too well, even though they're more appropriate for this series than most others--it just ends up looking like a higher-tech version of SHATTER--but this is my idea of a GOOD time, and I'm enjoying the chutzpah of Fraction's approach.

And I'm continuing to adore FINAL CRISIS. My annotations to #3 are over here, but I think my favorite thing about this series is the economy of its death-metal attack--Green Arrow's personality nailed in a single line of dialogue, Supergirl justifying her cover feature despite the fact that she appears in two panels (not counting the death of her Nazi alternate-world analogue), the way every big plot development happens scarily fast and every visual gesture and line of dialogue seems to have some kind of thematic resonance. (Libra's hood viewed from behind in the swamp scene sure looks like some kind of monster with too many consonants in its name.) Plus: Clark Kent spouting self-pitying exposition like he's on a Mort Weisinger-era cover! EXCELLENT.

INTERVIEW: Abhay interviewed Ed Laroche, creator of ALMIGHTY.

ALMIGHTY is a 140-page self-published comic book created by Mr. Ed Laroche (with lettering by Jaymes Reed) that I purchased on a whim off the internet, based on the recommendation of a blog entry by comedian Patton Oswalt. It’s a straightforward post-apocalyptic action comic. Here is the back cover text in its entirety: “A girl has been abducted and a killer hired to find her and bring her home.”

For a self-published comic by an unknown that I purchased off the internet, it exceeded my (low) expectations. I don’t think the main character’s arc is entirely earned, but I thought the action scenes were surprisingly accomplished. The book’s best action set piece is a 20 page sequence involving the main characters’ escape from a group of soldiers: the action reflects a sense of geography; characters seem to occupy a physical space; bullets feel like they might have consequences. I don’t know how excited I am by post-apocalyptic action thrillers, but ALMIGHTY at least succeeded for me as a showcase for Laroche’s art & storytelling skills.

You know: it looks like a real comic book. I think Ed Laroche could have gotten a job drawing someone else’s comic if he’d wanted one. Instead, I had a 140 page self-published action thriller sitting in my lap. I approached Mr. Laroche for an interview to discuss that and his book ALMIGHTY.

1. What lead up to your decision to self-publish the comic? I found the fact it was self-published surprising since it seemed like fairly commercial material, at least as I thought I understood the marketplace; you know: it’s an action comic. I was under the impression comic publishers knew how to sell those. Did publishers ask for creative changes you were unwilling to make? Or I get the impression with a lot of publishers-- I'm not sure I'm their audience anymore because I’m not Ashton Kutcher’s agent. Were people asking you to give up rights or what have you that you weren’t comfortable with giving up?

I couldn’t get any publishers to read it. My idea was to create a story that was built on certain principles of what I think a comic should be. One of those principles is the long form comic story, an all-in-one, a comic that is designed simply and laid out clearly, a book that is timed out differently because it’s not a bunch of 22 page issues glued together, but also a story that didn’t depend on a lot of exposition. When I shopped it around I found out that most publishers don’t look at unsolicited work, and the few publishers that did never got back to me. But I guess what’s mostly true is that I didn’t know the right people that would get me past the gatekeepers.

2. What have been the consequences of self-publishing the book? I don’t know how many self-publishing success stories there have been in comics lately. Have retailers been supportive? Los Angeles stores are good about supporting local creators; I know a week after I bought your comic online, I saw it in the window of Skylight Books, over in Los Feliz. You’ve had favorable reviews-- the Patton Oswalt reference got me to buy it. Is it finding an audience? How has it gone for you?

The consequences are still playing out. All I can say for sure is that before I self-published, I was a frustrated artist that had ideas about how comics should be approached. As of now, it’s great to see that my execution of those ideas are being well received. It validates my efforts and gives me the confidence to continue.

As far as retailers are concerned the stores that currently stock my book (this is before being listed in Diamond) are places that I frequented. Not only were they Indy friendly, but because they knew my face they were more willing to seriously consider the book. But by the same token, I found that stores where I didn’t have that relationship were resistant to take on something like ALMIGHTY. I understand why-- they have more to lose. They want a sure bet, a guarantee of a return on their investment. But there are no guarantees-- all you can do is minimize your liability. Unfortunately, this is one of many factors that have nothing to do with whether a comic is good enough to be offered to a retailer’s customer base.

3. ALMIGHTY ends with a teaser page for what looks like a prequel entitled REMEMBER AMPHION (honestly, not as good a title as ALMIGHTY). Based upon your experiences with ALMIGHTY, do you expect to self-publish that as well?

Yes, I plan on self publishing all the titles that I’ve been developing for the past several years (at least their first initial runs). The next book that I’m working on is not the sequel to ALMIGHTY -- it’s called WAVEFORMS. WAVEFORMS will allow me to implement another aspect of my ideas on what comics should be, which is authorial. I want the emphasis to be on the creator and not the creation.

4. Did you ever think about releasing ALMIGHTY as a webcomic?

No.

5. Okay, enough business questions—let’s talk about ALMIGHTY. The part of the book that stood out the most for me was the 20 page gunfight in Chapter 4. A lot of American action comics don’t spend that many pages on an action sequence; long action sequences to me seem like they’re more the domain of manga. Was that a part of the book you knew early on that you wanted to create?

One of the advantages of creating a long-form comic is that if you need an action sequence to play out for as long as it needs to, you’re not restricted to the 22-page limitation of most comics and trade paperbacks.

I found that most comics would spend a lot of time on exposition, establishing motive and resolution (because these are the domain of the writer, not the artist), but virtually no time on the way things resolve themselves visually. This is a byproduct of having the writer be the lead creative on the project. In the best case scenario, you would be able to have these two creative elements complement each other, but most of the time, what you have is this weird disconnect between what you’re reading and what you’re seeing.

With Chapter 4, I had an idea of what needed to happen, but how it unfolded was very organic. The story told me ultimately-- it resolved itself.

6. I felt a strong James Cameron influence throughout the book. ALMIGHTY sort of shares Cameron’s interest in strong women fighting back horrors that are both physical and philosophical. How important were those themes to you when you were preparing the book, as opposed to just giving yourself interesting things to draw? The book is very straightforward in premise, but there’s a swerve late in the book—the final confrontation between the protagonists and antagonists swerves in a way I didn’t expect (and I’m not honestly sure not sure if it succeeds), but that suggested to me that you had something very particular in mind that you were trying to communicate thematically.

James Cameron’s handling of Ripley and Vasquez in Aliens was the first and last time we’ve seen authentic portrayals of the type of woman that could really pull off the action hero thing.

