Well, if you didn’t buy your copy of Absolute Watchmen yesterday, you go right back to your funnybook store today and get your copy. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
…
Got it? Good. Now enjoy the heck out of it, because it’s the best thing that came out this week.
A very close second is this year’s edition of Bart Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror, reuniting Swamp Thing creators Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson on a parody of their creation…
…”Squish Thing.” Pick it up…tell ’em Mike sent you. (Oh, and there’s a Dracula story by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan, plus work by some other guys like, oh, say, John Severin, and Angelo Torres, and Mark Schultz, and Al Williamson…you know, no one you’d be interested in.) Honestly, though, the folks at Bongo Comics outdo themselves every year on their Halloween specials, and every one of them is chock-full of talent and worth picking up.
John Severin drawing the Simpsons. Fantastic.
Also new this week is the Trencher trade paperback from BOOM! Studios, which I mention here because 1) it’s Keith Giffen, for pete’s sake, and 2) our store was…intimately involved in the production of this item. No, not like that, we all kept our pants on, but we helped deliver that baby! Um, perhaps I could have phrased that better.
I’m already sick of this Spider-Man: The Other crossover series, and all we’ve seen so far is the sketchbook.
So, earlier this year, as part of DC’s ongoing company-wide retooling, the character of Blue Beetle was killed off, as you may have heard. And, as what usually happens when a second (or third) stringer character is offed, suddenly he became the Most Beloved Character Ever, and everyone bemoaned the senseless waste of a character so full of potential.
And now, Mikester of Progressiveruin.com shall predict…THE FUTURE!
2006: DC Comics announces a new Blue Beetle series, reviving the concept with a new character (or, perhaps, a previously established but otherwise currently unused one) in the title role.
Because of the publicity and apparent outpouring of love for Blue Beetle following the character’s death, interest seems high in this new series. Interest may be especially high if said Blue Beetle relaunch spins out of the best-selling Infinite Crisis series. Retailers order good numbers, and when the issue finally comes out, it sells very well. It may even possibly sell out, requiring a second, or even a third, printing, all with different covers, and so on.
Sales remain relatively strong for a few months, possibly still riding the post-Infinite Crisis buzz.
Then, once the fallout from Infinite Crisis finally settles down, and the new status quo of the DC Universe is established, most of the people buying the new Blue Beetle series will realize, “hey, you know what, it turns out we actually didn’t like the Blue Beetle that much after all.” Sales drop, retailers cut the book down to Breach or Arana or Doom Patrol numbers, and the book is finally put out of its misery in mid/late 2007.
And that’s pretty much it for the new Blue Beetle. Well, aside from a cameo in 2008’s Sue Dibny: Rebirth.
It looks like a couple spam sites made it onto the Comics Weblog Update-A-Tron 3000. DARN YOU SPAM! (“Spam” as in the unsolicited internet content, not the delightful and versatile meat product.)
