Nice looking week.
(Editing this to avoid any misunderstanding!!)
I have reviews from last week like 80% written, but I thought I'd get the last 20% written in Burbank, and I ended up doing shots with Geoff Johns among others that night; and then the next day there was the car accident as I was driven back to the airport and I'm in pain, so I'll need another day or two to finish writing them... so soon, yes.
ADVENTURE COMICS #516
AGE OF REPTILES JOURNEY #4 (OF 4)
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #637
ARCHIE & FRIENDS #145
ASTONISHING SPIDER-MAN WOLVERINE #2 (OF 6)
ASTRO CITY SILVER AGENT #1 (OF 2)
AUTHORITY THE LOST YEAR #10 (OF 12)
AVENGERS ACADEMY #2
BATGIRL #12
BATMAN #701
BIRDS OF PREY #3 (BRIGHTEST DAY)
BOOSTER GOLD #34
BRAVE AND THE BOLD #35
BULLETPROOF COFFIN #2 (OF 6)
CALLING CTHULHU CHRONICLES #1
CAPTAIN AMERICA BLACK PANTHER FLAGS OF FATHERS #4 (OF 4)
CARS #7
CHEW #12
COMIC BOOK GUY THE COMIC BOOK #1 (OF 5)
CONAN THE CIMMERIAN #22
CRITTER ORIGIN (ONE SHOT)
DAREDEVIL #508 SL
DAYTRIPPER #8 (OF 10)
DEADPOOL CORPS #4
DMZ #55
DOC SAVAGE #4
DOCTOR SOLAR MAN OF ATOM #1 MICHAEL KOMARCK CVR
DOCTOR WHO ANNUAL 2010
DONALD DUCK AND FRIENDS SC VOL 02 DOUBLE DUCK
EXPENDABLES #4 (OF 4)
FRENEMY OF THE STATE #2 (OF 5)
GEORGE R R MARTIN WILD CARDS #6 (OF 6) HARD CALL (RES)
GIRL COMICS #3 (OF 3)
GORILLA MAN #1 (OF 3)
GREEN HORNET YEAR ONE #4
HACK SLASH MY FIRST MANIAC #2 (OF 4) CVR A
HUMAN TARGET #6 (OF 6)
INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #28
JUSTICE LEAGUE GENERATION LOST #5 (BRIGHTEST DAY)
KILLER MODUS VIVENDI #4 (OF 6)
LADY ROBOTIKA #1
LIGHT #4 (OF 5)
LOCKE & KEY CROWN OF SHADOWS #6
MAGOG #11
MIGHTY CRUSADERS #1 (OF 6)
MYSTERY SOCIETY #2
OFFICER DOWNE (ONE SHOT)
ORC STAIN #4
PALS N GALS DOUBLE DIGEST #143
PAT LEE WIDOW WARRIORS #1
PREDATORS PRESERVE THE GAME ONE SHOT
REBELS #18
RESURRECTION VOL 2 #12
RICHARD STARKS PARKER MAN WITH GETAWAY FACE (PRELUDE)
ROBERT E HOWARD HAWKS OF OUTREMER #2 (OF 4)
ROBOCOP #5
SAVAGE DRAGON #162
SIGNIFIERS #1
SIXTH GUN #1 REG ED
SIXTH GUN #2
SONIC UNIVERSE #18
SPECTACULAR SPIDER-GIRL #3 (OF 4)
STRANGE SCIENCE FANTASY #1
STUFF OF LEGEND THE JUNGLE #1 (OF 4)
SUPER FRIENDS #29
SUPER HERO SQUAD #7
SUPER HEROES #4
SUPERMAN #701
SWEET TOOTH #11
SWEETS #1 (OF 5)
TERRY MOORES ECHO #23
THANOS IMPERATIVE #2 (OF 6)
TITANS #25 (BRIGHTEST DAY)
ULTIMATE COMICS SPIDER-MAN #12
UNCANNY X-MEN HEROIC AGE #1
UNCLE SCROOGE #393
UNWRITTEN #15
WORLD WAR HULKS SPIDER-MAN VS THOR #1 (OF 2)
WORLD WAR HULKS WOLVERINE VS CAPTAIN AMERICA #1 (OF 2)
X-FILES 30 DAYS OF NIGHT #1 (OF 6) CVR A
X-FORCE SEX AND VIOLENCE #1 (OF 3)
X-MEN FOREVER 2 #3
X-MEN HELLBOUND #3 (OF 3)
X-MEN ORIGINS DEADPOOL #1
X-MEN SECOND COMING #2
Books / Mags / Stuff
ABSOLUTE PLANETARY HC BOOK 02
AKIRA KODANSHA ED GN VOL 03 (RES)
ANGEL IMMORTALITY FOR DUMMIES HC
BATGIRL BATGIRL RISING TP
BLACKEST NIGHT BLACK LANTERN CORPS HC VOL 01
BLACKEST NIGHT BLACK LANTERN CORPS HC VOL 02
BONEYARD COLOR ED TP VOL 01 NEW PTG
BRODYS GHOST GN
CATALOG 439 BURLESQUE PARAPHERNALIA SC
DEATH LIVES GN S&S ED
DISNEY FAIRIES GN VOL 02 TINK & WINGS OF RANI
FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND #251
FRACTURED FABLES HC
FREDDY VS JASON VS ASH NIGHTMARE WARRIORS TP
G FAN #92
HALO BLOOD LINE PREM HC
HI FRUCTOSE MAGAZINE QUARTERLY #16
INFINITY GAUNTLET PREM HC
INVINCIBLE IRON MAN PREM HC VOL 04 STARK DISASSEMBLED
INVINCIBLE PRESENTS ATOM EVE & REX SPLODE TP VOL 01
JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE #299
JUDGE DREDD RESTRICTED FILES TP VOL 02
MEGATOKYO VOL 06
PEEPO CHOO GN VOL 01
PLAYWRIGHT HC
PREDATORS MOVIE ADAPTION TP
REVOLVER HC
RUNAWAYS PARENTAL GUIDANCE TP
SCOTT PILGRIM GN VOL 06 FINEST HOUR (NOT ON SALE UNTIL 7/19!)
SHERLOCK HOLMES TP VOL 01 TRIAL OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
SIEGE PREM HC
SPAWN ORIGINS TP VOL 06
SPIDER-MAN GAUNTLET TP VOL 01 ELECTRO & SANDMAN
SWORD TP VOL 04 AIR
TOMARTS ACTION FIGURE DIGEST #190
TOYFARE #157 MATTEL SAN DIEGO COMIC CON CVR
VIKING PRINCE BY JOE KUBERT HC
X-MEN LEGACY TP EMPLATE
X-MEN PIXIE STRIKES BACK TP
YOUNG AVENGERS ULTIMATE COLLECTION TP
An essay based upon MARIO ACEVEDO'S KILLING THE COBRA: CHINATOWN TROLLOP #2 after the jump.
Anatomy of an impulse buy:
1) The cover features a dude straight-up getting his fuck on, which is certainly a persuasive sales campaign for a comic book. And next to the Buddha, even, which I don’t think a lot of guys could manage. You know: I already think God’s laughing at me when I take my clothes off, just generally, so having a giant Buddha statue in the room towering over me in that moment would generate the opposite of enlightenment. By enlightenment, I’m of course referring to boners.
2) The sub-title of the comic was “CHINATOWN TROLLOP.” Trollop is such a delicate and dainty euphemism—it’s got so much more panache than “entry-level sluts” or whatever degraded euphemism rings through your local junior high school today. Standards have deteriorated. Trollop is like when you watch MAD MEN—earlier generations may have been racist, sexist alcoholic liars, but they at least knew how to dress themselves.
3) Apparently there was a book called the NYMPHOS OF ROCKY FLATS, and that book was even a best-seller, among literate people, people who don’t need to see pictures when they read. So: this comic about a guy fucking a Chinatown trollop had a very strong probability of having solid literary influences.
Excerpt from my screenplay STANDING DANGEROUS. Log-line: "A rookie English teacher is going to turn the hood… upside-down, through the Power of Learning… and Hip-Hop-- SAY WHAT?"
FADE IN.
Inner city gang members sit in rapt attention.
MR. CARTER
(earnestly) Do you know who the original Chinatown Trollop was?
(beat)
Moll Flanders.
Entire class explodes in applause and high-fives. Lil Tray throws his crutches into the garbage—he can walk! Wall explodes open, showering the room with debris—Buddha rushes in through the hole.
BUDDHA
Hey everybody—we’re all gonna get laid!
FIN.
But, oh well, comics, so:
1) A more astute observer would have noticed the squiggle near the main character’s lips. That squiggle nears the lips is a fang. It’s a vampire comic.
2) It’s about a Hispanic vampire named Felix Gomez and his Chinese “lover” fighting Yellow Peril villains—Jiang Chow and the Han Cobras, Asian heroin-dealers who kill their underlings using cobras. Sample dialogue: “By this time next year, I’ll have every drug cartel—Colombians, Mexicans, Thais, Afghanis, Russians—lapping like dogs out of my rice bowl.” My fortune cookie says you die now, Mr. Bond-- you know, not my kind of thing. By now you can probably guess that I’m a little too much of a delicate flower for that kind of thing. Here's my impression of me: "My vagina's sore. Waah."
3) The only discernible literary influence was Hemmingway’s THE SUN ALSO RISES, in that KILLING THE COBRA is similarly about an expatriate war veteran whose obsession with his war-wound (i.e. a nasty case of vampirism that he caught in the Iraq War) leads him into an ultimately tragic relationship with a woman (i.e. the Chinatown Trollop) and aimless wanderings in the shadow of meaningless and decayed social institutions (i.e. the remote institution of the vampire “Araneum”). However, I think that CHINATOWN TROLLOP loses too much in ignoring THE SUN ALSO RISES’s themes of sexual insecurity—after all, the cover features the Chinatown Trollop having sexual congress near the Buddha, plainly expressing that in the Felix Gomez universe, sexual success is a route to spiritual fulfillment. This is a far cry and a far less believable theme than those raised by Lady Brett Ashley’s inability to consummate a sexual relationship with the narrator of THE SUN ALSO RISES, Jake Barnes, due to his hideous genital wound.
On the other hand, THE SUN ALSO RISES didn’t feature heroin-dealing Chinese gangsters, so who’s laughing now? Not Hemmingway—he killed himself.
So, that happened. A comic you may never have heard of…? Turns out there may be good reasons you’ve never heard of it. But that's not a reason to write about anything, right? "News flash! Comics: not very good sometimes." But when I think about why I didn't enjoy KILLING THE COBRA: CHINATOWN TROLLOP #2-- when I really consider it, the things I've suggested to you so far-- the lack of craft, the discomforting politics, the cliche qualities...? Well, those those don't sound very meaningful at all, do they? I mean, if I really cared all that much about lack of craft, retrograde politics, or cliches, would I really still be reading comics, at all?
No, I found the comic silly for reasons deeper than what can be attributed to any alleged lack of craft. And in thinking about it, what I think it is, and why I think the comic may be worth a thought, is this: the main character. Main character, vampire-of-action Felix Gomez-- he seemed silly to me.
But: why? He's almost identical to a hero of a 1970's Marvel comic, just with fewer thought balloons and more of a willingness to have sex with trollops of a Chinatown variety. He could be Son of Satan; he could be Ghost Rider; he could be Werewolf at Night.
And yet those characters seem tolerable in a way that Mr. Gomez does not. The very idea of him seemed silly to me, regardless of execution. Why? What changed from 1970-whatever to today? Mr. Gomez seemed silly, but he's just a generic R-rated action hero of the pulp variety. And I think that's the key fact here-- that in fact, Felix Gomez: Vampire seemed silly BECAUSE he's a R-rated male action hero of the pulp variety. Those sort of doesn't exist anymore other than in obscure IDW books, hidden away in dark corners of your local comic shop. Not in any way that's hip.
What happened to R-rated male action heroes? What happened to bad-asses? Hemmingway killed himself-- what's everyone else's excuse?
One of the big summer movies this year is the EXPENDABLES, which features or stars every single, important action hero I grew up with (with glaring exceptions like, Fred Ward from REMO WILLIAMS: THE ADVENTURE BEGINS, Taimak from THE LAST DRAGON, or Kurt Russel from a hell of a lot of awesome movies). Most of the stars are roughly 80 years old now. It's a funeral for creatine. What's striking about the movie is how they were never really replaced by a new batch of action heroes. Who are the big action stars of this summer?
NO!
NOOO!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! All the time, it was... We finally really did it. You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!
THE A-TEAM underperformed at the box office-- THE LAST AIRBENDER exceeded expectations. Bad-ass action has been replaced by dull, computer-generated, bloodless fight scenes in children's superhero movies. "You have to see X-Men 2-- Broadway star Alan Cumming sparkles aroud the White House punching people, until he sparkles away without having hurt anyone. Weeeee!" Uhm: what?! What happened to guns, knives, bows, arrows, blood, gore, viscera? What happened to American audiences lining up to see roided-up freaks violently murdering South American drug-lords for our collective bemusement? WHAT HAPPENED TO THE US OF FUCKING A?
Who were the last round of legitimate contenders for action heroes? What happened to them?
