The caffeine is strong in this one.
Our shipping company sent one of the boxes from our comic book distributor on a free trip to the San Fernando Valley, so we were out 60 lbs. of new funnybooks today. SIXTY POUNDS. No Punishermax. No Chew. No Buzzard. No Uncle Scrooge. Not a single luxury.
Thankfully, our customers were understanding about it, and the box should be at the shop Thursday, but this still means I essentially have to do the comic saver pulls twice, and frankly I’m not all that good at doing them once a week, so we’ll see how this goes.
Some of the things we did get in this week:
- Batman #700 – fun story from Grant Morrison with multiple Batmen, multiple artists (yay, more Frank Quitely!), and time travel. The $4.99 price point for this Extra! Special! Big! Issue! is a damned shame, and if they’d cut the pin-ups and the Guide to the Batcave that I’ll probably never get around to looking at, maybe this could have been $3.99, which is still an ol’ kick in the pocketbook but then I wouldn’t be paying and extra buck for a bunch of stuff I really don’t care about and you know I think I probably have a period around here somewhere, oh, look, here it is.
- Wednesday Comics HC – which I know actually came out a couple of weeks ago, but the copies we first received weren’t packed properly for shipping and had crunched corners…and given these were $50 books, I didn’t feel right charging full price for ’em. Anyway, we received replacement copies this week, and they were pristine, and all was right with the world.
By the way, pal Sean bought one of the tweaked one, which he got with his Former Employee Discount so he didn’t pay full price for it, at least. He popped it open to let me take a look…and surprisingly, the unpleasantly difficult-to-read Wonder Woman story had been relettered from its original printing in the newspaper format, making it slightly less unpleasantly difficult-to-read. The rest of the book looks nice, too. This has been Mike’s In-Depth Review.
- Doom Patrol #11 – I finally really enjoyed a Doom Patrol story in this comic, which is probably a terrible thing to say eleven issues in, but Doom Patrol is one of those titles/groups/concepts that I’ll buy regardless, which probably makes me a bad comics fan that’s hurting the health of the medium, but screw you, it’s my money. I mean, Doom Patrol has never been really bad…well, okay, the Byrne issues were at least enjoyable in a “these are really dopey and amusing” sort of way. At least for me. Don’t look at me like that. But this new series was…interesting, but never really grabbed me, especially when we were forced to compare the lead DP story with the excellent and sadly missed Metal Men back-ups. But this issue everything finally clicked with me, I guess, what with the usage of that one Giffen character, and a few more Morrison concepts creeping back in. Really got a kick out of it.
- Star Trek: Leonard McCoy #3 – This is the one with Larry Niven’s Puppeteer alien on the front cover. Well, one of the front covers, since this needed to have a 50/50 split of variant covers, for some reason. The Puppeteer is not on the inside, sorry. Anyway, Niven fanboys, be on the alert. The red alert! I have no idea what I’m saying.
- Ooh, ooh, Tom Strong and the Robots of Doom #1 – I really liked this comic. Yeah, it’s not Alan Moore writing it, but it is Peter Hogan writing, and Chris Sprouse drawing, and it fits in perfectly well with any of the Moore stories. Great set-up, can’t wait to see how everything plays out.
- X-Men Forever 2 #1 – Oh, I’m sure this totally needed restarting with a new #1.
- Jonah Hex #56 has a Darwyn Cooke cover and comes polybagged with a Jonah Hex movie poster. Man oh man, this movie. I suspect it won’t be any good, but it’ll be entirely entertaining. The comic’s always good, though…you should read it.
- Justice League: Generation Lost #3 – Entertaining, but I’m already getting the feeling that this 26-issue biweekly series will be about 13 issues too long. Too soon to really say, I realize, so I’ll update my reaction here in a few months. Pretty sure it’ll be better than Trinity.
- Red Sonja #50 – Number fifty? Really?
In other news:
- There’s some kind of rumor that Swamp Thing will be making his reappearance in the non-Vertigo DC Universe in the forthcoming Plastic Man series, to which the creator of said PM series said “uh, no” so I guess that’s not happening. Anyway, you’ll just have to take my word for this because over my dead body I’m linking to the site where all this is going on.
In lighter Swamp Thing news, there’s this discussion where the main concern is apparently the number of times Batman has taken a beating from Swamp Thing. Sez one gentleman, he sez
“The Vertigo community which I’m part of feels this is just a ploy so that they can pit Batman and Swamp Thing back together and rectify, two of Batman’s very few losses.”
…which not only indicates that there’s two places on the nerdinet where Swamp Thing beating Batman is a point of contention, but that it’s felt this is the reason that Swampy was moved away from the mature reader Vertigo into the slightly-less mature reader DC Universe. And not, say, that the Vertigo-ized Swampy was a bit played out and needed to be retooled, or that one of DC’s more recognizable characters needed some rehabilitation for marketing exploitation, or something. Actually, I don’t care about the reasons, just bring me more Swamp Thing comics. Of any kind. And make it snappy.
- Pal Dorian presents…Previews for Gays. BONUS: Dor breaks his Archie silence to comment on the imminent arrival of Archie’s first (openly) gay character.
- War Rocket Ajax copilot and fellow Bureau Chief Eugene has gifted you all with a swell new song that you should all go listen to. Its “beats” are very “phat,” I believe you kids would say.
Swamp Thing beat Batman a total of three times:
Swamp Thing Vol.1 #7.
Swamp Thing Vol.2 #53.
and Batman #522.
Ohhhhhhh, so the Star Trek cover from the April 1st End Of Civilization WAS real. I was thrown by the whole “If I could walk THAT way, I wouldn’t NEED the talcum powder” thing.
I had been looking forward to the Jonah Hex movie since a completely over the top tribute to spaghetti western sounded like a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately I have heard that they had massive production problems including a rotating director. It’s safe to say that it’s going to be a disaster (in case the horrible trailers and commercials weren’t enough of a clue).
I agree, the Jonah Hex comic is very good. IMO, one of the best reads you can buy every month.
Too bad the movie’s going to suck so bad that it will tarnish the name, thus turning Jonah Hex into the Howard The Duck of it’s time.
You forgot the Buy/Don’t Buy recommendations, Mike.
The Puppeteer’s on the cover only of that McCoy comic? Well, that saves me some cash. Kinda false advertising on the publisher’s part, though.