New comics day.
A brief exchange I had with someone yesterday:
Someone: “I drew this cartoony figure in life drawing class, and the teacher kept talking about it to the class and comparing it to Crumb’s work. But it didn’t look anything like Crumb!”
Me: “So basically the only cartoonist your teacher knew by name was Crumb.”
Someone: “…Yeah, pretty much.”
Anyway, it was new comics day yesterday, and I may have jumped the gun a little on my review yesterday for Zombie Tales: Death Valley, which I thought would be out but didn’t arrive. Oops, my mistake…well, it should be out soon, so check it out then.
Aeon Flux #3 – There’s nothing sadder than the last couple of issues of a movie-based comic book mini-series that are released after the movie in question has flopped hugely.
Essential Spider-Woman – The meaning of the word “essential” just keeps getting stretched further and further, doesn’t it? Well, I suppose there’s a fan out there not named “Brian Michael Bendis” who wants this book. (Says the man who wants a Showcase Presents ‘Mazing Man.)
Marvel Zombies #1 – This shouldn’t have been enjoyable — Marvel jumping on the zombie trend, spinning out of a Ultimate FF storyline that seemed to irritate most folks with its bait ‘n’ switch — but it was just grotesque enough to be fun. The bit with zombie Banner not being able to deal with what zombie Hulk ate was particularly dark-humored.
Penny Arcade 25-center – Has anyone else noticed quality issues with this comic? No, not the contents, I mean the actual printing and paper quality? Maybe we just got a bad batch of ’em.
No-show: Hard Time Season Two #1. Also, sorta no-shows were the DC promotional bookmarks (for Sandman and such) that were supposed to be allocated to Diamond accounts at about five to fifteen each…but we ended up getting one each. What good does that do us, exactly? I wonder if Borders and Barnes & Noble got all the DC bookmarks they wanted?
Special “This stuff shoulda been delivered to us in previous weeks but we just got ’em yesterday” section:
I kept thinking Amazing Fantasy #15 was actually #10. I can’t imagine why, aside from the HUGE FREAKIN’ black circle with the number “10” inside right up there next to the issue number.
Re: Dawn 2006 Calendar – publishers, please, next time you release a calendar in a comic or magazine format, at least have the courtesy to punch a hole through the edge of the pages so that people buying your item would at least be able to hang it up.
So a while back, DC Comics offered a free Superman Justice variant action figure to retailers who had bought the same variant figure previously as a Justice #1 ordering incentive. If you bought one before, you’d get another for free as a “thank you” for supporting the series, or two for two, and so on. Well, we were supposed to get it last week, but we were shorted…but we got our replacement this week, which is when I noticed that we were getting charged nine bucks for it. Now, the press release from DC emphasized repeatedly we’d be getting this figure for free…still waiting for Diamond to offer up an explanation for this one.
Anyway, I’m a little grumpy…Killer Japanese Seizure Robots, take me away!