It's me, I admit it. My next door neighbor had a noisy lawn party until very late in the night (morning) and I'm running on absurdly little sleep. So if my reviews lack a certain cogent something (like, I dunno, verbs or the like) , I apologize. One would think such a caveat would make me re-think this whole "jamming my opinions down people's throats" thing, at least for this week, but noooooo. Opinion jamming waits for no man, my friend.

Also, because last week's gentlemanly disposition toward M. Hibbs prevented me from talking shit about Mark Millar, I reserve the right to review any book this week I want. If Bri doesn't like it, he can double-post.

As for them thar things certain folklings call funny books:

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #517: "Quick, MJ! You've got to get to safety!" "I will! Right after rehearsal!" "Great, and pick up Aunt Wassername! Oh, and toilet paper! We're totally out of toilet paper." JMS's end-run continues to whimper along, as Peter inexplicably lets Vibranium Boy leave his apartment, is inexplicably blase about warning Aunt May or protecting Mary Jane, all so we can get some false drama on that last page reveal. What a drag. Eh.

AVENGERS EARTHS MIGHTIEST HEROES #8: Ends pretty much where you would expect, and how you would expect. Not too crazy about the Cap's "You were great, baby. There's money on the dresser; buy yourself something pretty" scene with Rick but it's pretty close to how it played in the original, more or less. Which brings out my only real nagging problem with this mini, overall: Casey is savvy enough to tease out the dramatic undercurrents in the original stories, but is either unwilling or unable to take them anywhere new. Pretty; competent; pretty competent. OK.

BETTY & VERONICA SPECTACULAR #69: Note: Never, ever, ever see Larry Clark's Ken Park. But if you do, do not read Betty & Veronica Spectacular #69 (or any Archie comic, for that matter) the day after: it's horrible how similarly anti-narrative yr. average Clark film and yr. average Archie story are. Interestingly, the quiz says I'm more like Veronica than Betty, but I may have been subconsciously trying to swing the results. Eh.

BONEYARD #17: Richard Moore's Boneyard continues to be a great little read, month after month. I admit it gets overly cute from time to time, but not nearly as much as you would think, and Moore's got a great handle on his characters. His touch football game in this issue is exactly the sort of enjoyable between-epic breather that once suckered a whole generation into following Chris Claremont on X-Men for wayyyy too long. Good or Very Good, you make the call.

ENNIS & MCCREAS DICKS WINTER FUN SP #1: May have been the first one of these I really truly enjoyed, although I can't figure out why: maybe it's because both Ennis and McCrea seem much more focused this time out, although I really noticed the difference in how much tighter McCrea's work seemed--less loosey-goosey layouts with much tighter linework than usually ends up on Dicks. Just wish it had come out in December, is all. Good.

FANTASTIC FOUR #523: I'm baffled: Waid had a problem with Jemas's proposed FF-as-sitcom direction and quit? Because that's what a lot of his run has read like to me, and this issue even more so. I guess I'm more of a fanboy purist than I thought, because using Galactus as the center of an episode of Friends as directed by Frank Capra kinda irked me. Eh.

LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #3: So, either Waid's work is much better here than there, or it depends on if you're a Marvel fanboy or a DC fanboy. Because I, who've never followed the Legion books, thought this was Very Good material: A done-in-one that also progresses the larger storyline, re-introduces a bunch of characters, and affectionately riffs on silver-age staples. I think it's because Waid just has a grasp on the material here that's infinitely more sound than than on FF, but I'm aware of my biases, certainly.

MICHAEL CHABON PRESENTS ADV O/T ESCAPIST #5: I never quite feel like I'm having as much fun with this book as the creators are, although this issue may have come the closest, what with two relatively strong "straight" bookending stories and the two whimsical pieces in the middle by Chaykin and Geoffrey Brown, respectively. I thought Brown's piece was pretty great, actually, with all of its obviousness somehow not deluting the charm. Good, although kinda too pricey, really, for that not to be a qualified Good.

NIGHTCRAWLER #6: "This is like something out of The Grudge." No, The Grudge was scary. This is like something out of Scooby-Doo...or the Halloween episode of The West Wing, maybe. It looks too good, and Aguirre-Sacasa is too on top of the ball as far as characterization goes, to give this an Awful, but, jesus. Why not just have him be a private detective in Hawaii while you're at it?

SEVEN SOLDIERS #0: A little hard to judge it on its own merits, since I'm sure it's layered with stuff that'll pay off later, but I certainly enjoyed it. I kinda wish I hadn't already been in on the issue's central joke, but that's what I get for following the Internet (and/or Previews) too closely. Overall, Morrison has something like Kirby's ability to take bits and pieces and constantly reassemble them in surprising new arrays. And that J.H. Williams sure knows his way around a layout, don't he? Very Good stuff.

SOLO #3: Giving me Paul Pope on OMAC is like giving one of Pavlov's dogs a visit to the National Dinner Bell Convention, but I think I liked the slice of life stories even better--a little piece about that damn flying ghost they sold in comic books way back when, and a vignette about the average night of a streetcorner bar that builds and ebbs like the energy of the evening itself. This was all great stuff, and I can't wait to see Pope throw his considerable energy into a big new project. Very Good.

STRANGE #4: I think I'm beginning to see the pitch here: "I've figured out a way to make Dr. Strange even more boring!" For a guy who worked for so long in film and TV, JMS drops the ball on the drama in a really big way--not only does Strange not have to earn his redemption anymore (since he's "special") but he didn't even earn his damnation (because his evil mystical pal "corrupted" him somehow). Perhaps next issue, we can just have the guy replaced with a block of wood and be done with it. Really awful.

UNCANNY X-MEN #456: By horrifying contrast to super-dull X-Men #167, I could totally see how--if I was still twelve--this would be kinda cool. X-Men versus superheroes from a timeline where dinosaurs remained the dominant lifeform? With a cute chick in an old Wolverine costume? It's not like that absurdly over-the-top issue of Uncanny (#107) where Dave Cockrum basically threw in an entire Legion of Superheroes analogue gratis (and since I was too dumb to figure that out, it seemed like Claremont and Cockrum had access to an infinite number of great throw-away ideas) but thanks to Alan Davis, this makes me remember what that felt like, and ranks a Good for that alone. Or maybe I'm just glad for a little reprieve from all the usual psionic B&D games...

X-MEN #167: Return of the angry mutant houseboy? Can we get ACTOR to fund a team of mercs to forcibly extract Pete Milligan from L.A.? What's scary is that was far more interesting than all the other "Golgotha" stuff, which now reads like "The Naked Time" meets that first half of the Buffy season before the writers have figured out exactly what the threat is. Awful. [And super-thanks to Franklin Harris for straightening out my leaden brain as to which title's which. D'oh.]

Y THE LAST MAN #31: If you can buy the shit that you really would never buy in a million years (355 pops ninja chick three times in the chest and doesn't bother with a finishing headshot? Like hell she does!), this was pretty Good. Mighty contrived in spots, but Good.

Labels: Jeff

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Like Hibbs, I also thought Wondercon was a pretty great show. Normally, I find myself getting antsy and worrying I'm missing some panel or some personage signing, and find myself dashing around until I get exhausted and cranky and miserable. (In short, I'm a con newbie.) This year, I just stuck to wandering around the floor, taking the time to take in the sites and dig through dealers' stock. I was worried for a long time that I couldn't find anything I considered enough of a deal to plunk down money on, and then found a guy selling all of his stock at a dollar a book, and found some old Kamandis, Fantastic Fours and Brave and The Bolds (Batman and Ice Cream Soldier team up to beat up an anemic German schoolgirl, courtesy of Bob Haney and Jim Aparo!) Also, I've really got to give it up to Drunken Master--not only were they really nice and really knowledgeable about Asian cinema, they're 100% bootleg free and reasonably priced. Not only did I pick up two or three Seijun Suzuki films I had no idea had gotten statewide release, I went home and found I didn't pay insane convention prices for them. Really great.

Anyway, I'm leaving lots of the juicy titles alone in case Hibbs wants 'em. But here's what I thought about:

AMAZING JOY BUZZARDS #2: My biggest problem here is Dan Hipp's art--like the opening pages where, for example, a TV showing Mr. Ed looks like a picture of Mr. Ed on the wall, and the guys watching it aren't even shown facing it, or the results of a rochambeau match aren't immediately clear because the artist didn't work the tell-tale spiked wrist bracelet prominently enough into the early pages to provide the pay off--and yet at the end, when everything's going to hell, and people are getting lost and disoriented running through a dark collapsing cave, the art works perfectly. It's a problem of scope, I think--the artist just can't figure out what details to put in and which to leave out in things like establishing shots and big splash pages (that island splash page seemed both under- and over-detailed which is a n accomplishment). Weirdly, Mark Smith has the opposite problem--he's good at cramming the script with a lot of action and twists, but hasn't come up with any reason for me to care about the characters: the only reason I cared about that kiss between geek guy and geek girl was because Hipp made it lovely. If they can figure out how to cover better for each other's weaknesses, this could really work well but at the moment, it's barely OK. A shame because this is the kind of book I very much want to like.

APOCALYPSE NERD #1: Ha...ha? Bagge's tale of a Microsoft nerd and his low-life pal possibly tossed into a post-apocalyptic setting is supposed to read as a comedy, but I actually found the whole thing horrible and unsettling--maybe my love of dark humor doesn't run as deep as I thought. I also had a problem with the small details--I've travelled with tech geeks and they've got pagers, cell phones and wi-fi PDAs they check every so often to see if they're still connected--so the idea that the duo could never really find out what actually happened seemed unbelievable to me: the tech guy would check his pre-loaded list of possible wi-fi spots to surf the web and check out what had happened on BoingBoing and that would be that. I kinda wish the whole book had been Founding Father Funnies because those worked great for me. Eh, but Bagge's work just hasn't been doing it for me for a while so you may feel very differently.

