I don’t have a title for this post.

§ March 24th, 2009 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on I don’t have a title for this post.

  • Saw the Punisher War Zone movie over the weekend, finally…yeah, I can see why Punisher fans seemed to like it. Hell, sometimes you’re just in the mood for excessive violence and explosions, and the film delivered. Not enough Wayne Knight as Microchip. Too much scenery chewing by the villains, though that’s just par for the course, really. Interesting that they “retconned” the film-Punisher’s origin to be more like the one in the comics, as opposed to the “everyone Frank Castle was related to, or even just sorta knew, is killed by criminals at a family reunion” origin the previous film gave us. I guess this was a retooling of the character for the Punisher film franchise, though given the only other big-budget movie to do worse than this one last year was The Spirit, I’m guessing the point is moot.
  • Via the DC solicits, I see the entry for the new Batman and Robin title by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. I can’t wait to read it…I’m sure it’ll be great, but the real question is this: are they going to have fill-in artists to maintain the monthly schedule, or are they just going to publish the issues as they get done? Because, seriously, no way this is going to stay monthly as is.

    Also, a big thumbs up for the reprinting of George Perez’s ’80s run on Justice League of America, one of my favorite comics as a young Mikester.

  • So over the weekend someone asked me for a Green Lantern comic that would go into the backstory of GL’s bosses, the Guardians of the Universe. My first thought was “oh, yeah, Green Lantern #40, that’ll do the trick,” because I could have sworn that there was a one-off reprinting of that comic, like a Millennium edition or a Silver Age Classics, or a reprint in the Greatest Green Lantern Stories Ever Told, or something like that. But no, it just appears to be currently available in the Archives, and in the black and white Showcase volume. Oh, and in on the digests from the early ’80s, but alas, we didn’t have that one.

    I did find the customer a few comics to satisfy his Guardians need, though he didn’t want to go for the Archives or the Showcase. But still, I really thought there was some kind of standalone reprint of GL #40. I could even see it in my head. Ah, well, at my advanced age the mind is the second thing to go.

  • Speaking of reprints, Alan Doane has been discussing the ’80s Baxter paper reprints from Marvel and DC over a couple of posts. I quite liked those reprint series, which helped me catch up on some otherwise difficult to find or afford classic stories…like Deadman, or the Neal Adams Green Lantern/Green Arrow run. I do remember at the time (and I mention this in the comments over at Alan’s) there were several complaints about the market being flooded (particularly by Marvel) with unnecessary reprints, presumably to take the retailer dollar away from those upstart indie companies that were popping up all over the place at the time. I can see where that may have been a problem, but still, I don’t know that I would have read, for example, Jim Starlin’s Captain Marvel or Warlock comics otherwise. And it certainly was easier, and less of a financial impact, to get the reprints at $2 a shot per month, instead of, say, buying a $10 or $15 book.
  • And just talking about the paper stock sorta stirs up a nostalgic feel for me, as it seemed like we were always discussing paper stock on comics back in the ’80s. Newsprint, Mando paper, Baxter paper, Miraweb, whatever Marvel Fanfare was printed on, and so on.

    Nostalgia for paper stock discussions. I’ve been doing this too long.

EDIT: Pal Nat corrects me on the respective takes for Punisher War Zone and Spirit, but my original point stands…don’t expect another Punisher movie anytime soon.

And there are other corrections and elaborations and such in my comments, too…my research team will be beaten accordingly.

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