Granted, Schwarzenegger made KINDERGARTEN COP; Stallone made STOP OR MY MOM WILL SHOOT. But they made those after they had made THE TERMINATOR, CONAN THE BARBARIAN, COMMANDO, RAW DEAL, PREDATOR, THE RUNNING MAN-- I repeat THE RUNNING MAN, TOTAL RECALL, ROCKY I-V, FIRST BLOOD, RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II, RAMBO III, COBRA, OVER THE TOP, TANGO AND CASH, and THE PARTY AT KITTY AND STUD'S AKA THE ITALIAN STALLION.
That really only leaves Jason Statham...? Jason Statham has not made a movie for kids, yet. Well, I like to think children can learn a lot of lessons from the CRANK movies, but those aren't explicitly for children. So: one guy. And not to be xenephobic, but: one of them foreigners. You couldn't put James Brown's LIVING IN AMERICA in a Jason Statham movie, the way you could put it in ROCKY IV. And I feel that fact is crucial to any evaluation we undertake here. And by evaluation, I'm referring of course to boners.
What happened to men? What happened to American men? Consider the words of Guy Garcia, author of the DECLINE OF MEN: "We do know that men are losing traction in high schools. The same is true in colleges, where 59% of all students are female. Harvard professors tell me male students have lost their drive and ambition, women tell me they can't find a guy who's not a dummy, slacker, cheater or loser. Men of every stripe and part of the country are telling me they feel confused, besieged and worried that they have lost their place in society, that they have lost their bearings as men."
Science? Science blames chemicals:
"[A] host of common chemicals is feminising males of every class of vertebrate animals, from fish to mammals, including people. [...] It also follows hard on the heels of new American research which shows that baby boys born to women exposed to widespread chemicals in pregnancy are born with smaller penises and feminised genitals.
"This research shows that the basic male tool kit is under threat," says Gwynne Lyons, a former government adviser on the health effects of chemicals, who wrote the report.
[...] Half the male fish in British lowland rivers have been found to be developing eggs in their testes."
British fish have ovaries in their testes; the message is clear: even Jason Statham's days are fucking numbered. Look: I don't know about you, because I know you're probably down with some freaky shit, you're probably 9 kinds of DTF, but I really don't want to have to carry a baby in my testes. I need them for other things (amirightladies?) (ohI'mnot) (ohokaywellenjoyyourevening) (canijusthavesomeofyourhair).
American men are watching soccer. Soccer! For the geeks reading this, I'm pretty sure that's the American jock equivalent of the TARDIS bells sounding on DOCTOR WHO. And without jocks to act as counter-examples-- geeks, nerds, dweebs, dipwads: we are all just regular old assholes and jag-offs. Consider this excerpt from Tom Spurgeon's review of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies:
"Thirty years ago ramming your z-grade peanut butter into their capital l literary chocolate felt like an act of subversion. The boring stuff far outnumbered the junk. [...] These days shoving some aspect of all the junk that's out there into some poor piece of unsuspecting literature feels like something between an act of bullying and an expression of commerce on a sliding scale of self-regard."
"If the Hollywood studio assembly line is high school in a John Hughes movie, superhero films are the jocks — benighted beneficiaries of grade inflation and reflexive fan boosterism."
Geek bullies. Four-eyed fucking menaces.
What became of the pulp action hero? For the 80's action hero, the fantasy seemed to have been one of physical over-competence. Is that somehow no longer a relevant fantasy for today's audience? I'm not sure why not. I don't know about you, but I've gained some weight these last couple of years-- a spare tire around my mid-section, some in the jowl-area. I've got a very upsetting situation going on in my jowl-area, people. I've joined a gym, but discipline is ... Discipline is an issue. It causes no small amount of anxiety, being out of shape, even though I don't think I'm quite a lost cause physically just yet. I believe the statistics suggest that I'm hardly alone in this particular anxiety-- we hear now regularly of rampant obesity, declines in physical activity, and a surge in related disorders. So: shouldn't the fantasy of physical over-competence still hold some appeal for those like me, wanting to correct some years now of physical neglect? Or is the decline in that sort of hero, the fact that I look at Mr. Felix Gomez as being a silly figure instead of an aspirational figure-- is that a kind of surrender, a kind of giving up? Am I part of a culture of defeat?
Heroic sexual excellence got replaced by a scene in AVATAR where a guy shoves his ponytail into a lady's hot, wet ponytail. Great, any question I ever had as to what goes through Ben & Jerry's head when they masturbate has now been answered through the wonder of movie magic. Plus, I don't know if you've heard, but apparently the one guy from LETHAL WEAPON is kind of a fucked up, in real life.
Does MARIO ACEVEDO'S KILLING THE COBRA: CHINATOWN TROLLOP offer any answers to our questions? Does it at least-- at the very least-- give us someone we can point at and blame? Does it offer us a convenient scapegoat, who we can arbitrarily pick out of the ether and cast aspersions on? Consider!
CLUE #1: What is the most prominent feature of vampire pulp hero Felix Gomez in KILLING THE COBRA? It is his sexual relationship with the racially-insensitive stereotype of a "sexually compliant Asian female", the aforementioned Chinatown Trollop.
CLUE #2: Felix Gomez says ridiculous things about himself that made my eyes roll into the back of my head. As one example: "I'm about ready to serve. True, I'm not much of a tennis player, but I am a champion at kicking ass." ... huh?
CLUE #3: As established in the first issue, Felix Gomez has heavy-duty emotional baggage. Consider the following dialogue excerpts from issue #1:
"The agent probably had a wife and kid's waiting ... He's the real hero. Compared to him, I'm a poser.
"They say shit like that stays with you a lifetime. I'm immortal. That means I'm stuck with these memories forever.
"Luckily, I have Qian Ning. My guide. My interpreter. My lover. [...] But I can't fang her. I won't. More of that baggage from Iraq.
"Every time I get the thirst, I hear the screams of that little girl."
Thus, Felix Gomez presents us with three clues: emotional baggage, a tendency to make ridiculous proclamations that he's a "champion at kicking ass", and a disturbing Asian fetish. What do these three things add up to?
Answer: Rivers Cuomo.
Lead singer of the band WEEZER, whose album PINKERTON is widely considered to have first introduced emo-rock to mainstream audiences. Fact: Weezer signed with Geffen Records, on June 25, 1993. The same day, Kim Campbell became the first female Prime Minister of Canada. Historical fact! Connect the dots!
Look, I'm not saying that Weezer's music is a proximate cause of the increase in British fish with eggs in their testes because, well, we probably lack the genetic data necessary to separate cause from correlation. But if we need someone to blame, then the page I'm on, and the page that I think MARIO ACEVEDO'S KILLING THE COBRA: CHINATOWN TROLLOP is on, and the page maybe you should consider being on, is that the GREEN ALBUM is more likely than not a harbinger of testicular disfgurements.
They called off development of a James Bond movie the other day. And even that-- they had hired the director of AMERICAN BEAUTY and AWAY WE GO, real festivals of machismo. The world can not even muster the financial resources to create pussified James Bond movies-- meanwhile, work proceeds to have TWILIGHT 5, 6, and 7 shot simultaneously.
What is MARIO ACEVEDO'S KILLING THE COBRA: CHINATOWN TROLLOP #2, but further evidence, on what is fast becoming a mountain of evidence, that we are the damned, and we have been condemned to hell?
But I have to believe there's still hope. Somewhere in America, there's a young boy doing steroids for the first time because he wants to beat up the weaker children in his class. Somewhere in America, a teenager is dropping out of high school, to spend his days at a gym, where he will smoke dope and lift weights and dream of Hollywood stardom. Somewhere, in schools across this great land, at least once schools are back in session, maybe not this second, nobody's perfect-- but somewhere, young men are imagining that they or their sons or their son's sons will travel into space, to distant lands, to conquer alien species, rob them of their mineral resources, and copulate with voluptuous three-breasted alien women.
Ultimately, I place my faith in the simple truth, that we are a people waging two wars we can't afford, that we are at heart a bloodthirsy and savage race of butchers, and that the arc of history is long, but it bends towards us someday again making rad movies and bitchin' comics glorifying our unquenchable lust for raining violence down onto the innocent people around us. God bless you, and God bless America.
Devil's Due is leaving Diamond distribution -- Graeme probably does things best with this interview with Josh Blaylock.
I checked in MOBY (which I installed 7/28/2007 -- or almost exactly 3 years ago), and in the last three years this is the gross total of Devil's Due product I've been able to sell:
$1080.86
Figure gross-net at $540.43 then, or about $15.01 a month.
Same thing here: our best selling COMIC BOOKS, roughly the first 100, sorted straight by pieces (I'm skipping the dollars calc on this one) -- under the cut
BATMAN AND ROBIN #7
BATMAN AND ROBIN #10
BATMAN AND ROBIN #8
BATMAN AND ROBIN #9
BATMAN RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE #1 (OF 6)
BATMAN AND ROBIN #11
JOE THE BARBARIAN #1 (OF 8)
BLACKEST NIGHT #8 (OF 8)
BATMAN AND ROBIN #12
SIEGE #1 (OF 4)
BATMAN #700
BATMAN RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE #2 OF(6)
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #32 TWILIGHT PT 1 (OF 5)
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #33 TWILIGHT PT 2 (OF 5)
BLACKEST NIGHT #7 (OF 8)
BRIGHTEST DAY #0
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #31 JO CHEN CVR
NEMESIS #1 (OF 4)
JOE THE BARBARIAN #2 (OF 8)
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #34 TWILIGHT PT 3 (OF 5)
AMERICAN VAMPIRE #1
SIEGE #2 (OF 4)
BRIGHTEST DAY #1
SIEGE #3 (OF 4)
BLACKEST NIGHT #6 (OF 8)
JOE THE BARBARIAN #3 (OF 8)
SIEGE #4 (OF 4)
DETECTIVE COMICS #861
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #35 TWILIGHT PT 4 (OF 4)
DETECTIVE COMICS #862
AVENGERS #1 HA
CAPTAIN AMERICA #602
CAPTAIN AMERICA REBORN #6 (OF 6)
FLASH REBIRTH #6 (OF 6)
GREEN LANTERN #50
NEW AVENGERS #61 SIEGE
JOE THE BARBARIAN #4 (OF 8)
GREEN LANTERN #51
NEW AVENGERS #62 SIEGE
AMERICAN VAMPIRE #2
BATMAN RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE #3 (OF 6)
BRIGHTEST DAY #2
CAPTAIN AMERICA #603
DARK AVENGERS #13 SIEGE
GREEN LANTERN #52
NEW AVENGERS #64 SIEGE
SECRET AVENGERS #1
UNCANNY X-MEN #523
BRIGHTEST DAY #3
DETECTIVE COMICS #863
HELLBOY IN MEXICO OR DRUNKEN BLUR ONE SHOT CORBEN CVR
The nice thing about POS is being able to just spit out reports of what's doing what. What follows is our best selling books for the first half of 2010. It is below the cut!
Our Top 100 (or so) best-selling TPs and GNs from 1/1 to 6/30. This list is in PIECES SOLD
WILSON missed #1 by like 2 copies!
WALKING DEAD TP VOL 11 FEAR THE HUNTERS
WILSON HC
FABLES TP VOL 13 THE GREAT FABLES CROSSOVER
KICK ASS PREM HC
UNWRITTEN TP VOL 01 TOMMY TAYLOR BOGUS IDENTITY TP
ASTERIOS POLYP GN
BOOK OF GENESIS ILLUS BY ROBERT CRUMB HC
CHEW TP VOL 01
SCOTT PILGRIM GN VOL 01 SP PRECIOUS LITTLE LIFE
Y THE LAST MAN TP VOL 01 UNMANNED (OCT058020)
HELLBOY TP VOL 09 WILD HUNT
BTVS SEASON 8 TP VOL 06 RETREAT
SCOTT PILGRIM GN VOL 02 VS THE WORLD
BOYS TP VOL 06 SELF-PRESERVATION SOCIETY
LOEG III CENTURY #1 1910 NEW PTG
OTHER LIVES HC
SCOTT PILGRIM GN VOL 04 SP GETS IT TOGETHER
WALKING DEAD TP VOL 10 WHAT WE BECOME
Y THE LAST MAN TP VOL 02 CYCLES (OCT058281) (MR)
ALL STAR SUPERMAN TP VOL 02
EX MACHINA TP VOL 09 RING OUT THE OLD
TROUBLEMAKERS HC
WALKING DEAD TP VOL 01 DAYS GONE BYE
WALKING DEAD TP VOL 02 MILES BEHIND US
100 BULLETS TP VOL 01 FIRST SHOT LAST CALL (SEP068078)
DMZ TP VOL 08 HEARTS AND MINDS
EIGHTBALL GHOST WORLD TP
GRENDEL BEHOLD THE DEVIL HC
NO HERO TP
SCOTT PILGRIM GN VOL 05 SP VS THE UNIVERSE
SERENITY BETTER DAYS TP NEW PTG
WITCHFINDER IN THE SERVICE OF ANGELS TP VOL 01
BPRD TP VOL 12 WAR ON FROGS
CROSSED TP VOL 01
EX MACHINA TP VOL 08 DIRTY TRICKS
FABLES TP VOL 01 LEGENDS IN EXILE (APR058372)
FREAKANGELS TP VOL 04
IGNITION CITY TP VOL 01
INCOGNITO TP
PREACHER TP VOL 02 UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD NEW EDITION (M
Remember: the 4th of July holiday is pushing back comics (in America) by 24 hours -- comics arrive on THURSDAY!
