The only somewhat good part of this is the fact that we acquired the statue as part of a collection, and we actually didn’t have that much money into it. But let me tell you, I’d much rather have sold that statue than swept it up.

The worst part: I can’t yell at an employee about it. The only person to yell at is me, and I can’t yell at me, I’m too wonderful.

Anyway, here are a couple of comics that came out this week:

As for the comic itself…it’s a nice send-off to the Geoff Johns era of the franchise, so if you didn’t like any of the GL comics that came before, you’re certainly not going to like this one. I’ve generally enjoyed the GL run over the last few years, myself, and I thought the different colored Lantern Corps was a fun concept. It would be nice to have just a plain ‘ol “Hal versus Goldface” story now, but I don’t know if we can go home again after years of GL Cosmicness.

One interesting bit of business in this comic is an interspersing of full pages of pull-quotes from various comic creators, filmmakers, pals and family members, all congratulating Johns on his GL run. Don’t know if I’ve seen that ever done in a comic before, particularly for someone who’s still alive, but, well, there it is. Looking forward to DC doing the same thing for Grant Morrison when he leaves Batman.

They certainly crammed a whole lot of stuff into this issue, along with a couple of nice surprises, so if you are a fan of the GL books, this actually is a satisfying ending to the last few years’ worth of storylines. But here’s hoping things are a little more…accessible in the GL books that follow.

I do read the rest of the comic, too, though like most anthologies, not everything is going to be to everyone’s taste. The other ongoing adventure serials don’t really do anything for me, but the more oddball stuff, like Shannon Wheeler’s “Villain House” and “Hunter Quaid: Armageddon Out of Here,” are a lot of fun. I do wish there was more Geof Darrow in these books aside from the spot drawings, however.

This is kind of what I wanted when I clamored all these years for Swamp Thing’s release from Vertigo’s mighty grip…more “Swampy Versus The DC Universe.” I suppose I should have specified which DC Universe (“not one hastily rebooted with an indeterminate history, please!”) but beggars can’t be choosers. Justice League Dark has, to the surprise of most everyone, turned out to be the best of the new comics with the words “Justice League” in the title, even though most people hate that title while realizing this is probably the only reason it hasn’t been cancelled yet. Well, that, and the fact the series itself is very enjoyable, nicely utilizing DC’s supernatural characters in a more superheroic context.

Believe it or not, I haven’t read this yet, because I’m spending my free time writing this post about it instead. There’s something somewhat self-defeating about that.

I did manage to see both the new Star Trek movie and the Doctor Who season ender this past weekend, and…well, I hope the Trek folks got their “callbacks to the original series” thing out of their system, because in the two or three films that are likely left in this particular iteration of the reboot, I’d like to see a story that’s, you know, its own animal. I mean, okay, I’ll give them one film where we see what happens in the new timeline when they encounter a familiar-to-us face (well, kinda sorta, work with me here) from the past, with The Ol’ Twisteroos on familiar-to-us situations, and all-too-familiar-to-us bits of dialogue. I did enjoy the film, but I hope I don’t wait three to four years for the next film, and it turns out to be Star Trekkin’ Around Looking for Whales in the Past, But with The New Guys.

Also, a dumb Trek joke I made on Twitter, inspired by the Trek rebootings, got retweeted by Rob Liefeld, so it was all worth it.

The Doctor Who season-ender, on the other hand, benefited by a backwards glance or two, with cameos by previous Doctors via repurposed footage and stand-ins rushing by cameras in the various Doctors’ outfits. I always like seeing references to the previous Doctors in the current series, and since we’re leading up to the 50th anniversary, it’s certainly fitting that they’re popping up about now. And it’s all tied into an explanation for a season-long mystery, in the middle of what I thought was a fun and relatively clever story, which has me anticipating November’s actual anniversary special even more.

Plus, I know this is a bad thing to say, I know they’re overdoing it with these characters, I know getting what I want in this case will ruin the very thing I’m wanting…but I do so enjoy Madame Vastra, Jenny, and Strax when they appear, and hope for more appearances. Particularly Strax.

And then, in a following story it was revealed that, no, in fact it was the ghosts of babies, cruelly slain centuries ago by a terrible warlord, who facilitated the transition of man to monster:

And then Mother Nature pops up a few issues later and says, hey now, ’twas I done the deed:

I’m only partway through Roy Thomas Presents The Heap Vol. 2, so I don’t know if I have more origins waiting for me in later stories. I’m assuming if there are, they probably don’t include the one in this comic.

The Heap comics so far have been pretty enjoyable: lots of gangsters and crime stories and revenge plots and plenty of stories hinging on the Heap’s vague recollections of his previous life. Also: sure are a lot of old friends and relatives of Von Emmelman hangin’ around swamps, triggering plots and getting what’s coming to them thanks to the Heapster.