CONSTANTINE: Yeah, I went and saw it this weekend. I apparently am a soft touch with comic book movies (liked Daredevil, thought LXG was okay) because even though this probably ties the Cathy Lee Crosby Wonder Woman TV movie for fealty to the source material, I still thought it was more or less OK. The visuals are great, I thought the script did a pretty good job introducing all of the various "rules" of its magic and keeping them mostly consistent, and some of the performances were effective (Rachel Weisz, Tilda Swinton, and Peter Stormare's hammy but utterly menacing Lucifer). But everything you think would be wrong because it was a big Hollywood movie was wrong--Constantine's final gambit can't be a con, so there's none of the great "Rake at the Gates of Hell" feel to it, and if that wasn't bad enough, we had to get a final two minutes clearly dictated by test screenings to wipe out any ambiguity the character might possess. If anyone ever needed an example of how much freedom there is in comics as opposed to "big" media, there's no better example than comparing Constantine to any issue of Hellblazer. But it was some damn pretty eye-candy and I enjoyed it while it was on. Go figure.

EX MACHINA #8: Vaughan's talented enough to make that gay marriage scene amusing--"I don't want this to sound judgmental, but how long have you been with the G.O.P., Mr. Dunst?"--but it also seemed preachy, somehow (maybe it was having the characters exchange information that they all seemed aware of). Like this week's Astounding, perfectly fine but not nearly as strong as previous issues. Good.

HAWKMAN #37: Nothing's worse than "Sam & Diane" syndrome: it's disappointing when the couple doesn't get together, and it's more disappointing when they finally do get together. Here, Hawkman and Hawkgirl finally get together and it feels like too much, too soon. On the other hand, I'm sure I wasn't the only one who got tired of the relationship going nowhere, so I feel for the creative team here. And there's a sexy devil chick with short hair quoting Pat Benatar so I didn't hate this, but the relationship change and the weird behavior of characters just to get to the last page reveal made me feel very coolish and Eh about this.

HUMAN TARGET #19: Probably my favorite issue of the run--not just because it brings back Chance's fucked-up protege, but because of the suggestions for a few pages that he might just be a creation of Chance's even-more-fucked-up psyche. The last page suggests something a little more mundane, but we'll see and it's still Very Good work. I'm gonna miss this title.

LIVEWIRES #1: I'm a pretty big Adam Warren fan, so I'm stoked to finally see this first issue. As always, Warren works his ass off--the script is a nonstop action scene, an introduction to all the characters and themes, and a viewpoint character--but it almost worked a little too hard: I can't figure out if the nonstop action and the nonstop casual conversation kind of cancel each other out, or if, like a Michael Bay movie, the continuous acceleration just grows monotonous. And the same use of self-awareness for story shorthand (some of the characters describe each other with lines that sound straight out of the initial pitch session, i.e., "Ben Grimm in black babydoll lace") that bugged me on Peter David's recent issue of The Hulk is a little too evident here. Despite all of the above, I did like this--definitely Good--I'm just kind of bummed I didn't love it.

OCEAN #4: Lots of good stuff here--strong snappy dialogue and a great scene explaining the motivation of the villain--but this issue didn't feel as strong as the first three: to get to the great scene with the manager we have to believe that Kane is going to try one more time to settle things peacefully, and I just didn't buy it. A lot of screenplays suffer at exactly this same point for what I'd assume is the same reason--the lag as the transition from Act II to Act III gets set up--but some of the pacing problems in Ellis's Ultimate work has me a little wary. It's either a very weak Good or a very strong OK, I guess.

PROMETHEA #32: I've read several issues of Promethea that made me feel like I was on drugs. This final issue was, I'd have to say, the bad shake issue of Promethea: I felt a little trippy and dizzy at its completion, but I also had a headache and was cranky and a bit nauseated. Even as I appreciated the construction--I loved turning the pages and becoming lost repeatedly--I found myself really challenging some of the statements being put forward here, even the ones I think I agree with. Now, I haven't read this all seventeen different ways and my impressions may change drastically once I get the poster doo-dah (I'm assuming it's going to have, at the least, a personalized kaballah like the wonderful opening of Zadie Smith's The Autograph Man) but this felt like a rehash of some of the amazing formalistic achievements in this series but nowhere near a trumping of them; more a lovely whimper than a beautiful bang. OK.

RUNAWAYS #1: Filled with wit and intelligence on every page, and just as lovely to look at as the first time around, so I hope I'm alone in liking it less now that it's set so squarely in Marvel Universe. All of the Marvel touches are fun and clever--who wouldn't like "Excelsior," the group of recovering teen superheroes?--but rather than being an American manga book with superpowers, it's now an extremely quirky Marvel title. And even if readers could find this title (and/or the money for it) in the wild bramble of all those Spider-Man, X-Men and FF Titles, I think most of Marvel's readers don't want quirky, they want really strong traditional work--and so I think all this will do is shoot a hole in the supposedly strong sales being seen in the traditional bookstores. Don't get me wrong, it's a Good book--maybe even Very Good--but I don't think this reboot is gonna pull it off. I hope I'm wrong.

SHE HULK #12: Slott uses some very clever metacommentary to critique hypercritical fanboys while advancing his story and also riffing on Avengers: Disassembled. I still miss Bobillo's art, but this was quite a Good comic and I hope it comes back strong.

SIMPSONS COMICS #103: After being off for a couple issues, Boothby gives us another top-notch issue that would have worked just fine as an episode of the series. I could've lived without the Mary Tyler Moore sequence but even that, with its complex Marge/Rhoda/Brenda throw-away in-joke, is the sort of thing the series would try. Very Good.

There. That leaves at least four juicy books (Astonishing, GL: Rebirth, Andi Watson's Little Star and Wolverine) for Pa Hibbs to riff on. I may pop up again to talk about some of the week's trades.

Labels: Jeff

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I should be laying in bed, but I have to get all this work done....

(USE SEP045000) SAVAGE DRAGON #120
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #517
AVENGERS EARTHS MIGHTIEST HEROES #8 (OF 8)
BART SIMPSON COMICS #22
BATGIRL #61
BATMAN #637
BATTLE HYMN #1 (Of 5)
BETTY & VERONICA SPECTACULAR #69
BIGFOOT #1 (OF 4)
BLACK WIDOW #6 (OF 6)
BONEYARD #17
BPRD THE DEAD #4 (OF 5)
BURGLAR BILL #2 (OF 6)
CARTOON NETWORK BLOCK PARTY #6
CONAN #13
DEAD AT 17 REVOLUTION #3 (OF 4)
DESPERADOES BANNERS OF GOLD #3 (OF 5)
DR BLINK SUPERHERO SHRINK #1
ENNIS & MCCREAS DICKS WINTER FUN SP #1
ERIC REDS CONTAINMENT #2 (OF 4)
EXCALIBUR #10
FANTASTIC FOUR #523
FLASH #219
GI JOE #40
GRIMJACK KILLER INSTINCT #2 (OF 6)
HELLBLAZER #205
HUNTER KILLER SILVESTRI CVR #1
INVINCIBLE #20
JINGLE BELLE #3 (OF 4)
LAUGH DIGEST #200
LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #3
LOSERS #21
MANGA CALIENTE #4 (A)
MICHAEL CHABON PRESENTS ADV O/T ESCAPIST #5
MYSTIQUE #24
NIGHTCRAWLER #6
NIGHTWING #104
OUTSIDERS #21
POWERS #9
PROMETHEA #32
RICHARD DRAGON #10
RIDE FOREIGN PARTS ONE SHOT
ROGUE #8
RUULE KISS & TELL #8
SEVEN SOLDIERS #0
SLEEPER SEASON TWO #9 (OF 12)
SMALL GODS #7
SOLO #3
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #146
SPAWN #143
SPIDER MAN HUMAN TORCH #2 (OF5)
SPIDER-MAN INDIA #4 (OF 4)
STAR WARS EMPIRE #29
STAR WARS TALES #22
STRANGE #4 (OF 6)
STRANGERS IN PARADISE #71
TEEN TITANS GO #16
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES #20
TRIGUN ANIME MANGA WOLFWOOD ONE SHOT
ULTIMATE NIGHTMARE #5 (Of 5)
UNCANNY X-MEN #456
UNCLE SCROOGE #339
VIDEO #5
WALT DISNEYS COMICS & STORIES #654
WITCHBLADE #83
WITCHING #9
WONDER WOMAN #213
X FORCE SHATTERSTAR #1 (OF 3)
X-23 #3 (OF 6)
X-MEN #167
X-MEN PHOENIX ENDSONG #3 (OF 5)
Y THE LAST MAN #31





Books / Mags / Stuff
1000 FACES VOL 1 TP
ARMY OF DARKNESS VOL 1 ASHES TO ASHES TP
AVATAR VOL 2 CLAWS IN THE WIND GN
COMIC BOOK MARKETPLACE #119
COMICS JOURNAL #266
DIFFERENT PACE GN
ELFQUEST THE GRAND QUEST VOL 7 TP
FOLLOWING CEREBUS #3
FREAKS GEEKS AND STRANGE GIRLS TP
GALS VOL 1
GAME INFORMER MAR05
GO NAKED VOL 1 GN
HEAVY METAL SPRING 2005
HEDGE KNIGHT 2ND ED TP
ISAAC THE PIRATE VOL 2 GN
JSA VOL 7 PRINCE OF DARKNESS TP
LEGEND OF GRIMJACK VOL 1 S&N HC
MAGE VOL 1 THE HERO DISCOVERED TP
MEGATON MAN VOL 1 GN
MINISTRY OF SPACE LTD ED HC
NEW MUTANTS BACK TO SCHOOL TP
NICK VOL 2 GOOD NIGHT NICK GN
PREVIEWS VOL XV #3
PROMETHEA #32 POSTER SET VARIANT EDITION
SCURVY DOGS RAGS TO RICHES TP
SILENT HILL PAINT IT BLACK
SKIZZ TP
SLUT GIRL COLLECTION TP
STEVE DITKO SPACE WARS SC
SUPERMAN BATMAN SUPERGIRL HC
THRILLING COMIC COVER ART OF ALEX SCHOMBERG SC
TRIGUN MAXIMUM VOL 4 BOTTOM OF THE DARK TP
WIZARD COMICS MAGAZINE SUPERMAN BATMAN CVR #162
WOLVERINE THE END TP
X-MEN THE END BOOK 1 DREAMERSAND DEMONS TP Click Here to Read More...