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #636 GRIM
ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #210
AUTHORITY #24
AVENGERS CHILDRENS CRUSADE #1 (OF 9)
AVENGERS ORIGIN #4 (OF 5)
BATMAN AND ROBIN #13
BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL #46
BATMAN ODYSSEY #1 (OF 6)
BOYS #44
BRIGHTEST DAY #5
BRIGHTEST DAY THE ATOM SPECIAL #1
CASANOVA #1
CHIMICHANGA #3 (OF 3)
COLD SPACE #3
CRITICAL MILLENNIUM #1 (OF 4)
DARKNESS #85
DARKSTAR AND WINTER GUARD #2 (OF 3)
DEMO VOL 2 #6 (OF 6)
DOOM PATROL #12
DUST WARS #2 (OF 3)
ELECTRIC ANT #4 (OF 5)
FALL OUT TOY WORKS #5 (OF 5)
FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL #32
FEVRE DREAM #3 (OF 10)
GREAT TEN #9 (OF 9)
GREEK STREET #13
HAWKEYE & MOCKINGBIRD #2
HELLBOY THE STORM #1 (OF 3)
HERCULES TWILIGHT OF A GOD #2 (OF 4)
HIT-MONKEY #1 (OF 3)
HOUSE OF MYSTERY #27
IRON MAN LEGACY #4
IRREDEEMABLE #15
IZOMBIE #3
JIM BUTCHERS DRESDEN FILES STORM FRONT VOL 02 #2 (RES)
JONAH HEX #57
JSA ALL STARS #8
KILL SHAKESPEARE #3
KING CITY #10
LOONEY TUNES #188
MARVELMAN FAMILYS FINEST #1 (OF 6)
ORSON SCOTT CARDS ENDER IN EXILE #2 (OF 5)
POOD #1
RAWHIDE KID #2 (OF 4)
RED HOOD LOST DAYS #2 (OF 6)
RED ROBIN #14
SCALPED #39
SCARLET #1
SECRET HISTORY BOOK 11
SECRET SIX #23
SHADOWLAND #1 (OF 5) SL
SMURFS #1 SMURFNAPPER
SPARTA USA #5 (OF 6)
SPIDER-MAN FANTASTIC FOUR #1 (OF 4)
STAND HARDCASES #2 (OF 5)
STAR WARS OLD REPUBLIC #1 (OF 6)
STARSTRUCK #11
STEVE ROGERS SUPER-SOLDIER #1 (OF 4)
SWEET TOOTH #11
TAILS OF PET AVENGERS DOGS OF SUMMER
THANOS SOURCEBOOK
THOR AND WARRIORS FOUR #4 (OF 4)
THOR MIGHTY AVENGER #1
TOM STRONG AND THE ROBOTS OF DOOM #2 (OF 6)
VENGEANCE OF MOON KNIGHT #10
WALKING DEAD #74
WALT DISNEYS COMICS & STORIES #708
WASTELAND #29
WEIRD WORLD OF JACK STAFF #3
WIRE HANGERS #3
WOLFSKIN HUNDREDTH DREAM #3 (OF 6)
X-FORCE #28 XSC
X-MEN #1
X-WOMEN #1
YOUNG ALLIES #2
Books / Mags / Stuff
ABSOLUTE PLANETARY HC BOOK 01 NEW PTG
ABSOLUTION TP VOL 01
BB WOLF & 3 LPS HC (NOTE PRICE)
BLACKEST NIGHT GREEN LANTERN CORPS HC
BLACKEST NIGHT GREEN LANTERN HC
BLACKEST NIGHT HC
BONEYARD TP VOL 07
BPRD TP VOL 13 1947
CHOLLY AND FLYTRAP HC CENTER CITY (RES)
DC SUPERHERO FIG COLL MAG #57 ZATANNA
DODGEM LOGIC MAGAZINE #3
ESSENTIAL CLASSIC X-MEN TP VOL 01 NEW PTG
GERONIMO STILTON HC VOL 05 GREAT ICE AGE
HOUSE OF MYSTERY TP VOL 04 THE BEAUTY OF DECAY
IMPOSTERS DAUGHTER TRUE MEMOIR SC
KILL AUDIO HC VOL 01
MICKEY MOUSES WORLD TO COME TP
NEXUS ARCHIVES HC VOL 11
OCTOPUS PIE TP VOL 01 NO STARS IN BROOKLYN
STAND SOUL SURVIVORS PREM HC
STANS SOAPBOX THE COLLECTION TP (O/A)
STAR WARS LEGACY TP VOL 09 MONSTER
THE GOOD THE BAD & THE UGLY TP VOL 01
TWIN SPICA GN VOL 02
ULTIMATE COMICS SPIDER-MAN TP VOL 01 WORLD ACCORDING
WILLIAM STOUT HALLUCINATIONS SC
WOLVERINE WEAPON X TP VOL 02 INSANE IN BRAIN
I haven't read WONDER WOMAN #600 yet, but thanks to the free preview on the DC App - Look out, honey, 'cause I'm using technology - I've read the JMS/Don Kramer story and have to say, I think Hibbs is spot on with his thoughts; rewriting Wonder Woman's history so comprehensively screws up DCU history in so many places that it can't be unaddressed for too long, and feels completely temporary as a result. The story itself is... Eh, I guess? I can see the logic on a corporate level for the do-over - and it certainly seems to have worked, at least in terms of getting people to pay attention to the character - but I couldn't say that I was particularly wowed, or bothered, with the execution. It was just there. Luckily, there was another, much better relaunch of a DC book this week.
ACTION COMICS #890: Sure, there's no Superman, but god damn if Paul Cornell and Pete Woods didn't make this issue sing nonetheless. Maybe it's just me, but Cornell's script - and, in particular, the reveal about why Lois was there all along - felt oddly... Marvel-esque to me, in a way that DC superhero books don't normally manage, and in a good way; there was a kind of weird, mad invention and comedy to it that just worked both as a surprise and on a completely logical (and revealing about Luthor) level. Luthor himself got rebooted, as well, with his admitting how he was changed by his Blackest Night experiences - something that didn't seem to be the case from his recent appearances in the last few Robinson/Gates Superman books, but continuity is for losers, apparently - but the "needy, greedy" Luthor feels nostalgic in a good way, and sets up a quest that gives his run as Action lead a reason to exist. Artwise, Pete Woods continues to be the Superbooks' secret weapon; his stuff is clear, attractive and just really enjoyable to read, and I am both happy and surprised that he's not been stolen away by Marvel for some X-Men-related book that I have no desire to read already. Overall, though, this was a Very Good surprise, and a nice antidote to JMS' overly earnest Superman. Looks like I won't be abandoning the Superman titles entirely over the next year, after all.
OK, so I lied a little -- I meant to write the Dark Tower post yesterday, but then I found I didn't want to after Paul McEnery came in an distracted me for an hour. So, let's move forward onto comics, and I'll come back to DT at some point in the future (probably)
WIZARD #228: Wait, what? Well, yeah, Wizard. One of my jobs is to read pretty much everything that flows through the store, and that includes mags like Wizard. Normally that takes, dunno, 5 minutes or less? But this issue is "Guest Edited" by Mark Millar, and there was a fairly interesting roundtable discussion with film-makers about how and what works when making super-hero movies, and while it wasn't great journalism, or anything, it took me nearly TWENTY minutes to read this month's Wizard, which is, anyway you look at it, a great improvement. There were a couple of other, at least, readable pieces. There's no chance that this bump in readability will last more than an issue, and Wizard doesn't seem to understand that people-who-read-Wizard actually want a price guide (sigh), and I fairly despise the company in general, and wish they'd just go on and go out of business already, but I thought this individual issue was actually fairly GOOD.
CHRONICLES OF WORMWOOD: THE LAST BATTLE #4: I don't think I actually mentioned this during the first three issues: while Oscar Jimenez is a very fine artist, his art is a pretty severe tonal shift from the first series drawn by Jacen Burrows. Given that the series is (sort of) "So, Jesus and the antichrist walk into a bar", I find I want that kind of semi-bigfootish cartooning on it, rather than highly rendered, tiny-fine lines. Still, liking this a lot. GOOD.
JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #40: I really think the JSA has been a mess since Willingham took over; I know I've personally broken my multi-year buying of the series. And this issue really isn't much better: jumping around in time awkwardly, quickly resolving the non-threat of a modern nazi-driven supervillain group, and so on. Art is nice, however. But I'm bringing this book up for another reason: someone in DC Editorial or Marketing branded the cover of this issue with "A NEW ERA returns for the [JSA]" and "NEW beginning! NEW Triumphs!", when what the comic ACTUALLY is is the CONCLUSION of the current storyline, and doesn't contain a single thing that might make a new reader either jump on, or stay on. This is even weirder considering that NEXT issue will be the "jumping on" point, featuring a JLA/JSA crossover. I guess I just don't get the thinking of trying to make the cover super-attractive to a new reader, but not following through with that editorially? I thought it was fairly AWFUL.
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #46: This is not great epic comics. We will not be comparing this to WATCHMEN any time in the near future. This will not be winning an Eisner Award. Hell, it's part one of a JSA/JLA crossover, so clearly it isn't literature. What it IS, however, is pretty decent, fun, superhero comical books. There's a certain amount of zest and zing going on here, and, maybe most importantly, it feels like it is taking place in a coherent universe. If all super-hero comics had at least this level of craft, then maybe we wouldn't be seeing such weak sales on so many books? Just sayin'. I thought this was mildly GOOD.
WONDER WOMAN #600: Let's leave the problems for last. As an anniversary issue, I was taken by this in a way that I wasn't with BATMAN #700 or SUPERMAN #700; maybe because I thought the "look back" stories worked well? I super-double especially liked the Simone/Perez story that led off the book, as being essentially "correct" in tone and craft. The Amanda Connor story was also pretty lovely and awesome. The Lousie Simonson story was pretty straight-ahead genericism, but it didn't suck. The Geoff Johns bit was... adequate, mostly leading into the JMS bit, but other than that, it didn't really have a lot of place in the book. There's also a big mass of loverly pinups. So, yeah, this is a nice anniversary issue, and one I can recommend.
But lets talk about the JMS bits, now.
Actually, as a starting point, it wasn't horrible or anything -- and I particularly thought the art was very strong -- this seems like it could be a somewhat interesting direction for a short time (though I am wondering where her lasso is?)
The problem is that we have to discuss the "meta" implications of this. First off, there's a timeline problem here, as I see it. Diana is told it has been "18 years" since whatever happened, happened, and there's a strong implication she was a child when that happened.. making her... 20? 21? certainly less than 25. I'm not a fan of this, as it then makes her younger than Superman or Batman. I've always thought that Diana was older than that, however -- Amazons are "ageless", and while we've seen her "childhood", I've always kind of assumed that she was a "kid" for decades on the perfect, timeless Amazon island. You may disagree.
The goal seems to be to make Diana as important and significant as any other character, but the way they've appeared to try and make that happen is to essentially remove her from DC continuity. This is partly because two things in opposition can't be true at the same time -- if Diana was "never" star-spangled WW, then what happens to the JLA? To Donna Troy, or to Wonder Girl? If she never was, then she never killed Max Lord, in which case he couldn't have "come back" in BRIGHTEST DAY, could he? WAR OF THE GODS and AMAZONS ATTACK then never happened (well, that last one is not SO bad, is it?) Hippolyta would never been in the JSA. I can go on, but what's the point? There are characters and situations that can be retconned, but Star-spangled WW really isn't one of them, because there are too many other things happening to and around her -- pull a thread like this, and the whole tapestry collapses -- she is, or at least should be, central to the underpinnings of the DCU. It's NOT like "Well, Peter never married MJ", because that still left Spidey in play as effectively the same character. Even the whole "Spider-Totem" thing didn't invalidate previous stories (and OTHER CHARACTERS) stories -- but this really would appear to do so.
So, there's that.
There's also the dissonance of renumbering the series (that previous #1 really never should have happened...especially because Picault didn't stay on the character) back to "classic" numbering, then delivering a story that really kind of DEMANDS a new #1 (not that I like "fake" #1s, but this is a pretty different version of the character, both figuratively and literally) -- it's like "we're celebrating 600 issues of this by getting rid of anything that happened in those 600 issues!" Weird weird choice.
The costume? I don't hate it. I mean, personally, I'm more for the sandals-and-skirt version myself, but I'm OK with mixing it up a bit. Ugh, that jacket, though -- it just screams "90s!", and it flashes me back to the bicycle-pants-and-bra Mike Deodato redesign (which didn't much last) (There's a pretty great article on Comics Alliance about her costumes over the years) -- it just feels very "last decade" to me, rather than "21st century cool!"
thought I really do have to question the wisdom of getting rid of the Star-Spangled look DIRECTLY BEFORE FOURTH OF JULY WEEKEND. Ooops.
Also on the "meta" scale, JMS needs to... well, he needs to think before he speaks. Apart from the factual notions he gets wrong (ie, she's never changed her costume over the years, Superman and Batman look radically different than they did at launch, and so on), he just sounds remarkably and amazingly dismissive towards anyone else who has worked on the character recently. It rubbed me the wrong way.