Fale (my main protagonist) isn’t some super-deadly, mid-drift baring model in high heels. That kind of super-female archetype doesn’t work for me. It’s inauthentic.

The “swerve” that you mention and the way that it plays out in the story will have a richer impact when the sequel REMEMBER AMPHION is released.

7. I’m pretty shitty at comparing artists to other artists. I think I see an influence of the early Gaijin Studios guys—Jason Pearson, Brian Stelfreeze, that crowd, but I’m not sure about that. I’ve seen comparisons in other reviews to Eduardo Risso and Dave Lapham-- I personally don’t see that, like, at all; you don’t shy away from a heavy use of black, but that’s as much as I can understand those comparisons. I guess my suspicion, based on the quality of the action choreography, is that you have some experience storyboarding, but—well, that would be a guess.

All those guys are great artist, and they have inspired me in a lot of different ways. ALMIGHTY is my first published work. I’ve made my own comics for a very long time for my own personal use. I make a “living” storyboarding animation and live action.

8. The lead character Fale is sort of in the mysterious anti-hero mold that American action comics tend to feature. In rereading ALMIGHTY for this interview, the first third of the book is especially quiet and opaque; ALMIGHTY only features three splash pages and two of those are in that first third, and are quiet landscape images. Most of the characterization is done through how Fale behaves in the later action sequences. Why did you keep that character at arm’s length?

I have reason for the way Fale comes off in the book but getting into the why of it doesn’t give an opportunity for the reader to form their own ideas. I can say this: you will never know what Fale is thinking; her actions will define her.

9. I was wondering if you could talk about how ALMIGHTY was made. After work? On weekends? And I guess I believe every interview with an artist should include some tool/technique talk, so: what did you ink with? Do you do loose pencils and draw more at the inking stage, or are you particularly precise with your pencils? Did you thumbnail the entire comic before drawing the first page, or did you thumbnail and draw it chapter by chapter? For a book you drew yourself, you didn’t really go easy on yourself. Those three splash pages aside, most of the book clocks in at somewhere between 5-7 panels per page. A lot of those panels are atmospheric panels—the drawings of crows in Chapter 6, say.

I pulled a Kerouac. I saved up enough money to move to Prague where all I did was work on the book and party on the weekends. I plan on replicating the process. Work hard, play hard.

I pretty much just started at the beginning and penciled all the pages. I drew pretty tight pages on 8-1/2 by 11 printer paper, then light tabled them onto Bristol board. Then, I inked them on my next pass -- it was easier for me to take it in sections.

It took my whole life to get to ALMIGHTY. I’m planning on picking up the pace.

10. Do you have goals for the future with respect to comics?

Yes.

Thanks to Ed Laroche for the interview. For more viewpoints on the book-- it has been enthusiastically reviewed by the Broken Frontier website here; positively reviewed by Mr. Steven Grant here. You can find a short preview of ALMIGHTY on the internet.

Justice is like a Hawk

Sorry for that title, heh, just been rereading WATCHMEN again.

HAWKMAN SPECIAL #1: If you had told me 10 or 15 years ago that Jim Starlin would be writing and drawing HAWKMAN, I would have probably been pretty, "Wow, that sounds AWEsome, let's order a ton!", but come 2008 my response was far more muted because Starlin has had a string of fairly mediocre books lately. Nothing particularly awful or anything, but neither nothing that I've thought was exceptional, or that sold well.

It's also marketed as a tie-in to the RANN/THANAGAR HOLY WAR mini, which isn't selling as well as it should either.

But, oddly, maybe this should have been marketed as a FINAL CRISIS book -- it talks more directly about "CRISIS-y" stuff than something like ROGUES REVENGE or REQUIEM did.

See, apparently Hawkman's origin has changed yet again, and no, he never was a reincarnated Egyptian through the ages, that was all a lie. He was... well the comic never explicitly tells you WHAT his new origin really is, but I think you're meant to infer that it has gone back to the Thanagarian one, but WHICH of those (Silver Age or HAWKWORLD) isn't at all laid out.

Which just leaves me sputtering "Buh? Wuh? Guh?" Does this make Hawkman the most rebooted origin of all? Seriously, doubleyou-tee-eff? I think DC might actually believes that the reason that no one buys a HAWKMAN comic in the long run is that they don't like his origin. But, really, it's just that, in the long-run, most customers don't want to purchase a comic of a second-stringer. Unless there's a splendid reason to.

Like, Mike Grell can get GREEN ARROW to sell as a mini-series, and the monthly that spun out of that started strong... but within a year or so (as I remember it, and not looking at a sales chart), the audience started slipping away, because, naturally, it was Green Arrow after all. Sure, then Kevin Smith can come on a new GREEN ARROW, and it sells like free money, but after he leaves, a year or so later, and it sells like Green Arrow does, again.

Hawkman is like this, The Atom, Spectre, The Demon, and a whole host of other characters. They're all great characters, really, be it visually, powerswise, or something like that, but they're not actually sustainable on their own. You can sell someone a mini-series about them, if it is good, but trying to do a monthly comic will almost certainly get you canceled within five years. These characters are great on teams, though, or playing off of other characters. Everyone likes them, but few want to buy them.

Sometimes what they try to do is keep changing the status quo. Look at The Atom. He's been turned into a barbarian, or reset to a teenager, or had his wife go crazy and had him go wandering the multiverse, and now he's (maybe... but maybe not since Grant hasn't shown it, and it really looks like that entire year of COUNTDOWN has been moved into "didn't happen" territory if Grant doesn't show it) Monitoring the Monitors.

None of the other changes stuck, and no other change like most of those CAN stick, because it takes him away from the DC universe-proper -- and to the extent that people care at all about The Atom, it is in the context of the DCU, yes?

Hawkman hasn't been removed from play before, but they play merry havoc with him all of the time, and now neither the reader nor the character have any idea who he really is -- Hawkman is explicit on that point at least in the comic, on his knees and clutching his head, even, when he says it. On the plus side, he's now one of "The Aberrant Six", which, really, just sounds awful. I'd rather be in the Inferior Five...

And reading between the lines in this book and things Starlin said in a recent interview, it seems like there's going to be a monthly Hawkman comic that he's going to write (and draw?), and I guess this is the set up for it.

