Yeah, back for the second round of the day (and that worked PERFECTLY, too, both G & J posted between me so it doesn't like I'm bloviating as much as I am), but, man, it's already 10:30, and I'd like to have some "me time" today, so let's see if I can keep this shortish and still retain some meaning:

ALICE IN SUNDERLAND GN: Bryan Talbot is a creator that I feel doesn't get enough respect, though that may be largely because he seems to disappear for years at a time then releases ginormous works that just blow your tiny little mind, man. ANd this piece of work is a very radical departure for Talbot -- multimedia collage and photoshop enhances his already utterly amazing line work to a degree that I've never seen him approach before. And there's 300+ pages of this tooth-achingly beautiful work here, certainly the largest project he's tackled. I, really mean this, this is some of the best work of his already long and illustrious career.

But while I wholly and steadfastly recommend it in terms of sheer craft and presentation (an oversized HC original 300+ page GN for $30? It's a steal!), I'm a little less excited about the actual content. This is largely because I'm a dumb ol' 'murican, who likes a certain amount of linearity in my content; whose never particularly liked historical content (except as insofar as I can relate it to my individual life), and prefers fiction to non-. These are my biases, and while they make me a poor "critic", they are what they are.

There's an astonishing level of "dream logic" going on in ALICE IN SUNDERLAND, as Talbot relates historical information about the city/region of Sunderland in the UK, both of the physicality of the environment, and the colorful connections between many of its most famous residents over a (let's say) thousand year period -- it jumps willy nilly between decades and centuries, and always circling back around and through and between Lewis Carroll and ALICE IN WONDERLAND, and it's done in a constant array of ever changing styles -- going from an "Arkwright" style to nearly Dave McKean, to Herge, to historical period work, to rubber-faced cartooning, and back and around again, always changing, never standing still.

And I only made it through about 50 pages of the narrative before I finally gave up and decided to just look at the pretty pictures instead.

If I had to compare it to something narratively (and it's a shitty comparison, to be sure), it might be the tour of London in the middle of FROM HELL, where you find out about the giant pentagram inscribed on the soul of London. Except there's not a pentagram, or even an underlying murder. And, let's say, ten times as long.

There is so much craft and skill and deep understanding of comics on display here that you'll shake your head in wonder. The question is whether or not you're interested enough in the subject matter to have it carry the work. For me, that answer is no, but I still took home a copy for my personal collection because I know I'm going to want to look through it again and again, even if I never end up reading it at the end of the day.

That's kinda the worst review ever, isn't it? And yet... I'm still going to give it a VERY GOOD, because I can not heap enough superlatives on Talbot's craft, and I really do think you should seriously entertain buying it despite my aesthetic failures as a critic.



OPTIC NERVE #11: The sharp-eyed of you will notice that this wasn't on the Diamond shipping list. The regular customers amongst you will say "hey, that wasn't in on Wednesday! (or Thursday!)", and you'd both be right. Direct shipped from D&Q, arrived on Friday, partly because we can make thier (wickedly absurdly high) minimums, but also partly because Diamond isn't going to have this out for a few weeks, as I understand it. So, your LCS may not have it yet. Just saying.

Anyway, the box came, I unpacked it, and seconds after throwing it up on the rack me and Jeff both dived in and read it. What followed is why, really, I need to mic the store, and record every word that we say on Fridays, and edit into a podcast. It was a really fascinating conversation about authorial intent, and comparative analysis, and artistic influence (this issue is just DRIPPING with Tatsumi), where I took a point counter to Jeff's.... not because I thought he was wrong, but because it's the proper kind of conversation one should hear when one enters a comic book store. As opposed to our usual "Dur, who is stronger? Hulk or Thor? Dur!"

Anyway, Jeff made some rather excellent points about why similarly veined work by Tatsumi or Clowes works, and this doesn't, but they're his points to make and I'll let him do that... next Sunday if he keeps to his ABCs! (though he's crazy swamped with stuff too right now, so don't expect that essay to necessarily be the next thing he writes)

So, let's put that conversation to the side, and get to the heart of the comic itself: it sucked.

Sorry, thoroughly loathsome protagonist, systematically acts like a jerk because he can't handle change, and he ends up alone and unhappy at the end. The End.

That's nothing I want to read, when it comes down to it.

I gave #10 a GOOD, let me remind you (Heck, that's the WEEK Graeme joined us!), and I gave #9 a VERY GOOD (look, pre-Lester Critic, even!)

And this one was AWFUL.

Even more so when I went back and reread #9 & 10, because, let's face it, this story started in 2004 (January to be exact), so I thought "I must be missing something from the previous issues, which I remember liking". No, on reread, I STILL thought the first two parts were good comics, and act 3 just a waste of time and paper. Yes, it's possible to have an anti-protagonist, I guess you'd call it, where their character arc doesn't triumph, but deflate -- the problem is, there has to be something compelling about the protagonist, or their situation, to keep me interested. Here, not so much.

Interestingly, Rob Bennett opined to me today that he liked it very much. And Tomine is about as far from what one would consider Rob's normal tastes.


That's what I thought. How about you?

-B Click Here to Read More...

Is it just me, or did everyone else feel as if we'd never get to the weekend this week? God knows why, but the last five days seemed to go on forever... Luckily, there's always comics to make things go quickly, even as the work sometimes looks as if things have gone too quickly for the creators involved...

GREEN LANTERN #18: There's one good thing, and one good thing only about this issue, and I say that as a fan of Green Lantern in general and someone who's semi-enjoyed this series in particular (It's always nice enough, but seemingly directionless for the most part - The stretch between the first three issues and One Year Later was especially bad). It's not the story, however; Geoff Johns phones this one in two different ways - Firstly, the plot is pretty much non-descript beyond "An old villain returns to threaten Green Lantern," which feels like almost every arc from this series so far (First arc - Manhunters, Second arc - The Shark, Third arc - Mongul and those plants from the Alan Moore Superman annual, Fourth arc - Cyborg Superman, Fifth arc - Abin Sur's kid). More to the point, there's nothing else to the writing in the main story - Maybe because it's only sixteen pages long? - that we haven't seen before. Hal Jordan is irresistible to women, yeah, we get that. But the idea of the Star Sapphire - which is another anti-Green Lantern ring, like the Sinestro ring that gives us our back-up strip this time out, jumping between Hal's girlfriends is just kind of retarded, and not helped at all by the amount of full-page splashes and dialogue like "Tell me, Hal... Do ya want this body instead? It's awfully yummy."

The one good thing about this issue isn't the back-up strip, either. It's fine enough, but the presence of Dave Gibbons on art makes it feel even more like a 2000AD Future Shock than anything else, especially with the twist ending (which is, admittedly, cute).

No, the good thing about this issue is the art. Daniel Acuna has shown his chops before, whether it be his covers for the DC books around Infinite Crisis or his Uncle Sam and The Freedom Fighters series, but there's something less polished about it, something rushed, that makes it even more attractive than before; the wonderful use of color and texture is still there, but the rougher edge gives it a more approachable quality that I'd like to see again. That's not enough to make this any more than an Eh comic, though.

SUPERMAN CONFIDENTIAL #4: Again with the strangely rougher looking art, as Tim Sale seems to be either working with thicker brushes or on a smaller scale than usual - the fight scene in the first half of the book looks particularly blocky compared with Sale's usual linework - which may be something to do with Sale's extra-curricular duties on Heroes taking up more time than expected. Writingwise, Darwyn Cooke's story continues to be light on plot but filled with unexpected moments that save the book; Superman's dream while unconscious, or the long-running nostalgia trip of the kryptonite explaining the secret origin of the story's second villain. As the series continues, this story seems to be losing steam, but still enjoyable - a high Okay to low Good depending on your love for Jimmy Olsen - but who knows? If the other Superman titles weren't as strong as they are right now, I may be more forgiving.

And am I the only one really really curious about Hibbs' both potential and exciting (in whatever permutation works for him) news that he hints at below? You big tease, Brian. Click Here to Read More...

Missed my last night deadline, but I got some potentially exciting news (or maybe exciting potential news... or maybe even exciting news, potentially) that focused me on that during my (ha ha) "free time" last night.

So today I'm going to shoot for TWO posts -- one now, one tonight. We'll see if that works.

It’s not comics, no, but I've been wanting to make a television post for a while. Up until last year I was maybe watching 4 hours of TV a week, but I've been sucked in by the glass teat this season a lot. Modern TV is so strange -- there's almost barely things like traditional "seasons" any more; shows start and stop more or less willy nilly, it seems. And the advent of boxed set makes that a really superior way to watch a lot of shows. I'll be skipping our box set adventures (like, say THE SHIELD), for stuff I've been watching "live"

There will probably be some spoilers in here (especially on some shows, like BATTLESTAR GALACTICA), which makes this a post a number of you (= Jeff Lester) can't read... because YOU're waiting for the boxed sets. Funny.

In more or less alphabetical order, here's what I've been watching lately:

24: I really loved the first season, because the idea itself was so fresh -- "real time TV". I pretty much hated the second season, with its "we have no idea how to stretch this" scenes of Kim-in-Peril. I watched maybe 3 episodes of season 3, and decided I no longer cared. Totally skipped season 4. But something drew me back for season 5 -- maybe it was the Nukes. All of the problems the show has are still very much on display here: it is really really hard to break a story into twenty-four satisfying chunks without stretching dumb things out dumbly. We're what? halfway through this day? And my attention is flagging again. I don't think I am going to make it all the way through this season. It's been very very EH. At best.

30 ROCK: The single non-animated sitcom I watch these days, and its getting better and better with each episode, becoming more topical, and more adventurous in its storylines. I quite like it, and think it is consistently GOOD.

AMAZING RACE: Every man is allowed one thing that they KNOW is shit, and that they watch it BECAUSE its shit, and THE AMAZING RACE is my one main "I have no excuses" show. I was a real early adopter of reality shows -- *I* was the one who turned all of the CE's onto SURVIVOR, for example (stopped watching that around season 5, I think?) -- and this is my sole reality show left. It's very very not "real". Really, I'd like to see all of the extra footage where a producer has to intervene with the police; or where a contestant is delayed because the cameraman trips getting out of a car, or things like that. Still, I keep being entertained by Ugly Americans running all over creation and being the fools they can be -- I especially love how Charla and Mirna affect this weird spanish-tinged accent everytime they talk to anyone whose primary language isn't english. I do wish the show had a few more metrics as it was running -- a clock or miles traveled or something, but I can see how that would be an editing nightmare. I suppose what I like about the show is that it isn't hermetically sealed in a house or an island or something like that. There's a SENSE that "anything could happen", because there's only so much you can stage manage the WORLD. Its the one reality show that I'd like to watch a documentary about the making of it, and of what happens "backstage". Plus, watching Rob and "Ambuh" getting thier asses kicked by the midget and her idiot cousin? Pure Television gold. In any objective reality, the RACE is merely OK< but I like to fool myself that it is GOOD.

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: I love this show, I really do. And, in fact, I've even got Tzipora (who HATES all things Sci-Fi or Fantasy related) hooked on it. She's a season and a half behind, because I REFUSE to buy separate 2.0 and 2.5 box sets, and the library hasn't gotten 2.5 in yet. But it is everything you want SF to be -- thought-provoking, action-packed, twisty, human-driven.

Up until a point, at least.

I'm probably one of the few people who actually went "Hm, maybe not" when they announced a full 22 eps for Season 4; because I'm pretty unconvinced at this point that they actually have more than 12-13 viable stories each season -- because, let's face it, a really significant chunk of Season 3 was "filler" that neither moved the mythology forward, nor focused on areas that I cared too much about. When the show is "on", it is ON, but when it's not? Well, it's still some of the best TV on the air, but I don't care that much.

The season finale bugged me a lot -- not just because we have to wait until January (wtf?) to find out what happens next. I was especially annoyed by the "All ALong The Watchtower" use (that's like the Steppenwolf in STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT, yeah?), and the reveal of 4 of the final 5. Especially Tigh. And that between Tyrol & Boomer and Kara & jock resistance guy (I'm blanking), there's too much Cylon-on-Cylon action going on. I'm pretty unconvinced they can make either Tyrol or Tigh "work" as Cylons, but the show has certainly given enough reason to offer them the Benefit of the Doubt. But, man, January? There are certain episodes within the season that I'd call VERY GOOD or EXCELLENT (the finale itself probably even rates a GOOD), but over all I'd give Season 3 a strong OK, which is a prodigious drop from s1 & 2.

BLACK DONNELEYS: Probably going to drop this in the next week or two. The structural conceit of this being a flashback told by an unreliable narrator is kind of grinding, and the characters are kind of all too young & pretty for me. Basically, it's (Irish) SOPRANOS Jr., and while there's an appealing denseness to the episodes (esp for network TV), I'm not finding any of the characters memorable enough to care about them as characters. Its OK, though.

THE DAILY SHOW: OUr DVR (not TiVO) via the DISH network is funny with THE DAILY SHOW -- we can't set up "record series", or it attempts to tape every broadcast of each episode. Its the only show we tape that acts like that. So, we've got to manually set the episodes each week. Fairly annoying, and sometimes I forget. A lot of time I don't watch daily -- I'll watch 2-3 at a go, but there's a lot of things to genuinely love about the show. Not only is it (usually) very very funny indeed, but I especially like the way they book authors of political or cultural books that would be lucky to break 5k copies, and give them a chance to engage in an often substantiative dialogue in front of millions of people. You don't get the sense they're booking these people because they *can't* get the a-listers, but because they truly believe its good to expose people to other points of view. So damn good for them. and damn GOOD, even at its worst no-news days, and plug-a-movie interviews.

DAYBREAK: Didn't even make its full season on the air, so I guess no one liked the GROUNDHOG'S DAY-meets-THE-FUGITIVE show. And, yeah, the execution wasn't stellar, but I liked the concept enough that I actually went and watched the unbroadcast episodes on ABC.com. Took me a while to get through them because I don't like watching TV at the computer, but all in all, I thought they did an OK job. Bonus points to ABC for actually putting the second half of the season on-line, for free. That's pretty classy, really.

HEROES: I'm ready for it to come back, already. If they can pull off the endgame as well as they handled their middle section, this is going to be one of those shows you're still talking about in 10 years. It took a while to get going, and there were definitely some stumbles in the early episodes, but, pretty much around the time we met Sylar, and the "save the cheerleader" plot got started, this became one of the most fun serialized shows on TV. Largely because they seem to have a clear end for this story planned, and it's THIS season, not strung out indefinitely like BSG or LOST (that's also what I liked about DAYBREAK). I like most of the characters (except for Mohinder, yeesh, he's the worst Prof X-type ever), and it just zips along with multiple cliffhangers, and more importantly, revelations, every issue. Based on where we're at so far, this is an easy GOOD, and, depending on how well they resolve it all, it could be VERY GOOD.

LOST: This show, on the other hand, drives me fucking bugshit crazy most weeks, where things move along glacially (if that), and the "mystery of the island" is CLEARLY being made up as it goes along. I also can't really stand most of the "others", and think the show jumped the rails when it started to be ABOUT them, rather than "our" survivors. If, next week, Locke were to find a button, and, upon pushing it all of the others seized up with black smoke pouring from their ears saying "norman, coordinate", I'd be happy with that I think. Each week this season I've been muttering, "man, I should stop wasting my time with this crap", but then I'm all whining to myself "but I've already invested 40+ hours in this, I don't want to walk away after that!" Thankfully, this week's episode, with Nikki & Paulo made me glad that I've stuck around. Yeah, it is kind of the definition of "filler", but it was nice to see seom actual suspense on the show again, and to have something introduced AND resolved in one go. Plus, all of the cameos were cool (I wonder how much of that was "leftover" footage from previous seasons, and how much was freshly shot?) -- it was basically the best episode of TALES FROM THE CRYPT ever shot. I'm always a fan of ironic justice. So, most of this season: anywhere from AWFUL to OK (probably EH on the balance); this week's episode? VERY GOOD.

THE RICHES: 3 eps in, and the contrivances are starting to creak (and the sooner they resolve the Traveller boss thread, the better -- what a 2-d character and story there), but Izzard and Driver make this show very watchable, and I'm in for at least a dozen. Overall, I'll go with a GOOD.

SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE: When I was a kid in the 70s, I would beg my parents to let me stay up late for SNL, and growing up into an adult, it's a habit at this point. There were years, decades maybe, where you could watch SNL on "Fast Forward", taking maybe 20-30 minutes to get through the whole show. This season has been markedly better though -- I'm probably up to 40-45 minutes of actual watching, and they've been taking more chances (not a lot, but some) of doing more surreal humor, or tinkering with rhythms. There also seems to be a greater emphasis on new ideas, rather than relying solely on a character being endlessly repeated into the ground. Overall, the show seems to have found a new stride this year, and while there still LOTS of not-funny, the ratio seems to e getting better. Overall: OK

THE SIMPSONS: Two weeks ago I think they reached the bottom of the bucket. The plot was Granpa marries Selma (or Patty, whatever), and that was pretty much it. No act 1 leads to a radically different act 2 leads to a radically different act 3 -- just a straight line through on a very unfunny premise, that probably should have had a laugh track attached to it. I didn't even bother to watch last week's ep. I think they may have finally cured me of this particular habit -- I'm having a hard time remembering the last genuinely funny episode I've seen. (probably last year). Very very very depressingly EH.

SOUTH PARK: When its about the kids being kids, the show is honest and often very wise... but frequently dull. I mean, lice? But when they comment of celebrity or politics or just the dopiness of mankind, it always has the potential of hitting the home run. I'm sometimes amazed just how precisely topical they can be on waht would seem to be an impossible time frame -- there's times they appear to be writing, animating, and voicing an entire show in a matter of days. SO far this season has been a bit weak (I mean, seriously, lice?), but it is never less than very very OK.


That's what I'm watching, at least. What do YOU think?


-B Click Here to Read More...

I really don't know what's worse; that I have a Happy Mondays song stuck in my head from out of nowhere, or that I can't remember the name of it. Is it "Loose Fit" or "Kinky Afro"? It's the one that rips off "Lady Marmalade" - That's "Kinky Afro," isn't it? I have no idea where it came from or why, but all I can tell you is that it's making me want to see what Mondays songs are available on iTunes, which can't be a good thing. Let's try and distract me, shall we?

TEXAS STRANGERS #1: In the nicest way possible, Texas Strangers is the best Saturday morning cartoon that you never saw. The set-up is a weirdly perfect mix of different influences: Harry Potter in the Wild West meets Shrek (A giant green Scottish monster?), but it's done in such a way that I'm convinced that it's not going to succeed in the direct market, if that leap of pessimism makes sense. It's all about the format, more than the work itself - I simply don't feel as if a $2.99, 32-page monthly book is the right kind of book to make kids want to pick it up, for some reason. And that's a shame, because the book itself is a lot of fun - writers Antony Johnston and Dan Evans waste no time setting up the overall arc of the series before getting into the plot for this particular story, which is full of all manner of western cliches given a twist. There's nothing especially new about anything in the story, but it's solidly done and with enough energy and abandon to work - there's something weirdly early-2000AD-esque about the way that it pulls together pop culture artifacts in order to make a story for kids, but the difference here being that it's not the latest horror movie or TV show that kids wouldn't be familiar with being presented as something new and exciting, but instead things that kids would be very familiar with being used because of the familiarity. But there's more to this than the (perfect) high concept; it's things like the ridiculousness of the cliffhanger ("He's been kidnapped! And he's lying in a truck full of dynamite! While being shot at!") that make this worth reading.

Also a plus for the book is Mario Boon's art, which is blocky and clear, like Mike Parobeck trying to do Scott Pilgrim. It's not perfect artwork (It's just a little bit too blocky, for my liking) and, again, looks like it's a pitch for a cartoon series that should be watched while in pyjamas and eating cereal, preferrably at age seven, but it works for the series and the story. It's helped immensely by Traci Hui's colors, which add atmosphere and impact where the linework itself is lacking. But, like the story itself, it's something that makes me want to read the book in another format; the scale and clarity makes it perfect for being shrunk down into a color digest like Marvel's Runaways and Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane collections, where pushing six issues of the series together will provide a chunky block of story that just feels more worth kid hands and minds to me. As it is, this first issue is a high Okay, but I feel as if the eventual collection could be much better.

This makes me wonder - There are certain series that I only follow in trades (Runaways, Spider-Man Loves Mary-Jane - I really like that Marvel digest format, for the price alone - and Fables, to name just three), and I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe it's something about how much story I feel I get for my money, or that the individual issues don't feel so good alone? It's an entirely different reading experience, of course, but what I'm really wondering is what series you lot feel should only be read in large blocks. Ultimate Spider-Man, for example, has always kind of tempted me... Should I be picking that up? Give me fun recommendations of things to pick up and avoid, people. Click Here to Read More...

I know you don't care about my excuses (why would you?), but, man taking Ben to the dentist in the AM, and following that with a park trip (MAN, was it a god-damn lovely day at Walter Haas today! More cute moms then I have seen in a long time!), then his nap, then work, the home to try and catch up on news-in-comics-today that I couldn't do in the morning, and the big pile of mounting emails, and geez, it's already 10 pm, and I still have 2 hours of work in front of me at least. Sheesh.

So just 2 more books here, as fast as I can.

I'm going to keep with a "Dwayne McDuffie" theme today, since it's apparently "Dwayne McDuffie week" since he also had two OTHER (other than my last reviewed FF) comics out this week -- FIRESTORM #34, and ACTION #847.

ACTION #847: If I recall what the original plan we retailers were told about, before they started injecting more issues in before we get the end of the "SUPERMAN III" (heh) story in what appears now to be #851 (4 months of fill in, wow), there was only supposed to be 1 issue gap in publishing, and this was that story. As such, McDuffie tries to frame it as happening concurrently with "S III", and does a pretty good job disguising its fill-in nature. It is big, it is fun and full of Action, and it makes Superman a heavy-hitter bad ass, without necessarily raising things to a "then he pushed the planet out of orbit" state. So rah rah, hurray, and all that. On the other hand, my suspension-of-disbelief meter dipped into the red of the idea of Clark taking an old man with a history of heart attacks (or am I mixing my continuities?) into deep space in an experimental piece of technology (yes yes he says he used it before, but I mislike off-camera stuff). I also really don't like the idea of Superman ALSO having an "invisible plane", y'know? Still, really those are minor quibbles in what was both an action-packed and emotional story, and I'll go with a low GOOD.

FIRESTORM #34: This one, on the other hand, I didn't care much for. Part of it, like I've said before, is my general wariness around the New Gods and their semi-overuse (this week's HAWKGIRL is also a NG story, and clearly NG is a substantial part of the soon-to-be COUNTDOWN), and I also thought Firestorm himself was too jokey -- read more like Ronnie Raymond, now that I think of it, then what I've thought of as Jason's voice. Also, I'm reading this knowing there's just one more issue to go, and there's a lot of inter-personal stuff that needs to be, if not tied up, at least brought to some conclusion for Jason's character. No real progress in this issue for any of that. So, yes, I have my biases, but this still felt tragically EH to me.


Right, back to the Big List of Things That Have to Get Done.

What did YOU think?

-B Click Here to Read More...

Warning: This post contains some spoilers, not the least of which is that I'm a tremendous idiot. Also, this post isn't so much a series of reviews as probably really a review of a reviewer and therefore eminently skippable.

First, you should probably know about my love for Sgt. Frog, a love that I caught from John Jakala off the Interweb a few years back. Jakala had included Sgt. Frog in a list of books he was currently enjoying and, considering nearly every other book he was reading was one of my favorites, I figured I should try out Mine Yoshizaki's comedy manga about a cute frog-like alien invader living in a house with two kids.

Second, you should also know that I read Sgt. Frog. Vols. 1-10 at a pretty decent clip, maybe one every other week for the first nine volumes, then the tenth volume was published just as I finished the ninth, and then I had to wait until volume 11 was published a few months later. (I have no idea if this was the rate at which Tokyopop had always published them, or if they had cranked them out at the height of Sgt. Frog's popularity and they were now putting them out less frequently now that his popularity wanted). I waited too long, in fact--I was cued into the existence of Volume 11 by reading notice of the publication of Volume 12. Thanks to the wacky world of book availability, Hibbs was able to get me Vol. 12 almost immediately after it came out, but it took another three weeks to get Vol. 11.

Finally, I must confess an act of spectacular idiocy; I believed something I read on the Internet, and applied it indiscriminately. In this case, it was something I read a few years back as the manga wave was really beginning to hit, that someone (Dirk in his first incarnation of Jounalista, maybe?) had excerpted from a message board. There, someone explained the reason why they liked manga was that the stories came closer to resembling actual stories--characters grew and changed, and the stories actually ended. Thinking back on it, I'm sure now that the person was probably writing that in some manga, the characters grew and changed, and their stories actually ended. But stupid me, I more or less applied that as a blanket statement to manga overall.

And why shouldn't I? Akira ended. Lone Wolf & Cub ended. And the first Tokypop manga wave book I read, Love Hina, ended--even if it did so about four volumes later than it shoud have, it still ended.

So, with most of my biases and idiocies apparent, my hope is that the foolishness with which I greated the final story of Volume 10, Sgt. Frog, titled "The Last Battle: Keroro Platoon's 24 Hours," will be more readily understood. I really thought I was reading the last Sgt. Frog story.

I mean, it made sense at the time. After half an entire volume of wacky frog-related hijinks, in which ghosts were encountered, and soccer matches were mocked, and teen girls were caught half-undressed, came a story where another troop of frog invaders attack Earth, but with far greater success than anything attempted by the Sargeant and his troop (the manga had done a pretty good job of adding new members of the troop, and their human mascots over time, so that by volume ten, you had five frogs and five human mascots). At the end of volume 10, Sgt. Frog's troop has been conquered, the utterly inept Sargeant has been replaced with a frighteningly efficient clone, and Fuyuki and Natsumi, the two kids who've adopted the Sargeant, have failed in their plans to save the Earth.

So, yeah. I know it was kinda dumb, but I assumed that Volume 11 would be the final volume of Sgt. Frog and that would be the end of things. Which, now that I think of it, is probably why I was so reluctant to actually read Volume 11 and was more than willing to not think about it: I didn't want the fun to end. And when Volume 12 was announced, I was utterly baffled--the Last Battle of Keroro's Platoon stretched across two and a half volumes? It seemed kinda crazy, but I was willing to believe it.

Cut to, I dunno, the end of January, when I finally get volume 11 in hand. I pick it up--and I'm completely lost. I mean, I roughly remembered what had happened, and I recognized who was who and what was what, but I was completely and utterly baffled by my lack of emotional connection to the material. Against my will, my very first thought was "What the hell is this crap?"

This is another thing I've noticed about manga, by the way: since most of it is published weekly in manga magazines and then collected in volumes, it's pretty effortless to read continuously as one volume flows easily into the next. And when you've got a bunch of volumes all out on the market, it's absurdly easy to just suck on the teat of continuous material until you're sated or it's exhausted. (Which is why bookstores in malls have to deal with kids lying around on the floors like a bunch of pubescent opium smokers, and why a lot of us adults see those kids and have to suppress a long twitching shudder of disgust--I mean, sure, we were lazy when we were kids, but these children seem to have somehow regressed, and are sprawled on the floor like overgrown, baggy-panted infants. And it's just Ewwwww, if you know what I mean.) But if you get off the teat for a bit, it takes a little bit of effort to get back into the swing of things.

Consequently, I figured I should put down Volume 11, pick up Volume 10, and get my emotional investment in the narrative momentum going again. But it took me a long time to pick up Volume 10, and it was with a great reluctance, maybe a few pages before bed each night, and I pretty much figured, one way or another, my love affair with Sgt. Frog was over. Considering I was about twenty-eight years over their intended demographic, it probably was a bit overdue.

And yet, by the time Volume 12 finished. I was ready for more--in fact, I'm re-reading stories before bed and looking forward to Volume 13, even if it seems unlikely I'll still have the passion when the book's finally released in June of 2007.

What changed? Well, first, when Keroro Platoon's Last Stand wrapped up in the first 38 pages of Vollume 11 and nothing had changed, I was tremendously frustrated that what had appeared to be the natural conclusion for the series had been used up and tossed aside. Indeed, it seemed to me that a story in the same volume, where the Bandai model-loving Sgt. Frog creates a fully-armed miniature of himself and launches it on the household told the story behind the story--Bandai, which owns and publishes Sgt. Frog, had gone beyond making the Sargeant a loveable Bandai model obsessed marketer and was keeping the character around because he'd become a popular Bandai model himself.

(And so you can again understand my bias--between the time I'd read Volume 10 and purchased Volume 11, I'd purchased and built my own Sgt. Frog bandai model so it's hardly surprising this would occur to me. Also, I've always been prone to reading odd subtexts into Sgt. Frog--to me, its central conceit of a group of invaders from a warrior-based culture being tamed by cute kids, chores, creature comforts, and cute teen girls in their underwear, is a very clever commentary on Japan's cultural transition after World War II.)

I think the trick is, the more nonsensical and trivial a Sgt. Frog story is, the more I end up liking it, and vols. 11 and 12 are filled with such dashed off bits of charm. (Volume 12 has a story about jumping rope, for crying out loud, as well as a story about bathing. Oh, and watermelon.) Although the new characters are still proliferating, as one would expect from any franchise that has the future to think of, and the annihilation of at least one possible story conclusion renders the series one step closer to being Garfield, I advise fans of silly fun to check out Sgt. Frog. Even though this series is trying to sell you something, and you can lose your taste for the material if you go without it, you don't have to be as big a dumbass as myself to enjoy the goofiness. I give Vol. 11 a high OK, and Vol. 12 a high Good--would that all of the U.S.'s cartoons disguised as evil toy shills be half as good as this.

Labels: Jeff

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I can't work out if it's cunning marketing or stunning mismanagement that the covers to FANTASTIC FOUR #544 and BLACK PANTHER #26 are so similar this week: Both the posed shot of the new Fantastic Four (now with added Black Panther and Storm!) looking tough just before they come to kick your ass. I kind of feel sorry for Storm, because on each cover, she's the one standing in the back of the shot, her arms raised in a "I'm just about to throw a lightning bolt! No, really!" moment while secretly cursing the fact that her latest outfit is yet another flashback to the one she wore back in the '70s, but that doesn't stop me from wondering whether the two covers are meant to look so alike considering the fact that, with this month, Black Panther essentially becomes the second Fantastic Four book (Well, ignoring Marvel Adventures and Ultimate FF, that is).

There's already some continuity flubs - both books have different versions of how the Panther and Storm are introduced to the team, for example - but there's something to be said for the move together of the two books; Reginald Hudlin makes the idea work from the Panther's perspective in his book, and then graciously hands off the characters to Dwayne McDuffie in the Fantastic Four book - There's even a caption saying "To see the the new FF's first adventure, see Fantastic Four #544!". Hudlin also manages to get in digs at the new post-Civil War status quo (with appalled media reactions to two members of the anti-registration side replacing Reed Richards, one of the architects of the registration act) and fairly heavy foreshadowing subplots. Surprisingly, considering my past experience of the book, BP #26 is rather Good.

It helps, of course, that Dwayne McDuffie manages to make Fantastic Four so enjoyable again. He manages to capture the right tone for the book - high adventure with tongue-in-cheek - almost straight off, from the title of the story ("From the Ridiculous To The Sublime - But Not Necessarily In That Order," which is a quote from a conversation between the Human Torch and the Thing towards the end of the issue) and through the return of familiar characters acting, unusually for Marvel these days, in familiar ways. There's a welcome return to the feeling of family between the characters, as well, that hasn't been felt since Mark Waid's run, if anything else even stronger here; trust, love and the impossible urge to make jokes about everything, just as in the Lee and Kirby run... The last time that the book felt like this for me was Walt Simonson's short run, fifteen-odd years ago, which pleases me considering that's one of my favorite superhero runs of all time. Less Simonson-esque is Paul Pelletier's art, which is clear enough, rocking his traditional "early Dale Keown" look (large lips for everyone!) but with the energy that Mike McKone's been lacking for the last few months. There're also occasional Kirby touches, whether they be the energy pulses while the Watcher gives everyone a show, or the Thing's flight goggles... Small things that are nonetheless oddly welcome, you know?

It's, maybe fittingly given the book's history, the most optimistic and (less fittingly, given the book's history) also the most old-fashioned thing that Marvel has published in a long time - Maybe not The World's Greatest Comic Magazine anymore, but definitely a good enough start at becoming Marvel's Greatest. Very Good, and who expected that? Click Here to Read More...

Well, I didn't do that much reviewing last week, but I think I made it clear, regardless that the 3/21 PICK OF THE WEEK was THE BRAVE & THE BOLD #2. Kinda decisively, too.