I *do* have a cold, and I'm struggling to get through ONOMATOPOEIA, but at leas the new TILTING AT WINDMILLS is up at http://www.newsarama.com/pages/Tilting/Tilting14.htm

Go, read -- I think there's a metric ton of interesting data in there (not just the bits Graeme quoted, either)

-B Click Here to Read More...

Well, I had a terrific time at WonderCon this weekend.

WC has been a weird show for a while -- the last few years in Oakland had what looked like declining attendence, and tumbleweeds in the aisle, and the sale of the show to the San Diego ComiCon brought the show to San Francisco 3 years ago. The first two years at the Moscone can be charitbly descibed as marginal, where the show was dwarfed by the space around it, but 2005 was the year that broke big.

Friday's attendence looked solid (for a Friday), but the place was reasonably quiet. This was actually great because it gave me a good chance to get some business done, talk to people I pretty much only see at conventions and the like. More than anything else, it reminded me of a San Diego show from BEFORE the move into the new convention space -- those years when SD was THE place to be, yet you were still able to have half hour conversations with people while they manned thier booths. For me, as a person who would never ever SET UP at a show, yet has lots of comicy goodness and business to handle, that's a perfect as perfect could be.

Saturday, the place exploded. Probably because of Whedon and Kevin Smith, yes, but the convention floor itself was pretty steadily packed full of people wandering AND, it seemed, spending money. The show opened at 10 am, and at 1:30 that afternoon, there was STILL a steady 100-person long line to get in, which kind of blew me away. Especially since, by that point, it was thudding rain down. I was told that they actually ran out of badgeholders, and they had to take scissors to the exhibotr and guest badges in order to meet demand. It also seemed that they ran out of those as I saw someone with thier badge STAPLED to thier t-shirt!

There were a couple of minutes on early Saturday where it was nearly downright unpleasent to be on the convention floor -- the 10 minutes to walk 10 feet, because there are so many bodies in the place thang, and the for the love of god, turn on the air conditioners thang -- which I took as a good sign, actually. Business seemed to be solid and steady.

I was struck by how few publishers actually came -- DC, Image, Bongo and SLG were the only 4 traditional publishers set up (I very much missed Top Shelf and Oni, both of whom I wanted to discuss a few things with, and who were here last year) -- but I think if WC continues its growth curve, this has the potential to become an excellent show.

I learned a lot of interesting things, almost all of which were of the "just between me and you" variety, so you don't get to find out about any of them, but, in the end, I just had a terrific time.... something I haven't said about a comics convention in a decade or more. (Probably since the Pro/Con years at WC)

Ben went with me on Saturday morning, riding up on my shoulders most of the time. He charmed the hell out of both the ladies and the chaps, but he could only handle about 2 hours before his baby brain started to get overstimulated. The beauty of having a show in my home town was being able to take him all the way home, and still being able to make it back to the show within an hour.

Saturday night was the party at the new location for Comic Relief. Traditionally, Rory and I swap off years for store parties, and this year was technically our turn, but with his new venue, I was happy to cede it to CR. Helping out a fellow retailing brother is much more important than banging my own drum.

CR's new space is nothing short of impressive. Hell, given that they'd only had it for 18 days, and they had to prep WC, the quality of the presentation was nothing short of mind blowing. Comic Relief's staff and family should be amazingly proud of what they've been able to accomplish. Y'know, a lot of time me and Rory (and most other visible retailers, for that matter), get conflated with our stores. We'll say "Good Job, Rory" for anything that happens with CR -- but that does a great disservice to the people who actually MAKE the store what it is. CR has an excellent crew, and the victory of the new store is something they should all take individual pride in, and ownership of.

I can't say enough good things about the new space, however. It's huge, it's gi-normous; it's a big as a whale, and it's about to set sail! It is the kind of retail space that makes old men and young girls weep. It isn't there yet (only 18 days old), but I think that a year from now (especially if a store planner is brought in, modern signage installed, etc. etc.) this has the potential to be the single best comic book store in the WORLD. Seriously. I'm jealous.

So, that was my weekend. Now I'm just waiting for Lester to send me the final bits for ONOMATOPOEIA (Don't you love it when conventions and monthly deadlines collide?), so I can work all afternoon and evening. Hurray!

I might possibly squidge in with a few reviews on Monday (Here's a quick free one: PROMETHEA #32: I'm too old to read a comic that needs constanly turning and flipping, and has mostly yellow lettering on light blue backgrounds! It hurt my widdle head when I contemplated it. INCOMPLETE), but, honestly, I wouldn't expect it. I thinking I'm coming down with a cold, too.

-B Click Here to Read More...

You may have already seen these two excellent blog entries by John Rogers, if you follow Warren Ellis's website, but I thought they were pretty spot-on summations of last year's comics. Particulary the one entitled "Womb Crazy." Oh my, yes.

Labels: Jeff

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Hookay, the reviews this week are either coming verrrry late (as in early next week), or they ain't coming. (Newsletter + Wondercon + some very unavoidable personal appointments=Jeff weeping, tearing what's left of his hair and fighting with his girlfriend over who gets the last bit of milk) However! Because I had some problems with my new computer and video game addiction and stuff, the last three installments of Fanboy Rampage weren't put up...until now. Coverage of our Geoff Johns signing, thoughts about DC Countdown (and Christmas), and brief comments about Will Eisner's passing are now available for your perusal. See? Just like comic book reviews! Only....not.

Labels: Jeff

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Oh my, is that a big week for funnybooks.....


100 BULLETS #58
ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #637
AMAZING JOY BUZZARDS #2
APOCALYPSE NERD #1
ARCHIE & FRIENDS #89
ASTONISHING X-MEN #8
AUTHORITY REVOLUTION #5 (OF 12)
BAG OF ANTEATERS #1
BATMAN GOTHAM KNIGHTS #62
BIRDS OF PREY #79
BOOKS OF MAGICK LIFE DURING WARTIME #8
BRIAN PULIDOS BELLADONNA #4 (Of 5)
CABLE DEADPOOL #12
CAPTAIN GRAVITY AND POWER OF THE VRIL #3
CATWOMAN #40
CATWOMAN WHEN IN ROME #4 (OF 6)
COSMIC GUARD #6
DAMN NATION #1 (OF 3)
DAREDEVIL #70
DAREDEVIL REDEMPTION #2 (OF 6)
DARKNESS BLACK SAILS ONE SHOT
DARKNESS SUPERMAN #2 (OF 2)
DONALD DUCK AND FRIENDS #325
DOOM PATROL #9
DORK TOWER #30
EX MACHINA #8
FAUST LOVE OF DAMNED ACT 13
FRAGMENT #1
FREEDOM FORCE #2 (OF 6)
GARTH ENNIS 303 WRAPAROUND CVR #3
GREEN LANTERN REBIRTH #4 (OF 6)
HARDY BOYS #3
HAWKMAN #37
HEAD #10
HERE COMES THE LOVEJOYS IN COLOR
HUMAN TARGET #19
JACK STAFF #7
JLA CLASSIFIED #4
LITTLE STAR #1
LIVEWIRES #1 (OF 6)
LUCIFER #59
MANGA DARKCHYLDE #1 (OF 5)
MANHUNTER #7
MARVEL AGE SPIDER-MAN TEAM UP #5
MICKEY MOUSE AND FRIENDS #274
NEW INVADERS #7
NEW X-MEN #10
NOBLE CAUSES #7
OCEAN #4 (OF 6)
OFFICIAL HANDBOOK MARVEL UNIVERSE MARVEL KNIGHTS 2005
OUTSIDERS #20
POWERPUFF GIRLS #59
PROMETHEA #32
PROMETHEA VARIANT EDITION #32
PS238 #10
PVP #14
QUEEN & COUNTRY DECLASSIFIED VOL 2 #1
ROBIN #135
ROBOCOP WILD CHILD WRAPAROUNDCVR #1
RUNAWAYS #1 (OF 12)
SHE HULK #12
SIMPSONS COMICS #103 (NOTE PRICE)
SPACE GHOST #4 (OF 6)
SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #25
STORMBREAKER SAGA OF BETA RAYBILL #2 (OF 6)
TEEN TITANS #21
THE BALLAD OF SLEEPING BEAUTY #7
TOM STRONG #31
TOMB RAIDER #50
TRIGGER #3
UDON STREET FIGHTER CVR A #13
ULTRA #7 (OF 8)
WOLVERINE #25
X-FORCE #6


Books/ Mags/ Stuff
ALL STAR COMICS ARCHIVES VOL 11 HC
ANIMATION MAGAZINE MAR 2005 #146
ART OF GEORGE TUSKA SC
BATMAN WAR GAMES ACT ONE TP
BUDDY DOES SEATTLE GN
COMICS BUYERS GUIDE APR05 #1603
CRUMB SKETCHBOOK VOL 10 SC
EIGHTBALL CARICATURE NINE STORIES TP NEW PTG
ESSENTIAL LUKE CAGE VOL 1 TP
FRANK MILLER SIN CITY VOL 1 HARD GOODBYE 2ND TP
FRANK MILLER SIN CITY VOL 3 BIG FAT KILL 2ND TP
FRANK MILLER SIN CITY VOL 4 THAT YELLOW BASTARD 2ND TP
GOON VOL 3 HEAPS OF RUINATIONTP
JANES WORLD VOL 3 TP
LEES TOY REVIEW FEB 2005 #148
LOVE EATS BRAINS GN
NODWICK ADVENTURE LOG TP
PASSION FRUIT VOL 1 SWEAT ANDHONEY GN (OF 3)
PINUP ART OF DAN DECARLO SC
ROSEN LIBRARY GRAPHIC NOVELISTS NEIL GAIMAN
SON OF THE GUN VOL 2 SAINT TP
TOMARTS ACTION FIGURE DIGEST #131
TOYFARE GIANT SIZED X-MEN TRIBUTE CVR #92
TRIGUN ANIME MANGA VOL 1 TP
VAUGHN BODE VOL 1 RARE AND WELL DONE TP
X-MEN DAY OF THE ATOM TP Click Here to Read More...