At the end of the day, I don't really think this will stick -- there's too much product in the Star-spangled mode, there's too much history that this unwraps -- and, unless there is a WW movie greenlit using exactly this model in the next six months, I can't imagine this will still be here in two years from today. Maybe I'll be wrong, I've sure been so before, but I can't see it.
Despite all of that, I still thought WONDER WOMAN #600 was pretty GOOD.
Well, that'll teach me to make any kind of comment like "We'll try to do these podcasts more often" in the future. In Jeff's defense, these four - yes, four - new episodes of Wait, What? were recorded in a couple of sessions last month, and if I had been better at putting them up in any kind of timely order, then they might have been more timely to listen to. But, sadly, various things - including work, a laptop death and just plain forgetfulness - have conspired to make sure that didn't happen, and that's why you're getting four hours of Jeff and I talking nonsense in one sitting right now, before even more time gets away from us. And so, without any further ado: The Missing Wait, What?Episode 1
Hard week last week -- ONOMATOPOEIA took me longer than it should have (man, I've been doing this for more than 14 years in this format, you'd think I'd have it down to a science by now), then I had to start working on the new order form, and it was my 25th wedding anniversary on Friday, and making a Deeply Romantic Gesture soaked up even more time. And some of the digital stuff soaked some time as well...
I'll have the order form finished by this time tomorrow (better!), then writing reviews is my #1 priority after that -- I have a post on Dark Tower, then I'll move back to weekly comics stuff.
ABE SAPIEN ABYSSAL PLAIN #1 (OF 2) DAVE JOHNSON CVR
ACTION COMICS #890
AFTER DARK #0
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN PRESENTS AMERICAN SON #2 (OF 4)
ANGELUS #4 (OF 6)
ASTONISHING X-MEN #34
ATOMIC ROBO REVENGE O/T VAMPIRE DIMENSION #4 (OF 4)
BATMAN BEYOND #1 (OF 6)
BATMAN THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #18
BETTY & VERONICA DOUBLE DIGEST #182
BRAM STOKERS DEATH SHIP #2
CAPTAIN AMERICA #607 HA
CAPTAIN AMERICA 1940S NEWSPAPER STRIP #1
CAPTAIN SWING #2 (OF 4)
CHRONICLES OF WORMWOOD LAST BATTLE #4 (OF 6)
DEADPOOL TEAM-UP #892
DEADPOOL WADE WILSONS WAR #2 (OF 4)
DEATH OF DRACULA #1
DO ANDROIDS DREAM DUST TO DUST #2 (OF 12)
DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP #12 (OF 24)
DOOMWAR #5 (OF 6)
ELEPHANTMEN #26
EXPENDABLES #3 (OF 4)
FLASH #3 (BRIGHTEST DAY)
GEARS OF WAR #12
GHOST PROJEKT #3 (OF 5)
GI JOE HEARTS AND MINDS #2
GOTHAM CITY SIRENS #13
GREEN HORNET PARALLEL LIVES #1
GREEN LANTERN #55 (BRIGHTEST DAY)
HERALDS #5 (OF 5)
HERO COMICS HERO INITIATIVE BENEFIT BOOK
INVINCIBLE #73
INVINCIBLE IRON MAN ANNUAL #1
IRON MAN KISS AND KILL #1
JOKERS ASYLUM CLAYFACE #1
JUGHEAD AND FRIENDS DIGEST #38
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #46 (BRIGHTEST DAY)
JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #40
KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #164
LAST UNICORN #2
MADAME XANADU #24
MARVEL ZOMBIES 5 #4 (OF 5)
MUPPET SHOW #7
NEW AVENGERS LUKE CAGE #3 (OF 3)
NORTHLANDERS #29
PHANTOM CAPTAIN ACTION #2 (OF 2)
PHANTOM GENERATIONS #13
RED SONJA WRATH OF THE GODS #5 (OF 5)
RESIDENT EVIL #5 OF(6)
ROYAL HISTORIAN OF OZ #1
SECRET AVENGERS #2 HA
SIMPSONS SUPER SPECTACULAR #11
SKY DOLL SPACE SHIP #2 (OF 2)
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #214
SPIDER-HAM 25TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL #1
STAR TREK BURDEN OF KNOWLEDGE #1
STAR WARS DARK TIMES #17 BLUE HARVEST PT 5 (OF 5)
STAR WARS INVASION RESCUES #2 (OF 6)
STAR WARS LEGACY #49 EXTREMES PART 2 (OF 3)
TANK GIRL ROYAL ESCAPE #4 (OF 4)
TEEN TITANS #84
THOR #611 HA
TOY STORY #4
TURF #2
UNKNOWN SOLDIER #21
USAGI YOJIMBO #129
VELOCITY #1 (OF 4) ROCAFORT CVR A
VERONICA #201
WEB #10
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BARON VON SHOCK #2
WIZARDS OF MICKEY #6
WONDER WOMAN #600 (NOTE PRICE)
X-CAMPUS #1 (OF 4)
X-MEN FOREVER 2 #2
YOURS TRULY JACK THE RIPPER #1
ZOMBIES VS CHEERLEADERS #1
Books / Mags / Stuff
ALTER EGO #94
ARCHIE & FRIENDS TP VOL 04 BETTY & VERONICAS BEACH PARTY
BATWOMAN ELEGY DELUXE EDITION HC
CARTOON NETWORK 2-1 POWERPUFF GIRLS FOSTERS TP
CHI SWEET HOME GN VOL 01
DISNEYS ALICE IN WONDERLAND GN
FVZA TP
GHOSTOPOLIS SC
LIST TP
ONIKAGE ART OF TOSHIO SAEKI HC
PIANO TUNER GN VOL 02 (O/A) (A)
PRINCE VALIANT HC VOL 02 1939-1940
R CRUMB DEVIL GIRL 12 CT HOT KISSES DISPLAY
R CRUMB T/C SET
SECRET WARRIORS TP VOL 02 GOD OF FEAR GOD OF WAR
SGT FROG GN VOL 19 (OF 19)
SHADE THE CHANGING MAN TP VOL 03 SCREAM TIME
STRANGE ADVENTURES OF HP LOVECRAFT TP VOL 01
TAROT WITCH OF THE BLACK ROSE TP VOL 08
TOMB OF DRACULA TP VOL 01
ULTIMATES TP ULTIMATE COLLECTION
WEREWOLVES OF MONPELIER GN
WIZARD MAGAZINE #228 GREEN HORNET CVR
WIZARDS OF MICKEY SC VOL 02 GRAND TOURNAMENT
X-NECROSHA HC
Big week this week...
(Let me get ONOMATOPOEIA to bed, and I'll have some reviews...)
28 DAYS LATER #12
7 PSYCHOPATHS #2
AIR #22
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #635 GRIM
AMERICAN VAMPIRE #4
AMORY WARS KEEPING SECRETS OF SILENT EARTH 3 #2
ANGEL #34
ARCHIE #610
AUTHORITY THE LOST YEAR #9 (OF 12)
AVENGERS #2 HA
BART SIMPSON COMICS #54
BATMAN RETURN OF BRUCE WAYNE #3 (OF 6)
BATMAN STREETS OF GOTHAM #13
BILLY BATSON AND THE MAGIC OF SHAZAM #17
BIRDS OF PREY #2 (BRIGHTEST DAY)
BLACKBEARD LEGEND OF THE PYRATE KING #4
BUCK ROGERS #12
BULLET TO THE HEAD #1
DEAD AT 17 WITCH QUEEN #4 (OF 4)
DETECTIVE COMICS #866
DISNEYS HERO SQUAD #6
DOCTOR WHO ONGOING #12
DRACULA #2
DYNAMO 5 SINS OF THE FATHER #1 (OF 5)
FANTASTIC FOUR #580 HA
FRAGGLE ROCK #3 (OF 4)
FRANKEN-CASTLE #18
FRINGE TALES FROM THE FRINGE #1 (OF 6)
GARRISON #3 (OF 6)
GARTH ENNIS BATTLEFIELDS #7 (OF 9)
GOD COMPLEX #7
GREEN ARROW #1 (BRIGHTEST DAY)
GREEN LANTERN CORPS #49 (BRIGHTEST DAY)
HERALDS #4 (OF 5)
HULK #23 WWHS
HUSK #2 (OF 2)
INCORRUPTIBLE #7
INCREDIBLES #10
IRON MAN LEGACY #3
JAMES PATTERSONS WITCH & WIZARD #2 BATTLE SHADOWLAND
JOE THE BARBARIAN #6 (OF 8)
JOKERS ASYLUM KILLER CROC #1
JURASSIC PARK REDEMPTION #1
JUSTICE LEAGUE GENERATION LOST #4 (BRIGHTEST DAY)
JUSTICE LEAGUE THE RISE OF ARSENAL #4 (OF 4)
KATO ORIGINS WAY O/T NINJA #2
KEVIN SMITH GREEN HORNET #5
KILLER MODUS VIVENDI #3 (OF 6)
KING CITY #9
LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #2
MOUSE GUARD LEGENDS O/T GUARD #2 (OF 4)
NAMORA #1
PETER PARKER #4 (OF 5)
PHANTOM GENERATIONS #12
POWER GIRL #13
POWERS #5
SAM & TWITCH WRITER #4 (OF 4)
SEA BEAR & GRIZZLY SHARK #1
SECRET HISTORY BOOK 10
SECRET WARRIORS #17 HA
SENSE & SENSIBILITY #2 (OF 5)
SHADOWHAWK #2
SPIDER-MAN #3
SUPERGIRL #53
SUPERMAN #700 (NOTE PRICE)
SUPERMAN BATMAN #73
THUNDERBOLTS #145 HA
TICK NEW SERIES #4
ULTIMATE COMICS AVENGERS 2 #4
WILDCATS #24
WOLVERINE ORIGINS #49
WOLVERINE WEAPON X #14
X-FACTOR #206 XSC
X-MEN LEGACY #237 XSC
ZATANNA #2
Books / Mags / Stuff
AKIRA KODANSHA ED GN VOL 02
ARCHIE BEST OF DAN DECARLO HC VOL 01
AUTHORITY THE LOST YEAR TP BOOK 01
BATMAN ARKHAM ASYLUM MADNESS HC
BEASTS OF BURDEN HC
BRIDGE PROJECT GN
CLASSIC MARVEL FIG COLL MAG #119 JOCASTA
COVER RUN THE DC COMICS ART OF ADAM HUGHES HC
CRIMINAL TP VOL 05 SINNERS
DAREDEVIL BY BENDIS & MALEEV TP ULT COLL BOOK 01
DEADPOOL & CABLE ULTIMATE COLL TP BOOK 02
DINGO TP VOL 01
ESSENTIAL CAPTAIN AMERICA TP VOL 05
FALLEN ANGEL OMNIBUS TP VOL 00
GIRL GENIUS TP VOL 03 AGATHA & MONSTER ENGINE (NEW PTG)
GIRL GENIUS TP VOL 09 AGATHA & THE HEIRS O/T STORM
HALO GRAPHIC NOVEL TP
HEAVY METAL SUMMER 2010
JACK OF FABLES TP VOL 07 NEW ADVS OF JACK & JACK
JAM TALES FROM THE WORLD OF ROLLER DERBY GN
JOHN SABLE FREELANCE ASHES OF EDEN TP VOL 01
JUXTAPOZ VOL 17 #7 JUL 2010
LEES TOY REVIEW #211 JUN 2010 (NOTE PRICE)
LIFE & TIMES MARTHA WASHINGTON IN 21ST CENTURY TP
LOVE AND CAPES TP VOL 02
MARVELS EYE OF CAMERA PREM HC
NOVA TP VOL 06 REALM OF KINGS
OCTOPUS PIE TP VOL 01 NO STARS IN BROOKLYN
ODDLY COMPLELLING ART OF DENIS KITCHEN HC
PREVIEWS #262 JULY 2010
RED SONJA HC VOL 08 BLOOD DYNASTY
SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING HC BOOK 03
SIZZLE #46 (A)
STRAY MOONBEAMS GN NEW PTG (A)
TRIBUTE TO FOURMI BLANCHE SC
WICKED KISSES HC
WORLDS FINEST TP
Hey, I'm into single issues of things that come out on a weekly basis in a paper format that I can purchase with American currency. Here's a few of them.
Amazing Spider-Man # 633
I’ve enjoyed quite a few of these short story arcs that Amazing has been doing since “The Gauntlet” started, but Shed was the first one where I felt like what I was reading was living up to what I was seeing. The Marcos Martin issues, that Javier Pulido Rhino short, Paul Azaceta’s Electro, cosmic Lee Weeks--all of those were really beautifully drawn comics. But behind the art, I could tell they were supposed to be building towards a broken down Spidey (ala Knightfall), and it never seemed to get there. (Here's some advice: steal Jim Aparo's old "draw some stubble" trick. That's how we knew Batman wasn't at his best.) That might be more tied into the way the comics constructed (the ever-changing writer) than any specific creative failure. Being the last chunk of pain before the big finale, Shed was able to push the point further than the rest, but it’s probably selling Zeb Wells short to imply that his spot in the rotation is responsible for the stories quality.