PICK OF THE WEAK? Dunno, let me think... looking over the week of comics, I'm sorta hard-pressed to find THE "yuck" book, but I guess I'd lean towards CONVENTION CONFESSIONAL #3, which makes the "standard" indy comic mistake of trying to blame everyone and everything for misfortune except for one's own work.

BOOK / TP OF THE WEEK is a lot easier -- my clear pick is FAFHRD & THE GRAY MOUSER. Rollicking adaptation by Chaykin, lovely art by a pre-HELLBOY Mike Mignola, I'm really glad this is now in print after something dumb like 15-20 years.

(A CLOSE follow-up would be BUDDY DOES JERSEY, packing HATE #16-30 in a single book, albeit without color. Actually, it works better without the color. Bagge was really on a roll in this period, and this is a very dense, and very funny read.)




Let's start to roll forward on the books for 3/28, eh?

BLACK PANTHER #26, FANTASTIC FOUR #544: I think I'll deal with these as a piece, since BP is basically FFII now. What's sorta interesting to me is that BP had things I felt should be in a "FF" comic (most notably the stuff happening at the negative zone prison), while FF had stuff that felt like it more belonged in the "BP" comic (Primarily the "bombs in the embassy" thing). If you're wondering about "order to read in" BP definitely comes first (so much so that the non-subplot portion of the comic pretty just ends with "go read FF")

Oddly (or perhaps not, really), the two stories only kinda jibe -- there's two different takes on the first meeting with BP & Storm and Ben & Johnny, and they don't fit all that well together; there's also two different "T'Challa redecorates the Baxter building" sequences that felt written against one another to me.

Reading them together, I think I might have figured out why Hudlin's Panther isn't working for me, because it stands out juxtaposed against McDuffie's take. Both are writing about one of the smartest men on the planet, a tactical genius, and so on. But it seems to me that Hudlin gets him there by writing all of the OTHER characters as idiots. HIs Ororo is weak, and fawning, because it makes T'Challa look stronger. Hudlin's Ben Grimm is a idiot, and so's his johnny (well, Johnny probably IS an idiot, but not Grimm, no.) McDuffie, on the other hand, just writes T'CHalla "up", without undercutting the rest of the cast.

McDuffie also begins to play off threads he left in the BEYOND mini-series, and the back half of the issue becomes properly cosmic like a FF story should be.

I thought BLACK PANTHER #26 was very OK, and I liked FANTASTIC FOUR #544 enough to give it a GOOD.



WONDER WOMAN #6: Oh. Ouch. Lots of problems, not sure where to begin. Let's start with the "naivete to the 'modern world'". Cute (-ish) once, but Picoult tries it out three different times in one 22 page story. Overkill. Further, Diana isn't *that* naive. Second: Since when is DIana overly concerned what people think of her? It seems vain and empty-headed to me, and not the thoughts of one of the world's premiere super-heroes. Thirdly, I can't see Diana acting like that in regards to Sarge Steel's demand that WW be captured -- let's not forget she was once (recently, even!) the Goddess of Truth. The Diana I know would simply fly up to Sarge Steel one day and say, "I heard you were looking form me?" (if asked how? "mm, Batman?" would probably work). Finally, we get to the big reveal at the end and... and... Circe? Again? The LAST Circe story was just a couple of weeks ago... and that one didn't even CONCLUDE! I don't know, the art was pretty good, but the story? fairly AWFUL.


That's it for tonight... what did you think?

-B Click Here to Read More...

Am I the only one who has a problem with spoilers? And by problem, I mean "Can't help myself and end up reading all of them?" I realized this when I sat down to write what was going to be something about last Sunday's Battlestar Galactica season finale (very short version: It all depends on what they do with the two big plot twists next year. If they follow the "shocks" up with story that makes sense, then I'm sold, but I'm somewhat uncertain that they're able to actually do that right now. That said, I thought it was very good, with the one major misstep of using a song from real life - I didn't recognize it from the music, but as soon as Tyrol said "There must be someway out of here," I was completely pulled out of the story by the recognition), then remembered the conversation Bri and I had had about the show last Friday, talking in code because Jeff hasn't seen any of the third season yet (Hibbs would say something like "What do you think about One-Eye?" and I felt like we should be talking about killer dinosaurs or something). Damn, I thought, I'll have to put in a spoiler warning or something for people who haven't seen the episode yet.

And then I remembered that I was thoroughly spoiled for the last episode by this time last week. I hadn't intended to be; I had convinced myself that I was going to try and stay pure for the show this year, so that I could have the inevitable "What the frak" (because, you know, it's Battlestar Galactica) moment the way it was intended. And then, somewhere I can't even remember where, someone made an offhand comment to the finale being spoiled online and put a link. And even as I thought, I don't want to read that, I clicked on the link and read the whole thing.

Today, I did a similar thing; knowing full well that I was going to pick up this week's 52 this afternoon, I still read Wizard's synopsis of the issue ahead of time. I couldn't really tell you why, beyond the fact that I was curious and it was there. I certainly had no real reason to know what happened to Animal Man those three hours earlier than I would be buying the issue itself. I just couldn't help myself.

There is, I'm convinced, money in this compulsion. I can't be the only person who just has to know even though they may not particularly want to know, and I know that this goes way beyond comics (sites like Spoiler Fix make that obvious). All I need to do is meld that need with people's general insecurities and create a new kind of horoscope for the 21st century. Do away with that whole birthdate thing, and just run a website where people would pay me to spoil their lives for them. "Tomorrow, you'll regret having that second cup of coffee. But by May, don't be surprised if romance has come back into your life, if my recent interview with your ex-boyfriend is anything to go by." It's a winner of an idea, I'm telling you.

I'll get to it just as soon as I read what's going to happen in the season finale of Gilmore Girls. Click Here to Read More...

Dude, the truck came FOUR hours late today (pulled up at 5:05 pm), so I didn't even get home until 13 hours after I left this morning. Thus: head aches too much to review.

However, this gives me the excuse to post something I keep thinking should mention and keep forgetting to do...

If you're moving, you need boxes. Many many boxes. Boxes are life.

COmics are pretty bulky. Really, quite amazingly bulky, really, so comic shops get lots and lots of boxes every week.

The nice thing about the boxes they ship our comics in, is that they come with two inner boxes inside the outer box -- one box actually contains 3 boxes. And they're not shitty boxes. They're actually really strong high quality boxes.

They're perfect for packing comics in of course. Ever so less perfect for other kinds of books. The work great for clothes and things like that, too.

ANyway, every week, I have at least 15 or so of these boxes which we just dump out for the cardboard scavengers to get. Why not just give them to you instead?

So, if you're moving, and if you need boxes.... ask at your Local Comic Book Store to see if you can have thiers. You'll be happy.

More later.

-B

Labels: retailing

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Hmmm. You'll either get multiple reviews from me today (or tomorrow), or I'll be reviewing books well into next week, or you'll never find out what I think about any book beyond 'E.'

Richard Starkings left some very interesting feedback to my review on Hip Flask: Concrete Jungle, and I'm still trying to figure out how to parse my reply. On the one hand, I appreciate that part of the reason why we still haven't seen the conclusion of this story is that he is dutifully waiting on Ladronn. On the other, Starkings' justification for why it's okay for him to sell a thirty dollar book of all middle is that he's paid much, much more than that ("NO ONE has paid more to read it than I have") and it will be years and years before he sees any profit, while "any stores that sells a single copy (my local store sold out by the weekend) has made a profit already."

To reply will take a certain amount of judicious disentanglement that I'm not sure I'm capable of at the moment. I suppose those stores that sell copies will turn a profit at that price range, although if the retailer isn't prudent about mentioning to the buyer that it's an incomplete story and there's no guarantee that it'll ever be finished and that they therefore shouldn't be buying it for anything other than the beautiful art, they run the risk of having the buyer feel ripped off and losing future business. So, yes, a store can turn a short-term profit with Hip Flask: Concrete Jungle and hopefully not cut itself off from long-term profits. But it's also a much tougher sell to make responsibly than, I dunno, a complete product.

Also hard for me to disentangle is Starkings' perspective as a publisher/fan, which is that $30 is relatively very little to pay for an incomplete story compared to the tremendous amounts of money he's paid for the incomplete story. And while I believe this to be true, and do appreciate he's waiting for Ladronn to finish the story, there's a bit of misdirection going on. As Starkings says, it will be YEARS and YEARS before he sees a profit on the book. To apply the same logic he used earlier, that is relatively little compared to the amount of time it'll take for a reader to see a profit on the book, which is usually NEVER. Unless (successfully) engaging in speculation, the reader NEVER turns a profit on a book although they can defray their losses somewhat by reselling it.

This point is particularly difficult to untangle since Starkings is writing from the perspective of a publisher/fan as if I were a retailer/fan, instead of just a fan. But it seems to me that publishers, like all businessmen, are gamblers and gambling on turning a profit is part of the game. A reader who pays money for an entertainment is also a gambler, and gambling on getting your money's worth is part of that game. But they are two different, albeit interrelated, games, and when the publisher tries to help his odds by worsening the reader's, it's probably worth pointing out, if you're on the reader's side of the game.

Part of the problem with the direct market, it seems to me, is that retailers are treated as part of the publisher's game only when it suits the publisher, and the rest of the time they're treated as readers (which is why, for example, Marvel and DC feel no compunction about shafting the retailers about solicit information). Certainly, with that being the case, I can't see why all retailers don't act like their interests are first and foremost with the reader's side of the game. But even if it weren't the case and publishers always treated retailers like partners in the gamble of publication, I'd think that retailers are still better suited helping the readers win (by picking up books worth their money and time) than by helping the publishers win (by turning a profit). This makes it a much harder game for publishers, but there are correspondingly greater payoffs that make the difficulty worth it. And, of course, if a publisher turns out a product that's worth a reader's time and money, and the retailer can help the reader get it, everyone wins.

All of that is why even if I were a retailer/fan, instead of just a fan, I'd still think it's wrong for him to suggest that the reader help underwrite his investment; because the reader never shares in the final dividends if that investment pays off, apart from what he holds in his hands at the moment he pays his money. If that book is worth $30 to the reader, fine. If not, it's really not in the best interests of the retailer to try to convince the reader, otherwise.

Finally, Starkings is such a fan of Ladronn that he sees Hip Flask as "90 pages of Ladronn" and therefore well worth ten grande lattes from Starbucks. What's difficult is he never explains how many grande lattes an incomplete story is worth--in the wacky world of comic book currency, I would say it's worth one grande latte (and in the wacky world of real world currency, it's worth the electricity for your TV and having to watch an advertisement or two for a grande latte). If you're a similarly huge fan of Ladronn, you may feel that you would gladly pay ten grande lattes for Hip Flask: Concrete Jungle but for most of us, seeing that the book is neither solicited nor sold as a Ladronn art book, might feel that we are not getting our grande lattes worth of story.

My humble Solomon-like solution is to average out the number of grande lattes the Ladronn fan and the incomplete story purchaser are willing to pay--5.5--and make that the new SRP of Hip Flask: Concrete Jungle. Whether Starkings is paid in actual grande lattes or the equivalent amount of cash (approximately $16.50), I'll leave up to him.

So, yeah. Still trying to parse my reply. What do you think? As I said, I'm trying for "judicious disentanglement," and I keep ending up with "scrappy exhaustiveness."

Oh, and since I'm here:

BIRDS OF PREY #104: The BoP meets Secret Six was one of the more satisfying team crossovers I've seen in a while, especially because Simone's fondness for the characters seeps through the text--it reminded me of those very early Marvel team-ups where, say, the Fantastic Four would pop up in the Avengers for four pages and everyone would compliment each other on their hair. As for the big last page resurrection of Ice, I didn't know that she had died until someone in the cast mentioned it six pages earlier. So I guess you could say the impact was lost on me. A Good issue, anyway.

BRAVE AND THE BOLD #2: Really gorgeous to look at and fun to read, so much so that one can overlook the issue's strengths (without making a big deal out of it, Waid is clearly writing Supergirl differently than the Supergirl over in LSH because this is obviously a different Supergirl) as well as the weaknesses (I can say with absolute confidence that Mark Waid has never had a seventeen year old girl flirt with him). Very Good material if you like superhero stuff, and worth picking up.

CABLE DEADPOOL #38: A very Cable-free issue of Cable & Deadpool but still enjoyable. I snickered at a couple of pages, particularly six-inch-tall Deadpool's propositioning of Agent X's two girlfriends ("C'mon, girls! I may be small, but I know how to navigate!") and any time the hapless Bob, Agent of Hydra showed up. It's all pretty fannish stuff, I admit it, but enjoyable and Good.

DETECTIVE COMICS #830: It's the second part of the story about the guy who squirts liquid plastic explosive on stuff! Again, the art was nice, but once it became apparent that Robin wasn't going to have to chop his own arm off with an axe to get away from the plastic explosive, I kind of lost interest. (Not only does Robin not have to chop off his own arm, all he has to do is find the miniature detonator--which he does but can't reach. Stuart Moore has constructed the deathtrap equivalent of someone telling you there's a big hairy spider right between your shoulderblades. Actually, I lie; even that is more exciting and tense than the deathtrap we see here.) Pretty art again bumps it up to Eh, but considering how lovey-dovey I'm being with the week's books, that's probably a sign the book is barely that.

Labels: Jeff

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The final (?) cat update for now: She's home and relaxing, with a belly entirely shaved from all the doctorin' and scanning that she's had to go through in the last couple of days. Her heart, it turns out, is enlarged because of liquid inside it that they're still not entirely sure about, but all her test results checked out remarkably well; we literally went from being told that maybe we should get ready to say goodbye on Sunday night to everything apparently being alright a day later. We're monitoring her breathing - and as a result, both of us have real problems with the idea of leaving her alone in the house while we have work today, but what can you do? - and both Kate and I are nervously playing with her and hoping for the best, still.

It's too early to say that she's fine or that the danger's passed. But nonetheless, it's really rather nice to have her home, if nothing else. Thanks to all who left or sent messages of goodwill.

AQUAMAN: SWORD OF ATLANTIS #50: In which Tad Williams comes on the book and decides that somethings just have to change. Maybe it's because I don't follow the book regularly - Aquaman at the best of times is a hard sell to me, much to Kate's disappointment (She's had a crush on the character ever since he was on Smallville for the first time, back when she liked Smallville. Nowadays, she's gone off the show; the "Lois dresses in PVC catsuit and pretends to be a stripper in order to seduce a wrestler who dresses in a schoolgirl outfit so that she can break into an underground wrestling ring" plot being the last straw. And when I put it like that, suddenly hundreds of non-Smallville viewers head to BitTorrent in anticipatory masturbatory glee) - but this issue seems to move at a ridiculous pace, with characters spouting exposition in order to get all the plot and character furniture just the way that the new writing tenant wants it: New characters are introduced, old characters are reintroduced, the old Aquaman is killed off in a very offhand manner (which means, of course, he'll be back before too long), and there's something enjoyable about the wild abandon of the whole enterprise. I've seen complaints about the style not being serious enough for fans of the previous Underwater Barbarian take on the character, but Shawn McManus's cartoony look fits with the broad writing just enough to make you think that, just maybe, there's nothing that bad about such an old-fashioned superhero comic that dares to bring back Aquaman's sidekick who makes jokes about shitting himself as if he was in Finding Nemo. I have no idea if I'm engaged enough to pick up #51, but #50 was definitely much more Okay than I was expecting it to be. Click Here to Read More...

I, haha, kinda forgot it was order form week, which is why I haven't posted since Friday. Whoopsie. I'll be back with some content tomorrow.

Meanwhile, here's what's coming on Wednesday:

100 BULLETS #82
2000 AD #1527
2000 AD #1528
24 NIGHTFALL #5 (OF 6)
52 WEEK #47
A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #54 (A)
ACTION COMICS #847
BATMAN #664
BETTY & VERONICA DOUBLE DIGEST #150
BLACK PANTHER #26
BLUE BEETLE #13
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER VAR CVR NEW PTG #1
CAPTAIN AMERICA 2ND PTG EPTING VAR #25 CW
CARTOON NETWORK BLOCK PARTY #31
CATWOMAN #65
CITY OF HEROES #18
CONNOR HAWKE DRAGONS BLOOD #5 (OF 6)
CROSSING MIDNIGHT #5
DAREDEVIL #95
DEVI #9
DMZ #17
ELEPHANTMEN #8
FABLES #59
FANTASTIC FOUR #544
FATHOM KIANI #1
FIRESTORM THE NUCLEAR MAN #34
FUTURAMA COMICS #30
GAMEKEEPER MUKESH SINGH COVER #1
GARGOYLES #3
GODLAND #17
GREEN LANTERN #18
HAWKGIRL #62
HEROES FOR HIRE #8
HUNTER KILLER SILVESTRI CVR #12
JSA CLASSIFIED #24
JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE #256
NINJA SCROLL #7
PIRATES OF CONEY ISLAND #5 (OF 8)
PS238 #21
RED PROPHET TALES OF ALVIN MAKER #6 (OF 12)
SAM NOIR RONIN HOLIDAY #3 (OF 3)
SCARFACE SCARRED FOR LIFE #4
SENSATIONAL SPIDER-MAN #36
SILENT WAR #3 (OF 6)
SNAKEWOMAN #9
SPAWN #166
STAR WARS LEGACY #10
STRANGE GIRL #15
STRONGARM #2
SUPERMAN CONFIDENTIAL #4
TAROT WITCH OF THE BLACK ROSE #43
TEEN TITANS GO #41
TEXAS STRANGERS #1
TRANSFORMERS ESCALATION #5
ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #40
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #107
ULTIMATE X-MEN #80
UNCLE SCROOGE #364
UNIQUE #1 (OF 3)
USAGI YOJIMBO #101 (NOTE PRICE)
VERONICA #179
VIRULENTS (ONE SHOT) #1
WALK-IN #4
WALT DISNEYS COMICS & STORIES #679
WETWORKS #7
WITCHBLADE #104
WITCHBLADE TAKERU MANGA SUMITA CVR A #2
WOLVERINE #52
WONDER WOMAN #6

Books / Mags / Stuff
24 HOUR COMICS DAY HIGHLIGHTS 2006 TP
ALICE IN SUNDERLAND GN
BATMAN SNOW TP
CENTURY GUILD CHAMBER OF MYSTERY VOL 1 WITCHCRAFT SC
CONAN & THE SONGS O/T DEAD TP
DEAD HIGH YEARBOOK
EMPOWERED TP
FORTEAN TIMES #221
GREEN ARROW CRAWLING FROM THE WRECKAGE TP
GREEN LANTERN REBIRTH TP
GRENDEL DEVIL BY THE DEED HC
HALF DEAD TP
JUDGE DREDD COMPLETE CASE FILES VOL 7 TP
LOVELESS VOL 2 THICKER THAN BLACKWATER TP
MARVEL MASTERWORKS GOLDEN AGE USA COMICS VOL 1 NEW ED HC
OH SKINNAY HC
PREVIEWS VOL XVII #4
REIKO THE ZOMBIE SHOP VOL 6 TP
SECRET SIX SIX DEGREES OF DEVASTATION TP
SLAINE TIME KILLER SC GN
SPAWN ARMAGEDDON VOL 2 TP
SPIDER-MAN 3 MOVIE SPIDER-MAN BUST BANK
SPIDER-MAN LOVES MARY JANE VOL 1 HC
STAR WARS BOBA FETT VOL 1 TP MAN WITH A MISSION
SUPERMAN ACTION COMICS ARCHIVES VOL 5 HC
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES VOL 1 ATTACK OF THE MOUSERS TP
TIZZLE SISTERS & ERIK GN
TOTALLY SPIES VOL 4 SPIES IN SPACE GN
ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR VOL 7 GOD WAR TP
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN VOL 8 HC
WIZARD MAGAZINE SPIDER-MAN 3 MOVIE CVR #187
ZOMBIE TP

What looks good to you?

-B Click Here to Read More...

First, is it wrong to be a prayin' man about an action movie? Point of Impact is one of my favorite sniper dude novels (although I've loved all of the Swagger books by Stephen Hunter) and I'm kind of worried about its adaptation, Shooter which came out this weekend. I mean, they certainly could've done worse than getting Mark Wahlberg for the lead (at one point, our man Keanu Reeves was attached, which would've been awful) but I'm worried about the director Antoine Fuqua who's done at least one good action movie (Training Day) and at least one absolutely turdy one (King Arthur). Have any other Point of Impact fans seen Shooter? Will I hate it? It's times like this I wish Garth Ennis had a blog or something--I remember him recommending the Hunter books to somebody at some point, and I'd totally trust whatever he had to say about the film.

Second, speaking of Ennis, anyone know if there are going to be letters pages when The Boys resumes publication? I sure hope so: Ennis always crafted an entertaining letters page and it'd be great to have those back.

Third,

52 WEEK #46: A weird, but not unwelcome, shift in tone as Black Adam fights the mad scientists of Crazy Island. Normally, I'd give it more points off for that but considering I didn't like last issue's tone very much, I'll just take the cheap way out and give it a very high OK.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #539: Very anticlimactic, as May gets shot but not much happens other than Peter getting very pissed. I did like how jarring it was to see him openly swinging around as Peter Parker, though, and May's not out of the picture yet so... I dunno. OK, I guess? I've really checked out of the storyline which probably doesn't bode well overall, but I keep checking in to see if/when I'm gonna start caring again.

AQUAMAN SWORD OF ATLANTIS #50: Williams is a witty writer, and the art by Sean McManus has a ton of charm, and I also appreciated that Williams was bringing back old plotlines (like good ol' Sub Diego)--but I also think that witty and charming aren't the main qualities I want in my underwater barbarian book. This was OK, though, and there are enough plusses that I'll be back for more.

ARMY @ LOVE #1: Fans of the batshit should rush out and pick this up--it's probably the closest book I've read to Prez #1 in a long, long time. Honestly, it's no more wrong-headed than Exterminators or Testament but it's both more puzzling and more enjoyable than either of those books thanks to the talents of writer/artist Rick Veitch. Veitch is armed with talent and a decent hook--how the sexual tensions in the ranks during the current war are translating into some very strange new dynamics on the battlefront (my favorite image from the book may be the black sacks placed over prisoners' heads that manage to conjure up both Abu Ghraib torture and a bondage club gear simultaneously)--and absolutely no idea how to connect that to the current generation. Despite the cell phones used by troops and the Wiccan sub-commander, Veitch's idea of sexual chaos springs right from the '70s, with two married couples each with cheating spouses, the workaholic husband, the young wife with the itch her hubby isn't scratching, etc., etc.--kind of a satire of John Updike novels where instead of cocktail parties you've got a war in the Middle East. It probably would've killed back in '72.

But in 2007, Army @ Love reads wrong--the same way goofy ol' Prez read when it hit the stands. Admittedly, this is just the first issue, but I'd think even the most casual observer of today would skew the idea of erotic-thanatic shenanigans toward Myspace pages, Youtube videos and the Missed Connections of Craig's List than the idea of War as a great big key party with landmines ringing the hot tub at Plato's Retreat.

Also, knowing Veitch's propensity for drawing ugly people, the editors have teamed him with Gary Erskine on inks so that now the people are now merely unattractive. While not a bad idea, it's kinda falls flat as everyone looks paunchy and middle-aged in a way that works against the book's conceit.

But, again, Veitch is talented and he's got something to say, and I found something deeply appealing about Army @ Love's wrongness. If nothing else, it is entertainingly apeshit in a way that I find more encouraging than Exterminators and Testament--the mark of a master off his game rather than new talents who still can't figure out the game's rules. If you like "teh cazy," you'll find it at least OK. If not, I only ask that you put up with it for as long as possible so freaks like me can enjoy it.

Labels: Jeff

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For those of you who want a sick cat update, we're waiting to hear more but she seems to have an enlarged heart, which is what's causing her to breathe erratically. Of course, what caused the enlarged heart and vomiting is something that the doctors are still investigating, using both the highest and most expensive of technologies. Nonetheless, both Kate and myself are wusslike emotional wrecks about the whole thing, and pretending to investigate the possibility of turning her into an immortal cyborg cat so that we don't have to deal with this again in the future (Perhaps an immortal cyborg cat assassin, so that way she could pay us back for the cost of the cyborg parts. Who knows?) as we realistically face up to what appears to be the oncoming train of a fact that our cat won't be staying around for awhile. You'll all know it's bad news when I never mention the cat again; it's bad enough being a downer like this at the start of reviews, but if one started "And today, our cat died," then I would suddenly have turned into the first emo comic reviewer and should be ashamed of myself. Instead, shall we talk about "adult" comics?

ARMY@LOVE #1: Weirdly enough, I read a black and white preview of this about a month or so ago, and remember really, really disliking it; it seemed scattered and disjointed, aimess and mean-spirited. But reading the finished book, it seemed as if there was a rewrite somewhere, and I'm not entirely sure where - Maybe there were pages added, or dialogue was tweaked to bring things into greater focus? Don't get me wrong, it's still a mess, but it's less of a mess now and I'm not really sure what has changed outside of the color being added.

The majority of my problem with the story is that it doesn't seem to have any more depth than your average episode of Desperate Housewives. The somewhat self-congratulatory text piece where Rick Veitch writes about the book being new because it's comedy from tragedy without the distance of time appears to miss the modern satirical landscape of things like The Daily Show, Colbert Report or The Onion, which have done exactly the same thing, but better, for years, and the book itself reads dated and unaware in the same way (The military encourages, what, immorality (?) as a way of motivating its soldiers - but doesn't that seem oddly lazy or quaint as a satirical idea in light of the Abu Garib scandal, years ago?). There isn't any subtlety or nuance in the satire, whether it be political or social, nor does there really feel like there's any direction or intent to it beyond wanting people to think it satirical and shocking.

Artwise, Gary Erskine's inking over Veitch's pencils manages to both update his look and still keep it looking like an alternative book from the 70s. I'm not the biggest fan of Veitch's art (and suddenly I have a horde of Swamp Thing fans after me), but it's off-kilter and broad enough to work here, in the character work if not the action sequences, but I do tend to wonder whether an artist with a stronger style would have given the book a stronger sense of personality, and solved some of the problems I had with the writing and made the issue more than just something that makes you go Eh. The coloring's nice, though.

JOHN CONSTANTINE: HELLBLAZER #230: I'm getting way too cynical about these things, I think; I got to the end of this issue with its "To Be Concluded" and thought, well, why? Not that I didn't want the story to be finished, but because I felt that it already had been - We'd found out who had really killed the girl in question, and he seemed to be getting his come-uppance... The only things left (especially if the story was to be continue for only one more issue) were gore and more professional cockney menace, none of which we need anymore. There was nothing wrong with this issue, per se - new writer Andy Diggle has the voice of the character down and Leonardo Manco's art is gritty and ink-splattered as you'd expect, and that's kind of the problem: We've seen this before. By this point, we've seen this 229 times before, in fact, and this approach to it (Returning, I guess, to the source material?) just underlines that and makes the book look its age. Yes, it's the longest-lasting Vertigo book (and right now, one of the longest-lasting DC books in general), but that isn't enough reason to keep it going in and of itself, you know? Eh, again, and I'm sure that my lack of response to both Vertigo's newest and oldest books either says something about my jadedness, Vertigo's lack of surprise or presence as a publisher these days, or both. Click Here to Read More...

Okay, this has been in the hopper for a while, but I didn't get that gorgeous green light until just last week. We're having a signing from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. on Friday, April 20, 2007 and I think it's a pretty big deal.

Y'see, when this year's guests at APE were announced, I kinda lost my mind. So many great guests this year! I went to Hibbs and begged him to get some sort of signing together which he consented to as long as I organized it. So if this post doesn't make much sense, or seems quasi-unhinged, please understand: not only am I tremendously whacked out because this is the first signing I've ever organized, but--more importantly--the signing is going to be for:


him, and also for:


her, as well as for:



him, but also for:


him.

Yeah, that's right. Kevin Huizenga, Hope Larson, Bryan Lee O'Malley, and Gene Yang are signing at Comix Experience from 5:00 p.m. until 7:00 p.m. on Friday, April 20, 2007. That's an absurd amount of talent under one roof, and I owe big props to the artists and also Gary Sassaman and Comic-Con for going for it. This group of artists did some of the best work of 2006 and it's all I can do not to unleash torrents of hype at all of you about their utter awesomeness. If you're a Bay Area type or in town for APE, I hope you'll drop by the store from 5 to 7, get a book signed from these four amazing talents, or just stop by to "hey." APE can be an all-encompassing swirl and this may be a great way to get face time. (Plus, there more of you there are, the less the four of them will be subjected to the quivering fanboyness that is Jeff Lester, which I assure you is best for all involved.)

Anyway, I'll be back later with reviews, and when we get the flier put together this week, I'll also post it here. But I just couldn't keep it under wraps any longer, and had to share this with all y'all. As I said, I hope you can stop by.

Labels: Jeff

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Ah, the joys of pet-parenting; Kate and I are just back from the Pet Hospital on 9th Avenue, after dropping off our cat for an overnight stay because she's having trouble breathing and not vomiting over our carpets. I'm trying to think comics, but really I'm flashing to imagined images of a little black cat hooked up with IV drips and a thermometer sticking out her mouth.

BIRDS OF PREY #104: I don't know if there's a difference between "You didn't see that last page coming!" because it's a well set-up, yet unforeseen plot twist that, in retrospect, makes a lot of sense, or because it literally comes out of nowhere with no foreshadowing or reason to particularly exist. I mean, obviously there is, but both make the "you didn't see it coming" thing true, and so does it really matter that the end of this issue - apparently bringing a long-dead character who has never appeared in this book back to life - is the latter rather than the former? The saddest thing may be that the shock ending that's getting the Newsarama coverage is the worst thing about this otherwise Good issue - Bringing her two teams (the Birds and guest stars the Secret Six) together brings out the best in Gail Simone's dialogue, and her plotting is tighter than it's been in a long time. If we get a good rationale for why certain mystery character is back from the dead next issue, this could even be a return to form for this book.

THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #2: As (I think?) Ian Brill was saying the other day, Mark Waid's new team-up series proves that he's the new Bob Haney to Grant Morrison's John Broome. Or something. Nonetheless, this book is just plain fun; superheroics that embrace the fantastic and over the top while managing to come up with a better characterization in one issue for Supergirl than Jeph Loeb and Joe Kelly have managed in the last year or so of her own book. Excellent stuff, and even better than the first issue.

THE FLASH: THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE #10: Wait, so last issue wasn't filler? It was the first part of an ongoing storyline...? Then why does this issue have nothing to do with what happened last month? Yet again, it's competent enough, but not especially enjoyable. Eh, and all done before and better with the previous version of the character.

RUNAWAYS SAGA: Mentioned just because my mate Mindy was partially responsible for the actual recap meat of the issue, and because - despite the fact that she didn't believe me when I told her this - the diary of 11-year-old Molly really reads like the way Mindy speaks, in my mind. It's tough to do any kind of review of a "Saga" book, because who wants to review what's essentially a clip show? But that said, there's more to this than most, not least of which the humor of Molly's take on what's happened to date or Humberto Ramos's very enjoyable art. If you're looking to catch up on the series before Joss Whedon takes over next month, this is a Good way of not only getting plot details but also a taste of the tone of the book. But, like I said, I'm biased.

THE SPIRIT #4: Maybe it's me, but this seemed weaker than the last three issues - Very Good, say, instead of excellent - and part of me wonders if it's because of the subject matter. The Spirit makes sense to me as a crimefighting detective, and as soon as you take him out of that and try to put him in a story about fighting terrorism then my interest starts to wain. Add to that the taking-you-out-of-the-story narration of a CIA agent who suddenly switches from just-the-facts to "What am I doing? This is sooo wrong!" (Like, totally), and I'm left hoping that next issue sees some straight-forward criminal-punching and pronto.

Y: THE LAST MAN #55: You can tell that this is the last storyline, because the characters are beginning to talk about their own development just to remind the reader. Ignoring the expositionary value, though, this feels like the strongest issue of the series for awhile - we're back with the main characters, and finally getting back to the quest that started the series. I'm waiting for the traditional Vaughan twist midway through this arc - Beth doesn't love you anymore, Yorick! She's a lesbian! - but could probably happily deal with another couple of episodes of this kind of thing before we get there, to be honest. Good.

Still not done with this week's books - I have Aquaman, Army@Love and Hellblazer to get through, and at the suggestion of some of you I picked up Fray this week in trade - so no PICK OF THE WEAK yet, but I can easily say that PICK OF THE WEEK is Brave and Bold; all superhero comics should have planets that are entirely like Las Vegas. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to call the pet hospital again to continue being annoying and asking for updates... Click Here to Read More...

A short one today, because I'm tired and a wuss. It's been a long and strange week, what can I say?