No, Jeff didn't really leave me with much that I WANTED to talk about, that bastard! It's OK, because it is Sweetie's Day around the ol' Hibbs/Friedman household. I stayed up way late last night creating an elaborate hunt for clues aorund the house leading to this year's card (and a kiss), so I don't even really feel like reviewing comics that much today.

But here are some, where Lester didn't already tell you the punchline! :)

ALPHA FLIGHT #12: Last issue, and I wish Lester'd done this one actually, becauseof how much he hates Time Travel stories. He could have done a nice compare and contrast with this and JSA this week.... Anyway, yet another stab at AF dies, though I think the reasons why this time were fairly obvious -- it wasn't actually Alpha Flight, except in name. And the humor thing wasn't actually working. ("Funny" comics need to be, y'know, FUNNY). Anyway, this last issue, was EH for a last issue (where you don't expect much to begin with)

BREACH #2: I actually kinda liked this issue, and I thought the art, in particular, was really exceptional. But there's no chance it is going to make it to a full run -- I'll be flabbergasted if intials on #1 got above, say, 16k (we find out, what, next week?), and I fully expect it to be under 10k before issue #8, and a color book simply can't turn a profit at that point. Give that this started as a CAPTAIN ATOM pitch (and it's obvious it was), I really have to wonder why the decision was made to not have at least that minor commercial selling point attached to it. Ah well, easy to be a Monday Morning Quarterback. As a piece of storytelling, I'll give this a very low GOOD, though we all saw how much good that did for BLOODHOUND, eh?

CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON #12: Pretty much a straight ahead rock-'em sock-'em superhero comic, which we haven't seen from Priest... well, good lord, maybe when he had different initials. I actually understood almost every page here without having to scratch my head and read back. Not, mond you, that I neccessarily liked it that much better, but that this was probably more what people who want to read CAP & FALCON want to read. Not trying to damn with faint praise, though I know that's how it sounds... a highish OK.

FABLES #34: New storyline starts here, and its a cute one, way far away from Fabletown, in Hollywood, actually. It's one of those rare comics that might actually even play better if you hadn't read the 33 issues before it, so if you've heard the positive buzz and were thinking about it, I'd call this a terrific "jump on" issue. VERY GOOD.

INCREDIBLE HULK #78: Better than the uneven first part, but not back up to what I expected from a PAD Hulk comic. Probably becasue PAD didn't know if he'd be continuing when he wrote the script, and his best HULK stories were always change building upon change. If Jeff was reviewing this, he would have mentioned how the
"We're Dead on a island" scene fizzled the dramatic tension, or some sort of other flowery college-boy thing, but me, I was stuck on "why are the calling him 'Hulk' in the flashbacks -- he's called that because the scared soldier said it!". So, critic say EH.

MAJESTIC #2: Its a well done 21st century silver-age Superman story, yes. However, given the performance of the mini, one wonders why they rushed to do a monthly. This is a book that, like BREACH or BLOODHOUND or, across the city, SHE-HULK or RUNAWAYS or... well, the list goes on and on, books like this are high quality, but are basically not marketed at all, and are lost in the flood of SPider/Bat/X/Super titles that drown the racks. The mid list is effectively dead now, and unless drastic surgery is made at DC and Marvel to rein in thier overproduction, they're never ever ever ever going to be able to launch a new idea or concept again and have any commercial success whatsoever. Which is a shame because this, while not great is at least a low GOOD and deserves something better than "we hope hundreds of retailers will handsell the book fervently because THEY know it is good" when that mostly entails getting people excited about work that is going to come to a premature end.

KRACHMACHER GN
STRANGE DAY ONE SHOT: I wanted to put these two together in review because I read them one after another and they seemed like a good compare and contrast. KRACHMACHER is a Xeric grant book, and has terrific fucking art. Major cartooning potential here, and well deserving of a grant to develop style and talent. The story, however, was really craptastic. Dull, meandering, blech. By page 6 I had stopped reading, and I was on to flipping through to look at the nice art. AWFUL, there.

STRANGE DAY, on the other hand, had a terrific little story, that I had to fight my way through the art to find. In the end the art serviced the story just fine, but the first couple of pages were painful indeed. Sweet little romantic comic, just perfect for Valentine's Day, and I'm afraid it won't survive the casual "flip test" on the rack. It was VERY GOOD.

STRAY BULLETS #36: Lapham is well on his game here. Absolutely EXCELLENT. One wonders why this doesn't sell twice as well in the general market.

ULTIMATES 2 #3: I dunno man, though the recreation of the 70s TV show at the end made me hear the music in my head, I actually thought this was a pretty pussy development. I mean, if he's there and unconscious why go through the insane trouble and expense of strapping him to an aircraft carrier and nuking it, when it would be som much easier just to give him a lethal injection then and there, or a shot in the head, or a slit throat, or... well, hell, he's there on the floor, man. So, I don't know, there was a nice bit of dialogue here or there, but this issue didn't work for me. OK.

VIMANARAMA #1: I liked everything up until the baby disappeared, and really disliked everything after that. No dramatic tension at the end, either, as we've only just met her. On the other hand, I trust Morrison generally, and am willing to come back for #2 to see if it was me or if it was him. This issue: EH.

WALKING DEAD #15: The verbiage is cut by 50%, and things flow much smoother for it. Several fairly shocking things happen in succession, and this was clearly an EXCELLENT comic.

YOUNG AVENGERS #1: Actually, not that bad. Graeme called it. The script is brisk and fun, though I thought the characterization of JJJ was off, Kat seemed like too much of a bitch, and Jessica was reduced to the calling your boyfriend joke. Still that doesn't matter as much as the new characters. Right now they're still relatively ciphers, and how much and specifically how that changes is going to determine the long-term potential for the book. I'll give this first issue a low GOOD, though.

PICK OF THE WEAK is probably ACTION #824. Which is weird, because, as Jeff noted, it's probably Austen's best issue yet.

PICK OF THE WEEK: hard call, three excellents this week (also BERLIN #11), and all three are black and white, to boot. I'm going to give the edge to STRAY BULLETS #36, I think. Go buy a copy.

BOOK / TP OF THE WEEK has several very credible challengers this week: BPRD PLAGUE OF FROGS TP, FLASH IGNITION TP, LUCIFER VOL 7 EXODUS TP, NEGATIVE BURN VERY BEST FROM 1993-1998 TP, but I think I have to give the small edge to ITS A BIRD SC -- now that it is in paperback, and not expensive hardcover, you don't have an excuse to not enjoy this wonderful volume.

That's it.

-B Click Here to Read More...

Hey, all. Sorry this is a bit later than usual--my scheduling's a little off, I'm fighting a cold, and I've been gathering data for my very first trip to an accountant this Thursday. I knew there wasn't a chance in hell I'd sift through all my receipts if I started writing reviews beforehand, so here's a few quick reviews to celebrate having that done, and before I go on to the mightmare that is re-organizing my workspace:

ACTION COMICS #824: If we'd gotten this, oh, ten issues ago, I probably could've worked up some enthusiasm. And I know Supes is prematurely aged here because of kryptonite poisoning, but why does everyone think Superman would get weaker as he got older? The dude's one big solar battery--I think there's just as good a chance he'd be ten times stronger because of all the built-up solar power. But whatev. This was nice-looking but not quite as batshit, and so more or less OK.

AQUAMAN #27: Well, The image of bio-luminescent jellyfish floating over a tenement block was lovely and surreal, and I dug the idea of using Aquaman's amputated limb for necromancy; and this got wrapped up in two issues, instead of six. And so endeth the list of the good things about the issue. The bad things? I didn't care, and I didn't get much of a sense the writer did, either. The artist has some chops, but if even mirror, mirror can't get me enthused, I wonder what legs this book has left. Eh.

AVENGERS EARTHS MIGHTIEST HEROES #7: Casey's retroactive gambit shoots itself in the foot--why does Jarvis and Hawkeye stage that scene instead of just having Jarvis endorse Clint as a possible good match for the Avengers? Similarly, I thought Casey did a perfectly good job with the scene where Cap finally has some closure over Bucky's death. But that's completely at odds with all continuity after it, isn't it? Consequently, this book is too concerned with its own take on things to fit neatly into continuity, and yet carries almost no weight on its own without previous continuity. So it just can't win either way, alas. OK.

BATMAN THE MAN WHO LAUGHS: Pretty looking, and perfectly okay retcon, although I was left a bit underwhelmed: at times, Mahnke looks like he wants to out-Bolland Bolland's work on The Killing Joke, but it also looks like he loses his nerve and deliberately tries to undercut that impression at other points. The script is pretty damn good, with lots of fun creepy bits, but maybe I would've been fangasming over this if it'd been a $3.50 Annual as opposed to paying $6.95 and giving it a Good without the enthusiasm I would like.

BERLIN #11: How long is it between issues? A year and a half? Two years? The work is incredibly first-rate and, impressively, the issue neatly keeps all the storylines thematically centered on the sexual hedonism but--man, how long again? I almost wish Lutes would pull a Blankets and go straight for a trade, because the publishing schedules hinders the appreciation of Excellent work.

BLOODHOUND #8: Fuckin' Hibbs. He gets me hooked on this book and now, whenever I ask what he thinks of the most current issue, he just holds up his hands and goes: "Don't care. It's cancelled!" Bastard. Me, I enjoyed this issue right up until Zeiss appeared because the closer this book gets to actual supervillains the more contrived it suddenly seems. Although this'll sound insanely perfunctory if you've followed my previous reviews, let me assure you the art by Leonard Kirk and Robin Riggs is really great--there's so much character in the faces and the body language I can't stand it. These guys are perfectly suited for crime drama and I hope they can find another gig that'll allow them to extend those talents. Good.