Problem is, it really isn't a story. It's all set up. Things get subtracted, but nothing concrete gets added other than setup for some other story at some other ill-defined point of time. And I don't like the subtraction. "Reincarnated Egyptian warrior fighting a curse of destiny through the ages" is romantic, multiplies story possibilities, gives clear motivation, but allows you to fit any past version in at will, and allows any future changes to come cleanly. It's a dumb thing to throw away for a single storyline, just like killing off the Green Lantern Corps was dumb -- even if no one is using it at the time, it's the kind of broad "any story can fit in this box" concept that you don't want to pitch to the side.

The shame of it all is that Starlin draws Hawkman VERY well, with bold shots, and lots of cosmic, and really nice page and panel layouts, creating a book that moves right along even though it is essentially xx pages of two guys standing around and talking. Just looking at the art alone, I might have said "VERY GOOD" on the rating, because that's just some nice looking, dynamic comics art. But, there isn't a story, per se, and ugh, the "meta-story" is just plain AWFUL, and at the end of the day that's what matters to me.

What did YOU think?

-B

Keeping the Con in Content Free: Jeff describes the geekiest thing he did in San Diego

Someone will one day write a post that will catch San Diego Comic-Con in all its current monstrousness--a long New Yorker-esque post filled with telling details. Hell, at the size it is now, maybe only a Moby Dick sized book will be able to catch it in all its wonder and peculiarity, filled with digressive chapters on the history of comic books, and conventions, and cosplay. Believe me, I want to write the fucking thing but can't figure out how.

Also, impossible as it seems, I want to try to avoid the six or so types of SDCC posts so prevalent this year (the "SDCC is too big" post; the "no, it's not" rejoinder post; the "here's my interaction with a celebrity" story and the "who cares about the celebrities" post (you can sometimes find these two just a few entries apart on the same blog); the "here are my pictures" post; the "this is the panel I was on" post; and the "here's the news I found exciting" post). I want to just cut straight to the chase: what was the nerdiest thing I did at San Diego? When I tell friends I went, this is usually what they want to know, although they approach the subject in a roundabout way. "Did you dress up as a jedi?" they'll ask. "Did you get your picture taken with a chick in a skimpy outfit?" they'll inquire. "Did you buy something you can wear when you play Dungeon Master?" "Did you wait in really long lines to see the cast of Stargate?" "Did you bathe?" (No, no, no, no, and not as much as I would've liked, frankly, but that's more the heat and humidity than any sort of hygiene mishap.)

The runners-up to the nerdiest thing I did?

**I took pictures of the cast of The Greatest American Hero. Unironic pictures.

**I was on a panel with awesome people. (See? I'm cheating already.)

**I paid so much money for that stupid FLCL Ultimate Edition DVD I'm scared to tell my wife. Although now that I look at the prices they're going for on Amazon, I kinda wish I had bought two.

**I gave unsolicited advice to a total stranger about the best way to play her Region 3 Battle Royale DVD.

**I coveted a Brother Voodoo lego figure that also glows in the dark. (That was before I saw these.)

**I stood in the line to meet Grant Morrison, and then ducked out at close to the last minute because I had nothing for him to say and nothing for him to sign.

**By contrast, I not only bought a mini comic from Nat Hernandez (Gilbert's daughter), I paid extra to have her do a sketch on the inside.

But the geekiest thing I did at San Diego? Is after the jump.

I played Golgo 13: The Arcade Game.

I first came across it on Thursday night. We were walking up Fourth Street to the DCOnline/SOE party at some bar that looked like it should've been called "Senor Roofie's:" nice, well-lit, but when you try to leave you realize how many freakin' stairs you have to climb and how far from the street you actually are. When Eli Roth gets around to filming the inevitable Hostel: Con Night, he should keep Senor Roofie's in mind.

Anyway, yeah, on the way there, I looked over as we were walking and saw:

in a darkened window.

Somehow, I did not manage to lose my shit. While my love for Golgo 13 is well documented on this site, I may not have confessed my shameless love for the Silent Scope arcade games, and the two month period I spent driving to a miniature golf course in Redwood City twice a week just to play Silent Scope 2: Dark Silhouette to the unconcealed amusement of the fifteen year olds behind the concession counter. I think I'd read about Namco's Golgo 13 sniper game long ago and assumed I'd never see or play it, or maybe it was the video game had visited me in my dreams, but there a strange twinning effect happened as I glanced over and saw it: I was both shocked and nonplussed, disappointed and sanguine. After all, I had seen it. All I had to do was find it again, come back and play it.

So, allow me to qualify my earlier statement: the geekiest thing I did in San Diego was leave the Con on the middle of the day Saturday, skipping innumerable panels and the chance to better pan for the bits of awesome in that seemingly endless convention floor, so I could go play Golgo 13: the arcade game.

All the nerd obeisance surrounding the Con had led me to believe I'd find the game in the window of some trendy tattoo shop with a "Welcome Comicon!" poster I hadn't noticed earlier right above it. Inside, the game would be nestled right next to copies of Drifting Classroom and a Betty Page lookalike behind the register whose arms would be tattooed with sleeves recounting, on the left, the entire Planet of the Apes film series, and, on the right, Logan's Run, modified to include tattooed adaptations of both Logan's World and Logan's Search.

Actually, the Golgo 13 arcade game was located in a combination liquor store/laundromat/hobo joint. Dudes in unwashed sweatshirts slouched by the hostess products, staring at the scowling counterman as he sold cigarettes and liquor. On the laundromat side, clothes tumbled like nervous acrobats while a man with a sunburned face and dirty feet adjusted two plastic chairs so he might transition from nodding off to dozing off. A Marvel Vs. Capcom console growled and burped its way through its attract mode, the screen faded nearly to the color of clouds. Not only was there no Betty Page lookalike, the counterman looked at my request for a few dollars in quarters with a perfect marriage of disgust and suspicion.

Although it looks just like Silent Scope, the Golgo 13 game runs on an entirely different dynamic. As I recall, Silent Scope has a monitor inside the rifle scope that synchs what you see on screen, only magnified, and as you pass the scope of your sniper rifle across the screen, the area coved by the scope magnifies as well. So you're able to scan terrain quickly and, actually, make some of the sniping shots without bothering to look through the scope.

By contrast, from what I could tell, G13: TAG has a genuine magnifying lens within its scope, and a monitor built into the rifle stock which reads when your shoulder is in place. When you're in position, the entire video game screen switches to a zoomed in version of the scene, but you need to look through the scope for further visual amplification.

What's awesome about this is nerds who groove on the whole science of sniping (says the guy pretending he doesn't have John Plaster's Ultimate Sniper on his bookshelf) can actually deal with issues of parallax and eye relief and looking at the location of the crescent to check whether you're positioned appropriately. What sucks about this is that if the lens is screwed, you're screwed: it's like playing Missle Command with a broken trackball.