So, your pal Mike is enjoying a comic about a swamp monster. GO FIGURE.

images from Roy Thomas Presents the Heap Vol. 1 and Roy Thomas Presents the Heap Vol. 2

1. Just give Legion a rest already. Every reboot/restart boosts sales on the title for a little bit, then it always settles back to the numbers it usually sells at. Or maybe a little less. Maybe a little time out of the public eye would result in an actual fresh start for the book, removed from the previous decades’ worth of continuity that may or not still be valid because who the hell can tell any more. A little testing of the waters with some guest-appearances prior to any relaunch wouldn’t be out of order.

2. Pick one Legion character, give him or her a solo title, and make the Legion background/supporting characters. There could still be occasional Legion adventures, but it would be all told from the perspective of the title character. My personal pick for this would be Brainiac 5, because good gravy I’d love to read a solo Brainiac 5 comic, and also he seems like the one interesting/complex enough to carry a series on his own. Super-genius, doesn’t really “get” the emotionally volatile non-geniuses around him, always inventing crazy machines that are more trouble than they’re worth, HAS A TIME BUBBLE…c’mon, that’d be fantastic. But whoever is the star…that at least would give us a fresh perspective on an old dusty comic.

I don’t know. I’ve liked the Legion about as long as I’ve been reading comics, and easily have about three decades’ worth I’ve bought off the rack, and I’m still getting the sporadic and progressively more dear Archives reprints of the older material. I did stop reading new Legion some time back, prior to the New 52 relaunch, simply because I think I lived through one reboot too many and just couldn’t get into a comic where the constant threat of yet another restart to get themselves out a painted-in corner was always there. But I would love to read a good Legion comic again, particularly one that did something interesting with the franchise beyond “we need to have a Legion book on the stands.”

Okay, that sounds like I’m slagging the folks who are working on the comic now, and I’m really not. It’s just that…well, Legion isn’t grabbing new readers. With no current movie/cartoon/video games/action figure line to drive kids into shops looking for comics with those awesome Legion characters, the potential audience is restricted to people already buying comic books, and by and large, the people buying Legion are usually the people who always buy Legion, with some attrition over time (such as yours truly). To grab money out of the pockets of comic fans, you need to grab their attention, and the perception is that Legion is just same-old, same-old…this is your grandpa’s comic book. Esteemed Twitter colleague Max said that “Legion needs to be J.J Abrams-ed,” and that’s probably what it’ll take.

There have been some nice shots at it before…I really enjoyed Mark Waid’s take and the subsequent One Year Later (geez, remember “One Year Later?”) revamp Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes. Those worked, at least for a while, in grabbing new readers.

As for those other cancelled DC titles that I was reading…I’m pretty sure Dial H was no surprise to anyone. It was a fun and intelligent comic, but maybe a little too off the beaten path for your standard line of superhero funnybooks. Threshold‘s main selling point was the Larfleeze back-up, and even that wasn’t too much of a draw…maybe a cover or two actually featuring him may have helped. The lead story is entertaining, but the Green Lantern hook is slight enough to not have grabbed much of that franchise’s audience. And Demon Knights…I really liked Demon Knights. I have no idea why that’s getting cancelled. Well, okay, I know it’s low sales. Let me try again…”I have no idea why more people weren’t reading it.” I believe I mentioned a while back that the early issues were a tad on the chaotic side, and I wasn’t 100% sure I was following all the plot threads, so maybe that was an issue with more folks than just me. But I thought the rough spots were smoothed over of late and it’s been a highly entertaining fantasy/horror adventure. Ah, well.

So that DC publication outlining all their graphic novels ‘n’ such I mentioned a few days back? Collected Editions does the thorough overview of this item that I was totally too lazy to do myself. Good work, gentlemen and / or gentleladies…give yourselves a raise.

I did have the same problem with this film that I did with the previous installment, that too often during the film I found myself thinking “why am I being shown this when I could be seeing Iron Man doing stuff instead” — particularly during that middle “Tony Stark, Action Spy Detective, Goes to Tennessee” segment of the film. But, I can’t say I wasn’t entertained, and you end up getting more Iron Man armor action than you can handle during the film’s climax, with too brief glimpses of the dozens of different armored suits Stark apparently assembled between sequels.