More than any of the rest of the stories leading up to Grim Hunt, Shed was sad, a dark story that concluded with Spider-Man rejecting self-preservation when it demanded that he hurt innocent people. (He survived, blah blah blah, the drama of that moment had nothing to do with “how’s he going to get out of this”, it was a showcase for determination, a flipped version of the standard Spidey “whatever it takes” moment.) Visually, 633 suffers from the same Bachalo-didn’t-draw-it-all problems that hampered 632, and the only real arguments that can be made in defense of that is that 1) the work that is here is incredible, and 2) it’s not as hard to stomach as that Sinister Spider-Man mini-series where he only drew the fight scenes. (Did anybody else read those comics? Not-Bachalo draws Venom jumping off of a building, and Bachalo draws the landing? Not-Bachalo draws Venom walk through a door, Bachalo draws what’s inside? That didn’t work.)
The most memorable moments in Amazing in the last few months have all been visual--Azaceta’s catching-the-ceiling moment, Marcos Martin’s Family Circus casino fight and his inset square of a Ghost World style Carlie, Javier Pulido’s repetition of the seated Rhino while a jailbreak goes down--and Shed had at least two more, the first being when Curt Connors “died” in 631 and the second being when Spidey got buried at the bottom of a pile of crazies in this issue and chose not to fight his way out. Problems? Yeah, 633 has some. VERY GOOD nonetheless.
Ultimate Comics X # 3
I don’t think anybody was expecting Jeph Loeb to come riding in on a white horse with a new African-American super-hero right when Heidi Macdonald needed one most, but hey, here he went, and look what he brung. Art’s art is EXCELLENT.
Hellblazer # 268
This is the second part of “Sectioned”, which is probably the scariest Hellblazer story since that Warren Ellis issue about a room that made people commit suicide. It’s got a similarity of tone to one of the earlier Milligan stories, the one that achieved all of its drama by behaving exactly like one of those “i’m going to save the girl” soap operas right up until the point where it ended by saying that no, you dummy, the girl is dead and will always be dead and you’re as dumb as John for thinking that dead doesn’t mean dead forever. I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that most of the tension right now in Sectioned is wrapped up in wondering whether or not John Constantine actually did beat a woman so badly that he chipped her teeth, split her lips and broke her nose. I’ll admit, it’s pretty fucked up to have the primary importance in a story that involves a woman being beaten to be about ensuring that the male hero of the story isn’t responsible for doing it, but I'm hoping that’s an accidental casualty of the serialization of the story more than it is a reflection of what “Sectioned” is really about. I hope it is. This guy wrote Enigma, you know? I can’t see him busting up ladyfaces as window dressing.
What’s unsettling about "Sectioned" is how its taken John and turned him into one of those crazy/doomed side-characters in a Shade The Changing Man storyline, and now Milligan’s bringing the actual Shade on board as fellow protagonist. It’s scary because the story--like all of Milligan’s so far, except for the India arc--is about breaking John down, about attacking every aspect of the character’s historical behavior. What’s John done since Milligan took over? Failed, consistently. He hasn't saved most of the people he was trying to save, he very nearly raped a girl who didn’t want to date him anymore--get somebody else to explain that--and now Milligan’s bringing the story closer to Delano’s old threat (mental collapse) than any writer has since Ennis.
Not to encroach on Brian’s territory, but most Hellblazer readers have to be aware that the comic has a shitty trade program and low single issue sales, that its continued existence stands in stark opposition to the business model that every other Vertigo comic follows. Hellblazer is the one nostalgia hold-out that Vertigo publishes, and Vertigo’s gotten pretty merciless in the last few years. (Regardless of their quality, Air was a comic that they wrote about in Elle fucking magazine, and Unknown Soldier got a sales-jump write-up in the New York Times, and those comics still got shut down.) So when somebody like Peter Milligan comes along and starts writing Hellblazer stories that keep slamming against what-Hellblazer-is-usually-like, and then he starts doing thematic callbacks to the way the series began (with John’s fearing a return to straitjackets and suicide attempts), and when all of that is coming after two failed Hellblazer graphic novels (Dark Entries and Pandemonium), there’s an added measure of “this could be for real” attached. I’m not trying to imply that “Sectioned” is scary because “oh shit they might cancel Hellblazer”, but the fact that they very well might cancel Hellblazer gives Peter Milligan--one of the original writers that helped establish Vertigo in the first place--a gravity of consequence that the series hasn’t had since Azzarello figured out how freaked out he could make readers by making John into the factual bisexual Delano probably always intended him to be.
Anyway. “Sectioned”. It’s a GOOD story right now, Camuncoli’s still draws some of the most fluid bodies-in-motion panels of anybody right now, Vertigo’s gotten over their early decade fear of non-rust coloring, and Simon Bisley’s covers are goofy perfect. Blah blah blah, I like this one.
20th Century Boys Volume 9, VERY GOOD
This relates, but it's still tangential and you have to guess why.
I had to go to this mega-life-important meeting at this out-of-my-income-bracket hotel recently, one of those kind of meetings that you show up an hour early for because being late for it is a non-option. Being early fucks me up though, because that means I spend an hour milling around in the nearby vicinity getting myself more worked up until I’m as nervous as I get, which is a decent amount, although not as much as some. I was listening to “Chase Scene”, which is the only song on the new Broken Social Scene album that I’ve fallen in love with as much as I fell in love with that song “Atlas”, which was what I used to listen to when I’m nervous and needed to pump myself up a bit. Anyway, I walk towards the hotel, take a deep breath, walk inside the hotel, hit the marble staircase, and right then, at the height of my anxiety, I look up and see this totally-out-of-place guy standing at the top of the marble staircase: he’s wearing a brown t-shirt, one in that bleach-washed style that Old Navy probably has a patent on, and it says something about “always being in a Florida Keys state of mind”, and its tucked into his jeans, which are stone-washed, lycra-tight with hand-rolled cuffs (!), and yes, because he’s a real person who lives like a cartoon character, he’s wearing a gigantic fuck-you-heroes fannypack right over his junk. Rocking some glasses like they came from mail order. He’s looking past me as I hit the marble stairs, and there’s somebody behind me that he knows, because he straightens up, claps his hands and goes Bang Bang with his finger guns, and then he--i’m not making any of this up--he spins on his the ball of his right foot and starts walking toward the front desk.
He immediately tripped, hit the ground.
He hopped up real quick, didn’t need help from the bellhop or his friend, both of whom came running. I silently thanked him over and over again while I was waiting for the elevator to take me to the 18th floor. That guy saved my life.
Here's some comical books shipping this week...
2000 AD PACK MAY 2010
AGE OF BRONZE #30
AGE OF HEROES #2 (OF 4) HA
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #633
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #634 GRIM
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN PRESENTS BLACK CAT #1 (OF 4)
ANGEL BARBARY COAST #3
ANITA BLAKE CIRCUS OF DAMNED CHARMER #2 OF (5)
ATLAS #2
AZRAEL #9
BETTY & VERONICA #248
BETTY & VERONICA DIGEST #205
BLACK WIDOW #3 HA
BOX 13 GN
BOYS #43
BRIGHTEST DAY #4
CLASSIC RED SONJA REMASTERED #1
CROSSED FAMILY VALUES #2 (OF 6)
DARK TOWER GUNSLINGER JOURNEY BEGINS #2 (OF 5)
DARK WOLVERINE #87
DARKWING DUCK #1 DUCK KNIGHT RETURNS
DC UNIVERSE LEGACIES #2 (OF 10)
DEADPOOL #24
DEADPOOL MERC WITH A MOUTH #12 (OF 13)
DMZ #54
DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP #11 (OF 24)
DONALD DUCK AND FRIENDS #355
DV8 GODS AND MONSTERS #3 (OF 8)
FABLES #96
FADE TO BLACK #4 (OF 5)
FARSCAPE ONGOING #8
FEVRE DREAM #2 (OF 10)
FORGETLESS #5 (OF 5)
GI JOE #19
GRIMM FAIRY TALES #48 A CVR DEBALFO
HELLBLAZER #268
HERALDS #3 (OF 5)
HER-OES #3
INCREDIBLE HULK #610 WWHS
JOKERS ASYLUM HARLEY QUINN #1
JOKERS ASYLUM MAD HATTER #1
JUGHEADS DOUBLE DIGEST #161
KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #163
LOCKJAW AND PET AVENGERS UNLEASHED #4 (OF 4)
LONE RANGER #22
MAGDALENA (ONGOING) #2
MAGOG #10
MARVELOUS LAND OF OZ #7 (OF 8)
NEW AVENGERS #1 HA
NEW MUTANTS #14 XSC
NOT QUITE DEAD #6
OFF HANDBOOK MARVEL UNIVERSE A TO Z UPDATE #2
PHANTOM DOUBLE SHOT #4 (OF 6) KGB NOIR
PHANTOM GHOST WHO WALKS #10
PHANTOM UNMASKED #1 (OF 2)
POLITICAL POWER #11 AL FRANKEN
REBELS #17
ROBERT JORDAN WHEEL OF TIME EYE O/T WORLD #3 (RES)
SAVAGE DRAGON #161
SCOOBY DOO #157
SHIELD #10
SHUDDERTOWN #3
SIMPSONS COMICS #167
SONIC UNIVERSE #17
SPIKE THE DEVIL YOU KNOW #1
SPIRIT #3
TINY TITANS #29
ULTIMATE COMICS X #3
WALKING DEAD #73
WALL-E #7
WEB OF SPIDER-MAN #9
X-FACTOR FOREVER #4
Books / Mags / Stuff
AFTERSCHOOL CHARISMA TP VOL 01
ARTICHOKE TALES HC
BACK ISSUE #41
BATMAN RIP TP
BILLY HAZELNUTS & CRAZY BIRD (RES)
BLACKSAD HC VOL 01
BOOK OF MR NATURAL HC
CHEW TP VOL 02 INTERNATIONAL FLAVOR
CINEFEX #122 JUL 2010
CLASSICS ILLUS HC VOL 09 THE JUNGLE
COMPLETE DR & QUINCH GN S&S ED
CONAN SPEAR & OTHER STORIES TP
CREEPY ARCHIVES HC VOL 06
HELLBLAZER HOOKED TP
I THOUGHT YOU WOULD BE FUNNIER SC
JUDGE DREDD COMP CASE FILES GN S&S ED
JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE #298
LITTLE ADVENTURES IN OZ BOOK 02
MAD MAGAZINE #504
MEATCAKE GN
MIGHTY AVENGERS TP UNSPOKEN
NAOKI URASAWA 20TH CENTURY BOYS GN VOL 09
PETER PORKER TP VOL 01 SPECTACULAR SPIDER-HAM GN
PRESIDENT EVIL I HAVE A SCREAM TP
SEVEN SOLDIERS OF VICTORY HC VOL 01
STAR WARS CLONE WARS YR TP VOL 05 IN SERVICE OF REPUBLIC
STAR WARS KNIGHTS O/T OLD REPUBLIC TP VOL 09 DEMON
TEMPERANCE HC
THOR BY J MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI TP VOL 03
Hey! Do you remember I used to have a feature called "Asshat of the Week", for Fucking Stupid Publishing Decisions?
I *could* grant it to Marvel comics for publishing TWO issues of "Amazing Spider-Man" (and a spin-off mini) this week. Yeah, that's pretty fucking dumb.
I *could* also give it to DC for publishing two installments of the "weekly" 5 issue semi-mini-series "Joker's Asylum" this week. Yeah, that's also pretty fucking dumb.
But I think I *actually* have to give it to Moonstone for publishing THREE different "Phantom" comics in a single week! I mean, at least people *like* Batman and Spider-Man. Almost no one (in America) likes The Phantom any more, and no one is going to change their mind at all when you dump that number of comics on to the rack in a single week.
What the fuck is wrong with these people, anyway? Do they WANT their comics to not sell?
It is weird, after reading ARSENAL a couple of weeks ago, I feel like a straw broke somewhere for me -- I don't want to READ bad comics any more, let alone say snarky things about them...
Aw, let me put a jump in here, this might be long?
I *think* it is just a temporary aberration, because comics (even awful ones) are in my blood, like printer's ink, but twice I've sat down to write something here and twice I thought "why am I wasting my time talking about things I don't actually care about?"
We can also lay a little blame at Joe Keatinge's feet, as he's leaving SF for Portland (man, a lot of people do that!), and he doesn't want to move everything he owns. We got to talking about prose, and Stephen King, and I mentioned that "The Dark Tower" was the only bit of King's output that I've never devoured -- I had read book one a decade or more back and pretty much hated it (a rare response for me with King), and never read the rest of the cycle.
Joe is, as I said, moving and doesn't want to carry stuff, so he said, "Here, let me just give you my collection of DT books, they're great"
That was a week and some 1600 pages ago, and I'm THOROUGHLY absorbed in Dark Tower right now.
Book one? Still not-so-good, though better than I remembered it to be -- I *think* I read the "original" version of DT v1, and what Joe gave me was the "revised and expanded" version, which reads better. Not great, but better.
But with book 2...? Whoa, now I liked that shit, yes I did!
I've got about 10% of book 5 left yet, and I'm really looking forward to devouring 6 & 7, and then maybe my mind will really be ready for comics again.
You know what's weird? DARK TOWER reminds me, in a lot of ways, of everything I liked about LOST -- there's a TON of (surface) similarities: people torn from their lives to deal with crazy weird stuff, there are flashbacks that tie back into current insanity, there are strange occurrences of numbers, there are mysteries which will be revealed, but "a little later", there's strange things going on with pregnancies, and heroin junkies, and raids from Others, and even a character in a wheelchair... and a sense of, in many ways, of things being made up as they go along, but I have a better sense that King will have it all actually make a certain amount of sense at the end of the day.