Additional impediments to the enjoyment of G13:TAG include not a word of English to be found anywhere in or on the game, a baffling initial scene where you're shown where to point your rifle for it to zoom in on the scenario (which leads me to think Namco had originally designed the game to have two stages, one of which tested so badly all that remains is this vestigial sequence), and a distressingly aroused hobo who was very eager to turn my tender pas de deux with the video game into a tawdry menage a trois: "Yeah, dude, shoot, shoot, shoot!" He suddenly gurgled over my shoulder. "Blast that fucking diamond, bro! Do it! Do it!"

As Golgo 13 would say: "..."

One of the cool things about the game is each scenario is introduced by a quick bit of G 13 manga (presumably done by Saito and Co.) to set up what you need to do: gang boss needs executing; detonation trigger on skyscraper bomb needs to be shot off of a rooftop; perfect diamond (sigh) needs to shot and destroyed during the one moment of transfer between two safety deposit boxes. It's done in a panel by panel presentation and is such a keen little thing all its own--the first two-thirds of a Golgo 13 story compressed into seven or eight screens--I continued to put money in a busted video game just so I could see the different scenarios. There are something like 20 scenarios, but they're tiered so you have to try all of the first four before you can access the next four so I didn't see very many. So if there was a scenario where you snipe hobos so a middle-aged nerd can have a few minutes of rhapsodic interaction with a busted video game that hates him, I sadly wasn't able to access it.

It was definitely my geekiest moment, although it technically was more like forty-five (since the experience was disappointing in the first five but I hung out for another forty). And what's weird is, if it'd been awesome I'm not sure who I would've told. Tim Leong? Whoever was working the Viz booth? It's not like I saw any Golgo 13 cosplayers running around the floor. I pass it along to you, however, in the hopes that if you find yourself down San Diego way, anytime soon, and you're inordinately fond of Golgo 13, busted video games, and scary hobos, you'll be able to look it up for yourself.

Next: Content, I absolutely swear. Content!

Arriving 8/6/2008

Here is what we're receiving this week:

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN FAMILY #1
ARMY @ LOVE THE ART OF WAR #1 (OF 6)
ARMY OF DARKNESS #11 LONG ROAD HOME
AUTHORITY #1
AVENGERS INVADERS #4 (OF 12)
BETTY #175
BETTY & VERONICA DOUBLE DIGEST #163
BOND OF SAINT MARCEL #1 (OF 6)
BOYS #21
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #17
CABLE #6 MD
CRIMINAL 2 #4
CROSSED #0 (OF 9)
DETECTIVE COMICS #847 RIP
DOCTOR WHO CLASSICS #9
DREAMLAND CHRONICLES IDW #2
ETERNALS #3
FATHOM #1 CVR A GARZA
FINAL CRISIS #1 DIRECTORS CUT SPECIAL
FINAL CRISIS #3 (OF 7)
FRANKLIN RICHARDS SUMMER SMACKDOWN
FX #6 (OF 6)
HACK SLASH SERIES #14 FRISON CVR B
HAWKMAN SPECIAL #1
HELLBLAZER PRESENTS CHAS THE KNOWLEDGE #2 (OF 5)
HOUSE OF MYSTERY #4
HULK #5
INFINITY INC #12
INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #4
IRON MAN VIVA LAS VEGAS #2 (OF 4)
JACK OF FABLES #24
JACK STAFF #18
JONAH HEX #34
KILLER #7 (OF 10)
KING SIZE SPIDER-MAN SUMMER SPECIAL
LOONEY TUNES #165
MANHUNTER #33
MARVEL ILLUSTRATED MOBY DICK #6 (OF 6)
NEW EXILES #9
NIGHTWING #147 RIP
NINJA HIGH SCHOOL #162
NYX NO WAY HOME #1 (OF 6)
OKKO CYCLE OF EARTH #1 (OF 4)
PATSY WALKER HELLCAT #2 (OF 5)
PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #22
RED SONJA #36
ROBIN #176 RIP
SECRET INVASION FRONT LINE #2 (OF 5) SI
SPECIAL FORCES #3 (OF 6)
SPIDER-MAN LOVES MARY JANE SEASON 2 #1 (OF 5)
SPIDER-MAN MAGAZINE #2
SPIKE AFTER THE FALL #2 (OF 4)
STAR TREK ASSIGNMENT EARTH #4
STORMING PARADISE #2 (OF 6)
SUPERGIRL #32
SWORD #10
TERRY MOORES ECHO #5
TOR #4 (OF 6)
TRINITY #10
TWELVE #7 (OF 12)
ULTIMATE ORIGINS #3 (OF 5)
UNCLE SCROOGE #377
UNIVERSAL WAR ONE #1 (OF 3)
VENOM DARK ORIGIN #1 (OF 5)
VINYL UNDERGROUND #11
VOYAGES OF SHEBUCCANEER #2 (OF 3)
WAR THAT TIME FORGOT #4 (OF 12)
WOLVERINE KILLING MADE SIMPLE

Books / Mags / Stuff
AMELIA RULES FUNNY STORIES TP VOL 01
BLURRED VISION VOL 04
BRIT TP VOL 02 AWOL
COMICS COMICS #4 (RES)
COMPLETE ZOMBIES VS ROBOTS TP
COUNTDOWN ARENA TP
DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES TP
DMZ TP VOL 05 THE HIDDEN WAR
ESSENTIAL MAN-THING TP VOL 02
FOOLKILLER TP FOOLS PARADISE
GEEK MONTHLY VOL 2 #9
HONEYBEE WHISPERS GN (A)
JIM SILKE BETTIE PAGE PORTFOLIO
KID HOUDINI AND THE SILVER DOLLAR MISFITS GN VOL 01
LOST OFFICIAL MAGAZINE SPECIAL #18
MASK OMNIBUS TP VOL 01
MASSIVE SWERVE SC
NEVERLAND GN
PAINTINGS OF J ALLEN ST JOHN HC
PUNISHER PREM HC WELCOME BACK FRANK
SHOWCASE PRESENTS HOUSE OF SECRETS TP VOL 01
SPIDER-MAN J TP VOL 1 JAPANESE KNIGHTS DIGEST
ST TNG INTELLIGENCE GATHERING TP
STAR WARS DARK TIMES TP VOL 02 PARALLELS
WALT DISNEYS COMICS & STORIES #692

What looks good to YOU?