CAPTAIN AMERICA #3: There's something very off in the pacing here: "Well, we're in Paris hot on the trail of international terrorists and the Cosmic Cube--howzabout dinner?" Huh? And I'm not sure what those flashback sequences are building to, but it's starting to seem like Brubaker didn't bother to read the Reiber/Austen run. And, y'know, who can blame him, but you'd think the editor might've stepped in and informed him that the fake memory storyline was done, like, just last year. Still, OK.

DOC FRANKENSTEIN #2: Weirdly torn: I'm pretty bummed by the whole anti-religion thingy going on here, and yet my favorite pages of the book were the first three where Doc recounts all the previous attacks on him by religious zealots. And without the kooky straw-man arguments against organized religion, I'm not sure there would be anything left but busy, pretty pictures. So Good, but really could be much, much better.

FANTASTIC FOUR FOES #2: Hibbs can cut right to the heart of things. I was utterly irked by the how creepily out-of-character everyone was here, as Reed hatches a horrifying idea to jam prisoners in a Negative Zone prison--an environment so hostile the people would be loath to break out. If Reed Richards really put that kind of idea forward, I think the rest of the Four would assume he'd gotten his mind swapped with Dr. Doom again, not happily going along with this enormous human rights violation. But Hibbs just looked at the issue and said, "Where are the Foes? I thought this was supposed to be FF: Foes, but there's only one foe, and he appears on pg. 20. Gimme the god-damn foes, damn you!" Maybe this isn't really Awful, but it's rubbing me really wrong and I can't see any other rating for it.

GOTHAM CENTRAL #28: Once again, for me, it's great until the last page and then the superhero cliches just swamp it. Would the sales for this book be any worse if they just dropped the super elements all together? I'll give it a Very Good because not everyone has the allergic reation to the last page that I do but I wish these could work differently, somehow.

GREEN ARROW #47: If this had just been a done-in-one with good ol', dumb ol' Duke of Oil, this would've been just fine. But with the return of the Eurotrash Ninja, I kinda lost some enthusiasm. And I'm not digging Tom Peyer's pencils--every character looks like an enraged ectomorph suffering stomach cramps. Let's call it OK.

JLA #111: Finally, people sock stuff! But why couldn't this have been part two? Or even a "jammed with mad ideas" part one? Another case where I'm not digging the pencils--they seem dashed off to me. Eh.

MARVEL KNIGHTS SPIDER-MAN #11: I appreciated the half-hour argument that ensued in the store over whether Scorpion was an a-list villian or a b-list villain before he got the Venom outfit. (My opinion: most Marvel heroes have barely more than two a-list villains and the rest go straight to c-list villains. The Scorpion was a guy who would hit people with the big green cheeto tied to his ass--that's all he did, that's all that ever happened. C+ at best.) But other than that, I thought this was tired and wretched. Shield sends all those heroes to help Spidey but never thinks to set up any sort of watch on Mary Jane? And then--whoa, hold on, Goblin and Mary Jane on the Bridge? That's never been done before! It'll be interesting when this is done to see if I took the time to bitch about every single issue of this--that wouldn't reflect well on me at all. Awful.

OUTSIDERS #20: I miss romance in superhero comics, so this was a welcome little ish. Of course, I also miss the days when "romance" meant more than knocking boots in the quinjet (or whatever the equivalent here is) but that's another matter entirely. I don't know why I'm still so "meh" about this book, because although I enjoy each issue at least a little bit, I never really get excited about the title overall. If I can figure out why, I'll let you know. OK.

STRANGE DAY ONE-SHOT: Was this the story about the two kids meeting while waiting for the release of the new Cure album? I thought the art was ugly and limited, to be honest, but the story drew me in and nicely captured that feeling of teen chemistry and romance. I think it might have worked better as a period piece (these really seemed to be teenagers from pre-cell phone times) and, like I said, the art didn't really kung-pao my chicken, but a very nice read. Good.

STRAY BULLETS #36: Nice work on Lapham's part making that last panel as disturbing as possible. If I have a problem with this title, it's that it doesn't hold any surprises. If Craig hadn't actually been a scumball, maybe there would've been a little more drama in the story. But there was no doubt, this being Stray Bullets, that he was going to be at least quasi-scumballish and that things were going to turn out the way they did. And while it's bad form to criticize a work of art for having a consistent worldview, it's a worldview without enough nuance to really keep me interested all these many issues later: Amy's continuing corruption would be more moving if it seemed like there was any other choice available to her. Good work, don't get me wrong, but it's not knocking me out like it should.

YOUNG AVENGERS #1: Pretty good stuff, actually. I had issues with the portrayals of Jessica and Jonah--and maybe even Kat--but I thought they were handled pretty well and Heinberg is skilled enough to make sure those scenes had their own payoffs, even if a bit forced. And after seeing stuff like New Invaders turn into static mush, I appreciated Cheung and Dell's attempts to keep things moving, even if a lot of it didn't really work if you paid attention (that fight scene in the church is really messy and sketchy--those five guys frequently look like at least eight guys, and all of them seem particularly adept at shrugging off lightning bolts--but it's laid out to keep the eye zipping right through it). This book is gonna rise and fall on the strength of each Young Avenger's backstory (and even then, as Hibbs pointed out, where it's gonna go after, say, issue #12?) but I did enjoy it more than, say, any of the Bendis work on Avengers and I'll be back for more. Good.

I left plenty of stuff for Hibbs to weigh in about (and tried not to steal all of his best lines) so let's see if he takes the bait. I think I'll be working on the newsletter this week and Wondercon is coming up on Friday so don't be surprised if this site lies fallow, at least on my end, for a little bit.

Labels: Jeff

Click Here to Read More...

Since Bri actually did post some more (to which I heartily say "fuck, yeah!"), and since it was a pretty great week for trades, I wanted to review of the trades quickly. Actually, it's such a great week of trades for CE, there's a ton of good stuff to choose from: Vol. 11 of Battle Royale? Bill & Ted? Gemma Bovary, fresh from an extremely laudatory review by the extremely hard-to-please Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times? Legend of Grimjack? The budget release of The Superman Archives? And I'm just listing the cool stuff I didn't get. Out of the trades I did pick up, I wanted to briefly mention:

BIZARRO WORLD HC: Bri and I disagreed on this one at the store Friday, and somehow none of that made into his review. Thinking back on it, I do have to agree with his best point (which he didn't have time to scale into this review): this volume of Bizarro World feels a lot more Mad Magazine-ized than Vol. 1. There's a lot more of the funny and wacky here than the original Coober Skeeber premise of Vol. 1 where alt. cartoonists used their styles to explore the DC characters, which is why I think Brian sees the Kolchaka piece as the great piece in this volume (separate and apart from it being a great piece)--it's where Kolchaka's interests and DC's (silver age) interests cross and highlight each other in exactly the Coober Skeeberish way.

But, that said, I felt like I actually enjoyed this volume more: The Green Lantern story where we *finally* get a valid explanation for the color yellow thing; Dorkin's "Batman and Monkey The Monkey Wonder" story; the story (drawn by Dorkin) of Kamandi: the Laziest Boy on Earth (of course I would love that); that Dave Cooper girlfight; that Wonder Woman story by Mo Willems and Ellen Forney (can someone get more Forney work into the market and pronto?); and at least three or four other pieces. I can't imagine this is going to do as well in the marketplace (I think, based on what I overheard in the store a few times, is that a lot of people grabbed Vol. 1 expecting it to be Matt Groening's take on the DCU) but I think it's still worth the coin--if not in HC, then certainly in SC. I give it a high Good.

RUNAWAYS VOL. 3 DIGEST: I waited for the trade for this, and thought it read great even though the format is...not so great. Still, if you haven't had a chance, I highly recommend you pick up these three volumes: I think Vaughan does a dazzingly good job of creating an all-ages adventure packed with twists, characterization and witty dialogue. Although I was pretty sure I knew the twist resolution, I was impressed with how well it was handled, and how true to the characters it stayed. And the art's great, too. Very Good work and worth picking up--and if Marvel is smart, they'll pimp this one out to the movie people because it would be (to quote the Trump) hyooge.

BLACK PANTHER BY JACK KIRBY SC: I read through this expecting no more than typical late-70's Kirby at Marvel--great design, dynamic pacing, stinky story--and was surprised by the subtext--actualy god-damned subtext--encoded in the "Collectors" storyline. In this set of stories (running the first seven or so issues of Kirby's run--I don't have the trade in front of me), T'Challa ends up helping a collector called Mr. Little, first in correcting a problem with an ancient artifact/time machine once in the possession of T'Challa's family, and then, against his will, in a quest to recover water from the Fountain of Youth. In every issue, we get some choice bitching from The Panther about Mr. Little and his competitors (commonly referred to as "The Collectors"): "You Collectors may have a sense of value, but little sense of worth!" and like that. At first, I attributed the endless reiterations of such comments to Kirby's breakneck creative process until about mid-point it hit me: Here was T'Challa The King, fretting about wasting his time while being sent on fools' errands by The Collectors, as written and drawn by Jack "King" Kirby after the apparent rejection of his New Gods work and his return to Marvel. These quests involve time machines and eternal youth, as conceived by a guy in the later years of his career put on a book mainly because he co-created the character and expected to schedule and sell as if Kirby was still in his prime.

Mother-fuckin' subtext, yo.

All the more impressive to me is that Kirby doesn't use this for self-pity: his Panther is amused and annoyed by the Collectors but never cowed, frustrated that his attentions are forced elsewhere but never furious. And it's just a little thing, woven in underneath all the Yetis and lost Samurai and the very creepy Man from Hatch 23. I admit it's not prime Kirby, but that guy could still jam-pack a comic book and the industry could still learn a lot from him. Good (maybe even Very Good if you're a Kirby nut like me) and eye-opening.

SEAGUY TPB: Finally, on the opposite end of the subtext spectrum, we get this collection of the three issue mini by Grant Morrison and Cameron Stewart. Here, the subtext isn't discreetly woven in but the essence of the story itself--Seaguy is a Z-Grade character (I love how Cameron Stewart draws Seaguy less like a comic book hero and more like an action figure who once got a single page comic strip ad *in* a comic book) who, in a world bereft of adventure, has an adventure where everything changes, and yet nothing changes one whit. It's about as devastating a commentary on how media corporations control all their icons (even their lowliest) and keep them from genuine growth as I've read, and, amazingly enough, it's presented through a publishing arm of Time-Warner Communications.

