New comics day. Wheeeee.
- Well, we finally got our copies of the JLA/Avengers hardcovers in. If you would have told me 25 years ago that someday there would be a $75.00 slipcased set of hardback books that had, among others, Blue Devil on the cover, I would have said two things – #1: “No way!” and #2: “Who’s Blue Devil?”
- Shorted on us by Diamond: Scott Pilgrim, our reorders of Spaghetti Western, and our reorder of Street Angel #1. Dang it.
- At last, ComicsOne has cut through all the coyness and baloney, and has distilled manga down to its basic essence*:
High School Girls. Ask for it by name! - Fantastic Four #517 is the only tie-in to the current Avengers storylines that I’ve read…and I’m hoping that the rest of the crossovers are not as much of a “red skies”** crossover as this one is. Really, you could have changed every occurrence of the phrase “the Avengers are disbanded” with “the Avengers are on a mission in another dimension” and had more or less the same story.
- One thing I like about Brian Bolland’s two covers for the Julius Schwartz tribute series DC Comics Presents is that he uses Julie himself in place of one of the cover characters. I thought that was a nice touch. This issue of DCCP, featuring the Atom, was a little more enjoyable than the previous issue. The Mark Waid story threatened to collapse beneath its own cleverness, but turned out to be fairly charming, and a nice cataloguing of the stories we’ve heard about Mr. Schwartz.
- Cosmic Guard by Jim Starlin – I offer no excuses for buying this. I’m a die-hard Starlin fan, and there’s no known cure (though Wyrd came close).
- The new Comics Journal is out, and it looks like a winner. Complete Toth stories and the forbidden “Goodman Beaver” Archie parody? That alone should be enough to get you to pick it up. Oh, and there’s some articles and stuff, too.
- Plastic Man continues to be fantastic. Look, if you didn’t like the initial storyline, go back and try issues 8 and 9. They’re lots of fun, honest! (And Kyle Baker gets in a good jab at his own publisher this issue…you’ll know it when you see it!)
- New Demo out this week. Maybe you’ve heard of it?
- Batman Adventures #17. The last Batman comic I’ll be reading for the forseeable future. And yes, the ending of the story depressed me. Ah, well.
- Rob Liefeld Sketchbook Vol. 1. Rob Liefeld Sketchbook Vol. 1.
Rob Liefeld Sketchbook Vol. 1.
Really, it’s the greatest thing ever. You have to see it.
- Dorian noticed a typo on the back cover of the new Superman: Godfall hardcover – “tmmediately” or something similar. “Way to put your best foot forward, guys,” Dorian says.
- The one problem with several DC Comics all being prebagged with those Sky Captain CDs is that the comics tend to look alike if you’re not paying attention, which probably explains why we were shorted a certain number of the prebagged Hero #19, and got that same number of extra copies of the prebagged Fallen Angel #14.
- I wasn’t aware that they were going to be changing the logo of Hellblazer to tie into the movie, but the new printing of the Original Sins trade paperback does indeed say “Constantine HELLBLAZER” on the front cover. Apparently the same thing will be done with the monthly as well. I wonder how long they’ll keep the logo after the movie’s over and done with?
- New Girl Genius is out, in a more timely basis than the previous issue. This is a great comic…shame the trade paperbacks haven’t been available from Diamond for a while.
- And then there’s The Moth #4 (beautiful art, adequate writing), Astro City Special #1 (excellent as expected), Terra Obscura Vol. 2 #1 (looks like it should be as much fun as the first series), Ex Machina #3 (continues to be compelling), and JSA Strange Adventures #1 (Johnny Thunder’s attempt at writing JSA pulp fiction is a great idea…let’s hope the execution lives up to it).
- We also received the promo poster for the forthcoming Hal Jordan Green Lantern series, that frames the image in such a way that you can’t see how his costume has been changed. That reminds me…so let me get this straight…you’ve been complaining for years that you want Hal Jordan back, and now that you finally got him, you’re going to continue complaining over the fact that the green/black balance in his costume has been slightly changed? Well, you all better run out and get your internet petitions started to correct this horrible affront.
- This isn’t a comic that’s new this week, but I just wanted to mention…things that manage to irritate everybody make me laugh. Really, this is the cover of the year.
*I’m only joking. Relax.
** Boy, did I show my age or what?