-B

Ain't been here lately

Been just crazy swamped lately -- between trying to keep WATCHMEN in stock (no, seriously, we're selling a month's worth each-and-every day, so that's just nuts; then there was the comedy of errors as Diamond messed up a couple of orders in a row...), and getting rid of all of the Didn't-turn stuff from the store (first we've got to locate and pull it, then remove it from inventory, then removing the minimum points, so they won't reorder again, then getting them stickered and prepped for the big invite-only customer loyalty sale we've decided to do -- all in all a ton of frickin' work); plus I'm rearranging things throughout the store as I've got a little free space to play with having, y'know, removed 1400 GNs from the racks...

I know you don't care all that much when you just want reviews, but that's what's been going on. So today, my choice is between getting at the week or so backload of email messages that weren't Urgency Priority #1, or reviewing a little, and I chose YOU, pikachu!

JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA ANNUAL #1: Huh. This may be a good example of Nostalgia being a armed bear trap -- it was kind of nice to see Earth 2 again, especially presented as though pre-Crisis INFINITY INC had just continued being published into the 21st century, and especially draw by Jerry Ordway, but for $3.99 (and feel free to call me crazy!), it mighta been nice to have had one of those, whaddyacallem?, stories, too.

For me, in a serial, annuals should be a CULMINATION of the story -- I'm especially thinking of that period of late 80s DC annuals that would have been roughly contemporaneous with INFINITY INC: build build build, then boom, the payoff in the annual; but this was nearly exactly the opposite, instead it is kicking off a story that is apparently going to pay off slowly (?) in the main parent book. It's a really really frustrating choice, made even worse by what appears to be a Deus Ex Machina appearance of the "real" Power Girl in a way that isn't explained or alluded to at all.

What's worse is otherwise I really enjoyed this issue tremendously. I like these characters, I miss them a little (in, y'know, a manly way), and I thought Johns did a good job capturing the elusive "feel" of it all (there's this one line about something like "Justice Society of Infinity, or whatever crazy thing Sylvester is calling it this week" that felt just precisely perfect to me), but, owies, it is $4, and I expect something more. AWFUL.

NEWUNIVERSAL: 1959: a prequel (and probable schedule padder) to the Ellis newuniversal comic, and Kieron Gillen does a pretty good job, except for the somewhat inexplicable decision to have Tony Stark and Iron Man appear in the comic, and in such a weird way too, effectively making it "the 'New Universe' is the Marvel Universe gone sideways", which sort of kind of misses the point of the original, doesn't it? And all while I'm reading the story, I'm thinking about THAT, rather than about the story itself, which really goes against the point of a story too. The art is relentlessly pedestrian, which hurts -- I'm not 100% sure what the conclusion with the baby was meant to be. Odds are, he shot it, and those lines are supposed to be blood, but there are somewhat similar lines in the before shot, too... A noble try at franchise building, but I'm fairly uncertain that anyone is interested in the franchise OUTSIDE of Warren's involvement. I sorta want to go with a low OK, but the art is so workmanlike that I think I'm going to say EH.

SUPERMAN / BATMAN #50: DICKBAT! Man, I can NOT believe that an editor let that cover go past, at least with those colors in that place. *shakes head sadly* the insides were fine, if you really WANT "Thomas Wayne knows Jor El" as an in-continuity concept. But, hell, Jack Knight did, so what not? OK

WILDCATS #1: What is this? Try #5, I think?

On the one hand, you've got to give them credit -- they've *actually* "destroyed the world", and are trying a post-apocalypse survival-type set up as a basis for an entire LINE of titles. That's a "Hail Mary" pass of the highest order, and it actually takes some serious stones to even try. It also does what people have generally asked for from their superhero comics: "let's see some consequences". So good job in trying.

I don't think it is going to work for a few reasons, however:

1) the event the consequences CAME from ("Number of the Beast") was poorly read, and not on anyone's radar whatsoever, especially as it is running during ANOTHER poorly read event (The DC/Wildstorm crossover), to make it seem like some portion of one of the two was rushed out. Maybe to get out ahead of Ultimatum in the Ultimate Universe?

2) There's not a sympathetic character here among the protagonists; and they're hard to distinguish between them and the antagonists presented, except in the cartoony-ness of the baddies wanting to "eat people" for no reason other than they can.

3) There's no real sense of threat. It is "the end of the world", "Devastated wasteland", etc., but none of it feels real at all -- the Wildcat's have an easily defensible position with power and supplies and whatever, working medical bays and so forth. And LA looks mostly the same, but with some broken windows.

4) That was a pretty non-cliffhanger cliffhanger -- there's nothing to drag me back for the next issue, or even the other three series, actually.

5) It is try #5 on these characters -- the audience really and truly do not seem to be interested in them unless you've got a big name doing it. And even them, its an uphill battle.

It's a good try and something that people have seemingly been asking for, and like I say, they deserve props for trying, but you have to grade on the final product, and I'm going to have to go with an AWFUL.

Huh, that's a bunch of bad reviews, isn't it? For something good, I'm really really happy with the (FINALLY!) TP of GRENDEL: GOD & THE DEVIL. It's not Matt's most subtle of work, but there's a heft to it, and a reality to the world building that helps sell it really well. Plus I love Snyder's art, and it's nice to finally (FINALLY!!) have this collected, with a terrific recoloring. VERY GOOD work, and it should be in your library, and is also my PICK OF THE WEEK!

What did YOU think?

-B

PS: Because someone mentioned it to me yesterday, and I did not know this, you can find Joss Whedon's DR HORRIBLE'S SING ALONG BLOG for free online at hulu.com. I had missed chapter 3 because of the limited time on it's original site, so this pleased me to be able to see it still on line, in a way that, presumably, is making Joss and co some money...

Jog Bought It: Apologies from 7/30

Narcopolis #4 (of 4)

This cover gets a lot more amusing if you take the nosebleed in the manga sense. Rarely has the struggle between liberty and ruinous desire been so aptly rendered!

And you sort of have to work to make a Jamie Delano comic even less subtle, don't you? It's one of his endearing traits as a writer, I think - not every book is going to be outstanding, but you can generally count on a uniquely loud experience. It's not white noise either - Delano frequently mixes similar tones into distinctly linked compositions, heavy things, ringing with dim portent. Frequent listeners will recognize many of this project's particular clangs and booms, as if Delano's first work-of-the-form in five years had to recollect echoes of what went before, so as to solidify the old intent once again.