Although I think Morrison wants to have it both ways, and implies that Seaguy may be smarter, more vital and more emotionally connected to his past than appearances might show, I prefer the glass half-empty approach, and see Seaguy as a bitter pill with a sugar coating--a sadly knowing commentary on the world of mainstream comics disguised as a goofy skylark. Very Good stuff, if you ask me.

Labels: Jeff

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Hey, Graham will be happy, YOUNG AVENGERS #1 is coming out!


2000 AD #1421
2000 AD #1422
ACTION COMICS #824
ALPHA FLIGHT #12
ALRAUNE #8
ANGELTOWN #4
AQUAMAN #27
AVENGERS EARTHS MIGHTIEST HEROES #7
BATMAN LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT #188
BATMAN STRIKES #6
BATMAN THE MAN WHO LAUGHS
BERLIN #11 (RES)
BIG BANG PRESENTS ULTIMAN FAMILY #1
BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL #98
BLOODHOUND #8
BREACH #2
BRODIES LAW #5
CAPTAIN AMERICA #3
CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON #12
DISTRICT X #10
DOC FRANKENSTEIN #2
FABLES #34
FADE FROM GRACE #4
FANTASTIC FOUR FOES #2
FISHNET ANGEL JANE DOE #1
FULL CIRKLE CVR B #1
GAMBIT #7
GI JOE MASTER & APPRENTICE VOL II UDON CVR A #1
GOTHAM CENTRAL #28
GREEN ARROW #47
HERE DOESNT COME THE FLYING F$$$ #1
HOUSEWIVES AT PLAY #13
INCREDIBLE HULK #78
JLA #111
JSA #70
JUBILEE #6
JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE #228
JUGHEAD #163
KOLCHAK TALES OF NIGHT STALKER #5
LURKERS #4
MAD MAGAZINE #451
MAJESTIC #2
MARVEL AGE FANTASTIC FOUR TALES THE THING #1
MARVEL KNIGHTS 4 #15
MARVEL KNIGHTS SPIDER-MAN #11
MASKED COMMANDER
MENAGE A TROIS #7
METAL GEAR SOLID #5
NEW THUNDERBOLTS #5
NIGHTWING #103
OJO #5
OUTSIDERS #20
SAVAGE DRAGON GOD WAR #2
SCOOBY DOO #93
SEX WARRIOR ISANE XXX #2
STALKERS ONE SHOT
STAR WARS REPUBLIC #73
STRANGE DAY ONE SHOT
STRAY BULLETS #36
THE GIFT #10
THE INCREDIBLES #3
THE PUNISHER #17
ULTIMATE X-MEN #56
ULTIMATES 2 #3
VIMANARAMA #1
WALKING DEAD #15
WILD GIRL #4
WYATT EARP DODGE CITY #1
YOUNG AVENGERS #1



Books / Mags / Stuff
ALTER EGO #45
BPRD PLAGUE OF FROGS TP
CLIMATE GN
DOROTHY GALE JOURNEY TO OZ #1
EL ZOMBO FANTASMA VOL 1 TP
FANTASTIC FOUR VOL 3 RETURN DOCTOR DOOM DIGEST TP
FEMME FATALES MAR APR 05 VOL 14 #1
FLASH IGNITION TP
FORTEAN TIMES #193
ITS A BIRD SC
KRACHMACHER GN
LADY PEP GN
LIBERTY MEADOWS VOL 3 SUMMER OF LOVE HC
LUCIFER VOL 7 EXODUS TP
MAD XL #32
MARVEL WEDDINGS TP
MUSASHI #9 VOL 2
NEGATIVE BURN VERY BEST FROM 1993-1998 TP
PC GAMER MAGAZINE MAR 05 W/DVD
RANMA 1/2 VOL 16 2ND ED TP
RANMA 1/2 VOL 29 TP
ROSEN GRAPHIC NONFICTION ABRAHAM LINCOLN GN
ROSEN GRAPHIC NONFICTION ALEXANDER THE GREAT GN
ROSEN GRAPHIC NONFICTION CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS GN
ROSEN GRAPHIC NONFICTION CLEOPATRA GN
ROSEN GRAPHIC NONFICTION ELIZABETH I GN
ROSEN GRAPHIC NONFICTION GEORGE WASHINGTON GN
ROSEN GRAPHIC NONFICTION HARRIET TUBMAN GN
ROSEN GRAPHIC NONFICTION HERNAN CORTES GN
ROSEN GRAPHIC NONFICTION JULIUS CAESAR GN
ROSEN GRAPHIC NONFICTION RICHARD THE LIONHEART GN3 & 4
ROSEN GRAPHIC NONFICTION SITTING BULL GN
ROSEN GRAPHIC NONFICTION SPARTACUS GN
SANCTUM TP
STAR WARS TALES VOL 5 TP
SWAN VOL 2
TOM STRONG BOOK THREE TP
ULTIMATE X-MEN VOL 10 CRY WOLF TP
ULTIMATE X-MEN VOL 4 HC
VIDEO WATCHDOG FEB 2005 #116
WRITE NOW #9
Click Here to Read More...

Here, at least, is my epiphany about Superman.

I didn't really understand #213. It sounded like Superman saying HE had caused "The Vanishing" because he was upset about earth ending like Krypton. Or something? That's what I thought I read, at least. Doesn't make any sense, but there you go.

And there's a page where they're discussing Kal being sent off to earth in his rocketship and a paragrpah before or later they're talking about the Phantom Zone, and it hit me:

Jor-El is an idiot.

Now as I recall my continuity (And my memory is fluid, so maybe I have this wrong), but didn't Jor-El "invent" the Phantom Zone? Well the projector, I guess. At the least, he's well aware of it, if not having some access of some kind as a significant Kryptonian scientist.

So he KNOWS the planet it about to explode. And what does he do? Try to save his entire family, thier friends, random people on the Kryptonian equivilant of the internet by escaping into the Phantom Zone? Oh, nooooooo. He builds an experimental interplanetary spaceship, that may or may not even make it, and ONLY makes it large enough for his helpless infant son.

I mean, I never really bought "this is just an experimental version, and I ran out of time" -- it's not even big enough for a single adult!

Anyway, you let that slide because, y'know it's a resonant story of the parents sending thier child from certain death to become a great hero... that's biblical, man. Literally, even.

But once the silver age introduced the Phantom Zone, doesn't that render that sacrifice horrifically futile and moronic? If I had a choice between putting Ben in a rocketship alone or slipping into an alternate dimenion, no matter how unpleasent, but where the whole family could be there for him, well, I'll take Door #2 any day.

I don't know how I went nearly 40 years without realizing that? Probably because no writer had ever put "phantom zone" and "rocketship" on the same page before.

Superman #213 was AWFUL.

I also didn't do the PICKs in the last post, because I thought I'd be coming back for a full post today, but I lost any chance of working yesterday because Ben's nap schedule got messed up, so today I'm desperately trying to play catch up...

My PICK OF THE WEEK is probably SUPREME POWER #15. It's weird how I can utterly love this comic, while utterly hating AMAZING SPIDER-MAN.

For PICK OF THE WEAK, I already telegraphed SWAMP THING #12, but I have to say, X-MEN FANTASTIC FOUR #3 came dangerously close to being worse.

Back within the hour with this week's shipping list....

-B Click Here to Read More...

Wow. Hibbs posts--twice on the same day, in fact. And on the same week as the release of Bizarro World....Coincidence?

Maybe he'll even post after I post, thus causing our universe to collapse in on itself. That'd be something to see.

Oh, and, ostensibly, I don't care but the fact that Enterprise was cancelled warmed my heart tremendously. You know those fighting games where you got the special move bar that builds over time and depletes with constant use? Let's just call that bar "quality," and hope the Star Trek franchise gets time to replenish it now.

As for the funny books...

ADAM STRANGE #5: My attention seriously dwindled this issue, in part because there was too much Omega Men, too little Adam Strange. I also think Adam detecting the one ship on an entire planet that has Rannian etc., etc. is a little too..convenient? But considering all that, it's still five issues in and I'm still enjoying it so let's call it a very high OK.

BLACK PANTHER #1: I'm pretty much with Bri on this one: the anachronisms and the racial epithets didn't help with the tone on this, although the art and the conception are fine. For me, though, the biggest no-no was introducing Klaw like he's some sort of bad-ass. As somebody who's been reading Black Panther comics for far too long now, the last person to get me worried is a guy who's been getting his ass beat by the Panther for thirty straight years. This probably should have been the time to mix things up a bit and given us somebody else's supervillain---like, I dunno, Count Nefaria or something. It's damn pretty pictures, though, and it's just getting started so lemme also OK this.

CONCRETE: HUMAN DILEMMA #2: I skipped the first issue but something about the cover of the second issue drew me in and I'm glad. I can't remember the last time a indy creator really changed the paradigm of the relationships between main characters, and it really gave this mini the sense that Chadwick is willing to take some risks. (It helps that it worked.) As Hibbs pointed out, the "story" is a bit slow but all the character stuff is where the juice is at and I'm fine with that. If you've ever liked Concrete, you should pick this up. Good.

DEADSHOT #3: Tone, tone, tone. The artists really oversold the comedy on the babysitting scenes and that really wrecked it for me--just because you can draw Charles Bronson making the Home Alone face doesn't mean you should. But the GA/Deadshot fight was better than I expected, particularly as each character tries to psych the other one out. I'm liking this, although it's gonna be rough to get a satisfying ending. I don't want a cute and fuzzy Deadshot but I don't want this mini to end back at square one, either. So it'll be interesting to see how it pans out. Good.

DETECTIVE COMICS #803: Pacing was definitely off this issue, as Lapham apparently realized how to turn Clayface into something straight out of The Silence of the Lambs, which worked fine, and overfocused on The Penguin's organization, which didn't. This is very, very dark stuff and I'm not sure if Lapham's reach is exceeding his grasp (his Stray Bullets stories are usually much more intimate, narrower in focus, which he uses there to devastating effect) but I'm really intrigued by it. I'll give it a highly qualified Good.