So, yeah, digging that, and not digging comics all that much the last two weeks.
I started to read some more comics last night, from this week's stash, and I find that I don't really want to talk about BATMAN #700 or whatever -- I only want to talk about things that make me feel like "Wow, comics are wicked awesome!", and of the 12 or so things I read last night before giving up and going back to Roland and his Ka-tet, almost none of them touched me.
In fact, the only thing I liked, really even a little, was YOUNG ALLIES #1...
It wasn't even that I even loved it all that much, but it made me think of, dunno, NEW WARRIORS or something -- a new title that no one really has any faith in, featuring characters that no one would really say "that's my favorite!", but that delivered a solid base-hit of entertainment regardless. the difference between YA and NW is probably more that I have no faith (none), that YA will still be published in a year -- the market is all wrong for a comic like this right now, buried in Brightest Days and Heroic Ages and Avengers relaunches... in fact, the single worst week they could have possibly released a book like YA was this week where Marvel is also launching AVENGERS ACADEMY #1, which has a number of (surface!) similarities, but ties into the Avengers franchise.
Given a choice, THIS reader would rather see YOUNG ALLIES make issue #24, than AVENGERS ACADEMY, though I kind of don't think either of them is going to make it that far, naturally.
YA #1 had *zero* preorders at my store, and that's a REALLY bad sign because, right now, virtually no one is looking to add new titles to their pulls, and if you don't catch them right out of the box, the chances of them coming along a few issues later is extraordinarily small.
I *could* push and promote and really talk up YA (though, actually, it isn't really THAT good to warrant the full-court-press -- like I said, solid base-hit here), but mathematically, there's not a great return that is going to pay off into -- as a comic book retailer, who reads the market pretty well, thankee-sai, I'd be shocked if it made it to issue #13. It is a condundrum.
I thought YOUNG ALLIES was a fairly GOOD comic, and you might like it as well, but if it is unlikely to last out a full year, I'm not sure there's much point into telling you that? I don't know, flip through it at your local store -- it isn't sexy, but it's more solid than a lot of other launches lately.
Hopefully, something a bit later in the stack will light me on fire, but I think Roland's world is where my loyalty will stay for the rest of the week.
Still, I am, I think, genetically predisposed to a certain amount of snark, so this was the one that hit me when I was unpacking the box yesterday...
I wish I had the mad photoshop skills, because all I could think was....
"Pencilneck G!"? HAHAHAHAHA, man the mind just fucking boggles, doesn't it?
That's still not The Sensational Character Find of (June) 2010 -- that one might go to "Freight Train" in this week's issue of OUTSIDERS, who proclaims:
Brutal week last week with the end of 1st grade, and all that entails -- I should (I hope) be back to a normal speed this week...
ARCHIE & FRIENDS #144
ASTONISHING X-MEN XENOGENESIS #2 (OF 5)
AVENGERS ACADEMY #1 HA
BATGIRL #11
BATMAN #700 (NOTE PRICE)
BOOSTER GOLD #33
BUZZARD #1 (OF 3) ERIC POWELL CVR
CAPTAIN AMERICA #606 HA
CHEW #11
CHIP #2 (OF 2)
COWBOY NINJA VIKING #6
DAREDEVIL #507
DAYTRIPPER #7 (OF 10)
DEADPOOL CORPS #3
DEADPOOL WADE WILSONS WAR #1 (OF 4)
DOC SAVAGE #3
DOOM PATROL #11
DRACULA #1
DREAM LOGIC #1
EXPENDABLES #2 (OF 4)
FAME #1 LADY GAGA
FARSCAPE SCORPIUS #2
GEN 13 #36
GRAVEL #19
HACK SLASH MY FIRST MANIAC #1 (OF 4) CVR A
HERALDS #2 (OF 5)
HEROIC AGE PRINCE OF POWER #2 (OF 4) HA
HOUSE OF MYSTERY #26
HUMAN TARGET #5 (OF 6)
INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #27 HA
JAMES PATTERSONS MURDER OF KING TUT #1
JONAH HEX #56
JUSTICE LEAGUE GENERATION LOST #3 (BRIGHTEST DAY)
KEVIN SMITH KATO #2
LIGHT #3 (OF 5)
META 4 #1 (OF 5)
MODERN WARFARE 2 GHOST #5 (OF 6)
NEMESIS #2 (OF 4)
OUTSIDERS #30
PUNISHERMAX #8
RAWHIDE KID #1 (OF 4)
RED SONJA #50
ROBERT E HOWARD HAWKS OF OUTREMER #1 (OF 4)
SAM & TWITCH WRITER #3 (OF 4)
SCHIZOPHRENIC ONESHOT
SECRET SIX #22
SHIELD #2
SOLOMON KANE DEATHS BLACK RIDERS #4 (OF 4)
SPIDER-MAN FEVER #3 (OF 3)
STAR TREK MCCOY #3
SUPER FRIENDS #28
SUPER HEROES #3
TERRY MOORES ECHO #22
TITANS #24 (BRIGHTEST DAY)
TOM STRONG AND THE ROBOTS OF DOOM #1 (OF 6)
TRANSFORMERS ONGOING #8
ULTIMATE COMICS AVENGERS 2 #3
ULTIMATE COMICS SPIDER-MAN #11
UNCANNY X-MEN #525 XSC
UNCLE SCROOGE #392
UNWRITTEN #14
WARLORD #15
X-MEN FOREVER 2 #1
X-MEN HELLBOUND #2 (OF 3) XSC
YOUNG ALLIES #1 HA
Books / Mags / Stuff
ASHLEY WOOD FI #1
AVENGERS I AM AN AVENGER II TP VOL 02
AVENGERS VISION & SCARLET WITCH TP A YEAR IN LIFE
BATTLE ANGEL ALITA LAST ORDER TP VOL 13
BLACKSAD HC VOL 01
CHRONICLES OF CONAN TP VOL 19 DEATHMARK
CLASSIC MARVEL FIG COLL MAG #118 TIGRA
COMPLETE CHESTER GOULDS DICK TRACY HC VOL 10
DAFFODIL PREM HC
DOOM PATROL WE WHO ARE ABOUT TO DIE TP
GOLDEN COLLECTION OF KLASSIC KRAZY KOOL KIDS KOMICS HC
GOTHAM CENTRAL HC VOL 03 ON THE FREAK BEAT
GRASSHOPPER AND THE ANT HC (BOOM)
HELLBOY TP VOL 10 CROOKED MAN & OTHERS
HOW I MADE IT TO EIGHTEEN GN
IRREDEEMABLE TP VOL 03
NEIL YOUNGS GREENDALE HC
POWER OUT GN
RAWHIDE KID PREM HC SLAP LEATHER
ROBERT E HOWARD PRESENTS THULSA DOOM TP
SERENITY ATLAS OF THE VERSE VOL 01
SPIDER-MAN RETURN OF BLACK CAT TP
STAR TREK TNG GHOSTS TP
STARDROP GN VOL 01
STORIES EDITED BY GAIMAN HC
SUPER HERO SQUAD TP SUPER STARS DIGEST
TOMARTS ACTION FIGURE DIGEST #189
TOYFARE #156 BATMAN ARKHAM DC DIRECT CVR
TRANSFORMERS ONGOING TP VOL 01 FOR ALL MANKIND
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN HC VOL 11
WIZARD MAGAZINE #227 SCOTT PILGRIM CVR
The Bulletproof Coffin #1 (of 6): This is, on one level, a comic about comics. As our own Abhay Khosla recently said: "I don’t know– do you think that’s interesting, comics about comics? Me, not so often." But me? A little more so.
What sets The Bulletproof Coffin apart from the rest of the pop comics-on-pop comics pack is that it positions itself as genuinely radical in embracing some rather vintage, potentially anathematic ideas about self-expression, and thereby carries the potential to upset. It doesn't particularly play fair either, nor does it seem to even want to - there's a lip-smacking, facetious undercurrent to much of the commentary in this first issue, nonetheless presented with such eccentricity it registers instantly as forthright. And this tone is so odd and delicate its potential shortcomings act as their own thrill for this introductory chapter, juicing up an old fashioned funnybook critique so that it somehow feels like it can go anywhere.
The plot is very simple. Steve Newman is a voids contractor and avid collector of pop culture ephemera: he hauls garbage out of the homes of the recently-deceased, but keeps the good garbage for himself, provided there is no verifiable auction value. No speculator our Steve - he's in it for the love, or even the life, posing heroically in his colorful work jumpsuit ("G-Men" brand prominent) before exploring a clip art-perfect spooky old house, only to return home to a listless, vacuuming wife, fast food ketchup-stained twin boys and a family dog with spiky red hair and no genitals. Temporary solace comes in issue #198 of "The Avenging Eye," a vintage Golden Nugget horror comic the price guide insists ended with issue #127. The mystery deepens when a coin-operated television broadcast maybe reveals the murder of the comic's prior owner, an old man with a Golden Nugget superhero's costume stashed under the floorboards. Can these weird events have something to do with the publisher's legendary 1950s/60s writer-artist team, Shaky Kane & David Hine?!
Of course, Kane & Hine are the British creators of The Bulletproof Coffin itself -- Kane handling the art, Hine writing the script, but both credited with "story" -- neither of them quite old enough to recall the salad days of American Code-era chillers, nor even from the correct country. The start of it, then -- the first layer of commentary -- is that distinctly American strands of comics have been imbued with a near-mystical, life-changing force, propagating a complete alternate reality for the devout - it's like alien technology, and Kane & Hine imagine themselves as cosmic commanders, masters of the universe.
That alone isn't so unique, but the creators complicate matters by also acknowledging their own real-life works and personae: Kane the elusive, art-focused contributor to Escape, Deadline & Revolver (with later, intermittent forays into 2000 AD), and Hine, writer and/or artist of assorted fantastical British works and author of the expansive horror comic Strange Embrace turned script man for various front-of-Previews superhero franchises. As hero Steve enters the spooky house, rooms are lined with items from prior Kane or Hine projects, like totems warding off danger.
This quality is made explicit in the 'historical' essay in the back of the book, even as the creators' histories erupt into burlesque. As eager Hine arrives at Kane's door in 1956 full of ideas, the already-veteran artist growls that comics are bought for pictures, not what's in the word balloons. Nothing in particular happens to rebut that idea, even when the malevolent Big 2 Publishing buys out Golden Nugget's line to gut the place of Kane/Hine's vibrant horror, fantasy and bugfuck costumed hero work: Kane becomes a legendary comics mega-recluse combining Steve Ditko and Jack T. Chick elements with Russian porno produced under the name "Destroyovski," while Hine produces Big 2 superhero scripts for the "Z-Men" (setting up an amusing alphabetical continuum of quality with the G-Men farther up and Kane's own A-Men up front), including a desperately mediocre event crossover titled (oh dear) "Final Meltdown."
Eventually, the pair (allegedly) reunite as old men and (allegedly) set about reviving all their old properties in defiance of Big 2 copyrights. Indeed, eight pages of The Bulletproof Coffin #1 are devoted to one of these new stories, a perfectly blunt horror short about the dead exacting revenge on a weak man who murdered them in stealth, keenly blending Kane's real-life early 21st century horror endeavors from Black Star Fiction Library with in-story Hine's bottomless shame over having surrendered his principles to crank out superhero scripts, actually scripted by the man who wrote last week's Detective Comics.
It's perfectly bananas, delivering strident satirical messages -- snorting at the very idea of interesting or personal or relevant work even conceivably existing at Marvel or DC and then doubling down to lampoon the very idea of comic book writers -- in a style rife with insane self-deprecation or aggrandizement (Kane is at one point compared to Michelangelo) and industry criticisms that appear self-evidently contrived to fix wild old superhero and horror comics as the true state of vibrant comic art, vs. those multimedia-scrubbed corporate bozos who apparently haven't accrued a clattering enough mechanism of generic expectations to produce Justice League: The Rise of Arsenal.
Yet there is a richness to this seemingly on-the-nose-if-maybe-sarcastically-so lampoon, tucked away in Shaky Kane's art. More so than anyone working in Deadline, Kane was concerned with graphical qualities, and visual tropes as personal symbolism; look at his A-Men from that magazine, and you'll see a properly (John) Wagnerian costumed ass-kicker as faux-heroic icon of oppressive law transform rapidly into series of cutting, personal images, mixing comic book signals and Kirby gestures into readable mystery collage. It's precisely the opposite of Big 2's Z-Men, presumably writer-run, editor-managed and continuity-bound, enough so that in-story Kane's hyperbolic distaste for writers makes sense; what worked in A-Men, it's very center of being, was something writing couldn't dictate. There a revealing bit of Frank Santoro's Shaky Kane cover feature in Comics Comics #4, where Kane mentions that outside scripts would ask him for Kirby tribute-style art, and "it fell to pieces" almost all the time - he wasn't trying to become the King on a moment-to-moment level, but absorbing and reflecting the stuff that resonated, personally.
Kane's art is more direct in The Bulletproof Coffin -- as it was in Black Star eight years ago -- full of bright popping colors and clean panel arrangements, but still possessing a lumpy, rather boldly posed character to the figure work (a few pieces even seem to be cut 'n pasted from panel to panel) that gently reinforce their status as graphic elements in tilted perspectives and too-close zooms. It really is a whole world of artifice here, but meaningfully and mysteriously so, because odd foreign comics can be meaningful and mysterious for impressionable minds. Can't you see it in manga? Here we see it in the Silver Age, shone back at us.