You've got the garish, satirical sci-fi setting of 2020 Visions. A vision of tentacles as sustenance and prison, right out of The Territory. Terror-enlightenment as to all the world's suffering, a la The Horrorist. It all works pretty well together, like an index. I especially enjoyed the clash between 'bad' drugs, state-sponsored downers all, and "empathogens" that form naturally in caves, look like snot, and produce hallucinogenic truth sessions with the whole of screaming, exploited humanity. The moral is one all of us can support: grow yer own.

But setting aside its value as authorial stock-taking, Narcopolis unfortunately ends more or less as it began - a very adorned means of telling a simplistic, repetitive story, one dotted with character types that either shrug around under roles obvious from first sight or travel in arcs so plain they seem predestined. Our Hero is Gray Neighbor, a former bombmaker for EradiCare turned promising agent of T.R.U.S.T. (Together in Responsibility for Universal Security and Truth), who's been planning to "shoot hot into MamaDream's suckHole" (wreak havoc with the Big Government/Big Corporation/Big Church/Big Media drug outlet that runs the nation-city) since issue #1.

That's more or less what he does here, after having gone through a few dozen pages of children being mindwiped for playing the wrong games in the schoolyard, extraterritorial subHumans ("with black staring eyes") being hauled into camps en mass as obvious terrorists, citizens being complacent about the war on BadEvil as their rights are stripped away, and almost certainly a few too many personal flubs to believably rank as a top agent. I mean, I know Narcopolis is both a dangerous world superpower and mired in inefficiency, but don't they run tests for illegal drugs? Or assign a cadet at least a part-time supervisor he isn't sleeping with? It a type of satire that allows for endless retreat - any breach of plausibility is just one more sign of how fucked up this fallen world is.

Yet while it goes without saying that Narcopolis provokes its own enemies so as to spook its citizenry into a shell of consumerist complacency -- isolation breeding distrust toward anything beyond the borders -- at least the texture of the noise remains pleasing. Delano was always one of the more 'writerly' of the British Invasion comics scribes, and here he's crafted a neat little dialect of slogans, brands and buzzwords for his characters to use, with Jeremy Rock and Greg Waller (on colors) ably rendering an urban architecture of casino lights and vulgar literalism; why should a grand Cathedral try to hide the spiritual pornography within, when it can decorate the windows with hardcore action and shape the microphones like cocks?

Maybe I'm the one getting dazzled by surface appeal. This is a series so enchanted with its own metaphors that it has characters discuss a few of them, as metaphors, in-story, before launching into a finale that postulates deadly terrorism as the enlightened citizen's protest while simultaneously scampering away from having its hero kill too many people or anything really nasty like that. I guess I just respond to its qualities as a gathering of its writer's voice into dictating a thesis statement for a renewed comics effort, its citations accumulated over years of work. I'll call that EH as a whole experience, but you might hear it howling from farther down the BigStinkHole.

What I did on my summer vacation: Jeff's content free post for 7/30.

San Diego Comic-Con was ineffably strange for me, to the point where I've got little choice but to throw my hands in the air and admit this is just a post mentioning I was there, I made it back alive, and, oh yeah, I strung a few stories for io9 while I was at it. (Dammit, thought I had six stories. Whoops.)

It was definitely a "sing for your supper" kind of gig, and working with Graeme, Annalee, Charlie (and Meredith!) was great fun, but wow. Eating, breathing, sleeping your job? Even if your job is writing about geek stuff? I dunno. I was lucky in that I just covered the overflow for the first two days--everyone else was running non-stop, working, like, eighteen hours a day for four days. (Wednesday was a more leisurely thirteen hour day.) It made me think that what we're looking down the barrel of is a future where (for the lucky ones) our work is our play, but the catch is you can never really stop playing. Maybe if I was doing it full-time I'd get used to the pace--stringing stories for io9 for the first time while at SDCC is probably like doing political reporting and your first gig is the Democratic National Convention--but as it was, it was a little bit like thinking you're going to be boogieboarding in the surf with friends and suddenly you're getting dragged by riptide face-first through the sand.

Anyway, once I can sort that experience out from SDCC (to the extent I can), I expect you'll hear more from me about San Diego. And I did come back fired up to write some stuff for you guys--that first annual volume of Love & Rockets, Bottomless Belly Button, and Chiggers all demand more attention than I think they've been getting.

Oh, and if you're David Oakes, drop me an email, will you? I can't find a current email for you to save my life.

More in the next week or so, I promise.

Arriving 7/30/2008

Looks like the called the week because of the con... I can't remember such a small shipping week in a while...

1001 ARABIAN NIGHTS ADVENTURES OF SINBAD #2 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN EXTRA ARCHIE DIGEST #246 BATMAN DEATH MASK #4 (OF 4) BEYOND WONDERLAND #1 (OF 6) (O/A) BLACK PANTHER #39 SI BLACK SUMMER #7 WRAP CVR BLUE BEETLE #29 CALIBER #4 (OF 5) A CVR ROYO CARTOON NETWORK BLOCK PARTY #47 CATWOMAN #81 COMIC BOOK COMICS #2 DC SPECIAL CYBORG #3 (OF 5) DEADWORLD FROZEN OVER #3 (OF 4) DUMMYS GUIDE TO DANGER LOST AT SEA #4 (OF 4) DYNAMO 5 #15 FANTASTIC FOUR TRUE STORY #1 (OF 4) FRANK FRAZETTAS CREATURES #1 GHOST WHISPERER #5 GREEN LANTERN #33 GRIMM FAIRY TALES #29 (C: 0-0-1) HAUNT OF HORROR LOVECRAFT #2 (OF 3) HERCULES #4 (OF 5) A CVR SEJIC HUNTRESS YEAR ONE #6 (OF 6) JIM BUTCHERS DRESDEN FILES #4 (OF 4) WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE JOKERS ASYLUM TWO FACE #1 JUGHEAD #190 JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA ANNUAL #1 KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #141 LOCKE & KEY #6 MAN WITH NO NAME #3 MARVEL SPOTLIGHT UNCANNY X-MEN 500 ISSUES MS MARVEL #29 SI NARCOPOLIS #4 (OF 4) WRAP CVR NEW BATTLESTAR GALACTICA SEASON ZERO #11 NEW DYNAMIX #5 (OF 5) NEWUNIVERSAL 1959 NORTHLANDERS #8 PIGEONS FROM HELL #4 (OF 4) PILOT SEASON THE CORE #1 PROJECT SUPERPOWERS #5 (OF 7) REIGN IN HELL #1 (OF 8) (RES) SADHU WHEEL OF DESTINY #3 (OF 4) SECRET INVASION FANTASTIC FOUR #3 (OF 3) SI SKAAR SON OF HULK #2 SKRULLS VS POWER PACK #1 (OF 4) SPIDER-MAN WITH GREAT POWER #5 (OF 5) STAR TREK MIRROR IMAGES #2 STAR TREK YEAR FOUR ENTERPRISE EXPERIMENT #4 STAR WARS REBELLION #15 VECTOR PART 7 (OF 12) SUPERMAN BATMAN #50 (NOTE PRICE) SUPERNATURAL LAW #45 TAROT WITCH OF THE BLACK ROSE #51 TEEN TITANS #61 THOR #10 TRINITY #9 TRUE BELIEVERS #1 (OF 5) ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #124 UN-MEN #12 WILDCATS #1 WOLVERINE #67 WOLVERINE ORIGINS #27 X-MEN FIRST CLASS VOL 2 #14 X-MEN ODD MEN OUT ZOMBIE TALES #3 CVR A