EXILES #59: Hmmm, everything I liked about this (particularly Sabretooth's refusal to just off Mimic) was counterbalanced by that ending which kinda stank. I really wanted more from the Timekeepers storyline than a segueway into a new Age of Apocalypse crossover. The X-Men have a funny franchise in that anything that gets fondly remembered is brought back--even if the reason why something was fondly remembered is that it was only done once. Eh.

MARVEL TEAM-UP #5: This actually recaptures the spirit of the early MTUs: it's one big incoherent mess, in other words, and that's fine with me. It's not really a guilty pleasure per se, but I am enjoying it even though I probably shouldn't. And we're all tired of me blah-blah-blahing about Scott Kolins so I'll just stop here. A guilty Good.

NEW AVENGERS #3: I hope this can be read in the most constructive, positive way possible but what the fuck is Brian Bendis doing? We're two issues into an enormous supervillain prison break, where each hero is being piled on by more and more supervillains every minute, Luke Cage encounters the Purple Man and told to turn on the heroes and kill them. So how does issue three start out? Oh, you know, with Cap and Iron Man watching the sky and sharing bagels. Because God forbid we carry any of the tension from last issue's cliffhanger past page two: right off, without knowing how, we know that the prison break worked out, Luke didn't kill anybody and everything's fine, just by the way Cap's asking if they didn't have sesame bagels. And so we jump back to where we left off, except without any dramatic tension at all, and we get to see how our heroes get out of their fine predicament. Well, it turns out that the Purple Man didn't have his power (or enough of his power) to control Luke Cage so nothing happens there. And the supervillains? Well, some of them get beaten and some of them escape. All of it off-panel, mind you. And then the rest of the issue is Cap recruiting the new team, and setting up the new headquarters, and the new possible traitor with their "ooo, now mysterious team x will know what bagels Captain America likes!" subplot.

In short, this issue was so fuckin' weak it should be opening for Hanson at Paramount's Great America. I honest to god expect next issue to be Cap informing Spidey that he *can* write Avengers lunches off on his taxes, and telling Spider-Woman how to get her parking validated when she parks at Tony's new buliding, and letting Matt know that the deli shop has a policy where if you buy five frogurts, you get the sixth frogurt free as long as you remember to get the card stamped. If you can't be arsed to finish a fight scene, maybe The Avengers isn't the book for you. Awful.

SHANNA THE SHE-DEVIL #1: I hate Marvel editorial. You want to edit out Shanna's titties? Fine. But also edit out all the eyeball gouging, face tearing, and brutal dino-deaths, please, because anybody old enough to see that stuff is old enough to see titties. (This is known as "The Friday the 13th Covenant," and wimpy guys like me were aware that if we wanted to see the nudity, we had to see the violence...) That said, I thought Cho's storytelling was far more fluid than his recent Spider-Man work, and I liked that although we didn't get a lot of Shanna, there was enough Raptorectomies that there's hardly anybody left but Shanna for next issue to focus on. Too compromised to get a Good, but certainly a high OK if you wanted a pretty brain-dead book with cool dinosaurs.

SUPERMAN #213: I'm just posting my review so Hibbs can come in and share his very cool epiphany that resulted from reading this issue. I lack epiphany to share, or any insight whatsoever really, since things now sort of make sense even though they still utterly don't. I've been reading that exquisite Silver Age Superman Archive and can see a certain connection between a lot of those old improbable Superman stories and this new improbable one. But the crucial difference is they were able to do in ten pages what took this team, what, nine issues? Apart from Mt. Rushmore guy and a really cool logo for Zod, this has just about nothing going for it. Awful.

SUPERMAN/BATMAN #17: This didn't make any sense either (why would Bruce be able to fight as Batman when he had no reason to train, even slightly? And is this evil Superman? Good Superman?) but I don't care because, like the silver age stories, it's not afraid to just be absurdly jammed with cheap DC fangasm material. Sgt. Rock? The Blackhawks? The Statue of Al Ghul? Dumb and cheap, but still probably the best superhero book I read this week. Good.

SUPERMAN STRENGTH #2: Although I quite liked this too, even more than the first issue. Scott's updating of Silver Age weirdness works pretty damn well here. I know, I know: I didn't like the headless Superman thing from issue #1 but reading that Archive put me in the right mindset--plus it's got Superman flying off to stop enormous falling combs and pens! Someone drawing more like Curt Swan would have realy sold this for me...hell, as someone pointed out in the comments, Superman acts so much like Zot, McCloud could have drawn this himself and it might have pulled more punch. Shame about the price and the art, because with another format and/or with another artist, this may well have been my pick of the week.

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #72: Again, wouldn't the "secret girlfriend" angle be more dramatic without that opening scene--because then I think the reader would be more likely to think that Harry's just being an egomaniacal nutcase, and the story would deepen when we discover otherwise. Everyone in the comments section make it sound like I'm the only sucker still reading this, but this book was so good for so long that such easily fixed stuff drives me nuts. Eh.

Okay, so let's put the fate of the universe at stake and see if Hibbs will take it from here, and then, if there's still any fluid left in your eyeballs, I'll prattle about this week's trades.

Labels: Jeff

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Whaaaaat?!?!?! Brian's doing it first? Before Jeff even sees it? What the hell planet am I on?

Well, Tzipora's off to the suburbs for chores, and Ben crashed super-early today for his nap -- he usually makes it all the way through TELETUBBIES, which ends at 11:30, but today he watched all of the 10am SESAME STREET in my lap, stroking his hair (Episode 4070, jeez I think I've watched that one 25 times this year! I've seen it more than any other episode, and it's the WORST at the beginning. That's the one where Snuffleupagus' magic ukelale is broken, so he's stuck invisible, and Big Bird is all sad [Does anyone remember the days when everyone on Sesame Street thought Big Bird was barking insane because he kept talking about Snuffy, but no one but BB could see him? Or is that my aging cynicism interpreting that?] -- and talking to air. Ben always gets super bored during those scenes when there's nothing on camera and just some yammering on....), and he was done by the time they got to "Teletubbies everywhere"...

So, let's get a few books done while I have the cahnce - I really should be finishing the stupid TaW on BookScan, I'd really rather be playing a little CoH while the house is quiet -- and, hopefully, I'll be back Monday or so to do some wrap up.

Ooh, one bit of old business first: dunno why, but last week I totally forgot to mention BLUESMAN #1 from Rob Vollmar and Pablo Callejo. It is the follow up to the wonderful CASTAWAYS GN they did. This was really terrific and touching stuff, even if they really do need to find a cover designer to make thier covers "pop" off the rack. I want very much to give it an "excellent", but Callejo's anatomy is oddly "scrunched" in places, and I had a hard time in places distinguishing between the two leads. Still, VERY GOOD, and if your LCS deigned to carry it, go buy a copy, you won't be sorry.

This week, go!

BLACK PANTHER #1: I liked it from a "let's show how badass the Wakandans are" POV -- definately worked there -- though one has to think that world history would be completely different given what's presented here. But, I dunno if the script really worked. I was bugged by the anachronistic "kiss my butt!" thing in the 5th century, and I was surprised by the racist language as the book went along. Ignoring racism is a dumb thing for a book like Black Panther, but I do kinda wonder if Marvel would ever let a white writer and/or a "non-Hollywood" writer (because I don't know which it actually is) use the phrase "jungle bunnies", y'know? The art was spiffy, and there's definately seeds of rollicking potential laid here, but I've got enough quibbles in the scripting that I don't think I can go better than a GOOD on this first issue.

CONCRETE HUMAN DILEMMA #2: Weird pacing. 44-odd pages in and the story seems to just be beginning. It's also got the single most surprising sex scene I've ever seen in a comic. I really like this book, but this series is moving glacially. And, yet: GOOD.

DAREDEVIL REDEMPTION #1: Probably should have been an arc in the main book rahter than it's own mini. Solid but unspectacular stuff, but there's no "action" whatsoever. All Adventures of a Blind Lawyer stuff. A very strong OK, or a weak GOOD, you choose.

GRIMJACK KILLER INSTINCT #1: Again, solid but unspectacular. This is a mature team good great action material, but all in all, I wanted soemthing more. It wasn't...ugh, I dunno, distinct enough? A low GOOD.

FIRESTORM #10: I can't imagine this was the original plan, and if it was it was a dumb one. It feels to me like DC got panicky and switched horses mid-stream to get Ronnie back in the book, but its certainly too late -- the Ronnie fans left before issue #4. From a craft POV this was all fine, but something smells off here, and I give it an EH.

JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED #6: No real comment on the story (perfectly servicible, a solid OK), but I was fucking BLOWN AWAY when I got to the full-page ad for Scholastic's edition of the color BONE. Did you ever think you'd see something like that? I don't know what I'm more impressed by: Scholastic running advertising for the book, or DC accepting it. Both are forward thinking, y'know? Good show, everyone!

SHANNA THE SHE DEVIL #1: I think it would have done better as a Max book, but whatever. More about nazi experiments than Shanna, really, I was surprised to say that I was kinda, well, kinda bored. Cho draws great, no doubt, but there wasn't anything fresh here. *shrug* A high OK, I guess.

SWAMP THING #12: What an ugly ugly ugly book. I can't believe this has any legs. Horror doesn't work without humanity. AWFUL.

BILL & TEDS MOST EXCELLENT ADVENTURES VOL 1 TP: First thing: good job in the reproduction and toning. Sometimes efforts to translate a color book to B&W look like shit, but this did it well. Second thing: I know you're thinking, WTF? Who wants to read anything about a decade+ old movie? But I got to tell you this is excellent zany fun from Evan Dorkin, is wall to wall laffs, and absolutely belongs in your library. In fact, fuck it, its my TP/GN PICK OF THE WEEK, and this is a damn good week for books.

