§ April 22nd, 2004 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on

Reviews of AiT/Planetlar books will resume shortly…probably on Friday. Keep an eye out! And thank you to those of you who have given me feedback about my reviews…reviews of my reviews, as it were. I’m trying very hard to do reviews that don’t spoil anything, but still give you enough information about the comic to decide if it’s up your alley, regardless of whether I like it, and that’s not terribly easy for me. Also, I need to give Big Larry his money’s worth…I’m not going to pay back his generous donation of a large quantity of books with just a two sentence review. I’m not quite at this level of reviewing, but I’m doin’ my best!

As for Wednesday’s releases…the new Comics Journal is out, and it’s the transitional issue between former editor Milo George and the beginning of Dirk Deppey’s reign of terror. It’s a goody, too, with reviews the way they should be done of some of the best books of 2003, including reviews by one or two or three people that might be familiar to folks who frequent the comics weblogosphere.* (There’s a fourth, Alan David Doane, but he has no web presence at the moment.) Look for the gorgeous cover by Drew Weing. I haven’t had a chance to read much of this yet, but Deppey does have a very gracious introduction praising the efforts of George…that’s a class act. I can’t wait to see the first all-Deppey issue.

Tom Strong’s Terrific Tales #10 has a great Peter Kuper-illustrated story…it’s amazing how perfectly Alan Moore can tailor his stories to his artists’ strengths, and this story is no exception. If you’re familiar at all with Kuper’s work (now most visible on Mad Magazine’s “Spy Vs. Spy” strips), you know the last thing in the world you’d expect him to do is a superhero story, and yet he pulls it off perfectly. Also, as pal Dorian noted, we find out in the Kuper story what’s up with the Tom Strong universe’s version of George W. Bush, apparently. Also in this issue, in the Art Adams-illustrated “Jonni Future” story, the point is made that all of us readers have been wondering this whole time…isn’t that costume a bit much?

The Diamond Comics shipment of Optic Nerve #9 has finally come out this week, as well. (I screwed up and didn’t order it from one of alternative distributors…I decided to wait for the Diamond solicitation, which took forever.) Now, I like Adrian Tomine’s comics…very understated, very melancholy…but I had an old friend of mine once describe the comic like this: “it’s as if the cartoonist wants to be a teenage girl.” I now have that description stuck in my head every time I see a new issue of this series. Sigh.

Elsewhere in the internet world…everyone seems very excited about director Robert Rodriguez using actual pages of Frank Miller art for his filmed version of Miller’s Sin City comics. Well, while I’m sure it’ll look nice, hopefully the fact that Sin City is a tongue-in-cheek pastiche of hard-boiled detective novels will make it into the movie, but I have this fear that they’re gonna take it all in deadly earnest. I mean, everyone realizes that Marv in the first Sin City story was just as screwed up as any of the bad guys he took on, right?

Ah, don’t pay any attention to me…I’m all jaded and bitter and stuff.

* You may have noticed that I actively avoid using the word “blog.” I really, really, really, really hate that word. And yes, the irony of my using “Blogger” for my weblog is not lost on me.

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