In which I just sort of run off at the mouth about things you don’t care about.
THINGS YOU DON’T WANT TO DO: Somehow completely forget that the comic order is due, like, THAT EVENING, and you completely drop freakin’ everything to get that bastard typed into the computer and then suddenly there’s like a thousand different Uncanny Avengers #1 variants you have to figure out and you’re all “Uncanny Avengers, oh dammit Marvel” and you’re trying to balance out order plateaus and ratios and what have you to get the right amounts of everything and oh Lordy I was actually feeling nostalgic for the time when we were only dealing with pre-bagged copies of X-Force #1, each with a different card.
Anyway, the order’s in. Hopefully I didn’t have a slip of the finger while speedily entering the order and accidentally got 5,000 copies of the Before Watchmen: Dr. Manhattan statue. I mean, I only need a thousand.
Also, there are some Avengers Vs. X-Men follow-up series, which hopefully won’t go the way of the Fear Itself follow-ups, where we went from the main series selling pretty well to the series that followed having us think “hmmm, well, maybe we can glue these back together into trees.” My general feeling is that once the main event is over (whether it’s Avengers Vs X-Men or Fear Itself or whatever) then the readers are pretty much done with that particular idea, too, and don’t need these supporting series after the fact. It’s like “yeah, okay, we did that, what else you got?” I mean, nothing against the comics themselves…maybe they’re fantastic. But it’s better to move on before the diminishing returns set in, which is something that goes against everything that’s ever happened in the comics industry ever, but still, c’mon.
In other news, a lot of hay has been made about Superman and Wonder Woman hooking up in Justice League, which, yeah, I don’t know. Hasn’t the point of nearly every previous story featuring an attempted Superman/Wonder Woman romance been “Superman and Wonder Woman really shouldn’t be romantically involved?” Well, okay, maybe not Kingdom Come, and I’m sure there’s another story somewhere I’m forgetting. But, hell, why not, so long as DC’s new publishing policy is “throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks,” this isn’t any better or worse than other decisions they’ve made. And I’ll link to this news story about it because the headline is kind of amazingly crass. This is showing up in real world news sources too, which is even more amazing.
I get some folks at DC want to try new things, which is cool, and I’m sure the attention doesn’t hurt, but DC Comics only has itself to blame for teaching me over the years, among other important life lessons, that Supes and Wondy aren’t meant for each other. Besides, I prefer the Batman/Wonder Woman romance that they sorta danced around in JLA.
Also at DC, Rob Liefeld is outta there, apparently unhappy with how things were going behind the scenes. I honestly figured he’d be done and gone three issues into Hawk & Dove, but he worked on ’em all, I believe, and went on to do even more titles, at least for a bit. Ah, well. …I was thinking “maybe Marvel can get him back again” and then I was wondering what the absolute last title would be that he would do, and Howard the Duck was the first thing that popped into my head. I would break my “no non-Gerber Howard the Duck ever” rule for a Liefeld Howard.
For some reason, I was reminded of Image United…if you don’t remember this as yet uncompleted mini-series, ask your grandpa if he recalls buying it off the stands. Anyway, checking with the distributor, issues #4 and #5 are in the system, with “scheduled” shipdates for the end of the year. I put “scheduled” in quotes because they both have the same date, the last shipping day of 2012, which makes me think they’re placeholder dates and not the real thing. I guess we’ll see. We’re not quite up to Ultimate Wolverine Vs. Hulk levels yet, but soon. Soon.
Thanks to the website you linked to on the WW/Superman story, I learned a new term today: Eskimo Brothers.
Knowledge may be power, but this is horrible, horrible power…
“Rob Liefeld quits DC Comics”
And there Was Much Rejoicing.
“Image United”
Military Intelligence.
Jumbo Shrimp.
I DO sympathize with anyone ordering comics these days. Those variants are murder.
Oh, and as someone who has always hated Rob Liefeld’s art, let me join in the celebration.
I remember some story in which Superman and Wonder Woman kissed, and one of says something like “Remind me again why we don’t do that more often” and the other says something like “I don’t know… too predictable, I guess.”
I think sometimes the Bronze Age got it right.
On the other hand, I do agree with you about this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w6khbl-uXw
I like the idea of a Howard the Duck with teeny tiny feet that wouldn’t support his body, but I wouldn’t pay to see it.
“I like the idea of a Howard the Duck with teeny tiny feet that wouldn’t support his body, but I wouldn’t pay to see it.”
And he’d have lots of little pouches, and a humongous gun that doesn’t look like a REAL gun!
“Howard the DuckBlood”.
ArghSims/Snark Shark – Why must you taunt me with beauty that will never be?
@Walaka The story in question is the Superman Annual that Alan Moore wrote (“For the Man Who Has Everything”). Like much else Alan wrote for DC, he got WW/Superman right. So naturually DC’s going in a whole other direction.
Howard the Duck by Rob Liefeld? The tagline “Trapped in a World He Never Made” would be replaced by “Trapped in an Art Style No One Understands”.
Not for nothing, but they’ve already done a Lobo the Duck book.
Thanks, Dave-El — I thought that was it, but didn’t want to say so without checking, and couldn’t find my copy.
As for Howard the Liefeld: OMG.
Heard about Supes/WW on TV the other day – the anchors were wondering if Lois had been erased from history.
“the anchors were wondering if Lois had been erased from history.”
IF ONLY.
My secret for ordering Marvel variants is that I don’t. In the last five years, I’ve only had maybe three inquiries, so I feel that I made the right choice. We used to order DC ones if we qualified, but if my assistants didn’t intercept them, they tended to be the unwanted straggler copies.
RUB THE DUCK!