All of this is naturally only a reaction to issue #1 - things can change quickly, especially as far as satire goes, especially with one this mannered and conflicted. Certainly the suggestion is made that artist Kane isn't much the same without writer Hine -- hint #1 is in the credits box -- and interviews suggest the series' looming threat isn't nearly as simple as a hard-scrubbing corporate superhero monstrosity wiping out The Best Comics Ever, Which Are the Genre Comics We Loved From Back Then. As I said up top, this is delicate work, almost private, enough so that it could be a total banal disaster or something inscrutable, or just wonderfully unexpected. I have no idea where this superhero-tinged commentary comic is headed, and damn it all I value that.
Remember, because of the Memorial Day holiday, comics are shipping 24 hours late in America!
Small shipment, for a shorter week...
28 DAYS LATER #11
ADVENTURE COMICS #12
AUTHORITY #23
AVENGERS ORIGIN #3 (OF 5)
AVENGERS PRIME #1 (OF 5) HA
AVENGERS SPOTLIGHT #1
BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL #45
BETTY #186 (NOTE PRICE)
BRIGHTEST DAY #3
BULLETPROOF COFFIN #1 (OF 6)
CAPTAIN AMERICA BLACK PANTHER FLAGS OF FATHERS #3 (OF 4)
CARTOON NETWORK ACTION PACK #50
CONAN THE CIMMERIAN #21 KOZAKI PT 3 (OF 3)
DARKSTAR AND WINTER GUARD #1 (OF 3)
DEMO VOL 2 #5 (OF 6)
DUST WARS #1 (OF 3)
ELECTRIC ANT #3 (OF 5)
EXISTENCE 3.0 #4 (OF 4)
FRANKEN-CASTLE #17
GI JOE ORIGINS #16
GREAT TEN #8 (OF 9)
GREEK STREET #12
GRIMM FAIRY TALES #47
HAWKEYE & MOCKINGBIRD #1 HA
HERALDS #1 (OF 5)
HERCULES TWILIGHT OF A GOD #1 (OF 4)
INVINCIBLE #72
IRREDEEMABLE #14
IZOMBIE #2
JOKERS ASYLUM THE RIDDLER #1
JSA ALL STARS #7
JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #39
KILLER MODUS VIVENDI #2 (OF 6)
LEGENDARY TALESPINNERS #3 (OF 3)
LOONEY TUNES #187
MICE TEMPLAR DESTINY #9
MOUSE GUARD LEGENDS O/T GUARD #1 (OF 4)
MUPPET SHOW #6
NEMESIS THE IMPOSTORS #4 (OF 4)
ORSON SCOTT CARDS ENDER IN EXILE #1 (OF 5)
RED HOOD LOST DAYS #1 (OF 6)
RED ROBIN #13
SERENITY FLOAT OUT ONE SHOT #1 JO CHEN CVR
SKY DOLL SPACE SHIP #1 (OF 2)
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #213
SPARTA USA #4 (OF 6)
SPECTACULAR SPIDER-GIRL #2 (OF 4)
STAND HARDCASES #1 (OF 5)
STARSTRUCK #10
STEPHEN KINGS N #4 (OF 4)
SUPERMAN BATMAN ANNUAL #4
SWEET TOOTH #10
TALES DESIGNED TO THRIZZLE #6
THANOS IMPERATIVE #1 (OF 6)
THOR AND WARRIORS FOUR #3 (OF 4)
TORCH #8 (OF 8)
VENGEANCE OF MOON KNIGHT #9 HA
WALT DISNEYS COMICS & STORIES #707
X-MEN FOREVER GIANT-SIZE #1
Books / Mags / Stuff
AGENTS OF ATLAS TP TURF WARS
BART SIMPSON CLASS CLOWN TP
BLEACH TP VOL 31
CONAN TP VOL 08 BLACK COLOSSUS
DAREDEVIL TP MAN WITHOUT FEAR NEW PTG
DMZ TP VOL 08 HEARTS AND MINDS
DODGEM LOGIC MAGAZINE #2
ENDERS GAME WAR OF GIFTS PREM HC
FINAL CRISIS TP
FREAKANGELS TP VOL 04
GOD SOMEWHERE TP
HOUSEWIVES AT PLAY MOTHER KNOWS BEST TP
JONAH HEX NO WAY BACK HC
JUSTICE LEAGUE CRY FOR JUSTICE HC
LA BIBLE HC BK 01 GENESIS
LIBRARY WARS GN VOL 01
MADE WITH 90% RECYCLED ART TP
METAL GEAR SOLID OMNIBUS TP
MOVIE COMICS FEATURING MAN FROM PLANET X TP
MOVING PICTURES GN
NARUTO TP VOL 48
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD TP VOL 01
OKKO HC VOL 02 CYCLE OF EARTH W/ DUST JACKET
ROGUE TROOPER TALES OF NU EARTH GN VOL 02
STAR WARS LONG TIME AGO OMNIBUS TP VOL 01
STUCK RUBBER BABY HC NEW EDITION
SUPERMAN NEW KRYPTON HC VOL 04
TOO HOT TO HANDLE TP
Hello. For your long weekend, here's another boring "capsule" post where I drone on about things I've found interesting in the last couple months, while I'm too exhausted by work to write anything halfway decent or worthwhile.
GARRISON #1 by Jeff Mariotte, Francesco Francavilla, Jeremy Shepherd, Johnny Lowe, Kristy Quinn and Shannon Eric Denton:
This is a new Wildstorm comic about people who sit in dark rooms. Well, I guess the official pitch is that it's about a serial killer in a cowboy-hat, and the federal agent chasing him, or something. I don't know-- nothing about the story caught with me; I bought it to look at Francesco Francavilla's art. If you don't know his work, he's part of a pretty great group art blog; he has an old-school pulp webcomic he also does that's worth a look; LEFT ON MISSION.
I like how he draws, but the way this book is colored-- almost every scene in this comic was people in a dark room with no lamps: characters watching TV screens in the dark, having meetings in the dark, surfing the internet in the dark. The characters are federal agents, not depressive teenage poets-- somebody turn on the fucking lights!
Maybe it's just me-- if I'm at home at night, I have every single light on in my apartment, at all times. Because I'm afraid of shadows? Yes. But shadows are where the Boogeyman lives, so I think I'm being enormously reasonable.
DC's PULP UNIVERSE:
Oh, I made a terrible mistake with these.
I was excited by the idea for this DC pulp sub-imprint, and so I decided to buy all of the comics that they offered for sale. That might not be a mistake for everybody, but it was a huge mistake for me personally. Being feeble of mind and faculties, I always struggle to remember what happened the month before with anything I read, but now what's happened is that when I read FIRST WAVE #2 I became confused by vague memories of the plots of DOC SAVAGE or THE SPIRIT. I kept waiting for there to be a lightning strike in FIRST WAVE-- before realizing, oh, that's the plot of an entirely separate comic.
"Comics punish my enthusiasm for them, episode one billion and nine."
One of my favorite things about Brian Azzarello as a creator is the ways he very intentionally forces his readers to pay attention, to work to keep up with him instead of the other way around. And I think that maybe might have worked for me here, too, if I hadn't picked up the two spin-offs (both of which launched before the second issue of his FIRST WAVE series was released!). But all of the stories have now jumbled together in my head, basically ruining each other. I'm cutting back to FIRST WAVE: mistake made, lesson learned.
I would say "I don't understand why this is how they're reintroducing these characters," but none of the books really seem to be "reintroducing" anything especially. All of these comics seem to assume that I remember who Doc Savage's 20 companions are, or care about them. I don't, particularly. At all. I could, in theory. I care about Doctor Who's new companion, and all it took was a short skirt and some hormones on my part. But Doctor Who also started the news series with a "why you should care about who Doctor Who is and who the companions are" story. Maybe I'm dead-wrong, but I feel like these characters needed an Ultimates-style reintroduction and instead these series have started with a 200 mph mega-crossover.
Howard Porter seems badly miscast on DOC SAVAGE, though I thought Paul Malmont's effort was noticeable in a pleasant way in that first issue. I wouldn't call it altogether successful, but you could at least tell that guy was trying...? That's something. THE SPIRIT has been the only must-buy of the lot, thus far, on account of its back-up features, black and white comics by Denny O'Neil, Bill Sienkiewicz, Harlan Ellison, and Kyle Baker.
That is an all-star run of creators. It's a strange feeling to see creators of that caliber brought together for back-up features for barely-launched new imprints, though. Shouldn't creators of that level of fame, infamy, talent, whatever, shouldn't they be assembled for projects that feel a little disposable? Well, that sounds extreme, but... What a strange world, where the occasion of Harlan Ellison and Kyle Baker working together doesn't conclude with a ticker-tape parade.
More importantly, however, Doctor Who's new companion truly deserves some kind of humanitarian award. From the UN Commission on Boners. Who do I write to, for that to happen?
MYSTERY TEAM:
Oh my god, you guys.
The reason I'm writing these capsule reviews is so I can tell you about this movie. It's some kind of fucking achievement, is what it is because... If you're a sketch comedy fan, it's extremely difficult to get excited by a sketch troupe putting out a feature length movie. You're used to being a little disappointed. Python pulled it off, yes, but past that, in recent memory-- it just hasn't happened. Mr. Show, Kids in the Hall, Whitest Kids You Know, League of Gentlemen, the vast majority of Saturday Night Live features-- I'm not saying there aren't parts. There are parts of Brain Candy that I quite like. I'm still partial to Wayne's World. But mostly, they don't transition to features.
Derrick for the fucking win.
I'd loved their sketches, most of all Girls are Not to Be Trusted, or their new one Thomas Jefferson, but hadn't expected much more than uneven sketches from their feature. They kind of fucking kicked my ass instead. What struck me as so great about it is they didn't fall in the trap other sketch troupe's have so repeatedly fallen into. They didn't make a sketch movie, where none of the scenes add up to anything-- they actually told a story, instead. There's an aspect of it which is really dark and sad, while it's simultaneously hilarious and innocent...? There's a varied emotional tone to it; it's not just trying to be silly-funny ha-ha good times for the entire length. And it's filled with a fine cast of comedy world people (most in a "before they hit it big" capacity but... Matt Walsh: so underutilized by Hollywood, you guys). The credits are the same names over and over-- it feels like this tiny labor of love, but it looks as good as a Hollywood movie.
It's a story I've actually always wanted to see. The premise of the movie is basically "what would Encyclopedia Brown's teen years have been like" and-- I can't explain why, but I've always wanted someone to make that movie. I just didn't expect anyone to do it this well, or to actually find an emotional theme in that idea that worked as well as the one in MYSTERY TEAM.
This is probably the best comedy I'll see this year-- I'll probably see better movies, but it's hard to imagine loving one quite as much, especially now with movies having been ruined by fanboys. (I love you all, but you've ruined movies). I had the great fortune of seeing this in a crowded theatre (it's playing again at the New Beverly tonight, if you're nearby), with an audience that very audibly loved it. If that's not an option for you, it's available now on DVD, On Demand, what have you.
It's a hard-R rated Goonies! Why would you possibly not want to see that?? This really kicked my ass-- I was really shocked how much I enjoyed this. Highly, highly recommended.
TEEN WEREWOLVES:
I hadn't heard of the whole teen werewolf thing until I saw this video the other day. I'm not hip, not a hip guy, so the teen-werewolves got by me.
We've all thought the same things, I'm sure. We all have probably thought, "How I envy the modern teenager, with their easy access to vast swaths of internet pornography, their adorable ignorance of the days of squinting at scrambled porn, lazy teen days spent watching Lexi Belle perform as Batgirl, et cetera." We're all addicted to pornography in a way that's interfering with our ability to achieve true intimacy, right? That's probably true.
And we've all thought, in turn, well at least, having grown up pathetic losers, that at least in our day, there were no video cameras around, documenting our most embarassing moments for youtube audiences.
But watching this, what I realized, is someday, when I'm old, I'll be taken care of by a generation that sees documenting and publicly sharing shameful moments as being some kind of god given right. And that's terrifying because... I think there are bound to be shameful moments in old age that I'd rather not be on youtube. If I'm in a senior citizen home, crapping into an adult diaper-- I don't want for middle-age werewolves to put that on youtube. Especially if youtube is being beamed directly into people's brains, by that point. Especially now that there's advertising, which is extra annoying-- I don't want me, with a bunch of catheters shoved all in me being the new face of Pepsi, man.
On the other hand, maybe our robot overloads will annihilate the teenage werewolves before that happens. God, I hope so.
SPARTA by David Lapham, Johnny Timmons, Gabe Eltaeb, Wes Abbott, Kristy Quinn and Ben Abernathy #2-3:
I was annoyed by Colin Farrell starring in this book, in the first issue, but stuck with this series, regardless. It's only 6 issues, and I was feeling like I needed to start taking more chances. I'm trying to do that more-- I call it Get Excited About Comics Plan 2010. Try to be more "accepting." Try to be more "enthusiastic." Try to "suck it up." Try to "man it out." Try to "do other things with my time than watch Lexi Belle perform as Batgirl."