Books / Mags / Stuff ARMY @ LOVE TP VOL 02 GENERATION PWNED BATMAN GOING SANE TP DOOM PATROL ARCHIVES HC VOL 05 ESSENTIAL FANTASTIC FOUR TP VOL 7 FORGOTTEN REALMS TP VOL 07 THE LEGACY GEEK MONTHLY VOL 2 #8 GRENDEL GOD & THE DEVIL TP GRIMM FAIRY TALES OVERSIZED HC HOUSEWIVES AT PLAY ALONE WITH ME (A) JOURNEY TP VOL 01 JUXTAPOZ VOL 15 #8 AUG 2008 NOVA TP VOL 02 KNOWHERE ORDER TP VOL 02 CALIFORNIA DREAMING PARASYTE GN VOL 04 (OF 8) POPGUN GN VOL 02 PREVIEWS VOL XVIII #8 (NET) SONIC THE HEDGEHOG ARCHIVES TP VOL 08 STYLE SCHOOL TP VOL 02 TEMPLAR ARIZONA GN VOL 02 MOB GOES WILD THOR BY J MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI TP VOL 01 TOMARTS ACTION FIGURE DIGEST #167 WHITE RAPIDS GN WIZARD MAGAZINE #203 M KNIGHTS 10TH ANNIV QUESADA & PALMIOTT

What looks good to YOU?

-B

Here's a few manga I liked (or sort of liked).

Although you should keep in mind that I'm the kind of guy who thinks the best publishing news of the whole San Diego con is that Pluto -- Naoki Urasawa's Ultimate Astro Boy!! -- will be coming to US shelves in February 2009. Granted, it's still an ongoing series in Japan (a somewhat irregular one to boot), and only up to Vol. 6 as of this week, so it's likely to hit a production wall around Spring 2010... but still, PLUTO!! And 20th Century Boys at the same time!

But here's some back-to-front funnies you can buy right now.

Real Vol. 1:

Oh is it? This one's gonna need some context.

The writer/artist of this thing is Takehiko Inoue, who is a full-blown manga superstar. I'm not using that last word lightly. His reputation was built on a 31-volume basketball manga titled Slam Dunk, which ran from 1990 to 1996; it was one of the most popular features in the most popular manga anthology in Japan, the mighty Weekly Shōnen Jump, which in those days had a circulation of well over five million copies, per week. It is credited with exploding interest in basketball among the youth of Japan; there is now a sports scholarship that bears its name.

After the series ended, Inoue became less interested in shōnen manga, those comics for boys. Following the 1997 release of a silly sci-fi basketball webcomic, Buzzer Beater, the artist devoted himself to seinen manga, those for 'mature' audiences. In 1999 he began a swordsman opus, Vagabond, which is currently up to its 28th collected volume. And in 2001 he started up a side-project, a seinen basketball story, one that's managed to pull together seven volumes so far as it creeps onward - and unlike those boy comics, this one is Real. See what I did there?

Ah, but old habits die hard. Or maybe manga editors are hesitant to break them. Whatever the case, there's no hiding that Real -- at least in this debut volume -- is a dead-straight shōnen formula piece, its story structure practically out of a table of forms in the rear of a manga textbook, all of it fancied up with scratches and grit and hard-livin' times. And I guess I can't blame Inoue and/or his editors for not wanting to start too far off from the stuff that made the artist a legend, but all the tropes and tricks have a way of bumping into the real stuff.

All your favorite character types are present. Nomiya is a hoops-crazy fellow with an awful afro, a total goof... with raw, burning talent inside. Togawa is a fiery young man with clenched fists... striving to be the very best at his chosen vocation. And sure, Nomiya is a goof partially because he dropped out of school following a motocycle accident that paralyzed the young woman he was trying to pick up, and Togawa is broodin in part due to the bone cancer that has him confined to a wheelchair, but it all rarely functions as more than an especially colorful means of pushing enemies toward extending the hand of friendship, raising a fist in honor of perseverance and guts, and celebrating sweat-soaked victory. And defeat... unto greater victory, one might expect!!

Now, I don't want to go over the top here. This isn't something like, say, Gantz (a fellow resident of the Weekly Young Jump seinen anthology), where the notion of maturity seems to extend exactly 0% farther than added gore and naked. No, Inoue does pepper his work with some nice, lived-in details, like the plight of playing basketball in a limited-space city, or the economic doom that faces kids that don't graduate school - I particularly liked the running joke about Japan's draconian, scammish system of driver licensing.

But then we get back to the courts, where Togawa's disability functions primarily to facilitate the burning of rubber and the blowing away of stunned opponents. I understand that Inoue is trying to build a nice message about overcoming life's troubles, but I don't think his character's shōnen heat is terribly effective in delivering it - as the rest of Togawa's wheelchair basketball team grins over a loss, settled comfy into their positions ("I mean, what do you expect? We're disabled."), Our Hero lashes out with his fists, knowing that the path to Real fulfillment is that of a thousand boxers and bread bakers and martial arts winners in comics of the past, and thus his body's state is little more than a crucible for cooking up outstanding moves.

It's not that I'm at-heart opposed to boy's manga structures acting in an allegorical manner, mind you, but it all does have a way of making Inoue's pretensions toward grit seem... well, pretentious. And, about 3/4 of the way through this book, it's suddenly as if someone realizes the latent problems in interfacing with realistic disabilities on the plane of ninja superpowers, and the story launches into a detailed, fairly effective portrayal of coping with serious physical problems, one that unfortunately comes barreling into the story through a whopper of a plot contrivance. Still, it leaves one hopeful that Inoue will look a bit deeper than easy, friendly old motifs as the story goes on - it's only volume one, after all.