Okay, the “not enough Iron Man action” is kind of a terrible complaint…Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark carries the show whether he’s in armor or not, and I did enjoy the film. And it’s not as if I was expecting beginning-to-end Iron Man fight scenes…I realize there’s such a thing as “pacing.” When you get right down to it, the amount of Iron Man action was exactly the amount and of the correct quality for the story they were telling, he said as if anyone cared what he thought. I guess the old fanboy in me wanted more Iron Man in action at the height of his powers, outside of struggling against both technological and psychological failures, but I guess that’s what the Avengers movies are for. That this film, along with Downey’s portrayal, makes us like and care about the “civilian” identity as much, if not more so, than the superhero identity, is its real strength. Tony’s a cool dude that sometimes wears super-armor and his movies are fun…what am I complaining about, really?

Also, it’s nice that Bruce Banner was played by the same actor in more than one feature film. The lack of MODOK is points against, however. And, as always, not enough Miguel Ferrer, which is my gripe about pretty much every film.

It was fine, but honestly, though, I wish DC would just straight up adapt some classic Silver Age stories for their direct-to-DVD film program for a change…it’ll never happen, but it’s nice to think about. …At least the Batman: The Brave and the Bold cartoon took care of that need for a few years.

On a different note, an important question is asked and answered on this issue’s letters page:

images from Action Comics #330 (November 1965) – cover by Curt Swan & George Klein

Well, if I’m mentioning it here, you can probably guess 1) which character is among the possible choices, and 2) how I voted. …I have no idea how official it is, or whether the results would have any impact. I half-suspect any DLC available for the game was prepped ages ago, but my knowledge of how the video game business works is fairly minimal. It’s all wizardry and deals-with-the-devil as far as I know.

I did actually play the Injustice game, or at least the free demo they offer for cheap bastards like me who will settle for just the demo in place of dropping sixty bones on the full game. And…well, I’m not really much of a Mortal Kombat/Street Fighter-type fighting-game guy, as previously mentioned when I wrote about my previous interaction with this type of game. But it was a game with DC Comics characters, so at the very least I thought I’d give it a looksee and “dig” what all of you kids are “hep” to these days.

And…yeah, it was certainly a fighting game. I really do prefer the video games that allow you to explore environments and interact with characters and solve puzzles and such, so my attention was generally drawn to “I wish I can explore the background setting the characters are fighting in” versus “if I repeatedly hit this button, I’ll keep kicking Wonder Woman in the shins.” I do like that in the background of one scene you see Atom Smasher fighting it out with…Giganta, I guess? I kind of wanted to send my Batman avatar over there to check out what was going on, but no, I had to stay on the main screen there and fight Lobo.

It was an interesting diversion, but I think the demo slaked any desire I had to play this game…there’s just a sameness to it all that doesn’t keep my interest, he said with no ironic critical side-glance at the superhero genre whatsoever. And it’s sort of bland…the Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 game at least had some interesting visual flourishes and voicework. Injustice gives you a thin-sounding “stay down” from Batman when he vanquishes his opponent. Maybe there’s more in the main game, playing in the story mode or whatever, that provides a more enriching experience, but the novelty of a fighting game with DC characters wore out right quick.

That’s not to say I won’t buy it if Swamp Thing becomes available. But even in that case, I’ll wait ’til the game drops under $20. That’s about the right price for it.

Plus, Batman fighting and beating Doomsday? I call no way.

SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT THIS POST: it was going to be my Iron Man 3 review. No idea how I ended up writing about this.

Anyway, this is a freebie book that should be available at your local funnybook slinger emporium, spotlighting DC’s back catalog of trade collections divided up by character, imprint, panicked line-wide relaunch, kid-friendly reading, et cetera. There’s even a section spotlighting graphic novels by Alan Moore, which probably thrills him to pieces.

Of note is a section devoted to “suggested reading order” for books featuring some of their major superhero characters, which is useful since I kinda lose the thread of the Batman continuity after Final Crisis. The Superman section appears to give up on continuity order about halfway through its list, placing New 52 reprints before, like, all the pre-New 52 Superman/Batman reprints, among other things, and lumping all the non-continuity-ish books like Red Son and All-Star Superman and Birthright at the end. Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali is also near the end of the suggested reading order, when in fact it should be first in line. Heck, it should be the only Superman comic you need to read.

At the end of this book are three “blank” pages with a “NOTES” heading, in case you need to jot down your thoughts and feelings about Superman: Earth One being placed in the “25 Essential Graphic Novels” section of this freebie. The notes pages are designed to look like original art boards, which is a little strange…make sure your notes don’t result in more than about nine panels per page; you’re not George Perez.

In conclusion…I like the cover. Ryan Sook did a good job. Even Superman’s new costume is almost bearable. But surely the Justice League has better things to do than waste their time reading comic books.

Also out this week:

…I have big dreams.