This book? I don't know; what do you think? Lapham certainly goes for broke-- I like it more than what I'd read of YOUNG LIARS, at least. There are moments that really are quite creative: a little girl bragging about winning a Junior Mata Hari Award, say, I quite liked. I'm just not sure what exactly I think overall. All of the component parts are the stuff of great comics: football, bigfoots, swordfights, oracular lady assassins, armies of ex-mistresses. It's very much a COMIC BOOK, in capital letters, kind-of in the old Kirby sense of the term. Creativity sometimes feels in short supply right now, so the book is certainly to be applauded in that respect.
But it's ... sometimes it feels like too much of a good thing, I guess. The details are fun, but I'm still not really sure what this book is about, exactly: what anyone is trying to say about anything is kind of eluding me. Since the book is a "mystery" comic, and the mystery of the book is why the world of the book is so crazy and weird-- there's no way of knowing if the details are organic to some organizing principle or just wholly arbitrary. Granted, that same problem didn't stop me from watching LOST for six seasons, but LOST had characters, themes and a terrific visual style. What am I supposed to want SPARTA for? What need is it supposed to fill for me? But ... just the moment to moment pleasure of an idea like the Junior Mata Hari Award may be enough actually.
So, I don't know. It feels like it's at least worth thinking about, this book, maybe, which may be as good a compliment as I'm capable of anymore. Get Excited about Comics Plan 2010 still has a lot of miles left to travel.
JUSTICE LEAGUE: RISE OF ARSENAL #3 by J.T. Krul, Geraldo Borges, Kevin Sharpe, Sergio Arina, Mario Alquiza, John Dell, Rob Clark Jr., Hi-Fi, Greg Horn, Mike Mayhew, Sean Ryan and Brian Cunningham:
So: Brian wasn't exaggerating in his plot synopsis, in the slightest. It's really 100% that.
I didn't really have a very interesting reaction to it, though, other than it really made me feel for Alan Moore. He must think books like this are his "legacy"... They're not but he probably feels that way-- I think I would feel that way if I were him. I stopped halfway through this book, and just thought, "that poor man." People get angry when Alan Moore complains about the state of comics-- "But: has he ever heard of Hellen Jo?!?" But put yourself in his place-- how much would you like comics if you felt responsible for things like this? The shame would be overwhelming.
As for the comic itself, I don't know-- it's a success. I "enjoyed" it quite a bit, even if only in quotation marks. Obviously, if I bought it, it "succeeded" -- it created an accident on the side of the road so horrific that I craned my neck to look at it. And you know: well done. I will now remember JT Krul's name, and if you believe that obscurity is an author's true enemy, well done to him, too. I mean, the low opinion in which I hold numerous other writers in comics certainly hasn't hurt their careers, so well done to him. Well done.
I guess it kind of reminded me of the Wedding DJ video-- I'm sure you've seen it; it's "viral"...
I don't know if that video's "real" or not, but it kind of doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if it's crass or not-- I was entertained by it anyways: "that's entertainment." I mean, the interesting thing about the video to me is that... you know, does the internet make us all "worse" by entertaining us with bad behavior, or does it make us "better" by exposing bad behavior? Does the rising of the Arsenal make things "worse" by hitting what you might feel like is a "new low," or are we "better" for seeing how close that "new low" is to a "regular" run-of-the-mill superhero comic? I don't know-- no idea. Tucker & Marra covered this better than I'm capable of, so go read that if you haven't already instead, I guess.
IRON MAN 2:
I had really enjoyed the first movie, but didn't have much use for the second one. I haven't seen many reviews address my problem with this movie though which is that... I actually don't think African-American men are interchangeable...?
I had a much, much harder time with the fact they changed Rhodey's between IRON MAN 1 and IRON MAN 2 than I thought I would. I'd read the announcements ahead of time, heard the explanations why they were replacing Terrence Howard with Don Cheadle, and all that stuff. I certainly love Don Cheadle. But, when those scenes actually happened-- I just couldn't get past that they switched dudes on us. Don Cheadle just shows up and says "It's me; get over it; suck on it." But, yeah: sorry, no. Here's the thing: they weren't playing two different characters; they were playing the same guy. They COULD have played two different characters-- he could have been Rhodey's brother, or something. But, no: same guy.
I felt like at some level, the filmmakers were maybe inadvertently saying, "We don't believe you can tell them apart anyways." Which: I can. I mean, I'm not going to win the word-jumble on Soul Train anytime soon, I'm not the hippest guy, but I can at least tell Don Cheadle from Terrence Howard. I can tell all of the original Kings of Comedy apart, too. You know: I listened to a Jay-Z album once, and I didn't understand every word he said, but I wanted to...?
So: I couldn't get past that. Also: the story stank, there were too many villains, the demo for the video-game sequel gave me a massive headache which bummed me out because I totally wanted to play it to see Fraction's contributions, and the commercials for other Marvel movies wedged in the middle of this one were super-boring. But also, the race thing.
NEW AVENGERS: FINALE by Brian Michael Bendis, Stuart Immonen, Butch Guice, Andrew Currie, Karl Story, Paul Mounts, Justin Ponsor, Rain Beredo, Chris Eliopoulos, Lauren Sankovitch, Tom Brevoort, Joe Quesada, Dan Buckley, Alan Fine (with apperances by David Finch, Danny Miki, Frank D'armata, Steve McNiven, Dexter VInes, Morry Hollowell, Olivier Coipiel, John Dell, Mike Deodata Jr., Joe Pimental, Dave Stewart, Leinil Yu, Mark Morales, Laura Martin, Billy Tan, and Matt Banning):
Manners compel me not to talk about SIEGE, but this ... this tangential spin-off finale one-shot (?) was an interesting experience. It was like looking at vacation photos of a family of strangers. I'd picked up all three SIEGE finale comics to have the "total Siege experience". I'd picked up the odd issue of NEW AVENGERS in the past-- once in a while. So, I had some familiarity with going-on's of the book, but not a very complete one.
But then, this comic is a celebration for the entire run, for an entire era of Marvel comics, but one I didn't pay much attention to, or didn't have any emotion connection to when I did pay attention. So, that was fun for me, in a way that felt kind of peculiar.
There's this feeling of triumph to the comic, but it's-- it's a triumphant double-page splash of the time New Avengers fought ninjas, triumph over comics I never read. I've never watched the season finales of a show I don't regularly follow, but I imagine that my experience was close to what it must have been like to watch the LOST finale if you'd only seen two or three episodes prior. It was interesting for me not to able to comprehend the glops of emotion on display, but just instead have to shrug and go "well, this is probably meaningful to someone out there somewhere." I don't think I've ever quite had that experience before.
I guess what was striking was how much it felt like a "finale", with none of it being at all, even remotely final. The new AVENGERS book launched, what, a week or two later, with a near-identical creative team...? It's like they threw their own surprise birthday party.
I was interested in it as symbol of this era of Marvel comics, too. Years from now, people can look back on this comic and say "Aah, that era of comics-- they were very taken with storyboards colored red." The red thing-- how did red become to this era of Marvel comics what teal-orange is for movies? Was that a decision that was made? Do you like the color red? I'm more of a blue guy myself-- I personally like that teal-orange look in blockbuster movies. Instead, with blockbuster comics, all that red.
THE SIGNIFIERS #1 by Michael Neno:
I sent away for this comic over the internet-- by the time it arrived, I'd forgotten how I heard about it or that I'd ordered it. I like having strange comics arrive in the mail, I guess. It's an anthology of three stories, two of which end on "cliffhangers": the Signifiers lead story (a strange Kirby pastiche, with animal-hybrids, science-fiction villains, rockets falling to hip-hop lyrics, etc.), Nellie of Cosmic Brook Farm or Cosmic House on the Prarie (a nonsensical 10-panel grid Rocketman comic), and Landlark the Heat Seeking Dwarf (a Silver-Age Marvel-- but not quite Kirby-ish-- comic about a deranged dwarf who escapes bad guys and falls in with a hippie band).
I don't really know what this comic is-- none of the stories "make sense" strictly-speaking, at least to me, so I'm not really sure what to say about them, how to even describe them. The first story is about ... Yeah, can't do it; it seems to all fit together, at least, though, to its credit.
So, I don't know if I can "recommend it"-- but ... This is just the kind of thing I'm happy exists, I guess. It's one of those things that just looks cool, and it's so far gone that you can just forget about paying attention to what's going on and and enjoy watching one panel turn into the next. That's a very specific kind of fun that may not be for everybody though. That's sort of the level I enjoy POWR MASTERS on (although POWR MASTERS is much better than this, I think). The second story's weak sauce, any which way, though-- that 10 panel grid looks unforgiving and I think it brings Neno down to it instead of the other way around. More of the first story and third story might be better if there are any future issues-- those two fit together more than the second one, despite the super-rad title of that second story. It just doesn't live up to that title, but what could...?
SLEIGH BELLS - "TREATS":
I don't remember the last time I've looked forward to an album as much as this one. I probably have pretty bad taste in music-- I certainly know much less about music than ... oh gosh, an awful lot of people that I know, so take this with that warning.
But, man, every track I've heard on this thing has been exciting for me. I haven't felt this excited for a band since ... I don't know, first time I heard Broken Social Scene...? Maybe that'll sound ridiculous to people who have cool taste in music. I really don't know.
I've heard it referred to as "Jock Jams for Hipsters" (I think it was meant in a bad way, but... I'm not sure that's how I'm taking it). Music criticism, though-- there are people whose work I've enjoyed reading over the years, obviously, but... It seems like with any band now has to deal with a really poisonous environment-- the build-up / tear-down cycle seems severe. This band seemed to simultaneously get such a very overheated build/tear reaction.
I wonder if comics will be like that someday.
RED DEAD REDEMPTION:
(I try not to spoiler this, but if you're hyper-spoiler inclined, you might want to skip this one).
Middle-aged man, pretending to be a cowboy in his free time. That's healthy, right? I'm pretty sure that's normal.
On the other hand, this video game, you guys? I'm not a game expert, but I've never quite played a game with an ending like this one. The writing in the last hour of this game seemed kind of remarkable to me. The last hour builds on themes present through the rest of the game to actually elicit a real feeling of story-motivated dread. Not shitty horror-game dread, with violins, but "where is this story taking me" dread. I don't know of another game I've played where I've experienced that feeling before, and that last hour alone makes it Rockstar Games's finest hour for me. The Grand Theft Auto games are more "gorgeous" to look at, more stuffed with entertainment, more overflowing with content-- music, comedy, dialogue, characters.
I was just more impressed by this game, though. I was struck how they succeeded not only with the action elements but the role-playing elements, as well. I played my version of the main character as a decent man, who always did the right thing, and never committed any crimes, except those he was forced into by circumstance. Someone else could have played their main character in some completely different manner-- and I just think that was more truly the case here than with the Grand Theft Auto games.
Between this and the superbly thought-out mission structure on MASS EFFECT 2 (which Kieron Gillen writes about better, here), maybe this is crazy, or not a well-informed opinion, but I feel like the blockbuster-end of gaming took a giant step forward this year, in terms of writing, finally. Finally.
DAVID CHOE AT THE LAZARIDES GALLERY:
Did anybody make it to this? Choe went fucking balls-out on this gallery show. There was a massive inflatable sea-monster that filled the space (new gallery, used to be the Anthropologie store in Beverly Hills-- tremendous high ceilings), huge paintings, small drawings of naked bat-women tucked away in the back area of the gallery (which resembled a church confessional); the entire foyer was festooned with children's blankets.
Here's a bad iPhone photo of the sea-monster-- you can't see the entirety of the gallery, but there was a back area filled with his work, smaller work that expressed more of a sense of humor than the more dramatic pieces out front:
Hell of a fucking show, just a hell of a fucking show-- he really knocked this one down. I think this closed just recently, unfortunately-- I hope you didn't miss it.
CONAN O'BRIEN AT THE GIBSON AMPHITHEATRE, NIGHT TWO:
I'm so glad I made it to this. If you got overly-worked up by the Leno-Conan incident earlier this year, this show was such a joy. Such a joy-- just 2-3 hours of pure happiness for me, at least. Songs, jokes, funny videos, guest stars. Jim Carrey sang a duet dressed as Kick-Ass, with Conan dressed as Superman. Jonah Hill made a rape joke about Inspector Gadget. Andy Richter-- he's performed pretty constantly in small venues in Los Angeles since he left the old show, so it was great to see him this entire amphteatre laughing along with him.
The craziest thing for me was Reggie Watts-- I used to see Reggie Watts perform in the basement of the Ramada Inn on Vermont, in the haunted W.C. Fields room. The last time I saw him perform, it was 10-20 people in a Ramada basement, every single last one of us thinking "Why isn't this guy on TV or something? How am I getting to see this for free?" Seeing him in an amphitheatre, surrounded by people hanging on his every word, watching an audience of that size trying to figure him out-- that was amazing. Amazing.
And, of course, Mr. Conan O'Brien. All of the years I'd seen him-- there's an aspect of him which you don't appreciate on television that makes him funnier in person: motherfucker is shaped like Abraham Lincoln. He is a weirdly shaped guy-- he looks like he could throw a punch, but ... He's shaped like he should be building a log cabin somewhere. There's just something funny to him physically that even after watching him for years and years, I'd never really seen before.
It felt like getting to see and be a tiny, tiny part, however small, of a happy ending.
