On the other hand, the Gladstone albums came with those cool trading cards.
Still looking for your 2011 comic book predictions, so please feel free to add them in the comments on that post…even if they are just gag predictions, you jokers. I’ll probably discuss some of the predictions in a couple of days, and maybe lay down a few of my own.
In other news:
- Well, here comes the fourth ongoing Green Lantern series, only it’s all about the Red Lanterns, which seems awfully unnecessary, except 1) it’s written by Peter Milligan, so, you know, it’ll probably be good, and 2) Dex-Starr, the Red Lantern cat is in it, and who can resist a cute little homicidal kitty? Stronger folks than me, that’s who.
This still leaves us with about two too many Green Lantern-related comics, but DC’s still riding that huge bump of interest in the franchise after the sales success of Blackest Night, and sales on the GL books are still very strong. Plus, Marvel’s not the only company that’ll saturate the shelves with books tying into a forthcoming movie…just that DC doesn’t get to do it too often.
- In other DC news, letter columns are coming back, so losing those two pages of story and art in DC’s books in order to keep the price point (temporarily) at $2.99 will be countered by content provided by you, the reader.
I used to really like reading letters columns, probably for the same reason I enjoy fanzines…exposure to what other fans are thinking about the same books I’m reading (and of course trying to glean hints about What’s to Come from the editorial responses). Nowadays, for those of us who regularly endure online fandom, there’s no shortage of this sort of thing available to those who want it, even if it’s without the editorial filter that would weed out the…less socially-adapted, shall we say. I admit I’d sort of stopped reading the letter pages in recent years, before DC dropped them entirely. Not sure I’m looking forward to their return, but…hmm, I wonder if I wrote in, they’d let me plug my site? Always look for the silver lining!
(Johanna has additional commentary.)
- So Bully, The Little Bull What Is Stuffed, was pulling your leg (with his little stuffed hooves wrapped around your ankle, tugging furiously) with his 365 Days with The Guy Freaking Out on The Cover of Action Comics #1, but he’s not pulling your leg with 365 Days with the Warriors Three! Spend the year the way our forefathers intended…with Fandral, Hogun and Volstagg!
- Big news from Fantagraphics, as they’re publishing the complete Disney Ducks work of Carl Barks in full color hardcover volumes. This really is some of the best storytelling comics has to offer, and if you don’t have any of this stuff already, you need to check it out.
Now, I already spent 10+ years (and, ahem, more money than I care to think about) buying the Gladstone color Carl Barks Library softcover albums, which, as I seem to recall, covered nearly all of Barks’ Disney output. There was apparently a story or two that were left out…I don’t recall the specifics, but I seem to remember at least one Daisy Duck story not making it into the series, and probably more that that…but they are long out of print, and the binding on these wasn’t the best in the world, so the Fantagraphics project is quite welcome. There are some comics that should never be unavailable, and the work of Carl Barks is at the top of that list.
As long as they select some intelligent, interesting letters and don’t run mindless praise and Uncle Elvis every issue, it’s not a bad idea.
Perhaps T.M. Maple will rise again…
I thought Uncle Elvis was dead? Or am I thinking of someone else? (If he’s not, my apologies to him wherever he may be.)
This one’s probably a gimmie,but I predict that even though Nekron has been defeated,and even though Hal and Barry pretty much turned around and adressed the readers to assure us that after Blackest Night, “dead is dead for reals this time” at least 1 DC character will die and come back in 2011. At least one,but probably like 20.
T. M. Maple is dead, Uncle Elvis was last seen working the counter of a Big Belly Burger.
I think there was another letter-column regular besides T.M. Maple who died in the last few years, but I can’t remember who it was.