KING CITY Volume 1: Proof that this whole internet thing has legs: I picked this graphic novel by Brandon Graham up not because I knew anything about it, or was familiar with Graham's work, but purely because I'd read a couple of positive reviews (by, I think, Chris Butcher and Kevin Church?) and was curious. Luckily, it worked out - This is an unusual but enjoyable book that's very much of its own thing even as it wears its influences on it's sleeve. If you added Eduardo Risso, Paul Pope and Pete Fowler together, you'd have something that looked like Graham's artwork in this book - contemporary, sexy and full of attitude but oddly cute, nonetheless - but it's art that's being used in the service of a story that doesn't entirely match its quality. It comes close; the plot is sprawling, mixing an updated noir kick of good people doing bad things and lost love with fantastical elements (cats as infinite weaponary, zombie wars, self-perpetuating drugs), but its lack of focus is offset by its inventiveness; there are some great concepts in here used just enough (or, in some cases, barely used at all), and none of them outstay their welcome. While the dialogue occasionally seems generic and by-the-numbers - particularly at the start of the book - the narration works better throughout, and is occasionally wonderful (When Joe, the main character, sees the femme fatale of the story: "I bet she's got just the right amount of eyelids and teeth. Plus a full set of magical equipment. Breasts: The old one-two."). The end result, though, is a Very Good book that works as a complete piece as much as the first half of a longer story, and perhaps more importantly, leaves you wanting to read the second half almost immediately. If only to see what other things that the impossible cat can do.

Tomorrow: Probably lots of short reviews, because it's Sunday... Click Here to Read More...

No seriously, what the fuck IS wrong with people?

Yesterday, I went into the store to find out some stupid piece of shit decided to graffiti all over the windows up and down Divisadero st. Graffiti is a part of urban living, I suppose, though it is one that I've never really understood. If 99% of the people who see it can't read it, don't know what it means, don't understand your affiliation, and think you're a ignorant asshole for doing it, then I don't see the benefit whatsoever.

The different between "the usual" graffiti and yesterday's adventure, is that the small-dicked little morons used acid to "etch" the windows, which permanently stains them, and is (as I understand it) impossible to remove without warping the glass. I could spend a couple of hundred dollars to replace the glass (then just have some OTHER idiot hit is a few days later), or I could spend a couple of thousand dollars to get specially coated glass that makes it "impossible" to tag in that way -- but then I'm afraid someone will just throw a brick through the window, y'know?

I'm a child of New York in the 70s, so I appreciate the graffiti ARTIST -- those guys who spent serious time decorating the subway trains? Wonder and awe from me. The big elaborate and colorful pieces on 8x12 foot sections of abandoned walls? There's some urban attraction in that.

But just taking out your dick and randomly spraying piss everywhere? You're a stupid, pathetic piece of shit who should get dumped in prison, and cornholed daily for the crime of being a moron. At the very least, I'd like the punishment to be that a squad of homeless people are dispatched to the taggers room, where they proceed to take a shit over every object the tagger cares about whatsoever. Maybe they'd get it then.

(that would presuppose that there was a reasonable way of catching such shit-heads -- it's not even like we get a police car rolling by the store more than 3 or 4 times a day though. Let alone at 3 AM when they hit nearly every store I checked in a 4 block stretch)



Its not just the vandalism, but society as a whole seems like it is filling up with unsocialized morons faster and faster. On Wednesday, I was taking the bus home, and, as usual for the 24-Divisadero it was pretty unreasonably crowded (Man, remember when Muni was just 25 cents, and busses came every 5 minutes? Now they're $1.50, and you've got to wait 20 minutes between runs). There's two kids on the bus, a brother and sister I think, one maybe 12, the other 14 or so. The 12 year old boy is standing across the aisle, hands on either side of the rails of the bus, making it so no one can get past him at all. People are trying to get on the bus, but he's (consciously) creating a bottleneck. I don't really mind riding in the "driver's area" of the bus, but a lot of people do, and it's not really safe for the driver anyway (can't see his side mirrors), so I say to the kid "Excuse me, could you move in, so everyone else can board?". His sister spins on me and screams "Ain't you never heard of 'please'?". "Uh, yeah, that's what 'excuse me' means" The kid says something about there being no room, and I'm like 3 times his size, and you could fit 4 more of me into the space he's occupying but I don't really care that much -- like I said, I'm cool with being in the driver's area.

Driver isn't though. "MOve in, move in!" he starts to yell at me. "I'd love to, bud, but little man here won't move." Meanwhile his sister is unleashing a steady stream of invective at me in the way that only an ignorant selfish 14 year old that's going to end up with 3 babies by age 19, and will die with a glass pipe in her mouth before she's 30, can. Bus Driver says "The bus isn't moving until everyone moves in!" and the kid finally relents and moves aside while moaning all of the time. At the next stop, they make a big show of getting off the bus.

Children like these need to be slapped. Repeatedly. Where the hell are their parents. You know, when *I* was a kid (again: 70s, New York, not Leave it to Beaver) I don't know of any teenager that would have dared disrespect a grownup like that. It just wasn't done.

The only reason I didn't smack the kid was, just a few minutes before they were talking with another lady who seemed to know them - even asked how their mom was. She looked like a young school teacher or something. I pretty much expected HER to say something, but she never did.

Just before the boy gets off the bus, he stares directly at me and says "Some niggers ought shut up before they get they asses shot." I looked at the adult-who-knew-them. She had that helpless liberal smile on her face suggesting "Boys will be boys" or some other nonsense. I'm reasonably sure she'll never mention to the kid's parents that he just threatened to kill an adult, on a bus full of people.

So, what the fuck is wrong with people? Who are this kid's parents? Do they not care that their boy is likely to end up in prison or the morgue within the next decade?

If I ever caught even a whiff of that kind of insubordination from Ben, he wouldn't be able to sit down for a week. I may be an asshole, but I try to have a modicum of manners. I even usually thank the bus driver as I get off every day. I feel like George Constanza some days, screaming "Don't you know we live in a society? A SOCIETY?!?!"


No reviews this morning -- I'm too grumpy.


-B Click Here to Read More...

What a relief. I felt really, really shitty yesterday and my main thought of the day was something like, "No! Can't...get...sick! Must...change....blog's...reputation...for being...unhealthy!" And today I feel a million times better. I'm still sticking to my new theory, however, which is that blogging on a regular basis makes you ill. It takes up so much time you can't spend as much time in front of the Renewvo Regeneratron (or "Playstation 2," as it's more popularly known) as you need in order to stay healthy.

Anyway, before I get set to go open the store I thought there was a very faint link between the following two books:

HIP FLASK CONCRETE JUNGLE: See, this book breaks my heart. It's a collection of several issues of Casey and Ladronn's Hip Flask mini from what I believe was several years ago collected into a Euro style hardcover album for (gasp!) 30 bucks. I read it at the store last week, and thought Casey did a pretty good job giving the characters and world a very consistent tone. But it's the painting by Ladronn that really got me--I'd bought the first issue or two included here and thought they were lovely, but at this size they are brain-achingly gorgeous and almost feverishly textural: rhinos in smoking jackets, and hippos in trench coats, and zebras in tuxedos, and soft-skinned women recoiling against leather-seated interiors with a pale blue sky settling into a windowpane. Like nearly every science fiction comic from the last twenty-plus years, the city looks like the one in Blade Runner, but Ladronn's use of color makes that ol' trope come alive again, and I just spent most of my time looking through this book with my mouth agape. It's like a magic mud puddle, half an inch deep but able to reflect all the colors of the world so vividly you swear you never truly saw them until then.

And yet--it's thirty fuckin' bucks and nothing happens in it. Somebody dies. Somebody else dies. Every single character appears to have a shadowy past. Things are alluded to. Flashbacks are plentiful. Dead ends are pursued. Since I invoked its name once, lemme do so again: it's like paying thirty dollars to watch twenty minutes from the middle of Blade Runner. And considering I bought two of these issues, like, three years ago, I have the sneaking suspicion the story isn't even finished. It's heartbreaking because the art is so good, you have to see it, and yet I can't recommend you buy it at this price. My only hope is that every library in America buys it so people can go check it out and get lost in it for a while.

YUKIKOS SPINACH NEW EDITION GN: See, and this book is about heartbreak. I guess I read Mariko Parade (or maybe Love Hotel?) about a year or two back, knowing nothing about Frédéric Boilet and the Nouvelle Manga movement other than what the book told me on the flaps, and I was pretty underwhelmed by its love story between a French cartoonist and a Japanese student. The whole thing struck me as big ol' flapdoodle over nothing, the Franco-Nihon equivalent of Jungle Fever and a new marketing term to peddle the same ol' second-rate filler.

But over time, I realized that a few of the author's observations stayed with me. There was a description, as I recall, in Mariko Parade about how one of the essential components to eroticism for the Japanese is a sense of loss, and that the affair, once begun, is already sweetened by the sadnes of its inevitable end, and there was something about that observation that allowed me some insight into stuff I read or watched since.

So when this new edition of Yukiko's Spinach came out--the original work by Frédéric Boilet that started all of this off--I picked it up, sure that it would be more codswollop, but hopeful there would be something decent in it.

In fact, Yukiko's Spinach is a much stronger work than the stuff Boilet did later--a poignant little story about seduction and sex and love buttressed by a formalist structure. Although Boilet uses extensive photoreferences to tell his story, he makes extensive use of sketches to counter-balance that. Even better, the way he frames the story of the cartoonist remembering his affair, the action happens in photoreferenced illustrations but the memories of the scenes are replayed through sketches and thumbnails. In doing so, Boilet draws attention not only to the way in which the book is constructed, but underlines the way in which the lover is constructing his memory of the affair and, by the end, potentially using those thumbnails not just for the construction of memory, but as a blueprint for future seductions.

Surprisingly, Yukiko's Spinach isn't half as twee as the title suggests, nor half as cynical as I make it sound, but occupies some perfect middle ground between romance and maturity, seduction and idealism, love and lust. And, as promised, the book in fact shows how a love affair, by ending even as it begins, can be suffused with a sadness that is genuinely sexy and sweet. A Good read and if the sort of thing you think you might like, you probably will.

Labels: Jeff

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You know what I'm surprised that I haven't seen this week? More outrage about the latest New Avengers solicitation (which, if you haven't seen it, is this: "No hype! No BS! The most important last page of any Marvel comic this year! Do not miss it!" That's it, apart from the credits and other infomation about length, price, etc.). It was only, what, three years ago (two years ago, maybe?) that the comics internet was falling over itself in outrage about the claim that House of M#3 would break the internet in half, so the near-total silence about the New Avengers line (which even starts "No hype! No BS!" just to bait people) has to be some kind of good sign that either we've all grown up a lot since, then, or that Marvel's BS hype has entirely worn out its effectiveness.

Or, of course, that I'm blind and have missed a thunderstorm of people being upset and excited all at once right beside me. Their eyes may even be swiveling, which I've heard happens all the time these days.

Nonetheless, I'm amused to see what the last page of the comic is going to be, considering it has to be beat the "Look. Captain America is on a slab. Dead." of Cap #25. Maybe it's Cap alive again already? Or someone else dying so that we can get a five-part miniseries about that, as well? Part of me hopes that it's something entirely offbeat, like Brian K. Vaughan has abused his new staff position at Lost, and the last page is one tiny little talking head and the rest is a speech balloon where Iron Man appears and, because he can see the future these days, gives away the ending of Lost to the readers. Although, of course, that would depend on there being an actual end of Lost already, as opposed to the writers clearly just making shit up as they're going along: "What would you say if I told you that there was a magic box where, once you open it, your heart's desire is inside?" I'd say you have no idea what you're writing anymore, and I really, really hope that was a metaphor for who was trapped inside the cell at the end of the episode instead of, you know, a real magic box, personally.

That said, poor John Locke. His dad? Kind of a bastard.

Anyway: C! O! M! I! C! S! Quickly, because I've just babbled for far too long already.

52 WEEK FORTY-SIX: And just as I'm complaining that the series is unraveling, they do an issue like this and I'm sucked back in. Not that any of my concerns from last time are really addressed - aside from maybe that the balancing of storylines seems to be coming back, and it looks like there's more to Steel's storyline than I thought (The announcement that Steel is going to be starring in a new Infinity Inc. series from this past weekend was both unexpected and somewhat head-scratching - He's the breakout character from the book? Really? - but any new Peter Milligan writing would be nice, I have to admit) - but seeing Black Adam defeated by the island of misfit mad scientists was both surprising and amusing. I expected Adam's rage to be the driving force behind WW3 in a month, but now it's beginning to look like there's more going on than I'd given them credit for. The scenes with the scientists was great, as well - simultaneously making them comedic ("I'll say it if no-one else will... Feel free to cackle hysterically, gentlemen!") but also weirdly threatening at the same time, considering that they, you know, beat Black Adam without really breaking a sweat. For the first time in a more weeks than should be the case, this book is fun again instead of just being relentless plot-hammering. Maybe that turnaround really is just around the corner. Good.

JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #4: This, on the other hand, felt like a mess: Rushed, unclear, and pointless. After three issues of building up the new Nazi badguys as the villains of the piece, they're largely dealt with offpanel so that we can see Wildcat's son - who has powers that let him turn into a werecat, which are never really explained - beat up Vandal Savage before he gets hit by a fire engine, and then it's back to subplot city. It's an unsatisfying conclusion all-round because the reveal of Savage as the villain behind the villains, and subsequent focus on him as opposed to the guys we've been seeing since issue 1, feels like bait and switch, and what little we do see of the Nazi showdown is there more as grist for the angst-mill (and nonsensical grist, at that: "I blew up Jesse! I hurt her so bad, I am evil and an ugly monster and I - Oh, wait, she's up and about a couple of panels later with no immediately obvious effects. Never mind.") than anything else. More than anything else, it feels as if Geoff Johns was told that he'd have to cut the storyline down so that they can fit in the Justice League crossover next month, and that he did it by literally just throwing out scenes until he had 22-odd pages of comic left. Pretty much Eh.

More tomorrow, potentially. Click Here to Read More...

Everyone's out of the house, blessed silence is mine for an hour or so, hurrah!

So... work on Onomatopoeia (everyone hit their deadlines EARLY, hurray!), or do some reviews?

I better review, because if I hold THAT til night, then I'm too cranky, and only do 1-2 books, and I can do Onomatopoeia in "neutral" much easier...

AQUAMAN: SWORD OF ATLANTIS #50: I've said several times that I just don't care about Atlantis too much, but this issue got me a lot closer with a number of new and fairly interesting additions to the concept. Heck, it even has the (re)introduction of A's "sidekick" Topo. But, ultimately, I still didn't care that much about it, and I think it has to do more with the meta issues of Who Is Aquaman then the specific content of the book. I really detest, for example, that the new Aquaman is "Arthur Curry". Or the somewhat creepy interactions that Mera and "Arthur" have (she's old enough to be his mother, isn't she?) Or, for that matter what a punk and anti-heroic passive ending they gave to the "Dweller". And while the Narwhal character was fairly intriguing, he visually looked way too much like "Arthur" for me. Mm, and the sort of tossed off way they "fixed" San Diego, where they'll (you know it) never ever deal with the ramifications of a major American city being treated like that. And yet, this does feel a bit like a sustainable direction despite my whinging. Williams has to learn how a comics page works, a bit more (all through my reading of this, I kept thinking "this'd work better in prose", while forgetting that is William's background) -- little fun details like the "I inked myself" joke end up falling flat because there's not a good image/text counterpoint. But even with all of that, I'm still going to go with a fairly high OK, with the sense that this book *could* become "GOOD" at some point soon.

52 WEEK 46: Well at least that, kind of, explains how the next month won't just be "Adam kills people over and over again" (though I'd think it would open up many many geo-political questions about what the world should do about Oolong island, no?) as we go to the inevitable World War 3. Because of the focus on Oolong, this was one of my favorite issues in the last good while. The Steel thread also comes back for a few pages, mostly to tie up a couple of OYL things, but I literally can't fathom how Clark led everyone straight to Lex, or, really, even why Lex was sitting right there, waiting to be taken. All in all? A GOOD issue.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #539: Here's what I'll say: if one was to read this comic without any great knowledge or understanding of Spidey continuity, it parses just fine. It moves along adequately, the emotional through-line is fine. I just don't believe that Peter woulda kept a black costume, in the first place, given the previous history. I also still can't figure out what he's currently on the run FOR -- he is, after all, a fully licensed and registered super-hero, and you'd think ol Futurist Tony would have gone on national TV and told everyone to leave Peter alone, right? (Unless, of course, he's a y'know, huge raging dick) So, yeah, plothammery plothammers dictate the shape of the story for the next X, and that sucks as it always does, but I thought the EXECUTION of the plothammer was fairly adequate. I'll even go with a high OK.

MS. MARVEL #13: Branding this as a "The Initiative" book is such a post-event mistake -- the kind that both Marvel and DC regularly engage in. The Initiative bits are so, really, tossed off (look at that scene where Carol's "team" gets introduced. "Hi." is about the most dialogue any character gets), despite the fact that they're going to form the spine of the book for the next bit, that I think this kind of comic really weakens the post-event Branding. Its not that the book is bad -- its not, its fine -- but its just pretty unrelentingly dull, and the whole "Best of the Best" thing... well, man, this is issue #13 (14 if you count that odd special) -- wasn't that supposed to be the premise of the title from #1? And STILL I don't feel like we're ANYwhere near that point -- it's just a lot of empty sloganeering at this moment in time. So, yeah, deeply, painfully EH.

THE FLASH #10: Liked this one, at least up to the point where Zoom showed up out of nowhere for no reason, then gets defeated way too easily making him seem like no threat whatsoever. I also still am wondering when Bart is going to develop a distinguishable character. Hm, no that's not quite it -- its more like I was reading this thinking "this could be Wally... why isn't it Wally? Just change the name in the captions, and its a Wally story." Why is Bart DIFFERENT from the Flashes before him? I just don't get the game plan other than "Flashes change during Crisii". Despite that, this was highly OK. A better artist, and maybe it could get up to "GOOD" before too long.


OK, that's it for now, time to get ready for work!

-B Click Here to Read More...

Ack, look at that Graeme McMillan--he finished his part of the newsletter and he's giving you comic reviews! Me, I barely posted anything yesterday and now, until I figure out what, if anything, I have to say about Yukiko's Spinach, I'm going to review the first fifteen minutes of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories for the Playstation 2.

I received my copy of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories the other day. Despite being 100% pleased with the game I was spending playing Dragon Quest VIII (which, if you like old school video game RPGs and the design work of Akira Toriyama, you pretty much owe it to yourself to buy--half the monsters you encounter look like outtakes from Dr. Slump), I threw GTA:VCS into my console like it was bucket of water on some flaming curtains. That is the power the Grand Theft Auto franchise holds over somebody like me. I can't really say what I was thinking as I did so, because there wasn't a lot of rational thought going on at that point, but it was something like, "I'll just see what part of the city you start out in...."

Interestingly, the first thing I noticed playing GTA: VCS was the pain; my eyes hurt constantly the whole time I was playing it. After the clean cel-shaded goodness of DQ8, my brain couldn't quite understand why someone had smeared vaseline all over my TV tube so thoroughly. Also, the camera perspective made me feel like I had a blind spot on my left which I kept trying to compensate for. And, finally, the opening, after a lengthy credit sequence, is a helicopter landing at an army base, followed by your character walking into a military office and talking to his corrupt superior officer and getting a job to drive someplace. I've seen more dramatic openings in porn.

In fact, the opening dialogue kinda reminded me of bad '80s porn. GTA:VCS's opening goes roughly like this:

Corrupt Superior Office: Welcome to Vice City, Vance! You're gonna have a good time here!

Your Character: I don't care about a good time, sir. All I care about is my family. I had to enter the military to take care of them. I can't afford to mess that up. They're counting on me.

CSO: What? You won't mess anything up! I'm not talking about anything dangerous, I'm just talking about having a good time and making money!

[beat]

So, look. All I need you to do is go deliver a package for me to my friend on the docks. That's all! That shouldn't be a big deal, right?

YC: Well... okay.

Contrast this to bad '80s porn dialogue, which I recall running something like:

Corrupt Boyfriend/Film Producer/Talent Agent/Previously Absent Father Figure: Hey, baby! Welcome to [my sex club/ the sex industry/ the music industry/ my family estate], [Name of porn star]! You're gonna have a good time here!

Porn Star: I don't care about a good time, [boyfriend's name (usually Jake)/ Mr. (last name of producer/agent)/ Dad]. All I care about is [true love/ making it big/ becoming a star/ my horribly upset mother who sent me here]. So don't fuck it up for me!

CB/FP/TA/PAFF: What? Who said anything about fucking things up? I'm not talking about anything [kinky/ kinky/ kinky & demeaning/ kinky & demeaning & incestuous], I'm just talking about having a good time and [making money/ making money/ making money/ getting the family back together again]!

[beat]

So, look. All I need you to do is [blow me/ blow me/ blow me/ blow me and your brother Jake here]. That's all! That shouldn't be a big deal, right?

PS: Well...okay!

To me, the comparison is sadly apt--just as the "plot" in porn exists just to get the sex going, the "plot" in GTA:VCS is just an excuse to get you driving around as soon as possible and hooked in with the wrong crowd who'll give you missions. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing (I admit all I wanted was to start driving around the city to see what was different and hear what was on the radio--and while I can't tell you much on the first front, on the second I heard Japan, Marvin Gaye and, most satisfyingly, "Rock You Like A Hurricane" by The Scorpions), it's a far cry from the old days when Rockstar would start by ripping off the plot from their favorite crime movie then try to make you care about the character.

On the other hand, it's only the first fifteen minutes (or really, only the first five with a lot of driving around thrown in) of the game, and I didn't like Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories until about four or five hours in. And it's a budget title (cheaper than buying seven Brian Bendis comics) that was originally released, for Christ's sake, on a handheld and inexpensively ported over to a video game console reportedly on its last legs. So probably I should just shut up and enjoy the hot girl-on-girl-on-piano-in-recording-studio action while I can. But if you find yourself playing this game and feeling what Simon Pegg in Spaced describes as "a moment of clarity," take cold comfort in knowing that you're not alone.

Labels: Jeff

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AFTER THE CAPE #1: I have no idea whether it's intentional or not, but the first issue of this new three issue superhero series from Image (specifically from Jim Valentino's Shadowline imprint, and his plotting here is perhaps the best argument for his return to autobiographical comics yet) reminds me of nothing as much as a generic mid-'90s indie book. It's not just the content of the book; even the format - the thick, inky pages that stain your hands, the lack of additional content beyond the story itself and full-page previews of the next issue's cover, the attempt at a Bullpen Bulletin page that's set in bland Times New Roman type just large enough to look as if there wasn't enough text to fill the page normally - brings to mind Caliber or Trident books of my youth.

And that's not necessarily a good thing.

There's something that's missing about this book, and I'm not entirely sure what it is. I'm tempted to be a dick and say that it's "quality," but that's kind of cheap, and not entirely correct - The creators are definitely trying their best, but those efforts are somewhat misguided and unfocused, and the ultimate aim seems to be something unoriginal and unnecessary in today's environment. I mean, do we really need another story about superheroes with feet of clay and problems just like normal people, when the largest superhero publisher is pushing their entire line in that direction and doing it with the big name toys that we've known since we were children? The only way to make a book like that work if you're an indie publisher is to do something that the mainstream publishers can't, or won't - either take it farther, or do it better. On the evidence of this first issue, this series isn't looking to do either.

Howard Wong - who's listed as the creator of the book, but doesn't plot it, interestingly enough - gives us a script that's loaded with unsubtle scenes that don't hang together well enough to provide a consistent plot. We're shown that the superhero - Captain Gravity, whose very name sounds like an afterthought - is an alcoholic through a series of scenes with captions like "Hell one drink won't hurt" and "Nothing to worry about... it's just one drink." His good-natured wife, who straddles the line between trusting and naive, seems to miss that he's not only going to the office every day as he claims, but that he's also an alcoholic and criminal. We know this, because we have two unnamed characters talking about her behind her back: "Sad, isn't it? She still believes in him... How many more times is he going to put her through his bullshit? Breaks my heart, ya know?" More worryingly for the reader, the plot doesn't make sense, because none of the characters' actions are given any reason or context - How did the superhero become a criminal in the first place? And why? The story doesn't give an explanation, which seems lazy and dilutes the drama of what happens after the crime takes place, because we're not given any reason to care (Maybe an explanation is coming next issue? We're not given any reason to suspect that that's the case given the structure of this issue, but it's possible).

The art, by Marco Rudy, isn't entirely polished - The balance of black and white on the page is obviously "influenced" by Frank Miller, but it lacks the finesse that Miller brings, and the figures seem weightless and flat within the page; each texture is treated exactly the same in the way it's stylized from skin to metal to cloth, and therefore nothing grabs the eye or has any greater weight than anything else. Like the script, it's so close to being working, to being professional, that it's kind of frustrating that it's not there yet. And maybe that's what makes this book feel so reminiscent of a mid-90s indie book: Not the unoriginality, not the underwhelming attempt at superhero relevance, but the "not-ready-for-prime-time-just-yet" feeling. This isn't a bad book, per se - It's no Civil War: The Initiative - it's just not a good one. Eh, but nonetheless I want it to get better, in a weird way. Click Here to Read More...

Just one from me tonight, in order to say I did it:


EXILES #92: I swear to god there should be a Chris Claremont drinking game. Like when someone utters the phrase, "You're good... I'm better", you take a drink. Or when someone calls something a "Caper", you drink. Dude, even people who are ON capers don't call them capers. Rassen-frassen. The worst part is I have a soft spot for this book, this situation, these characters -- even when Judd was doing his Echoes-of-Claremont thing -- but this isn't where I want to read "real" Claremont, no I don't. EH.


More tomorrow.

-B Click Here to Read More...

I am completely ignoring everything Bri said in his last post, apart from the comment about Brave and The Bold, because it really is that enjoyable - I'll get to it later this week, but if you dig superheroes who don't frown or want to read an enjoyable Supergirl for a change, you should definitely pick it up. Right now, though, I'm going to do an Amy Whitehouse and get back to black.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #539: The main problem with this book isn't actually really a problem with the book at all, but with all the expectation that's been created around the thing. For months now, we've been told "Spidey puts on his black costume! Yes! His black costume! You're probably wondering why, aren't you? Why he'd put on his black costume! Well, the answer's in Amazing Spider-Man #539! Read that and know why he's putting on his black costume!," creating this expectation that the issue would - at least in part - be devoted to some revelation as to why he'd return to the costume he's been avoiding for almost 20 years.

And then the explanation for why he puts on the costume gets taken care of in three panels at the end of the book:

"I put this here a long time ago. I got rid of it in the first place because I thought it sent the wrong message. Maybe I kept it because there might come a day when I'd WANT to send that message. That the rules don't apply anymore. That the gloves are off. That I can't stop, can't BE stopped, until I find the people responsible for shooting May."

So, basically, he puts it on because he's pissed and thinks that he looks more bad-ass wearing it. Plus, it's slimming. But that doesn't really work as a shocking reveal that has been hyped for months - it's what's more or less been expected by the audience. But that isn't necessarily bad writing; doesn't it just show that J. Michael Straczynski is writing the same character as the fans want to read? Maybe it's bad hype because it created anticipation that the comic itself was never really meant to handle, if that makes sense. And that anticipation, that "There is an important reason why there's a return to the black costume! And the return is so important itself that we'll brand all the Spider-Man books with a 'Back in Black' logo to make people aware of it!" is so cynically manufactured, considering that we're all intelligent readers who know that the real reason he's wearing the costume again is because of Spider-Man 3 in a couple of months.

The other thing is, of course, that the internal reason doesn't really make sense in the comic world. Sure, it's a fairly generic "The gloves are off. No more Mister Nice Guy. Say Hello to my leetle friend" piece to show that everything is different and more serious for our hero now, and that genericness and lack of attention just shows off how unimportant the change in outfit really is to the actual plot, but in terms of *ahem* Spider-Man continuity, wasn't the reason that he abandoned the costume not because "it sent the wrong message" but because Mary-Jane was attacked by Venom and the sight of the black costume traumatized her? And didn't he, you know, destroy the costume, and not just hide it away in case he got grumpy later? I'm not a Spider-Man continuity expert - Matthew Craig, where are you? - but I feel that there's definitely an emotional thread here that's being ignored.

Anyway, the comic itself is Okay. We've seen all of this before - "Peter Parker is pushed too far by attacks on those he loves" is Stock Spider-Man Plot #23, after all - and there's nothing to really distinguish this version from any of the others other than its own sense of importance (Aunt May has even died before, so her potential death doesn't have the dramatic weight it's probably supposed to). The choice of Kingpin as main villain continues to be odd in light of what happened a couple of months ago in Daredevil, necessitating "This story takes place before Daredevil #93" captions that are oddly nostalgic, and Ron Garney's art is pleasantly readable. It's fine, but instantly forgettable, which may not what Marvel was intending, really, but is better than a lot of the other big Marvel comics recently. Success through mediocrity - It's the new Rock'n'Roll, apparently. Click Here to Read More...

"Schrodinger's Cap" is a term explaining how Captain America can be alive in one Marvel title while dead in another title that comes out the same week.

I should have something more substantial later today but right now I've got a couple of different deadlines breathing down the back of my neck. Really, though, you should check out the comedy gold that is Hibb's post below. Just beautiful.

Labels: Jeff

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I'm utterly dead after today's day of work -- not only did I have to get through the new books, but the photocopy of the new PREVIEWS (the "blackline") appeared today, so I had to power through that, deciding on what to list and what not on our next sub form so I could get it to Graeme so G knows WHAT to discuss in the new ONOMATOPOEIA.

Speaking of Graeme, since I know he's not likely to link-blog this one, but check out This thread on Millar World, where Millar evidentially decides Graeme is an internet stalker of some kind. I love this bit: "I think he's Scottish, though I've never actually met him, but the people who have say he's actually OK... until my name is mentioned. The very mention of my name has him, in their words, swivel-eyed with rage."

Yeah, man, I'll back that up -- SWIVEL-EYED WITH RAGE! Just mention Mark Millar in Graeme's presence and he turns beet-red. Thick black smoke starts pouring out of his ears and nose. His rage and anger is so great that he starts to make this peculiar humming/whistling noise, and if you don't interrupt him, the sound build until it actually makes him lift off the ground, and float around the room with rage. One eye twitches left, and the other one? Man, it just starts to spin in circles. First clockwise, then counter-clockwise, then it does this sort of backwards Zorro Z kind of thing, faster and faster until you think YOUR eyes are going to start doing it too if you keep looking at him. Milk will start to curdle around ol' McMillan if you say the "M-Word". Why, just saying "Mark" causes this anger-ray to radiate from the pits of G's soul, such that colors seem a little less bright, sounds a little more discordant. Banshees and Nessie alike flee in terror when Graeme is in his "Millar Rage".

How mad does he get? You really want to know? Man, Graeme gets SO mad that his hair actually starts to grow back in, JUST SO he can rip it out at the roots again, screaming "MILLAR THAT BASTARD, HE CAUSED ME TO LOSE MY HAIR!"

He's Lex Luthor to Mark Millar's Superboy. Yes.

I can't count the number of times I'm have to physically hold Graeme back (and it took me, Lester and Brill to wrestle him to the ground this one time!) when some one mentions his name. I can even recall this time we had to restrain him when we were discussing 300, and he wigged out: "No, Frank! We're talking about Frank Miller, man! PUT THE GUN DOWN!!!"

I'm even taking a chance with this post -- sometimes, just seeing The Infernal Name in print, I've been told he'll just put his hand through the monitor. He's gone through 20 this year alone.... and it's only March!

I live in daily fear. I really do. And thank god you've all been warned now -- DON'T SAY THAT NAME IN FRONT OF GRAEME MCMILLAN.

-B


PS: Seriously, it sounds like Millar and G have been in email contact, and have worked things out. Good. I think its pretty crazy insane that MM made that rant, and exhorted his readers to dig up every bad thing G ever said, in the first place.

Here's the thing though, and I'm just speaking for myself, if you don't want people to call you out on crazy batshit insane things you say on the internet, then, dunno, maybe you shouldn't say them. But when you say them EXPRESSLY TO CREATE CONTROVERSY, then maybe you shouldn't be too surprised when, uh, they create controversy. Or, if you prefer "controversy".

PPS: This is going to be a weird week because we don't have a Massive Book That Everyone Is Hounding Us For. Two weeks ago: CAPTAIN AMERICA #25. Last week: BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #1. This week...

...

...

Well, let's MAKE one, OK? Tomorrow morning, I want you to walk into your Friendly Local Comic Shop, and ask them for a copy of THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #2. I read my copy tonight on the bus ride home, and, I think I might have even liked #2 better than #1. There's a wonderful denseness to the narrative, lots and lots of things happen, and it's just lovely to look at. This is nothing less than a love letter to the DCU, and, it should probably be called MARK WAID'S DC UNIVERSE ADVENTURES. Maybe add an "ALL STAR" before that, even. This is quality superhero comics, with heart and soul, and exactly the right amount of FUN. There's not a single drop of blood in this comic, and yet there's plenty of punching and 'splodyKicks and action. This is everything that every book in the DCU should read like. And its EXCELLENT.