So, er, why is this a manga I (sort of) liked, as mentioned up top? Why is it still more-or-less OKAY? It all comes down to Inoue's visuals, at this point in his career a frighteningly assured evolution of the stylized shōnen realism of Tetsuo Hara (Fist of the North Star) and Tsukasa Hojo (City Hunter, on which Inoue apprenticed as an uncredited assistant), his sturdy figures powerful yet lithe, even a tiny bit feminine. VIZ's deluxe presentation preserves all of Inoue's delicate color sequences, which serve to add a dreamy texture to the rampant physicality. It goes without saying that the big basketball set pieces are flawlessly paced, mixing droplets of humor and observation into forward-rushing action, no movement less than perfectly clear.

You will understand how this artist got so huge (and, starting next month, you can directly observe his growth as VIZ rolls out Slam Dunk itself), even if you wonder where his art is going, so heavy with the shadow of past, youthful success.

Dororo Vol. 2 (of 3):

Of course, some artists can mix things up more effectively than others.

For an unfinished 1967-68 series many anticipated to be little more than an appetizer before the great Osamu Tezuka's famed Black Jack -- coming later this year from Vertical, also publisher of this project -- Dororo has turned out to be a damned effective bit of work. It's got a formula too: every storyline sees driven, cursed Hyakkimaru and his thieving boy sidekick Dororo take on a fabulously nasty demon and The Inhumanity of Man, before getting chucked back out onto that long road. Hyakkimaru was born as little more than a human slug, his wicked father having traded 48 parts of his body to 48 demons before his birth, in exchange for Earthly power, but the boy's had himself augmented with a man-made humanoid frame, with swords under his fake arms and many other nasty tricks; it's no wonder he's made for killing, since every demon he slaughters wins him back another organic piece of himself.

It's a far wilder way to cope with one's disabilities, and that's only the bloody edge of Tezuka's berserk entertainment aesthetic, one that thinks nothing of following fourth wall-breaking zaniness with the graphic, on-panel execution of young children. Tezuka's style is not a realistic one, in terms of drawing or storytelling or whatever, though the story he's telling is often bracingly dark; rather, blood and gags flow naturally enough from his pen that all of this comic's setting seems a mad hallucination, cumulative in its burrow through the unconscious.

(this is actually from vol. 1, btw) It's furiously good cartooning, pefectly complimenting Tezuka's tales of fox demons that inspire men to war so as to feed from the dead, and an evil god out to rip the faces from the faithful and wear them for vanity. A larger plot also begins to cohere, one I'm not sure will wrap up in a satisfying manner, given Tezuka's ultimate move away from the project, but the particulars remain VERY GOOD on their own.

Retail Intelligence: The impact of the WATCHMEN trailer

Just popping in for a quick Retail Intelligence note: the trailer for WATCHMEN, which debuted something like a week ago, in front of THE DARK KNIGHT (and, wow, was that a terrific film), has done something that I've never ever seen. It is selling comic books. Lots of them.

Well, or it would have, had I had any in stock!

Last Tuesday I had what would normally be a month's worth of WATCHMEN in stock (and if you remember back to last week's post, WATCHMEN was my #2 best selling TP in the last 12 months, so we're talking about a real number of copies). Every single copy sold out by mid-Saturday morning. The calls have been coming in by the dozen or more a day "Do you have WATCHMEN?!?!", so I'm going to go on a limb and suggest that no one in San Francisco has them. I put in a direct order for a "3 month supply" that I should have tomorrow, but even then I'm going to order another big stack on my next reorder cycle (unless I pay a LOT for shipping them faster, reorders take about 10 days to show) just to cover my bets (it's not like, worst case, we won't sell them *eventually*)

Interestingly, there are some calls for DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, but nothing like WATCHMEN -- and DARK KNIGHT was a fabulous and fantastic movie.

Talk on the CBIA suggest that retailers all over the country are having similar results.

-B

Savage San Diego: A Quick List of Who's Where & When

I don't know which one of the thousands of exhibitors brought the ray that speeds up time, but they've got it cranked to eleven down here in San Diego: I had enough time to walk one-tenth of the giant exhibition floor last night, said hi to no more than three or four people (but they were awesome people, I assure you) before joining the nerd diaspora and staggering through the streets of San Diego in search of a place to rest my feet and a liquid that cost less than a dollar an ounce.

So I'm posting this early Thursday morning instead of Wednesday, and I apologize for that. Nonetheless, if you're immune to the effects of the Speed-Up-Ray and are at SDCC and have time to peruse our humble blog, here's the schedule for the Savageites at SDCC (basically, this is the stuff Douglas presented at the end of his post, plus the rare appearance of Graeme on a panel):

Thursday, July 24

1-2: Douglas Wolk moderates The Future of the Comics Pamphlet, Room 32AB (with Joe Keatinge, Carr D’Angelo, Eric Shanower, and other luminaries to be announced)

2-3: Graeme will be schooling you on the Science Fiction That Will Change Your Life, Room 2, along with Annalee Newitz, Austin Grossman, Charlie Jane Anders, and Patrick Lee. Expect Graeme to do most of the talking!

6-7: Douglas Wolk moderates The Comics Blogosphere, Room 32AB (with David Brothers, Jeff Lester, Laura Hudson and Tim Robins)

6-7: Jeff Lester will be thinking of something clever to say on the above-mentioned Comics Blogosphere, Room 32AB (with David Brothers, Laura Hudson and Tim Robins, moderate by the mighty DW)

Friday, July 25

11:30, Douglas’ll be giving a talk called “Against a Canon of Comics” as part of the Comic Arts Conference in Room 30AB, and probably signing Reading Comics somewhere after it.

5-6: Douglas Wolk moderates Teaching Comics—Room 4 (with Phil Jimenez, Matt Silady, James Sturm and Steve Lieber)

Saturday, July 26

11:30-12:30: Douglas Wolk moderates Image Comics/Tori Amos—Room 6B (with Tori herself and a cast of thousands)

2:00-3:00: Douglas Wolk moderates Lettering Roundtable—Room 8 (with Todd Klein, John Roshell, Tom Orzechowski and Jared K. Fletcher)

4:30-5:30: Douglas Wolk moderates The Story of an Image—Room 4 (with Kim Deitch, Jim Woodring, Jim Ottaviani and Kyle Baker)

Hmm, looking at the schedule, I think Douglas is one who owns the Speed-Up-Ray...

So there you have it, and I hope to see you at the Con. If you catch me wandering about blankly, feel free to come up and say hi--I'm hoping I can defeat the effects of Time Disappearitis by meeting more quality people!