This shot:

Here’s a shot from sort of behind the register “island” near the front of one side of our shop…that’s Employee Fredat the far right behind the register there:

Part-Time Employee Aaron and his lovely wife Kempo manned and womanned the Cash Only register we set up on the other side of the store, with only the occasional bout of violence:

Anyway, remember how in this post I mentioned I was going to de-emphasize the distribution of our free comics in age-appropriate bags…a bag of freebies for kids, one for teens, one for grown-ups. Well, I de-emphasized the heck out of it since I ultimately decided not to bag any of the comics at all. The goal was to keep some stock of freebies through most of the day by not giving everything to everybody. And I have to tell you, that morning, as I was unloading and stacking all the comics on all the tables I had a moment of panic. “Oh man, we’re never going to get rid of all of these, I shoulda bagged ‘em, oh we’re screwed,” which is a variation on my usual FCBD pre-opening panic that no one’s going to show up and that it’ll be a disaster.

Shouldn’t have worried. We were slammed from the second we opened our door at 10 AM, and the store was crammed full with people until mid-afternoon, when things slowed down to just merely insanely busy. Seth and Employee Mark even had to function as gatekeepers for a couple of hours, standing at the door and letting customers in only a few at time, and we still had a line stretching around the interior of the store, down one side, across the back wall, and forward by the tables as they head back towards the the register and the exit. As previously noted, the shots of the store above were later in the afternoon, when folks were just heading straight in from the door toward the tables, when the crowds were slightly more manageable.

Also as previously noted, we had a second register set up for cash only transactions, having learned my lesson from last time when we had register lines a mile long. As it turns out, not a whole lot of people carry cash nowadays, but enough did to help lessen line wait times at least a little.

Back to this year’s free comic distribution test (i.e. “Mike was too lazy to sort out the comics into bags this time”), there were two main results. First, yes, as I’d hoped, the comic stock lasted a bit longer this time around. In fact, for the first time in a few years, I still had a small assortment left over, enough to fill a small Diamond shipping box, which is quite the reduction from the many dozens of Diamond FCBD shipping boxes I originally received. That’s probably a combination of the non-bagging and of my increased orders this time around. That’s okay…we’ve left some out for anyone who couldn’t make it in on Saturday.

Second, it did increase customer wait time as everyone picked out the comics they wanted instead of just grabbing a pre-packed bag or three and running off. Nobody really seemed to mind, however, and the wait time wasn’t that long.

Another thing I did this year was take a bunch of those bargain-priced comics we still had hanging around (all those 50-cent Invincibles and $1.00 “Image Firsts” and 25-cent Vampirellas and such) and put those out for giveaways, too. And that giant stack of free Marvel Point Ones that Marvel overshipped to us a couple years back, and that one issue of Garfield that, ahem, I may have accidentally overordered by entering the wrong number on the order form and not noticing…all put out for giveaways, all gone.

AND I think I am finally, finally out of that Avatar Comics Robocop freebie from years ago. I thought I was done with it before, but more keep turning up. But I think I finally unloaded all our backstock of books from FCBDs past. …Well, it wasn’t more than two or three shipping boxes’ worth, so it wasn’t that much, but it still feels good to have found good homes for them.

We didn’t have any in-store signings or other planned special guests…there just wouldn’t have been room…but I did briefly greet pal Nat; got to see the bearded visage of Matt Digges and his non-bearded niece; reader Dave Z., who makes the trek from Bakersfield every year to get free comics that had been personally touched by my filthy, filthy hands; and hugged Gina, my former editor at Music Confidential magazine.

In addition to the goodies pal Casie brought us, Heather from the local library brought us a tray of cookies, thanking us for providing a bunch of this year’s FCBD books for them to distribute. And Employee Mark’s uncle Jay brought us his candied balls. …Before you ask, yes we did. How can you not.

End result: the busiest, most successful Free Comic Book Day yet…gave away more comics than ever before, and made more money than ever before. I’m not trying to be crass by mentioning the money thing, but it’s important to note that the expense of Free Comic Book Day…the cost of the comics, the employee wages, the trapeze artist, the stunt drivers…was more than covered.

I have been sent a few stories, in comments and via email, from people whose own FCBD experiences at their local shops were less than exemplary. I’m sorry to hear it, but I’ve also heard from folks who had wonderful times, so maybe things have been improving on that front. Like I’ve said many, many times before…it doesn’t take much to make Free Comic Book Day into an event, and boy, what an event we had this time around. Plus, I think I’ve convinced Seth into letting me spend even more money for Free Comic Book Day next year.

I should also note the efforts of Employee Robert the Friday night before, who did a lot of set-up rearranging part of the store to accommodate the free comic distribution. EFFORTS ARE NOTED.

…

And yes, I know that’s Goku…don’t send me emails.