(I know I've oversold it now, but really, it's a barrel of fun)

OK, going away from computer now.

-B




PPPS: Slowly, I turned....

Hm, let me try one more thing:



Neat, it worked! Click Here to Read More...

So, I'm working on the New Comics part of the new Onomatopoeia (For those who don't live in San Francisco and/or have never been in the store to know what I'm talking about, Onomatopoeia is the free monthly Comix Experience newsletter thing; I do a bunch of blurbs about the new comics that can be preordered that month, Peter Wong does a column called Lost in Pictopia, and most importantly, Jeff Lester from this very parish does a column called Fanboy Rampage! - He came up with it first; I stole it without realizing it, because I am unoriginal and a pilferer - that is more often than not the funniest thing you'll read of a month. Really, it's a rather wonderful little newsletter thing and you should all check it out), and it strikes me how insanely that Marvel are throwing things out there. I mean, as of June, there are going to be five ongoing Avengers books. Five! There weren't even that many in the 1990s, weren't there? There are also nine regular Spider-Man books (Amazing, Sensational, Friendly Neighborhood, Ultimate, Loves Mary Jane, Marvel Adventures, Family, Spider-Girl and New Avengers, if you're wondering about my math), and if you're an X-Men completist, then things get even uglier, because June will see you picking up the following ongoing books:

X-Men
Uncanny X-Men
New X-Men
X-Factor
Wolverine
Wolverine: Origins
Cable/Deadpool
Exiles
Excalibur
X-Men: First Class
Ultimate X-Men
Black Panther (because Storm is now a regular cast member; she also rejoins the X-Men in June's Uncanny, according to the solicits and Ed Brubaker's comments at Wizard World LA that she's in the book for the foreseeable future)
Fantastic Four (because Storm's now a regular cast member of this book, as well. She's the new Wolverine!)
New Avengers (because Wolverine's a member)

And that's missing Astonishing, because - no surprise - Astonishing isn't shipping in June. I missed out the mini-series and guest-shots for the month, as well.

The moral of this story is either that it doesn't pay to be an X-Men completist in financial terms as well as spiritual ones, or that Marvel is literally out to flood the market with their product without really taking much notice of its audience. Maybe the most obvious example of this currently is the surprise hit of last year, Marvel Zombies, which had three separate books solicited for May (Marvel Zombies: Dead Days, Marvel Zombies Vs. Army of Darkness and Black Panther, which is hitching itself to the bandwagon for a storyline). Way to run a sleeper hit into the ground, Marvel.

Sure, you could make similar noises about DC. To use DC's biggest franchise, a Batman completist would "only" be picking up eleven books in June, and that's not counting trades. But Marvel feels like a much worse offender - In June, DC are launching four new series, three of which are in their CMX line, but Marvel are launching more than ten, including three different "events" (Major Arcana; World War Hulk and Annihilation: Conquest. That's not even mentioning Endangered Species, the X-book back-up crossover that's really just a 17-part lead-in to another crossover event that's starting later this year).

I dunno; I'm not a retailer like Hibbs nor anything other than a generic loudmouth on the internet, and maybe there's an eager audience for all of these books, but it strikes me that when you get a four-issue miniseries about Daredevil's dad's boxing career, then just maybe Marvel is putting out too many books. Am I overreacting because I have to write about all of them, or does anyone else think that there's something horribly familiar and '90s-esque about the sheer volume of product these days? Click Here to Read More...

This is where the funny would go, if I wasn't up and writing this before six in the god-damned a.m.

TEEN TITANS #44: As long as we get an unfucked-up Batgirl out of this, they can totally get away with the "fortunately, I have the antidote in my utility belt right here" trick. Hell, Robin could use a syringe full of Magic Wishing Juice and I'd go for it. I'm surprised that Hibbs didn't like this as I thought it did a great job of giving each Titan their opposite number, which is very Silver Age. (I know he wasn't happy with all the torture, but that's, you know, Claremont's X-Men which was the inspiration for the Wolfman-Perez revival in the first place, right?) My only real problem with the book is that it always feels like it's been three months since I read the last issue--which speaks to either a bad publishing schedule or how little I really care about the title. But I'd give it a low Good, at least.

THUNDERBOLTS #112: That one page with Stan Lee just about made me laugh myself sick, which tempts me to bump the whole book up to Good, but why does it feel so formulaic after, what, three issues?

I don't quite agree with Hibbs, by the way: although Suicide Squad is a cult fan favorite, I don't get much of an impression anyone at Marvel is even aware of it. (Was Joe Quesada even in comics when Suicide Squad was being published? Was Ellis?) The presence of all their "A-list" supervillains (as opposed to the Squad's more expendable C-list makes me think they're taking their inspiration from elsewhere (although if it was pitched as "It's like Identity Disc, but written by Warren Ellis!" that'd be really sad). And I think maybe they are gonna be messing more with these characters (I think Venom will be around for a while but poor ol' Mac Gargan won't) than Hibbs might think.

And yet, after making such a spirited defense, I have to admit the whole enterprise feels like a car that's already running on vapors, coasting down a long hill at a pace steady enough to avoid all the stoplights, in the hopes there's a gas station down there in the valley somewhere.

WONDER WOMAN #5: What happened on that last page? The guy killed himself by exploding? His ex-wife killed him? Wonder Woman pulled a Maxwell Lord? And the rest of the issue seemed really weird to me: "Once I saw a woman flying, even though I myself cannot fly, I knew I could accomplish anything!" suggests to me that mainstream media in the DCU has more difficulty with powerful women than the media here. I may have been especially resistant to this issue because (a) not reading Newsarama, only Hibbs informing me in advance kept me from expecting the wrap-up of Heinberg's story; and (b) I kept imagining Dave Sim making fun of all the women in the issue but I thought this was cheaty Awful stuff. As Hibbs would say: Foo.

PICK OF THE WEEK: BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #1: less filling, but tastes great.

PICK OF THE WEAK: GHOST RIDER #9, or maybe JLA CLASSIFIED #36, depending on what you hold dear in your life and would thus account for which book you find more blasphemous.

TRADE PICK: Yeah, JAMES KOCHALKA'S AMERCIAN ELF v2. The garish color thing is rough--it's like reading a book printed on Fruit Stripe gum--and keeps you from reading for an extended period of time without your eyeballs literally throbbing, but so far the content is exceptional--touching, funny, insightful and deeply human. Although I was worried baby Eli might tone down the Kochenanigans, there still seems to be the right balance of profanity, drunken weeping, observational humor and child-like wonder to keep the reader delighted. Excellent stuff and worth hunting up, but find your sunglasses first.

Labels: Jeff

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Weirdly unmotivated to do any work today -- I've been largely pretending I have a day off. BUt I said I would, so I will, and here's another couple of reviews from last week's books. Tomorrow, the new cycle starts again!!

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: CYLON APOCALPYSE #1: More of a "retail intelligence" thing than anything else, but man am I getting frustrating by how DE is handling (or having to handle, your call) it's BSG books. Mixing new and old, putting multiple titles in one week, and not being clear as to what's what, really.

Here's the solicit copy for this series:

"DYNAMITE ENTERTAINMENT presents an all-new, Battlestar Galactica event featuring the DYNAMITE Debut of Javier Grillo-Marxuach (ya know, the guy behind such hit shows as Lost and Medium) as he unleashes the Cylon Apocalypse!

Dual revelations rock the rag-tag fleet as a routine Viper patrol puts them on the edge of a bizarre scene - Cylon Raiders attacking one of their own Basestars! As the Cylon Basestar crashes into an ocean-covered world, Adama and Starbuck discover a bizarre creature that appears to be a Cylon Centurion engulfed by diseased flesh. The Cylons are sick and the apocalypse has begun!

Grillo-Maruach is joined by Battlestar artist Carlos Rafael, along with colourist Carlos Lopez for this special comic book event! Featured covers artists include: the legendary Michael Golden, the modern master Pat Lee, colonial warrior Carlos Rafael and master of all things time and space Jim Starlin! Don’t miss it!"

Which "series" of BSG would you suppose this was from, based upon reading that? Especially given that "Classic" BSG is marketed as, well, "Classic Battlestar Galactica". ANd there's the convenient "all-new" in sentence #1.

Well, it's not the modern version, it's "classic". But, of course, I ordered it like a "modern" BSG comic (we're selling roughly quadruple the # of copies of "modern" versus "classic") Double-plus foo.

The comic itself? Ah, pretty deeply EH.



THUNDERBOLTS #112: I liked the first issue pretty OK, and I thought issue #2 was even stronger, but the third one here was really pretty weak. In theory (though never claimed, lets be fair) this is Marvel's version of SUICIDE SQUAD, but issue #3 makes me think, no, not at all one tiny bit -- the beauty of SS was that anything (cast, circumstance, etc.) could change issue by issue, if not page by page... but given the cast of characters here the "most interesting" ones (Goblin, Venom, Bullseye, Speedball) can't really change, since they have other roles they'll have to go off into sooner or later; and the ones that COULD change (say, Radioactive Man) probably won't, because they don't appear to have any interesting hooks in the first place. I suspect that by the end of the first year, pretty much everything will still be in the same place, while that was never true for SS, or, really, even the "old" THUNDERBOLTS. So: EH.




My PICK OF THE WEEK this week? Probably (flaws and all) BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #1

PICK OF THE WEAK: Dunno, think I'm going to go with TEEN TITANS #44 since its mostly torture and magic potions.

My BOOK/TP OF THE WEEK is easily JAMES KOCHALKA'S AMERCIAN ELF v2. Here's a rare case where a smaller book actually helps -- this isn't something you can sit down and "read" in any case, from start to finish.... best you can really do is, dunno, 4-5 pages at once before you start to get overwhelmed. My big downside is the book being in color. I really don't think it adds a thing, and the color wasn't designed for print, or with any idea of how the pages would go together, and the result is just a big garish mess that deeply deeply hurts your eyes when you look at it. STILL< there's some really wonderfully touching and human observations in here, and is an absolute hoot and belongs in your funny book collection. Jeff Lester had THE BEST line about the printing, but hopefully he's saving that up for tomorrow or Wednesday or something, and I shant spoil it.

(though I want to)

What did you think?

-B Click Here to Read More...

Yeah, I took a few days off, but I'll have another review post here before the end of the day. In the meantime, here's what Comix Experience is meant to be recieving this week:

30 DAYS OF NIGHT SPREADING THE DISEASE #4 (OF 5)
52 WEEK #46
A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #53 (A)
AFTER THE CAPE #1 (OF 3)
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #539
ANITA BLAKE VH GUILTY PLEASURES #5 (OF 12)
AQUAMAN SWORD OF ATLANTIS #50 (NOTE PRICE)
ARCHIE & FRIENDS #108
ARCHIE DIGEST #233
ARMY @ LOVE #1
BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL #4
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA ZAREK #3
BIRDS OF PREY #104
BRAVE AND THE BOLD #2
CABLE DEADPOOL #38
CAPTAIN AMERICA #25 CW
CHECKMATE #12
CIVIL WAR BATTLE DAMAGE REPORT
CLASSIC BATTLESTAR GALACTICA #5
COBB MAGAZINE
CONAN #38
CONVENTION CONFESSIONAL #3
CRIMINAL MACABRE TWO RED EYES #4 (OF 4)
DARKMAN VS ARMY OF DARKNESS #4 (OF 4)
DEADMAN #8
DEATHBLOW #4
DETECTIVE COMICS #830
DINOWARS JURASSIC WAR OF THE WORLDS #4 (OF 4)
DRAGONLANCE CHRONICLES VOL 3 KURTH CVR A #1 (OF 12)
EXILES #92
EXTERMINATORS #15
FLASH THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE #10
GHOST IN THE SHELL 1.5 HUMAN ERROR PROCESSOR #6 (OF 8)
GIRLS #23
HELLBLAZER #230
HERO BY NIGHT #1 (OF 4)
ION #12 (OF 12)
JOHN ROMITA JR 30TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL
JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #4
MAGICIAN APPRENTICE #6 (OF 12)
MARVEL ADVENTURES AVENGERS #11
MINESHAFT #19
MS MARVEL #13
OMEGA MEN #6 (OF 6)
ORSON SCOTT CARDS WYRMS #2 (OF 6)
PUNISHER PRESENTS BARRACUDA MAX #2 (OF 5)
RAMAYAN 3392 AD #7
RED MENACE #5 (OF 6)
RUNAWAYS SAGA
SADHU #6
SCOOBY DOO #118
SHADOWPACT #11
SHRUGGED #5
SIMPSONS COMICS #128
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #173
SPIDER-MAN LOVES MARY JANE #16
SPIRIT #4
SUPERGIRL #15
TESTAMENT #16
TMNT MOVIE PREQUEL 1 RAPHAEL
TMNT MOVIE PREQUEL 2 MICHELANGELO
TRANSFORMERS SPOTLIGHT SOUNDWAVE
ULTIMATE POWER #4 (OF 9)
WALKING DEAD #36
WISDOM #4 (OF 6)
WITCHBLADE SHADES OF GRAY #1 (OF 4)
WONDER MAN #4 (OF 5)
X-23 TARGET X #4 (OF 6)
X-FACTOR #17
X-MEN #197
X-MEN FIRST CLASS #7 (OF 8)
Y THE LAST MAN #55

Books / Mags / Stuff
ANIMATION MAGAZINE APR 2007 #171
BUDDY DOES JERSEY GN
CINEFEX #109 MAR 2007
COMICS BUYERS GUIDE JUNE 2007 #1629
COMPLETE JON SABLE FREELANCE VOL 6 TP
DEADMAN VOL 1 DEADMAN WALKING TP
DISNEY JR VOL 3 LION KING GN
FAFHRD AND THE GRAY MOUSER TP
FLASH FASTEST MAN ALIVE TP
FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN VOL 2 MYSTERY DATE TP
GLOOMCOOKIE VOL 5 FINAL CURTAIN TP
GUNSMITH CATS OMNIBUS VOL 1 TP
IT RHYMES WITH LUST TP
JUXTAPOZ APR 2007 VOL 15 #4
KUROSAGI CORPSE DELIVERY SERVICE VOL 3 TP
LEADING MAN VOL 1 TP
NEW AVENGERS VOL 4 COLLECTIVE TP
PHOENIX VOL 10 TP
ROBIN WANTED TP
SAVAGE DRAGON VOL 11 RESURRECTION TP
SHADOWPACT THE PENTACLE PLOT TP
SHOWCASE PRESENTS HAWKMAN VOL 1 TP
SPIDER-MAN BIRTH OF VENOM TP
SWALLOW BOOK THREE
TOMARTS ACTION FIGURE DIGEST #152
WOLVERINE WEAPON X PREMIERE HC


What looks good to you?

-B Click Here to Read More...

NEW AVENGERS #28: Those missing pages from Civil War: The Initiative pay off here as the New Avengers try to get Cap's body and find themselves confronted by, uh, the Newer Avengers. Only problem is, Bendis wraps this as a flashback which he ends on a cliffhanger so he can go back to the present time and bring that to a cliffhanger which, to give Bendis the benefit of the doubt, I'll chalk up as experimentation instead of plain ol' bad storytelling. Like the other Bendis book this week, nice art saves it from being worse than Eh.

PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #5: Ooooh, no. Would've been perfectly fine as, say, a follow-up to a big Punisher-centric multi-issue story arc, but on the heels of another issue where Frank barely appeared? This book feels to me like it's been mired in crossovers and spinning its wheels since the first issue, and unless the "Cap's mask" storyline brings Castle back to the forefront of the book, I could see readers leaving it in droves. Mind you, I actually liked the cop-who-wasn't-a-cop (and how it might provide some counterpoint to the upcoming "Cap-who-isn't-a-Cap" storyline) and found myself involved in his story, but I also found myself flipping through it impatiently, annoyed that I was having to play "Spot the Title Character" again. Eh.

SPIDER-MAN REIGN #4: The Sandman and daughter stuff, which came more-or-less out of left field worked surprisingly well, and gives me hope that after Andrews has moved on from this (decent selling, widely noticed) fiasco, there'll be place to develop all the promising stuff and put the overly-influential influences aside. I thought the rest of it was still relatively awful, though, but that's just playing out the hand that's been dealt. Let's call it a Eh wrap-up to an Awful miniseries.

SUPERMAN #660: A very nice, almost Astro-City approach to a Superman story. I don't necessarily care much for the Prankster, but there's a bunch of neat touches here that made this highly OK. If everyone could do done-in-one fill-in style stories as well as Busiek, DC would have a lot less annoyed fans on its hands. (And, it probably goes without saying, the rest of the non-event superhero market would be in a much better place.)

Labels: Jeff

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Hmmm. Keep thinking I had some interesting comic-related dream to tell you about, but I don't remember it now. I'm re-reading Rick Veitch's really staggering Rarebit Fiends collections, the first two volumes of which are pretty much a secret history of the comics market in the early '90s and I keep coming across all these deeply prescient bits (as so often seems to be the case with dream journals, particularly if you're almost hysterically suggestible and prone to magical thinking, as I am). My favorite bit so far is Veitch stumbling across a back room in a dilapidated house where the DC Editors are having a meeting. "We've come up with an idea that's going to save direct market," one of the editors says excitedly. "We call it 'The Death Of The Death Of Superman!'"

Copyright 1995, and as relevant now as it was then, True Believer.

CIVIL WAR: THE CONFESSION: Yeah, everything Graeme said, but also, between this and New Avengers #28 (and kinda Mighty Avengers #1), it's clear that Bendis is entering a new stage of formal experimentation in his storytelling. Unfortunately, his Pulp Fictiony twist in this issue sucked so hard, I'm worried we're in for a nasty streak of "Hey, what if you did the entire issue showing nothing but the characters' feet!" and "Wait a minute, I got it! All the panels are color coded and told out of sequence, so the only way the issue makes sense is if the readers cut up the entire book and pastes the color coded panels in sequence themselves! Fucking A!" As long as Alex Maleev is drawing it, it'll at least be Eh, no matter how bad the actual experiments turn out.

DAMNED #5: Uh...what? I seem to be having a bit of trouble with last page revelations this week (did anyone figure out what the hell that last page of Wonder Woman meant?) so it may just be me but that last page (that read like a set-up for the next mini) just didn't jibe with anything else I was following (unless that's Worm sister, done in by the deal Eddie cut?)

That one may-undo-all-my-ideas-about-the-story page aside, I thought this was pretty Good, with the conclusion relying on a twist outside the Miller's Crossing/Glass Key template. In fact, it makes me eager for a follow-up to see what the creative team can do without following somebody else's templates (presumably).

DETECTIVE COMICS #829: Blah-blah-blah and then stuff blows up. The art is pretty, however, and, to be fair, the idea of someone who can spray liquid plastic explosive would be pretty cool in a Die Hard 4 kind of way. But it's rare when the comic book 'splodey is half as interesting to look at as any but the lousiest explosion on film. And is it really my idea of an interesting Batman story? It really isn't. Pretty art bumps it up to Eh.

GHOST RIDER #9: So at one point, Lucifer (who has, uh, taken possession of Jack O'Lantern's corpse?) blows Ghost Rider's skull apart with a shotgun, to which Ghost Rider mystically reassambles his skull and keeps on fighting. Then, a few pages later, Ghost Rider is riding on his bike, gets pinned by the take-no-prisoners sherrif who points a bad-ass assault gun at GR's head. Does Way not know the first scene robs the second scene of any tension? How could he not know that?

I also wasn't thrilled by the scene where two kids are being chased down a road by a floating flaming pumpkin head and one of them decides to jump off a bridge into the water. If the flaming pumpkin head had been attached to a guy on a motorcycle, then I could follow that but--a floating flaming pumpkin head? (Now that I think about it, who'd fucking run from a floating flaming pumpkin head? What are you scared of? Getting pumpkin scent stuck in your clothes?)

Ugh. Even a few cool looking panels from the art team can't prevent this from getting a Crap rating. This book is astonishingly lousy.

GREEN ARROW #72: Guess Judd didn't get the "kinder, gentler OYL Batman" memo. And this issue gets a big ol' Eh because Mr. Winick has played "The Red Hood could've killed [character], but The Hood's goal was to screw with [character's] head all along" one too many times. Time to poop or get off the pot, Mr. Winick!

JLA CLASSIFIED #36: Dan Slott gets reduced to co-plotting credit and Dan Jurgens gets the writing and layout credit, and the book goes from Eh to Awful. Unbelievably fucking dull, compounded by a badly done plot twist--one of the Red Kings has fallen in love with Wonder Woman which allows for his undoing--that had no reason to come out of nowhere considering the total pagecount of this dragged-out story. On the plus side, the spinning of Gardner Fox in his grave will probably power Dan Jurgens' pencil sharpener for a while...so there's that, I guess.

MOON KNIGHT #8: Filled with scenes that start strong and then fizzle (I particularly like where Cap gives his "Civil War" speech and then goes, "Don't get me wrong. I'm not here to recruit you. In fact, you're the most compelling reason I've seen for forced registration yet! So keep your nose clean, or I'll--hey, is that the time? Sonuvabitch, I'm missing Fear Factor! See ya!") but, despite me knowing better, the twisted fucked-up superhero thing is still working for me (like, when MK hammers in those crescent moons with his truncheon, or the slaughtered corpse chanting "Kill him, kill him, kill him" while Cap is talking.) But, really, the shit going on here is way beyond Marvel Knights material. Move this title to Max, take it out of the regular MU, and get the writer into rehab for his cough syrup addiction so we can actually have something happen in this damn book. I'm giving it an OK even though, as I said, I should know better.

Labels: Jeff

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So, Jeff complains (below) that this page is full of essays and that we can't skate by by just complaining that things suck anymore. The following is my attempt to prove him wrong, because sometimes I just want to phone it in.

NEW AVENGERS #28: Maybe I'm just getting beaten down by the constant world of pain that is mainstream Marvel these days, but this was surprisingly enjoyable. Not so much for the main plot, which leaves me relatively cold, but instead the smaller moments - Luke Cage buying milk, the Dr. Strange scenes (especially the cloaking of the Sanctum Sanctorum, which I'm sure that I've misspelt), the Silver Samurai's choice of movie. Bendis is clearly enjoying himself on this book, and it's more apparent than it's been on his other series. Less immediately apparent is whether Lenil Yu is a suitable choice for the book, but I'm completely fascinated by his current style, which looks like early-Enigma-era Duncan Fegredo inking over Kevin Nowlan pencils (dig the pout on Wolverine as he sniffs at the end of the issue). A high Okay.

PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #5: While I get that Matt Fraction may love the Punisher, he still seems to be writing a book that works around the character as opposed to starring the character. This issue is a good example, with the Punisher himself only appearing in what essentially amounts to a cameo in a story about Bridges and a beat cop in New York City. It's interesting to see Marvel trail this book as featuring a Punisher who tries to replace Captain America, because there's something about this issue in particular that makes this an especially American book, focusing on one character's response to 9/11 and, amazingly enough, the Stamford disaster that started off Civil War. It's a tricky balancing act that works only because the superhero fallout from Stamford is ignored - Once you start pointing out that, in the Marvel Universe, 9/11 is apparently less important than the explosion of a small Connecticut city, you're in a bad place where a real tragedy is pushed into second place by a sales-grab, which leaves a slightly bad taste in the mouth. Nonetheless, this series is continually better than I expect, especially when it zigs instead of zags in its focus as it does here. Okay.

SPIDER-MAN: REIGN #4: Yet another issue of DKR: WTF, and luckily, the last one. Too much of the intended emotional impact here comes out of nowhere (The kid is the Sandman's daughter? And has superpowers? Wait, what?), or rely on readings of the characters that are pretty specific and not necessarily what the original creators intended - So much of this series seems to rely on the idea that Peter felt that Mary-Jane pitied him instead of loved him for who he really was, which is an interesting take, but one that I'm not sure is really supported in the original stories. The ending is fascinating, however; success relying on the destruction of a tower is an interesting climax for a story that felt so affected by 9/11. Following from that, there seemed something anti-climactic about the series ending with Spider-Man up and about and protecting New York again. Sure, it fitted the Dark Knight model, but somehow works less well here. Eh, but sadly missing the thrill of radioactive spider-spunk.

SUPERMAN #660: Yes, I know that this is the second straight month of fill-ins on this title, but Kurt Busiek makes it work by following the Silver Age model of using Superman as incidental character in his own stories (also a trick that Busiek uses successfully in his Astro City books), and writing about the way Superman affects other people's lives. There's nothing earth-shattering about the story or art, but it's perfectly enjoyable and perfectly Good nonetheless - A sign of how strong the Superman books are these days, when even the fill-in issues are stronger than many other books on the market.

WONDER WOMAN #5: The infamous fill-in issue, replacing the long-awaited conclusion to Allen Heinberg's relaunch of the character. It's unspectacular but solidly Eh, being preachy yet confused in its political message (Was the moral of the story that violence is bad, but suicide is good as long as it's bad guys who do it?). I hadn't noticed, as Brian pointed out, that there's no explanation as to why this isn't the last part of the Heinberg arc anywhere in the book, because I am part of the Newsarama-readin' (and writin') clique, but he's right; it's something that someone at DC should've noticed before the book got sent out. Another continuation of the ongoing clusterfuck that is the relaunched Wonder Woman, then; it'll be interesting to see what happens to the book if/when Jodi Picoult gets the book on a regular schedule. Will we all lose interest without the car crash element?

PICK OF THE WEEK overall is probably, I dunno, Superman I guess. Is that a sign that it was a pretty weak week? PICK OF THE WEAK is Civil War: The Confession, which was just unnecessary - I was listening to one of Brian Bendis's Wordballoon podcasts the other day, and he was talking about the misconception in his eyes that Marvel has contempt for the their audience. He said that the opposite was true, and that everyone involved in the company is really trying their hardest on what they work on, because they're very conscious that people are paying money for things that have their names on them... If only that was obvious in the books themselves, you know? TRADE OF THE WEEK, I have no answer for - I didn't read any trades all week, and couldn't even tell you which trades actually came out this week. Instead, I'll recommend Live From New York, the oral history (written oral history?) of Saturday Night Live, that I just finished rereading this week. It's much better if you stop before the last couple of chapters, but the first half of the book, concentrating on the first decade of the show's history, is well-worth the price of admission.

Next week: Runaways Saga comes out, which is co-written by a friend. I'll try and be nice about it. Click Here to Read More...

Back when I first started co-writing these with Hibbs (and although it feels like forever, was really only about five years ago), I would sit down with a pile of the books in alphabetical order, read each book, write a review immediately after finishing it, and then move onto the next. It took forever, and usually I'd have to break the work into two different readings or else I'd get incredible headaches, and I could pretty much only do reviews every other month because at the end of that session it'd take at least ten days before I could even begin to look at comics for fun. And although I was seeing Edi at the time, I was single, living on my own and so had countless empty hours to spend on comic reviews and crippling migraines.

Over time, I got a method that worked pretty well--read a ton, write it a day or two later, fire and forget, and thank readers when they pointed out that I called the protagonist of Ex Machina Tony Millionaire for the entire paragraph.

So I'm understandably reluctant to go down that path again, even though while I was reading books at the store on Friday, I was thinking "Oh, shit! I'm never gonna remember anything about this book by Sunday! Hell, I won't remember anything about it by this afternoon! But I can't go back to the old method; it'll kill me!" But, obviously, I can't write intelligent, funny paragraphs about books every day if I can't remember a fucking thing about them, can I?

Hibbs had a sort of similar moment at the store yesterday, where he looked at me and said, "Yeah, the page is full of essays now. I can't just sit down and write, 'This story sucks! Blah-bloo-bloo-bloo!' It'd look stupid--actually, I should say it looks even more stupid--next to all those well thought out opinions n' shit!" So I know I'm not going through this alone--obviously, we all can't be sleek, sexy Graeme McMillanauts, exploring the heavenly proscenium arch of comics incisiveness--but it's gonna take some time before I feel like I've hit my stride under the reign of our self-imposed daily content overlords. After five years, I'm sure it's good for me to shake things up. On the other hand, I read 18 comics (and one trade yesterday) and I've gotta say something cogent over the next week about 'em? No wonder people started scanning old comics pages and posting them on the Internet!

Right, right, enough stalling. So, anyway:

52 WEEK #45: I hope the taste of "nah, I just don't buy it" washes out of my month quickly, because I couldn't tell which parts of this I wasn't buying because of last week's plot-hammery renunciation by Isis, and which parts of it, well, just weren't buyable. I spent an absurd amount of time grousing to Hibbs about whether Black Adam, like some deathly version of Santa Claus, could speed around an entire country and kill everyone. (Bri for his part mentioned Johnny Bates' destruction of London in Miracleman and then more or less left it at that, content to watch me sputter about like an idiot fanboy.) If it wasn't for Greg Rucka's incredibly satisfying interview at CBR this week--which restored a certain amount of faith and a tremendous amount of respect for everyone directly involved with this book--I'd be even more Eeyoreish about what the next seven weeks will bring than I am now. This issue was still pretty Eh, though.

BLADE #7: Either I'm gaining more appreciation for his work, or Chaykin seems to have shaken off a lot of his recent doldrums, working harder to make his art serve the story rather than vice-versa. Narratively, the book is constructed so the Blade scenes hurtle along and the flashbacks are left to carry any additional resonance and it's a nice way to pick up each issue and feel like shit is happening...but I wonder if anything really is happening other than big fights, lovely looking flashbacks, and strewn seeds that may or may not flower into sub-plots. On the one hand, as long as it's done well, what more do you need from a superhero comic? On the other, without some sort of narrative thrust tied to the character's actions (as opposed to reactions), I don't know if it'll ever break out of the high end of OK. Maybe it doesn't need to.

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #1: Tell you what. I'll give you my review and you can decide what caliber of Buffy fan I am.

If nothing else, this issue with its interior narration helped distinguish the comic book Buffy of Season 8 from the TV Buffy of Season 7 and that's a very good thing. Why? Because Sarah Michelle Gellar sucked ass on that season 7 of Buffy, that's why.

Admittedly, I thought there was an assload of problems with Seasons 7, not the least of which was Whedon's love of the "I am the boss and right or wrong you will do what I say because I am the boss" speech which he used too much in both Season 7 and in Firefly (and probably reflects the kind of frustrations he was having during that period trying to oversee three shows), but Sarah Michelle Gellar's inability to radiate anything other than "I really don't want to be here" killed Season 7 for me.

Don't get me wrong, SMG was a far better actress than they ever could have hoped for when the show came out, and she really nailed a lot of moments of vulnerability and heartbreak and humor and bravado over the seasons, but somewhere along the line she obviously wanted to get out and make the jump to movies and couldn't, and she stopped paying attention to her craft: in that last season, I could've watched any given scene and predicted "okay, she's gonna frown and cross her arms...now" with 95% accuracy.

So what I really enjoyed about this first issue was having a character that felt like Buffy but didn't have that air of Sarah Michelle Gellar-ness to it. The Buffy in this issue really felt like a leader (as opposed to the whiny, self-righteous Buffy of Season 7 who kept insisting that she was a leader), someone self-confident with a sense of humor but a tendency to fixate on the bad things. Because this issue gave me that, I'd give it a Good (despite Whedon's writing coming across as too self-pleased, despite the complaints Hibbs and Graeme had, despite the fact that this'll read a million times better in the trade than in singles) and I look forward to more. I really do.

Labels: Jeff

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GRIFTER/MIDNIGHTER #1: I'm not sure that I've ever actually read a Chuck Dixon comic before. I guess that I must've; wasn't he all over DC and the Batbooks in particular in the mid-to-late '90s? I read the first Robin mini-series, and they were probably Chuck Dixon, right? Nothing that sticks in my mind, anyway, and nothing that I can think of since Chuck came to the fore as one of comics' foremost conservatives. Bearing his personal politics in mind - and read this for some idea of what his personal politics are - how do you think he deals with DC's highest profile gay character? Let's evesdrop on this conversation between Apollo, Midnighter's boyfriend, and another offpanel random cast member:

"What was the function of this machine?"

"Best guess? Some sort of mindscrewing device, to use the technical term."

"Well, if that's the case, trust me - - Midnighter was on top."

Well, I'm sure that was just one particular...

"They took me because I was the weakest one of us. And my big-hearted lover comes to rescue me."

"It's not like that."

"You're damn right it's isn't. I'm not the convenient hostage here. I'm not the little wife. And you know that better than anyone."

