New comics day, yet again: we finally got our copies of Eightball after everyone else in the country got theirs…I didn’t know how big the darn thing was! It’s downright sizable. Haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but a quick flip-through tells me it’s gonna be a treat.
Also arrived this week is Scurvy Dogs #5, which again it seems like everyone else on the planet already got their copies before they ever showed up at the store. At least, several webloggers have been talkin’ about their copies, and now I can read it for myself. Good stuff…I love the silvery-ink cover.
Identity Crisis #2 – if you didn’t like what happened to You-Know-Who in the first issue, you’re definitely not going to like what happens in the second issue. (For additional entertainment: visit the John Byrne Message Forum in the next day or two and look for a message thread devoted to this comic. I can hear the outrage already.)
DC Comics Presents: Mystery in Space – while the lead story (by Elliot S! Maggin and J.H. Williams III) was entertaining (and will please fans of the aforementioned You-Know-Who), the second story by Grant Morrison and Jerry Ordway really is something else. It’s a tribute to Julius Schwartz, to Adam Strange, and to the particular moment in time surrounding the beginning of the Silver Age of comics. Very touching.
In other news:
- Smallville fans: we have achieved Lois Lane.
- Today at the store I was talking with coworker Kid Chris about the remote possibility of a Green Lantern movie starring Jack Black…and you know what? I want to see it. Yes, everyone on comic book message boards and weblogs will complain, but this represents only the tiniest fraction of a potential audience for this film. Compare to the forthcoming Catwoman film, which, pal Dorian has convinced me in our discussions on the subject, will probably do reasonably well at the box office even though comic fans loathe what they’ve seen of it. If this film were actually being marketed to comic fans, maybe the studio would care what the fans thought.
So, a superhero comedy film? No one is currently filling that niche, maybe aside from the coming Pixar film The Incredibles. It’s not as if a superhero comedy film will change anyone’s opinions on comics…we’ve had several successful “serious” superhero movies in recent years, and that didn’t really do anything for the public perception of funnybooks, so it’s unlikely a funny Green Lantern will do any harm. Besides, most non-comics fans really don’t know or care who Green Lantern is anyway…I don’t know how many times I’ve had someone in the store who wasn’t familiar with comics look at Green Lantern and ask me, “where’s Kato?”
Anyway, Kid Chris suggested Ben Stiller as Sinestro. Now tell me you don’t want to see this film.
