It’s not often Nancy and Popeye are described as “high-falutin’.”
So if you’re on your way to your local funnybook store, let me warn you, there’s about one million new releases out this week, or at least it felt that way as I was breaking down the shipment Tuesday afternoon/evening. I mean, not even counting Marvel’s apparently weekly new titles I was complaining about a few days ago, there was a whole lotta stuff. And on top of that, due to the vagaries of shipping caused by the holidays at the end of the year, we also received next week’s comics which we’re to hold ’til the on-sale date of the 26th, so I’ve got to keep those stored away for a week while ignoring the cynical part of my brain that tells me all these titles I’m holding aside are probably already in the hands of somebody somewhere scanning away and uploading them to your torrents and your napsters and whatever other crazy things you kids use what with your portable phones and hip-computers and such.
But enough cynicism…here are a few things this week that bring me joy and good tidings:
Nancy Likes Christmas: Complete Dailies 1946-1948 – pretty much the only thing that got me out of bed and into work Tuesday (aside from, you know, having to do my job in order to get paid) was the knowledge that this would be waiting for me inside one of the Diamond boxes. It’s a great book…a perfect book. In an ideal world, this is what you’d find in hotel rooms instead of Gideon Bibles. This is far better than what the world deserves…well, I deserve it, at any rate — I’m not sure about the rest of you. But you should get a copy anyway.
Classic Popeye #5, reprinting in its entirety the original #5 from 1949, including the two page prose story filler that nobody read back then and nobody’s going to read now. That’s okay…it’s cover to cover comics aside from that, and at $3.99 retail that’s a bargain for this swell and densely-packed comic.
…Look, it’s can’t all be high-falutin’ classic comic strip stuff. Sometimes I just want a goofy superhero comic filled with oddball ideas and fights, and Supreme works just fine. It’s hard to imagine Supreme having a life after Alan Moore’s run, with its deconstructive self-awareness, but Erik Larsen has simply pulled it back to straightforward Silver Age-y action. Well, maybe with a little self-aware poking at the genre, but it’s certainly more “let’s have fun” than Moore’s “let’s examine why this is fun while we’re having fun.” Um. Okay, something like that. Also, I wanted to note that I’m getting just the slightest “Howard the Duck” vibe off Squeak the Supremouse and his “trapped in a world he never made” predicament in the series, but if that’s just me, please ignore that I typed that.
I haven’t your Nancey ‘jones’ but I will concur that the current Popeye books (both the new stories by Langridge and these reprints) are top notch and well worth picking up. The Popeye reprint series is also double size I believe, so that’s worth mentioning.
Larsen’s SUPREME has been a teeth-gritting fever of pleasure (feel free to use that for promo blurb purposes EXTREME Studios!), the first ‘old school’ Image book I’ve been interested in, in years (and I was never interested in the other Liefeld titles). It is particularly nice to see Larsen working outside his usual universe. Too bad there’s only 1 more issue to go.
Interesting thing about Squeak the Supremouse is that there’s a evil duck character running around the story somewhere too; AND Savage Dragon may have the “real” Howard the Duck as a refuge from the Marvel U in it–depending on how you read that “Savage Dragon/Destroyer Duck” crossover!
who the heck is Charles Soule and why will he soon be hearing the name Mike Sterling?
he has no entry on wiki.
anyway,have a great holiday season,Mike.
Oh, it’s all so beautiful!
The Nancy book is great, I read it all in one sitting yesterday.
Hey, you’re right! I DIDN’T read that Popeye prose story! Maybe I would have if it were written in first-person narration by Popeye himself…
two of my fav’ comic bloggers, in post communication. Tis the season of joy!
“In an ideal world, this is what you’d find in hotel rooms instead of Gideon Bibles.”
I left a Star Trek novel in a motel drawer once. I figured the next people outta have some decent reading!
Merry Christmas Mike!