Yes, it's true: Chuck Dixon can't write dialogue to save his life. Oh, and he wants us to know that Midnighter may be gay, but he's definitely masculine and in charge, so no-one think anything about the characters Dixon's willing to write, alright? It's an awkward moment, because you kind of get the idea that Dixon is trying, but that almost makes things worse - Again, like I said, I'm unfamiliar with Dixon's normal output, but somehow I doubt that he writes heterosexual characters talking about being tops or making sure that their lovers know which one is the dominant one in the relationship (He probably leaves that for Chris Claremont). That said, though, it's nowhere near the worst thing about this issue; that would probably be the fact that the story doesn't really make any sense, or perhaps the sudden and unexpected introduction of a killing-terrorists-in-the-Philippines plot that leads to the comic world's least suspenseful cliffhanger. Hibbs was right: there's something off in the pacing of this book, to the point where it's two-thirds a Midnighter book, and then BAM suddenly there's Grifter is what seems to be pages out of another comic altogether. Obviously, the two stories will interconnect at some point, but what makes the break all the more obvious in this first issue is that there's no attempt whatsoever to bridge the two stories for the reader. There's a lack of... care, maybe? or attention, perhaps? in the transition, as if Dixon was literally just hacking it out with no craft slurring Here's yer goddamn funnybook with yer gay guy, ya lousy bums, as he throws the script on the editor's table.

As if to underscore that, there's no introduction to the characters for readers unfamiliar with them. I've seen Grifter in a few comics before, but I had no idea that he could control people's minds before... At least, I think that's what he's doing - It's really not that clearly explained, nor is what's happening in all of the Authority scenes (What is Jenny doing, and how?)... Again, another new book that's being aimed entirely at the existing fans, when it could easily have been retooled to be more open for the new and relatively new like me.

Because, really, that's all I'm looking for: Comics made just for me. This Crap isn't quite what I'm looking for, not just yet. Click Here to Read More...

How weird is it that I skipped a day of daily blogging, and even *I* didn't notice it? (though, honestly, I'm clearly the weak link in this chaain insofar as something something GOD DAMN RIGHT goes)

CIVIL WAR: THE CONFESSION: I literally can't add anything to what Graeme said. That's probably the best single-book review I've ever read here on the CRITIC. There's not a word there I'd disagree with, though I might have said "due to the loveliness that is Maleev's art, this is right on the cusp between AWFUL and EH. Though, no, really, it's AWFUL"

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (Season 8) #1:I watched all 7 seasons of the TV show over the course of.... oh, nine months or so? I really admired it. And I've been tempted 3 or 4 times, to invest in the complete series (it will probably have to drop under $80 to get me to bite, however -- its not like I don't already have hundreds of hours of TV on disk that I'm unlikley to watch again until Ben is, dunno, 6 or 8 or something), but it's not like I'm an uber-fan or anything.

I really liked this first issue, however. It felt very comfortable and right.

If I have any complaints, they can be summed as three points:

1) It felt like just the opening 5 minutes before the credits. Which is fine in a lot of ways, but I'm afraid that BuffyFans that are New Comics Readers might be a *smidge* disapointed. I wonder about the structure of this, too -- not really sure how long Joss is on for (ICV2 says 6 issues, but this suprisingly in-depth TV Guide interview says 4 issues, with the "Season" running "25-30" issues.

I hope ICV2 is right, because it feels like 1/6th of a story, and not 1/4.

I'm also saddened by the concept this is only 25-30 issues. Let's say we're talking about 4 issue arcs, and it runs to #32 -- that's only 8 "episodes", compared to a normal, what, 22 in a "season" of TV? Of course, the reason that I am "saddened" is because what the Whedon-verse does BEST is the feint -- making you think the story is going one way, then suddenly jerking it back the other direction, and that's a bit harder to do with only 8 stories to play with.

On the other hand, that's maybe what we all think that we want -- just the "continuity" shows, with none of the filler. I'm not sure that's what we really and truly want, but 8 is a different structure than 22, and we'll see what we see.


2) Continuity is a scary beast, anyway. Like I knew that I knew who that was on the lst page, but it took Jeff on Friday doing the "Yes, don't you remember the (blank), then the (blank)?". Me, I'm all "duh, right, I know exactly who you're talking about", but I had to be reminded. For those of us who are weak in our Buffy-Fu, that last page wasn't so much of a "Whoa!" but a "Uh, WTF?".


3) Dude, that Xander joke totally didn't work. With the cut to that big shot of X, my very first thought was "Ha! He looks like Nick Fury!" then it took most of another page to get there. I had some sort of half-baked theory in the store about how this represents the difference between comics and the filmed image -- both are about "coverage", but there's no time to edit the comics page in the way you would a filmed image. On the comics page, the set-up needs to have a beat before the reveal for it to work. If this was filmed, the beat might work beacase there's a lag in real time between seeing an image, and taking it in, but in comics the opoosite is true -- the image reinforces the text.

Is that right? In the filmed presentation, text reinforces the image, in comics image reinforces the text? Did I just hit on something smart by accident?



Ultimately, I hope Whedon some day has the time to approach the comics page as a formal experiment. As "Hush" or "Once More, With Feeling" are experiments of Form with the structure of the broadcast TV show, I'd love to see what he could do with a comics page. Because I think it could be spectacular.

This isn't spectacular in that way, again it's the 5-ish minutes before the wolf-howl-and-guitar-riff -- but its absolutely "what would they do if they didn't have a budget to worry about", and it scores high for that.

I say VERY GOOD.

Right, and for the rare "retail perspective" on this, this is an unequivocal hit -- I don't think I ever sold more than 10 copies of any previous BVTS comic (though FRAY did much better), and preorders were pretty anemic (under 20% of my final order).

I initially ordered something like, dunno, 80% of CIVIL WAR #1, but I added on half of my intials when I saw how many casual requests there were for it. If I'd just had my intial in stock, I would have sold out today; at my projected rate I'll probably sell out within 3 days of the second printing arriving, which is pretty much perfect, right? I'll be ordering the second at, uh, maybe a third again of the first? I can already predict that DH will do a third printing. Place your bets now.

In fact, I tend to suspect if a quarter million copies were available on the market, at the time of demand, that's probably would have been what would have sold through. As it is now, I suspect they'll land at 160 or less, total. A great # for Dark Horse, to be sure, but this was a book that needed vision when setting the print run.


One other thing: the variant cover (1 in 4, more or less, though my count didn't end up exact, because it's not a line item on the invoice) was unwanted in these quarters -- I'd rather not have unannounced variants (nothing about them in the catalog or the order form) foisted upon me. Honest to god, if I get a choice in what appears on my racks, the rule is "one book, one cover". I hate speculating scumtards, and I'd rather not be put in a position where I'm asked to take thier money, when they're just trying to get over on someone else.


So, uh, yeah, wtf, I've been typing for more than an hour, and that's all I wrote? God, this is what I hate about "daily" blogging!

(whine whine whine, do I sound like the Comic Book Guy? I don't mean to!!!)

What did you think, huh?

-B Click Here to Read More...

http://www.newsarama.com/Tilting2_0/Tilting38.html

I have to admit I'm fairly dumbstruck how many people in the thread that follows are talking about how great SUPERMAN #75 was. I guess it really IS true that whatever you read first when you're 13, is the greatest comic ever. Or something.

-B Click Here to Read More...

CIVIL WAR: THE CONFESSION: Right upfront, let's be honest here: This is Alex Maleev's book. His art here is well done, occasionally-beautiful work (especially in the Cap sequences; his figurework and facial expressions are wonderful, and slightly defeated, obviously, by Iron Man's armor), making the most out of what is essentially just another talking heads book. Like his recent New Avengers issue, this is a book that you look at and kind of wonder what he'd be like on something where his design tendencies were let loose and he wasn't stuck drawing people in longjohns.

But the writing... Ehhh. Not so good.

I'm not even talking about the dialogue, which manages to reduce supposed-genius Tony Stark (who, again, boasts of his amazing ability to see into the future: "I saw the war. I knew it would happen. I've told you - - This is what I do. I'm an inventor. I can envision the future. I can see what the world will look like, and I can see what the world will need to make that future worth living for." Have I ever told you before that I work with people from Stanford Research Institute? I mention it here because, well, they really are futurists - They're looking at how culture and technology and society are going to evolve at least 15 - 20 years ahead, if not 50 - 100 - and the first thing they always admit is that no-one can predict the future for sure. You can come up with possibilities, and even the most likely possibility, but no futurist worth their salt - at least according to them, and they should know - would ever give definite proclamations about what will happen, because it's impossible to be 100% sure. Everytime I see Bendis give Tony Stark a speech where he explains what it means to be him, I always think of that. But I digress) to the role of excited fanboy:

"I met King Arthur. Me - - who based the entire theme of Iron Man on an archetype he perfected. I met King Arthur!!"

You really kind of want him to say "Dude!!!" at the end of that, don't you? Luckily, later in the same monologue, there's a line that's almost as bad: "I kept my cool, and so did he." Yes, Iron Man's still talking about King Arthur there. The dialogue throughout the book stays at that level, for the most part; readable for the wrong reasons, very out of character with the occasional awkward shoutout to continuity. The most amusing instance of that being Iron Man crying while talking about Civil War and saying "The good news is... through all of this... I never took a drink," which I'm convinced is the result of a bet being lost, as opposed to anyone thinking it worked as dramatic characterisation.

(Somewhere, Brian Michael Bendis has a large chart with all the characters he writes and a couple of lines to remind him of who they are. You just know that Iron Man's entry says "Can see the future or something. Likes a drink.")

The problem with this kind of dialogue is that it doesn't work for what this book wants to be: Some kind of intelligent, low key, wrapping up of the ideological debate behind Civil War. We don't get anywhere near that at any point in the issue, and the closest we do come is Captain America shouting at Iron Man from a jail cell that everything was his fault, with a final page that literally goes like this:

Iron Man: Well... You're a sore loser, Captain America.

Captain America: You bet.

...And that's the last line of the book, which is the epilogue to all of Civil War. There's the note to finish your massive crossover on, huh? A supposed ideological battle which has resulted in at least one death, summed up by the above exchange; the genius taunting someone for losing. It kind of stuns me with how tone-deaf it is. How are we supposed to think of Iron Man as anything other than a dick when he actually goes to the leader of the opposition and does the equivalent of "Nyah boo sucks to be you" in the aftermath of what was supposed to be this massive tragedy that tore families apart and killed lots of people...? (Or, for that matter, that Iron Man seems to think that this was the kind of thing where anyone actually wins in the first place.) It also, because of the fact that it's the end of the book, kills the earlier attempt in the same issue, to humanize Iron Man and place his actions in some kind of larger context. We literally go from crying Iron Man saying that he was trying his best and oh God it's so hard to Iron Man calling his opponent a sore loser and boasting that he'd won so obviously he was right.

This leads me to what my real problem with the writing was: The book is backwards. There're two strips in the book, an Iron Man-centric one where he "confesses" that war wasn't worth it to Captain America's corpse, followed by a Captain America-centric one where he shouts at Iron Man from his cell and asks him if the war was worth it, and they appear in that order. It doesn't make sense chronologically (because, obviously, the Cap story happens before he's dead and all) nor dramatically; with this placement of the stories, you get the dramatic highpoint of the book midway through (Iron Man admits that it's not worth it! And he's talking to a corpse!), followed by the rest of the book which makes the two characters look like whiny children, trailing off instead of providing an ending and undercutting the earlier scenes. Yes, it allows the book to close on the somber image of Cap in a jail cell, but even that image has been overshadowed by the earlier double-page spread of Cap on a slab, so... I don't get why the stories were written to appear like this, I guess (Considering both stories were written and drawn by the same team, I'm presuming that the placement was a creative choice as opposed to an editorial one).

As with Civil War: The Return, and Civil War: The Initiative, there's no real reason for this book to exist; there's nothing new revealed here, and what we do see was either unnecessary (the Cap strip), or could've been handled elsewhere (Iron Man's "It wasn't worth it" could have been done in any number of places: His own book, either of the Bendis-written Avengers books, the Fallen Son special that's supposed to be all about Iron Man dealing with Cap's death...). Worse, the book feels unnecessary even as you're reading it, yet another cash-in on the Civil War gravy train. Pretty Awful, then, although the art is nice. Click Here to Read More...

Getting ready to go to CE and Thank God, because I could only scratch up another four reviews total from the remaining books of last week. Since I feel that's kinda paltry, I thought I'd relate a honest-to-God dream comic book related dream to you in the hopes you'll find it funny.

In order for this story to be funny, I'm making a large assumption (unsupported by Google) which is that I'm not the only person who remembers those freebie kite-flying comics they used to pass out in school. You do remember those, right? In my case, they were distributed through Pacific Gas & Electric, but I assume they were printed nationally and then branded regionally. In them, you'd have cartoon characters, or TV characters like the Brady Bunch, show you how to make how a kite and learn helpful facts about electricity. (Oh, hey, look here for the whole story, and fuck Google Images for being 80% less helpful than Google at times like this. And God bless Scott Shaw!, but that probably goes without saying.)

Anyway, Wednesday night I wake up laughing from a dream in which I'm reading a kite safety comic book--starring the cast of THE SHIELD. I wish I could tell you my subconscious had taken full advantage of the rich comic potentinal in having a bunch of hardened, racist, murderous cops show you how to build a kite (with Vic Mackey undoubtedly taking two of the kite sticks and jamming them down a criminal's mouth until he confessed) but all I can remember is Michael Chilkis, in his black leather jacket, drawn in a very Gold Key style (so that he looked equally like, say, Brian Bendis) running over a grassy field with kite string in hand, and the speech balloon, "Now THAT'S how you build a kite!"

Like I said, I woke up laughing. Please don't tell my wife I told you.

Anyway, to wrap up the reviews of last week's books:

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #6: I thought the battle between the League and Amazo was very cool, although I would've liked it more if I hadn't taken us five full issues to get there. But the Red Tornado sections showed off Meltzer's weaknesses far more than his strengths--if nothing else, the idea that Reddy is a human being should mean that, you know, he reacts to his arm being ripped off like an actual human being and not a superhero. And, as always, I can't wrap my head around a magical system that allows Zatanna to undo a curse in two words but can't just give Red Tornado the ability to be an android and feel. OK, but if the rest of Meltzer's run is paced like this, it's gonna be a tough slog.

MIGHTY AVENGERS #1: Obviously, all of Bendis's team books should be double-sized--it allows him to get all the dialogue he wants in there and actually have cool stuff happen, to boot. But the real surprise for me was Frank Cho's art, which on those issues of Spider-Man felt incredibly stiff and forced but here looks lovely but still seems fluid. This was a Good issue, and I have to admit that surprised the hell out of me. But I think the regular sized next issue will be the true test of how well it's going to work.

NEWUNIVERSAL #4: I read somewhere that Ellis wasn't too happy about the extensive photo-references for the characters and I can't blame him: although the "Spock with a beard!" joke wouldn't have worked, it really didn't work with one of the alternate Starbrands being a dead ringer for Leonard Nimoy. There's other weird stuff going on here, too--I get the impression that Ellis is trying to make each issue a jumping-on issue with all the groundwork being summarized each time for anyone dropping by but it's not working: this is the second issue where the bulk of space is taken up by Something Mysterious Popping Up and Explaining Shit, and it's more or less the same shit that got explained last time, to boot. Pretty damn Eh, unfortunately.

SHAZAM THE MONSTER SOCIETY OF EVIL #2: Every bit as delightful as both Graeme and Hibbs have claimed--My favorite part were the evil crocodile creatures who are so thrilled at the prospect of eating children, every possible success or failure must incorporate children eating into it. I'm glad C.C. Beck wasn't around to see this because he would've landed on it with both feet (his columns in The Comics Journal were so full of piss and vinegar
they permanently altered my pH balance)--I think because his conception of Billy Batson was far less little kid-like than what we get here (Beck's Billy Batson is like Tintin who also has the frequently-stolen ability to become a superhero) but Smith's recreation tears away so much awful cruft, it really does transcend those types of complaints. Very Good work and absolutely worth your time.

See? Now THAT'S how you build a kite. Back tomorrow with more.

Labels: Jeff

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You can tell that Jeff and I both have day jobs by the fact that we both post on weekdays at the very start of the day (well, unless you're not on the West Coast of the Continental United States of America, in which case, I apologize). This is my way of saying, he's got an interesting essay about essays right below this post, so if you haven't read it, go and do so.

Meantime, for those of you who thought I'd be reviewing Civil War: The Confession first this week, wait until tomorrow.

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER SEASON EIGHT #1: As such a fan of the Buffy TV show that I kind of think that the seventh season was the second best (behind the third, which - come on - really was wonderful), to say that I was rather excited about the potential of this series is a slight understatement. Joss Whedon has more than proven his comics mettle with Astonishing X-Men (I missed his Fray series entirely, and have always meant to fix that one day), and Georges Jeanty has long been a strong storyteller who's somehow avoided his fanboy due, so it's not like there wasn't some pedigree there... And that pedigree kind of makes itself known here, but only kind of. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of good things in the issue, but sadly a story isn't really one of them. It all comes down to the pacing - We definitely get the start of a plot, but literally only the start, and as a result the issue is left being somewhat underwhelming; it's the equivalent of the first act of one of the television episodes. Which, you know, is great on one hand - There're funny lines and action and a mystery being set up - but on the other hand, it lacks the oomph we've come to expect from the first issue of a new series, and relies too much on the audience's knowledge of the Buffy TV show (The last page reveal literally means nothing to anyone who's never seen the TV show, which is a shame). You get the feeling that Whedon's maybe too comfortable here, and is literally doing this for the fans as opposed to anyone else; it's just that he's so good that even his apathetic work still has a shiny surface gleam.

It's Good enough to get me back for the second issue, but not enough that I want to rant and rave and tell everyone to buy it right now. But considering I'm a pretty big Buffy fanboy, that's not the greatest sign of things to come.

Was I the only one weirdly disappointed by this? Click Here to Read More...

Now that it's my turn on the wheel of "blog until you drop" here at SC, I probably can't get away with the whole "somebody someday should write an essay about so and so" that I just dump in the lines of one of the 3700 reviews we do every week--there's really no reason I can't take the time to actually take one of those ideas and expand upon it. So rather than getting Part II of my review of last week's books (and I'm starting to worry there may be a very paltry Part II if it ever does show since my memory of last week's books has faded radically), I thought I'd try something different and look at PHONOGRAM #5 through the reflecting prism of CASANOVA #7, and vice-versa.

Casanova #7 came out a few weeks ago, the last issue in the first miniseries by Matt Fraction & Gabriel Bá about a reality-hopping super-spy dealing with hilariously complex family issues, and as I recall I left a placeholder in a blog entry in the hopes I'd get around to reviewing it. Phonogram #5, which came out just last week, is the next to last issue in the miniseries by Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie about a music-based magician battling to keep his self intact as a group of other music-based magicians create a perversion of the Britpop movement to which he's tied. Phonogram utilizes a fatter version of Casanova's Image Slimline format, where the writer fills the page count in back with essays about the work in front; whereas Warren Ellis (who came up with the format) invented the idea I think out of money-saving necessity, Gillen piles on all the material on top of a full twenty-two pages of story & art.

Many of my earlier complaints about Casanova centered around these back page essays from Fraction; although very enjoyable reads, these essays threatened to overwhelm and overwrite the reader's impression of the issue he'd just read. By contrast, Gillen's essays have moved from explaining references the reader might not understand to explaining plot points the reader might have missed to, ultimately, being the point of the whole exercise--Phonogram's densely coded emotional autobiography, although terrifically illustrated by McKelvie, is far more obtuse and has far less drama to it than reading Gillen write about Britpop like a man possessed, alluding at several points about a very personal emotional event from which his ideas for Phonogram--and the bitter, arch protagonist at its center--sprang.

Now, here's where I reach the branching fork in my essay and tell you a little bit about the road I'm not going to go down. On that road, I talk about DVD commentaries, opening weekend box office numbers, Newsarama and these essays. I talk about how, for better or for worse, consumers of story-driven art today consume it in a very multivalent way, as both traditional spectators and informed contemporaries; and thus there are two fantasy experiences the audience goes through simultaneously, the fantasy experience of identifying with the protagonist and experiencing the story, and the fantasy experience of identifying with the creator of the story and experiencing the story's creation. And down this road somewhere I probably suggest that whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, it's something that isn't going back in the box anytime soon, but that eventually a more complex form of criticism is going to have to emerge, one which is going to be able to ascertain the extent to which a work succeeds or fails based on the dimension in which it's working. Because the DVD commentaries and the essays presented in both Casanova and Phonogram (among all sorts of other ways in which professionals interact with fans) are already working on how the fans receive the work, and is also in some weird way part of the work itself, but is either being excluded from the criticism of the work or else included with the criticism of the work incorrectly, leading to a lot of muss and fuss and bother and frustration on the part of everyone involved.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about, unfortunately, although I needed to say all that as justification for the stuff I am going to talk about, so you know where I'm coming from and hopefully can understand why, hopefully, what I'm going to say about the essay pages in both Casanova #7 and Phonogram #5 is worth talking about, and relates to more than just the essay pages of both works.

In the text pages of Casanova #7, Fraction talks quite movingly about his wife's pregnancy and miscarriage, and the ways in which both affected the work he did in Casanova and the way he perceived the work he did in Casanova.

For example, Fraction writes about suddenly quitting his regular job with the company he helped start:

Just like that, the whole I love my job theme that Cass fought throughover these seven issues took on a new context. I saw for the first time, what I really wrote about. Cass, me, the jobs and the identities we chose to identify ourselves with...I hadn't been writing about free-spirited Cass not wanting anybody to tell him what to do...I wrote about me. I dunno, maybe a shrink could nail that from 100 meters but it sure as shit blew my mind.

Interestingly, to my eyes, the first issue of Casanova reads to me like that, but the series comes to be overshadowed by a completely different set of themes. In fact, Casanova spends most of the arc (Fraction uses the term "album" so I'll probably use that from here on out) caught between the demands of his controlling father and his vast government organization, the evil scientist who similarly has Cass under his thumb, and Cass's own complex desires to save his family. In short, I'd say that it's not I love my job so much as here's the life of a freelancer: telling people what they want to hear while I try to figure out how to get what I need out of the situation and also provide for me and mine.

Similarly, although Gillen writes extensively about Britpop in his back pages, it's interesting to me that The Afghan Whigs pop up repeatedly. It would be interesting to me, of course, because I'm one of those guys who played Gentlemen over and over and over, listening to it with gradations of awe and dread and shame and relief. (As Gillen perfectly puts it: "If you listen to Dulli's lyrics, it's like crossing the event horizon into the black hole of the male psyche.") The Whigs were not Britpop, unless there's some weird definition of the term that allows a band from Cincinnati to be included. Rather, Gillen keeps including them because it's central to understanding the psyche of his intensely male protagonist--the re-awakening of the Goddess that the protagonist fears is symbolic of the not-quite misogyny at the core of the protagonist--but it's a topic he can barely bring himself to address in all those thousands of words about The Manic Street Preachers and Oasis and Blur and Pulp (although I'm also a huge fan of Pulp's This Is Hardcore and can see how they fit into the protagonist's psyche as well). It's not fair to put all this on Gillen as I haven't seen his last issue yet (and, to be honest, my eyes glazed over at some of his earlier text pieces) but, like Fraction in Casanova, I wonder if Phonogram is really about what Gillen thinks it's about. Phonogram reads like it's supposed to be a dense, allusion packed meditation on the way pop culture, for better or for worse, matters, but it actually reads like a comic written by someone who would rather talk about anything other than what they're really there to talk about. (And although I can't quite get a grip on what that is, it has something to do with that event horizon of the male psyche and its relationship to pop culture--something beyond the stuff we find in Nick Hornsby's High Fidelity, where the pop fanatic uses his obsessions to hide from both responsibility, his fear of responsibility and his fear of his fear of responsibility. Phonogram has something even darker at its core and I can't quite get a handle on it.)

In the Savage Critic way of things, I'd give Phonogram an OK and put Casanova #7 on the high end of Good. But in this ultra-extended "how-the-hell-does Jog-do-it?" essay, what's more important is why both books aren't Great, even though I think they (and their creators) have the potential to be. They're both starting out, these guys, and it's easy and probably preferable to attribute a lot of it to just them learning the ropes, pacing problems, newbie blues, and there's a very good chance we won't see those problems as much or again as their careers go along. But there is also the chance--and that chance makes it worth putting all those words down, I think--that they might get tangled in the nets of their own essays, interviews, websites and commentaries, and let all their proclamations blind them from what's really going on in their work, and prevent them from taking those things and refining them. Because I do think the shit you can't bring yourself to talk about is precisely the shit that's most interesting in your art (and it's in your art precisely because it's so important to you and yet you can't bring yourself to talk about it). It'll continue to come up, of course, but whether or not it may or may not become fully realized and ferociously utilized--and every piece in an artist's work has to become fully realized and ferociously utilized if the work is to make itself indelible--is another matter altogether, a matter for which any number of essay pages, commentaries of blog entries may not be able to compensate.

Whew! Okay, now that's off my chest, let's see if I can remember anything atll about GHOST RIDER: TRAIL OF TEARS #2...

Labels: Jeff

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A couple of quick reviews is all I have for you today, leaving out "event" books until later:

TEEN TITANS #44: No, sir, I did not like it. Lots of "Torture the Titans" scenes, without any real depth to them, and a big really badly paced and -stage battle around that. There's a bunch of hand waving and a magic potion to "explain" why Batgirl's been Out Of Character lately... and that's about that. THe next issue blurb says "The Wilson Family Reunion", as though that isn't the program that we JUST saw, and there's some painfully bad dialogue (esp the "contact" sequence -- that never was something that was SAID, it was a narrative caption device, sheesh!). It just made me wince all the way through, from start to finish. AWFUL.

WONDER WOMAN #5: On the one hand this was kind of a nice story about symbols and how abused women can use them to get help, but on the other, it really devolves into Wondy punching a horrifically cliched character. It's pretty much filler material. I'd've hope they would have abandoned the "Diana has to hunt Wondy" element, since it really just doesn't work, isn't compelling, and makes everyone involved look really really stupid. BUt I think what pisses me off the most is there's no mention, NOTHING about what happened to part 5 of the opening story, or anything related to that. Does DC now just assume that 100% of their audience reads Newsarama? They're wrong. This was very EH.

JLA CLASSIFIED #36: Wow, I don't think I could have come up with a shittier (and more confusing) ending if I had tried. AND, its double-szed to boot. CRAP.

BLADE #7: This is really becoming one seriously strange book, you know that? Blade's lost his hand, and he's fighting a uber-Vamp in a priest's outfit, and it flashes backwards and forwards, and (*boggles*) Howard Chaykin is still drawing it (but turning in what have started to become lovely examples of his work, at the same time), and there just isn't an audience for Blade, yet they still keep trying. I'd have liked it a lot more if it didn't seem like it was seriously cribbed from Buffy, with the uber-vamp, and the necklace that prevents you from staking one, and all. I can't recommend this book, at all, but it has its charms, and is growing on me little by little... let's call it barely OK.

ANT-MAN #6, MOON KNIGHT #8, MARTIAN MANHUNTER #8: All of these books have thoroughly unlikable protagonists, and I dislike all of them for it. EH, EH, and AWFUL, respectively.

GRIFTER & MIDNIGHTER #1: More like "half a Midnighter comics and half a Grifter comic" -- there didn't seem to be any readily apparent connective tissue between the two, and nothing here had be thinking "Wow, better come back for #2!". Unrelentingly EH.

CHRONICLES OF WORMWOOD #2: There's some Ennis-being-Ennis here, but I'm not feeling any affection for the lead. Which is what you really need when six shades of nasty shit is going on all around them. Still this is highly OK work anyway.


Right. More tomorrow (my heart wasn't in this tonight, can you tell...?)

-B Click Here to Read More...

So, following on from my reviewamarathonarama last week, it's pretty fair to say that my brain was fried - I finished reading Plain Janes on Saturday evening, and suddenly became unable to stop reviewing everything in sight ("This sandwich is Good, but if it had had more onions, it might've made Very Good." That kind of thing always makes Kate happy, as you can guess). It also made me unable to enjoy anything, because my head was just constantly spinning arguments and potential negatives to be weighed about everything that I was reading... which meant that it was time for me to recharge my batteries and get a palate cleanser of a comic to read.

Which, this time, was Scott Pilgrim.

Now, I know that there are people out there who don't dig the Pilgrim, but those are people who have no joy in their lives and have never stopped to smell the roses or danced their little hearts out to "PO Box 9847" (which is possibly my new favorite song, by the way; if I could sing or play a musical instrument, that would be the song that I'd cover all the time). Rereading them - again! - this time around, the sheer fucking JOY just shone out from each page, the dumb jokes and not so dumb ones, the emotional subtext becoming text in the third book (Am I the only one who really gets choked up by the Scott/Envy slow breakup flashbacks? I can't be the only sap out here, surely), watching Bryan Lee O'Malley becoming a more confident and stronger artist over the three books, the whole shebang.

There's something wonderfully COMICS about the series for me, in the same way that there is about Eddie Campbell's Alec, or Kirby's Fourth World or Eternals. It's the love and joy for the medium that's there on the page, the inventiveness on display, that completely wins me over and makes me feel as if anything is possible. But I'm not telling you any of this to convince you of how much I love Scott Pilgrim, but instead to ask those who are brave enough to comment: What are the comics that you completely and unconditionally love that always give you the indescribable thrill when you read them?

(Also, if you haven't read it yet, check out Jeff's movie reviews below. They're Excellent. Shit, there I go again.) Click Here to Read More...

Still working on my reviews for Part II, but since I did just see five movies in five days, why don't I try something a little different? In the order I watched 'em (and maybe a little spoilery):

TENACIOUS D AND THE PICK OF DESTINY: As the great John Kricfalusi opening made clear, my wife and I were not the target audience for this as we weren't even slightly stoned. After a brilliant first ten minutes (I think they should have gone faux rock opera for the entire thing), the movie settles down to being an extended Tenacious D sketch with a decent story hook and okay execution. I think if I had been baked, I might have died laughing at Sasquatch/strawberry river sequence (which almost killed me as it was) and there's two or three bits I really enjoyed, but this was OK, no better and no worse. Consdering my opinion of Hollywood comedies, however, that's comparatively high praise.

ZODIAC: As a San Franciscan who twice read the book (although probably over a decade ago) this was based on, I thought this David Fincher flick did a great job of telling the facts, nailing most of the small details, and rolling at a good clip without falling back on manufactured shocks or typical Hollywood moments (considering the movie is over two and a half hours that's a considerable achievement). There's the occasional strange choice (Jake Gyllenhaal and Mark Ruffalo each seem to age about a week over the course of 15+ years, presumably to avoid distracting the audience with weird make-up changes, and yet Anthony Edwards is filmed throughout with an old gray cat disguised as a wig sleeping on his head) but nothing horrible, and it's laudable how Fincher takes real life material and doesn't go for a cheap hammering home of his theme.

Nonetheless, it's pretty easy to walk out of the theater wondering what the hell the point was, and it's tempting to conclude that Fincher didn't have one. Thematically, Fincher's an oddball director--his movies are always technically stunning but it's hard to talk about, say, the themes of Panic Room without feeling like a pretentious dumbass--yet I'd argue his movies feature protagonists unable to either completely withdraw or completely engage with the culture around them and forced at the end to acknowledge the neurosis/psychosis/devouring-alien-within that causes this inability.

And so, in Zodiac, we have three ordinary men (Toschi the cop, Avery the reporter, Graysmith the cartoonist) driven to hunt the Zodiac at the risk of losing their humanity (much is made of the story/film "The Most Dangerous Game" where we are told repeatedly that "to hunt man is to hunt the most dangerous game of all") but, since this is real life, it's arguable whether any of them men lose anything other than a certain amount of sleep and a certain number of years, before ultimately resuming their lives on the same paths they would've pursued anyway.

In fact, it seems likely that Zodiac killer himself is the closest thing the movie has to a standard Fincher protagonist, and considering how rarely he appears in the movie, we're left--quite deliberately, I think--to see him only in how he affects the world around him. And if there's a part where Zodiac falls short, it's precisely there; despite all the beautiful, telling details and one breathtaking sequence to show the passage of time, Fincher doesn't (and maybe can't) show how the Zodiac killer changes the world around him--how his appearance heralds the end of the peace-and-love Sixties and ushers in the lock-your-doors paranoia of the Seventies--because it's too big a change to catch on film (you get a sense of this at the Dirty Harry premiere, and it's great). All he can really do is use Donovan's "Hurdy-Gurdy Man" to suggest everything he can't show, which for some of us may be enough. I've had that damned song stuck in my head all week now and it's creeping me out.

So, yeah, Zodiac's Good, not great. And unless Alan Moore decides to do "From Hell II" about the Zodiac killer, it's probably going to be about as good as we're going to get.