BIZARRO WORLD HC: There's a lot of good material in here, but only a small chunk of it gets as far as great (I think I'm partial to the "Dear Superman..." piece, or maybe Kochalka's wonderful LSH story) -- and there's a couple of pieces that can't crack merely OK. So, your typical anthology problem, largely compounded by being in a HC when we're all 100% sure there will be a SC within 12 months. If you prefer HC books, or your trying to match the first volume, then yes, absolutely get it now -- that's why I'm not going to wait -- but, otherwise, yeah you might be better off waiting for the SC. It will probably be the PICK for the week it gets released in SC, but it's only a high GOOD in this format, in this week.


OK, that's it for today, more later, hopefully with some Jeff along if I didn't frustrate him to death over the last few weeks. I left PLENTY to talk about....

-B
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Just got an email from John Jackson Miller (Editor at Krause's COMIC BUYERS GUIDE), which I thought I should share with you as well as my response. This is a little further afield of the usual content of this blog, but I thought that, possibly, it could generate an interesting thread on the comments section.

Let's see, shall we?

JJ Wrote:
>>>Hi, Bri!

Craig Shutt and I are discussing the Bronze Age and its potential terminus, and we got to talking about Legends of the Dark Knight #1. He said you'd made an argument that there are enough problems "from a technical perspective" with using LODK as the divider that you prefer Spider-Man #1 from the following year -- but Craig couldn't recall the specifics.

We're doing another piece on this, so can you recap your case against LODK for me? My feeling has been that it marked the complete commoditization of the comic book and the beginning of the variant silliness, and that Spider-Man #1 is a difference only of degree. But I can be convinced, so if you can recall what you had to say, I'd appreciate it. I honestly don't remember much noteworthy from the interval between the two...
Best regards,
John Jackson Miller
Editorial Director, Krause Publications Comics & Games Division

<<<<<<<<<


My argument, as I recall it, was that the commoditization of the comic book was “accidental” in the case of LDK – the story goes that DC saw the order numbers for it, and freaked the fuck out, thinking there was NO WAY the DM could possibly absorb that many copies. The outer covers were added to ensure sell-THROUGH.

With McSpidey #1, multiple covers were used to increase sell-IN – which I think is the key factor in commoditization

Further, McSpidey #1 was (I think?) the first time that a book was created for a CREATOR, rather than the character – the selling point wasn’t so much that it was a new Spidey book – it was that it was TODD MCFARLANE’s new Spidey book.

It also, I think, marked the point where craft marked a decline – I still get a giggle out of “His powers? Advantageous!” whenever I think of it – because creator and synergy and commercial goals became more important than the actual craft of what was being produced. That 800-pound gorilla thing marked much of the next decade.

So that’s why I think McSpidey #1 is a MUCH better delineator than LDK #1 – it’s not just degree, it’s a wholly different thing.

Intellectually, I suppose I’d *really* argue that “Bronze age” runs from SUPERBOY SPECTACULAR (that’s the title, right?) – the first “DM exclusive” title, where publishers realized there was a retainable, non-fickle audience, and so they could start to do things FOR them – through to CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS #x (Maybe #1, but more probably #8), because that’s when the “tone” began to change. McSpidey #1 probably denotes the beginning of the “Dark Age”, going clear through…. Well, that’s harder to say with less than 10 years behind the terminus… something “NuMarvel”, perhaps? I don’t have a clear fix on it.

We’re definitely in a new “age” now – one where fun has begun to return, and commoditization has been “internalized” or, perhaps institutionalized might be a better word – it might have started, possibly, with ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #1, though 10 years from now I think that’s not going to “feel right”.

I tend to think “ages” begin with CONCSIOUS DECISIONS – which is why I’d put SHOWCASE #4 above the DETECTIVE with the first J’onn J’onzz as the true start of “Silver” books – but I don’t think they END cleanly or clearly at all – there’s a gap between gold and silver, and silver and bronze.

-B
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Yah, yah, I know.

It's already Wednesday, and I'm just getting to this, I suck. We're going to take Ben to the Zoo today (Free Day at the Zoo, hoorah!), so there's really no time, and besides I'm days late now.

Best thing I read last week? A book from two weeks ago: HELLBLAZER: ALL HIS ENGINES HC. Best JC story I've read in quite a while. Since's Garth's run, maybe. Terrific stuff, and don't let the price get to you -- thought it was really worth it!

Of last week's actual comics? I thought PLANETARY #22 was great -- I don't even really matter that the through-line plot is getting like a page an issue. I also really liked LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #2, BEst stab at the Legion in a while.

But, there's nothing that beat last week's WE3 #3. What an astonishingly touching book, that's also action packed and full of humanity. One of the best things I've ever read from Morrison. Easy PICK OF THE WEEK.

On the down side? SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #24 was dumb-de-dumb-dumb on most every page, disguising a Walking Tour of Paris (aka: How I Expense My Holiday) with the dopiest plot developments in a Spidey book since the Howard Mackie days. We've lost somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 our Spidey readers in the last 2 months. Sometimes, actually, editors are a good thing.

But as bad as that was, PICK OF THE WEAK must go to the oh-so-loveable TAROT #30. Pube-eye shots, radically innapropriate cartoony manga art, and absurd ruminations on female sexuality that made me cringe. I mean, "Mommy Bags"? Buh?

On the book/TP side, I really liked the coloring on the scholastic version of BONE VOL 1, but the retailer in me couldn't be more pissed off that we're now losing 5% on discount at the same time the cover price shrinks. Work harder for less money, young retailer, work!

The EPILEPTIC hardcover was really pretty and well designed, and it's a terrific story, but I think I'm going to go mainstream and declare my BOOK /TP OF THE WEEK to be the hardcover of LOKI. Day-um is that some nice looking artwork all the way through.

For the stuff arriving at CE this week, sorry if you normally print this before going to the store, since it's now 12:40 and I'm just getting to it:

ADAM STRANGE #5
ALAN MOORES HYPOTHETICAL LIZARD WRAPAROUND CVR #1
BATTLE OF THE PLANETS PRINCESS #4
BLACK PANTHER #1
BLOOD ORANGE #4
BMW FILMS THE HIRE #2
BRIAN PULIDOS UNHOLY #1
BUGTOWN #2
CASEFILES SAM & TWITCH #13
CONCRETE HUMAN DILEMMA #2
DAREDEVIL REDEMPTION #1
DARKNESS #18
DEAD AT 17 ROUGH CUT VOL 2 TP
DEADSHOT #3
DETECTIVE COMICS #803
EXCALIBUR #9
EXILES #59
FIRESTORM #10
GI JOE RELOADED #12
GRIMJACK KILLER INSTINCT #1
GUN FU LOST CITY #4
INTIMATES #4
JOHN CONSTANTINE HELLBLAZER SPECIAL PAPA MIDNITE #1
JONAS TALES OF AN IRONSTAR #3
JUSTICE LEAGUE ELITE #8
KBETTY & VERONICA #206
KJUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED #6
KLOONEY TUNES #123
KMARVEL AGE SPIDER-MAN #20
KUNCLE SCROOGE #338
KWALT DISNEYS COMICS & STORIES #653
LIONS TIGERS & BEARS #1
MARVEL TEAM-UP #5
MONOLITH #12
MORA #1
NEW AVENGERS #3
QUESTION #4
RAZORS EDGE WARBLADE #4
SHANNA THE SHE DEVIL #1
SHONEN JUMP VOL 3 MAR 2005 #3
SPIDER-GIRL #83
STAR WARS OBSESSION #3
SUPER MANGA BLAST #49
SUPERMAN #213
SUPERMAN BATMAN #17
SUPERMAN STRENGTH #2
SUPREME POWER #15
SWAMP THING #12
TOE TAGS FEATURING GEORGE ROMERO #5
TWILIGHT EXPERIMENT #1
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #72
UNCANNY X-MEN #455
X-MEN FANTASTIC FOUR #3
X-MEN PHOENIX ENDSONG #2
X-MEN UNLIMITED #7

Books / Mags/ Stuff
24 STORIES ONE SHOT
ABCS OF SUPERPOWERS HC
BATMAN ANIMATED SERIES VOL 2 DVD
BATTLE ROYALE VOL 11 GN
BILL & TEDS MOST EXCELLENT ADVENTURES VOL 1 TP
BIZARRO WORLD HC
BLACK PANTHER BY JACK KIRBY VOL 1 TP
BOOKS OF MAGICK LIFE DURING WARTIME BOOK 1 TP
CAVEMAN ROBOT GIGANTIC MEGA ANNUAL 2004
COMIC ART MAGAZINE #7
COURIERS VOL 3 BALLAD OF JOHNNY FUNWRECKER GN
DAISY KUTTER VOL 1 TP
GEMMA BOVERY GN
GRANDE FANTA SC
GRAPHIC CLASSICS VOL 11 O HENRY
HULK AND THING HARD KNOCKS TP
JUST BLOOMED ART OF BORIS LOPEZ VOL 2
LEGEND OF GRIMJACK VOL 1 TP
MARVEL VISIONARIES STAN LEE HC
MAXX BOOK FOUR TP
MEGATOKYO VOL 3 TP
OTHELLO VOL 2 GN
PVP RELOADED VOL 2 TP
RANMA 1/2 VOL 15 (SECOND ED) TP
ROGUE TROOPER THE FUTURE WAR TP
RUNAWAYS VOL 3 GOOD DIE YOUNGDIGEST TP
RUROUNI KENSHIN VOL 11 TP
SEAGUY TP
SEVEN SOLDIERS OF VICTORY ARCHIVES VOL 1 HC
SIMPSON COMICS BARN BURNER TP
SINSTER DEXTER MURDER 101 TP
SMALL GODS VOL 1 KILLING GRINTP
SPIDER-MAN KUBRICK SET A
SUPERMAN ANIMATED SERIES VOL 1 DVD
SUPERMAN ARCHIVES VOL 1 HC
THE REMAINDER GN
UNCANNY X-MEN NEW AGE VOL 2 CRUELEST CUT TP
VAMPIRELLA COMICS MAGAZINE ART COVER #9
WALLFLOWER VOL 2 GN
YU GI OH VOL 1 DUELIST TP

There's a good couple of "Cool!"'s in there -- what are you getting?

Off to the zoo!
-B Click Here to Read More...