BABEL: Babel is like a two hour AT&T commercial that wants to hurt you. Although it proclaims itself to be an examination of the universality of human hope and suffering, Babel's main argument seems to be that Americans are a bunch of entitled, self-absorbed whiney-woos who freak out at the slightest bit of disaster and so indirectly cause children to be shot and housekeepers to be deported after spending nightmarish nights wandering about in the desert. If they hadn't made this case in the broadest, emotionally manipulative way possible, I would've found it easier to agree.

Also, watching Cate Blanchett act in a scene with Brad Pitt is like watching a woman play handball against a very attractive, artificially aged wall.

Also, apparently you can be a beautiful sex-crazed Japanese teenage girl in Tokyo and still not get laid. On this point, Japanese pornographic manga has dramatically misled me.

Lovely to look at, but it's not gonna make me break out 21 Grams anytime soon. Eh.

ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW: It can be a challenge to find movies to watch with Edi since she finds most of my DVD library inaccessible or unsavory (she wasn't nearly as happy when I came home with a digitally remasterd copy of Bullet In The Head as I was, for example) so I figured this acclaimed indie film might make a good flick for the two of us. I thought it was a little bit like an early Jeffrey Brown comic--twee, self-conscious, but occasionally tremendously moving--if instead of scratchy, sketchy drawings you had gorgeously composed camera shots. Despite a lot of the scenes feeling like they were alternate transmissions from Planet Retard, this had some good laughs, gorgeous images, and something to say. We could've done worse. OK.

300: Hugely entertaining, even more so than the original work by Miller which I never took to (it was few more years before I realized that Miller had abandoned depth, or at least the illusion of it, for tone--which tells you how I can really be the last one to get the memo sometimes). This sucker is filled with enough gratuitous blood spatter, battle elephants, ninjas and gorgeous visuals to make up for any hunger one might have for plot, characterization or consistency (I love how Leonidas explains the strategy of the phalanx, but the movie continually has the Spartans abandon it so it can have all the bloody slow-mo stabbity-stab it desires). There is a chewy layer of subtext when the movie's considered in the context of current events, and I admit that if the film had come out in, say, 2002, it would've worried the hell out of me, but in 2007, when the national response to war and bloodshed is much more ambivalent, I can't imagine it polarizing anyone except film dudes looking to squabble about whether it's better than Gladiator. (I say yes, by the way, if for no other reason than as soon as 300 starts to get old, it's over 20 minutes later.)

In fact, I walked out admiring the film for sticking to its guns (gaudy, Abercrombie-&-Fitch-meets-Triumph-Of-The Will shaded guns though they may be) and telling a brutally simple story so directly (but with such gorgeously complex execution). Plus, this movie will singlehandedly increase guy-on-guy experimentation by college dudes by twenty percent and that's probably a good thing. Far from a great movie, but I had a highly Good time watching it.

Labels: Jeff

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Books showed up about 90 minutes late, so there goes my sched for the night.

The worst part is I ended up getting so hungry that I ran out to get a sandwich while waiting for the truck. The INSTANT they finish making it? The truck shows. Mmmm, cold submarine, YUCK

I know I should say more, but I want to stop thinking about comics right now, so just one book from last week:

AUTHORITY #2: This COULD be awesome, but, I swear, since they didn't show up at La Jolla, looking for Jim, and find out that the Cosmic Treadmill got moved for some reason (its not like Julie's gonna be using it any longer), I lost all interest in this Earth-Prime story... I want to see Scott Dunbier get super-powers like Cary Bates did, damnit...EH.

-B Click Here to Read More...

Warning: If last week was the greatest week for comics this year, it'd be news to me. Friday was busy and even if Hibbs had stayed in the shop longer than the hour or so that he did, I doubt I would've gotten a chance to read any more books. It was just that damn busy, which is a shame because there wasn't a lot of stuff that knocked me out this week and/or that Graeme & Bri didn't do a kick-ass job of reviewing, already.

Nonetheless, here's my meager part 1:

52 WEEK #44: Sure, sure, plot hammering, thread dangling, character biffing, but let's talk about what's really important: why do two of the four horsemen have no hands whatsoever? For that matter, why don't any of them have horses? How does Black Adam fire a gun without any trigger (or, for that matter, hold a high-tech gatling gun by the barrels and still have it fire)? Hopefully Douglas Wolk will add these to his 100 questions because dammit, I need some closure. Shamefully Eh.

AUTHORITY #2: There's been a bit of a cock-up on the Wildstorm front, it looks like. The first issue of this made me think we might get an Authority tale told M. Night Shamalayan style--slow, brooding and full of dread, with the Authority seen as terrifying Others to our ignorant, impoverished world. The second issue is so disparate in tone and formulaic (well, for Morrison), it's easy to imagine he wrote the script while waiting for the toast to pop up. Rather than going on hiatus and pretending the whole fiasco never happened, I think they should give Gene Ha the script to Justice League Unlimited #3 and just change all the characters where applicable. If nothing else, we'd get to see Gene Ha draw a gorilla army... So disappointing it's Awful.

CAPTAIN AMERICA #25: Like a chump, I forgot to sign up for this--amusing since I've been with Brube's run from the beginning (unlike EbayIsRad0481)--but read it in the store. It was Good, with a particularly good next-to-last-page twist, and I'm glad they decided to off Cap here rather than in Civil War proper. I'm very happy for Brubaker--even if this book wasn't lacking for storylines, his work deserves the attention--but can't really pass judgment until I see how the rest of it plays out.

CIVIL WAR INITIATIVE: I read the badly-misprinted copy in the store and didn't feel like I missed anything despite hearing about (and, thanks to LITG, seeing)the missing pages. I'll give this to Marvel--none of that $1.99 Brave New World bullshit here: they plunked original Bendis and Ellis material in here and charged the customer almost five dollars for it. If this had been $2.99, I would've gone with OK, but at that price, Eh.

CRIMINAL #5: This really was Brubaker's week, wasn't it? Three books on the stand, one of which him is garnering national attention, and one of which is this one, an exceptionally strong wrap-up to his creator owned crime book. I loved the twist here, as we find out what our protagonist is really scared of, and Phillips' art is exceptional. I only hope the time off between issues helps this book find even more new readers. Very Good work, and I'm looking forward to more.

DARK TOWER GUNSLINGER BORN #2: I liked that the first issue had more than just set-up to it, so felt a bit let down that's all that happened here. I'm loving the art but wonder if the book might've benefited from something a little simpler: with both the prose and the art being so ornate, it's more of a slog than I would like. And while I can see that's probably what King wants (The Lord of the Rings was on the baroque side, too), I doubt a Hildrebrandt comics adaptation of LOTR really would have been what the readers wanted either (at least after the third issue or so). OK.

FANTASTIC FOUR #543: My esteemed colleagues didn't care much for the main story, but it didn't seem to bother me too much--The Thing's been replaced at least twice, after all--and considering what bad shape Civil War's left the book in, I'll take what I can get. I do agree, however, that the two back-up features were far more enjoyable (even if you had to mentally squint to combine Lee's charm in the first and Kirby's uncanniness--reconfigured via Paul Pope--in the second to get a taste of what the FF could be like overall). Thanks to the back-ups, very highly OK.

Hmm, yeah. So that's part 1. More later (if not sooner).

Labels: Jeff

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I'm still lagging behind my reading (yeah yeah, shut up), but I HAVE just read two of the best comics I've read all year, and you probably should, too

CRIMINAL #5: A great (if horrifically downer) ending to this first arc. Brubaker's on fire lately, and for my money, this is him at his purest. If I had to say something bad about the book, it might be that this issue just felt a little STRAY BULLETS to me. Sean Phillips art is as loverly as ever, and this is just one of the nicest looking packages, of design and backmatter, being released as a periodical comic book in 2007. We'll see if the second arc holds up to the strength of this first, but there's really no reason to think it won't, is there? VERY (very!) GOOD

SHAZAM: MONSTER SoCIETY OF EVIL #2: Oh! My! God! That was astonishingly stellar on almost every level! Tha sequence with Mary zipping around the Big Red Cheese had me laughing out loud, and there's just a sheer exuberant level of fun from every page of this. Not to mention mystery, and suspense, and perilous peril. Hoo-boy, that's what the funny books is 'sposed to be about, and there's no doubt whatsoever that this is EXCELLENT in every way possible.

More tomorrow....

-B Click Here to Read More...

It's actually kind of unnerving to read Hibbs say that he completely agrees with me about 52. I'd kind of devolved into a mindset where I was the one more likely to go to extremes with reviews, while Brian would come along with something that was carefully considered and more concise, yet utterly correct, so reading that he thinks the same thing I do about the recent issues of DC's weekly comic kind of makes me feel as if I've accidentally discovered the meaning of life or something. Luckily, this time out I'm the complete inverse of Jeff Lester, so normal service has apparently been resumed.

THE PLAIN JANES: Perhaps it's my love of shows like Gilmore Girls, The OC or America's Next Top Model, or perhaps it's the fact that I went to art school (first as a student, then as a teacher, fact fans), but there was something about this book that made me love it almost from the get-go, despite its flaws... right up until the end. Cecil Castellucci's experience as a novelist is obvious from the over-reliance on narration (occasionally leaving Jim Rugg high and dry with the accompanying illustrations), but I completely bought into the narrator's - admittedly teenage angst-ridden - struggle for an identity that she could only find in comparison to others (both her friends and the town society in general). The narration, in fact, might be the strongest part of the book; the voice is strong and believable, bringing the main character Jane (who co-stars with Jane, Jayne and Polly-Jane, partially-hence the title of the book) to life in a way that doesn't quite happen through her interaction with the other characters. There's something about the space provided in book-length narration that allows for contradictions and humor and doubt that the other characters don't have, allowing (main) Jane to transcend her stereotypical origins in a way that the other characters don't. You could make an argument for that being intentional - when we're teenagers, we're all the center of our own worlds, after all - but it doesn't change the fact that the book doesn't really give enough of a reason for why the other Ja(y)nes are friends before Jane comes into their life; they just are, because it's what the story needs, apparently.

But I'm kind of getting ahead of myself, pointing out what didn't work for me, instead of what did. The narration, then, I enjoyed. The art terrorism of PLAIN, I loved; it was wonderfully pointless and pointed at the same time, and the confused, scared reaction it causes in the town felt like an interesting counterpoint to what Jane herself was going through (The embracing chaos/denying it thing, I guess). The random love interest plot, and the awkward interplay between Jane and her crush was fun, even if the crush himself came across as pretty generic and McGuffin-esque, appearing and being cool at just the right points throughout the story. When it all goes wrong, too, felt honest and is dealt with satisfyingly quickly, for the most part.

No, what really didn't work for me was the ending. This is where writing advance reviews gets annoying, because I really want to talk in specifics about why the ending didn't work for me - because, in theory, it should; it has all the ingredients you'd expect, but the execution is lacking, partially, I think because of space - but I can't, because that would completely spoil the story for everyone else who wants to read the book. Suffice to say, if the last two pages had been about five times longer and included a particular reason for a particular decision to be made, then it wouldn't've (a) cheapened the climactic event that had just happened, and (b) kind of ruined the book for me.

"Ruined" may be a bit strong, of course. There's nothing in those last couple of pages that invalidated the enjoyment I'd gotten from the rest of the book - the close of the prologue of the book, the eighth page, is something that I'm just completely in love with for some reason, for example - but the book just kind of stops, as opposed to actually coming to an end, and the way that it stops almost goes back on some of the promises that've been made earlier, that the small things have weight and importance, so the big things should have even moreso (The book starts with what seems to be a flashback to 9/11, but curiously, it's never explicitly stated as such as the city Jane comes from is always called "Metro City," which may be some shoutout to famous comic cities like Metropolis or Star City, but still feels weird each time. While the climax of the book is nowhere near that scale, it's still... I don't know, something larger than other events but isn't treated as such, which undermines not only that event, but also the motivations of the characters from earlier in the book. Again, I really want to go into specifics, so ask me again when the book comes out).

Overall, though, I liked the book. One thing that I'm with Jeff in is the wanting to like the Minx line on principle, and from looking at the previews of other books in the launch cycle at the back of this book, The Plain Janes is probably the best book to launch with, with clearer art and premise than the others (For no reason whatsoever, I just want to point out that almost all my excitement for the Andi Watson book was killed by seeing the Josh Howard art in the preview - Howard's stuff can be fine sometimes, but just doesn't work in the pages they show here). It's a very un-DC book for DC to be pushing like this, but that's probably the point. I just hope that it finds its way to a receptive, less-critical-than-Jeff-or-I, audience who's willing to come back for more. Good.

Meanwhile, for those in the San Francisco Bay Area that I call home: Pick up today's Examiner (Hey, it's free), and look at the letters column. You'll know why when you see it. Click Here to Read More...

I'm probably stupid to have not mentioned this before, but my understanding is that we DO have a large confirmed order of CAPTAIN AMERICA #25 (1st printings) coming in this Wednesday, and we currently have a list going at the store if you want to "get in line" for one. We are, last time I looked (Saturday) about 16 deep now, so we should be able to fill any request before Wednesday with no problem (with the normal cavaet, as we are with all books at all times, you're limited to 2 copies max, unless you preorder something)

I also forgot to mention my appearance on issue #231 of the Comic Geek Speak podcast. I show up around the 51 minute mark, blabbing about sales and how retailers order things like 52 and COUNTDOWN. You can find that at http://www.comicgeekspeak.com/episodedetail.asp?episodeid=319 -- if you pay attention, you can hear the start of my cold, and maybe even me cooking dinner, or Ben in his bath. I really really want us to eventually do at least one test podcast ourselves here at Savage Critic, because I think that would rock.

This early daylight savings time is weird. I *think* I like it, but that's only because it gves me a decent chance of a second park trip with Ben in the afternoon for a couple of weeks here. We had a GLORIOUSLY beautiful day here in San Francisco for the changeover which was nice, except that I'm on tail-end of sickness, and desperate to catch up on paperwork and stuff, and Tzipora has gone into full-bore sickness -- 2 days behind me. Of course, she's fifty times healthier than I am, so she's not sleeping for 16 hours a day, just being low energy. Still, sucks to have a LOVELY day, and to be not at 100%.

Right, that's me catching up. Here's what's shipping this week:

2000 AD #1525
2000 AD #1526
52 WEEK #45
A LATE FREEZE
AMAZING SPIDER-GIRL #6
ANGEL AULD LANG SYNE #5
ANT #11
AVENGERS EARTHS MIGHTIEST HEROES II #7 (OF 8)
BATMAN STRIKES #31
BATTLE POPE #13
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA #7
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA CYLON APOCALYPSE #1
BETTY & VERONICA #225
BETTY & VERONICA DIGEST #173
BLADE #7
BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL #123
BPRD GARDEN OF SOULS #1 (OF 5)
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #1
CARTOON NETWORK ACTION PACK #11
CIVIL WAR THE CONFESSION
CVO AFRICAN BLOOD #3
DAMNED #5
DETECTIVE COMICS #829
FABLES #58
FRANKLIN RICHARDS MARCH MADNESS
GARTH ENNIS CHRONICLES OF WORMWOOD #2 (OF 6)
GEN 13 #6
GHOST RIDER #9
GREEN ARROW #72
GREEN LANTERN CORPS #10
GRIFTER MIDNIGHTER #1 (OF 6)
GRIMM FAIRY TALES #13 (RES)
HACK SLASH VS CHUCKY
HELLGATE LONDON #3 (OF 4)
IRREDEEMABLE ANT-MAN #6
JACK KIRBYS GALACTIC BOUNTY HUNTERS #5
JLA CLASSIFIED #36
JUGHEADS DOUBLE DIGEST #129
KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #124
LONE RANGER #5
MAD MAGAZINE #476
MARTIAN MANHUNTER #8 (OF 8)
MARVEL ADVENTURES FANTASTIC FOUR #22
MARVEL SPOTLIGHT CIVIL WAR AFTERMATH
MOON KNIGHT #8 CW
MYSTERY IN SPACE #7 (OF 8)
NEW AVENGERS #28
NEW X-MEN #36
PTOLUS CITY BY THE SPIRE #5 (OF 6)
PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #5
ROBIN #160
SAM NOIR RONIN HOLIDAY #2 (OF 3)
SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE SLEEP OF REASON #4 (OF 5)
SPIDER-MAN REIGN #4 (OF 4)
STORMWATCH PHD #5
SUPERMAN #660
TAG CURSED CVR A #2 (OF 5)
TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED #6 (OF 8)
TEEN TITANS #44
THUNDERBOLTS #112
THUNDERBOLTS PRESENTS ZEMO BORN BETTER #2 (OF 4)
TRENTON DOYLE HANDBOOK
WHAT WERE THEY THINKING GO WEST YOUNG MAN ONE SHOT
WILDSTORM FINE ARTS SPOTLIGHT J SCOTT CAMPBELL
WOLVERINE ORIGINS #12
WONDER WOMAN #5 (RES)
WONDERLAND #3
WORMWOOD GENTLEMAN CORPSE #6



Books / Mags / Stuff
AMERICAN ELF VOL 2 COLL SKETCHBOOK DIARIES OF JAMES KOCHALKA
BACK ISSUE #21
BLUE MONDAY VOL 1 THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT TP NEW PTG
CEST BON ANTHOLOGY VOL 2 GN
CRISIS ON MULTIPLE EARTHS THE TEAM UPS VOL 2 TP
CRYING FREEMAN VOL 5 TP
HARLAN ELLISONS DREAM CORRIDOR VOL 2 TP
HIP FLASK CONCRETE JUNGLE HC
IRON WOK JAN GN #23
KIN-DER KIDS SC
KING CITY VOL 1 GN (OF 3)
MS MARVEL VOL 1 BEST OF THE BEST TP
NEW EXCALIBUR VOL 2 LAST DAYS OF CAMELOT TP
PIRACY IS LIBERATION VOL 1 INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE GN
PVP VOL 4 PVP GOES BANANAS TP
SFX #154
SIZZLE #33 (A)
STREET FIGHTER LEGENDS VOL 1 SAKURA TP
STREET FIGHTER VOL 3 FIGHTERS DESTINY TP
SUPERMAN BATMAN THE GREATEST STORIES EVER TOLD
TABOO DISTRICT GN (A)
TIMES OF BOTCHAN VOL 3 GN (OF 10)
TOYFARE HASBRO SPIDER-MAN 3 MOVIE CVR #117
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN ULTIMATE COLLECTION VOL 1 TP
VIDEO WATCHDOG #129
WARCRAFT VOL 3 GN (OF 3)
WOLVERINE ORIGINS VOL 2 SAVIOR PREMIERE HC
WORLDS OF AMANO HC
WORMWOOD GENTLEMAN CORPSE VOL 1 TP
YUKIKOS SPINACH NEW EDITION GN
YURI MONOGATARI VOL 4 GN


What looks good to you?


-B Click Here to Read More...

So, and I'd very much like you to take the 3 minutes to register an opinion here, hows this "daily content" thing working for you? Are you checking us every day? Were you, anyway, even when we updated once a week? Are you still coming just 1x a week, and soaking in it? Would you rather we do a score of books each with short short entries, or do you like the smaller # of titles but a bit more in depth reviews that we've been experimenting with?

Another question: we're thinking of trying to figure out a way to make this make a little money so everyone gets paid for thier time (less me, then Graeme and Jeff, really -- they really SHOULD get paid for thier content), which might be dunno, banner ads or something. We've been fully ad free (except for the ones Haloscan rips us for) from the beginning, but do you give a damn at all? Does it change your feelings about the blog? If we had a blinking strip of banners on the top or the bottom or the side, would you change your reading habits of our Savageness?

Inquiring minds want to know!

-B Click Here to Read More...

Day six in the Big Brother house, and Good Lord, but my head is spinning from all the reviewin' going on here. Remember when we never used to post? Those were the days, my friend.

THE AUTHORITY #2: Can we now finally start the "Grant Morrison needs a vacation, desperately" meme? This much-delayed second issue of his Wildstorm relaunch finally ships, and proves to be pretty much a disappointment all-round. The discovery that the Authority have somehow crossed over into "our world" is unconvincing (They all seem to deal with it very well, I must say. "Hey, there's our lives as a comic book! Let's make a joke about how much comic books cost these days!") and, at this point, a tired theme from Morrison that he's handled better in Animal Man, Doom Patrol and even The Filth, the dialogue is flat and uninspiring, and even Gene Ha's artwork is inconsistent and overly reliant on the colorist to fill-in the details. After what felt like a much more impressive first issue, this is a massive letdown, and considering that the title is now "on hiatus" until further notice, more proof that Morrison may have burned himself out for the moment. Crap.

FANTASTIC FOUR #543: Happy 45th Birthday, Fantastic Four! Shame that you have to celebrate it with such a depressing lead story that has to jump from one editorial edict ("Civil War has torn this family apart!") to another ("Black Panther and Storm are the newest members of the team!") even though both of them don't really say anything about the characters themselves. Much, much better are the back-up strips, with Paul Pope revealing a deep love for early '60s Marvel that I wouldn't have guessed, and Stan Lee firing on all cylinders - surprisingly, considering his "Stan Lee Meets" books - on a story (with awesome art by Nick Dragotta and Mike Allred) that shows off the absurdity, comedy and love that the series used to be full of. Good for the price, and if you ignore the main story, much better.

THE FLASH: FASTEST MAN ALIVE #9: Okay, sure, it's much better than what came before, but that's possibly the most backhanded compliment possible considering what had come before. At least now the characters seem to be back in character, and the book has a voice that's more recognizable as both Bart and a Flash book in general. That said, this is clearly a filler issue, a palate cleanser and attempt to make it up to the fans who'd stayed around by playing firmly to continuity and the DC faithful with guestshots and shout-outs to touchstones for Bart's particularly hardcore fanbase, more than a successful story in its own right. Okay, I guess, and if nothing else, a step in the right direction.

GREEN LANTERN #17: I really want to like this book. I love the character - He's a space cop with a magic wishing ring! What's not to love? - and like the writer and artist, so why do I end up feeling so uninvolved with the whole thing? For every right move (the Batman as Sinestro thing was funny and smart, for example), there just seems to be a lack of... I don't know, direction? momentum? in this series that I can't explain. A hesitant Eh, I guess.

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #6: Brad Meltzer is a massive fanboy, and that's the biggest problem with this book. He gets really excited in the small details of the story (How to fight Amazo, in depth. Because, really, we all want to know that Superman goes for the eyes while Batman goes for the legs. And we need to take three pages for that, don't we?) and sadly the larger plot gets lost in the process. The book reads as if it were written by a kid: "And then they fight and then they win because they win because that's what they do!" Weirdly enough, I don't think that Meltzer's at fault for this, though; he's a good enough writer to do better, but he's clearly not getting the editing he needs - the double-page spread of Amazo and Red Tornado looking sad is something that really should've been killed at script stage, instead of using it and adding pages (and cost) to the final book - or deserves. Okay, but it should be much, much better.

MARVEL ZOMBIES VS. ARMY OF DARKNESS #1: Yeah, I don't know. It's fun enough, I guess? But this joke stopped being funny about a year ago, and even John Layman's best attempts to keep the comedy coming fail to raise a smile. Eh.

SHAZAM!: THE MONSTER SOCIETY OF EVIL #2: If anything, even better than the first issue. Jeff Smith shows that he can do something that's so wonderfully old-fashioned that it seems contemporary again, bringing a pitchperfect sense of wonder and menace (The Monster Society here manages to be scarier than 52's Sobek, perhaps because of the context they work in - or maybe just their go-for-broke "let's eat all the children" plan B) to the character and superheroics in general. I can't wait for the eventual collection, because if ever there would be a great book for kids who like superheroes to read, it'd be this one. Excellent.

Now that I've done all of this week's books, I can safely say that Shazam is the PICK OF THE WEEK, and Civil War: The Initiative is a sloppy, tossed-off PICK OF THE WEAK. Apparently, I've chosen what kind of superhero comic I'd rather read in the future.

Tomorrow: The last day of my week-of-posting, and Jeff Lester and I will have to fight over it. Click Here to Read More...

I felt fine again on Friday morning, but by noon or so I wilted again. Spent a couple of frustrating-to-Jeff hours in the store trying to catch up on stupid-mundane tasks (like refilling quarter boxes and starter sets), but then went home and collapsed again for like another 16 hours.

So far today I've had a full day trying to just get caught up on losing 3 days of work (and, really, being a small business owner who is locked into a 7-day cycle because of product release, that's a big big big loss of time), even at 80% capacity, so I hope you'll forgive me for just talking about one funny book.

Which will be 52 week 44

It's fairly rare these days, content-wise, but I agree with nearly every word Graeme wrote below about 52, and I'm sorta freaked out that there's only 8 issues to go, and we can be pretty much guaranteed that at least 3 or them will focus nearly-exclusively on the Black Adam thread and "World War 3". Wolk's 100 item list not-withstanding (and seriously, proabably half of it falls into "ok, not really important" land), there's a LOT of stuff that needs to come to a head/be resolved VERY VERY SOON, and I can't possibly imagine that there's room enough to do it in, given the WW3 thing.

At the very least, I absolutely INSIST on proper closure on anything that's COVER-FEATURED (which would specifically include #5's "how did all of the space-based people get better (eg Hawkgirl being a giant), and wtf happened to them in the first place, anyway?") during the run.

I do not think this will happen.

I am especially mad at week 44 because it, as Graeme pointed out, resoutely tears down everything since week 12 or so we've been told about Isis. It's not "wow, they killed a character I've grown to love ("against all odds")", it's "wow, that's a big plothammer, and doesn't jibe at all with what we were told all the way through this"

You know what's funny? 52 was largely positened on 4 discrete threads: Steel, Booster, Ralph, and Question/Montoya. Steel's thread was 4 issues, max, and they probably gave us the equivilant of 8 issues worth. Ralph was handled "just about right", though Wolk's History of the Wishing Gun will always stay with me. The Question thread has gone on way too long "Who are you?" "Good Question." isn't a sustainable narrative (I think it's fair to argue that Cowan and O'Neill could really only sustain it for 24 issues, really -- the last 12 aren't half as strong; and the less said about Quarterly, the better, really), which leaves Booster and the connection to time travel and maybe somehow that links up to Oolong island and Doc Magnus and all that too, which has (between both threads) the thing I think most people have been digging on the most... but we almost never see those threads.

COUNTDOWN is in a curious place. If they IMMEDIATELY learn from the mistesps that 52 has made -- if it's more HEROES than LOST, to mix media -- then it could possibly fill all of the promise that 52 doesn't look that it is going to. But I have my doubts. I read somewhere, I think, that COUNTDOWN has been planned for a while, but didn't initiate as a year-long weekly. That it was the success of 52 that caused them to expland it. So I fear, that, just like 52, they're going to take what's maybe 20-30 issues worth of content, and vamp it out over a longer period.

The market REALLY REALLY wants a weekly comic, actually -- it just wants one with WEEKLY beats and meaning.

I'm unconvinced that any individual, or group of indivudals, can hit 52 week-to-week beats. Not without being mental and/or stuffing a gun in thier mouth when its over.

Parenthetically, our preorders to date for COUNTDOWN are slightly less than half of our preorders for 52. This can (AND DOES) change dramatically as we get closer to release date, but it is a worrying sign.

-B Click Here to Read More...

Honestly, I'm really running out of books that I've read recently. I mean, I could say something about the three volumes of Essential Spider-Man that I picked up at Wondercon (especially as they have some great John Romita, Gil Kane and Ross Andru art, and Harry Osborne grows a great moustache), but I should probably finish reading them first. So, instead, a random assortment of spined joys:

MY DEAD GIRLFRIEND VOLUME 1: I have this problem with the way that (I seem to remember, although I may be wrong) Tokyopop forces their OEL creators to structure their books, with each volume being one act of a larger story told in the three-act structure (Meaning that Volume 1 is Act One, Volume 2 is Act Two, and Volume 3 is Act... Oh, you get it already): It makes the books seem very inconsequential. I remember having the same feeling about Becky Cloonan's "East Coast Rising" as I did about this book, that there wasn't really any payoff by the end. And, yes, it's part of a series and all, but when you're paying $10 for a 128- (or however long it is) page book, then I don't think it's too much to ask for something that feels slightly more worthwhile than your average #1 of a 32-page comic book. And I'm kind of annoyed that I feel like that about this book, because lack-of-ending aside, I really enjoyed it - Eric Wight is an amazing cartoonist who gets to really play around with his art here, pulling off a mix of styles that somehow all manage to work in the same world without too much visual disconnect, even when Peter Gallagher shows up to play the father of the hero; there's something about his art that manages to be retro and contemporary at once that helps keep things interesting to look at. The writing is loose enough to feel natural, but tight enough to carry the reader through some pretty expositionary moments without seeming too rough or losing your attention; it's definitely a book aimed to a teen audience, but done with enough skill and humor to have something to offer those of us who're almost twenty years outside the target demographic. As I said, I enjoyed it a lot; it's just that I finished the book immediately wanting to read the next one and find out what happens next - which is the sign of a Very Good book - and wishing that there had maybe been a little more meat on this one.

MAKING COMICS: The third book in Scott McCloud's "[Present Participle] Comics" trilogy, but it really feels like a sequel to "Understanding Comics" in both quality and content (I actually went back and re-read "Reinventing Comics" because I enjoyed "Making..." so much; "Reinventing" hasn't dated well - as could be expected for a seven-year-old book that tried to predict the future of technology - but it's a more scattered, more theoretical-based work, and doesn't really fit with the other books, feeling less certain of itself, and written for a different audience and purpose. Still worth reading, if you haven't, though). For all his modesty in the start of the book, McCloud knows perfectly well how do to good comics; what makes his book work so well isn't just the information that he's trying to give, but the method which he uses to impart said information. Like "Understanding," this is a joy to read, and even if you know half of this stuff, the presentation makes connections you may not have as well as acting as a good refresher. Excellent.

SHOWCASE PRESENTS THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD: THE BATMAN TEAM-UPS VOLUME 1: Yes, that is an astonishingly long title. But it's worth it for the stories contained herein, because, man, Bob Haney really managed to take advantage of DC's lack of ability to do anything with Batmania in the late '60s. Sure, there may be other reasons for his being able to get away with everyone calling Batman "Batguy" and the rest of the wonderfully dated attempts to be contemporary that Haney filled this book with, but I'm going with that one as the most likely. The result is something that reads like "What if Terry Southern wrote Batman?", and fits in perfectly with my love for things like The Magic Christian (talking of Southern...) and the Monkees movie Head. DC purists probably hate the way that Haney completely fucks around with character in service of his goofy plot - especially when Wonder Woman and Batgirl both fall in love with Batman at exactly the same time and start fighting over him, letting the bad guy get away - but there's such a shameless lovability about the whole thing that is unavoidable, and perfect for this kind of cheap and cheerful format, especially with some great Neal Adams art towards the end. Very Good.

I start out by talking about the awesomeness that is late 60s Spider-Man and end by talking about late-60s Batman. I don't know if that is incredible planning or proof that I read far too many campy books from before I was born. At least tomorrow I'll be back to talking about this week's books like I normally do on Sundays... Click Here to Read More...

So, I've been asleep for about 30 of the last 36 hours. Neat! I think I'm largely over my cold now, but I'm still moving at just a fraction of normal speed here, so take pity on the old man for missing a day of daily blogging.

Let's do just a couple of comics before I have to go pick Ben up from school and go to work:

MIGHTY AVENGERS #1: Its big and goofy, filled with explosions and people hitting giant monsters. Its basically just fun. THAT'S pretty much what I've been wanting from an AVENGERS comic for a while, and this was the first time in (uh, like 3 years?) that I've thought that Bendis had the rythym of the "suepr team". I'm just a little less excited by the thought baloons (because they're mostly being used for shtick), but overall, I thought this was a fun little Marvel funny book, and a nice change from the sturm und drang of CIVIL WAR. Shockingly GOOD.

CIVIL WAR: THE INITIATIVE: Every single copy we recieved has mis-printed -- the Tbolts story repeats, and the final story is only the final 4 pages. Still, I think I can judge the contents pretty well. Its basically "BRAVE NEW WORLD" for 5x the price. How well that sits with you is likely to come down to how much you like Mark Silvestri's artwork, and I think he's over-rendered, and a mediocre story-teller. The price tag would have been less insulting had the "previews in the back" not been stuff out THIS week (or, worse, LAST week), but man, $5, seriously? AWFUL.

FANTASTIC FOUR #543: Wow, there's something deeply creepy about that cover, isn't there? Probably the worst-timed 45th anniversary ever, given what's going on in the Marvel U right now, and sadly, filled with a big bunch of "I don't buy it"s. I don't buy that Reed and SUe "reconcile" that easially. I don't buy that Johnny & Ben are so wedded to the FF as a *concept* that they're looking for new members. I don't buy that Panther and Storm make ANY sense whatsoever. So, the lead story? Pretty meh. But the backups pretty make up for it -- Stan Lee and Mike Allred, both being pure-injections of themselves, on one story, PAUL-freakin'-POPE on the other. Wow. That pulls the wqhole thing up to a GOOD for me, man.

OK, back later with more....


what did YOU think?

-B Click Here to Read More...

52 WEEKS FORTY through FORTY-FOUR: As the series comes uglily (is that even a real word?) towards its conclusion, I just can't buy the Black Adam plot thread. I mean, sure, the plot mechanics are all there in theory: Black Adam needed to lose his recent happiness in order to, for whatever reason, revert from everything he's spent the last forty-four weeks learning (Not that I really see why that has to be the case, but whatever; maybe it's some kind of nature versus nurture thing, or perhaps it's just the simplest "big finish" available to the creators at this point) and go on a murderous rampage across the four spin-off WWIII books in six weeks, and the easiest way for that to happen is to kill his family. Why not? It's a weekly schedule, and no time to work out another, less obvious, direction for that particular plot. Plus, this way you get to have some fight scenes, a genre staple that has been missing throughout the series until recently.

(Not that that's a bad thing; if there's something that these five issues have shown, along with the earlier space showdown with Lobo and Lady Styx, it's that 52 doesn't really do action that well. I don't really understand why, considering the writers and layout artist involved, but one of the continual weaker parts of the series has been the art, and weak art makes things like fight scenes harder to carry out well.)

So, sure, I get that. No, what I'm missing is why Isis died suddenly doing a 180 on everything that the character has always been about since her first appearance. For as long as we've known her, Isis has been all about seeing the best in humanity. It's been her one defining characteristic, her one characteristic in general, and I'm really not getting why she changed her mind just before her death, outside of it being what the plot demanded at that particular point. I mean, yes, I get that Kahndaq was attacked and destroyed by the Four Horsemen and that she knows that the Four Horsemen were sent there by Intergang, but I don't see why that automatically translates into "the evil needs to die." Didn't she already know that Intergang were evil, considering that she had, you know, been their slave before her first appearance? And wasn't her brother also their slave? Did she somehow miss everything else that Intergang had been doing up until that point despite her involvement with the Question and the Crime Bible plotline? She has, so far in the series, been the one voice of (relative) reason for Black Adam despite what she's seen (Intergang using teenage suicide bombers at their wedding, for example), so I'm not buying that she completely abandons that entirely in her last dying breath and instead tells Adam that it's time to go kick some ass, without any hint that she would even consider this at any other point in the past thirty-odd weeks. For her last words to work as the scene played out suggests that either Isis only really takes these things that seriously when they directly affect her personally (and is therefore pretty damn shallow), or that the one thing that we were ever shown about the character - her pacifist, optimistic nature - was a lie.

Or, of course, she says it because it's cheap drama and an easy signpost to make Adam go on a murderous rampage.

That's the worrying thing about 52 as we get closer to the finish line. Not that it's beginning to seem more and more obvious that we're not going to get all of the mysteries answered (Doug Wolk made a list of 100 unanswered 52 questions on 52 pick-up this week, and pointed out that, with the number of pages left in the series, we'll have to get a resolution on every second page remaining on average if everything's to be answered, and somehow I'm not expecting that to be the case. Also, I keep hearing the rumor of 52 Week Fifty-Two being a 52-page issue, but it definitely wasn't solicited as one...), but that the creators are getting sloppier at moving all the pieces around in the rush to try and get the main stories finished in time, and the cracks are starting to show throughout the entire thing. For example, the Steel plot, which hasn't appeared at all in the last few issues, ended with an underwhelming slugfest and a climax that seemed to come out of nowhere ("Lex! You have powers that have never been mentioned before! But luckily, we can switch those powers off using this method that we've never mentioned before either!"). Likewise, the finale of Ralph's plot - or the finale so far, perhaps, in case we haven't seen his final fate just yet - also didn't really provide payoff to those who were only familiar with the characters through this series, relying on the Fate helmet to actually be the work of a characters who had only appeared in cameos before that point and motives that wouldn't be familiar to someone who'd never seen the characters before. It's both sloppy and not sloppy at the same time; consistent enough with former continuity to satisfy the longtime fans but too reliant on continuity outside the story itself to satisfy those only following 52 itself.

The various plot threads are starting to feel even more unbalanced than before - Three out of the past five issues have essentially dispensed with the original concepts of real-time storytelling and multiple storylines in each issue by focusing on near-issue-length setpieces that took place not only within one day, but within a matter of hours, in a manner that acts less like the earlier issues and more like the traditional superhero comic. Each thread itself is also beginning to seem muddied in the execution - I feel as if we've spent far too long waiting for Renee's story to catch up with where we all expected it to be months ago, and I'm completely unclear as to whether the Steel, Ralph or even the Adam Strange plots are actually over or not, because while they've each reached a conclusion, none of them have reached any real sense of closure. Maybe it's just exhaustion setting in for me as a reader as much as the writers by this point (and the artists, too; it might be unfair, but Dan Jurgens' professional-yet-unspectacular art in week forty-three made the book feel more tired than any "Giant crocodile eats crippled child" issue should), but there definitely seems to be a sense of the wheels falling off this wagon right now, when I'm sure that I should be getting excited for the ramp-up to the big finale instead. Still, there are eight weeks to turn everything around, so who knows what'll happen in that time? Right now, though: Eh.

What do the rest of you think? Am I the only one burning out on this series right now? Click Here to Read More...

Gah. Welcome to the new Savage Critics' world of ultra-content [insert your own "Hope you survive the comix experience!" joke here], and enjoy it for as long as we can keep the plates spinning. Hopefully, as time goes on, we'll smooth out the wrinkles a bit, so you're not reading all three of us reviewing the same book with more or less the same take on it. For example, I'm writing this review of trades knowing that Graeme's got the same thing in the hopper and we're covering some of the same books, which I find a little daunting and also an excellent excuse to instead go and play a few more hours of Dragon Quest VIII (which I would totally recommend to readers of Dr. Slump, by the way, because Akira Toriyama designed the characters and monsters for DQVIII and they've got a great loopy touch to them).

On the other hand, if it provides all y'all with some sort of guideline to track down a new book that you end up loving, I'll be happy.

BECK MONGOLIAN CHOP SQUAD VOL 7 TPB: It's always hard pretending to be a critic, and never more so than when you're reviewing something you love passionately but you know to have more than its share of flaws--for example, Harold Sakuishi's Beck, to which I'm passionately devoted. This volume finds Sakuishi relying ever heavier on a rather gaudy plot element--a stolen guitar that ties into the death of an American pop star--and abruptly ending scenes between characters so as to prolong the development of relationships over time, rather than letting his drama build, crest and peak naturally.

On the other hand, this volume of Beck is chock-full of Sakuishi passionately drawing things he clearly feels passionate about--pretty girls and guys hunched intently over guitars, gratuitous cartoon slapstick and people's faces contorted in song and anger and joy. And if you're invested in the slow struggle and triumph of the underdog protagonist like I am, it's like that long, endless ribbon of delicious nougat they'd show in candy bar commercials on Saturday morning--a simultaneous promise and delivery of cheap and blissful sensory overload. Very Good work, and worth reading despite the shortcomings.

DOOM PATROL VOL 5 MAGIC BUS TPB: Although I've been buying the trades, I've been pretty lax about re-reading these classic Grant Morrison Doom Patrol stories, but I tucked into this volume to see what was being reprinted and found myself impressed at the variety of material here--there's the "Mr. Nobody for President" story, a great Lee-Kirby piss-take {thanks, Duncan!], probably the most elliptical superhero origin story ever told, and the beginning of the final Doom Patrol arc which has all the balls to look at the origin of the Doom Patrol in a way that finally has it make sense. Although I'm probably preaching to the choir here, this is a Very Good set of reprints, and impressive for being a well-told superhero book (well paced subplots and everything!) as well as a flashy, gaudy, dazzling shot of pop-culture transgressiveness.

DRIFTING CLASSROOM VOL 4 TPB: Took me a while to get around to Vol. 4 of this and I worried that maybe it wouldn't be as grippingly insane as the first three volumes. Fortunately, Kazuo Umezu's volume opens with a bunch of first-graders convinced they can change into birds and leaping to their death, and then just gets better from there. Giant monsters, bloody dismemberment, semi-voluntary chloroforming, last minute life-or-death school elections--Drifting Classroom hurtles along like a full-bore nightmare, heedless of its own illogic and committed to making you break out in a cold sweat even while you're chuckling at the insanity of it all. It's been Excellent work so far, and I have every hope it'll continue its streak of brain-melting brilliance. Amazing stuff.

GARAGE BAND TPB: I didn't want to be the first SCer to review this because my take on the book is so pedantic. While I loved Gipi's art on this, I found myself wishing that First Second had opted for a foreword or an afterword to this tale of four kids trying to overcome any number of travails; for one thing, the book strikes me as deeply, deeply Italian with some of the struggles going on between the kids and their parents with Communism, Socialism and Nazism having pretty specific meanings within the ongoing free-for-all that is Italian national identity. Secondly, Gipi's central conceit--that the kids are playing in a garage owned by the father--is a pretty specific thematic concern to the book as the band struggles with the influence of family (particularly their fathers) in the way they're going to do with their lives and what's expected of them, and again I think this didn't strike as deep a chord with me as an American reader as it might someone in Italy for whom family is an all-pervading influence.

I'd like to think that such a foreword or afterword might help adjust a reader's expectations a bit, so that the focus is put more properly back on the kid's struggle, rather than whether they fail or succeed; becuase it's the struggle that Gipi is stressing here as important, not the success or failure, and it might make it a little easier to put the book down satisfied if one knows that going in.

Either way, it's a tremendous looking book and I'm glad that First Second is publishing it, but Garage Band is easier to admire than to love (which makes it exactly the opposite of a its subject matter) and I think that's a bit of a shame. OK.

GOLGO 13 VOL. 7 TPB: Although the exchange of prisoners never happens, and we are not passed from our sensible jailer Takao Saito to the crazed revolutionaries of Golgo 13 readers, editor Carl Horn picks two nice complementary Golgo 13 stories with more than a touch of the crazy to them. I particularly liked the villain of "Eye of God," a religion obsessed peeping tom satellite intel specialist who tries to deceive Golgo 13, with typicially sniperific results. But the second story, "Far From An Era" also has a enoyable denouement stemming from the bat-shit crazy idea that a guy would hire a professional killer to snipe an earring off his wife's ear. Oh, and Golgo 13 beds a lonely widow with little more than five sentences and three set of ellipses. Good stuff, and among the more enjoyable volumes released yet.

MUSHISHI VOL 1 GN: Picked this up because of some stuff Jog said (sorry I'm being too lame to look up direct links), and I wasn't disappointed. I was amused, however, by a possible influence on Yuki Urushibara's work that hasn't been noted; while everyone has pointed out the influence of Tezuka's Black Jack on this story of a wandering healer-for-hire in a rural, semi-magical time, I haven't seen anyone mention that Ginko wanders around in a trench coat, hair in his eyes, smoking a cigarette. Maybe everyone is afraid of making the terrifying high-concept pitch for this but I won't: if you've ever wanted to see Hayao Miyazaki try his hand at John Constantine, you'll probably dig Mushishi. I thought the first story, which won a prestigious manga award, was filled with tons of a cool ideas but was a little on the draggy side but by the time we get to the "Light In The Eyelids," Urushibara is crafting taut little stories about tiny innocent things we do that connect us to a more powerful and dangerous barely seen world. If you think it sounds like the sort of thing you'll like, then trust me, you will. Good stuff.

NAOKI URASAWAS MONSTER VOL 7 TPB: As Dick Hyacinth pointed out on his blog somewhere, Naoki Urasawa is a helluva cartoonist, and his love of jowly, mustached old men serves him particularly well in this volume--I could spend hours looking at the sequence on pgs. 146-148, where a tubby old guy has flashbacks while jogging. In fact, said old guy, Dr. Gillen, pretty much steals the show for Volume 7, which works in the volume's favor and makes it one of my favorites of the series. While Fugitive-style narratives with new characters constantly stepping into the limelight seems like a good idea for an open-ended story, in fact I think it just makes it easier for the reader to stop caring about the overall narrative. But Urasawa's solid cartooning chops and surehanded way with melodrama manage to keep me chained to the story every time. A highly Good read, I thought.

THE PLAIN JANES TPB: I'm cheating, because I only read the first half of Hibbs' copy before he dashed off with it. However, the two things that struck me the most were: (a) how much Jim Rugg's work here looks like Dan Clowes and all the half-baked conclusions that I leapt to as a result of that (is Ghost World a tremendously popular read in the teen girl market? Is Rugg's style and some of the plot element of Plain Janes an attempt to tap into that specific readership?) and (b) wow, this needed another draft. There's a lot of stuff I really liked about Castelluci's story--for one thing, the book's theme is about how the creation of art is implicitly tied to trauma and the attempts to come to terms with trauma, and so art can be uncomfortable, unsettling and challenging to the status quo even while it is for the status quo's ultimate good--but it's poorly structured: the protagonist's story flips around awkwardly in time as Castelluci tries to throw in all the important elements of the backstory while making a run at having the plot power forward. I'm sure the idea is to unpeel the protagonist's motivations seem mysterious and complex, but the opening covering the most dramatic part of that backstory (the explosion that changed her life) renders that pretty moot. What we get is a story that feels like it's told on the fly, one of those "Oh, wait! I forgot to tell you this part!" jokes where the punchline is going to end up mangled.

I really love the idea of the MINX line, and Rugg's art is gorgeous in places and clean and emphatic throughout, but I'm kinda relieved I can't give you a rating for the full book of The Plain Janes. The first half was Eh, but I hope when I get the chance to read the whole thing all my criticisms will be nullified by a terrific ending. I'm doubtful, however.

THE PROFESSOR’S DAUGHTER TPB: Like Bri and Graeme, I thought this was the hit of the upcoming First Second books I've read. In fact, having read Graeme's review, I don't know what I can tell you about it that he or Brian hasn't. The watercolor work on it is stunning; the story is goofy, but also romantic and touching and sweet. It's told with incredibly charm and brevity and scope, so that what starts off as a quiet afternoon in the park between an animated mummy and a professor's daughter becomes a crime story, love story, family drama and courtroom epic without losing its pitch-perfect note of whimsy. I'm pretty stingy with my Excellent rating, so hopefully the fact this book earns it (from me and Graeme and Brian) will send you in search of it. It's absolutely worth your time and attention.

Believe it or not, I've got another six or so trade reviews up my sleeve but I'll try and save 'em for later so your eyes don't explode. But what do you think of the new content-heaviness? Too much? Not enough? Both? Let us know...

Labels: Jeff

Click Here to Read More...

Aaaand we return and begin again with three reviews of things that aren't even out yet. Because, really, I'm just that damn popular that everyone can't help but show me previews.*

GARAGE BAND: Garage Band may be the most beautiful book released this year. Gipi's artwork for it is stunning, all watercolor washes for landscapes and skies and busy, excitable linework for the characters themselves; it's one of those books that might be worth it for the art alone, without every reading any of the words attached. Imagine a less precious Jon J Muth, with a teenage Dave McKean helping out with the figures, and you might have some kind of idea what the book looks like. It's really something. Sadly, the art maybe dominates the book too much - the writing definitely seems to give the art enough room to show off, but at the cost of the plot... Each chapter of the book is too slight, too much of a specific scene or feeling to really allow for any plot development, leaving the end of the book as unsatisfying, because it doesn't feel earned. Despite that, though, I really enjoyed this; maybe I'm just a sucker for the amazing artwork, but it still seemed a high Good/low Very Good to me.

THE HOMELESS CHANNEL: For everyone who - like me - has been watching Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip and thinking "Whatever happened to the old Aaron Sorkin? You know, the good one?" then you should probably pick up this book when it comes out (which is, I think, in May). I mentioned it here a couple of weeks ago, I think; it's the first graphic novel from a local creator called Matt Silady, a collection/expansion on a series of minicomics he made of the same name, and I have to admit that it's something that pretty much blew me away. I keep coming back to Sorkin as a touchstone when I talk to people about it (which means that it's probably someone like Mamet, but I'm uncultured, so what can you do?), because there are so many things that Silady does that reminded me of Sportsnight here - Definitely the dialogue is the most obvious, but the interplay of the characters and even the motivation of the characters and the way that's played out through the story reminded me of Sorkin back when he was really trying hard (The latter becomes more obvious as you get to the end of the book, I think, but that may just be me). There's something about the writing that feels both authentic and hyper-real at the same time, the dialogue given a very enjoyable stylization that makes conversations both familiar and the way that you wish people would talk, and a plot that often threatens to fall straight into the overly sincere and preachiness of early Brian Wood but manages to keep its balance all along, right up until the end. In a strange way - and I mean this as a compliment - it doesn't feel like a comic in many respects, because of the way the story is told; the focus and pace feel less selfconscious than most comics that try for this kind of mainstream drama, allowing everything to happen without the author's hand being too evident throughout. It's a fascinating book, to me; something that I finished and immediately started reading again, because I enjoyed reading it so much and felt as if there were things that I had missed and wanted to go back to check. It's not perfect, of course (the artwork at the start is a little too sparse and kind of stalled the reading process for me in a weird way, but that self-corrects throughout the book to the point where, halfway through, it's working really well), but it is Very Good, and, I feel, a pretty damn impressive debut book from one of the more interesting new creators I've seen in a long time.

THE PROFESSOR'S DAUGHTER: Brian has already raved about this, and he's entirely right. Taking the humanity, gentle romance and comedy of Joann Sfar's Vampire Loves (and am I really the only person who thought that book was wonderful? It was every teenage romance I never had, with added monsters) and matching it with the really gorgeous watercolor artwork of Emmanuel Guibert, this is an amazingly wonderful book that manages to tell what should be a goofy story (Boy meets girl, except that boy is a 3000 year old mummy and girl is the daughter of the professor who discovered said mummy. Oh, and she accidentally murders some people and they have to go on the run) with such heart and wit that it becomes something that's sincere and touching at the same time as funny and smart. It's the book to show to everyone who wonders what this whole comic thing is about, because it's just done so well that it's impossible not to be completely captivated by it (As I said a couple of weeks ago, I pushed this on the houseguests we had, neither of whom read comics, and they were both sucked in). Excellent, and the kind of thing that you want everyone in the world to read. I loved this book to pieces and then some.

* - This is untrue. But if anyone at DC is reading this and feeling particularly susceptible today, I'd really like to read The Plain Janes, please. Click Here to Read More...

All that "tired" I've been feeling this week has turned into full-fledged "sick", and my nose is leaking like a sieve.

So, in the interest of being able to go to sleep early, just one book today:

CAPTAIN AMERICA #25: I was less of a fan of the telegraphing of the issue (ie: all the "And here's why Steve is just the ginchiest!" stuff, and I thought the "Remember" flashback was pretty awkwardly staged as a story beat, and I also thought that as an "epilogue" to CIVIL WAR, this wasn't the statement *I* would have made (America Dies) in the wake of what they seem to want to be presenting as the through line (Surrending civil liberties is a good idea!), and I wonder how many people in the offices see that meta-textual read. Also, this is the SECOND assassination attempt during CIVIL WAR (remember, that's what turned poor ol' Robbie into PAINMASTER, THE GOTH-MAN AVENGER)

Also, as is probably not to be surprised, I don't much buy that Steve Rogers is "dead dead" -- I can think of at least 2-3 ways out of this story without even straining, and I'm no fancy writer-man, AND that doesn't even count the "cheap" kind of resurrection of Captain Marvel in THE RETURN. Steve will be back, probably within 3 years, more likely by issue #50. I do hope that Bucky doesn't become Cap -- Sharon'd be a much cleverer choice (but then, I think Ralph and Sue should come back as crime-solving ghosts, ala TOPPER, so what do I know?), but, for the most part, I trust Brubaker on this.

See, despite my sort of base level hesitations as noted above, I thought this was a pretty competent and well told story; one that, if a civilian were to read it, might possibly get them interested in comics over the long-haul. There's certainly craft on display here.

I wish Marvel had laid out the score for us a lot better -- certainly when Superman was killed, we knew MONTHS in advance, and it resulted in millions of copies ordered. Even with the supposed generous overprint, I'll be surprised if we end up with even the same number of copies of CAP #25 on the market as CIVIL WAR (ie, nowhere near enough). The REAL problem is, because (I'm guessing) the reorders are going to fill from newstand copies, and because of the way that Diamond and Marvel work with OSDs (over-short-damage), it seems likely that reorders won't arrive for 2 more weeks. That's going to be way too late, I think.

Anyway, all that aside, yeah, good craft, I'll go with a (low) GOOD.

What'd you think?


-B Click Here to Read More...

Seeing as I have somehow magically picked up the "trying to post every day for a week" baton from Hibbs, it's probably time for me to look at just what happened to that whole Marvel Universe after their little Civil War, wouldn't you agree? But be warned, because I'm potentially spoiling the "controversial" Captain America #25 with all my complaining, in case you somehow haven't already read about the end in your daily newspaper (It's like Spider-Man's unmasking all over again!). So, you know, spoiler warnings and stuff.

CAPTAIN AMERICA #25: Wait, that's it? Seriously? That's what everyone's been waiting for? Strangely enough, it doesn't make me think of anything as much as this past Sunday's Battlestar Galactica, from the self-important tone of foreshadowing that runs through the whole thing (Much worse here, especially as it feels as if everything right up until the climax of the book is filler - Far too much "Character X spends a page remembering why Captain America is so important to them" and far too little actual story for my liking) to the exceptionally unconvincing "death" at the end. Again, this book is worse than Battlestar in this respect, in that you don't even see an exploding spaceship, but just cut from Cap in an ambulance to being told that he died; yes, there's a body in the morgue wearing the Cap outfit, but come on, people: This is the least convincing death that comics has seen in a long time, leaving multiple chances to bring Cap back if and whenever Marvel editorial and/or Ed Brubaker feels like. As unfulfilling as this issue is, though, it feels even moreso because we've all been expecting this since Marvel first announced Civil War: Fallen Son Note: Not Actual Title a couple of months ago. Way to rob this Eh book of whatever shock and surprise that it may have otherwise had, Marvel.

(This week's Battlestar Galactica was Okay, by the way. And Starbuck is obviously a Cylon.)

CIVIL WAR: FRONTLINE #11: So we've all done the "Captain America doesn't watch YouTube?" jokes to death now, but let's look at the rest of Sally's speech to Captain America from this Awful book: "Your problem is that you're fighting for an ideal - - It's all you know how to do... The country I love treats its celebrities like royalty and its teachers like dirt. But at least I walk its streets every day. At least I know what it is." So... the hero of this book thinks that fighting for an ideal is bad and that it's okay that your country is fucked up as long as it's familiar. That, more than any amount of MySpace comedy or Daredevil crying because of the carnage he caused, is what stuck with me about this issue. That and the melodramatic desire to ask whatever happened to Marvel's soul. There's something about the... I don't know, the apathy about the whole thing, the lack of desire to question or take responsibility for yourself - the Tony Stark scenes in this, where the reporters confront Stark with proof that he tried to engineer a war with Atlantis to further his own political ends and then applaud him for it and say that they're going to bury the story because what he's doing is for the Greater Good JESUS CHRIST MY MIND IS MELTING was jawdropping in the active abdication of personal responsibility, the way in which the reader is essentially told that those in authority know better than us mere mortals - that really just depresses me more than I could honestly say. In my small little heart, superheroes are about more than upholding the law; they're for fighting for what's right and defending the little man. But in this new Marvel Universe, it's being made explicit that that's not the case anymore: Superheroes exist to toe the legal line, fighting for an ideal is derided for being outdated, and by the way, we all love Big Brother. Yes, it's all going to be undone at some point, but it'll be undone in some vague "Look! It's Mephisto! Let's all team up and be friends again!" way, as opposed to anything approaching an investigation into the morals and politics that Marvel have presented as "right" through the comics and interviews supporting the comics involved in Civil War. For now, though, we're stuck with Fox News Comics Presents: You Don't Know How Hard It Is For The People In Charge, Peasant.

CIVIL WAR: THE INITIATIVE #1: Would the phrase "Less a comic, more a glorified sales pitch" sum everything in this (as Hibbs pointed out, $5 for 24-pages of unique content) book? Probably. It's not the sixteen pages of previews for other books at the back that makes it feel that way, though, nor the one page checklist to make sure that you know each and every book that's telling you all about the "exciting new status quo for the Marvel Universe"; it's the main story itself, proof positive that both Brian Michael Bendis and Warren Ellis aren't above phoning it in long distance for the cash. Actually, calling it a story is being polite, as there's nothing resembling a plot here, just a bunch of money shots with some filler to try and make them hang together well. And, you know, failing (My favorite random scene is probably the Omega Flight reveal, where Sasquatch's speech balloon tail leads off the left of the page, even though he's on the far right of the image. Obviously his secondary mutation is superventriloquism). The writing here is so bad as to seem intentional, because how else do you explain narration like "Not too long ago, Tony made a massive technological breakthrough - - Instead of physically putting on his shining suit of armor, the armor is now part of him. It pours out of his skin. He is an Iron Man"? Not that Warren isn't trying to compete for the clunkiness, giving Penance the following lines: "I want you to hurt me. Pain is what activates my powers. And I'm already in pain. Pain you can't imagine. And I want more." It's as if he's trying to channel Scott Lobdell trying to channel Chris Claremont's fetish fantasies. The sloppiness of the writing - and sloppiness of the production, as the entire Ellis Thunderbolts scene gets repeated in the book, and it doesn't seem to be a printing error due to the pagination - underlines yet again the lack of respect that Marvel have for their audience right now... Clearly, they've realized that their fans are so hopped up on the goofball that was Civil War that they can sell them anything at this point, and they're trying to see how far they can push things. Really, really Awful.

IRON MAN #15: Yes, yes, I get it: Tony Stark is, like, totally dreamy and awesome. He takes over SHIELD and suddenly no-one dies and there's daycare and even Dum-Dum Dugan (who seems to have un-died since his last appearance in Wolverine: Origins) buys into it eventually. Wow, he's really not the same guy who built a murdering cyborg clone of his dead friend and tried to start a war so that he could make a fortune! You've convinced me, Marvel! I can see what is trying to be done in this book - repositioning it as a high-tech international spy thriller while also setting up a "things are good now, but just you wait" status quo - but it's just done with such little subtlety that it becomes ridiculous. But as Crap as the book may be, it has one saving grace: new artist Roberto De La Torre, whose work here is very, very nice indeed.

THE MIGHTY AVENGERS #1: Another one for the "Well, you can see what they're aiming for" pile, I think. What with the giant monsters (complete with comedy sound-effects - Look, it's "FOOM" - making me feel as if Bendis had just read Nextwave that morning and wanted to do something like that himself) and "we're picking the team" scenes, this has a self-consciously retro feel to it that doesn't really gel, mostly because of Bendis' traditional dialogue, which makes every character sound identical and weirdly fake. There are other problems with the writing that suggest that Bendis is becoming a little too enamored with himself - when discussing ideal Avengers line-ups, he lingers on the Spider-Man/Luke Cage pairing of his New Avengers longer than any other, for example - and in need of a stronger editor: the return of thought balloons to Marvel (You have to wonder if Walt Simonson got a similar amount of attention when he started using thought balloons in Hawkgirl last year; I don't think he did, did he?) just doesn't work, because the initial idea isn't as funny as the team apparently thinks it is. That said, it's nice to see a high profile Marvel book not dwell on how horrible everything is now that parts of Connecticut have been blown up, even if it's as uneven as this. Eh.

At this point, I'd have to admit that I'm on the side of not being a massive fan of this post Civil War landscape; even the fun comics seem shrill and oddly joyless. But on the plus side, if Cap really is dead, then at least he doesn't have to worry about people complaining about his online social networking anymore. Click Here to Read More...

Not that I want to interrupt Hibbs' pretty stunning run of daily posting or anything, but I feel as if I'm due some reviews on here myself. Not that I've read any new comics in the last couple of weeks, mind you, so have a few trade reviews instead while I try and get my head around the fact that Brian and I were written up on Wired (Hello, Annalee).

DEATH NOTE VOLUME 1: There's a trick to reading a lot of dramatic manga, just as there is a trick to reading almost every superhero comic; a language to learn, so that the sudden exclamations act almost as (very) short theatrical monologues to the audience instead of part of the story itself, telling everyone the emotional state at that particular instant. I'm not sure that it's something I've completely mastered yet - there were parts of this that still seemed very goofy, to be honest - but I could suspend my inner critic enough to dig the start of this mass-murdering spree story and want to see what happens next. The story shouldn't work, of course; as soon as the mysterious law enforcement officer who keeps his identity hidden from everyone appears, logic starts jumping out the window, but what saves it is the idea that both he and Light, who possesses the Death Note and can kill anyone he wants any way he wants as long as he knows their name, both think that they're saving the world in almost the same way - It's perverse enough to keep me hanging on to see if they're going to end up teaming up later on... For now, though: Very Good.

ESSENTIAL FANTASTIC FOUR VOLUMES 1 - 5: What's really surprising about reading the complete Stan Lee and Jack Kirby run on Fantastic Four isn't how jaw-droppingly awesome it is all the way through, but how long it takes before everything comes together - It isn't until, weirdly enough, the addition of Joe Sinnott as inker at the start of the third collection (#44, for those of you paying attention) that everything gels; it's not just the art (which, once Sinnott comes along, magically becomes both the stereotype "Marvel" look and the classic Kirby look at once), but the stories that suddenly snap into place. The same issue that Sinnott comes aboard also introduces the Inhumans, Kirby's first attempt at a Magical Family that would later become the New Gods, the Eternals and probably countless other Krazy Kirby Koncepts in his head, and then BLAM! the characters go from fighting the bad guy of the month to jumping through infinity and feeling every single emotion in the world to an almost operatic level all the time. Which isn't to say that it's not good for the first 43 issues, because it is, but it's good in the same underwhelming way that the Steve Ditko issues of Spider-Man are to me; classic and groundbreaking, sure, but in a strangely ugly disjointed manner that reads... kind of "off" (And this is where I get jumped on by purists. Sorry). Classic Marvel to me is art that's a mix of dynamic layout and lush linework, and stories that have grand concepts that the script tries to have both ways, trying to convince you of its greatness and immensity while at the same time having some character offer a variation of "Can't ya just speak English for once, stretcho?" as a punchline for the expositionary monologue as if winking at the reader and implying the Kirby line "Don't ask! Just buy it!" Once Sinnott comes on board and smoothes out the art, and the stories seem to, well, become much more Kirby-esque, then it becomes the zenith of my definition of Classic Marvel - There's such energy and potential in the stories, and such movement in the characters that you can understand, finally, why they could get away with calling it The World's Greatest Comic Magazine. Sure, Kirby clearly stopped giving his all by the time that you reach the fifth collection, but even mid-level Kirby at that point was still staggering. In terms of historical importance, all five volumes are a must read - they redefined what comics could be as a medium! - but in terms of just old fashioned good reads, Volumes 3 and 4 are Excellent, Volume 5 Very Good, and the first two volumes still a strong Good.

LOST AT SEA: I'm not sure what I expected from Bryan Lee O'Malley's first book, and now that I've read it, I'm not sure what I got, either. But there's something fitting about that, because this seems like a book about uncertainty and insecurity (and as such, the emotional opposite of Scott Pilgrim, where Scott is too dumb to think about such matters for the most part)... I'm not sure if there's even a story here as much as a journey for O'Malley himself when he was creating the book, but I enjoyed it nonetheless; he hits some emotional points that feel true, and that makes all the difference on this kind of angst book, you know? A tenuous high Good.

Coming up later this week: More trade reviews, including my favorite two books of the year so far. Click Here to Read More...

I'm extremely frickin' bushed today -- I woke up feeling tired, and never got back on track. ANd we get our comics on Tuesdays, so I'm doubly tired from messing with all of those massive massive piles of double-sized funny books.

And so, I don't really feel like tackling the rest of last week's comics -- I've already started reading this week's!!

But.... some reviews, I guess. FirstSecond has been kind enough (about, uh, 3 weeks ago) to send me advance copies of thier next batch of books, so let's justify thier expense, shall we?

GARAGE BAND: Really fabulous looking book, and absolutely engaging as I was reading it. Then I hit the last page, and it just kind of stopped with no real sense of conclusion. I don't know if there's meant to be a second volume or something, but I was ultimately disapointed with this as a "read". Gipi's art is really kick-ass, however, and it's absolutely worth a look when it comes into your LCS. Up until the last page, an easy GOOD. But, here six hours later, now that I've digested it, the sudden stop makes me feel like just an EH.

TINY TYRANT: I didn't bother to read SARDINE IN OUTER SPACE v3, because I didn't much care for v1 & v2, but this one's a solid book that's a lot of fun for both kids AND adults. The art is nice, kind of looking a bit like "Fairly Odd Parents", but with much more detail and texture, and there's some wonderful subtext going on in most pages. I've only read about 1/3 of this, but since it's just non-continuing vignettes (of a child king, and the adults that cater to him), there's no sense that it has to "end" well or not. Anyway, really terrific, and I thought it was VERY GOOD.

THE PROFESSOR'S DAUGHTER: the real gem of the batch. A reborn Mummy, and the daughter of the Professor (duh) who found him, during Victorian England. It's funny, strange, romantic, and more than anything else, human. Truly EXCELLENT material, and the one you really NEED to track down once it ships.


Anyway, that's what I got for you. Time to put Ben to bed, then lay down with this headache and try to read some post-CIVIL WAR comics (wait, THAT won't help, will it?!?!?)

Oh, and THANK YOU for the VERY thoughtful comments on the digital comics thread -- I'm still trying to digest them all, but I was truly impressed by the care and thought that everyone put into thier comments. Keep it up!


-B Click Here to Read More...

I've got a lot of stuff to catch up on today (and a misbehaving child who is making it harder to do so then I would like), and a phone interview with ComicGeekSpeak tonight, so I may not finish the reviews tonight. Still, trying the daily thing here, so must Feed the Beast.

Veneta Rogers has one of her Talking Shop pieces for Newsarama up at http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=103822, on the topic of Digital Comics. I was one of the people she emailed on the topic, but I wrote a statement, rathering than answering her bulleted questions, so I ended up mostly on the cutting room floor. Here's the entirety of what I wrote:



I'm fairly non-plussed, at this stage, about digital comics.

There are a couple of reasons for this:

1) Music, our primary source for "how will this impact us" analysis, is very different than reading. Music tends to be either something that is either a social function/lubricant or an activity that is done while doing something else (like, say, taking the bus, or studying or surfing the web). "Listening to music", I believe, in most cases for most people, most of the time, is a relatively "passive" activity -- most of the time you're not putting 100% of your focus ON the music, if you understand what I mean? This is not the case for "reading" (be it comics or prose) -- that's an "active" activity all of the time, and can really only be done alone. It makes sense for you to be able to carry 10k songs in your pocket. It makes less sense to have 10k comic books there.

2) Excluding a few audio-philes, the difference between an song playing on a MP3 over your computer's crappy speakers, or listening to a "tape" on your "Walkman", or playing a CD on your stereo is pretty much nil -- there's a portability between formats and the listening device, and so, naturally whichever format takes up the least space and costs the least will win.

The experience of "reading" is very different, and we're nowhere near the "portability" of music (or video, for that matter, though even that has a while to go) -- until there's a ubiquitous low-cost universal portable reader, I don't see the one we currently have (paper) being especially harmed. And even then I have my doubts.

(the corollary of that point is there's every reason to believe that digital "sampling" can lead to increased sales of physical objects)

3) Unlike prose, the physical presentation of content matters very much -- a comics page is usually designed as a unit, and the "timing" of the story depends on its physical space. Reading comics formatted for a comic's dimension is a wholly different experience on a computer screen. How successful would digital music have proven if you had to fiddle with the balance controls for each and every song?




I think digital comics are inevitable, but I don't think, at this stage, they should be feared by the quality DM retailer, because the disadvantages of the experience, portability, and presentation don't prove much of a "threat" to the physically printed object.

'cuz, y'see, right now this very second, you can get this week's comics, for 100% free, from the net, yet comic sales are on their 6th straight year of rise. Yes, there are some percentage of people who would like to switch to digital, but haven't done so for ethical reasons (yay, them!) or technology know-how ones, but I don't think they'll be statistically significant; and I think they'll be outnumbered by the new people we expose to the art form.

At least for stores that are "civilian-friendly", diversely stocked and focused, and are taste-makers rather than trend-followers.

-B Click Here to Read More...

Wow, Wondercon. Wiped me out, man. And I didn't even go!

Well, okay. I did go, but like for maybe two hours? On Sunday? And then I just had to leave: thanks to the awesomeness that is Drunken Master, I spent fifty bucks over my budget, found myself overwhelmed by all the other books and this sudden creeping--what? antipathy? shyness? exhaustion?--and cut out. If there was an olympic sport for lameness (as opposed to just most olympic sports being lame), I would've certainly been made the U.S.'s number one draft pick.

But, yeah, Drunken Master is awesome: they're like the PETA for fans of asian films as they refuse to carry bootlegs. So sometimes you have to have an all-region DVD player (or have hacked your DVD player to play all regions) but you can rest in peace knowing that the dudes who busted their hump making an awesome flick like The Host (which I highly recommend you catch when it comes to theaters next month) get paid. Plus, the guys there know their shit, so when you need help finding that kinda obscure Wong Jing flick, they generally know what you're talking about. I've nearly made dudes in Chinatown burst into tears trying to understand that, no, I don't want God of Gamblers, I want that spoof of God of Gamblers. You know? The one with the kid? Thanks to DM, I finally have a copy of Saint of Gamblers on DVD... and Osaka Wrestling Restaurant...and Welcome to Dongmakgol...and this digitally remastered copy of John Woo's Bullet In The Head...and more than a few others. It's awesome, but now I think I'm gonna have to rob a 7-11 to make it 'til payday.

So there you have it--the world's most retarded Wondercon report: they have non-bootleg DVDs there and I bought some. The End.

As for the week's books:

52 WEEK #43: Well, fuck. I really liked Sobek, so I wasn't thrilled by those last two pages (and you know I've been on the wah-wah wagon the last couple months about the casual use of explicit violence in several DC books, so I won't bore you with that) but I did think they were effective. Also, it probably counts for a lot that these were two characters created for this story and to serve the storyteller's ends (as opposed to, say, if the scene had happened between Capatain Marvel, Jr. and Mr. Tawny). So Good work for the most part, even if though it left me kinda pissed.

ACTION COMICS #846: If this was shipping on time, I'd be more-or-less stoked about it. I'm surprised that a book this late can still feel so slapdash (if nobody ages in the Phantom Zone, as Jor-El states, how do you explain the kid?) but it looks pretty and I appreciated the extra thought Kubert put into finding new angles from which to show someone being punched through a building. So at the least, it's on the high ranges of OK. Really shows how you late shipping can sap momentum from an extended stoyline, though.

ACTION PHILOSOPHERS #8: Probably their densest issue yet, I think, as I could feel the smoke flowing out my ears from the Hegel/Schopenhauer story alone. But I even made it through that (if just to read the rest of the jokes), which is a testament to the skill and humor with which Van Lente and Dunlavey build their narratives. It's not what I would give to someone as their first issue, but the exceptionally well-crafted "Immanuel Kant: Epistemological Attorney" story makes this issue a Very Good read all by itself: the rest is just gravy.

BLUE BEETLE #12: The great thing about Hibbs doing more reviews is I can now pick on him mercilessly again. Like, when saying good things about this book, he says it's his favorite "Not-Superstar" book from DC...like that's supposed to make a lick of sense to the rest of us. (Does he mean, "Not-Superstar" creators? Or "Not-Superstar" characters? I mean, I think he means the latter, but he's also a guy who's got a lovely portrait of Ma Hinkel hanging on his walls, you know?) For me, the only problem about this issue is that the art is little more than functional: yeah, it's effective, but there's a weird mix of factors (maybe there's too much happening for the layouts to really breathe? Maybe the Beetle's overly detailed outfit doesn't jibe with the low-key storytelling tact?) that keeps this issue from being more than a Good comic. If you're reading this book like I am, you'll dig it. If not, this wouldn't be the issue I'd try to change your mind with.

CITY OF OTHERS #1: I've never been that impressed with Steve Niles' work, as I think I've mentioned here before, so I was surprised I liked this. That Berni Wrightson art helped a great deal, particularly with José Villarrubia doing an amazing job on the color (that panel where the protagonist leaps into the snow with the rest of The Others knocked me on my ass), but there was something that kind of caught me in the narrative voice and the, I dunno, dream-like nature of the narrative. It'll probably all fall apart by issue #2 as I imagine the creators would like you to believe this story is actually happening, and isn't just a deliberately unreal story that later reveals itself to be an imagined narrative (a la The Singing Detective, say). But hey, it could happen, and just the fact that I believe that's a narrative possibility says worlds about how much stronger a piece of work this is compared to Niles' usual work. I found this highly OK, and hope it somehow manages to stay that way.

CIVIL WAR FRONT LINE #11: Completes the Tony-Stark-as-Ozymandias comparison as Ben Ulrich and Wassername show up and proceed to reveal Tony as the guy with the master plan who saves the world (and loses, if not his soul, then his ability to share the depths of his soul's sacrifice). The problem is, these two devoted passionate reporters--who've cast aside previous job security to strike out on their own--then go, "Of course, we couldn't tell anyone that because it'd really screw everything so don't worry, we won't! See ya!!" To bring the Watchmen comparison back in, it'd be like if there was an extra two pages at the end of Watchmen, where the guys from The New Frontiersman read Rorshach's journal and say, "Wow! For the good of the world, we can never tell anyone!"

In short: no, I don't think so. Sub-Eh.

CONNOR HAWKE DRAGONS BLOOD #4: Considering I just started reading last issue, yeah, OK. I have no idea why so many Green Arrow narratives of the last five or so years have to have a mystical component, but for what it is, it's pretty decent.

CROSSING MIDNIGHT #4: After an exceptionally slow start (I read issue #1 and maybe #2?), this book finally kicks into high gear, with exceptionally lovely art and the high concept (imagine Spirited Away adapted by the writer of Hellblazer, basically) made manifest: on Friday, I not only sold more copies of this issue than all the other issues on all the other Fridays combined, but I had people asking for back issues which had all disappeared. I hope it's not too little, too late, because I read this issue and felt like "Oh, I get it now. That's pretty cool." Good, and worth looking for--I'll be curious to see what where it goes from here.

DAREDEVIL #94: I think I see what Brubaker was going for here--he was trying to show how Milla and Matt have one of those co-dependent relationships where one member realizes that the whole thing is just going to go through the same thing but worse, time and again, and yet can't break away. More than that, I think he was trying to have us feel what it's like for Milla, with the very extensive recapping giving us a similar feeling of watching what we already know get played out again and again. (It's probably also a way to craft a new jumping-on point with readers.) Unfortunately, it felt less like that and more like an overextended recap story that went nowhere. A cool idea, but very Eh execution.

DOCTOR STRANGE OATH #5: A very satisfying wrap-up to a very strong miniseries, and with Vaughan taking his tongue out of his cheek long enough to give us some very cool little character moments and refine his vision on how this character can still be interesting. Very Good stuff, and should make a satisfying little trade.

ETERNALS #7: Maybe I suffered from too-high expectations on this one, because I read Hibbs' review and picked this up not long after I got in the store on Friday. But far from rescuing the mini, I thought this was another wet fart of an issue with only the merest flashes of Gaiman cleverness(Gaiman is still one of the few guys that can make a non-violent superhero seem not just sensible, but actually cool) rescuing this from total drudgery. I don't know. I guess I just feel if I pay out almost thirty bucks for your miniseries, I deserve a bigger finish than "Is it true that I'll save the world but suffer as no one ever has?" "Beats me. Race you to Sao Paulo! Yeehaw!" Eh.

FLASH THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE #9: Obviously benefits from comparison to the ugsome issues before it, but I like how Guggenheim doesn't throw the baby out with the bath water, and takes some of the concepts from the original arc (Bart as a telecommuter to his own life; a romantic life that, as befits a speedster, moves too fast). I didn't love it (in fact, I'm now hard-pressed to remember what happened in the superhero parts of it) but I can honestly say I want to pick up next issue and see how things develop. Hard to gauge, but certainly no worse than OK.

GREEN LANTERN #17: Again, I'm with Hibbs: that opening sequence with Batman was really, really cool. I'm going with a high OK because the rest of it, while competent, didn't really fry my burger. It was certainly a better issue than the previous issue led me to expect, though.

IRON MAN #15: Making Iron Man the director of Shield has a certain logic to it because I can't think of two concepts in the Marvel Universe more broken than (a) Iron Man, and (b) Shield. Still, I think Knaupf does OK work with the hand he's dealt, by playing up the cororate mindset (or at least a near-parody of the Silicon Valley version of it) against the military mindset (as personified by a guy who's been wearing a non-regulation bowler for over six decades). I'll check out next issue, but even all the good will and high concept smarts in the world may not be enough to make me excited about two played out one-note concepts joined together.

JLA CLASSIFIED #35: I liked the last few issues, why'd this one feel like a big suck-out? Somehow this issue took all the nuanced momentum and removed it, making it feel like just one more issue in a story that should've been three issues shorter. Awful.

KILLER #3: An anticlimactic end throws off an otherwise strong issue, but that amazing sliced-up bit of action on page 21 trumps any number of bad chapter breaks. Very Good stuff, and well worth you seeking out if you like gorgeously illustrated crime stories.

SUPERGIRL AND THE LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #27: Despite me not being a big fan of big cosmic wars (which always seem to happen in this title every ten issues or so), I thought Waid and Kitson gave us an enjoyable, highly Good issue. But even better was the passionate, edifying and touching tribute to Dave Cockrum which really laid out in no uncertain terms Cockrum's tremendous contributions to the LSH. I thought that was exceptionally classy and noteworthy.

TRUE STORY SWEAR TO GOD #4: Wasn't until I re-read it that I realized Beland more or less put two self-contained stories side-by-side (I re-read it because I couldn't remember the first part to save my life) which is a pretty neat trick--although it might've been better if the two stories flowed into each other a bit better, it probably reads far better than if Beland had devoted an issue to each. A highly Good read.

WALKING DEAD #35: I agree with Hibbs again on this one--a very strong issue, and I also hope the end is a fake cliffhanger. Although the art is awesome as always, I really appreciated the shorthand Adlard is using here--that little set of panels on the top tier of page 9 reads as incredibly thrilling and violent even though, when you really look at it, it's barely more than abstraction. Adlard's managed to find that sweet spot where he barely has to put any detail on most of the zombies and the reader fleshes them out with their own fears and details. A pretty neat (and time-saving) trick, that. Very Good.

WOLVERINE #51: Hibbs giving this an AWFUL but encouraging those of you who buy this sort of thing for the art to do so seems baby-splittingly wise, and yet I can't follow suit--not only is Bianchi wasted on this story, but he's kinda wasted drawing Wolverine and Sabretooth, generally. Maybe I'm wrong and Bianchi thinks it's great he's getting paid hundreds of dollars a page to draw two hairy rednecks with bad haircuts fuck each other up, but I think it's kind of a waste. Sub-Awful, unless you've been looking for some material to add to your hot S&M bears-with-mullets slashfic story in which case, hey, this is the book for you.

X-FACTOR #16: An exceptionally strong issue, and the one I would use if I had to pitch a Madrox TV pilot--David really takes a swing for the existential fences here, and does it without going for the glib. Unfortunately, the art was flat and I couldn't care less about the B-story, so it just gets a plain ol' Good. But it's worth hunting up if you're not reading the title already.

PICK OF THE WEEK: I don't know, really. Action Philosophers? Walking Dead? Killer? Last issue of Dr. Strange? Love is in the air, baby!

PICK OF THE WEAK: You'd think I'd go with Wolverine, right? But, no. JLA Classified made me feel like a sucker, retroactively, and I can't imagine the last two issues will redeem that.

TRADE PICK: I want to do an all-trades post, hopefully this week, so I'll go into more detail later, but, yeah, BECK MONGOLIAN CHOP SQUAD VOL 7 was great.

Et tu?

Labels: Jeff

Click Here to Read More...

This counts as daily blogging. THIS COUNTS!!!


1-800 MICE #1
2000 AD #1523
2000 AD #1524
52 WEEK #44
AGE OF BRONZE #25
ALL NEW ATOM #9
AUTHORITY #2
BETTY #163
BOMB QUEEN III #1 (OF 4)
BONEYARD #24
BORROWED TIME #2
BULLET POINTS #5 (OF 5)
CAPTAIN AMERICA #25 CW
CASTLE WAITING VOL II #5
CIVIL WAR INITIATIVE
CIVIL WAR POSTER BOOK
CRIMINAL #5
DARK TOWER GUNSLINGER BORN #2 (OF 7)
DEAD AT 17 VOL 2 #3
DYNAMO 5 #1
FALL OF CTHULHU MAVLIAN CVR A #0
FANTASTIC FOUR #543 CW
FANTASTIC FOUR THE END #6 (OF 6)
FREE SEXXX #3 (A)
FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN #18
GHOST RIDER TRAIL OF TEARS #2 (OF 6)
GRIMM FAIRY TALES #12
HELMET OF FATE ZAURIEL #1
HIGHLANDER #5
HULK AND POWER PACK #1 (OF 4)
INCREDIBLE HULK #104
IRON MAN HYPERVELOCITY #3 (OF 6)
JEFFERY BROWNS FEEBLE ATTEMPTS #1
JONAH HEX #17
JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE #255
JUGHEAD AND FRIENDS DIGEST #18
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #6
JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED #31
LOONEY TUNES #148
LOVELESS #16
MANHUNTER #29
MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN #25
MARVEL ZOMBIES ARMY OF DARKNESS #1
MEN OF MYSTERY #64
MIDNIGHTER #5
MIGHTY AVENGERS #1
NEWUNIVERSAL #4
NIGHTWING #130
ONSLAUGHT REBORN #3 (OF 5)
OUTSIDERS #46
PALS N GALS DOUBLE DIGEST #110
PHANTOM #15
PHONOGRAM #5 (OF 6)
PIRATES VS NINJAS #3 (OF 3)
PLANETARY BRIGADE ORIGINS #2 (OF 3)
PUBLIC ENEMY #3
PUNISHER #45
REAR ENTRY #15 (A)
RED SONJA #20
SCALPED #3
SECRET #2 (OF 4)
SHAZAM THE MONSTER SOCIETY OF EVIL #2 (OF 4)
SHEENA PREVIEW CVR A
SONIC X #17
SPAWN #165
SQUADRON SUPREME HYPERION VS NIGHTHAWK #3 (OF 4)
STAR WARS LEGACY #9
STRANGERS IN PARADISE #88
STRONGARM #1
SUPER REAL VS COMIC BOOK INDUSTRY SPECIAL #1
SUPERMAN BATMAN #32
TRANSFORMERS PRIME DIRECTIVE MOVIE PREQUEL #1
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #106
ULTIMATE VISION #3 (OF 5)
UNCANNY X-MEN #484
UNCLE SAM AND THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS #8 (OF 8)
UTILITY NOTEBOOK
WELCOME TO TRANQUILITY #4
WORLDSTORM #2

Books / Mags / Stuff
ADVENTURES OF BARRY WEEN BOY GENIUS VOL 1 TP NEW PTG (N
BATMAN PLASTIC BUST BANK
CARTOON WORKSHOP PIG TALES GN
DEATH NOTE VOL 10 TP
DORK DECADE DORK TOWER 10TH ANNIV TP
DUNGEON PARADE VOL 1 TP
EC ARCHIVES TWO FISTED TALES VOL 1 HC
ESSEX COUNTY VOL 1 TALES FROM THE FARM TP
EVIL INC ANNUAL REPORT VOL 1 GN
EX MACHINA VOL 5 SMOKE SMOKE TP
EXTERMINATORS VOL 2 INSURGENCY TP
FORTEAN TIMES #220
GARTH ENNIS 303 TP
JAMES KOCHALKA SPREAD EVIL WINGS & FLY CD / DVD
LEES TOY REVIEW MAR 2007 #173
NARUTO VOL 13 TP
NAT TURNER BOOK 2 REVOLUTION TP
SHOWCASE PRESENTS HOUSE OF MYSTERY VOL 2 TP
SPIDER-MAN SAGA OF THE SANDMAN TP
SUPERGIRL CANDOR TP
THOR ETERNALS SAGA VOL 2 TP
TOWN OF EVENING CALM COUNTRY OF CHERRY BLOSSOMS GN


I'l be back tomorrow with more reviews.

What looks good to you?

-B Click Here to Read More...

Getting started late, so I guess this will post as "sunday", but it's still Saturday night in my mind.

Um, boring day, but a gucky one anyway. I'm naturally a night owl, so I like to sleep like a bear for a bit alone when Tzipora (circa 5 am) and Benjamin (circa 7:30 am) get out of bed. I requested a late sleep in, but by 9 am Ben had the Daddy-jones, and wanted to come back into bed with me and snuggle up. Only problem, he refuses to wear pants or slippers around the house, so he's a little block of ice. Right, guess I'm awake.

Tzipora's not feeling well, so my turn to take Ben to the park. Which is great, because its a gloriously sunny day in San Francisco. Only he hasn't, I don't, maybe quite recovered from yesterday (where he didn't get his nap), or maybe it's the lunar eclipse, I don't know (he's definitely more hectic during the full moon, and less in the fingernail), but he's in full Toddler-Cranky-Mode (also known as "the terrible twos", except, really, they're worse at three)

He's chasing this one kid around the park, and fine, but the kid is a little younger -- 6 months, developmentally or so (dunno his chronological age), so I'm really stressing "Protect the Smaller" to Ben, but Ben is getting to rough, and I have to call him out a couple of times. Finally, he tries to snatch a sandtoy out of the kids hands, despite me yelling "whoa, Blondie! Take it down a notch!", and the kid, appropriately, snatches it back. Ben gets a little notch on his skin (can't even call it a cut), and moans bloody murder about it off and on for the next 90 minutes.

Then he wants to climb the twirly slide, which is generally cool, but not when littler kids want to slide down. Then you have to get out of the way, and let them go through. But Benny starts to do the flip out thing, "No, I want them to slam into me!" and whatever, and he starts to freak out about not being able to be on the slide, and I have to pick him up and physically remove him from the park.

I love this age, really I do, but I also bloody hate it to pieces on days like this, with the random freak-out. Man, nothing kills your mood for a day faster.

Finally get him down to a nap (one of those ugly crying-down sleeps -- compounded by him losing his favorite sleep aids, these two silk shirts of Tzipora's which he calls (and rightly so) "Purple & Black") We'll find out 6 hours later that he dropped them in one of his toy chests. HUrray!

Then in to work and doing the weekly inventory. I'm a grumpy-pants as I do it, and Rob probably thinks I'm an ass.

Bleh. Hardly ready any comics in the last 24, here's what I got:

ANNIHILATION HERALDS OF GALACTUS: Super-Skrull, Terrax, Stardust (? How many times has this character appeared before?) -- all decidedly 3rd rate characters, and much better suited as pure adversaries, rather than semi-heroic figures. But, regardless of that, I still basically enjoyed this issue just fine. Its nothing I'd spend my own money on as a reader, but I didn't feel like my time had been wasted, either, whihc automatically qualifies it for a OK.

BLUE BEETLE #12: This really is a charming little book, isn't it? Maybe it's even my favorite "Not-Superstar" book from DC these days. Fairly attractive protagonists, interesting circumstances, a touch of mystery, some revelations, enough action, this book has everything you can want from a b-list comic book, really. But that's it, its good, not great, and with the state of comics being what they are, its often hard to fit a title like this in your budget. I like it fine, and it's a low GOOD.

FALLEN ANGEL #13: I miss the painted look a bit, but this is fine solid character-driven work, and I think its worth an easy GOOD.

HERO SQUARED #5: Despite the kinda-false pathos of "oh god I killed a some people!", what bugs me is that there's so much plate spinning going on here, so much so that we're now going to be 9 issues in (adding the mini series) to address what I'd argue to be the central question: what did the big guy do to make Stephie become calig-whatever. This'd be much more acceptable in a book that came out, say, monthly. But not one on the laissez-faire plan. Or that costs $4. So while I basically like it, circumstances dictate that I say EH.

JOHN WOOS SEVEN BROTHERS #5: *snap snap* its over. Too much Deux, but plenty pretty to look at. PLenty OK.

TRUE STORY SWEAR TO GOD #4: Its warm, its funny, I like it fine, a very high OK.


Right, that's it for today. Tomorrow I'm back to the con for the panel at 11:30. Show up! Really!

What'd you think?

(and Jeff? Graeme? Feel free to jump in any time!!)


-B Click Here to Read More...

Just back from WonderCon -- Fridays are generally slow there, so its definitely the right day to go. I expect Saturday to be Madness. MADNESS, I say!

WC moved yet again -- this time to Moscone South, or "The Big Moscone", whihc made it seem even more slow, but, if I had to guess, attendance was probably up a little bit, just spread out over a bigger area.

Pro attendance seemed kind of low to me, but this may be a function of Convention Season Death March, with Florida 2 weeks ago, NY last week, and LA in 2 weeks from now -- how can people do THAT MANY shows in a row?

Ben came with me for a couple hours in the morning -- he's so adorable out in public; and the purchase I allowed him, after doing the whole show floor to make sure what he got what was he REALLY wanted, was a mummy pen and a sarcophagus pencil case. He loved showing that off to every adult we spoke to, and virtually every adult was pretty stunned to see such a little man know that it was called a "sarcophagus", and what Hieroglyphics were. Kid has himself an amazing vocabulary.

Got 2 new JSA pieces for the gallery from Matt Wagner -- Hourman and Mr. Terrific. They are awesome, and I will punch you if you don't think so. With the speed that I move to get things framed, it will probably be 3-4 months before they make it on CE's walls, so if you're at the store, ask and I shall show. We're just down to 4 pieces left... Atom, Spectre, and (Golden age) SUperman and Batman. Maybe we'll even be finished by 2010!

Um, didn't read a lot of comics yesterday (as you'll see below) -- decided to get caught up on TV, and the week's worth of DAILY SHOWs backed up, etc. I desperately want to stop watching LOST because it keeps on spinning and spinning and spinning its wheels (LAST week, I *literally* screamed at the TV to HAVE SOMETHING [ANYTHING!!] HAPPEN!!!! and STOP INTRODUCING NEW FUCKING 'OTHERS', WE DON'T CARE YOU FUCKS!). The only reason I keep watching is because I feel like I invested some sixty hours of my life at this point, and I'd like that to fucking pay off, thankyouverymuch. THis is almost certainly a fool's errand at this point.

Didn't much care for THE BLACK DONNELEYS, but I'll give it one more episode to see if it's going anywhere.

Dude, have you seen the "Back To The Future" commercial for DirecTV with Christopher Lloyd as Doc Brown? It bothers me. Deeply. Not just because I'd rather if every beloved movie wasn't whored out to shill for something. And not just because I kinda assumed Christopher Lloyd was the kind of savvy actor who had such a string of visible memorable roles that I kind of figured he was set for life at this point, and didn't need to do commercials. But really because it violates the very logic of the thing that it's trying to use to shill. Marty, after the rescue at the clock tower in the 1950s, zooms, well, back to the future, and Doc Brown comes running up and say "Great Scott! I forgot to tell Marty about DirecTV!". Yeah, except this is 1950s Doc Brown, who hasn't time travelled, and won't for another 30 years, and HE DOESN'T KNOW ABOUT ANY SUCH THING. Further, even if he DID tell Marty, what the fuck could Marty DO with that info? Marty is going back to the 1980s -- he's at least 10 years from even the possibility of ubiquitous wide-spread satellite TV. Fuck, sell out if you HAVE to, but at least have the shit make sense, wouldja?




Whaaaaaat? You want comics? Well, between last night and now I've only read three:

CITY OF OTHERS #1: I'm torn. It's really fucking pretty. Like "man, that's god-damn amazingly wonderful looking!"; and it has one of the strongest voices Steve Niles has ever delivered yet with a cold, disassociated killer. But, it's all in the service of what is pretty sub-NIGHT GALLERY story. First off, the killer is stupendously, no... RIDICulously! competent. TORE me out of the story. Second, what the fuck was up with that train? Third, isn't that pretty directly ripped off from "Midnight Meat Train" in Clive Barker's BOOKS OF BLOOD? Fourth, didn't Niles either directly adapt, or at least edit the adaptation to comics of "Midnight Meat Train"? (I may be wrong on that score, but am too lazy to google it) Fifth, (paraphrasing) that last line of "And that's how I knew it was zombies.... and vampires!" was truly truly cringe-inducing. Sixth, the fawning editorial page where she declares this, in effect, the second coming of horror comics, and how awesomely amazingly awesome it was, was just salt in the wounds. I dig she has a she-woody for Wrightson -- and hell, his art is really really damn fine handled this way -- but keep it in your pants. An editor should never come on the page and tell you how great something you just read was. (JOe and Dan could learn that lesson, too) It's... well, it is simply unseemly. How do you balance an AWFUL (the story) with a GOOD (the lovely lovely art, and the specific scripting)? I'll go with EH.

WOLVERINE #51: Oh cripes. Second verse, same as above. BEAUTIFUL looking little thing. HORRIFIC thing to read, filled with jibber jabber and blah blah blah and nonsensical nonsense about pretty much nothing. Marvel is offering a color-free version of the book (still $3, though! HAHAHAHAH!)... what about offering a words-free version? If it was just Bianchi drawing 22 pages of whatever-the-fuck... well, I wouldn't have "enjoyed it", but I'd be a lot closer to "Cool!", but this is dragged down by the script. Sorry, we average out to AWFUL in this case (though, again, I FULLY SUPPORT those of you buying it for the art)

X-FACTOR #16: Art was much less likeable this go round (and likely drops it a full "grade"), but this was a really strong episode of Madrox Finds Himself. Didn't really care about the Monet/Siryn thread too much, though. Monet is too one-note to continue to be entertaining. With the possible (and not always) exception of ASTONISHING, THIS is the best X-book being published each month. GOOD.




I'm sort of undecided about this "daily" experiment. I'm probably writing more than I would, and it's not "Oh, God, block out 3 hours..." chore that writing a big one entails, but more manageable 30-60 chunks, but I also know I really can't maintain this over the longer haul. Let me know if you like it like this, or if you prefer the longer single-entry-for-a-week entries...

I'll be back tomorrow with more (assuming I get to read any more)

As always.... what did YOU think?

-B Click Here to Read More...

Lost a couple of hours today because some DC staffers popped in the store before WOnderCon, but I should be able to get this done before midnight, and keep my schedule...

Speaking of WonderCon, I've got a panel on SUNDAY:


11:30-12:30 Comic Retailer Roundtable— Join moderator Dan Shahin (Hijinx Comics) and fellow comic retailers Joe Ferrara (Atlantis Fantasyworld), Joe Field (Flying Colors), Brian Hibbs (Comix Experience) and Ryan Higgins (Comics Conspiracy), for an up to the minute look into the realities of modern comic book retailing. Special focus will be placed on recent industry changes and how retailers are adapting and planning for the future. Room 228

Do feel free to come and yell things at us...

ACTION COMICS #846: Horrifically crippled from the scheduling problems (We had, what? 50 years where ACTION shipped 12x a year or better?), I've lost some of the thread here, and a significant part of my interest. Still, despite feeling lost in several places, this was an OK enough issue. I'm less comfortable with some of the grafting of SUPERMAN-THE-MOVIE continuity in here, but probably more from seeming to contradict the SUPERMAN II continuity more than anything else. But, yeah, highly OK

BLACK PANTHER #25: A week later, this seems pretty "yeah, and...?" to me. I may have enjoyed this more last week, WITH CW #7. EH.

DAREDEVIL #94: Great cover. Lotsa recap on the insides. I felt like there were really only 2-3 pages of "new" content in here. So, gonna go with EH.

ETERNALS #7: If you asked me what a Neil Gaiman-written ETERNALS comic would be like, this issue would be very very close to that answer. That is to say that I kinda thought this single-handedly "rescued" the whole mini, and gave them at least an adequate new purpose in the Marvel U, if anyone follows up on it. I'll go with a GOOD.

GREEN LANTERN #17: That one sequence with Batman and the Sinestro ring makes the whole thing worth it to me. It could have been followed by 19 more pages of Hal picking his nose and saying "Dur!" to the camera, and I still'd probably have liked this. Well, maybe not, but still: great moment. GOOD.

JLA CLASSIFIED #35: Yeah.... don't care. AWFUL.

RUNAWAYS #24: BKV's run ends nicely. This has been a fun little book, and I hope that Whedon (and who ever is post-WHedon) can keep it up. GOOD.

SUPERGIRL AND LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #27: Too many characters, too much chicken-with-head-cut-off running around. It's not BAD, but too busy to be any fun. EH.


And... believe it or not, that's everything I've read so far now.

OK, off to pay bills (WHERE THE HELL DID FEBRUARY GO?!?!) and get some more pre-WC stuff done... More (maybe, probably) tomorrow...

What did you think?

-B Click Here to Read More...